The (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History)
Verse Observations: Eph 1:9-10
*Christ as God's divine plan - Eph 1:9
*God's past patience with the nations - Acts 14:16
Why did God create the world in 7 days? What's this about process, when he could have had everything exist instantaneously? (see "plants take time to grow" under Generalities vs Exceptions [press "ctrl" and "f" simultaneously to search for the phrase])
To a certain extent it makes sense that he made the universe in stages because the universe is physical, and physical things happen in stages. At the same time, I can see how this would be completely superfluous. While it's natural that now that the world has been "set up" that things happen gradually over time, why would this be necessary from the very beginning? I don't see what difference it would have made, other than I suppose it'd be much more difficult for us to explore the origins of the universe. As it is, we can look at things like background radiation and such to figure out that God indeed said, "Let there be light." Not that I'm saying this is the reason why God created the universe this way. Not at all. That wouldn't be much of a reason.
So what was the purpose of the Tree of Life anyway? (Gn 2:9)
It's interesting that it was there in the garden when it apparently was never eaten from, at least it seems that way, given that God was so worried about them eating from it once they had fallen, since he said that it would make them "live forever". What's even stranger is why it was in the garden given that Adam and Eve would have already lived forever, as long as they didn't eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Furthermore, why is it that they never ate from the tree (of Life) earlier, before the Fall? There was no prohibition against eating from it, so why didn't they? And what would have happened if they had eaten from it, and then eaten from the Tree of Knowledge? Would that even be possible? (ie, would God have stopped them from doing, just as he stopped them from eating from the Tree of Life after the Fall?) I realize that it's pretty terrible that I'm attempting to answer a question by asking even more questions. It's a bit overwhelming. By the way, if you haven't figured it out already, I take the story of the Fall literally, and obviously that's going to affect my interpretation of what was going on. Would this be as interesting if we took on an allegorical interpretation? Probably not.
In any case, it does indeed seem that God prevented Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree of Life, certainly after the Fall, but even before, because of the disastrous consequences that would imply. So then when would it have been appropriate and allowed to eat from the Tree of Life? Given that the possibility of falling was always there, that would imply that eating from the Tree of Life would never have been a possibility, at least not a possibility in the sense of being actualized. So its existence allowed for the existence of an alternate reality, a free will choice. Not that I'm saying that without the Tree of Life there could have been no free will choice for eating from the Tree of Knowledge, since I don't see why there needed to be a Tree of Life in order for there to be a Tree of Knowledge, much less, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. So I'm still stumped.
Was it just there for the allegorical sense, just (included in the story) to show that Adam and Eve had forever lost paradise, symbolized by never being able to eat from that tree? This is certainly a convenient answer, but as I said earlier, that makes things far less interesting, and furthermore, I would still wonder why it would even be mentioned, given that although it would certainly enhance the atmosphere of doom in the story, it would serve no real purpose, given that we would already know that Adam and Eve had lost paradise forever (they got kicked out of the garden after all). I mean, why would there be this big emphasis (on God's part) on making sure they don't get to it or else they'd live forever, and that would just be so terrible that it'd be divinely unthinkable? (God doesn't even finish his sentence it's so painful to imagine.) But the biggest reason, in truth, as to why I take the story literally is because I don't think it could be taken as seriously if it wasn't. I'm sure there's people who would disagree, and I could see how they'd take the story just as seriously as I do, but I think it's still true that you wouldn't be able to really parse things (like I'm trying to do here) without taking it literally.
I almost feel as if whatever it was that God was so scared of happening (a world where you could be evil and still live forever, thus eliminating any kind of moral cause and effect in the universe) was the reason for the tree's existence. So I'm talking about some real, heavy-duty necessity here, that it was so necessary that God was willing to allow for this alternate reality of horror in order to get whatever it was necessary to get out of this tree's existence in the garden.
So if it wasn't necessary to eat from the Tree of Life before the Fall, given that Adam and Eve were already immortal, doesn't that imply that the purpose of the Tree of Life wasn't in its existence before the Fall, but after? As obvious as this might sound to one who believes in providence, it seems that the tree's purpose was to not be eaten from. Anyway, I've come full circle at this point, and I'm just restating the original question, albeit, from a different perspective.
How is it that God could make a tree so powerful that even he could not undo the consequences of eating it (Adam and Eve living forever because of eating fruit from the Tree of Life)? (Gn 3:22)
And I wonder if God routinely does this sort of thing (constricting himself by his own rules). Why make a tree that powerful anyway? What would be the purpose behind that? Does it really have to be that powerful in order for it to serve whatever its intended purpose was?
Why’s the Tree of Life still around? (Rv 2:7, 22:2)
Granted, while I take the story of the Fall literally, this Revelation reference could very well be symbolic, as a lot of stuff in this book is.
Why was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? What was its function? (Gn 2:17) What exactly did it confer on its eaters, if Adam and Eve obviously already knew right from wrong? Why did God make it if he didn't want them eating from it?
Hmmm. I guess there's a lot of stuff God doesn't want us doing, but that doesn't mean that he ensures blockage to any access to those things. The Tree of Knowledge seems conspicuous however in that it appears that it was created for the express purpose of giving Adam and Eve free will. But that in itself is an interesting question because would that mean that if the tree didn't exist that they wouldn't have free will? It seems strange that their free will would be contingent on a tree. Well, I guess it could have been contingent on anything -- red pill, blue pill.
In any case, would it really have been impossible for them to rebel without some kind of door out (of paradise)? Did such a door exist for Satan and the other fallen angels? The bible makes no mention of one. For all we know he might very well have just decided one day to be evil. So why couldn't Adam and Eve have done the same thing? So would Adam and Eve have remained forever free of sin if only the Tree wasn't available to them? Could they still be said to have free will? But isn't free will something inherent to the individual, and not contingent upon actual choices available to them in their environment?
This ties into the other subquestion -- what exactly did the fruit of the Tree confer to its eaters if Adam and Eve already knew right from wrong? It's almost like, yes, there had to be this one door out of paradise, unlike the world we live in, where mortal sin is all around in all sorts of forms. Perhaps it could be argued that their world (Adam and Eve's) wouldn't have been perfect if temptation was so readily available like in ours. But wait ... that makes me think that there was really no real reason why their world couldn't have been like ours except for the Tree. It is/wasn't that temptation is/was always "physically around", but that their eyes "weren't opened" (just like it says [Gn 3:5]) to the temptation all around. In this sense, it's kind of ironic that the serpent really wasn't lying -- their eyes were indeed opened. Apparently, they were so innocent at the beginning that they didn't even know they were naked, just like very young children don't know they're naked. It's just that he (the serpent) really put a totally different spin on things to make it seem like this would be a good thing. Talk about a word game (no pun intended).
It's still kind of weird that even though there were no temptations available to them, there was one temptation available. If there's tons of temptations or just one, does it really matter? In a way, it seems not, because the end result is the same world -- the world we live in, a fallen world. But for the world Adam and Eve lived in, the Garden of Eden, it did matter, because it meant that they were living in a moral paradise, and they could have kept it that way just by avoiding that one fruit they weren't allowed to eat.
What would have happened if only one of our parents had decided to eat from the Tree?
On the Tree of Life and Knowledge
Would it be artificial of God to make the Tree of Knowledge efficacious "by fiat", and not because of some kind of physical mechanism? To get off track a bit here, how would this physical mechanism work? Is this somehow related to communion? Now things are getting very complicated here, because it's difficult to sort out the physical and spiritual here, physical being a physical mechanism by which these foods are efficacious (perhaps even a biological mechanism, though I doubt that), spiritual meaning "by fiat", which to me is a bit artificial, at least at first glance. I'll go into this more later. Now getting back to the physical mechanism, I was against a biological mechanism, but if not biological, and yet physical, what do I mean by "physical"? Actually, I don't know. And this is why I say it gets complicated, because by "physical" perhaps I actually mean something not MERELY physical, but also spiritual, as with communion, whose mystery I don't understand, and which I'm not sure if anyone does. This is also true of the other sacraments, such as baptism and marriage/sex (which Paul writes of as a mystery in Eph 5:31-32). 2 analogies could be helpful here -- the red/blue pill scene from the Matrix, and the Tree of Life. Now why did God even set up a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden? Why would the eating of fruit be the mechanism by which man was to fall? It seems very arbitrary, considering that in itself, eating fruit isn't wrong. It's not like God told Adam not to worship the sun and moon, or not have sex with the animals, both things of which I don't see why he couldn't do (if he wanted). Certainly they weren't physical impossibilities. Those things would have been sins in themselves, so eating forbidden fruit raises the question -- what makes it forbidden? Again, because God made the fruit PHYSICALLY efficacious, or merely by fiat? For example, I don't think there was anything physically efficacious about the red or blue pills in the Matrix. What made them efficacious was completely arbitrary -- they were merely symbolic vehicles by which Neo could make a choice. But I wonder if the Tree of Knowledge was the same way. We can look to the Tree of Life for a clue -- in that case, it seems that the tree WAS physically efficacious, since God alludes to humans living forever if they were to eat of it, despite the fact that this contradicts the very effects of the Tree of Knowledge, which God said would cause certain death. And God doesn't just "shut down" the efficacy of the Tree of Life, which he could do if its efficacy was by fiat, but instead he places an angel in front of it to guard it. Then in Revelation, the Tree of Life is reinstated in the lives of humans, to be eaten and to give life. This part could be metaphorical, but if not, we have to ask, what would be the purpose of the Tree of Life? Would we not already have eternal life because God had given it to us by his Son, and not by a tree? Or even if we were to take it metaphorically, still, what need would there be for it, since God has already saved? To backtrack a little, God would not even have to "shut down" the Tree, since if it was merely symbolic, as in the Matrix, it would have already served its purpose and would no longer be forbidden.
Now this is related to natural law, which is related to the UQ -- that is, why are we physical? Because if the efficacy of the Trees was physical, then the mechanism by which they worked could be said to be akin to the power of the natural laws. But then this raises the question of how the natural laws work -- since even THEY are upheld by fiat, that is, by God's word (Heb 1:3). And yet, when the natural laws are broken, that is, when God performs a miracle, that's also by God's word, so if they're both by God's word, why do we say that one is natural and one supernatural? Why do we say that one is physical and one spiritual? And likewise, what's the difference between a physical mechanism for the efficacy of the Trees and one by fiat?
So how is this related to the UQ, and how does the mystery of the Trees shed light on the mystery of our physicality? Well, we have to ask, what's the purpose of the natural laws, emphasis on NATURAL, if God a)upholds it all anyway by his own power and b)(which follows from "a") -- wouldn't this mean that the naturalness of nature is somehow superfluous, unnecessary, and therefore, even arbitrary (arbitrary in the sense that it's there for no reason)? And yet we can study the natural laws and see that they're so orderly, beautiful, so universal and -- not to be argued with. Now going back to where I said "emphasis on natural", my whole point of saying this is to ask, what's the point of being NATURAL, (which I'm afraid I can't even define, but only recognize it when I see it)?
What does knowing that you're naked have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? (Gn 3:7)
Well the first thing that comes to mind is the innocence of very young children who don't know that they're naked. It'd be interesting to know whether this shame of being naked has anything to do with the growth of the conscience. (Perhaps my internet research skills aren't the best, but I surprisingly haven't been able to find much on this topic, even from a purely religious perspective.) I've also heard of senile elders who lose the awareness of being naked, and I wonder if a degradation of the conscience goes along with that, too. And while this is somewhat of a side issue, having to do with the the internalism/externalism debate in ethics, I wonder why it is that even psychopaths manage to develop a conscience even though they never use it. Of course, use (and formation of) the conscience is something that happens on a scale, so I guess this is the same as asking why anyone at all develops a conscience, since we're all psychopathic to certain degrees.
Anyway, the major point I want to make here is to link this up with what I wrote earlier in a question posed above about their eyes being opened, specifically, where I ask a further question, "did it matter that there were tons of temptations (as in our world) or only one temptation (as in theirs)?" To add to my answer there, and to buttress it, this knowledge of nakedness seems to support the answer "yes" (to the "does it matter" question), since knowing that you're naked is a huge difference (and a shock to Adam and Eve when they found out) from not knowing that you're naked. What I'm saying is that this state of innocence (of not knowing the difference between good and evil) was real, even if Adam and Eve knew enough to be held culpable for disobeying God's one command. So it's ironic, but I don't purport to know everything about the significance about all this.
A related question is, why did they feel ashamed when they were married? Married couples don't feel ashamed of being naked in front of their own spouse. It's as if they go back to the innocence of childhood when they're naked in front of each other. This makes me think that Adam and Eve weren't ashamed of being naked in front of each other, but in front of God. Perhaps they even just felt ridiculous about being naked in a very general sense, although I'm inclined to doubt this, since I think that most people, after a hypothetical nuclear disaster that obliterates all mankind except for that one individual (and they know this for a fact), would not mind walking around naked. On the other hand, who really cares about being naked in front of God? If God is everywhere and omniscient, he already knows what you look like naked, and he sees you whenever you get naked. Given this, does anyone care that God can see they're naked? So this must mean that God manifested himself to Adam and Eve in a much more personal way than we're used to, since even though everything I said about God seeing us naked holds true for Jesus as well, I don't think anyone would be comfortable being naked in front of Jesus, even if perhaps logically this doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, I don't think the knowledge of nakedness is very logical, since even if a doctor examines you while you're naked, that doesn't mean that from then on you'd be perfectly fine with being naked in front of them, since they already know what you look like.
What does it mean “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil”? (Gn 3:22)
This has already been discussed obliquely in the previous questions. What's interesting here is that God confirms what the serpent said, "That you will become like God, knowing good and evil." (Gn 3:5) So in a very twisted way, the serpent wasn't technically lying. Of course, that's the best kind of lie, right? So the real question here is -- why is this (attainment of knowledge) a bad thing? If God knows good and evil, he still remains good. But it seems that if we know good and evil, this can only come by way of having become corrupted in our moral nature. A counterexample to this would be the saints in heaven who have been made perfect, but they too know good and evil, although it could be argued that this doesn't count because they were all born under original sin. And what about the angels? (They always come in handy for comparison.) Angels know the difference between good and evil, but with angels, they've already reached permanent states of grace or damnation. In this way, the saints in heaven are akin to the good angels, both of whom are in permanent and irrevocable states of grace. Likewise damned humans are akin to fallen angels, both of whom are in permanent and irrevocable states of damnation. (For more background on this, namely, the fall of the angels, please see the Angel page, but more specifically the (About) the Divine Plan/Fate & Free Will page and Prayer page. [Searching for the term "fallen angel" should locate the exact questions these are discussed under.])
Let's take this from a different tack. Would it really be good if Adam and Eve had remained in a perpetual state of innocence and obedience to the one command they had been given? If we compare their state with the condition of the saints in heaven, it seems that the saints in heaven have it better. This is because they know good and evil in the way God does, and as the angels do, but have come out clean and with their souls having been saved. In other words, they really know what they know and so their choice is true. Put another way, it can be said that they have more of an "adult's mind", whereas Adam and Eve, though in a state of moral innocence, were also like children in that they were also in a state of moral ignorance. Children are innocent, but only because they don't know any better. At their core, children are just as corrupt as adults, it's just that the evil within them hasn't come to full fruition. So the child is innocent, and the saint is innocent, but in completely different ways. In a way, the saint can be said to be more innocent than the child, since if the saint is innocent (and they are), it's a deliberate innocence, whereas the child has "wound up" in a state of innocence through no "fault" of their own. But looked at from a different perspective, the child is, in absolute terms, more innocent than the saint, since the saint has sinned (albeit repented), whereas the child is truly clean and spotless, with a clean slate. In this sense, the child is more blessed than the saint, having never (in fact) offended God. Applying the UQ, the saint is spiritually innocent, whereas the child is physically innocent. (Of course, by "physical" I don't mean this in any material, tactile or tangible way, in case you don't know what I mean by the UQ.) So too, God, good angels and the saints are spiritually innocent. (And God, and perhaps the good angels as well, though it's hard to say for sure since we know so little about the history of the fall of the angels -- are also physically innocent.) Adam and Eve, up to their fall, were only physically innocent.
So now the next logical question, which I think really brings us back to the our starting point -- how could Adam and Eve achieve spiritual innocence without undergoing the Fall? Would this have even been possible? Again we can turn to the angels for a little insight here. It seems that they (the good angels) did in fact attain spiritual innocence even while in their physical innocence. (We have to remember here that even Satan, for at least a little while [although for exactly "how long" {since in the spiritual realm there's no time in our sense of the word} this lasted we don't know], was also once in a state of physical innocence.) Now how they (the good angels) managed this is impossible to say for sure, since the bible really doesn't give us any details about this matter, other than to say that there was a rebellion at some point.
Now given all this, the next question to ask is -- why are the angels so "fortunate" to be able to enter into spiritual innocence without ever having lost their physical innocence? This has never happened with any mere human, except the Virgin Mary. So the good angels and the Virgin Mary have received the same treatment and blessing from God. On the other hand, you could also look at it the other way, and say, "How come us humans are so fortunate that even when we've lost our physical innocence, God gives us the grace of spiritual innocence, whereas, angels don't get this privilege? For them, if they sin, they sin and they're kicked out and that's it?" So looking at it from this perspective, we're really quite lucky. Now we can debate which way is more blessed, which perhaps all comes down to a matter of personal opinion in the end, but as a theologian, that's not quite what I'm worried about here. The real question is -- why are things different like this for us (humans and angels) anyway?
I can only speculate that it's due to our natures as physical and spiritual beings. Not that we (humans) are entirely physical, since we're also spiritual, a composite creature if you will, whereas angels are pure spirit. Unfortunately, that's all I can say on this matter. How exactly this effects grace and salvation for us, or why our being physical or spiritual matters, I really don't know. So why is this my speculation? I can only say it's my hunch. It only makes sense to me that something this important would be rooted in the very state of our being (physical or spiritual). Think about it -- physicality is all about process and gradualness, and we as humans do in fact, on our road to damnation or salvation, make decisions day-by-day that lead us to our eventual destination. Not only that, but salvation history displays this kind of development, where we start off with a kernel, a promise of redemption at the Fall, to all the various covenants, the people of Israel becoming more and more aware of various spiritual truths, to the revelation of God become man, to the birth of the Church, to the articulation, and greater articulation of various dogmas (which is exactly what we're trying to do here), just as was the case with Israel. If we zoom out even more, and look at human history (which is just another term for The Divine Plan), we see this groping after some kind of fulfillment, some ultimate purpose, something which we'll never fully understand in the here and now.
Angels, being pure spirit, don't have any of this process or gradualness. They don't even live in time! So it would make sense that for them, salvation or damnation is more or less instantaneous.
Now going back to where I said, "... we can debate which way is more blessed", (and this also flows well into what we were just talking about) I'm going to take back what I said afterward about not really being concerned about this. I realized that far from this being a matter of personal opinion, this is perhaps a very telling clue in figuring out the divine plan. Not that we're ever going to figure it out on this side of eternity, but we can at least try to make progress in that direction. Now if there's a difference in treatment (between humans and angels when they fall from grace), why this difference? Obviously, because it pleased God to make it such, but why? Although I don't know the answer, just asking the question leads us to realms of greater awareness, glimpses of a greater truth that we can only imagine about at this point. Now there's two ways of going about answering this question. We can either say that this difference of treatment is merely the fallout of the consequences of being spiritual or physical, and God wanted physical beings (for whatever reason -- this is the Ultimate Question, after all), and so it just follows as a natural consequence that humans as a general rule (the exception being the Virgin Mary), passed from physical innocence, to fallenness, to spiritual death or spiritual innocence. Or we can say that it didn't have to be this way, that this state of matters does not follow naturally from our very beings, and that God could have arranged things otherwise -- in which case, we would be treated in the same way as angels. Given that we have the Virgin as a counterexample, perhaps this is the way to go. On the other hand, you could even combine both explanations (perhaps even given the Virgin's Immaculate Conception), and say that both ways are correct, not that I'm being a dialetheist here -- I only want to point out that God could will something even if it follows naturally from some previous state of affairs. Some would argue that to God, nothing comes "previously", but I flatly deny that, since God, though I don't deny his omnipotence, is still the God of reason and goodness. (Ie, I don't believe that God is himself a dialetheist, or that he could will evil, and that the fact that neither of these apply to him is not arbitrary.) In fact, given all this, it would be more correct to say that God wills something more strongly the more it follows from some natural state of affairs. But to return to the main thread, unfortunately for you all, I, as a good theologian, can see it from both points of view, and so while I've opened new vistas of awareness to you, I've turned out to be quite unhelpful in settling the matter once and for all,which is also typical of theology.
This discussion raises other questions as well -- 1)What would have happened if Adam and Eve had never been tempted? Could they have tempted themselves? 2)If Mary was conceived without original sin, how come she knew she was naked? And related: Could Adam and Eve become ashamed of being naked without eating the forbidden fruit if they had seen other people wearing clothes?
