My brother, as a liberal Anglican Christian, I very much appreciate the even-handedness with which you treat every subject covered in the lectures I've heard so far - Constantine, the Schism of 1054; Augustine, Aquinas; the Reformers, both Continental and British; the Wesleys--the list goes on and on. I like how you illuminate the heresies and why they're seen as heresies without getting too deep in the nitty-gritty. I very much liked your portrayal of the ugly parting of ways between Rome and Constantinople - probably as much because of the egos of the two principal players as because of the cultural divide between the two sectors of the church and empire. After all, those differences had been in place long before 1054. Your lectures do a great service to the Gospel and to all Christians who question why the history of the Christian household is such a god-awful mess. All the best.
I've not known of you or your lectures but have been blessed by several of them on TH-cam.....I had forgotten that I have "City of God" on my Kindle and it has remained unread.....you've inspired me to start reading that book by Augustine. Thank you!
Thank you Dr. Reeves for sharing your expertise in such a polished way. Here bc I started listening to City of God and could not believe how many words Augustine used, and how many topics he discussed in minutia. A full audio of City of God is over twenty hours, easily.
the greatest controversy with the Donatists was over Christians, especially priests, bishops, etc., that lapsed under persecution and gave in, say by sacrificing to the pagan gods or denying their faith, that not only could they not be forgiven but that all sacramental rites performed by them, baptism, confessions/absolution, marriage, etc., were all invalid. This caused much distress because one could hardly pick out everyone that may have lapsed and so it left people completely worried that the sacraments they were receiving were invalid and therefore they may not even be a legitimate Christian through no fault of their own. Augustine rightly saw that this would have been a death blow to the spread of Christianity.
Brilliant,and the part on if someone breaks into your house and threatens your family,that has always been a problem for me,as theres no teaching from our Lord on this.None the less many thanks Ryan Reeves.
Mr. Reeves you presentation was well rounded. Thank you. I am sorry that your presentation is interrupted by so many commercials. I look forward to another of your videos.
Thanks for your videos, I enjoy them very much. At 6:45 you said ‘Augustine says that in Adam we all fell which is, of course, a quote from the Old Testament", could you tell me what verse you are referring to?
Those who teach the doctrine of Original Sin as Augustine taught it believe that man has imputed corruption or biological transmission of guilt through sexual procreation. This imputed stain of guilt is transmitted to you from your parents. Thus you are born in sin and depravity. You have a sinful NATURE. That is you have a sinful nature that was passed down to you by ordinary generation. I am stating accurately the doctrine of sin that is universally stated in all Protestant creeds and confessions. This Protestant doctrine comes from a Roman Catholic named Augustine. Augustine came up with his ideas about Original Sin from Romans 5:12 In the Latin translation from the Greek Augustine saw these words, “in quo omnes peccaverunt” English Translation, “in whom [Adam] all sinned”. So Augustine took the idea that we were all "IN" Adam and postulated that this meant that we were all in Adams loins and present with him and thus share in his culpability and guilt. All babies are born with this stain of original guilt. The problem with this theory is that it is not taught in scripture. Perhaps you are not aware of it but many theologians have recognised that this theory is unbiblical and has caused millions of people in the West to think incorrectly about sin and it keeps them from a proper anthropology. Here are two articles that point out this problem. Augustine's Mistake About Original Sin gentlewisdom.org/2007/08/11/augustines-mistake-about-sin/ Original Sin: How Original Is It? Romans 5:12 answersingenesis.org/sin/original-sin/how-original-is-it-romans-5-12/ The early church and Eastern Orthodoxy have always rejected Augustine's interpretation of Romans 5:12. They have always maintained that Romans 5:12 is to be interpreted that we sin "BECAUSE" Adam sinned. We are not guilty of Adams sin. I am not guilty of your sin. Each person is guilty of their sins. The reason for this is because of the verses that follow vs 12. Vs 13 says, “for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Vs 14 identifies the subjects of this passage. It is talking about all the men who lived from Adam to Moses. For these men “sin was in the world”. These men struggled with sin, but it says that sin is not imputed where there is no law. In the King James Version, it actually says that sin was not imputed or reckoned to these men because the Torah had not been given. So verse 13 contradicts Augustine’s theory that all men have imputed guilt after Adam. Adam did not break the Torah. The Torah had not been given. Adam broke the command not to eat of the tree in Genesis 2:17. All of the men who live from Adam to Moses had no biological transmitted guilt from Adam. The entire Bible nowhere teaches biological or genetically transmitted guilt from Adams original sin. It is a myth. Vs 14 states, “Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.” Adam broke the command of God not to eat of the tree. Adam’s sin brought the "reign of