What does in God’s image mean? He created Adam & E

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Originally posted by mikejuli

i suggest rethinking your first line. adam and eve clearly had a moral sense, because even knew there was a difference between what the serpent told her and what the lord said. she and adam chose to disobey and ended up losing innocence. maybe you have confused the idea of innocence with lacking a moral sense? not my problem. i know that stealing is wrong without having to steal. so i'll gladly remain innocent of that crime and my innocense will be based on my moral sense not because i lack one.

anyway.. thats enough to break your argument. your whole basis for making it is faulty.

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If they already had a moral sense, then why did God say they became like him only after eating of the tree of knowledge?

Regards
DL

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Originally posted by baby3

Perhaps the whole concept of Adam and Eve was to show us all that even when we have everything we want our desire to have more and become more fleshly is always there more then God is in our lives and this was wrong they loved knowledge more then him and this had to hurt him because they had no reason to do this after living in a complete paradise? Just think we are heading there to if we obey and try our best But will it all start over again? This is why I want to just be in the holy place with God and dwell there where man can't come and betray him any more.

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Originally posted by baby3

Why would God make a tree like this? He must have already known that man would sin?They were made perfect in the mind until Satan got to their minds and changed them against the Lord.Of Course god knew what sin was he made the universe and all that is in it so perhaps he made other people before us and knew what sin they did his laws are throughout the universe all positive forces but sin is a negative force against the universal laws.

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Originally posted by Greatest I am 2

God is within. I agree.
Any Gnostic would.

Regards
DL

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http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm

Gnosticism

The doctrine of salvation by knowledge.

This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought.

Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge.

Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.

A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be:

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another.

Many scholars, moreover, would hold that every attempt to give a generic description of Gnostic sects is labour lost.

The Gnostics, it is true, borrowed their terminology almost entirely from existing religions, but they only used it to illustrate their great idea of the essential evil of this present existence and the duty to escape it by the help of magic spells and a superhuman Saviour.

This utter pessimism, bemoaning the existence of the whole universe as a corruption and a calamity, with a feverish craving to be freed from the body of this death and a mad hope that, if we only knew, we could by some mystic words undo the cursed spell of this existence — this is the foundation of all Gnostic thought.

It has the same parent-soil as Buddhism; but Buddhism is ethical, it endeavours to obtain its end by the extinction of all desire; Gnosticism is pseudo-intellectual, and trusts exclusively to magical knowledge.

Moreover, Gnosticism, placed in other historical surroundings, developed from the first on other lines than Buddhism.

When Gnosticism came in touch with Christianity, which must have happened almost immediately on its appearance, Gnosticism threw herself with strange rapidity into Christian forms of thought, borrowed its nomenclature, acknowledged Jesus as Saviour of the world, simulated its sacraments, pretended to be an esoteric revelation of Christ and His Apostles, flooded the world with apocryphal Gospels, and Acts, and Apocalypses, to substantiate its claim.

As Christianity grew within and without the Roman Empire, Gnosticism spread as a fungus at its root, and claimed to be the only true form of Christianity, unfit, indeed, for the vulgar crowd, but set apart for the gifted and the elect.

So rank was its poisonous growth that there seemed danger of its stifling Christianity altogether, and the earliest Fathers devoted their energies to uprooting it.

Though in reality the spirit of Gnosticism is utterly alien to that of Christianity, it then seemed to the unwary merely a modification or refinement thereof.

When domiciled on Greek soil, Gnosticism, slightly changing its barbarous and Seminitic terminology and giving its "emanatons" and "syzygies" Greek names, sounded somewhat like neo-Platonism, thought it was strongly repudiated by Plotinus. In Egypt the national worship left its mark more on Gnostic practice than on its theories.

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