It is often said that Adam and Eve did not know the difference between good and evil prior to eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE). This does seem to be the straightforward meaning of Genesis 3:22a: “Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.’” (ESV) There are a couple of problems I see with this interpretation, however:
- The text does not say Adam and Eve only gained knowledge of evil after the Fall, but knowledge of “good and evil.” If we understand “knowledge” in a cognitive sense, this would mean God originally created human beings as amoral beings, having no knowledge of moral concepts or moral categories. If we were created as amoral beings, then our moral intuitions and our capacity for moral reasoning are not part of the imago Dei (image of God) in which we were created, but rather a consequence of the Fall. That’s a tough pill to swallow for two reasons: (1) Moral reasoning is one of the unique characteristics of God that among God creatures, humans alone exhibit. Since humans alone were created in the imago Dei, it stands to reason that moral reasoning was part of that original imago Dei; (2) How is it possible for an act of disobedience to produce in us the knowledge of good? Evil, yes, but good?
- If Adam and Eve could not think in moral categories before the Fall — i.e. they did not have the cognitive awareness of what good was, what evil was, and the difference between the two — then how could they have understood God’s command not to eat of the TKGE? Minimally they would need to understand that it was wrong to eat of the TKGE, and that disobeying God is evil.
So in what sense could it be said that Adam and Eve came to know good and evil after the Fall? If they were created with an understanding of moral categories and had the ability to engage in moral reasoning, what did eating from the TKGE give them that they did not already have? Perhaps the solution is to look more closely at the Hebrew word for “know,” yada. It has a range of meanings. It can refer to both cognitive knowledge, as well as experiential knowledge (which is why yada is used as a euphemism for sexual relations). To illustrate the distinction, consider sight. A blind person can have knowledge of the biochemistry involved in sight, and thus be said to know about sight (cognitive knowledge), but they do not know what it is like to experience sight (experiential knowledge). While Adam and Eve had cognitive knowledge of good and evil before the Fall, they came to know evil in a new way after the Fall because they experienced it personally.
While I am inclined toward this explanation, it is not without its own significant problems:
- Genesis 3:22 doesn’t say humans came to know evil, but rather “good and evil.” If we understand yada as referring to experience, then we have to conclude that Adam and Eve not only lacked experience of evil prior to the Fall, but experience of the good as well. That seems counterintuitive. Surely they experienced good when they walked with God in the cool of the day and in their interactions with each other. Surely they experienced goodness in their observations of God’s good creation.
- God said “man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” Since man’s knowledge is like God’s knowledge, if man’s knowledge was an experiential knowledge of evil, then God must also have an experiential knowledge of evil. This is absurd, since it would mean God has committed evil.
Both views have significant theological problems, and I don’t want to be forced into picking my poison. Is there another explanation? What are your thoughts?
July 20, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Tough one Jason. I think if we look at it from the perspective of an infant growing up into adulthood we might have a bit more to go on. When an infant reaches a certain age they have knowledge of good and evil, not that fully grasp what either are in their fullest capacity, but as they grow older they become more acquainted with the rudiments of both and has the ability to choose between them. Their moral capacity is engaged, therefore they can make informed decisions as whether they are going to do good or evil, so neither is a knee-jerk reaction but carefully thought actions made by rational people. So it could very be that now Adam and Eve gain that rationality of understanding the nature of both good and evil as opposed just the innocence of infant naivety they might have had prior to the fall. Remember that the serpent told Eve that the fruit would make her wise (not that she was stupid before) and that she would have knowledge like God and become like him knowing good and evil. How do we consider God to know good and evil, isn’t to its fullest? So it could be in that wise. Just a thought.
July 20, 2012 at 5:08 pm
[...] It is often said that Adam and Eve did not know the difference between good and evil prior to eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE). This does seem to be the straight… [...]
July 20, 2012 at 6:48 pm
I see this as perspective/comparative, ie, good compared to evil. One can understand good and experience good, yet without the knowledge of evil, so good stands alone pure and innocent. So they had knowledge of good, just not the knowledge of good + evil. If God says “do not”, then this implies a mental understanding that God does not want something to happen (boundaries), and if the command is violated one will “surely die”. This was understood by Eve and she repeated it to the Serpent. In this dialogue alone, before the fall, a concept of a right and wrong, of, “can do” and “can’t do” was understood. I do not see Eve oblivious to understand “Do” and “Don’t do” as if this concept was void of moral value. That Eve somehow did not understand that doing the “don’t do” was neither good nor bad; She knew doing the “don’t do” was bad. Yet, this “do not” command, with its moral value understood, did not carry the perspective of evil. So in this sense evil was understood, but relative to its evilness. Not completely related, but as Paul said, “sin became utterly sinful.”