death into creation". So Adam’s sin establishes the curse and slavery of death. This is why everyone who lives after Adam is under that curse. Adam is the head of the human race. He was the first man. He was the first man to sin. And Adam’s sin brings death on all men after him. So the problem was not imputed guilt from Adam. The problem is the reign of death. So Adam sets up the pattern of the one who is to come. That pattern is that Adam brings death into creation thus producing the fruit of unrighteousness. Christ the second Adam defeats death and establishes righteousness. Vs 17 says this, “For if by the transgression of the one, DEATH REIGNED through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” So death reigned through Adam and produced sin. Jesus Christ produces the gift of righteousness which reigns in resurrection life. Then in vs 21 of Chapter 5, it says that “Sin reigned in death”. Here again, Paul says that sin comes from the reign of death. Then in Chapter 7 after Paul describes his struggle with sin he says in vs 24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” So Paul says that his struggle with sin originates from his body which is infected by death. Paul nowhere ascribes his struggle with imputed guilt from Adam. Nor does he ascribe his struggle with sin from a biological or genetic guilt transmitted from Adam. Again this is a philosophical myth invented by Augustine and it has become the great deception of western Christianity. 1 Cor. 15:56. where he says, the sting of death is sin.” You will not find any mention in Paul’s writings in all of the New Testament the idea that sin comes from imputed guilt, genetic transmission, or biological procreation. Romans 6:23 states that "the wages of sin are death." This is true. The early church taught that both things are true. Death produces sin and sin produce death. Adam brought all men under q covenant with death. We are born into that world of death and because we are under the covenant that Adam established we will sin. When we Sin we recapitulate and confirm the covenant with death that Adam established. So sin comes from death and death comes from sin. Both things are true. When we sin we recapitulate the covenant that Adam established and we produce more death in our lives. It is an endless cycle of bondage to sin and death. In the garden narrative, God says to Adam that “in the day you eat you will surely die.” God did not say that in the day you eat the wrath of God will fall on you. God does not say in the day you eat that you will have a legal problem with Me. God does not say to Adam in the day you eat I will kill you. What God was saying to Adam is that death is the natural consequence of moving away from God. Adam had life because his being was connected to the being of God. In other words, Adams life was directly connected to his divine union with God and thus he had life. There was no death before Adams disobedience. To move away from the being of God is to move to non-being. The ultimate result of non-being is death. There is no life apart from God. So the early church believed that the first sin produced an ontological problem for Adam and all of the creation. The law of decay became the slavery and curse of the original creation. Since Adams sin created an ontological problem for Adam the solution for this ontological problem is an ontological solution. That ontological solution is in the incarnation of Christ. Hebrews 2:9 says, “But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” So it is in the incarnation that Christ comes to “taste death for every man.” So in the incarnation, Christ pays the wages of sin and He destroys the sting of death. The fall of Adam created an Ontological problem. The solution was an ontological remedy. Everything I have articulated comes from the church fathers. Augustine by interpreting the Bible apart from Church Tradition came up with a new and heretical doctrine that has become the great heresy of the West. Simply put he used the principle of Sola Scriptura and by ignoring the Church Fathers he put the West into a false anthropology and a false metaphysical theory of reality. The doctrine of sin in the Bible is very important because it is the foundation of so many other doctrines in the Bible. One final note. There is a distinction that needs to be made between a sinful nature and a fallen nature. The reason for this is because sin is located precisely in an act of the will (James 1:14-15), and is not a state of being. Sin does not have an existence in and of itself. That is it has no being and thus it is not part of our natures. Sin comes into existence by an act of our wills When Adam sinned God told him he would die. Death created the Ontological problem for Adam and his posterity. Since death had made him weak in his flesh Adam was now subject to his passions and lusts. All men are subject to their passions and we cannot love as God intended because we are now self-centered, Egotistical and selfish, We need to survive or we die. That is why we say as the scripture teaches that sin comes from death. Now that we are ontologically under the curse of death we will all sin. When we sin we ontologically move away from life and move toward death. The ultimate end of sin or non-being is death. So to say we have a sinful nature is to say we have a mortal nature. A fallen nature is a mortal condition. Christ entered into that fallen nature by becoming flesh and blood. Christ raises his flesh from the dead and takes it back to the right hand of God. By doing this he ontologically shows that he is the second Adam and reverses the pattern. that Adam established.