Let's take the first question. First of all, I think they would have had to have been tempted at some point simply as an outlet to their free will. So I don't think they would have just been left alone. But why wasn't the mere existence of the tree good enough? Would they never have given it any thought if Satan hadn't called their attention to it? Would they have never wondered about it? Don't people always want what they can't have? If Satan tempted mankind, who tempted Satan? Surely not God, right? So the idea to rebel against God must have just occurred to Satan on his own, somehow or another. Then why couldn't Adam and Eve have done the same? And if they could have done the same, why weren't they allowed to just tempt themselves? What was the point of Satan doing this for them? Does it matter who tempted them -- either Satan or themselves?
Hmmm... interesting. Was just doing some quick research on these matters on Wikipedia, and here's what it says, "Since the Second Council of Orange against semi-pelagianism, the Catholic Church has taught that even had man never sinned in the Garden of Eden and was sinless, he would still require God's grace to remain sinless." This sounds like a clue to our question in the previous paragraph. I'm saying that this sounds right, that Adam and Eve, like Satan himself, could very well have tempted themselves just fine, and that if Satan tempted himself (which he did), then as the Catholic Church teaches, it was because God withdrew his grace from him. But how did this happen? Was it because God was the first one to withdraw, or because Satan rejected God's grace? Perhaps these two things happened simultaneously. In fact, I would say that this sort of thing always happens simultaneously, since fate and free will, though not the same thing (as monists and pantheists would be apt to say), are bound up with each other in an inseparable way, as we know from the UQ. That doesn't mean that one doesn't get precedence, however. But you can read about the spiritual coming before the physical on the UQ page.
With the second question, you can see that I'm speculating that perhaps the reason Mary knew she was naked was because she learned this from others, and that perhaps Adam and Eve could have learned this from others, too, if only there had been other people wearing clothes around. It's interesting that being naked is, in itself, no sin, unless other people are around. Furthermore, it was no sin to be naked around others except after the Fall. So if it was a sin after the Fall, and Mary was sinless, then she would have known it was a sin to be naked around others and would have covered up. What's amazing to me is imagining the human race being completely unashamed of being naked had there been no Fall. That's hard to believe. I mean, how far could you take this? Surely, people would have been ashamed of having sex in front of each other, right? I mean, that couldn't possibly be OK even before the Fall. But that's the whole reason people are ashamed of being naked -- because of its sexual connotations, and even those children who are too young to know what sex is, are ashamed of being naked for this same reason, even if they don't know exactly why. But, you could take this the other way, too, and wonder why we're so ashamed of being naked and sex? Maybe it's actually the other way around -- we're ashamed of having sex in front of each other because we're ashamed of our private parts. It's a difficult question, and it's also strange why anything would change depending on whether you're in the pre-Fall or post-Fall state.
It's interesting that Adam and Eve "heard" God walking through the garden (Gn 3:8), even though God's not physical. It seems that he manifested himself to them in some sort of physical way. And it's also interesting that he didn't just pop up in front of them, which he very well could have done. Instead, he gave some "warning" that he was coming, almost as if to give Adam and Eve the impression that he was just taking a stroll and just "happened" to catch them in their nakedness.
Why, after the Fall, did God leave us?
I actually already partly covered this question on 3 different pages [Angels, (About) the Divine Plan/Fate & Free Will, Faith in God's Will (search using the word "hidden"), but I have more to say on this. It's interesting that we put God in a different category from everyone else, something which may or may not make sense, depending on how you look at it. For example, let's say that you feel all alone in the world -- you feel like nobody understands you or cares about you. We know that this just isn't true, because at least one person -- God, cares about us. However, if this was truly the only person who cared about you, you wouldn't really feel like he cared about you, because then we'd wonder, "Well, if God cares so much about me, how come he hasn't given me anyone to care about me?" It'd be very difficult to believe that God really cared about you. But we think this way because God is hidden from us. If Jesus was still walking around on earth, and we had the privilege of knowing him and being his friend, and let's say he was the only person who cared about us, we'd really feel like "Well, at least one person -- Jesus, really cares about me," and likely, that'd be good enough for us to not feel all alone. And that would be because even though we're talking about the same person here -- God, and the same personal situation, it makes a big difference for some reason whether he's up there (and hidden) or down here and revealed. So that's why I say it's both weird, and perfectly sensible, that we put God in a different category from everyone else, and he ends up getting blamed for all sorts of things (like making us feel alone even though he says he's always with us) which wouldn't otherwise happen if he were only more up-close and personal.
Why didn't God walk in on Adam and Eve as they were about to disobey or send an angel to try and stop them? Then I'm almost certain they wouldn't have dared to touch the fruit.
This is actually just the same question in a different form as I covered on the Good & Evil/Pain & Suffering page, which you can search using the term "non-paternalism". I suppose the divine plan requires God holding off, since he could very well have intruded in on them and saved them from themselves, just as he could do the same for all the 7.5 billion people on the planet. But then what would be the point of having the forbidden tree in the garden? In other words, what would be the point of giving us free will? And what if our first parents (and likewise, us) never got to exercise our free will, as well as suffer the consequences (or reap the rewards) of our own choices? If we never actually got to exercise our free will, how could it be said we had free will? Isn't that kind of like opening doors in a hallway and always ending up in the same room, or winning a spending spree but when you get to the store it turns out that the only thing you can buy is red toothbrushes? Seems like a hoax, or a cruel trick.
In fact, I'm sure people would complain if God always saved them from their own stupidity. After all, people want to sin and be bad, right? People already see God as some kind of cosmic kill-joy, just for having rules and expecting to be obeyed! -- but how much worse if he actually prevented and stopped everyone from breaking those rules!
Why did Satan choose to tempt Eve and not Adam? (Gn 3:1)
We could ask, "Would things have turned out differently if Satan had gone after Adam instead?" My guess is, probably not. So then does it matter? Considering that I think everything happens for a reason, I surmise, yes. What's interesting to me is that the bible doesn't say that "their eyes were opened" (Gn 3:7) until after Adam had also eaten the fruit, which makes me wonder if the Fall would have happened if only Eve had eaten the fruit. It also makes me wonder if the Fall would have happened anyway, even if only Adam had eaten the fruit, like everything depended on Adam, like it wouldn't count if only Eve had eaten. Even though Eve was the first to eat the fruit, and even though the apostle Paul does blame her as such in I Tm 2:14, in all other places in the bible, including Paul's own references to the Fall, it's Adam who's considered what you might call "the fallen one", as when Paul says, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man ..." (Rom 5:12) and "For as in Adam all die ..." (I Cor 15:22).
All of this makes the question even more interesting. If we assume that it was really Satan's objective to cause Adam to eat the fruit, and not Eve, why did he do this in a roundabout way? Because he thought it'd be easier? But would it really have been hard? After all, I think anyone in the same position as Adam and Eve would have done the same. I don't think we live in this messed up world just because of the mistake of two particular people. It could have been anyone, anyone could have been Adam and Eve, and the world would still look the same as it does now. And as I said earlier, I don't think the results would have been any different if Satan had tempted Adam instead. So it doesn't seem to me that Satan thought it'd be hard to get what he wanted. So then what?
I can't help but think that it has something to do with this transgression not counting unless Adam was the one who sinned, which in itself is not something I'm completely sure about. So why would it not count unless Adam was the one to transgress? Probably because he was the head of the human race, back when there were only 2 people, and even now with 7.5 billion people. After all, Eve came from him, and so we all ultimately descend from Adam. This hearkens back to the even deeper question of "Why did God make man first, and not woman?" for which there's both practical and more abstract reasons, but I won't get into those here. I'll probably cover this in The Sexes section of the Philosophy side of this website, however, but that might be a while, since I'm writing this website in chronological order.
So it seems to me that it was because tempting Adam first, although it would have been perfectly successful, would have bungled up the divine plan. This is because Adam, as the head and leader, would have been responsible for Eve's sin, had he been the one to tempt her. But since it was the other way around, Eve, not being the head or leader of Adam, would not have been held accountable for Adam's sin, even though she was the one who tempted him. If Eve's sin could not be completely attributed to her, but at least partly to Adam, then it would not have counted as her own sin, and then that would have bungled up the Fall, because it seems that though what was really needed was Adam's disobedience, having one sinner and one innocent person doesn't seem tolerable, cosmically speaking, if you get what I mean. Things have to be kept uniform, otherwise you end up with this wacky world of perpetual good and evil, which is exactly what God was trying to avoid (I discuss this in an earlier question; see the second question on this same page), and we know that things can't get mixed up like that, because then innocent people would suffer. Perpetual worlds (2 worlds) of good and evil (heaven and hell) come in the next life, and then innocent people don't have to deal with evil people's crap forever, just temporarily, as Jesus says (Mt 13:29; see Mt 13:24-30 for the entire Parable of the Wheat and Tares).
What does it mean that people began to call on the name of the Lord after Seth had Enoch? (Gn 4:26)
Whatever this means (although it sounds like prayer to me), it's strange that this happened so late in the game. You would think that Adam and Eve would have called on the name of the Lord from the very beginning, as soon as they had gotten kicked out of the garden. What makes this even more curious is that they (Adam and Eve) didn't automatically carry this habit out with them from the garden. Surely they must have called on the name of the Lord pre-Fall, since they had easy access to him at all times at that time.
In any case, we can see here perhaps one of the first developments in the practice and doctrine of the Faith. We know that God revealed himself to mankind little by little, and man increased in his knowledge about God little by little, to this day.
So was this really just about prayer? After all, Cain and Abel were making sacrifices to God from the beginning. Is that not considered calling upon the name of the Lord?
Why did God wipe out the world only once? Why during the time of Noah?
And does this mean that this is the lowest point mankind ever hit while he was on the face of the planet? If it was, then it makes sense that this was the only time God wiped everything out (putting aside the end of the world). But then the next logical question is (and this is only based on the assumption that this was the lowest moral point for mankind) -- why would this have been the lowest point? It seems kind of strange that things could be worse than they are now, we who live in the end times (Heb 1:2).
Why did God allow us to eat meat after the Flood? (Gn 2:16, 9:3) What changed?
Well first of all, it makes sense that we didn't eat meat, or anything except fruit, before the Fall, since there was no killing, hunting or dying at that time. I guess you could say the fruit cells died and were absorbed into the body, but no individual organism was harmed in the process. However, the animals could eat plants, so things like leaves, stems and roots. (Gn 1:30) I guess they could eat the whole plant, thereby killing it, but I'm not sure if I'd consider that a tragedy. After the Fall, God provided better clothes for Adam and Eve than the fig leaves they were wearing by giving them animal skins, so that's the first time an animal was killed and died. (Gn 3:21) In the story of Cain and Abel, people were apparently making sacrifices to God, both of plants and animals. So it's kind of strange that animals could be killed for reasons other than food, which is especially curious, because then the meat would have been wasted. Certainly by the time of Moses, people would eat their sacrifices. Besides that, people must have seen that animals were eating meat, so why couldn't they? In fact, as James R Hughes notes, people might have been doing so, even though it hadn't been permitted.
But why would something that once was prohibited be permitted? If it was really sinful, why was it permitted? Or if it wasn't really sinful, why was it prohibited? There's several similar cases in the bible, which I'll go into now. So this is only one of the first case among many, and the first explicit case.
One, the kosher laws and other Mosaic laws, of which there were many. However, this topic is so big, I gave it it's own page, which I'll soon be covering in Necessity of the Law & a Chosen Nation, since it's under this (page's) topic. These requirements were abolished (for the most part -- things like the Ten Commandments still stand) in several stages. First, although Jesus never explicitly abolished any of the Mosaic laws, he did say that such things were secondary to the 2 greatest commandments (love of God and neighbor). However, this wasn't super revolutionary, since any Jew at that time probably would have agreed (Mk 12:28-34, I Sm 15:22, etc). It was mostly the Jewish customs that he repudiated, things like rules about washings, how strictly you had to keep the Sabbath, etc, but these things had never been commanded by God (Mk 7:1-23).
Marriage to unbelievers is a second thing that was later permitted. Whereas Ezra (chps 9-10) made the Israelite men who had taken foreign, pagan wives divorce them, even if they had had children together, Paul says that believers married to unbelievers should stay together, if the unbeliever wishes to continue in the marriage (I Cor 7:12-13). However, even prior to this time, these kinds of marriages were permitted/condoned (although mostly among royalty, as when King Solomon took Pharaoh's daughter for his wife).
Another thing that had once been permitted was incest, as when the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve had no choice but to marry each other. However, there's other cases of incest that are allowed by God that happened far after the first and second generations of humans. Abraham, for example, was married to his half-sister, Sarah (Gn 20:12). Moses' parents were an aunt-nephew couple. (Ex 6:14) Soon afterward, however, this is outlawed in the Law of Moses. Tamar, the daughter of King David, as she was about to raped by her half-brother, Amnon, pleaded with him to allow them to get married first, saying that their father (David) would allow it, a strange thing to say considering that this would be considered incest under the Mosaic Law. (II Sm 13:13) And strangest of all is where John the Baptist condemns Herod (Antipas) and Herodias, because Herod had taken her as his wife, though she was previously married to his half-brother, Philip. (Mt 14:3-4) Although it doesn't mention it in the bible, Philip, in the historical record, was in fact Herodias' half-uncle. So we have an uncle-niece marriage here, which John the Baptist upheld as being lawful. This, of course, was way after the time of Moses, who forbade such unions. This is especially confusing since the Mosaic Law did in fact permit divorce, and not only that, forbade a divorced woman from remarrying her first husband if she had married a second husband. (Dt 24:1-4) However, John the Baptist opposed the marriage because he viewed it as adulterous ("It is not permitted for you to have your brother's wife.") He doesn't say, "It is not permitted for you to have your niece." Clearly, he does not even recognize divorce. Of course, the Church would say that such a marriage (between Herodias and her first husband, Philip) would be invalid.
Peter received a vision from God, abolishing the need to follow the kosher dietary laws (Acts 10:11-15), which is related to the time that God commanded Ezekiel to cook his food with human dung, but relented when Ezekiel complained that he had never made himself unclean. (Ezk 4:12-14)
The final act of lifting (Jewish) prohibitions came at the first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15 (vv 1-31), in which the Apostles declared that it was the decision of the Holy Spirit not to lay any burden on the Gentiles concerning the Mosaic Law, but give them the freedom to live as Gentiles, with only a few prohibitions, like the eating or drinking of blood, which, in fact, had only been prohibited by God in his covenant with Noah. (Gn 9:4-5)
Perhaps the permission to eat meat had something to do with the new covenant. There's a parallel between the covenant God gave to Adam and the one with Noah. God tells Adam that he can eat of any of the fruit of the trees in the garden (except for one), and to rule over the animals. God tells Noah that he can eat animals, and also that he will put the fear of man into the animals. (Gn 9:2-3)
I can't help but think that with many of God's covenants, there's an association with food. With Adam, it was fruit, plus the prohibition from eating the forbidden fruit. With Noah, it was meat, with the prohibition from eating blood. With Abraham's covenant, there was circumcision, but that has nothing to do with food, so we have a curious exception there. With Moses, we have the Passover, the lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread, plus the kosher dietary laws. Here the food is the Passover meal, while the food prohibited is the non-kosher food. There's also the beginning of the Sabbath observance, which has nothing to do with food, either, but I mention this because it's another example of God starting a new "policy". Although God made the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th, he never made the 7th day holy until his covenant with Israel as a nation after delivering them from slavery in Egypt. With David's covenant, there's no food, and there's nothing prohibited, nor is there any other kind of symbol or ritual involved as with circumcision, so we have another curious exception. With the new covenant, there's the eucharist, and also the prohibition from eating blood (which is just a reiteration of the covenant with Noah), food sacrificed to idols, or meat from an animal that's been strangled. (Acts 15:29) Of course, not everyone is going to agree with the way I've enumerated the covenants here, but this is the way I've always seen it. To me, there's these 6. Although there's many parallels between them, there's also differences and exceptions, as we've already seen.
Could it be that God holds people to different standards depending on how much they know, that is, how much he's revealed to them? We know that God has revealed himself and spiritual knowledge little by little throughout history, and even until now in the church age, the last age (the promulgation of the Marian dogmas, for example, and on the moral spectrum, denunciations of slavery, capital punishment, etc, and exhortations in favor of freedom of religion, a much more positive view of marital sex, etc.) For example, I don't think the Crusades could happen again with the modern mindset of the Church. Other than more obvious things such as the coming of Jesus and what he taught us (such as the Trinity) and what he accomplished for us, probably the 2 biggest things I can think of in this regard is the afterlife/resurrection, and more specifically, heaven and hell, Satan, and the existence of angels and demons in general.
To elaborate, in the time of Abraham, which is the first time that God initiated contact with humanity in order to begin his divine plan, there's hardly any theology except for the concept of a covenant, the covenant of circumcision. It's really the only thing God specifically prescribes. Not even the 10 Commandments, the most basic formulation of a moral code, came until later with Moses. There's no talk of the resurrection, and in fact, we only have talk of some kind of renewal of the world when we get to the age of the major and minor prophets, like Isaiah, Zechariah, etc. Even then, it's hard to say that anything is explicitly explained or described, and there's even verses that would indicate that this future utopian age is really quite earthly. For example, "No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed." (Is 65:20) This indicates that there will still be death, but we know that "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Rv 21:4) This isn't to say that there was absolutely no concept of an afterlife among the Jews during the Old Testamental times. But the references are quite shadowy. The first time we see evidence for the afterlife is when the medium of Endor raises up the spirit of Samuel, so we know that he still existed after death, and by extension, all people. But it seems that the Jews saw the afterlife more as a waiting room, rather than a world in itself. There is much reference to sheol (the grave), especially in the Psalms, but different verses seem to describe it in different ways. However, for the most part, it seems that the Jews saw it as a place a place of soul sleep, as in Eccl 9:10 where it says "there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going." Then there's other verses that are more colorful and describe more "activity", as when it says in Is 14:9-10, (speaking about the downfall of the king of Babylon), "Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will answer and say to you: ‘You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!’" However, I have to attribute this to merely poetic language, if we want to be consistent. King David, in speaking about his infant son by Bathsheba, who died for his sin, said, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me," (II Sm 12:23), which may or may not be interpreted to be evidence for belief in an afterlife. We don't really see extremely explicit references to the resurrection until we get to the deuterocanonical books, in the eloquent speeches of martyrdom given by faithful Jews during the persecutions executed by Antiochus Epiphanes and Nicanor (II Macc 7, II Macc 14:37-46). And even at this point, there's no mention of heaven or hell, though there's an allusion to purgatory in II Macc 12:38-46 when Judas prays for the fallen idolators and has sacrifices made for them. Jesus warned against a place he variously called Gehenna, the outer darkness, and in Revelation we have what's called the second death, and the lake of fire, but before that, all we had was sheol.
The same can be said of Satan and the angels. While Satan shows up in the first chapters of Genesis, he's not given a name, we don't know where he came from, or even who or what he really is. He just appears in the form of a serpent. We figure it out by putting the pieces together from looking at the bible as a whole. In Job, in the story of David and the altar of Araunah, in the account of the prophet Micah before King Ahab, there's a tempter, an adversary, but again, he's a mysterious figure. And given the entire length of the Old Testament, these references are pretty sparse. Not until the gospels do we hear about Jesus giving blatant warnings against following Satan and his minions, the demons. We also don't see many angels until we get to the deuterocanonical books, as when Judas prays that God "send a good angel to spread fear and trembling before us." (II Macc 15:23) And of course there's the entire book of Tobit. Not that there's no angels before the time of the deuterocanonicals; in fact there's explicit references to them, as in Ps 91:11, the verse that Satan famously quotes in the gospels, "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways," but there's certainly not much interest or elaboration on angels until or around the deuterocanonical period, the angels Gabriel and Michael being mentioned by name for the first time in the book of Daniel, and Raphael in Tobit.
I think you get the point, although we could go over many more examples. So maybe if moral laws change, it's because there was a change in revelation, or just a change in the way things were?
Let's look at the first change: although above I said it was the lifting of the prohibition from eating meat, I now realize that actually, it was the need to wear clothing, not for any utilitarian reason, but for covering our nakedness. This change is pretty easy to explain using my speculation in the previous paragraph. There was indeed a change in "the way things were". Before the Fall, mankind and the entire creation was in a state of innocence and pristineness. We've already gone over this earlier on this page, so I won't repeat myself.
And what of eating meat? I've heard it said that perhaps God allowed the eating of meat after the Flood because it would have taken a while to grow crops and harvest them. I don't buy this explanation because that would be proposing a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Besides that, they'd been surviving on the ark for a lot longer than just 40 days and 40 nights with just the stores they had the ark. I don't see why they couldn't have saved up more if they needed to.
Well, we do have that new covenant. So that's something that changed. It was a new revelation, and it was also a change in "the way things were". But what's the connection between that and being allowed to eat meat? It is interesting to note that while the Noahic covenant expanded the food edible to mankind (basically, anything goes except blood), the Mosaic covenant shrunk it back quite a bit.
