To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (4462 ) 12/11/2000 12:00:46 PM From: Greg or e Read Replies (1) | Respond to Good morning Mitch I was suggesting that you were mistaking the efficient cause with the final cause, in an Aristotlean sense. should that read formal cause? I have only read philosophy on my own so please excuse any inaccurate use of terms. ) That's why I pointed out it's usually stated by the NRA as "guns don't kill, people do" However that's not the only the only trouble I had with the analogy. Maybe I'm being too picky, but as you yourself pointed out, God could have chosen any standard He wanted to in order to test their obedience to Him, so the we could in theory, totally remove TKOGAE from our equation and still achieve the same result or could we? In a real sense I think TKOGAE was an inherent consequence of any disobedient act. There might not in fact have been any difference between one tree's fruit and another, except for the fact that one was permitted and the other was not. So if that is the case then my version of your analogy might look something like this. The efficient cause of original sin is a personal choice to eat fruit from a particular tree,(the formal cause) in opposition to a stated and known command to not do so and the attendant warning about the consequence of doing so. The consequence of this act of disobedience was that sin moved from the theoretical realm into the experiential, where it remains active to this day (Known as original sin) Being ratified by us on a daily basis.