Thanks for the video. I did want to respond to something: "The fact that we all die" as being related to sin. Clearly, there was a tree of life and death in the Garden. Had Adam and Eve been created immortal (which would have been lost to sin), who would that have been for? It was guarded precisely because Adam didn't yet have any immortal life; it was posited that he would live forever in his sin, had he been able to get to eat of it. So our physical death, as created beings, is not related to our nature to sin.
Jenna Caruthers // You can't stand the entirety of your understanding of keeping the Law on one verse. Augustine didn't either. You also can't only base it on Deuteronomy, which stands at the beginning of the covenant structure of Law, long before Christ comes and clarifies what is needed to keep law and atone for sin. That's a bit like saying sin can actually be atoned for with the blood of animals because Torah says it can, when the NT says it was insufficient. In this case, the vast majority of the New Testaement's discussion of the need for Christ is based on the ultimate inability of sinful humanity to keep the Law and therefore the need for a renewed covenant based on Christ's sacrifice.
Not exactly the point about Adam, and besides it's attempting to reason backwards. Also God says that if you eat if it 'you will die', and the remaining biblical story continues to refer to the start of sin and death at the point of Adam's rebellion. Romans 5 is about as clear a text as you need that death 'came by Adam', and now life comes by Christ.
Ryan Reeves Hey Dr. Reeves, i want to say that this series is like spun gold. So much value exists in history, it's a shame more people do not dive into it. I can't get enough. However, I had a similar concern to Jenna about Adam and sin and Augustine. At 7:50 where you mention pride and so forth and not being able to say no to the things we want or believe should be ours despite being good or bad, does that mean Adam and Eve already had this pride, which would mean they already had the foundations of sin? I reason that if Adam and Eve were made perfect, then wouldn't they have perfectly working 'scales' to judge good or bad and be able to ignore negative suggestion? If the state of sin means that our free choice cannot exceed our will to enact it (not able to not sin), does that mean that Adam and Eve were created unable to exercise their will from the very beginning? That they were created already with broken 'scales' in place and couldn't say no to the fruit even if they wanted to? I suppose a simpler question is, if sin came into the world through Adam, when did sin enter the garden and into Adam and Eve? Before the fruit or after it? In Romans Paul says all men and women were created with a conscience, so if Adam and Eve 'knew' what was good and bad and if God already told them what and what not to do, then why were they unable to carry it out when tempted? The more I rationalize the more it seems to me that they already were displaying the effects of sin i.e.being unable to 'not sin'. Or is it that 'sin' the noun, used in Romans, actually really just means not having faith/trust in God? As I write this I remember what Satan said. I think maybe Adam and Eve did indeed have free will and choice but those things do not compare in the face of mistrust. For example, if I want to eat a box of donuts in the morning, I have free choice to do so but my free will might say it is not healthy, but then something happens that makes me doubt my nutritionist who told me that it is unhealthy. So, I think I ended up answering my own question. Free choice and perfect will are useless without truth. After the fall not only did we lose that perfect will but we learned alienation from God and to mistrust Him. Any help in clarifying this will be appreciated. Thanks.
The death spoken "if you eat if it 'you will die'" is a spiritual; death not a physical one. Adam and Eve were not created immortal it not part of our nature but one of the three "preternatural gifts" (the three I's: infused knowledge, immortality, and integrity) which are preternatural in the sense they do not belong to bare human nature, while at the same time they are not supernatural. In other words, the preternatural gifts strengthen human nature, but are not habits of grace. You can say physical death is a consequence of Adams sin, not as a direct result of it but an indirect one because Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden and separated from the tree of life. Again in Roman 5 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. This death is a Spiritual death, nothing to do with physical death as Christ who was without sin died on the cross. The reason man was expelled from the garden is given in Genesis 3:22 ... Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing ... now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. " If that had happened man would have been eternally separated from God, physically immortal, spiritually dead
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Thank you, Lord, for the internet and Ryan Reeves
ELTON LEE no
My brother, as a liberal Anglican Christian, I very much appreciate the even-handedness with which you treat every subject covered in the lectures I've heard so far - Constantine, the Schism of 1054; Augustine, Aquinas; the Reformers, both Continental and British; the Wesleys--the list goes on and on. I like how you illuminate the heresies and why they're seen as heresies without getting too deep in the nitty-gritty. I very much liked your portrayal of the ugly parting of ways between Rome and Constantinople - probably as much because of the egos of the two principal players as because of the cultural divide between the two sectors of the church and empire. After all, those differences had been in place long before 1054. Your lectures do a great service to the Gospel and to all Christians who question why the history of the Christian household is such a god-awful mess. All the best.