While we're at it, let's examine the Noahic covenant for some more clues. There's 2 things that I find interesting -- the other elements of the covenant I do not. First for the things that aren't interesting (this is all at the beginning of Gn 9) -- one is that God says that he will put the fear of man into all the animals. This isn't too interesting because it's kind of a reiteration of what we had in the Adamic covenant -- that God gave us dominion over his whole creation. Even if you're not a Christian, this is still pretty apparent. We are, after all, the dominant life form on this planet. We have indeed taken over the globe in a way no other species has. The second uninteresting thing is also a reiteration of the Adamic covenant -- to be fruitful and multiply. It's quite obvious that God would want us to spread and take over the planet (he's got his divine plan to run after all), and this would be an especially pressing need when at this time, there were only 8 people on the planet.
Now for the things that are interesting; again, 2 things. One is the prohibition against murder, and God's promise to exact retribution against murderers. At first glance this isn't interesting at all, because even if you're not religious, everyone knows that you're not supposed to kill people, except in self-defense. The reason I find it interesting is because it is so obvious. If it's so obvious, why does he single this out as his one moral requirement? (Oh, and also to not eat blood. Almost forgot that one. But that's something God has proscribed 3 different times (the Noahic and Mosaic covenants, and at the first ecumenical council in Jerusalem), so we know he really doesn't like it. And even that's not very interesting because I think most people and cultures think it's gross anyway. Although I can't really explain why, there's definitely something evil and vampire-like about it. Blood-thirsty. That's not a good thing.
So back to murder. The only thing that comes to mind to explain this is that God is just explicitly prohibiting the most egregious sin out there. That's got to be the ultimate sin, and the ultimate crime, right? Murder? So it appears that we've got a real rudimentary moral code that God has put into place here. Not that it was OK to murder before this (as we've already said, everyone from the beginning has known that you're not supposed to kill people), but now God has made this explicit. But we're back to square one -- if something is already obvious, why make it explicit? I'm afraid my brain cells have copped out at this point.
The next interesting thing is God's promise to never flood the earth again. Indeed, nothing more catastrophic has ever happened to the earth or mankind and never will until it's actually time for the end of the world. This was like a mini end-of-the-world. And the weird thing is that it happened so early on in the history of the world. I imagine that the population of the world at that time must have been very small. It even appears that mankind hadn't even spread very far across the globe at that point because it's not until Gn chp 10 that we have a genealogy of Noah's descendants that makes it evident that it was around this time that mankind began to divide and separate themselves into groups, clans and nations. We see something similar to this in Gn chp 4 when Cain builds a city, the first of its kind as far as we know, perhaps because he was banished and became a wanderer and so we have our first recorded instance of human migration and spreading across the globe. However, you have to wonder if this could really be considered a "city" given that we're only at the first few generations of humans at this point. It'd probably be best described as a settlement.
In Gn chp 11, the story of the tower of Babel, is either an elaboration of what was already happening (dividing of peoples into groups) as described in chp 10 (the genealogy of the descendants of Noah), or it's an explanation of how this happened. In any case, 1)I don't see why God would decide to destroy the earth at this particular time early in the history of the world, and 2)I don't see why he'd be against doing this over and over again. It's almost like he put the divine plan on pause, or even rewind, as if the beginning of the divine plan doesn't really start to take off until after the Flood. I'm not sure why he would do this. I mean, why would you interrupt your divine plan like this? And if you're fine with interrupting your divine plan, why not do it over and over, or at least at a point in time when things have gotten really corrupt? I don't really know if things are more corrupt now than they were in the times of Noah, but it seems to me that people have always been more or less really corrupt, as even God says (it was the whole reason he sent the Flood), so I don't know why God would reserve his ultimate wrath (other than the end of the world) for when there weren't even a whole lot of humans around. So basically, he's wiping out humanity before there's even a division of peoples into nations, which was a major development in the history of mankind. But maybe that was the point -- perhaps doing so after the development of nations would have been way too much of an interruption of the divine plan. It also appears that the development of nations happened pretty quickly after the Flood, if we look at the genealogies in Gn chp 10. It seems that it only took a few generations. Unfortunately, the tower of Babel story includes no information as to the time of this occurrence, only that this story is sandwiched, somewhat cryptically (because so few details are given) between the record of Noah's descendants and the introduction of the mysterious person of Abraham, mysterious because we have no idea what his life was like before God's call, or why God even called him as opposed to someone else. (I've always wondered why he didn't call Melchizedek instead, especially since in all probability Abram must have been an idolator before God called him to the land of Canaan.) But we do know that Abraham's lineage is directly traced back to Noah at the end of Gn 11, and that's really the only information we have about his origins or who he was exactly. It's almost like the point is -- "Well, all you need to know is that he was one of the many descendants of Noah, and after all, we all are," which isn't very satisfying at all.
We must ask, "Was it necessary that the Flood happen?" and related, "Could history not have progressed without the Flood?" (ie, to kick-start the divine plan, so to speak). Does the division of humanity into nations have anything to do with the Flood? Couldn't this have happened anyway? All very difficult questions, and I'm certainly not wise enough to answer any of them.
But this brings us back to our talk about covenants. Given that most of the Noahic covenant is either a reiteration of the Adamic covenant or just very obvious, what was the point of the covenant? It seems to make sense to make a covenant with the last (or first, depending on how you look at it) 8 people on earth, especially when you can't help but see the Flood as some kind of renewal of the world, like some sort of re-creation, but then that brings us to the bigger question -- why the Flood? Why this renewal, this "re-creation", and why at that time and no other, before the beginning of nations? And what role did this event have in salvation history? And here's a very cryptic passage, to confuse us even more: "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water." (I Pt 3:18-20) (See discussion on this on the page "Purgatory and the Harrowing of Hell".)
So let's return to the other covenants and see what we can discover about what changed when they were inaugurated, and if there was any accompanying moral code. I'd like to point out that it's actually kind of strange that God doesn't prescribe any moral code until Noah, and at that, only 2 laws; with Abraham there's no moral code, unless you count circumcision, but I see that more as a ritual -- he does tell Abraham to walk in his ways but doesn't specify exactly what that means; not until (the 4th covenant), do you find things like the 10 Commandments, the Sabbath, and all the Mosaic laws. With David, he merely tells him to walk in his ways, but nothing additional is added. Then there's the 6th and last covenant, and that's very different from the 1st Covenant (by this I mean the 4th covenant, the Mosaic covenant).
Ex 6:3 "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them." (God introduces himself for the first time in history as YHWH) What's the significance of this? Wasn't Abraham his friend, after all, and how many people can claim that honor? (II Chr 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; Jas 2:23)
Why would God allow the nations to walk in their own ways? (Acts 14:16)
I have a hunch that this is actually the reverse of the question "Why a chosen people and the Mosaic Law?" (a topic so large that it has it's own page).
For a while, everyone was walking in their own ways, before God called Abram. Why at this point did he decide to form his own nation? Was this around the same time that the nations were forming (at and after the Tower of Babel)? We can't really say because there's not much of a timeline. We have a genealogy, but nations are formed over generations, so we don't know exactly when nations branched off from their ancestral root. God told Abram that he would make a great nation out of him, so Abram knew what he was talking about, and the Egyptians had already become a great nation, probably the greatest one at that time and for a long time to come. It'd be nice if we could say the Jews were the first nation, but they clearly weren't. Besides the Egyptians there were Hittites, various Canaanites, Philistines, etc. So the Jews were late-comers. Even after Abram, we have to wait until 3 generations later for the 12 tribes of Israel, and after that 400 years while they were in slavery in Egypt before God makes his covenant with them as a nation.
And Abram really wasn't anything special. Melchizedek, a contemporary of Abram, was a priest of God -- how come that didn't go anywhere? So at least some people were still worshipping the true God -- in Salem in the land of Canaan, but for whatever reason God overlooks these people. But wouldn't that make a much better narrative -- that there was a small minority of people who were still worshipping the true God, and so God unfolds his plan of salvation through and from them? But that's not how it happened. It's just plain weird.
In keeping with the Christian worldview of seeing things from both a spiritual and physical perspective (please consult the UQ page if you don't know what I'm talking about), I think it's also important to consider why and what the causes were of people going astray in their own ways, to follow false gods. The spiritual answer is that this was inevitable, given human nature, which I'll go into more detail below. The physical answer is that this was God's plan (that there be many nations, that he chose one for himself, leaving the others to stray until the time of the second covenant). You might think I've got this backward. Surely, anything having to do with God is spiritual and anything having to do with nature is physical. That's sometimes true, and it could even be said to apply to this case -- I won't say you're wrong, only not as right as you could be.
This is because the spiritual is always the more nebulous, abstract component, "the irresistible force", which is what's going on here with the tendency in human nature to want to worship idols, whether they be of a physical or "metaphysical" type (more on this later). It's the background force. I say that God's plan is the physical component because that's God's agency directly "interfering" with and directing the course of history. It's more concrete and immediate, and therefore I see it as physical. However, like many dichotomies, we can consider this one flippable.
Now as to this spiritual cause, this constant tendency toward idolatry, it might seem very peculiar given that many of you reading this probably belong to a society that has abandoned idol worship. Idolatry could be considered to be backwards and a more primitive form of religion. In the evolution of religion, the trend is toward more abstract forms of religion, namely, the Abrahamic religions. These seem to fairly easily supplant the more primitive idolatry. After all, all the peoples on earth who subscribe to one of the Abrahamic religions were once pagans. We don't usually see this going in the opposite direction, where people of an Abrahamic religion revert to idolatry (although I can think of 2, possibly 3 exceptions, but more on this later). It's funny. Even though there's a natural tendency toward idolatry, if people hear about the One God, they usually think he's a good idea and decide to switch. Not immediately, of course, but over time, eventually God wins out. This also is a puzzle, but I guess we'll consider that at the end.
So why idolatry? There's several ways I could go about this, but I guess I'll start at the beginning. Have you ever wondered how such a strange and senseless practice started? The answer is found in Wis 14:12-21. 2 explanations are given -- 1)worship of the dead and 2)worship of rulers as divine. More specifically, "For a father, afflicted with untimely mourning, made an image of the child so quickly taken from him, and now honored as a god what once was dead and handed down to his household mysteries and sacrifices. Then, in the course of time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law, and graven things were worshiped by royal decrees. People who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presence copied the appearance of the distant king and made a public image of him they wished to honor, out of zeal to flatter the absent one as though present." (vv 15-17)
I heard a story of a woman who, when her father died, offered him a cake (kind of like a sacrifice, the way many Asian cultures do for their dead), even though obviously, he couldn't eat it, and even though this practice was completely alien to way she had been raised. It reminded me of these verses from the bible, and it made me more convinced that that's really how it all started. Not that this practice was completely foreign to this woman, since she knew that such a practice existed, but it was also something she spontaneously did, since she'd never had personal experience with this sort of practice before.
By the way, the most extreme form of idolatry I've ever come across was at the Metropolitan in New York, which had a display of two rocks, about the size of your fist, with something equivalent to smiley faces scrawled on them. That's right, 2 dots for the eyes and a line for the mouth. The description explained that these had been made by African immigrants to the US, who had made these idols to worship. I couldn't believe it. It was just too ridiculous that anyone in this day and age would worship something they had made themselves, pray to a rock, literally a rock, and the only thing that made these rocks different from other rocks was that they had scrawled the most rudimentary of faces on them. What was even worse was that most pet rocks look better than these idols did, as their makers obviously had no artistic talent whatsoever. I couldn't believe that anyone could take these things so seriously.
*Christ as God's divine plan - Eph 1:9
*God's past patience with the nations - Acts 14:16
Why did God create the world in 7 days? What's this about process, when he could have had everything exist instantaneously? (see "plants take time to grow" under Generalities vs Exceptions [press "ctrl" and "f" simultaneously to search for the phrase])
To a certain extent it makes sense that he made the universe in stages because the universe is physical, and physical things happen in stages. At the same time, I can see how this would be completely superfluous. While it's natural that now that the world has been "set up" that things happen gradually over time, why would this be necessary from the very beginning? I don't see what difference it would have made, other than I suppose it'd be much more difficult for us to explore the origins of the universe. As it is, we can look at things like background radiation and such to figure out that God indeed said, "Let there be light." Not that I'm saying this is the reason why God created the universe this way. Not at all. That wouldn't be much of a reason.
So what was the purpose of the Tree of Life anyway? (Gn 2:9)
It's interesting that it was there in the garden when it apparently was never eaten from, at least it seems that way, given that God was so worried about them eating from it once they had fallen, since he said that it would make them "live forever". What's even stranger is why it was in the garden given that Adam and Eve would have already lived forever, as long as they didn't eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Furthermore, why is it that they never ate from the tree (of Life) earlier, before the Fall? There was no prohibition against eating from it, so why didn't they? And what would have happened if they had eaten from it, and then eaten from the Tree of Knowledge? Would that even be possible? (ie, would God have stopped them from doing, just as he stopped them from eating from the Tree of Life after the Fall?) I realize that it's pretty terrible that I'm attempting to answer a question by asking even more questions. It's a bit overwhelming. By the way, if you haven't figured it out already, I take the story of the Fall literally, and obviously that's going to affect my interpretation of what was going on. Would this be as interesting if we took on an allegorical interpretation? Probably not.
In any case, it does indeed seem that God prevented Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree of Life, certainly after the Fall, but even before, because of the disastrous consequences that would imply. So then when would it have been appropriate and allowed to eat from the Tree of Life? Given that the possibility of falling was always there, that would imply that eating from the Tree of Life would never have been a possibility, at least not a possibility in the sense of being actualized. So its existence allowed for the existence of an alternate reality, a free will choice. Not that I'm saying that without the Tree of Life there could have been no free will choice for eating from the Tree of Knowledge, since I don't see why there needed to be a Tree of Life in order for there to be a Tree of Knowledge, much less, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. So I'm still stumped.
Was it just there for the allegorical sense, just (included in the story) to show that Adam and Eve had forever lost paradise, symbolized by never being able to eat from that tree? This is certainly a convenient answer, but as I said earlier, that makes things far less interesting, and furthermore, I would still wonder why it would even be mentioned, given that although it would certainly enhance the atmosphere of doom in the story, it would serve no real purpose, given that we would already know that Adam and Eve had lost paradise forever (they got kicked out of the garden after all). I mean, why would there be this big emphasis (on God's part) on making sure they don't get to it or else they'd live forever, and that would just be so terrible that it'd be divinely unthinkable? (God doesn't even finish his sentence it's so painful to imagine.) But the biggest reason, in truth, as to why I take the story literally is because I don't think it could be taken as seriously if it wasn't. I'm sure there's people who would disagree, and I could see how they'd take the story just as seriously as I do, but I think it's still true that you wouldn't be able to really parse things (like I'm trying to do here) without taking it literally.
I almost feel as if whatever it was that God was so scared of happening (a world where you could be evil and still live forever, thus eliminating any kind of moral cause and effect in the universe) was the reason for the tree's existence. So I'm talking about some real, heavy-duty necessity here, that it was so necessary that God was willing to allow for this alternate reality of horror in order to get whatever it was necessary to get out of this tree's existence in the garden.
So if it wasn't necessary to eat from the Tree of Life before the Fall, given that Adam and Eve were already immortal, doesn't that imply that the purpose of the Tree of Life wasn't in its existence before the Fall, but after? As obvious as this might sound to one who believes in providence, it seems that the tree's purpose was to not be eaten from. Anyway, I've come full circle at this point, and I'm just restating the original question, albeit, from a different perspective.
How is it that God could make a tree so powerful that even he could not undo the consequences of eating it (Adam and Eve living forever because of eating fruit from the Tree of Life)? (Gn 3:22)
And I wonder if God routinely does this sort of thing (constricting himself by his own rules). Why make a tree that powerful anyway? What would be the purpose behind that? Does it really have to be that powerful in order for it to serve whatever its intended purpose was?
Why’s the Tree of Life still around? (Rv 2:7, 22:2)
Granted, while I take the story of the Fall literally, this Revelation reference could very well be symbolic, as a lot of stuff in this book is.
Why was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? What was its function? (Gn 2:17) What exactly did it confer on its eaters, if Adam and Eve obviously already knew right from wrong? Why did God make it if he didn't want them eating from it?
Hmmm. I guess there's a lot of stuff God doesn't want us doing, but that doesn't mean that he ensures blockage to any access to those things. The Tree of Knowledge seems conspicuous however in that it appears that it was created for the express purpose of giving Adam and Eve free will. But that in itself is an interesting question because would that mean that if the tree didn't exist that they wouldn't have free will? It seems strange that their free will would be contingent on a tree. Well, I guess it could have been contingent on anything -- red pill, blue pill.
In any case, would it really have been impossible for them to rebel without some kind of door out (of paradise)? Did such a door exist for Satan and the other fallen angels? The bible makes no mention of one. For all we know he might very well have just decided one day to be evil. So why couldn't Adam and Eve have done the same thing? So would Adam and Eve have remained forever free of sin if only the Tree wasn't available to them? Could they still be said to have free will? But isn't free will something inherent to the individual, and not contingent upon actual choices available to them in their environment?
This ties into the other subquestion -- what exactly did the fruit of the Tree confer to its eaters if Adam and Eve already knew right from wrong? It's almost like, yes, there had to be this one door out of paradise, unlike the world we live in, where mortal sin is all around in all sorts of forms. Perhaps it could be argued that their world (Adam and Eve's) wouldn't have been perfect if temptation was so readily available like in ours. But wait ... that makes me think that there was really no real reason why their world couldn't have been like ours except for the Tree. It is/wasn't that temptation is/was always "physically around", but that their eyes "weren't opened" (just like it says [Gn 3:5]) to the temptation all around. In this sense, it's kind of ironic that the serpent really wasn't lying -- their eyes were indeed opened. Apparently, they were so innocent at the beginning that they didn't even know they were naked, just like very young children don't know they're naked. It's just that he (the serpent) really put a totally different spin on things to make it seem like this would be a good thing. Talk about a word game (no pun intended).
It's still kind of weird that even though there were no temptations available to them, there was one temptation available. If there's tons of temptations or just one, does it really matter? In a way, it seems not, because the end result is the same world -- the world we live in, a fallen world. But for the world Adam and Eve lived in, the Garden of Eden, it did matter, because it meant that they were living in a moral paradise, and they could have kept it that way just by avoiding that one fruit they weren't allowed to eat.
What would have happened if only one of our parents had decided to eat from the Tree?
On the Tree of Life and Knowledge
Would it be artificial of God to make the Tree of Knowledge efficacious "by fiat", and not because of some kind of physical mechanism? To get off track a bit here, how would this physical mechanism work? Is this somehow related to communion? Now things are getting very complicated here, because it's difficult to sort out the physical and spiritual here, physical being a physical mechanism by which these foods are efficacious (perhaps even a biological mechanism, though I doubt that), spiritual meaning "by fiat", which to me is a bit artificial, at least at first glance. I'll go into this more later. Now getting back to the physical mechanism, I was against a biological mechanism, but if not biological, and yet physical, what do I mean by "physical"? Actually, I don't know. And this is why I say it gets complicated, because by "physical" perhaps I actually mean something not MERELY physical, but also spiritual, as with communion, whose mystery I don't understand, and which I'm not sure if anyone does. This is also true of the other sacraments, such as baptism and marriage/sex (which Paul writes of as a mystery in Eph 5:31-32). 2 analogies could be helpful here -- the red/blue pill scene from the Matrix, and the Tree of Life. Now why did God even set up a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden? Why would the eating of fruit be the mechanism by which man was to fall? It seems very arbitrary, considering that in itself, eating fruit isn't wrong. It's not like God told Adam not to worship the sun and moon, or not have sex with the animals, both things of which I don't see why he couldn't do (if he wanted). Certainly they weren't physical impossibilities. Those things would have been sins in themselves, so eating forbidden fruit raises the question -- what makes it forbidden? Again, because God made the fruit PHYSICALLY efficacious, or merely by fiat? For example, I don't think there was anything physically efficacious about the red or blue pills in the Matrix. What made them efficacious was completely arbitrary -- they were merely symbolic vehicles by which Neo could make a choice. But I wonder if the Tree of Knowledge was the same way. We can look to the Tree of Life for a clue -- in that case, it seems that the tree WAS physically efficacious, since God alludes to humans living forever if they were to eat of it, despite the fact that this contradicts the very effects of the Tree of Knowledge, which God said would cause certain death. And God doesn't just "shut down" the efficacy of the Tree of Life, which he could do if its efficacy was by fiat, but instead he places an angel in front of it to guard it. Then in Revelation, the Tree of Life is reinstated in the lives of humans, to be eaten and to give life. This part could be metaphorical, but if not, we have to ask, what would be the purpose of the Tree of Life? Would we not already have eternal life because God had given it to us by his Son, and not by a tree? Or even if we were to take it metaphorically, still, what need would there be for it, since God has already saved? To backtrack a little, God would not even have to "shut down" the Tree, since if it was merely symbolic, as in the Matrix, it would have already served its purpose and would no longer be forbidden.
Now this is related to natural law, which is related to the UQ -- that is, why are we physical? Because if the efficacy of the Trees was physical, then the mechanism by which they worked could be said to be akin to the power of the natural laws. But then this raises the question of how the natural laws work -- since even THEY are upheld by fiat, that is, by God's word (Heb 1:3). And yet, when the natural laws are broken, that is, when God performs a miracle, that's also by God's word, so if they're both by God's word, why do we say that one is natural and one supernatural? Why do we say that one is physical and one spiritual? And likewise, what's the difference between a physical mechanism for the efficacy of the Trees and one by fiat?
