Thursday, January 23, 2014

"Who told you that you were naked?"





"Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself (Gen 2:24-25). The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with his origin (Gen 3)In the knowledge of good and evil man does not understand himself in the reality of the destiny appointed in his origin, but rather in his own possibilities, his possibility of being good or evil. He knows himself now as something apart from God, outside God, and this means that he now knows only himself and no longer knows God at all... The knowledge of good and evil is therefore separation from God.

Instead of knowing himself in the origin of God, he must now know himself as an origin. He interprets himself according to his possibilities, his possibilities of being good or evil, and he therefore conceives himself to be the origin of good and evil, Eritis Sicut deus (you will be like god). ' The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil', says God (Gen 3:22)... 
Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at this origin and has made himself his own creator and judge. What God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself..." Bonhoeffer -  Ethics 17-20 Italics added.

"
 I believe in Christianity like I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."  CS Lewis


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