I've not known of you or your lectures but have been blessed by several of them on TH-cam.....I had forgotten that I have "City of God" on my Kindle and it has remained unread.....you've inspired me to start reading that book by Augustine. Thank you!
Thank you Dr. Reeves for sharing your expertise in such a polished way. Here bc I started listening to City of God and could not believe how many words Augustine used, and how many topics he discussed in minutia. A full audio of City of God is over twenty hours, easily.
the greatest controversy with the Donatists was over Christians, especially priests, bishops, etc., that lapsed under persecution and gave in, say by sacrificing to the pagan gods or denying their faith, that not only could they not be forgiven but that all sacramental rites performed by them, baptism, confessions/absolution, marriage, etc., were all invalid. This caused much distress because one could hardly pick out everyone that may have lapsed and so it left people completely worried that the sacraments they were receiving were invalid and therefore they may not even be a legitimate Christian through no fault of their own. Augustine rightly saw that this would have been a death blow to the spread of Christianity.
Finally some clarity!
Excellent lecture on Augustine.
Brilliant,and the part on if someone breaks into your house and threatens your family,that has always been a problem for me,as theres no teaching from our Lord on this.None the less many thanks Ryan Reeves.
Mr. Reeves you presentation was well rounded. Thank you. I am sorry that your presentation is interrupted by so many commercials. I look forward to another of your videos.
"Donuts are awsome" Saint Augustine
:P
I always thought that quote was attributed to Homer of Simpson.
although outside of my wheelhouse your vids are very entertaining and informative...
Thanks for your videos, I enjoy them very much. At 6:45 you said ‘Augustine says that in Adam we all fell which is, of course, a quote from the Old Testament", could you tell me what verse you are referring to?
Those who teach the doctrine of Original Sin as Augustine taught it believe that man has imputed corruption or biological transmission of guilt through sexual procreation. This imputed stain of guilt is transmitted to you from your parents. Thus you are born in sin and depravity. You have a sinful NATURE. That is you have a sinful nature that was passed down to you by ordinary generation. I am stating accurately the doctrine of sin that is universally stated in all Protestant creeds and confessions. This Protestant doctrine comes from a Roman Catholic named Augustine. Augustine came up with his ideas about Original Sin from Romans 5:12 In the Latin translation from the Greek Augustine saw these words, “in quo omnes peccaverunt” English Translation, “in whom [Adam] all sinned”. So Augustine took the idea that we were all "IN" Adam and postulated that this meant that we were all in Adams loins and present with him and thus share in his culpability and guilt. All babies are born with this stain of original guilt.
The problem with this theory is that it is not taught in scripture. Perhaps you are not aware of it but many theologians have recognised that this theory is unbiblical and has caused millions of people in the West to think incorrectly about sin and it keeps them from a proper anthropology. Here are two articles that point out this problem.
Augustine's Mistake About Original Sin
gentlewisdom.org/2007/08/11/augustines-mistake-about-sin/
Original Sin: How Original Is It? Romans 5:12
answersingenesis.org/sin/original-sin/how-original-is-it-romans-5-12/
The early church and Eastern Orthodoxy have always rejected Augustine's interpretation of Romans 5:12. They have always maintained that Romans 5:12 is to be interpreted that we sin "BECAUSE" Adam sinned. We are not guilty of Adams sin. I am not guilty of your sin. Each person is guilty of their sins. The reason for this is because of the verses that follow vs 12. Vs 13 says, “for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Vs 14 identifies the subjects of this passage. It is talking about all the men who lived from Adam to Moses. For these men “sin was in the world”. These men struggled with sin, but it says that sin is not imputed where there is no law. In the King James Version, it actually says that sin was not imputed or reckoned to these men because the Torah had not been given. So verse 13 contradicts Augustine’s theory that all men have imputed guilt after Adam. Adam did not break the Torah. The Torah had not been given. Adam broke the command not to eat of the tree in Genesis 2:17. All of the men who live from Adam to Moses had no biological transmitted guilt from Adam. The entire Bible nowhere teaches biological or genetically transmitted guilt from Adams original sin. It is a myth.