So how is this related to the UQ, and how does the mystery of the Trees shed light on the mystery of our physicality? Well, we have to ask, what's the purpose of the natural laws, emphasis on NATURAL, if God a)upholds it all anyway by his own power and b)(which follows from "a") -- wouldn't this mean that the naturalness of nature is somehow superfluous, unnecessary, and therefore, even arbitrary (arbitrary in the sense that it's there for no reason)? And yet we can study the natural laws and see that they're so orderly, beautiful, so universal and -- not to be argued with. Now going back to where I said "emphasis on natural", my whole point of saying this is to ask, what's the point of being NATURAL, (which I'm afraid I can't even define, but only recognize it when I see it)?
What does knowing that you're naked have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? (Gn 3:7)
Well the first thing that comes to mind is the innocence of very young children who don't know that they're naked. It'd be interesting to know whether this shame of being naked has anything to do with the growth of the conscience. (Perhaps my internet research skills aren't the best, but I surprisingly haven't been able to find much on this topic, even from a purely religious perspective.) I've also heard of senile elders who lose the awareness of being naked, and I wonder if a degradation of the conscience goes along with that, too. And while this is somewhat of a side issue, having to do with the the internalism/externalism debate in ethics, I wonder why it is that even psychopaths manage to develop a conscience even though they never use it. Of course, use (and formation of) the conscience is something that happens on a scale, so I guess this is the same as asking why anyone at all develops a conscience, since we're all psychopathic to certain degrees.
Anyway, the major point I want to make here is to link this up with what I wrote earlier in a question posed above about their eyes being opened, specifically, where I ask a further question, "did it matter that there were tons of temptations (as in our world) or only one temptation (as in theirs)?" To add to my answer there, and to buttress it, this knowledge of nakedness seems to support the answer "yes" (to the "does it matter" question), since knowing that you're naked is a huge difference (and a shock to Adam and Eve when they found out) from not knowing that you're naked. What I'm saying is that this state of innocence (of not knowing the difference between good and evil) was real, even if Adam and Eve knew enough to be held culpable for disobeying God's one command. So it's ironic, but I don't purport to know everything about the significance about all this.
A related question is, why did they feel ashamed when they were married? Married couples don't feel ashamed of being naked in front of their own spouse. It's as if they go back to the innocence of childhood when they're naked in front of each other. This makes me think that Adam and Eve weren't ashamed of being naked in front of each other, but in front of God. Perhaps they even just felt ridiculous about being naked in a very general sense, although I'm inclined to doubt this, since I think that most people, after a hypothetical nuclear disaster that obliterates all mankind except for that one individual (and they know this for a fact), would not mind walking around naked. On the other hand, who really cares about being naked in front of God? If God is everywhere and omniscient, he already knows what you look like naked, and he sees you whenever you get naked. Given this, does anyone care that God can see they're naked? So this must mean that God manifested himself to Adam and Eve in a much more personal way than we're used to, since even though everything I said about God seeing us naked holds true for Jesus as well, I don't think anyone would be comfortable being naked in front of Jesus, even if perhaps logically this doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, I don't think the knowledge of nakedness is very logical, since even if a doctor examines you while you're naked, that doesn't mean that from then on you'd be perfectly fine with being naked in front of them, since they already know what you look like.
What does it mean “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil”? (Gn 3:22)
This has already been discussed obliquely in the previous questions. What's interesting here is that God confirms what the serpent said, "That you will become like God, knowing good and evil." (Gn 3:5) So in a very twisted way, the serpent wasn't technically lying. Of course, that's the best kind of lie, right? So the real question here is -- why is this (attainment of knowledge) a bad thing? If God knows good and evil, he still remains good. But it seems that if we know good and evil, this can only come by way of having become corrupted in our moral nature. A counterexample to this would be the saints in heaven who have been made perfect, but they too know good and evil, although it could be argued that this doesn't count because they were all born under original sin. And what about the angels? (They always come in handy for comparison.) Angels know the difference between good and evil, but with angels, they've already reached permanent states of grace or damnation. In this way, the saints in heaven are akin to the good angels, both of whom are in permanent and irrevocable states of grace. Likewise damned humans are akin to fallen angels, both of whom are in permanent and irrevocable states of damnation. (For more background on this, namely, the fall of the angels, please see the Angel page, but more specifically the (About) the Divine Plan/Fate & Free Will page and Prayer page. [Searching for the term "fallen angel" should locate the exact questions these are discussed under.])
Let's take this from a different tack. Would it really be good if Adam and Eve had remained in a perpetual state of innocence and obedience to the one command they had been given? If we compare their state with the condition of the saints in heaven, it seems that the saints in heaven have it better. This is because they know good and evil in the way God does, and as the angels do, but have come out clean and with their souls having been saved. In other words, they really know what they know and so their choice is true. Put another way, it can be said that they have more of an "adult's mind", whereas Adam and Eve, though in a state of moral innocence, were also like children in that they were also in a state of moral ignorance. Children are innocent, but only because they don't know any better. At their core, children are just as corrupt as adults, it's just that the evil within them hasn't come to full fruition. So the child is innocent, and the saint is innocent, but in completely different ways. In a way, the saint can be said to be more innocent than the child, since if the saint is innocent (and they are), it's a deliberate innocence, whereas the child has "wound up" in a state of innocence through no "fault" of their own. But looked at from a different perspective, the child is, in absolute terms, more innocent than the saint, since the saint has sinned (albeit repented), whereas the child is truly clean and spotless, with a clean slate. In this sense, the child is more blessed than the saint, having never (in fact) offended God. Applying the UQ, the saint is spiritually innocent, whereas the child is physically innocent. (Of course, by "physical" I don't mean this in any material, tactile or tangible way, in case you don't know what I mean by the UQ.) So too, God, good angels and the saints are spiritually innocent. (And God, and perhaps the good angels as well, though it's hard to say for sure since we know so little about the history of the fall of the angels -- are also physically innocent.) Adam and Eve, up to their fall, were only physically innocent.
So now the next logical question, which I think really brings us back to the our starting point -- how could Adam and Eve achieve spiritual innocence without undergoing the Fall? Would this have even been possible? Again we can turn to the angels for a little insight here. It seems that they (the good angels) did in fact attain spiritual innocence even while in their physical innocence. (We have to remember here that even Satan, for at least a little while [although for exactly "how long" {since in the spiritual realm there's no time in our sense of the word} this lasted we don't know], was also once in a state of physical innocence.) Now how they (the good angels) managed this is impossible to say for sure, since the bible really doesn't give us any details about this matter, other than to say that there was a rebellion at some point.
Now given all this, the next question to ask is -- why are the angels so "fortunate" to be able to enter into spiritual innocence without ever having lost their physical innocence? This has never happened with any mere human, except the Virgin Mary. So the good angels and the Virgin Mary have received the same treatment and blessing from God. On the other hand, you could also look at it the other way, and say, "How come us humans are so fortunate that even when we've lost our physical innocence, God gives us the grace of spiritual innocence, whereas, angels don't get this privilege? For them, if they sin, they sin and they're kicked out and that's it?" So looking at it from this perspective, we're really quite lucky. Now we can debate which way is more blessed, which perhaps all comes down to a matter of personal opinion in the end, but as a theologian, that's not quite what I'm worried about here. The real question is -- why are things different like this for us (humans and angels) anyway?
I can only speculate that it's due to our natures as physical and spiritual beings. Not that we (humans) are entirely physical, since we're also spiritual, a composite creature if you will, whereas angels are pure spirit. Unfortunately, that's all I can say on this matter. How exactly this effects grace and salvation for us, or why our being physical or spiritual matters, I really don't know. So why is this my speculation? I can only say it's my hunch. It only makes sense to me that something this important would be rooted in the very state of our being (physical or spiritual). Think about it -- physicality is all about process and gradualness, and we as humans do in fact, on our road to damnation or salvation, make decisions day-by-day that lead us to our eventual destination. Not only that, but salvation history displays this kind of development, where we start off with a kernel, a promise of redemption at the Fall, to all the various covenants, the people of Israel becoming more and more aware of various spiritual truths, to the revelation of God become man, to the birth of the Church, to the articulation, and greater articulation of various dogmas (which is exactly what we're trying to do here), just as was the case with Israel. If we zoom out even more, and look at human history (which is just another term for The Divine Plan), we see this groping after some kind of fulfillment, some ultimate purpose, something which we'll never fully understand in the here and now.
Angels, being pure spirit, don't have any of this process or gradualness. They don't even live in time! So it would make sense that for them, salvation or damnation is more or less instantaneous.
Now going back to where I said, "... we can debate which way is more blessed", (and this also flows well into what we were just talking about) I'm going to take back what I said afterward about not really being concerned about this. I realized that far from this being a matter of personal opinion, this is perhaps a very telling clue in figuring out the divine plan. Not that we're ever going to figure it out on this side of eternity, but we can at least try to make progress in that direction. Now if there's a difference in treatment (between humans and angels when they fall from grace), why this difference? Obviously, because it pleased God to make it such, but why? Although I don't know the answer, just asking the question leads us to realms of greater awareness, glimpses of a greater truth that we can only imagine about at this point. Now there's two ways of going about answering this question. We can either say that this difference of treatment is merely the fallout of the consequences of being spiritual or physical, and God wanted physical beings (for whatever reason -- this is the Ultimate Question, after all), and so it just follows as a natural consequence that humans as a general rule (the exception being the Virgin Mary), passed from physical innocence, to fallenness, to spiritual death or spiritual innocence. Or we can say that it didn't have to be this way, that this state of matters does not follow naturally from our very beings, and that God could have arranged things otherwise -- in which case, we would be treated in the same way as angels. Given that we have the Virgin as a counterexample, perhaps this is the way to go. On the other hand, you could even combine both explanations (perhaps even given the Virgin's Immaculate Conception), and say that both ways are correct, not that I'm being a dialetheist here -- I only want to point out that God could will something even if it follows naturally from some previous state of affairs. Some would argue that to God, nothing comes "previously", but I flatly deny that, since God, though I don't deny his omnipotence, is still the God of reason and goodness. (Ie, I don't believe that God is himself a dialetheist, or that he could will evil, and that the fact that neither of these apply to him is not arbitrary.) In fact, given all this, it would be more correct to say that God wills something more strongly the more it follows from some natural state of affairs. But to return to the main thread, unfortunately for you all, I, as a good theologian, can see it from both points of view, and so while I've opened new vistas of awareness to you, I've turned out to be quite unhelpful in settling the matter once and for all,which is also typical of theology.
This discussion raises other questions as well -- 1)What would have happened if Adam and Eve had never been tempted? Could they have tempted themselves? 2)If Mary was conceived without original sin, how come she knew she was naked? And related: Could Adam and Eve become ashamed of being naked without eating the forbidden fruit if they had seen other people wearing clothes?
Let's take the first question. First of all, I think they would have had to have been tempted at some point simply as an outlet to their free will. So I don't think they would have just been left alone. But why wasn't the mere existence of the tree good enough? Would they never have given it any thought if Satan hadn't called their attention to it? Would they have never wondered about it? Don't people always want what they can't have? If Satan tempted mankind, who tempted Satan? Surely not God, right? So the idea to rebel against God must have just occurred to Satan on his own, somehow or another. Then why couldn't Adam and Eve have done the same? And if they could have done the same, why weren't they allowed to just tempt themselves? What was the point of Satan doing this for them? Does it matter who tempted them -- either Satan or themselves?
Hmmm... interesting. Was just doing some quick research on these matters on Wikipedia, and here's what it says, "Since the Second Council of Orange against semi-pelagianism, the Catholic Church has taught that even had man never sinned in the Garden of Eden and was sinless, he would still require God's grace to remain sinless." This sounds like a clue to our question in the previous paragraph. I'm saying that this sounds right, that Adam and Eve, like Satan himself, could very well have tempted themselves just fine, and that if Satan tempted himself (which he did), then as the Catholic Church teaches, it was because God withdrew his grace from him. But how did this happen? Was it because God was the first one to withdraw, or because Satan rejected God's grace? Perhaps these two things happened simultaneously. In fact, I would say that this sort of thing always happens simultaneously, since fate and free will, though not the same thing (as monists and pantheists would be apt to say), are bound up with each other in an inseparable way, as we know from the UQ. That doesn't mean that one doesn't get precedence, however. But you can read about the spiritual coming before the physical on the UQ page.
With the second question, you can see that I'm speculating that perhaps the reason Mary knew she was naked was because she learned this from others, and that perhaps Adam and Eve could have learned this from others, too, if only there had been other people wearing clothes around. It's interesting that being naked is, in itself, no sin, unless other people are around. Furthermore, it was no sin to be naked around others except after the Fall. So if it was a sin after the Fall, and Mary was sinless, then she would have known it was a sin to be naked around others and would have covered up. What's amazing to me is imagining the human race being completely unashamed of being naked had there been no Fall. That's hard to believe. I mean, how far could you take this? Surely, people would have been ashamed of having sex in front of each other, right? I mean, that couldn't possibly be OK even before the Fall. But that's the whole reason people are ashamed of being naked -- because of its sexual connotations, and even those children who are too young to know what sex is, are ashamed of being naked for this same reason, even if they don't know exactly why. But, you could take this the other way, too, and wonder why we're so ashamed of being naked and sex? Maybe it's actually the other way around -- we're ashamed of having sex in front of each other because we're ashamed of our private parts. It's a difficult question, and it's also strange why anything would change depending on whether you're in the pre-Fall or post-Fall state.
It's interesting that Adam and Eve "heard" God walking through the garden (Gn 3:8), even though God's not physical. It seems that he manifested himself to them in some sort of physical way. And it's also interesting that he didn't just pop up in front of them, which he very well could have done. Instead, he gave some "warning" that he was coming, almost as if to give Adam and Eve the impression that he was just taking a stroll and just "happened" to catch them in their nakedness.
Why, after the Fall, did God leave us?
I actually already partly covered this question on 3 different pages [Angels, (About) the Divine Plan/Fate & Free Will, Faith in God's Will (search using the word "hidden"), but I have more to say on this. It's interesting that we put God in a different category from everyone else, something which may or may not make sense, depending on how you look at it. For example, let's say that you feel all alone in the world -- you feel like nobody understands you or cares about you. We know that this just isn't true, because at least one person -- God, cares about us. However, if this was truly the only person who cared about you, you wouldn't really feel like he cared about you, because then we'd wonder, "Well, if God cares so much about me, how come he hasn't given me anyone to care about me?" It'd be very difficult to believe that God really cared about you. But we think this way because God is hidden from us. If Jesus was still walking around on earth, and we had the privilege of knowing him and being his friend, and let's say he was the only person who cared about us, we'd really feel like "Well, at least one person -- Jesus, really cares about me," and likely, that'd be good enough for us to not feel all alone. And that would be because even though we're talking about the same person here -- God, and the same personal situation, it makes a big difference for some reason whether he's up there (and hidden) or down here and revealed. So that's why I say it's both weird, and perfectly sensible, that we put God in a different category from everyone else, and he ends up getting blamed for all sorts of things (like making us feel alone even though he says he's always with us) which wouldn't otherwise happen if he were only more up-close and personal.
Why didn't God walk in on Adam and Eve as they were about to disobey or send an angel to try and stop them? Then I'm almost certain they wouldn't have dared to touch the fruit.
This is actually just the same question in a different form as I covered on the Good & Evil/Pain & Suffering page, which you can search using the term "non-paternalism". I suppose the divine plan requires God holding off, since he could very well have intruded in on them and saved them from themselves, just as he could do the same for all the 7.5 billion people on the planet. But then what would be the point of having the forbidden tree in the garden? In other words, what would be the point of giving us free will? And what if our first parents (and likewise, us) never got to exercise our free will, as well as suffer the consequences (or reap the rewards) of our own choices? If we never actually got to exercise our free will, how could it be said we had free will? Isn't that kind of like opening doors in a hallway and always ending up in the same room, or winning a spending spree but when you get to the store it turns out that the only thing you can buy is red toothbrushes? Seems like a hoax, or a cruel trick.
In fact, I'm sure people would complain if God always saved them from their own stupidity. After all, people want to sin and be bad, right? People already see God as some kind of cosmic kill-joy, just for having rules and expecting to be obeyed! -- but how much worse if he actually prevented and stopped everyone from breaking those rules!
Why did Satan choose to tempt Eve and not Adam? (Gn 3:1)
We could ask, "Would things have turned out differently if Satan had gone after Adam instead?" My guess is, probably not. So then does it matter? Considering that I think everything happens for a reason, I surmise, yes. What's interesting to me is that the bible doesn't say that "their eyes were opened" (Gn 3:7) until after Adam had also eaten the fruit, which makes me wonder if the Fall would have happened if only Eve had eaten the fruit. It also makes me wonder if the Fall would have happened anyway, even if only Adam had eaten the fruit, like everything depended on Adam, like it wouldn't count if only Eve had eaten. Even though Eve was the first to eat the fruit, and even though the apostle Paul does blame her as such in I Tm 2:14, in all other places in the bible, including Paul's own references to the Fall, it's Adam who's considered what you might call "the fallen one", as when Paul says, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man ..." (Rom 5:12) and "For as in Adam all die ..." (I Cor 15:22).
All of this makes the question even more interesting. If we assume that it was really Satan's objective to cause Adam to eat the fruit, and not Eve, why did he do this in a roundabout way? Because he thought it'd be easier? But would it really have been hard? After all, I think anyone in the same position as Adam and Eve would have done the same. I don't think we live in this messed up world just because of the mistake of two particular people. It could have been anyone, anyone could have been Adam and Eve, and the world would still look the same as it does now. And as I said earlier, I don't think the results would have been any different if Satan had tempted Adam instead. So it doesn't seem to me that Satan thought it'd be hard to get what he wanted. So then what?
I can't help but think that it has something to do with this transgression not counting unless Adam was the one who sinned, which in itself is not something I'm completely sure about. So why would it not count unless Adam was the one to transgress? Probably because he was the head of the human race, back when there were only 2 people, and even now with 7.5 billion people. After all, Eve came from him, and so we all ultimately descend from Adam. This hearkens back to the even deeper question of "Why did God make man first, and not woman?" for which there's both practical and more abstract reasons, but I won't get into those here. I'll probably cover this in The Sexes section of the Philosophy side of this website, however, but that might be a while, since I'm writing this website in chronological order.
So it seems to me that it was because tempting Adam first, although it would have been perfectly successful, would have bungled up the divine plan. This is because Adam, as the head and leader, would have been responsible for Eve's sin, had he been the one to tempt her. But since it was the other way around, Eve, not being the head or leader of Adam, would not have been held accountable for Adam's sin, even though she was the one who tempted him. If Eve's sin could not be completely attributed to her, but at least partly to Adam, then it would not have counted as her own sin, and then that would have bungled up the Fall, because it seems that though what was really needed was Adam's disobedience, having one sinner and one innocent person doesn't seem tolerable, cosmically speaking, if you get what I mean. Things have to be kept uniform, otherwise you end up with this wacky world of perpetual good and evil, which is exactly what God was trying to avoid (I discuss this in an earlier question; see the second question on this same page), and we know that things can't get mixed up like that, because then innocent people would suffer. Perpetual worlds (2 worlds) of good and evil (heaven and hell) come in the next life, and then innocent people don't have to deal with evil people's crap forever, just temporarily, as Jesus says (Mt 13:29; see Mt 13:24-30 for the entire Parable of the Wheat and Tares).
What does it mean that people began to call on the name of the Lord after Seth had Enoch? (Gn 4:26)
Whatever this means (although it sounds like prayer to me), it's strange that this happened so late in the game. You would think that Adam and Eve would have called on the name of the Lord from the very beginning, as soon as they had gotten kicked out of the garden. What makes this even more curious is that they (Adam and Eve) didn't automatically carry this habit out with them from the garden. Surely they must have called on the name of the Lord pre-Fall, since they had easy access to him at all times at that time.
In any case, we can see here perhaps one of the first developments in the practice and doctrine of the Faith. We know that God revealed himself to mankind little by little, and man increased in his knowledge about God little by little, to this day.
So was this really just about prayer? After all, Cain and Abel were making sacrifices to God from the beginning. Is that not considered calling upon the name of the Lord?
Why did God wipe out the world only once? Why during the time of Noah?
And does this mean that this is the lowest point mankind ever hit while he was on the face of the planet? If it was, then it makes sense that this was the only time God wiped everything out (putting aside the end of the world). But then the next logical question is (and this is only based on the assumption that this was the lowest moral point for mankind) -- why would this have been the lowest point? It seems kind of strange that things could be worse than they are now, we who live in the end times (Heb 1:2).
Why did God allow us to eat meat after the Flood? (Gn 2:16, 9:3) What changed?
