OK, General. In my last post, I suggested what I think to be a good outline for getting a grasp on the totality of Scripture without trying to trudge through the entire thing and getting terribly lost along the way. Let me now, in much better conscience, try to answer your specific questions.
Who is ''they''? When God says, let us create man in our image? Who is he talking about? I thought God is God and knowone is like him? I did assume the angels who I believe are called the sons of God (if someone could explain that to me I would appreciate it btw). Though surely that cant be right?
This is usually answered by looking at what is called "the plural of majesty." It was very common for ancient near-eastern kings (and even some today, as well), to refer to themselves in the plural. I was surprised to learn this past week, actually, that this practice was continued even in England as recently as 500 years ago.
Bottom line, kings referred to themselves as "we" and "our" to emphasize their own majesty. Moses, then, is simply using a literary device that was very, very common in his own day, to emphasize the sovereignty of God.
As an aside, some see the Trinity here. I don't, but I think we can safely say that the seeds of the Trinity are certainly there. But that doctrine doesn't require a singular or plural usage of the pronoun. Trinitarians rightly refer to God as "He" rather than "they," so we shouldn't expect anything less than that from Moses.
So, I take it God didnt intend for man to live forever?
Immortality is an interesting idea that can be nuanced in several ways. Let me answer this by looking at a different "problem." Consider this question: Why didn't a perfect God just create a perfect world?
The answer: He couldn't. It isn't that God isn't powerful enough to. It's that it is logically impossible. This is why: for a thing to be perfect, it must not lack anything. Put differently, if a thing lacks anything, it is not perfect. A perfect world, then, would not lack anything. But if the world lacked nothing, then it would be able to exist independently of God. The fact that the world cannot exist independently of God means that it lacks the ability to do so (called
aseity in theology). Can God, then, create a world independent of Himself? He cannot, because then there would be TWO totally perfect beings, lacking in nothing. But this brings out another problem: if two things were completely and totally complete and perfect--if they had all things in themselves--then what would we mean by saying, "There are two different things"? In fact, when we say things are different, we say that they differ by something. This one has A, that one does not. That one has B, this one does not. But if two things had ALL things, then they would both have ALL things. As such, neither would have anything the other did not have, and thus, neither would be different by anything at all. And if two things are not different by anything, then they are simply the same thing.
Thus, to ask God to create a perfect world is to ask Him to create Himself. But that is obviously absurd. So it is evident that God cannot create anything that exists independly of Himself, which we simply perceive to be true on its face.
Let's take that idea to your question. Did God intend for man to live forever? Yes, He did, but God did NOT intend for man to live forever independently of Himself. What is life? Ultimately, it is that which is in God. What is the difference in a rock and you? You are living, and it is not. But what makes a thing alive? Genesis 2 tells us that God breathed the Spirit of Life into Adam. All life, then, comes from God. It is impossible, then, for anything to be alive if it is apart from God, just as it is impossible for a flower to be alive if it is plucked from the ground, or a leaf from a tree.
Apart from God, then, Man would die. God never intended for Man to die, but it was and is a possibility.
What, then, of the Tree of Life (ToL)? If life comes from God, then how could a person eat of the tree and have life in them? Let's answer that by looking at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE). And in looking at that, let's start with this observation: a Good God cannot create anything evil. Like begets like, so goodness can never give rise, naturally, to evil. Thus, God could not nor would create something inherently evil. They means that the TKGE wasn't
itself evil. I think that Geerhardus Vos has it right in his
Biblical Theology when he says that Adam was going to come to understand good vs. evil no matter what, and that no matter what, the TKGE would take him to it. Let me explain.
We have a tendancy to think of the TKGE as something that held this innate power that Adam had access to once he ate of it, and that power was a bad power. But let me suggest a different approach. Look at it, instead, as a fork in the road. Adam would face it no matter what. He would either obey God and avoid its fruit, or he would disobey God and partake of its fruit. Either way, Adam would do something relative to the TKGE. If he obeyed God, he would learn good and evil by experiencing Goodness. As it stands, he disobeyed God, and learned evil.
Here, it is also worth pointing out that "to know" in biblical texts refers to experiential knowledge.
Now, my point here is that the fruit wasn't what was evil. What made it evil is that God commanded it so. The question was about obeying or disobeying God.
I believe the same is true of the ToL. The fruit, in and of itself, has no power of life. It has life in it only because God so decreed it, and God so decreed it as a means of fellowship with Man. Thus, to be expelled from the Garden of Eden was actually to be expelled from the ToL, and thus to be removed from fellowship with God. That, as it happens, is the means by which man died. Just as a flower dies the moment it is plucked from the ground and yet it takes several days for the decay to set in, so with man, the moment he was expelled from God's presence died, and yet it takes time for the decay to set in.
SO - bottom line here: God intended for man to live forever in His presence, depended on and in fellowship with Him, but He also gave man the ability to reject that fellowship and thus, like everything else imperfect, the ability to die.
If mans intent was to eventually return to the ground, then where exactly does the idea of the soul come in, if man is said to come from the ground, and doesnt this seem to cause issues for the supposed afterlife?
As should be clear from above, God did not intend for people to die, thus, there was no intention of a separation of body and soul. With that, however, let me point out that there are two major schools of thought in Christian circles regarding the soul, both of which are represented on these boards. The one school is called
substance dualism. It is, you could say, the popular view, in which the soul is considered a separate thing that resides in and controls the body. When the body dies, the soul goes to be with God. The second view is called
composite dualism, to which I adhere. Under this view, the soul is not a separate thing from the body, but rather an integrated whole with it. In philosohical terms, the soul is to the body what
form is to matter.
I'll leave it to a substance dualist to explain your question from their perspective, but as for me, I'll simply say that when God created human beings, he created them as a single substance--a body/soul composite--that was never intended to be, and in the strictest sense cannot be, separated. When a person dies, their soul (form--that is,
what they are) is given a temporary body in paradise (or, if they are unsaved, in Hell), until they receive their permanent bodies back at the Resurrection.
oh and I think there was a quote along the lines of, my spirit wont stay with men forever, for they are mortal.
You are talking about Genesis 6:3, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years" (NIV). The key word here is "contend." The idea is not "stay," but rather, "fight with." Mankind had become utterly evil by that point in history. They were no longer listening to the Spirit, and thus, God said He would not try to convict them forever. He could not, as eventually, people would die, and a new, just as evil, generation, would just take their place. God could convict them only until they died, which, He was saying, would not be enough time. Thus, God gave them 120 years to repent. He then gave them Noah as a "preacher of righteousness" to give them a fair chance to avoid judgment. When they did not, after 120 years, God sent the Flood and destroyed them.
So, I hope this has helped, and do consider the reading outline I suggested in my first reply.
God bless!
edit: Thanks, Zoe. I actually went through that very thing last night with a friend of mine. I use the outlines as a teaching tool when I do a general lesson on the Bible as a whole. People usually find it pretty helpful.
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