Vs 14 states, “Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.” Adam broke the command of God not to eat of the tree. Adam’s sin brought the "reign of death into creation". So Adam’s sin establishes the curse and slavery of death. This is why everyone who lives after Adam is under that curse. Adam is the head of the human race. He was the first man. He was the first man to sin. And Adam’s sin brings death on all men after him. So the problem was not imputed guilt from Adam. The problem is the reign of death. So Adam sets up the pattern of the one who is to come. That pattern is that Adam brings death into creation thus producing the fruit of unrighteousness. Christ the second Adam defeats death and establishes righteousness. Vs 17 says this, “For if by the transgression of the one, DEATH REIGNED through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” So death reigned through Adam and produced sin. Jesus Christ produces the gift of righteousness which reigns in resurrection life.
Then in vs 21 of Chapter 5, it says that “Sin reigned in death”. Here again, Paul says that sin comes from the reign of death. Then in Chapter 7 after Paul describes his struggle with sin he says in vs 24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” So Paul says that his struggle with sin originates from his body which is infected by death. Paul nowhere ascribes his struggle with imputed guilt from Adam. Nor does he ascribe his struggle with sin from a biological or genetic guilt transmitted from Adam. Again this is a philosophical myth invented by Augustine and it has become the great deception of western Christianity.
1 Cor. 15:56. where he says, the sting of death is sin.” You will not find any mention in Paul’s writings in all of the New Testament the idea that sin comes from imputed guilt, genetic transmission, or biological procreation. Romans 6:23 states that "the wages of sin are death." This is true. The early church taught that both things are true. Death produces sin and sin produce death. Adam brought all men under q covenant with death. We are born into that world of death and because we are under the covenant that Adam established we will sin. When we Sin we recapitulate and confirm the covenant with death that Adam established. So sin comes from death and death comes from sin. Both things are true. When we sin we recapitulate the covenant that Adam established and we produce more death in our lives. It is an endless cycle of bondage to sin and death.
In the garden narrative, God says to Adam that “in the day you eat you will surely die.” God did not say that in the day you eat the wrath of God will fall on you. God does not say in the day you eat that you will have a legal problem with Me. God does not say to Adam in the day you eat I will kill you. What God was saying to Adam is that death is the natural consequence of moving away from God. Adam had life because his being was connected to the being of God. In other words, Adams life was directly connected to his divine union with God and thus he had life. There was no death before Adams disobedience. To move away from the being of God is to move to non-being. The ultimate result of non-being is death. There is no life apart from God. So the early church believed that the first sin produced an ontological problem for Adam and all of the creation. The law of decay became the slavery and curse of the original creation. Since Adams sin created an ontological problem for Adam the solution for this ontological problem is an ontological solution. That ontological solution is in the incarnation of Christ. Hebrews 2:9 says, “But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” So it is in the incarnation that Christ comes to “taste death for every man.” So in the incarnation, Christ pays the wages of sin and He destroys the sting of death. The fall of Adam created an Ontological problem. The solution was an ontological remedy.
Everything I have articulated comes from the church fathers. Augustine by interpreting the Bible apart from Church Tradition came up with a new and heretical doctrine that has become the great heresy of the West. Simply put he used the principle of Sola Scriptura and by ignoring the Church Fathers he put the West into a false anthropology and a false metaphysical theory of reality. The doctrine of sin in the Bible is very important because it is the foundation of so many other doctrines in the Bible.
One final note. There is a distinction that needs to be made between a sinful nature and a fallen nature. The reason for this is because sin is located precisely in an act of the will (James 1:14-15), and is not a state of being. Sin does not have an existence in and of itself. That is it has no being and thus it is not part of our natures. Sin comes into existence by an act of our wills When Adam sinned God told him he would die. Death created the Ontological problem for Adam and his posterity. Since death had made him weak in his flesh Adam was now subject to his passions and lusts. All men are subject to their passions and we cannot love as God intended because we are now self-centered, Egotistical and selfish, We need to survive or we die. That is why we say as the scripture teaches that sin comes from death. Now that we are ontologically under the curse of death we will all sin. When we sin we ontologically move away from life and move toward death. The ultimate end of sin or non-being is death. So to say we have a sinful nature is to say we have a mortal nature. A fallen nature is a mortal condition. Christ entered into that fallen nature by becoming flesh and blood. Christ raises his flesh from the dead and takes it back to the right hand of God. By doing this he ontologically shows that he is the second Adam and reverses the pattern. that Adam established.