Well first of all, it makes sense that we didn't eat meat, or anything except fruit, before the Fall, since there was no killing, hunting or dying at that time. I guess you could say the fruit cells died and were absorbed into the body, but no individual organism was harmed in the process. However, the animals could eat plants, so things like leaves, stems and roots. (Gn 1:30) I guess they could eat the whole plant, thereby killing it, but I'm not sure if I'd consider that a tragedy. After the Fall, God provided better clothes for Adam and Eve than the fig leaves they were wearing by giving them animal skins, so that's the first time an animal was killed and died. (Gn 3:21) In the story of Cain and Abel, people were apparently making sacrifices to God, both of plants and animals. So it's kind of strange that animals could be killed for reasons other than food, which is especially curious, because then the meat would have been wasted. Certainly by the time of Moses, people would eat their sacrifices. Besides that, people must have seen that animals were eating meat, so why couldn't they? In fact, as James R Hughes notes, people might have been doing so, even though it hadn't been permitted.
But why would something that once was prohibited be permitted? If it was really sinful, why was it permitted? Or if it wasn't really sinful, why was it prohibited? There's several similar cases in the bible, which I'll go into now. So this is only one of the first case among many, and the first explicit case.
One, the kosher laws and other Mosaic laws, of which there were many. However, this topic is so big, I gave it it's own page, which I'll soon be covering in Necessity of the Law & a Chosen Nation, since it's under this (page's) topic. These requirements were abolished (for the most part -- things like the Ten Commandments still stand) in several stages. First, although Jesus never explicitly abolished any of the Mosaic laws, he did say that such things were secondary to the 2 greatest commandments (love of God and neighbor). However, this wasn't super revolutionary, since any Jew at that time probably would have agreed (Mk 12:28-34, I Sm 15:22, etc). It was mostly the Jewish customs that he repudiated, things like rules about washings, how strictly you had to keep the Sabbath, etc, but these things had never been commanded by God (Mk 7:1-23).
Marriage to unbelievers is a second thing that was later permitted. Whereas Ezra (chps 9-10) made the Israelite men who had taken foreign, pagan wives divorce them, even if they had had children together, Paul says that believers married to unbelievers should stay together, if the unbeliever wishes to continue in the marriage (I Cor 7:12-13). However, even prior to this time, these kinds of marriages were permitted/condoned (although mostly among royalty, as when King Solomon took Pharaoh's daughter for his wife).
Another thing that had once been permitted was incest, as when the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve had no choice but to marry each other. However, there's other cases of incest that are allowed by God that happened far after the first and second generations of humans. Abraham, for example, was married to his half-sister, Sarah (Gn 20:12). Moses' parents were an aunt-nephew couple. (Ex 6:14) Soon afterward, however, this is outlawed in the Law of Moses. Tamar, the daughter of King David, as she was about to raped by her half-brother, Amnon, pleaded with him to allow them to get married first, saying that their father (David) would allow it, a strange thing to say considering that this would be considered incest under the Mosaic Law. (II Sm 13:13) And strangest of all is where John the Baptist condemns Herod (Antipas) and Herodias, because Herod had taken her as his wife, though she was previously married to his half-brother, Philip. (Mt 14:3-4) Although it doesn't mention it in the bible, Philip, in the historical record, was in fact Herodias' half-uncle. So we have an uncle-niece marriage here, which John the Baptist upheld as being lawful. This, of course, was way after the time of Moses, who forbade such unions. This is especially confusing since the Mosaic Law did in fact permit divorce, and not only that, forbade a divorced woman from remarrying her first husband if she had married a second husband. (Dt 24:1-4) However, John the Baptist opposed the marriage because he viewed it as adulterous ("It is not permitted for you to have your brother's wife.") He doesn't say, "It is not permitted for you to have your niece." Clearly, he does not even recognize divorce. Of course, the Church would say that such a marriage (between Herodias and her first husband, Philip) would be invalid.
Peter received a vision from God, abolishing the need to follow the kosher dietary laws (Acts 10:11-15), which is related to the time that God commanded Ezekiel to cook his food with human dung, but relented when Ezekiel complained that he had never made himself unclean. (Ezk 4:12-14)
The final act of lifting (Jewish) prohibitions came at the first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15 (vv 1-31), in which the Apostles declared that it was the decision of the Holy Spirit not to lay any burden on the Gentiles concerning the Mosaic Law, but give them the freedom to live as Gentiles, with only a few prohibitions, like the eating or drinking of blood, which, in fact, had only been prohibited by God in his covenant with Noah. (Gn 9:4-5)
Perhaps the permission to eat meat had something to do with the new covenant. There's a parallel between the covenant God gave to Adam and the one with Noah. God tells Adam that he can eat of any of the fruit of the trees in the garden (except for one), and to rule over the animals. God tells Noah that he can eat animals, and also that he will put the fear of man into the animals. (Gn 9:2-3)
I can't help but think that with many of God's covenants, there's an association with food. With Adam, it was fruit, plus the prohibition from eating the forbidden fruit. With Noah, it was meat, with the prohibition from eating blood. With Abraham's covenant, there was circumcision, but that has nothing to do with food, so we have a curious exception there. With Moses, we have the Passover, the lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread, plus the kosher dietary laws. Here the food is the Passover meal, while the food prohibited is the non-kosher food. There's also the beginning of the Sabbath observance, which has nothing to do with food, either, but I mention this because it's another example of God starting a new "policy". Although God made the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th, he never made the 7th day holy until his covenant with Israel as a nation after delivering them from slavery in Egypt. With David's covenant, there's no food, and there's nothing prohibited, nor is there any other kind of symbol or ritual involved as with circumcision, so we have another curious exception. With the new covenant, there's the eucharist, and also the prohibition from eating blood (which is just a reiteration of the covenant with Noah), food sacrificed to idols, or meat from an animal that's been strangled. (Acts 15:29) Of course, not everyone is going to agree with the way I've enumerated the covenants here, but this is the way I've always seen it. To me, there's these 6. Although there's many parallels between them, there's also differences and exceptions, as we've already seen.
Could it be that God holds people to different standards depending on how much they know, that is, how much he's revealed to them? We know that God has revealed himself and spiritual knowledge little by little throughout history, and even until now in the church age, the last age (the promulgation of the Marian dogmas, for example, and on the moral spectrum, denunciations of slavery, capital punishment, etc, and exhortations in favor of freedom of religion, a much more positive view of marital sex, etc.) For example, I don't think the Crusades could happen again with the modern mindset of the Church. Other than more obvious things such as the coming of Jesus and what he taught us (such as the Trinity) and what he accomplished for us, probably the 2 biggest things I can think of in this regard is the afterlife/resurrection, and more specifically, heaven and hell, Satan, and the existence of angels and demons in general.
To elaborate, in the time of Abraham, which is the first time that God initiated contact with humanity in order to begin his divine plan, there's hardly any theology except for the concept of a covenant, the covenant of circumcision. It's really the only thing God specifically prescribes. Not even the 10 Commandments, the most basic formulation of a moral code, came until later with Moses. There's no talk of the resurrection, and in fact, we only have talk of some kind of renewal of the world when we get to the age of the major and minor prophets, like Isaiah, Zechariah, etc. Even then, it's hard to say that anything is explicitly explained or described, and there's even verses that would indicate that this future utopian age is really quite earthly. For example, "No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed." (Is 65:20) This indicates that there will still be death, but we know that "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Rv 21:4) This isn't to say that there was absolutely no concept of an afterlife among the Jews during the Old Testamental times. But the references are quite shadowy. The first time we see evidence for the afterlife is when the medium of Endor raises up the spirit of Samuel, so we know that he still existed after death, and by extension, all people. But it seems that the Jews saw the afterlife more as a waiting room, rather than a world in itself. There is much reference to sheol (the grave), especially in the Psalms, but different verses seem to describe it in different ways. However, for the most part, it seems that the Jews saw it as a place a place of soul sleep, as in Eccl 9:10 where it says "there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going." Then there's other verses that are more colorful and describe more "activity", as when it says in Is 14:9-10, (speaking about the downfall of the king of Babylon), "Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will answer and say to you: ‘You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!’" However, I have to attribute this to merely poetic language, if we want to be consistent. King David, in speaking about his infant son by Bathsheba, who died for his sin, said, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me," (II Sm 12:23), which may or may not be interpreted to be evidence for belief in an afterlife. We don't really see extremely explicit references to the resurrection until we get to the deuterocanonical books, in the eloquent speeches of martyrdom given by faithful Jews during the persecutions executed by Antiochus Epiphanes and Nicanor (II Macc 7, II Macc 14:37-46). And even at this point, there's no mention of heaven or hell, though there's an allusion to purgatory in II Macc 12:38-46 when Judas prays for the fallen idolators and has sacrifices made for them. Jesus warned against a place he variously called Gehenna, the outer darkness, and in Revelation we have what's called the second death, and the lake of fire, but before that, all we had was sheol.
The same can be said of Satan and the angels. While Satan shows up in the first chapters of Genesis, he's not given a name, we don't know where he came from, or even who or what he really is. He just appears in the form of a serpent. We figure it out by putting the pieces together from looking at the bible as a whole. In Job, in the story of David and the altar of Araunah, in the account of the prophet Micah before King Ahab, there's a tempter, an adversary, but again, he's a mysterious figure. And given the entire length of the Old Testament, these references are pretty sparse. Not until the gospels do we hear about Jesus giving blatant warnings against following Satan and his minions, the demons. We also don't see many angels until we get to the deuterocanonical books, as when Judas prays that God "send a good angel to spread fear and trembling before us." (II Macc 15:23) And of course there's the entire book of Tobit. Not that there's no angels before the time of the deuterocanonicals; in fact there's explicit references to them, as in Ps 91:11, the verse that Satan famously quotes in the gospels, "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways," but there's certainly not much interest or elaboration on angels until or around the deuterocanonical period, the angels Gabriel and Michael being mentioned by name for the first time in the book of Daniel, and Raphael in Tobit.
I think you get the point, although we could go over many more examples. So maybe if moral laws change, it's because there was a change in revelation, or just a change in the way things were?
Let's look at the first change: although above I said it was the lifting of the prohibition from eating meat, I now realize that actually, it was the need to wear clothing, not for any utilitarian reason, but for covering our nakedness. This change is pretty easy to explain using my speculation in the previous paragraph. There was indeed a change in "the way things were". Before the Fall, mankind and the entire creation was in a state of innocence and pristineness. We've already gone over this earlier on this page, so I won't repeat myself.
And what of eating meat? I've heard it said that perhaps God allowed the eating of meat after the Flood because it would have taken a while to grow crops and harvest them. I don't buy this explanation because that would be proposing a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Besides that, they'd been surviving on the ark for a lot longer than just 40 days and 40 nights with just the stores they had the ark. I don't see why they couldn't have saved up more if they needed to.
Well, we do have that new covenant. So that's something that changed. It was a new revelation, and it was also a change in "the way things were". But what's the connection between that and being allowed to eat meat? It is interesting to note that while the Noahic covenant expanded the food edible to mankind (basically, anything goes except blood), the Mosaic covenant shrunk it back quite a bit.
While we're at it, let's examine the Noahic covenant for some more clues. There's 2 things that I find interesting -- the other elements of the covenant I do not. First for the things that aren't interesting (this is all at the beginning of Gn 9) -- one is that God says that he will put the fear of man into all the animals. This isn't too interesting because it's kind of a reiteration of what we had in the Adamic covenant -- that God gave us dominion over his whole creation. Even if you're not a Christian, this is still pretty apparent. We are, after all, the dominant life form on this planet. We have indeed taken over the globe in a way no other species has. The second uninteresting thing is also a reiteration of the Adamic covenant -- to be fruitful and multiply. It's quite obvious that God would want us to spread and take over the planet (he's got his divine plan to run after all), and this would be an especially pressing need when at this time, there were only 8 people on the planet.
Now for the things that are interesting; again, 2 things. One is the prohibition against murder, and God's promise to exact retribution against murderers. At first glance this isn't interesting at all, because even if you're not religious, everyone knows that you're not supposed to kill people, except in self-defense. The reason I find it interesting is because it is so obvious. If it's so obvious, why does he single this out as his one moral requirement? (Oh, and also to not eat blood. Almost forgot that one. But that's something God has proscribed 3 different times (the Noahic and Mosaic covenants, and at the first ecumenical council in Jerusalem), so we know he really doesn't like it. And even that's not very interesting because I think most people and cultures think it's gross anyway. Although I can't really explain why, there's definitely something evil and vampire-like about it. Blood-thirsty. That's not a good thing.
So back to murder. The only thing that comes to mind to explain this is that God is just explicitly prohibiting the most egregious sin out there. That's got to be the ultimate sin, and the ultimate crime, right? Murder? So it appears that we've got a real rudimentary moral code that God has put into place here. Not that it was OK to murder before this (as we've already said, everyone from the beginning has known that you're not supposed to kill people), but now God has made this explicit. But we're back to square one -- if something is already obvious, why make it explicit? I'm afraid my brain cells have copped out at this point.
The next interesting thing is God's promise to never flood the earth again. Indeed, nothing more catastrophic has ever happened to the earth or mankind and never will until it's actually time for the end of the world. This was like a mini end-of-the-world. And the weird thing is that it happened so early on in the history of the world. I imagine that the population of the world at that time must have been very small. It even appears that mankind hadn't even spread very far across the globe at that point because it's not until Gn chp 10 that we have a genealogy of Noah's descendants that makes it evident that it was around this time that mankind began to divide and separate themselves into groups, clans and nations. We see something similar to this in Gn chp 4 when Cain builds a city, the first of its kind as far as we know, perhaps because he was banished and became a wanderer and so we have our first recorded instance of human migration and spreading across the globe. However, you have to wonder if this could really be considered a "city" given that we're only at the first few generations of humans at this point. It'd probably be best described as a settlement.
In Gn chp 11, the story of the tower of Babel, is either an elaboration of what was already happening (dividing of peoples into groups) as described in chp 10 (the genealogy of the descendants of Noah), or it's an explanation of how this happened. In any case, 1)I don't see why God would decide to destroy the earth at this particular time early in the history of the world, and 2)I don't see why he'd be against doing this over and over again. It's almost like he put the divine plan on pause, or even rewind, as if the beginning of the divine plan doesn't really start to take off until after the Flood. I'm not sure why he would do this. I mean, why would you interrupt your divine plan like this? And if you're fine with interrupting your divine plan, why not do it over and over, or at least at a point in time when things have gotten really corrupt? I don't really know if things are more corrupt now than they were in the times of Noah, but it seems to me that people have always been more or less really corrupt, as even God says (it was the whole reason he sent the Flood), so I don't know why God would reserve his ultimate wrath (other than the end of the world) for when there weren't even a whole lot of humans around. So basically, he's wiping out humanity before there's even a division of peoples into nations, which was a major development in the history of mankind. But maybe that was the point -- perhaps doing so after the development of nations would have been way too much of an interruption of the divine plan. It also appears that the development of nations happened pretty quickly after the Flood, if we look at the genealogies in Gn chp 10. It seems that it only took a few generations. Unfortunately, the tower of Babel story includes no information as to the time of this occurrence, only that this story is sandwiched, somewhat cryptically (because so few details are given) between the record of Noah's descendants and the introduction of the mysterious person of Abraham, mysterious because we have no idea what his life was like before God's call, or why God even called him as opposed to someone else. (I've always wondered why he didn't call Melchizedek instead, especially since in all probability Abram must have been an idolator before God called him to the land of Canaan.) But we do know that Abraham's lineage is directly traced back to Noah at the end of Gn 11, and that's really the only information we have about his origins or who he was exactly. It's almost like the point is -- "Well, all you need to know is that he was one of the many descendants of Noah, and after all, we all are," which isn't very satisfying at all.
We must ask, "Was it necessary that the Flood happen?" and related, "Could history not have progressed without the Flood?" (ie, to kick-start the divine plan, so to speak). Does the division of humanity into nations have anything to do with the Flood? Couldn't this have happened anyway? All very difficult questions, and I'm certainly not wise enough to answer any of them.
But this brings us back to our talk about covenants. Given that most of the Noahic covenant is either a reiteration of the Adamic covenant or just very obvious, what was the point of the covenant? It seems to make sense to make a covenant with the last (or first, depending on how you look at it) 8 people on earth, especially when you can't help but see the Flood as some kind of renewal of the world, like some sort of re-creation, but then that brings us to the bigger question -- why the Flood? Why this renewal, this "re-creation", and why at that time and no other, before the beginning of nations? And what role did this event have in salvation history? And here's a very cryptic passage, to confuse us even more: "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water." (I Pt 3:18-20) (See discussion on this on the page "Purgatory and the Harrowing of Hell".)
So let's return to the other covenants and see what we can discover about what changed when they were inaugurated, and if there was any accompanying moral code. I'd like to point out that it's actually kind of strange that God doesn't prescribe any moral code until Noah, and at that, only 2 laws; with Abraham there's no moral code, unless you count circumcision, but I see that more as a ritual -- he does tell Abraham to walk in his ways but doesn't specify exactly what that means; not until (the 4th covenant), do you find things like the 10 Commandments, the Sabbath, and all the Mosaic laws. With David, he merely tells him to walk in his ways, but nothing additional is added. Then there's the 6th and last covenant, and that's very different from the 1st Covenant (by this I mean the 4th covenant, the Mosaic covenant).
Ex 6:3 "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them." (God introduces himself for the first time in history as YHWH) What's the significance of this? Wasn't Abraham his friend, after all, and how many people can claim that honor? (II Chr 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; Jas 2:23)
Why would God allow the nations to walk in their own ways? (Acts 14:16)
I have a hunch that this is actually the reverse of the question "Why a chosen people and the Mosaic Law?" (a topic so large that it has it's own page).
For a while, everyone was walking in their own ways, before God called Abram. Why at this point did he decide to form his own nation? Was this around the same time that the nations were forming (at and after the Tower of Babel)? We can't really say because there's not much of a timeline. We have a genealogy, but nations are formed over generations, so we don't know exactly when nations branched off from their ancestral root. God told Abram that he would make a great nation out of him, so Abram knew what he was talking about, and the Egyptians had already become a great nation, probably the greatest one at that time and for a long time to come. It'd be nice if we could say the Jews were the first nation, but they clearly weren't. Besides the Egyptians there were Hittites, various Canaanites, Philistines, etc. So the Jews were late-comers. Even after Abram, we have to wait until 3 generations later for the 12 tribes of Israel, and after that 400 years while they were in slavery in Egypt before God makes his covenant with them as a nation.
And Abram really wasn't anything special. Melchizedek, a contemporary of Abram, was a priest of God -- how come that didn't go anywhere? So at least some people were still worshipping the true God -- in Salem in the land of Canaan, but for whatever reason God overlooks these people. But wouldn't that make a much better narrative -- that there was a small minority of people who were still worshipping the true God, and so God unfolds his plan of salvation through and from them? But that's not how it happened. It's just plain weird.
In keeping with the Christian worldview of seeing things from both a spiritual and physical perspective (please consult the UQ page if you don't know what I'm talking about), I think it's also important to consider why and what the causes were of people going astray in their own ways, to follow false gods. The spiritual answer is that this was inevitable, given human nature, which I'll go into more detail below. The physical answer is that this was God's plan (that there be many nations, that he chose one for himself, leaving the others to stray until the time of the second covenant). You might think I've got this backward. Surely, anything having to do with God is spiritual and anything having to do with nature is physical. That's sometimes true, and it could even be said to apply to this case -- I won't say you're wrong, only not as right as you could be.
This is because the spiritual is always the more nebulous, abstract component, "the irresistible force", which is what's going on here with the tendency in human nature to want to worship idols, whether they be of a physical or "metaphysical" type (more on this later). It's the background force. I say that God's plan is the physical component because that's God's agency directly "interfering" with and directing the course of history. It's more concrete and immediate, and therefore I see it as physical. However, like many dichotomies, we can consider this one flippable.
Now as to this spiritual cause, this constant tendency toward idolatry, it might seem very peculiar given that many of you reading this probably belong to a society that has abandoned idol worship. Idolatry could be considered to be backwards and a more primitive form of religion. In the evolution of religion, the trend is toward more abstract forms of religion, namely, the Abrahamic religions. These seem to fairly easily supplant the more primitive idolatry. After all, all the peoples on earth who subscribe to one of the Abrahamic religions were once pagans. We don't usually see this going in the opposite direction, where people of an Abrahamic religion revert to idolatry (although I can think of 2, possibly 3 exceptions, but more on this later). It's funny. Even though there's a natural tendency toward idolatry, if people hear about the One God, they usually think he's a good idea and decide to switch. Not immediately, of course, but over time, eventually God wins out. This also is a puzzle, but I guess we'll consider that at the end.
