Question posted on Yahoo! Answers: If Adam and Eve were created perfect, how were they able to sin? A perfect being cannot sin. And if they were created imperfect, why did God get angry at them for his mistake of making imperfect beings. And if God knew they would sin, why did he get angry at them for something he knew they would do before creating them? If God is omnipotent and had a plan for Adam and Eve they were unable to have freewill.
What are your thoughts?
I love this question! “A perfect being cannot sin.” The thing is they weren’t created perfect in such a way that they could never choose to do wrong. They were created perfectly human. That is, they had everything a human consists of: a body, a mind, will, and emotions. For a human to be a perfect human, he would have to have a will and thus would be able to choose to sin.
” And if God knew they would sin, why did he get angry at them for something he knew they would do before creating them?” I could not agree more with this statement. I’ve said similar stuff on a few articles. It is completely true. God would never get angry at someone for something in which they had no choice in the matter.
Since you asked, here are my thoughts…
God’s plan from the beginning was perfect, before Adam and Eve were created the entire gospel had been set out including the necessity of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were created perfect because they were created in an overflow of the love of the Trinity’s perfect, harmonious community. They were created in the way God intended (according to his overall perfect plan), innocent and in constant communication with their Creator. God’s allowing them (or even willing them) to sin does not make their creation any less perfect. This allowance started the story for His perfect plan. Or, if you say he must have willed them to sin this point doesn’t change…a biblical truth is God’s will is perfect because he is nothing other than perfection.
This doesn’t mean God cannot be angry when they do sin. This is a common and incomplete comparison, but it’s like a Father and his children. You may lay out rules for them to follow, but it’s inevitable that the rules are going to be broken and you know that when the rules are made. This doesn’t mean when the child breaks the rules that you (as the rule creator) are OK with the child’s actions. The child still requires punishment for his transgression.