Thanks for the video. I did want to respond to something: "The fact that we all die" as being related to sin. Clearly, there was a tree of life and death in the Garden. Had Adam and Eve been created immortal (which would have been lost to sin), who would that have been for? It was guarded precisely because Adam didn't yet have any immortal life; it was posited that he would live forever in his sin, had he been able to get to eat of it. So our physical death, as created beings, is not related to our nature to sin.
As far as the inability of persons to obey YHVH: Deut 30:10-14 absolutely confronts that.
Jenna Caruthers // You can't stand the entirety of your understanding of keeping the Law on one verse. Augustine didn't either. You also can't only base it on Deuteronomy, which stands at the beginning of the covenant structure of Law, long before Christ comes and clarifies what is needed to keep law and atone for sin. That's a bit like saying sin can actually be atoned for with the blood of animals because Torah says it can, when the NT says it was insufficient.
In this case, the vast majority of the New Testaement's discussion of the need for Christ is based on the ultimate inability of sinful humanity to keep the Law and therefore the need for a renewed covenant based on Christ's sacrifice.
Not exactly the point about Adam, and besides it's attempting to reason backwards. Also God says that if you eat if it 'you will die', and the remaining biblical story continues to refer to the start of sin and death at the point of Adam's rebellion. Romans 5 is about as clear a text as you need that death 'came by Adam', and now life comes by Christ.
Ryan Reeves Hey Dr. Reeves, i want to say that this series is like spun gold. So much value exists in history, it's a shame more people do not dive into it. I can't get enough. However, I had a similar concern to Jenna about Adam and sin and Augustine. At 7:50 where you mention pride and so forth and not being able to say no to the things we want or believe should be ours despite being good or bad, does that mean Adam and Eve already had this pride, which would mean they already had the foundations of sin? I reason that if Adam and Eve were made perfect, then wouldn't they have perfectly working 'scales' to judge good or bad and be able to ignore negative suggestion?
If the state of sin means that our free choice cannot exceed our will to enact it (not able to not sin), does that mean that Adam and Eve were created unable to exercise their will from the very beginning? That they were created already with broken 'scales' in place and couldn't say no to the fruit even if they wanted to?
I suppose a simpler question is, if sin came into the world through Adam, when did sin enter the garden and into Adam and Eve? Before the fruit or after it? In Romans Paul says all men and women were created with a conscience, so if Adam and Eve 'knew' what was good and bad and if God already told them what and what not to do, then why were they unable to carry it out when tempted? The more I rationalize the more it seems to me that they already were displaying the effects of sin i.e.being unable to 'not sin'.
Or is it that 'sin' the noun, used in Romans, actually really just means not having faith/trust in God? As I write this I remember what Satan said. I think maybe Adam and Eve did indeed have free will and choice but those things do not compare in the face of mistrust. For example, if I want to eat a box of donuts in the morning, I have free choice to do so but my free will might say it is not healthy, but then something happens that makes me doubt my nutritionist who told me that it is unhealthy. So, I think I ended up answering my own question. Free choice and perfect will are useless without truth. After the fall not only did we lose that perfect will but we learned alienation from God and to mistrust Him. Any help in clarifying this will be appreciated. Thanks.
The death spoken "if you eat if it 'you will die'" is a spiritual; death not a physical one. Adam and Eve were not created immortal it not part of our nature but one of the three "preternatural gifts" (the three I's: infused knowledge, immortality, and integrity) which are preternatural in the sense they do not belong to bare human nature, while at the same time they are not supernatural. In other words, the preternatural gifts strengthen human nature, but are not habits of grace. You can say physical death is a consequence of Adams sin, not as a direct result of it but an indirect one because Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden and separated from the tree of life.
Again in Roman 5 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. This death is a Spiritual death, nothing to do with physical death as Christ who was without sin died on the cross.
The reason man was expelled from the garden is given in Genesis 3:22 ... Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing ... now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. " If that had happened man would have been eternally separated from God, physically immortal, spiritually dead
Oh, I almost forgot......I'm an old guy originally from NJ......do I hear a Jersey accent there?....lol
Adam's sin was not trusting God's word and as a result falling in line with woman who had been seduced by Satan.