So why idolatry? There's several ways I could go about this, but I guess I'll start at the beginning. Have you ever wondered how such a strange and senseless practice started? The answer is found in Wis 14:12-21. 2 explanations are given -- 1)worship of the dead and 2)worship of rulers as divine. More specifically, "For a father, afflicted with untimely mourning, made an image of the child so quickly taken from him, and now honored as a god what once was dead and handed down to his household mysteries and sacrifices. Then, in the course of time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law, and graven things were worshiped by royal decrees. People who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presence copied the appearance of the distant king and made a public image of him they wished to honor, out of zeal to flatter the absent one as though present." (vv 15-17)
I heard a story of a woman who, when her father died, offered him a cake (kind of like a sacrifice, the way many Asian cultures do for their dead), even though obviously, he couldn't eat it, and even though this practice was completely alien to way she had been raised. It reminded me of these verses from the bible, and it made me more convinced that that's really how it all started. Not that this practice was completely foreign to this woman, since she knew that such a practice existed, but it was also something she spontaneously did, since she'd never had personal experience with this sort of practice before.
By the way, the most extreme form of idolatry I've ever come across was at the Metropolitan in New York, which had a display of two rocks, about the size of your fist, with something equivalent to smiley faces scrawled on them. That's right, 2 dots for the eyes and a line for the mouth. The description explained that these had been made by African immigrants to the US, who had made these idols to worship. I couldn't believe it. It was just too ridiculous that anyone in this day and age would worship something they had made themselves, pray to a rock, literally a rock, and the only thing that made these rocks different from other rocks was that they had scrawled the most rudimentary of faces on them. What was even worse was that most pet rocks look better than these idols did, as their makers obviously had no artistic talent whatsoever. I couldn't believe that anyone could take these things so seriously.
Thanks to Hempdiddy
To top it off, the PC Met, in it's description, made sure to make it sound like this was perfectly natural, good, and to be given the greatest respect and honor. Hah! Does anyone take the flying spaghetti monster seriously? (Well actually, I just looked it up, and apparently in New Zealand they do. Pastafarian respresentatives are allowed to officiate at weddings there. However, thank God, in the US and the Netherlands, Pastafarianism has been ruled to not be a real religion.)
Thanks to Niklas Jansson
Now while this might all sound very primitive and outdated, none of this has gone out of style at all -- it's just morphed into a more modern version palatable for those who think they're too sophisticated for belief in God, and that's the new idolatry -- materialistic atheism. While the old idolatry called for worship of wood, stone and other inanimate objects, the new idolatry calls for belief in, well, inanimate objects, since to the materialist, nothing exists except the material. Everything else is considered an illusion, or, their all-time favorite cop-out argument when all else fails -- constructs and conventions of language.
So as I said I would return to this earlier, there's a contradiction here -- on one hand the natural tendency toward idolatry, on the other, a tendency toward discarding idolatry toward worshiping the more abstract God of Abraham. Well, first, why idolatry? Earlier I merely noted that there was a tendency toward idolatry, but didn't really explain it. Maybe we can work backward here. Personally, it's hard to understand either physical or metaphysical idolatry, but atheism, in a way, is more understandable, although even here, I think it just boils down to an unwillingness to say that God is God and you're not. And if not, then at least it comes from a desire to live without any rules except your own, which is tantamount to the same thing as the first reason. But what about idolatry? At least with idolatry, the worshipers believe in some god, probably many gods. That's probably better than not believing in God at all, although it's hard to say when there's people out there worshiping smiley-face rocks. Here we should note that interestingly, idolatry appears to go hand-in-hand with polytheism. Belief in an abstract god means only one god.
Again, it could be helpful to work backward -- idolatry within non-idolatry. That's right -- Catholics and Orthodox who worship idols (of the saints, or Jesus, or the other 2 persons of the Trinity, although a statue of Jesus naturally lends itself to idolatry more than, say, a painting of God the Father as the Ancient of Days [ie, an old man], or the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove). How many of them do this? It's hard to say, given that worship is an inner act and submission that doesn't always correlate with outward behavior. However, given that there are so many Catholics and Orthodox out there, and given that not everyone is going to have a perfect understanding of the faith or have perfect faith, there are bound to be some people out there, maybe even a lot (although I wouldn't say a majority), who really do commit idolatry, perhaps without even realizing it. I must say that I've seen instances where I really had a strong suspicion that the Christian worshiper was indeed worshiping a statue or image. Again, I can never truly be certain just from casual observance, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had indeed come across it. However, it appears that the majority of Catholics don't pay much attention to the religious and devotional artwork in their sanctuaries. But for those who do take them too seriously? What's driving them to do that? To a certain extent it's understandable. Given that the image is life-like enough (and I don't think it takes much for an image to be life-like; I'm not saying it has to be realistic), when praying to Jesus or one of the saints, it's natural to do so in front of an image of them (although you certainly don't have to, but it's kind of like visiting a dead person at their grave -- it's certainly not necessary to do so in order to remember them or cherish their memory, but obviously it helps a lot of folks to process their grief), and when doing that it doesn't take much to transfer your awareness and concentration from the actual person (be it Jesus or a saint) to the representation of this person. I really think it can be easy to slip into. It could happen subconsciously. Now if you were to ask a person who was in fact doing this if this is what they were doing, and they denied it, they might intellectually be telling the truth, ie, intellectually they don't really believe that a crucifix of Jesus is really Jesus, nor do they think that a statue of one of the saints is really a saint. This is simply obvious to any Christian. Nor would they make the mistake of saying that the spirit of Jesus or a saint lies in or lives in the image. They would say it's just a representation of the person. The real person is in heaven (or in Jesus' case, his Spirit is everywhere). Despite this intellectual denial, I think it's still possible to subconsciously think and act as if the representation is actually the person it represents.
And what of superstition? Superstition goes hand-in-hand with idolatry and false religion. It occurs in every religion, and there are plenty examples of its occurrence even in a true religion like Christianity. Superstition could even occur in the absence of religion, and there's varying degrees of superstition. For example, even believing too strongly in Murphy's Law could be considered somewhat superstitious, even though this doesn't have anything to do with any religion. So what's the draw of superstition, especially what we can call the idolatrous kind (for example, carrying around a rabbit's foot, talisman or some other kind of good-luck charm)? I think it's about control. The connection goes 2 ways and is somewhat ironic. On one hand, you cede control over to your good luck charm, trusting in it to take care of you. Where this power comes from, who knows? The believer doesn't care to make this kind of logical assessment. They might make a connection between a lucky coincidence or series of lucky coincidences and wearing a certain article of clothing, or believe that because of the charm's auspicious origins (perhaps religious, perhaps not), that it carries a power in it. Of course, this is completely ridiculous if you give it any thought whatsoever, but thinking is not something the believer is doing.
Why does this happen? This is where the control goes in the other direction (the 2 way connection I was talking about). It's easy to believe these things if it's what you want to believe. And the reason you would want to believe is that you are the one who actually wants to be in control. If you're worried about your ability to handle something you'd like to accomplish (doing well on an exam for example, or success in any area whatsoever), believing that carrying around your little talisman will take care of all your troubles can be extremely comforting, as long as you really believe this. Instead of trying your best, doing your homework (whether literal homework or just your due diligence), finding the right resources and the right people who can help you, etc, you can condense all this hard and painful work into your little talisman. This can make you feel powerful, serene and confident. And really, anyone can fall into this kind of thinking (or rather, non-thinking) and behavior. Even if you consider yourself too sophisticated for this now, you can probably think of a time in your childhood when you did think like this at least on occasion. And even if you don't consider yourself a superstitious person, you can probably think of some ways when you do occasionally slip into it, like being overly pessimistic or optimistic, which betrays an irrational belief in your ability to predict the future based off your own feelings and personality. I have to admit, I somewhat believe that if I'm not sure if it'll rain or not, if I bring an umbrella it won't rain (meaning I brought my umbrella with me for no reason), and if I don't bring it, it'll rain (meaning I'm screwed), and all this means that on some level I think that the universe knows what I'm up to and is out to jinx me. Again, when you think about it and lay it all out like this, it's clearly irrational, and yet, I can't say I've budged. On the other hand, you could also say that I consider myself a well-prepared person because of my irrational beliefs (yes, I'm the kind of person that will always bring an umbrella, just in case).
This is a very low degree of superstition, but there's others who are held captive by their superstitious beliefs, and even whole cultures, especially primitive societies, and it appears that the more idolatrous a society, the less rational they are and the more likely they are to hold extremely harmful superstitions. While I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist, I consider myself well-read and well-educated, and it appears that the Chinese are especially superstitious and severely obsessed with good luck and bad luck, and I think many African societies are also superstitious, although I wouldn't say they're as obsessed with luck (good or bad) the way the Chinese are. For example, female genital mutilation (FGM), which is practiced in Africa and Middle East, is perpetuated based off of erroneous beliefs about female biology, none of which has any basis in the truth, and for which for some reason nobody has ever cared to find out for themselves whether these beliefs are true or not. For example, believing that the clitoris will continue growing and growing if you don't cut it off or out -- nobody ever seemed to notice that in fact, if you delay a girl being "circumcised", nothing bad at all will happen. Nor did anyone seem to notice that if you do do FGM, all sorts of bad things can happen -- infections, problems with sex and childbirth, death, not to mention the obvious -- a lack of sexual desire and response. But that's the hallmark of superstition -- non-thinking, not checking things out to see if they're really true or not, not putting things to the test, having no concern for actual reality.
Now some superstitions might have some basis in social control -- like FGM, where the probable origin and perpetuation of this practice comes from the desire to control female sexuality and chastity. But others appear to have absolutely no social utility at all, like the common African belief that twins are a curse and must be killed. Many superstitions just make life difficult and stressful. Having to avoid black cats takes effort, after all. All the rules have to be remembered and obeyed, and they're completely unnecessary and even hurtful. So this in itself is a mystery -- why would humans go out of their way to make life unnecessarily difficult?
Again, I think it has to do with control, feeling in control. This could happen on the individual or society-wide level. Let's go back to the example of twins being considered an evil omen in many parts of Africa. Although killing twins serves no utilitarian function, my guess is that the practice started due to fear of twins, and the reason for this fear was probably because twins are "abnormal". Not that they're really, but they are out of the norm, most births being single. Are there other parts of the world where twins are considered evil or abnormal? I'm not aware of this outside Africa. So then you have to wonder why is it only in Africa that there's this belief (if in fact, this is the only place that has this belief)? In other words, how come only Africans think twins are abnormal? I'm just saying that the abnormality factor cannot fully explain this superstition. And then of course there's millions of superstitions out there for which we have no explanation for, or that at least I can't imagine could be useful in any way, for example, all the dietary prohibitions on Hawaiian women (not being able to eat coconut, bananas, pork, and some types of fish, which to me, sounds like pretty much the only thing they had on the islands to eat. I have to wonder what the women survived off of?)
Now this is somewhat tangential, but while researching idolatry, polytheism, superstition, etc, I thought about excessive Marian devotion as an example of idolatry and even polytheism. I have no doubt that even when Mary is honored as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, and no more, even in these roles, which are good and acceptable, she has definitely taken on the role of an "informal" goddess. I see nothing wrong with this. It seems to me that humans have a natural inclination and will to have some kind of female divinized being to love and adore (by the way, "adore" has a technical meaning in Catholicism which means "worship", but I don't necessarily mean it in that sense here -- only the common meaning of "adore", like when you adore a loved one or hero.) But because there is no god but God, having a goddess is just completely out of the question. Christianity channels this natural inclination and desire for the female "deity" (deity here could be literal or metaphorical) into a healthy devotion towards Mary, the mother of all Christians. This way, the natural human instinct is fulfilled, without resorting to polytheism or offending God.
Another potential Christian substitute for a goddess is Wisdom, who is personified as a woman (Lady Wisdom) in the books of Proverbs, Sirach and Wisdom. Jesus also describes Wisdom as a woman when he said, "Yet wisdom is justified by all her children." (Lk 7:35) Interestingly, no other attribute of God gets this kind of attention or is anthropomorphized like this. Partly this is due to the human instinct toward the female deity, and partly this is due to the nature of wisdom itself. (This is an issue that must be covered elsewhere, however.) So although Christianity actually has 2 female "deities" (for lack of a better word), Mary definitely fulfills that role to a much greater extent than wisdom. This makes sense, given that she's a real person, and wisdom is just an abstract attribute of God. And as a real person, she really is the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, the mother of the Church, the mother of all Christians, etc.
Now that's a healthy Marian devotion, but of course there's the unhealthy kind. Signs of this could be subtle or blatant. If you're asking Mary to forgive your sins, something which only God can do, well, I think only the most uninformed and confused Catholics would do that. I came across this in one instance, however, in my research. The only exception is if you committed some particular sin against Mary, in which case, of course you could ask her to forgive you just as you would ask anyone for their forgiveness if you had sinned against them. You would still have to ask God for his forgiveness, though.
Something subtle might be capitalizing the pronouns "she" and "her" when referring to Mary, a convention in the English language which is only reserved for God. However, thank God, I only came across this once in my research. But before that, it had never even occurred to me that someone might do this, having never seen it before. But it was very interesting just how subtle this sign was.
Then there's things in the middle, but which are highly questionable at the least, and of which I certainly disapprove of. For example, Pope John Paul II, during the assassination attempt, said, "Mary! My mother! Mary! My mother!" I heard another case of a priest, who I must admit appears to have been extremely holy and who, if I remember correctly, might even be in the canonization process, on his deathbed (his actual deathbed, unlike the pope, who ended up surviving) said something to the effect that showed that what he looked forward most to going to heaven was seeing Mary. That was a real disappointment reading that. In both cases (the pope and the priest), this just sounds like having mixed-up priorities. However, at least in the case of Pope John Paul II, you could say that it was perfectly natural for him to cry out to his mother, since apparently that's what a lot of people do when they're in distress, especially young children, and there's nothing wrong with that. Mothers, after all, are the best comforters, and that's part of their God-given function.
It was a further disappointment seeing that the author of this article saw nothing wrong with this (actually related it as an example of the priest's holiness), and that means the author also thought that their readership would see this as an edifying anecdote, something which definitely tells you something about the common Catholic milieu and attitude towards excessive Marian devotion (ie, that it's a good thing). While I don't think most Catholics are idolators (in the sense of worshiping physical statues or images), I do think that there's a lot of them (although I can't say a majority), who definitely like Mary more than God (the Father) or Jesus.
Let's talk about this. To a certain extent, you can hardly be surprised. After all, women, as long as they're young and beautiful (and of course the Virgin is considered and conceptualized as young and beautiful), have always been more popular than men. Now if God were our Mother, and not our Father, or if Jesus were a woman, they wouldn't have so much competition with Mary, but that's just not the case. This preference for (young) women over men (old women are to be discarded by society), can be seen among many of our celebrities. Look at national, or even international heroines, such as Princess Diana, Evita (of Argentina), or Ivanka Trump. They were waaay more popular than their husbands, (or in the case of Ivanka, she gets a lot more press and media coverage than her actual role or accomplishments would seem to indicate, at least compared to her father, which is where she gets her claim to fame) even though it was through their husbands that they derived their position, prestige and power. The same can be said of the Virgin Mary. Just take a look at pretty much any depiction of her holding the baby Jesus. The focus is definitely on her and not on Jesus, even though Jesus is her claim to fame. The only exception I can think of in a famous work of art is the one by Bouguereau:
So as I said I would return to this earlier, there's a contradiction here -- on one hand the natural tendency toward idolatry, on the other, a tendency toward discarding idolatry toward worshiping the more abstract God of Abraham. Well, first, why idolatry? Earlier I merely noted that there was a tendency toward idolatry, but didn't really explain it. Maybe we can work backward here. Personally, it's hard to understand either physical or metaphysical idolatry, but atheism, in a way, is more understandable, although even here, I think it just boils down to an unwillingness to say that God is God and you're not. And if not, then at least it comes from a desire to live without any rules except your own, which is tantamount to the same thing as the first reason. But what about idolatry? At least with idolatry, the worshipers believe in some god, probably many gods. That's probably better than not believing in God at all, although it's hard to say when there's people out there worshiping smiley-face rocks. Here we should note that interestingly, idolatry appears to go hand-in-hand with polytheism. Belief in an abstract god means only one god.
Again, it could be helpful to work backward -- idolatry within non-idolatry. That's right -- Catholics and Orthodox who worship idols (of the saints, or Jesus, or the other 2 persons of the Trinity, although a statue of Jesus naturally lends itself to idolatry more than, say, a painting of God the Father as the Ancient of Days [ie, an old man], or the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove). How many of them do this? It's hard to say, given that worship is an inner act and submission that doesn't always correlate with outward behavior. However, given that there are so many Catholics and Orthodox out there, and given that not everyone is going to have a perfect understanding of the faith or have perfect faith, there are bound to be some people out there, maybe even a lot (although I wouldn't say a majority), who really do commit idolatry, perhaps without even realizing it. I must say that I've seen instances where I really had a strong suspicion that the Christian worshiper was indeed worshiping a statue or image. Again, I can never truly be certain just from casual observance, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had indeed come across it. However, it appears that the majority of Catholics don't pay much attention to the religious and devotional artwork in their sanctuaries. But for those who do take them too seriously? What's driving them to do that? To a certain extent it's understandable. Given that the image is life-like enough (and I don't think it takes much for an image to be life-like; I'm not saying it has to be realistic), when praying to Jesus or one of the saints, it's natural to do so in front of an image of them (although you certainly don't have to, but it's kind of like visiting a dead person at their grave -- it's certainly not necessary to do so in order to remember them or cherish their memory, but obviously it helps a lot of folks to process their grief), and when doing that it doesn't take much to transfer your awareness and concentration from the actual person (be it Jesus or a saint) to the representation of this person. I really think it can be easy to slip into. It could happen subconsciously. Now if you were to ask a person who was in fact doing this if this is what they were doing, and they denied it, they might intellectually be telling the truth, ie, intellectually they don't really believe that a crucifix of Jesus is really Jesus, nor do they think that a statue of one of the saints is really a saint. This is simply obvious to any Christian. Nor would they make the mistake of saying that the spirit of Jesus or a saint lies in or lives in the image. They would say it's just a representation of the person. The real person is in heaven (or in Jesus' case, his Spirit is everywhere). Despite this intellectual denial, I think it's still possible to subconsciously think and act as if the representation is actually the person it represents.
And what of superstition? Superstition goes hand-in-hand with idolatry and false religion. It occurs in every religion, and there are plenty examples of its occurrence even in a true religion like Christianity. Superstition could even occur in the absence of religion, and there's varying degrees of superstition. For example, even believing too strongly in Murphy's Law could be considered somewhat superstitious, even though this doesn't have anything to do with any religion. So what's the draw of superstition, especially what we can call the idolatrous kind (for example, carrying around a rabbit's foot, talisman or some other kind of good-luck charm)? I think it's about control. The connection goes 2 ways and is somewhat ironic. On one hand, you cede control over to your good luck charm, trusting in it to take care of you. Where this power comes from, who knows? The believer doesn't care to make this kind of logical assessment. They might make a connection between a lucky coincidence or series of lucky coincidences and wearing a certain article of clothing, or believe that because of the charm's auspicious origins (perhaps religious, perhaps not), that it carries a power in it. Of course, this is completely ridiculous if you give it any thought whatsoever, but thinking is not something the believer is doing.
Why does this happen? This is where the control goes in the other direction (the 2 way connection I was talking about). It's easy to believe these things if it's what you want to believe. And the reason you would want to believe is that you are the one who actually wants to be in control. If you're worried about your ability to handle something you'd like to accomplish (doing well on an exam for example, or success in any area whatsoever), believing that carrying around your little talisman will take care of all your troubles can be extremely comforting, as long as you really believe this. Instead of trying your best, doing your homework (whether literal homework or just your due diligence), finding the right resources and the right people who can help you, etc, you can condense all this hard and painful work into your little talisman. This can make you feel powerful, serene and confident. And really, anyone can fall into this kind of thinking (or rather, non-thinking) and behavior. Even if you consider yourself too sophisticated for this now, you can probably think of a time in your childhood when you did think like this at least on occasion. And even if you don't consider yourself a superstitious person, you can probably think of some ways when you do occasionally slip into it, like being overly pessimistic or optimistic, which betrays an irrational belief in your ability to predict the future based off your own feelings and personality. I have to admit, I somewhat believe that if I'm not sure if it'll rain or not, if I bring an umbrella it won't rain (meaning I brought my umbrella with me for no reason), and if I don't bring it, it'll rain (meaning I'm screwed), and all this means that on some level I think that the universe knows what I'm up to and is out to jinx me. Again, when you think about it and lay it all out like this, it's clearly irrational, and yet, I can't say I've budged. On the other hand, you could also say that I consider myself a well-prepared person because of my irrational beliefs (yes, I'm the kind of person that will always bring an umbrella, just in case).
This is a very low degree of superstition, but there's others who are held captive by their superstitious beliefs, and even whole cultures, especially primitive societies, and it appears that the more idolatrous a society, the less rational they are and the more likely they are to hold extremely harmful superstitions. While I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist, I consider myself well-read and well-educated, and it appears that the Chinese are especially superstitious and severely obsessed with good luck and bad luck, and I think many African societies are also superstitious, although I wouldn't say they're as obsessed with luck (good or bad) the way the Chinese are. For example, female genital mutilation (FGM), which is practiced in Africa and Middle East, is perpetuated based off of erroneous beliefs about female biology, none of which has any basis in the truth, and for which for some reason nobody has ever cared to find out for themselves whether these beliefs are true or not. For example, believing that the clitoris will continue growing and growing if you don't cut it off or out -- nobody ever seemed to notice that in fact, if you delay a girl being "circumcised", nothing bad at all will happen. Nor did anyone seem to notice that if you do do FGM, all sorts of bad things can happen -- infections, problems with sex and childbirth, death, not to mention the obvious -- a lack of sexual desire and response. But that's the hallmark of superstition -- non-thinking, not checking things out to see if they're really true or not, not putting things to the test, having no concern for actual reality.
