[HarleyD]

I have no problem with the first possibility because God did give Eve the right choice — not to eat the fruit... God did not make us purposefully imperfect.

Eve was not imperfect. She was simply lacking in knowledge and wisdom. Even in her perfect condition she was deceived into eating the fruit and she never once thought to run to Adam or God for advice. God knew this was going to happen and He never tried to stop her or zap her with some godly wisdom.

It is interesting that the Catholics and Orthodox make such a deep comparison of Eve and Mary. Never in the Bible is this comparison made. On the contrary, Paul compares Adam and Christ-not Eve and Mary.

As long as we cleave to God, use God rather than man as a measure, we will function within our created capacity to make rational decisions of good moral character.

No amount of "good things" that we do is of any value. God must work through us to bring about His purpose. We have nothing to offer Him except our submission (and even that is a gift). Any good work we do is strictly because He has chosen to use us as His hand-maiden or bond servant.

"I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." John 15:5

But your other quote is problematic. First, if God deceives, does that mean we can too?...And if God kills, then we can kill too.

God did not deceive anyone. God simply ask who could deceive Ahab. A demon was more than willing to volunteer, God knew that it would be successful and God gave His permission for His divine plan. If you have a better interpretation to the scripture verses I've laid out, I love to here it.

God killed people all the time in scripture. He flooded the world, rained fire on Sodom, drowned the Egyptian army, ordered Joshua to slaughter the inhabitants of the Promise Land, and on and on and on. This is God's wrath on us miserable creatures who cannot even remotely understand God's glory unless, through His grace, He takes and sets us in the right direction.

while I trust that the faith of Jesus and the Apostles was that of Abraham, I simply do not see Christ-like anything in most of the OT quotes.

Of course you don't. That's simply because you have the wrong soteriology. You will NEVER be able to reconcile the God of the Old Testament against the New Testament under your "God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives" soteriology. You might as well rip out the Old Testament. Most have reduced it to nothing more than moral stories anyway. And while you're at it you might as well cross out anything in the New that says "wrath", "vengeance", "woe to you", hell, etc. You can probably condense the whole thing down to about 150 pages (large text edition).

The early church fathers sought to harmonize the scriptures, not ignore them. The question becomes how much are you dedicated to understanding God's word as the INSPIRED word of God and being true to understanding God as He has revealed Himself to us?

[kosta50]

Eve was not imperfect. She was simply lacking in knowledge and wisdom

If Eve was perfect (i.e. not imperfect), how could she lack anything?

One does not need a dictionary to realize that anything that is perfect lacks nothing. If she were perfect, HD, she would be God.

However, if she lacked knowledge and wisdom then she is not perfect, is she? The truth is, Eve was simply human. If Adam and Ever were created perfect, they would not need God. It is not that God made made imperfectly, for God does not make anything imperfectly. He made man in such a way that he is fully human only when he is cleaved to God, but not by wisdom or special knowledge (gnostic error). The knowledge of God is not hidden, but revealed.

Even eve told the serpent that God said they must not eat of the tree. So, she knew God, she knew what God commanded Adam; therefore claiming lack of knowledge or wisdom on her part is meaningless. She lacked faith (and so did Adam) and obedience that comes from faith. And, that is something we all can relate to.

God did not deceive anyone. God simply ask who could deceive Ahab...

Your reasoning fascinates me! So, if I hire someone to do a "dirty job" for me I am not responsible? If everything happens on God's "watch" then everything is ultimately His responsibility, including deceit, whether it is direct or indirect.

What really amazes me, further, is that you give a demon credit for making a free choice to do the job of deceiving, yet when it comes to humans you say we do only what God wants us to do. Did, then, God make the evil spirit deceive Ahab, or did the evil spirit make that choice too happily on his own?

If it is all God's doing (i.e. if the demon was compelled by God) to do the deception, then it was not the demon who did it but God through the demon; the demon here being a passive conduit of God's will.

But that's not what you are actually saying. You are saying that God did not deceive anyone, but simply asked who would. From a moral point of view that is one and the same.

You will NEVER be able to reconcile the God of the Old Testament against the New Testament under your "God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives" soteriology

Perhaps, but the fact remains the two Testaments are very different and very unlike. The Church interprets the OT through the prism of the NT teaching, and specifically the references made to the OT in the Gospels and Epistles. That is because, like it or not, it is the New Testament that defines Christianity; the Old testament leads and hints at it.