Quote:
Originally Posted by Gubei
Trapped,
Okay. I will do my best. Please forgive me if my explanation is not sufficient. It is difficult to clarify my position in English.(I'm Korean living in Seoul.)
Compared to the NT stories surrounding Jesus, the Eden story is unclear on whether it was physical or just figurative. When I read the names of rivers like Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates from Gen2:10, obviously Eden sounds to be physically located in the land of the Middle East, but, reading the God’s punishment of Gen3:21 where cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life are mentioned gives me a different angle because currently no one can find the physical location of Eden under the guard of cherubim and the sword. As an natural extension, is the city of New Jerusalem physical or just figurative? The Tree of life in Rev 22:19 is also physical or figurative? (in this conjecture, “physical with figurative meanings” should be regarded as physical anyway) I guess, most of us stick to the literal interpretation of the Bible(me too), as dispensationalists do, and Witness Lee was one of them, then consciously or unconsciously, we tend to interpret Eden or New Jerusalem are physical. This is the point where problems arise. I have wrestled with any possible way to interpret Gen 2, 3 almost scores of years, but I confess I still cannot fully understand the story. Your earlier post mentioning “You shall surely die” may not mean natural consequence seemed to echo once again to my long-held conundrum. If death of Gen 2,3 could mean judicial punishment rather than natural death of dictionary meaning, then the whole story of Eden can also be a figurative one?
I believe only after we define the Eden story either physical or figurative then we can discuss further, otherwise all the debates will be useless. The first video of the youtube channel says not only the three of life but the tree of knowledge of good and evil was in the middle of the garden. Witness Lee said in his writings that only the tree of life is center. If we define middle and center are identical in their meaning, Witness Lee seems to have omitted the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but if he had used the word “center” as meaning “most important” (as often seen in Chinese language usage. Center = 中心 zhongxin) rather than physically middle, it also gives us a different angle. As far as I noticed, most of the cases, Witness Lee seemed to think in Chinese.
If all the words in Gen 2, 3 like life, death, good, evil, knowledge, even Adam and Eve etc could be just figurative/symbolic then there will be myriads of way to interpret the story.
I hope this clarified my earlier post.
ps. To avoid any doubt, I left the LC about 15 years ago.
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Gubei,
Okay, your explanation helps, thanks.
These are my thoughts in response:
1. Romans 5 refers to what happened in the garden of Eden. "
Sin entered the world through one man and death through sin", "
the many died by the trespass of the one man".
And then it clearly balances it out with what Jesus did: "
For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive an abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!"
It seems to me that if we are to take the garden of Eden, Adam's transgression, death as punishment, etc figuratively, then we would also have to take Jesus' death and our resultant justification figuratively too. I'm personally not prepared to do that.
2. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul says, "
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ." Sure, we could imagine that as a figurative analogy, but Paul is comparing it to the real situation the Corinthians were in, so it feels like a weak warning if Genesis 2-3 is only a figurative story.
3. When the article I posted says death is judicial punishment, not natural consequence, that distinction is not related to whether it's a figurative or literal story. What it means is, if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were some kind of poisonous tree like many claim, then when Adam and Eve ate of it, the "natural consequence" of ingesting something poisonous is death. Poison kills us as a natural consequence of eating it. But the tree is called "good for food", and so it is all but impossible to call something that is "good for food" poisonous.
And that's what the article is saying. "You shall surely die" does not carry with it a sense of natural consequence from poison. It carries with it a sense of "judicial punishment" for disobedience, which is what we actually see in Genesis - God punished them by cutting off access to the tree of life and driving them from the garden. And so they were not able to eat the tree which would have made them live forever, and so they died. This was God's punishment.
4. The Bible, as far as I know, never really addresses the fate of the garden of Eden after Genesis 3. It never says "and God preserved the garden and so it has stood until the present day", and it also never says, "and so God took the garden up into the heavens until the appointed time", or anything in between. It's just silent. So I don't think we can assume that the garden would necessarily still be around......we just don't know.
5. The middle/center thing is interesting. It's been a month or two since I listened to any of the two trees videos, but I don't recall them considering this as an option. However, in thinking about it, it doesn't really save Witness Lee from his errors because the next thing he taught was "God charged man to eat the right tree". This simply isn't true and is the major basis of his error, regardless of where the trees fell in relation to the center or middle. No one will ever find a record in the Bible of God telling Adam to eat the tree of life. It's just not there. So if we consider Witness Lee to have really been saying "the tree of life is the most important"....he literally put words in God's mouth in order to claim that. The truth is the narrative in Genesis 2-3 heavily centers around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the most, and yet I don't even consider that to mean "the TKGE is the most important". One thing I do remember specifically from the videos is the statement of something like "the tree of life wasn't the tree they were charged to eat, instead it was the tree they lost when they disobeyed". That's the same realization I came to myself when looking into these chapters. It's like the tree of life was a privilege, the access to which was dependent on their obedience. But it's not presented as the center, whether "center" means alone in the middle of the garden, or whether it means the most important part of the chapters. The whole thing contains important concepts!
I'm sure some will disagree with me. These are just my thoughts. Not sure if any of that helped or made it worse....
Trapped