They did experience good before the fall (and understood it) without evil, but once evil was experienced, good become “apparent” and understood from a different perspective. So “good” now had a counterpart after the fall. It is a whole lot different looking into the pit of roaring lions, than it does looking out of the pit of roaring lions. Perspective is everything.
I believe that this evil could have been understood without experience. God knowing evil is relatively simple; it is the opposite of his moral character. Evil is not evil because God deems it so, it is so, because evil is any variance from His moral character. This variance is separation from the source of life (God), and that death is evil. For in God there is no shadow of turning. God knows what happens when one is unplugged from the source of life. God knows because he is omniscient. We came to know evil through rebelion.
My 2 cents
Dane
July 20, 2012 at 7:53 pm
I think you are on the right track with “know” being the experiential type. And perhaps, the explanation is that the (experiential) knowledge of evil is in addition to their pre-existing knowledge of good. Just as I can say that I know you. If I were to meet your cousin, I could say that I now know “you and your cousin”…this includes the possibility that I already knew you.
To know God is to know goodness. So perhaps it is just a lack of inflection.
July 20, 2012 at 8:08 pm
I also agree with dane. Evil is not a thing unto itself. It is the opposite of good which is a thing. Much like darkness has no substance…its just the absense of light.
So after the fall, Adam and eve now knew that there can be an opposite of good. Being people that lived for their entire existence by God’s Word, they never knew anything else…which is consistent with John 1 when it says that by the Word “all things were made and without him was not anything was made that was made”
July 21, 2012 at 1:55 am
My particular view, academic as it may be, is that the knowledge of good and evil has to do with the realization that their wills’ were free to choose between the two.
Prior to Eve’s deception and Adam’s willful disobedience, while existing as free moral agents, I submit that Adam and Eve didn’t know they were such, until the serpent awakened them (specifically Eve) to the concept.
A similar thing occurs in children. At some age, a child realizes they can choose to disobey a parent, i.e. that they are free to choose between good (obedience) and evil (disobedience). The Law of Sin being what it is, children by nature choose, often and eventually, the latter.
Then, at that moment, when such a choice is made, the knowledge of good and evil enters, and as it reads in Romans (regarding the knowledge of sin through the law and that without the law, sin is not imputed; 3:20 and 5:13, respectively) the Law of Sin manifests, comes alive, and slays (7:5-11).
So, to me, free will is death. The only life God offers is through a complete submission of the will to His. That’s why God warned them that in the day they eat, they would surely die. Not physically, of course, but the moment they became self-aware of their own freedom to choose between the two, and so ate, they died. Had they refused the serpent, they would have ostensibly chosen good, but the damage was already done. Self-conscious freedom of the will was established. This is why it’s a package deal: good and/with evil, not one exclusive to the other.
Then, to rescue humanity from such a death, God sent Jesus to taste death for every man, pre-destinating His Son to suffer the same fate as we, so that, through His complete submission to the will of God, Jesus could effect our salvation. This, I believe, is the essence of Paul’s argument in Romans 5:15-21.
As to the morality vs. amorality of Adam and Eve, I think we can only conclude that they were innocent prior to the Fall. Their conscious’ were completely devoid of defilement or enlightenment. On the surface, this may appear to make them amoral, but I would argue that their morality, instituted by God, was merely dormant, awaiting a trigger. This is why God put the tree in the garden and gave them the freedom to choose. He knew they were going to need that moment of enlightenment in order for their dormant morality to kick-in. He just also happened to know the cost of that moment, and so, provided from time immemorial, the plan or solution/payment of that cost, i.e. the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Regarding imago Dei, I think an understanding of the Hebrew concept of image is important here. Does it mean a similitude of God? Does it mean that Adam was to somehow be like God (perhaps even God-like) by virtue of being such an image?
I think not. My understanding of tselem is that being the image of God made Adam His representative figure on earth, and nothing more. A representative in this case is merely someone who operates by proxy, not someone who takes after or is like to the one which they represent (Compare this to the Greek word for image regarding Jesus being the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1:15. The word is eikon, and means a likeness or to have a resemblance, i.e. to be a representation of. Semantically, it may appear to be only a slight difference, but doctrinally, the difference is quite significant).
Now, regarding likeness (Genesis 1:26), I understand this adjective to mean an embodiment or manifestation. If this is so, we don’t have to automatically assume that Adam was the embodiment or manifestation of God’s moral nature. As the first son of God (Luke 3:38), Adam could very well embody or manifest other aspects of God, like, for example, God’s creative or redemptive power. As such, Adam (and by extension all of humanity) serves as a symbol of God’s awesome ability and might in the universe to create and/or save, and not necessarily be a copy of the divine holiness and righteousness of God in the earth in human form. Make sense? See the difference?