Now some superstitions might have some basis in social control -- like FGM, where the probable origin and perpetuation of this practice comes from the desire to control female sexuality and chastity. But others appear to have absolutely no social utility at all, like the common African belief that twins are a curse and must be killed. Many superstitions just make life difficult and stressful. Having to avoid black cats takes effort, after all. All the rules have to be remembered and obeyed, and they're completely unnecessary and even hurtful. So this in itself is a mystery -- why would humans go out of their way to make life unnecessarily difficult?
Again, I think it has to do with control, feeling in control. This could happen on the individual or society-wide level. Let's go back to the example of twins being considered an evil omen in many parts of Africa. Although killing twins serves no utilitarian function, my guess is that the practice started due to fear of twins, and the reason for this fear was probably because twins are "abnormal". Not that they're really, but they are out of the norm, most births being single. Are there other parts of the world where twins are considered evil or abnormal? I'm not aware of this outside Africa. So then you have to wonder why is it only in Africa that there's this belief (if in fact, this is the only place that has this belief)? In other words, how come only Africans think twins are abnormal? I'm just saying that the abnormality factor cannot fully explain this superstition. And then of course there's millions of superstitions out there for which we have no explanation for, or that at least I can't imagine could be useful in any way, for example, all the dietary prohibitions on Hawaiian women (not being able to eat coconut, bananas, pork, and some types of fish, which to me, sounds like pretty much the only thing they had on the islands to eat. I have to wonder what the women survived off of?)
Now this is somewhat tangential, but while researching idolatry, polytheism, superstition, etc, I thought about excessive Marian devotion as an example of idolatry and even polytheism. I have no doubt that even when Mary is honored as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, and no more, even in these roles, which are good and acceptable, she has definitely taken on the role of an "informal" goddess. I see nothing wrong with this. It seems to me that humans have a natural inclination and will to have some kind of female divinized being to love and adore (by the way, "adore" has a technical meaning in Catholicism which means "worship", but I don't necessarily mean it in that sense here -- only the common meaning of "adore", like when you adore a loved one or hero.) But because there is no god but God, having a goddess is just completely out of the question. Christianity channels this natural inclination and desire for the female "deity" (deity here could be literal or metaphorical) into a healthy devotion towards Mary, the mother of all Christians. This way, the natural human instinct is fulfilled, without resorting to polytheism or offending God.
Another potential Christian substitute for a goddess is Wisdom, who is personified as a woman (Lady Wisdom) in the books of Proverbs, Sirach and Wisdom. Jesus also describes Wisdom as a woman when he said, "Yet wisdom is justified by all her children." (Lk 7:35) Interestingly, no other attribute of God gets this kind of attention or is anthropomorphized like this. Partly this is due to the human instinct toward the female deity, and partly this is due to the nature of wisdom itself. (This is an issue that must be covered elsewhere, however.) So although Christianity actually has 2 female "deities" (for lack of a better word), Mary definitely fulfills that role to a much greater extent than wisdom. This makes sense, given that she's a real person, and wisdom is just an abstract attribute of God. And as a real person, she really is the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, the mother of the Church, the mother of all Christians, etc.
Now that's a healthy Marian devotion, but of course there's the unhealthy kind. Signs of this could be subtle or blatant. If you're asking Mary to forgive your sins, something which only God can do, well, I think only the most uninformed and confused Catholics would do that. I came across this in one instance, however, in my research. The only exception is if you committed some particular sin against Mary, in which case, of course you could ask her to forgive you just as you would ask anyone for their forgiveness if you had sinned against them. You would still have to ask God for his forgiveness, though.
Something subtle might be capitalizing the pronouns "she" and "her" when referring to Mary, a convention in the English language which is only reserved for God. However, thank God, I only came across this once in my research. But before that, it had never even occurred to me that someone might do this, having never seen it before. But it was very interesting just how subtle this sign was.
Then there's things in the middle, but which are highly questionable at the least, and of which I certainly disapprove of. For example, Pope John Paul II, during the assassination attempt, said, "Mary! My mother! Mary! My mother!" I heard another case of a priest, who I must admit appears to have been extremely holy and who, if I remember correctly, might even be in the canonization process, on his deathbed (his actual deathbed, unlike the pope, who ended up surviving) said something to the effect that showed that what he looked forward most to going to heaven was seeing Mary. That was a real disappointment reading that. In both cases (the pope and the priest), this just sounds like having mixed-up priorities. However, at least in the case of Pope John Paul II, you could say that it was perfectly natural for him to cry out to his mother, since apparently that's what a lot of people do when they're in distress, especially young children, and there's nothing wrong with that. Mothers, after all, are the best comforters, and that's part of their God-given function.
It was a further disappointment seeing that the author of this article saw nothing wrong with this (actually related it as an example of the priest's holiness), and that means the author also thought that their readership would see this as an edifying anecdote, something which definitely tells you something about the common Catholic milieu and attitude towards excessive Marian devotion (ie, that it's a good thing). While I don't think most Catholics are idolators (in the sense of worshiping physical statues or images), I do think that there's a lot of them (although I can't say a majority), who definitely like Mary more than God (the Father) or Jesus.
Let's talk about this. To a certain extent, you can hardly be surprised. After all, women, as long as they're young and beautiful (and of course the Virgin is considered and conceptualized as young and beautiful), have always been more popular than men. Now if God were our Mother, and not our Father, or if Jesus were a woman, they wouldn't have so much competition with Mary, but that's just not the case. This preference for (young) women over men (old women are to be discarded by society), can be seen among many of our celebrities. Look at national, or even international heroines, such as Princess Diana, Evita (of Argentina), or Ivanka Trump. They were waaay more popular than their husbands, (or in the case of Ivanka, she gets a lot more press and media coverage than her actual role or accomplishments would seem to indicate, at least compared to her father, which is where she gets her claim to fame) even though it was through their husbands that they derived their position, prestige and power. The same can be said of the Virgin Mary. Just take a look at pretty much any depiction of her holding the baby Jesus. The focus is definitely on her and not on Jesus, even though Jesus is her claim to fame. The only exception I can think of in a famous work of art is the one by Bouguereau:
We can see this from the way Bouguereau chose to show the Madonna with her eyes lowered, while Jesus is looking straight at the viewer, therefore that's the central focal point. However, to contradict myself, the title of this work is "The Virgin with Angels" leading us to believe that it was his intention to depict primarily the Virgin. On top of this, Mary gets her crown of 12 stars, but Jesus has no halo or crown of any sort. So it's arguable what the artist's motive was.
Not that I'm saying it's wrong to do this in any particular instance, since not every religious work of art has to have God as the main character or theme. The problem is when over many works of art, over a whole culture of art and religious depiction we see an emphasis on the Virgin and not on her Son.
Not only with heads of state and their consorts, but with the media and celebrities the same preference for women holds. I read an article that discussed how the most popular American female singers get a lot more media attention, and popular attention, than their male counterparts, even though it's actually their male counterparts who make more record sales, and just more money in general from their music careers. Even though men rule the world, and are in the majority in most any important endeavor that comes with prestige or power, if a woman does manage to climb into their ranks, she'll get a lot more attention and coverage than if she had been a man. Like if you think of a famous female scientist, probably the only one you'll be able to think of off the top of your head would be Madame Curie, but because of that, she's in a class all by herself and therefore gets a lot more "territory" in your mental space and in the popular imagination by that very fact. This isn't to say she didn't face discrimination for being a woman, though, in her chosen fields -- in fact she did, to an appalling extent. Having overcome, however, she has now soared to enormous heights by being a singular woman.
Or take the Smurfs for example. There's only one female character on the whole show, and of course she's a young Smurfette, not an old (ie, unattractive) one. Be that as it may, she's one of the only memorable characters, because she's the only girl. All the other (male) characters get lost in a sea of "repetitiveness". For a highly recommended discussion on this, see "Men are Generic, Women are Special" on the also highly recommended website TV Tropes, which is a website mostly about archetypes.
Now to get back more directly to our original question, I haven't been able to find an indisputable example of monotheism elsewhere in the world. Other so-called instances of monotheism seem to actually be pan(en)theistic. Even the original founder of Judaism, Abraham, we must assume was originally an idolator. It doesn't seem that monotheism ever spontaneously arises. It wasn't Abraham who found God, but God who called Abram. Nor was the original monotheism (from Adam and Eve) preserved throughout the generations. There was Melchizedek, but for some reason that died out.
Now to get back to a few considerations I mentioned earlier, 1)examples of reverting back to idolatry, and 2)why it is that monotheism inevitably supplants idolatry. However, before I do this, I'd like to clarify the very distinction between monotheism and idolatry. This is because up to this point I've put monotheism and worship of an invisible, intangible God on one side, and polytheism and idolatry on the other. This isn't so bad, but I'd just like to point out that it's possible to have a form of idolatrous monotheism, however, I haven't been able to find any example of this, which is interesting in itself. Even in Atenism, one of the very few examples of a religion that comes close to being monotheistic, the worship of images was forbidden. Likewise, I suppose you could have non-idolatrous polytheism, but that's also something I've never come across. So this issue in itself is something that needs to be explained. To a certain extent, it makes sense, but like I said, given that it's possible, and that we never actually find it, it's a question.
So about reverting to idolatry. First of all, the Old Testament is pretty much just the history of how the Jews kept reverting to idolatry over and over and over again. We have to say that it was inevitable that they did so. Of course, they'd have prophets who would bring them back to monotheism, and so there was actually a of cycle of monotheism/idolatry, until at least sometime between the time of the Maccabees and Jesus. It seems that around this time they finally decided to be real Jews and just stick with God. And, here it comes, this is also a question. It's almost like the trend that you see in the rest of the world (a trend towards the inevitable adoption of monotheism), was happening with the Jews. After an initial adoption of monotheism, they kept wavering back and forth, until it finally stuck. Was this because at some point it just became plain backwards to be pagan? This is related to our second consideration which I wanted to go back to previously, so let's save this for then.
Anyway, more about reverting. Another example is our modern secular society -- not physical idolatry, but "metaphysical" idolatry -- materialistic atheism. This is an interesting example to juxtapose with our first example, because in the first example (the Jews) it seems they finally quit idolatry because it was, to put it simply, unsophisticated. And actually, I have a lot more to say on this, in relation to the general history of the world, I mean, the one trend that can describe the direction of history, but I'm going to have to save that for afterwards. But with atheism, this reversion to idolatry (materialism) is often couched in language that implies that monotheism is backwards and unsophisticated. This is where we get talk of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, where unbelievers liken belief in God to belief in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, unicorns, etc. Strangely enough, I find that atheists seem to be very amenable to other forms of superstition, such as belief in aliens, UFOs and that it was aliens who put us here and taught us everything we needed to know about how to survive on earth (Zecharia Sitchin and his ilk). It's almost like because they don't believe in God, they need some kind of substitute explanation for how we got here and how things got to be the way they are, and they just reach out into nowhere and grab the alien explanation, as if that's a whole lot more reasonable than belief in a Supreme Being. Some may object to my observation, but in my own experience, I find that Christians are much less likely to believe in aliens than the general population. Now I'm not saying that Christians don't have their own forms of superstition (they certainly do, and I can go into this later), but on the whole, I find Christians to be less superstitious than the rest of the population. Part of this can be easily explained by the fact that a lot of superstition is just outright forbidden in Christianity. For example, anything involving the occult, or witchcraft or fortune-telling, and anything having to do with the subtle and ubiquitous New Age movement is absolutely not allowed. As for aliens, Christians have no need for the alien explanation. Although there's no reason God couldn't have created other peoples on other planets, (so unlike occultism and the New Age, belief in aliens isn't forbidden), it's unnecessary, and given that there's no solid empirical evidence for their existence, I think most Christians think that it's all fiction. I also don't think that Christians would be the sort to go ghost-busting, or to become obsessed with paranormal experiences. And a strikingly large percentage of the (American) population are believers in these sorts of things -- astrology, psychic-consultation, spirit channeling, etc. By the way, yes, to Christians, all of the above is -- unsophisticated.
So why is it that monotheism is seen by atheists/agnostics as unsophisticated? Some of the criticism is warranted, since every religion, even the true religion, has its forms of superstition. As I said above, the two often go together, superstition being a corruption of valid religious belief, a way for man to try to control God (of course, this is forbidden in Christianity). But this kind of criticism is against corrupt religion. What about true religion? Atheists still see this as unsophisticated. I think there's several reasons for this. One, since God is invisible and hidden [I mean something specific here, for which you can refer to the (About) the Divine Plan/Fate & Free Will page], they see him as a figment of the imagination, and therefore, on par with Santa Claus and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, beings that we know don't exist because we've never seen them. However, what I think this really boils down to is pride. Admitting that God exists is to say that you're not God, (ie, you don't make up the rules, you're not the one in control, you're not the center of the universe), and this is too hard for some people to stomach. It's an excuse to not submit to God, which is too humiliating and humbling, and therefore, unsophisticated. It feels unsophisticated to them to feel less-than. Not that belief in God should make you feel this way, but that's how they take it.
Perhaps you don't believe me? Say that I'm falsely accusing non-believers of arrogance? Well, to take just one example, many atheists point to the miracles of the bible to being really galling. It's something to laugh at. Of course everyone knows miracles don't happen -- by definition! It's interesting to me that a lot of atheists, and certainly agnostics, might actually consider the argument from creation (ie, necessity of a Creator God, the First Uncaused Cause argument) to at least be worthy of consideration, but they get all hung up on miracles. This makes no sense, since if God can create the universe, and out of nothing on top of that, can't he do a puny little miracle? While an atheist may acknowledge that this is a completely logical conclusion, they just can't get over the humiliation of having to say that anything is possible with God, including all the dreaded miracles. I can only chalk up this inconsistency and disconnect to an unwillingness to submit and confess. The same can be said for pretty much any other argument for the existence of God. While they may be plausible at first, they end up being thrown out because of a real fear of being seen as unsophisticated. I don't say "real" because the fear is well-grounded, but because the subjective feeling is very real to them. I think they truly find belief in God downright embarrassing, ie, they're ashamed of God. (More on this later.)
Then there's the moral aspect -- submission of will and conscience. An agnostic friend of mine told me about a video he watched of a talk by Christopher Hitchens, in which he accused God of being a dictator trying to get everyone to live in a North Korean concentration camp (ie, God is the Great Killjoy of the universe). For all of Hitchens' phony arguments against God, I'd say this is the real reason he didn't believe. It's not that he really didn't believe, but that he didn't want to believe, because that would require living by someone else's rules, and apparently this other person's rules are too strict and too hard to live up to. There's also the accusation that if you believe in God, that means you're weak, for one of 2 reasons -- 1)you need a crutch to handle the vicissitudes of life, and 2)you need a metaphysical crutch to explain the vicissitudes of life. Without trying to rebut either one of these arguments, my point is that for just these 2 reasons, belief in God renders one unsophisticated, because being weak is obviously unsophisticated.
So let's get back to the concept of being ashamed of God. This is important not only for explaining atheism, but even faithlessness among believers. As Jesus said, "Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." (Lk 9:26) And likewise, "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven." (Mt 10:32) While someone unfamiliar with the bible might think Jesus is only referring to those who reject him, this rejection doesn't have to be total. As with anything in life, it could be on a spectrum, and this is, for example, why Jesus also said, "Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Mt 5:19, emphasis mine; the original manuscripts didn't have italics) So we can see here that it's possible to keep the greater commandments, and yet relax the lesser ones, and also that while this may not kick you out heaven outright, you'll be least in the kingdom of heaven for doing so.
So let's look into this lesser form of being ashamed of God. First of all, I'd like to point out the irony of being ashamed of God, since who can be cooler than God? But no, God can be very, very uncool (ie, unsophisticated, since that's what un/coolness is all about -- un/sophistication). And he can be uncool in all sorts of ways. A more serious way he can be uncool is when he gets in the way of getting money, either money you want out of greed, or money you want out of fear, that is, money to get rich, or money just to survive. To thugs, following anti-money laundering laws is uncool, and just downright stupid, because, hey, if you can get away with it, it'd be stupid not to, right? Obeying some abstract rule is laughable and may I daresay, can even be said to be superstitious, since you've got this invisible rule (that therefore appears very unreal), vs some very real, concrete money coming your way as long as you don't get caught. But that shouldn't be too hard to do, because hey, justice is also just some abstract, unreal notion. Likewise, let's say at work you're being tempted to do something unethical, and you're livelihood is on the line if you don't go along with everyone else. Again, you have to ask yourself -- which is more real -- life itself and surviving (something which is obviously very tangible and real and pressing), or God and his rules, God who seems so far away, who doesn't seem to be helping you out at the moment, the Judgment that seems so far off and that might not even be real? If you still hold to your integrity, some may admire you for doing what they themselves couldn't, but most are just going to ridicule you, if only behind your back. And even worse if they think you'll get them in trouble!
But there's lesser ways of being ashamed, that pertain more to believers specifically. I'll put these in 2 categories: 1)subscribing to God's commands and 2)sharing your faith with others.
First, many Christians are ashamed of the teachings of Jesus, the bible, and the Church, to the point of denying that these are the authentic teachings of Christianity. Especially in this day and age, it's uncool (ie, politically incorrect at least, and intolerant, prejudiced and offensive at worst) to subscribe to the Church's teachings on the family and sexuality. I have no doubt that in the future, and perhaps even the near future, Christians will come under harsh persecution for just this reason. It's already begun, but this is nothing compared to what's to come. However, there's other teachings that can be held up to just as much ridicule -- miracles (as we've already discussed), the creation and a Creator God, Christian practices such as reading the bible, going to church, fasting, all the different sacraments and rituals, which can all be looked upon with disbelief, misunderstanding and ridicule by outsiders.
Now for the second category -- evangelizing. As a priest once taught us in his homily, the most fundamental form of evangelizing is just making others aware that you're a Christian, living and behaving in such a way that it was obvious to everyone that you're a Christian. (Not that this is good enough, but it's a start.) However, many Christians try to hide this fact, especially around certain people or groups with whom they perceive they'll be looked down on if they're true identity were revealed. They may decide to not bring up religion, or hide the fact that they engage in certain religious activities. And they would be terrified at the thought of sharing the Good News with family and friends, much less a stranger, should the opportunity present itself. Unfortunately, I would have to put Mr. Rogers into this category. Bless his soul, he was surely a very good man, and he certainly left this world a better place, but it was actually his policy to never publicly share his faith, even though he had the perfect platform to do so. He should have at least not gone out of his way to hide his faith. I was surprised to find out he was actually a Presbyterian minister, but I never knew this until I read about it, probably in a magazine article covering his biography when he died. This should have been common knowledge, but it wasn't. I really wish he could have been more courageous for Jesus, but you know, it's considered uncool and politically incorrect to talk about Jesus as other than a great moral teacher. I guess he fell for that lie. And just to prove my point, I'm sure a lot of people (mostly non-Christians of course), would applaud him for his don't-share-your-faith-keep-it-private policy, say that he was sophisticated, tolerant and wise in his attitudes about this. Well, nobody's perfect, not even what you might call this "secular saint", but it's a shame that he was ashamed of Jesus. It's this very same attitude that gives the atheist permission to think in the same way, on a much severer level. And what I mean by this is, yes, holding this kind of attitude about holding back your faith is indirectly encouraging and giving the atheist permission to do the exact same thing. This will definitely convince them, that, yes, even his own believers think God is uncool and unsophisticated.
So let's continue and delve further into atheism as a more "sophisticated" form of idolatry. As I pointed out earlier, this is part of the larger trend in the world towards abstraction. I also call it "barbarism and sanitation", which I'll talk about on its proper page "History of the World". Please refer to that page before returning here, as the discussion is too long to practically cover here.
What was God afraid of them doing (concerning building the Tower of Babel)? (Gn 11:5-7)
My speculation is that God wanted to slow the progress of human history, besides dividing the world into nations, since he says "they'll be capable of anything", and understand this to mean technologically-speaking. Everything has been slowed down because we can't communicate with each other easily. Things have to be translated and interpreted to allow the flow of ideas.
What a strange name that God chose for Israel. (Gn 32:28)
Why did God time certain events (of theological importance) the way he did? For example, what was God's relationship to cavemen before his covenant with Abraham? Why did the Israelites first become a nation (and come into possession of their territory) at the time they did? Why did Jesus come when he did? I think those are probably the major three, just to get us started. And I suppose you could expand this question to the philosophical side -- ie, why did human history unfold the way it did? And why has human progress been so slow (until recently) (at least in my personal opinion)?
