EVEN die-hard supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte find it inconvenient to defend his description of the Christians’ God as “stupid” for having created Adam and Eve only to allow them to succumb to temptation of eating the forbidden fruit – the “original sin” that destroyed their purity. Had he uttered the “blasphemy” while campaigning, he might not have won the presidential election of 2016.
If it was any consolation, Duterte acknowledged the existence of God who maintains order in the universe.
While I am a non-conformist myself, I thought of playing Devil’s advocate by consulting the book Creation, Fall, and Redemption by Iloilo City-based lawyer Edwin R. Catacutan.
The author asserted that God created Adam and Eve in his image (Genesis 1:27), but with “free will.”
It was out of such free will that they disobeyed God’s instruction to them to refrain from eating the “forbidden fruit” of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”; otherwise, “you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).
It was then that Satan burst into the picture, deceiving Eve that God did not want them to eat the forbidden fruit because “God knows that when you eat it, you will be like God.”
Their disobedience marked “the fall of man,” shedding off immortality.
“The bodies of Adam and Eve,” Catacutan wrote, “immediately became vulnerable to the death process of diseases, old age and decay… The Bible says that Adam lived 930 years.”
It was a “death penalty” handed down to us, the descendants of the first man and woman.
Catacutan alluded to the first three chapters of the book of Genesis on creation and fall of man, which is less than 0.3% of the entire Bible, as “the substantive law defining the individual’s rights and conditions of having and maintaining eternal life.”
The author agreed with Blaise Pascal, a 17th Century French mathematician behind the famous Pascal’s Wager.
“If there is no God,” Catacutan explained Pascal’s argument, “then no one is benefited; but if there is a God, the believer wins and the unbeliever loses.”
The lawyer believes that while the Bible does not explain but simply asserts confidently the creation of the heavens and the earth, they could not have always been there.
He quoted famous physicists, including Paul Davies, who wrote that “the essential hypothesis – that there was some sort of creation – seems, from the scientific point of view, compelling.”
God did not have to create, Catacutan argued, to sustain Himself. He did so “for His pleasure.” When He finished his work, He found the entire creation “very good.”
Catacutan asked his readers to keep faith that we can claim back the immortality promised in the New Testament (John 3:16): “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
“Jesus’ coming to earth in the flesh, His dying on the cross and His resurrection completed the redemption process from the side of God,” the lawyer interpreted that promise of eternity. “It perfected the justice-compliance stage. In this context, Jesus is the last messenger from God as He himself is the message.”
The lawyer’s book offers Jesus Christ as the only way to eternal life after death. Either man believes in Him for the transformation of the soul from perishable to imperishable in the resurrection or stands condemnation by default.
As to why Catacutan offered no discussion on the so called “fire of hell” that is widely believed to be the destination of non-believers, it’s no doubt because the Bible itself has no adequate discussion on the matter. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