Finally, just to say again, this is all just academic reasoning as I’ve come to so far think. I’m persuadable here, i.e. not overly dogmatic about it. So, to each their own on whatever they feel is true. Peace
July 21, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Google First Scandal. When you get there, go to the top of the page and click on “Can you explain…”
July 22, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Jason, Thank you for providing this blog concerning the Fall of Adam and Eve. I wanted to add my input and please let me know if I confuse anybody. Concerning the Knowledge of God and evil, God explained it to me this way. God is the creator of all things and the source of all creation, he has power that the human can not contain nor come close to unless he allows it. God know what is opposite or contradiction of his character. The opposite of light is darkness(in a spiritual sense). Not to say God is evil but he knows what is not of him. The Fall of Adam may have opened that gateway to experience(as you mentioned earlier using the Blind Man analogy) evil and live in sin. With this causing God to separate from man for he is not a God that is evil and opposite of nature. Hope this makes sense.
Quick Questions to add my 2 cents in the tithe bucket as well. In the Old Testament in Proverbs 16:4, it says: The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. What does this mean fully? Any thoughts?
July 23, 2012 at 9:40 am
“While Adam and Eve had cognitive knowledge of good and evil before the Fall, they came to know evil in a new way after the Fall because they experienced it personally.”
Jason, I agree with your above statement 100%.
“Genesis 3:22 doesn’t say humans came to know evil, but rather “good and evil.” ”
I think this is just semantics here, the experience of evil was “added” to their experience of good which they already had.
“God said “man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.” Since man’s knowledge is like God’s knowledge, if man’s knowledge was an experiential knowledge of evil, then God must also have an experiential knowledge of evil. This is absurd, since it would mean God has committed evil.”
You’re right, it is absurd. Therefore the premise of this statement must be wrong. I think it is quite impossible for us know how God “knows” things – let’s leave it at that.
Naz
July 23, 2012 at 11:28 am
Dane,
You seem to be echoing my preferred explanation, but if the knowledge they gained of evil after the fall was based on their experience of evil, then how could their knowledge of evil (experiential) be the same as God’s since God does not know what it is like to experience evil.
Perhaps it’s just a matter of having experienced evil, not necessarily perpetrating it. Indeed, with the rebellion of the angelic hosts God did experience evil.
Jason
July 23, 2012 at 11:36 am
Nico,
I had the same thought. It’s quite possible that God did not mean to say they did not experience good previously, but merely that now they have experienced both good and evil.
But the problem would still remain about how God could be said to know evil in the sense of experiencing evil, unless, what I said in comment #9 is true.
Jason
July 23, 2012 at 11:45 am
Aaron,
But if they did not realize that they had the ability to choose before the Fall, then how did they exercise that ability in the Fall? Also, wouldn’t Adam and Eve know that God would have no reason to command them not to eat of the TKGE is they weren’t capable of doing so?
But the concept of submission entails free will. So how can free will = death if free will is required for submission to God = life?
Jason
July 23, 2012 at 11:50 am
Naz,
You agree with Nico on this, and I think you are both right. This is a good way to solve the problem.
What do you think of my proposal that the knowledge of evil in view is experiential knowledge, but that experiential knowledge can result from either having perpetrated the evil or having experienced the effects of evil? God did not have the experience of perpetrating evil, but He did have the experience of the effects of evil (angelic rebellion).
Jason
July 24, 2012 at 6:28 am
Jason, I’m not smart enough to make a comment about whether the knowledge of evil was experiential knowledge or not. How can we classify the knowledge of an Omnipotent God ?
Aside from that, I accept your statement since it does makes sense.
Naz
July 24, 2012 at 7:54 pm
When Satan said, you shall be as God knowing good and evil, was not that introduction to forbidden knowledge? That knowledge itself was introduced by Satan and is what compelled Eve to take the fruit. And notice God said if you eat of this fruit you shall surely die not “you shall be like me knowing Good when you eat of this fruit but you shall surely die. Was that portion left out by God for a purpose? I believe it was because he was looking out for the well being of humanity. Why was it the only tree that was forbidden was it because the knowledge of good and evil was the “experience of sin? Just a thought, please clarify if I am not making sense.
July 24, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Aaron:
As to the morality vs. amorality of Adam and Eve, I think we can only conclude that they were innocent prior to the Fall. Their conscious’ were completely devoid of defilement or enlightenment. On the surface, this may appear to make them amoral, but I would argue that their morality, instituted by God, was merely dormant, awaiting a trigger. This is why God put the tree in the garden and gave them the freedom to choose. He knew they were going to need that moment of enlightenment in order for their dormant morality to kick-in. He just also happened to know the cost of that moment, and so, provided from time immemorial, the plan or solution/payment of that cost, i.e. the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
May you please explain this again, are you saying God was waiting for Adam and eve to commit sin? I understand God has foreknowledge for he knows the beginning from the end but the way you described is that God organized the fall of man? May I am not understanding, please elaborate.
