Image of God, Free Will, an eternal Soul and the GAE

In my understanding, a free will (moral choice), and an eternal soul are fundamentally linked to being made in the image of God.

Based on this, if the humans prior to Adam were also made in the image of God, they would have had the ability to make moral choices, and therefore must have sinned.

The other option (given my understanding) is that they were not (yet) made in the image of God, and therefore were essentially animals, unable to make moral choices.

I think what your are suggesting, is that there is a 3rd option, that their choices would not represent sin, as without the law they had no option to reject God’s law. While I think I understand this in “theory”, I think I’d have to change my understanding of what it means to be human in a relationship with God, and what sin really is. But that’s partly why I’m here, to have my understanding challenged. I guess I’ve got a few more topics to add to my list for indepth Bible Study.

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I just want to say thanks for this thoughtful response. Lots in here that I need to consider and put to the test of Bible for myself.

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Genesis 1
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

@cdods What if man (humanity) were created in God’s image, such that all who were “human” possess those three attributes? If one is willing to accept the story of Adam and Eve as the story of man’s willingness to sin, despite being in close communion with God, rather than it being a recapitulation of the verses above, every person created human has a spirit, soul and free will. Adam and Eve are there to remind us that humans, given the gift of free will, will inevitably become sinners and separated from God.

Personally, I see the story of Adam and Eve being more about the tendency of man to sin than about a primary pair through whom sin entered like a virus. If Adam is a proxy for us, then he is a symbol through whom sin entered, but we are guilty through him. I have trouble with the traditional understanding because it pushes the blame away from me and onto Adam.

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It’s the publisher who dishes the dosh! I never expected to buy a tropical island with the royalties of a book without “Harry Potter” in the title.

In my case the publisher adds up the sales once a year and works out the cheque: since that happens in February, this year it happened only a few weeks after the book was published, and I got the princely sum of $49.77 (less the banks conversion fees into sterling!). I can’t resist using that figure in any discussion on book publishing.

I may have bought some saxophone reeds or guitar strings with it.