Why did God go so far as to lead the people of Israel with pillars? It’s like a miracle every day for 40 years or so. Why did God decide to show mere humans his power and glory on a daily basis, when this has always been so rare? Why was this one 42 year period in the wilderness the only time in human history that God was with the people all the time and lived among them? What’s more, they’d get a “living miracle” day-by-day in the manna kept for generation after generation without spoiling. This would also be true of Aaron’s staff. (Ex 13:21-22, 15:25, 16:4, 31-32, 35, 17:5-6, 33:9-10, 34:29-35, 40:36-38, Nm 17:2-5, 8-10)
I Kgs 13:18 Why did he lie? esp on purpose (vv 21-22), and when he believed in his victim's prophetic mission? (v 32) Very strange reaction, considering he was the cause of the demise of the man of God. (v 30-31)
Why was Elijah the one sent to be the one to prepare the way of the Lord? Why not Moses, or someone higher up on the spiritual totem pole? In fact, why was he the one to be taken to heaven without dying? (Ezk 14:20, Mt 11:13-14, Rv 11, II Kgs 2:11-12)
I really don't get what role John the Baptist had to play in preparing the way for Jesus, how he accomplished it or why it was even necessary. And his ministry was a lot less dramatic than was foretold in the OT -- the most disappointing thing being that he wasn't actually Elijah.
What was the purpose of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness? After all, don't we all know that Jesus is perfect by nature, and wouldn't Satan have known this? Then what was the point, if there was no possibility that he could fall?
Mt 10:27 I don't understand this verse. Why should Jesus whisper anything or keep anything secret if he wanted everyone to know about it?
Why didn't Jesus want the disciples to tell anyone about his transfiguration until after he would be resurrected? (Mt 17:9)
What was the point of giving James "extra training" (at the healing of Jairus' daughter [Mk 5:37], the Transfiguration) if he was going to be martyred so soon afterward (Acts 12:2)?
What was the point of the Triumphal Entry? (Mk 11:1-11) Why did he make a big hullabaloo when when he got there, he didn’t address the crowds, he just looked around and then he didn’t even stay in Jerusalem, but went back out to Bethany, so then he was really making a big hullabaloo and what was the point of that? Just saying that this was a very anticlimactic event. And I'm not sure what the point was. After all, this wasn't the first time he'd been to Jerusalem, so why was this time supposed to be special?
Why did Jesus say that he wouldn’t drink wine until they were together in the kingdom of heaven? (Mt 26:29) What’s the significance of that?
Why did God send the dream to Pilate’s wife and not to Pilate? (Mt 27:19)
Why did Jesus give up his spirit earlier than what would have been natural? (Lk 23:46, Mk 15:44)
Why did Jesus stay for 40 days? Why not stay forever? (Acts 1:3, Mt 28:10, 16-20, Mk 16:12-20, Lk 24:13-52, Jn 20:19-29, 21:1-23)
Why did Jesus go back to heaven? Why couldn’t he stay and rule the world? Why this intermittent period?
Rom 3:25 What does it mean “in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins”?
I Pt 3:22 Had they not already been subjected to him, since he was always God, and everything is subjected to God? What changed after the resurrection?
What is the meaning of Satan being thrown down to earth? (Why did God not choose to throw him in hell instead?) What does this have to do with God's victory (since he wreaks havoc on earth)? (Rv 12:9-10)
Why didn't God send Jesus to earth right after Adam and Eve sinned? Why so late in the game, in the last days? (Heb 9:26)
We can see this from the way Bouguereau chose to show the Madonna with her eyes lowered, while Jesus is looking straight at the viewer, therefore that's the central focal point. However, to contradict myself, the title of this work is "The Virgin with Angels" leading us to believe that it was his intention to depict primarily the Virgin. On top of this, Mary gets her crown of 12 stars, but Jesus has no halo or crown of any sort. So it's arguable what the artist's motive was.
Not that I'm saying it's wrong to do this in any particular instance, since not every religious work of art has to have God as the main character or theme. The problem is when over many works of art, over a whole culture of art and religious depiction we see an emphasis on the Virgin and not on her Son.
Not only with heads of state and their consorts, but with the media and celebrities the same preference for women holds. I read an article that discussed how the most popular American female singers get a lot more media attention, and popular attention, than their male counterparts, even though it's actually their male counterparts who make more record sales, and just more money in general from their music careers. Even though men rule the world, and are in the majority in most any important endeavor that comes with prestige or power, if a woman does manage to climb into their ranks, she'll get a lot more attention and coverage than if she had been a man. Like if you think of a famous female scientist, probably the only one you'll be able to think of off the top of your head would be Madame Curie, but because of that, she's in a class all by herself and therefore gets a lot more "territory" in your mental space and in the popular imagination by that very fact. This isn't to say she didn't face discrimination for being a woman, though, in her chosen fields -- in fact she did, to an appalling extent. Having overcome, however, she has now soared to enormous heights by being a singular woman.
Or take the Smurfs for example. There's only one female character on the whole show, and of course she's a young Smurfette, not an old (ie, unattractive) one. Be that as it may, she's one of the only memorable characters, because she's the only girl. All the other (male) characters get lost in a sea of "repetitiveness". For a highly recommended discussion on this, see "Men are Generic, Women are Special" on the also highly recommended website TV Tropes, which is a website mostly about archetypes.
Now to get back more directly to our original question, I haven't been able to find an indisputable example of monotheism elsewhere in the world. Other so-called instances of monotheism seem to actually be pan(en)theistic. Even the original founder of Judaism, Abraham, we must assume was originally an idolator. It doesn't seem that monotheism ever spontaneously arises. It wasn't Abraham who found God, but God who called Abram. Nor was the original monotheism (from Adam and Eve) preserved throughout the generations. There was Melchizedek, but for some reason that died out.
Now to get back to a few considerations I mentioned earlier, 1)examples of reverting back to idolatry, and 2)why it is that monotheism inevitably supplants idolatry. However, before I do this, I'd like to clarify the very distinction between monotheism and idolatry. This is because up to this point I've put monotheism and worship of an invisible, intangible God on one side, and polytheism and idolatry on the other. This isn't so bad, but I'd just like to point out that it's possible to have a form of idolatrous monotheism, however, I haven't been able to find any example of this, which is interesting in itself. Even in Atenism, one of the very few examples of a religion that comes close to being monotheistic, the worship of images was forbidden. Likewise, I suppose you could have non-idolatrous polytheism, but that's also something I've never come across. So this issue in itself is something that needs to be explained. To a certain extent, it makes sense, but like I said, given that it's possible, and that we never actually find it, it's a question.
So about reverting to idolatry. First of all, the Old Testament is pretty much just the history of how the Jews kept reverting to idolatry over and over and over again. We have to say that it was inevitable that they did so. Of course, they'd have prophets who would bring them back to monotheism, and so there was actually a of cycle of monotheism/idolatry, until at least sometime between the time of the Maccabees and Jesus. It seems that around this time they finally decided to be real Jews and just stick with God. And, here it comes, this is also a question. It's almost like the trend that you see in the rest of the world (a trend towards the inevitable adoption of monotheism), was happening with the Jews. After an initial adoption of monotheism, they kept wavering back and forth, until it finally stuck. Was this because at some point it just became plain backwards to be pagan? This is related to our second consideration which I wanted to go back to previously, so let's save this for then.
Anyway, more about reverting. Another example is our modern secular society -- not physical idolatry, but "metaphysical" idolatry -- materialistic atheism. This is an interesting example to juxtapose with our first example, because in the first example (the Jews) it seems they finally quit idolatry because it was, to put it simply, unsophisticated. And actually, I have a lot more to say on this, in relation to the general history of the world, I mean, the one trend that can describe the direction of history, but I'm going to have to save that for afterwards. But with atheism, this reversion to idolatry (materialism) is often couched in language that implies that monotheism is backwards and unsophisticated. This is where we get talk of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, where unbelievers liken belief in God to belief in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, unicorns, etc. Strangely enough, I find that atheists seem to be very amenable to other forms of superstition, such as belief in aliens, UFOs and that it was aliens who put us here and taught us everything we needed to know about how to survive on earth (Zecharia Sitchin and his ilk). It's almost like because they don't believe in God, they need some kind of substitute explanation for how we got here and how things got to be the way they are, and they just reach out into nowhere and grab the alien explanation, as if that's a whole lot more reasonable than belief in a Supreme Being. Some may object to my observation, but in my own experience, I find that Christians are much less likely to believe in aliens than the general population. Now I'm not saying that Christians don't have their own forms of superstition (they certainly do, and I can go into this later), but on the whole, I find Christians to be less superstitious than the rest of the population. Part of this can be easily explained by the fact that a lot of superstition is just outright forbidden in Christianity. For example, anything involving the occult, or witchcraft or fortune-telling, and anything having to do with the subtle and ubiquitous New Age movement is absolutely not allowed. As for aliens, Christians have no need for the alien explanation. Although there's no reason God couldn't have created other peoples on other planets, (so unlike occultism and the New Age, belief in aliens isn't forbidden), it's unnecessary, and given that there's no solid empirical evidence for their existence, I think most Christians think that it's all fiction. I also don't think that Christians would be the sort to go ghost-busting, or to become obsessed with paranormal experiences. And a strikingly large percentage of the (American) population are believers in these sorts of things -- astrology, psychic-consultation, spirit channeling, etc. By the way, yes, to Christians, all of the above is -- unsophisticated.
So why is it that monotheism is seen by atheists/agnostics as unsophisticated? Some of the criticism is warranted, since every religion, even the true religion, has its forms of superstition. As I said above, the two often go together, superstition being a corruption of valid religious belief, a way for man to try to control God (of course, this is forbidden in Christianity). But this kind of criticism is against corrupt religion. What about true religion? Atheists still see this as unsophisticated. I think there's several reasons for this. One, since God is invisible and hidden [I mean something specific here, for which you can refer to the (About) the Divine Plan/Fate & Free Will page], they see him as a figment of the imagination, and therefore, on par with Santa Claus and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, beings that we know don't exist because we've never seen them. However, what I think this really boils down to is pride. Admitting that God exists is to say that you're not God, (ie, you don't make up the rules, you're not the one in control, you're not the center of the universe), and this is too hard for some people to stomach. It's an excuse to not submit to God, which is too humiliating and humbling, and therefore, unsophisticated. It feels unsophisticated to them to feel less-than. Not that belief in God should make you feel this way, but that's how they take it.
Perhaps you don't believe me? Say that I'm falsely accusing non-believers of arrogance? Well, to take just one example, many atheists point to the miracles of the bible to being really galling. It's something to laugh at. Of course everyone knows miracles don't happen -- by definition! It's interesting to me that a lot of atheists, and certainly agnostics, might actually consider the argument from creation (ie, necessity of a Creator God, the First Uncaused Cause argument) to at least be worthy of consideration, but they get all hung up on miracles. This makes no sense, since if God can create the universe, and out of nothing on top of that, can't he do a puny little miracle? While an atheist may acknowledge that this is a completely logical conclusion, they just can't get over the humiliation of having to say that anything is possible with God, including all the dreaded miracles. I can only chalk up this inconsistency and disconnect to an unwillingness to submit and confess. The same can be said for pretty much any other argument for the existence of God. While they may be plausible at first, they end up being thrown out because of a real fear of being seen as unsophisticated. I don't say "real" because the fear is well-grounded, but because the subjective feeling is very real to them. I think they truly find belief in God downright embarrassing, ie, they're ashamed of God. (More on this later.)
Then there's the moral aspect -- submission of will and conscience. An agnostic friend of mine told me about a video he watched of a talk by Christopher Hitchens, in which he accused God of being a dictator trying to get everyone to live in a North Korean concentration camp (ie, God is the Great Killjoy of the universe). For all of Hitchens' phony arguments against God, I'd say this is the real reason he didn't believe. It's not that he really didn't believe, but that he didn't want to believe, because that would require living by someone else's rules, and apparently this other person's rules are too strict and too hard to live up to. There's also the accusation that if you believe in God, that means you're weak, for one of 2 reasons -- 1)you need a crutch to handle the vicissitudes of life, and 2)you need a metaphysical crutch to explain the vicissitudes of life. Without trying to rebut either one of these arguments, my point is that for just these 2 reasons, belief in God renders one unsophisticated, because being weak is obviously unsophisticated.
So let's get back to the concept of being ashamed of God. This is important not only for explaining atheism, but even faithlessness among believers. As Jesus said, "Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." (Lk 9:26) And likewise, "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven." (Mt 10:32) While someone unfamiliar with the bible might think Jesus is only referring to those who reject him, this rejection doesn't have to be total. As with anything in life, it could be on a spectrum, and this is, for example, why Jesus also said, "Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Mt 5:19, emphasis mine; the original manuscripts didn't have italics) So we can see here that it's possible to keep the greater commandments, and yet relax the lesser ones, and also that while this may not kick you out heaven outright, you'll be least in the kingdom of heaven for doing so.
So let's look into this lesser form of being ashamed of God. First of all, I'd like to point out the irony of being ashamed of God, since who can be cooler than God? But no, God can be very, very uncool (ie, unsophisticated, since that's what un/coolness is all about -- un/sophistication). And he can be uncool in all sorts of ways. A more serious way he can be uncool is when he gets in the way of getting money, either money you want out of greed, or money you want out of fear, that is, money to get rich, or money just to survive. To thugs, following anti-money laundering laws is uncool, and just downright stupid, because, hey, if you can get away with it, it'd be stupid not to, right? Obeying some abstract rule is laughable and may I daresay, can even be said to be superstitious, since you've got this invisible rule (that therefore appears very unreal), vs some very real, concrete money coming your way as long as you don't get caught. But that shouldn't be too hard to do, because hey, justice is also just some abstract, unreal notion. Likewise, let's say at work you're being tempted to do something unethical, and you're livelihood is on the line if you don't go along with everyone else. Again, you have to ask yourself -- which is more real -- life itself and surviving (something which is obviously very tangible and real and pressing), or God and his rules, God who seems so far away, who doesn't seem to be helping you out at the moment, the Judgment that seems so far off and that might not even be real? If you still hold to your integrity, some may admire you for doing what they themselves couldn't, but most are just going to ridicule you, if only behind your back. And even worse if they think you'll get them in trouble!
But there's lesser ways of being ashamed, that pertain more to believers specifically. I'll put these in 2 categories: 1)subscribing to God's commands and 2)sharing your faith with others.
First, many Christians are ashamed of the teachings of Jesus, the bible, and the Church, to the point of denying that these are the authentic teachings of Christianity. Especially in this day and age, it's uncool (ie, politically incorrect at least, and intolerant, prejudiced and offensive at worst) to subscribe to the Church's teachings on the family and sexuality. I have no doubt that in the future, and perhaps even the near future, Christians will come under harsh persecution for just this reason. It's already begun, but this is nothing compared to what's to come. However, there's other teachings that can be held up to just as much ridicule -- miracles (as we've already discussed), the creation and a Creator God, Christian practices such as reading the bible, going to church, fasting, all the different sacraments and rituals, which can all be looked upon with disbelief, misunderstanding and ridicule by outsiders.
Now for the second category -- evangelizing. As a priest once taught us in his homily, the most fundamental form of evangelizing is just making others aware that you're a Christian, living and behaving in such a way that it was obvious to everyone that you're a Christian. (Not that this is good enough, but it's a start.) However, many Christians try to hide this fact, especially around certain people or groups with whom they perceive they'll be looked down on if they're true identity were revealed. They may decide to not bring up religion, or hide the fact that they engage in certain religious activities. And they would be terrified at the thought of sharing the Good News with family and friends, much less a stranger, should the opportunity present itself. Unfortunately, I would have to put Mr. Rogers into this category. Bless his soul, he was surely a very good man, and he certainly left this world a better place, but it was actually his policy to never publicly share his faith, even though he had the perfect platform to do so. He should have at least not gone out of his way to hide his faith. I was surprised to find out he was actually a Presbyterian minister, but I never knew this until I read about it, probably in a magazine article covering his biography when he died. This should have been common knowledge, but it wasn't. I really wish he could have been more courageous for Jesus, but you know, it's considered uncool and politically incorrect to talk about Jesus as other than a great moral teacher. I guess he fell for that lie. And just to prove my point, I'm sure a lot of people (mostly non-Christians of course), would applaud him for his don't-share-your-faith-keep-it-private policy, say that he was sophisticated, tolerant and wise in his attitudes about this. Well, nobody's perfect, not even what you might call this "secular saint", but it's a shame that he was ashamed of Jesus. It's this very same attitude that gives the atheist permission to think in the same way, on a much severer level. And what I mean by this is, yes, holding this kind of attitude about holding back your faith is indirectly encouraging and giving the atheist permission to do the exact same thing. This will definitely convince them, that, yes, even his own believers think God is uncool and unsophisticated.
So let's continue and delve further into atheism as a more "sophisticated" form of idolatry. As I pointed out earlier, this is part of the larger trend in the world towards abstraction. I also call it "barbarism and sanitation", which I'll talk about on its proper page "History of the World". Please refer to that page before returning here, as the discussion is too long to practically cover here.
What was God afraid of them doing (concerning building the Tower of Babel)? (Gn 11:5-7)
My speculation is that God wanted to slow the progress of human history, besides dividing the world into nations, since he says "they'll be capable of anything", and understand this to mean technologically-speaking. Everything has been slowed down because we can't communicate with each other easily. Things have to be translated and interpreted to allow the flow of ideas.
What a strange name that God chose for Israel. (Gn 32:28)
Why did God time certain events (of theological importance) the way he did? For example, what was God's relationship to cavemen before his covenant with Abraham? Why did the Israelites first become a nation (and come into possession of their territory) at the time they did? Why did Jesus come when he did? I think those are probably the major three, just to get us started. And I suppose you could expand this question to the philosophical side -- ie, why did human history unfold the way it did? And why has human progress been so slow (until recently) (at least in my personal opinion)?
Why did God go so far as to lead the people of Israel with pillars? It’s like a miracle every day for 40 years or so. Why did God decide to show mere humans his power and glory on a daily basis, when this has always been so rare? Why was this one 42 year period in the wilderness the only time in human history that God was with the people all the time and lived among them? What’s more, they’d get a “living miracle” day-by-day in the manna kept for generation after generation without spoiling. This would also be true of Aaron’s staff. (Ex 13:21-22, 15:25, 16:4, 31-32, 35, 17:5-6, 33:9-10, 34:29-35, 40:36-38, Nm 17:2-5, 8-10)
I Kgs 13:18 Why did he lie? esp on purpose (vv 21-22), and when he believed in his victim's prophetic mission? (v 32) Very strange reaction, considering he was the cause of the demise of the man of God. (v 30-31)
Why was Elijah the one sent to be the one to prepare the way of the Lord? Why not Moses, or someone higher up on the spiritual totem pole? In fact, why was he the one to be taken to heaven without dying? (Ezk 14:20, Mt 11:13-14, Rv 11, II Kgs 2:11-12)
I really don't get what role John the Baptist had to play in preparing the way for Jesus, how he accomplished it or why it was even necessary. And his ministry was a lot less dramatic than was foretold in the OT -- the most disappointing thing being that he wasn't actually Elijah.
What was the purpose of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness? After all, don't we all know that Jesus is perfect by nature, and wouldn't Satan have known this? Then what was the point, if there was no possibility that he could fall?
Mt 10:27 I don't understand this verse. Why should Jesus whisper anything or keep anything secret if he wanted everyone to know about it?
Why didn't Jesus want the disciples to tell anyone about his transfiguration until after he would be resurrected? (Mt 17:9)
What was the point of giving James "extra training" (at the healing of Jairus' daughter [Mk 5:37], the Transfiguration) if he was going to be martyred so soon afterward (Acts 12:2)?
What was the point of the Triumphal Entry? (Mk 11:1-11) Why did he make a big hullabaloo when when he got there, he didn’t address the crowds, he just looked around and then he didn’t even stay in Jerusalem, but went back out to Bethany, so then he was really making a big hullabaloo and what was the point of that? Just saying that this was a very anticlimactic event. And I'm not sure what the point was. After all, this wasn't the first time he'd been to Jerusalem, so why was this time supposed to be special?
Why did Jesus say that he wouldn’t drink wine until they were together in the kingdom of heaven? (Mt 26:29) What’s the significance of that?
Why did God send the dream to Pilate’s wife and not to Pilate? (Mt 27:19)
Why did Jesus give up his spirit earlier than what would have been natural? (Lk 23:46, Mk 15:44)
Why did Jesus stay for 40 days? Why not stay forever? (Acts 1:3, Mt 28:10, 16-20, Mk 16:12-20, Lk 24:13-52, Jn 20:19-29, 21:1-23)
Why did Jesus go back to heaven? Why couldn’t he stay and rule the world? Why this intermittent period?
Rom 3:25 What does it mean “in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins”?
I Pt 3:22 Had they not already been subjected to him, since he was always God, and everything is subjected to God? What changed after the resurrection?
What is the meaning of Satan being thrown down to earth? (Why did God not choose to throw him in hell instead?) What does this have to do with God's victory (since he wreaks havoc on earth)? (Rv 12:9-10)
Why didn't God send Jesus to earth right after Adam and Eve sinned? Why so late in the game, in the last days? (Heb 9:26)
