Did Adam and Eve know God's Law?

[Hobie]

Did Adam and Eve know God's Law, and how. When Adam was created, God was there and Adam learned and gained understanding of God and His character directly from the source. Eve too, had a primary relationship with God. Everything they saw was created by God. All their activity or 'work' involved the things God had created, which provided a lesson into the will and ways of God. God came and visited with them regularly and walked with them and let them know His will.

To Adam and Eve, the commandments or what pleased God were clear or 'transparent', as one would be with a friend. They patterned their lives after a divine role model or what God did. At the start, it did not even occur to them to do otherwise. Their lives were full what God had given them in understanding and with much joy of having Him with them and purpose. Day by day as they grasped deeper in what is meant, they kept God's Law of love as He was their role model, but just as Satan worked on the angels and made them doubt God, so he brought doubt to man.......

Man was created in the very image of God, and God was his teacher including on everything he was given dominion over.

"And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Gen. 1:26, 27

Some things to think about...

 

[Josheb]

Did Adam and Eve know God's Law, and how[?]

Can you clarify a few concerns before the thread gets started?

• When you capitalize "Law," is that a reference to the Mosiac Law or simply "God's law" in general or generic form? If the former, then why would anyone expect Adam and Eve to know the Law of Moses centuries before it was given?
• What evidence is there in scripture Adam learned and gained understanding directly from God because God was there? Is this an assumption or something actually reported by the text of scripture?
• Same question pertaining to the work of Adam and Eve providing lessons into the will and ways of God. What evidence is there of that in scripture, or is this something being assumed?
• Are "the will and ways of God" being conflated with "God's Law"? If so, how and why?
• I can read only two commands given by God prior to Genesis 3:6-7 where Adam disobeys God. At the beginning of the second paragraph the op mentions, "the commandments." To what "commandments" is the op referring? If you cannot point to the commandments being stated specifically to Adam and Eve then how cany you say they were clear and transparent?

I do think Adam and Eve knew more than is stated in the Genesis creation account, but I'll address that in a separate post. In the meantime, can you answer the questions above?

 

[Josheb]

Did Adam and Eve know God's Law, and how. When Adam was created, God was there and Adam learned and gained understanding of God and His character directly from the source. Eve too, had a primary relationship with God. Everything they saw was created by God. All their activity or 'work' involved the things God had created, which provided a lesson into the will and ways of God. God came and visited with them regularly and walked with them and let them know His will.

To Adam and Eve, the commandments or what pleased God were clear or 'transparent', as one would be with a friend. They patterned their lives after a divine role model or what God did. At the start, it did not even occur to them to do otherwise. Their lives were full what God had given them in understanding and with much joy of having Him with them and purpose. Day by day as they grasped deeper in what is meant, they kept God's Law of love as He was their role model, but just as Satan worked on the angels and made them doubt God, so he brought doubt to man.......

Man was created in the very image of God, and God was his teacher including on everything he was given dominion over.

"And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Gen. 1:26, 27

Some things to think about...

Part 1:

Scripture tells us that the knowledge of God, His power and His law is written on the human heart and can be seen in creation. Those are "generic" and "common" means of understanding. We would not know that from reading only the Genesis account because the added information is found later in scripture. For example, in Romans 1 Paul explains how any human living in the post-disobedient world does, can, and should know about God.

Romans 1:18-20
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Since this information is said to have existed since the creation of the world, we know it was there for Adam and Eve.

What existed?

• Knowledge of God.
• God's invisible attributes.
• God's eternal power.
• God's divine nature.

And implicit in the larger Romans 1 narrative is the knowledge God is the Creator and Adam and Eve created creatures (not God). The psalms and the prophets contain other passages like this that expound on what humans did, can, and should know simply as a consequence of what is evident to them in creation.





Part 2:

Part 1 being said, I'll also suggest another approach to answering this op's question. The design features of creation are just as much part of God's laws as are His commands to subdue the earth and not to eat the forbidden fruit. For example, God stated the plants and animals replicate "according to their kind," and in the case of plants that entails death (a seed dying to become a plant that produces more seeds than itself). Another example would be the lessons learned from the laws of gravity, magnetism, the linear nature of time on earth (we cannot go backwards), and all of the other physical but unseen aspects of earth. For example, if you fall down you might skin your knee and feel pain, but that fall is nothing compared to a fall from ten or twenty feet and the ten-foot fall is nothing compared to the 1000-foot fall. The 1000 foot fall brings death. That is the law. That law exists by God's design and no one else's.

So do not jump off cliffs and expect to survive the fall.


Part 3:

There is an overlap. If, for example Adam and Eve were working a field in close proximity to one another and one bumped the other with a man-made rake the resulting pain and commensurate bruise taught them something about God, His creation, and the laws by which He created them, and those laws might not be amoral. An inadvertent bump is much different than a negligent one and a negligent one much different than a forceful one a "light" intended one much different than a forceful intended one. Same bruise. Maybe different motive. So one set is amoral and another decidedly moral.

However, we do not actually have any statement from God explicitly declaring, "You cannot intentionally hit one another with a rake," any more than we have an explicit declaration, "do now kill your brother," in the first three chapters of Genesis. A variety of laws existed. More than two reported in the creation account may have been stated but whether stated or not they were readily grasped given sufficient time and experience.





Which is one of the reasons it is necessary and important to recognize scripture is not exhaustive. Sufficient, but not exhaustive. We could read the Bible until its entirety was memorized but that would not mean we'd learned all there is to know about God's laws.

 

[CrowCross]

God came and visited with them regularly and walked with them and let them know His will.

This might be true but it's mostly speculation.