July 25, 2012 at 8:22 am
@Reginald – surely if you hold that God knows the future, then he did organise the fall in that it was available and he foreknew that they would fall.
On the other hand, failing to do this removes the notion of free-will.
July 25, 2012 at 3:45 pm
Reginald,
My own view is that there was nothing inherent within the fruit itself. What gave Adam and Eve the knowledge of evil was their experience of evil. How did they experience evil? By disobeying the command of God. In my opinion, God could have equally said, “You can say anything you like, but do not say “wow,” for in the day you do you will die” and the effect would have been the same. The object was not what mattered. It was the act of disobedience that mattered.
Jason
July 25, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Reginald,
I would agree that they were morally innocent, but that does not mean they did not have knowledge of moral categories. It just means they had no experience of evil. When they disobeyed God, they experienced evil and its effects: something they did not know before the Fall.
Jason
July 27, 2012 at 12:54 am
“But if they did not realize that they had the ability to choose before the Fall, then how did they exercise that ability in the Fall…?”
The ability to choose, or rather, the realization that they had the ability to choose occurred concurrently to the when the option was presented to them by the serpent. Prior to the serpent’s interference, because of the innocent natural of their conscience’s, I think we can safely assume that Adam and Eve had no reason to question, doubt, or disobey God. For them, in their innocence, there wasn’t another option. The only thing that informed their minds on the matter was God said no. But when the serpent spoke and created doubt in what God had said (or meant), and so, presented a second option, the realization of the existence of their already free will came about.
It was at that point that they exercised that ability in the Fall, but not prior.
“…Also, wouldn’t Adam and Eve know that God would have no reason to command them not to eat of the TKGE is they weren’t capable of doing so?”
Not when they are innocent. I think we have a hard time imagining what their mindset was like prior to eating from the TKGE and the subsequent enlightening of their minds. The best analogy is a child. Very, very young children believe everything, doubt nothing, question nothing, and take to heart all that they are told, regardless of veracity. It’s only when “sin revives” in them and they becoming actively aware of their freedom to doubt, question, disobey, and etc that they realize just what they are and are not capable of.
As an example: When my daughter was a baby, she had no fear of heights. Now that she is two, and has fallen and been hurt, she thinks twice about how high she wants to climb. What made the difference? Innocence, i.e. lack of knowledge. When she was a baby, she had no ability to understand height, distance, falling, or being hurt should she fall. So no fear existed. It’s only as knowledge entered into the picture that fear developed. So it is with the TKGE.
Adam and Eve knew only what God told them. In their innocence, they accepted all things. When the serpent came to beguile, he began a process that eroded their innocence. First, he created doubt in God and His Word. Second, tricked Eve into thinking something as true that was not true. Last, once convinced, she exercised her newly realized freedom to choose, and so, ate. Then, once Adam saw that Eve was free to disobey, he also realized his own freedom to do so, and so did.
“But the concept of submission entails free will. So how can free will = death if free will is required for submission to God = life?”
To submit to God is to “die”. To kill the freedom of the will and die to this death, as it were, is to submit to God, taking the death that is freewill to its furthest (dare I say deadly) point: freely surrendering oneself to God, even as the will, and the person, metaphorically speaking, on a spiritual level, dies. Nothing less than this is actual submission to God.
But, for believers, to gain the life in the Spirit that God offers, God must resurrect, but only after a person has “died”. Life from God doesn’t come before then, anymore than Jesus resurrected prior to dying.
July 27, 2012 at 1:09 am
To Reginald:
“May you please explain this again, are you saying God was waiting for Adam and eve to commit sin? I understand God has foreknowledge for he knows the beginning from the end but the way you described is that God organized the fall of man? May I am not understanding, please elaborate.”
Not waiting, per se. But God knew it was going to occur, and when. Did God organize it? Better yet, did God orchestrate it?
Well, all the players involved in the Fall were put there by God, were they not? God made Adam and Eve, made the garden, put them both there, made the serpent, put that there, made the tree, put it in there, too. And He gave the command, knowing full well what was eventually going to happen once all the players came together at the right time and moment.
Did God make or force it to happen? No. But we can’t say God didn’t create the conditions that allowed it to happen. It comes with the territory of creating beings with free will. In order to have freedom of the will, there must be a setting or environment where that freedom can be exercised, otherwise it’s just a charade, a virtual demo, if you will, that has no bearing in the real world.
And since God created the conditions that allowed it to happen, it only makes sense that God had a plan for solving the mess that Adam created once it did happen. But that freedom to choose/disobey had to be there, so, by necessity, there had to be something that Adam could do to disobey, which, in this case, was eat from a forbidden tree, otherwise there were no means available to Adam to exercise his freewill.
It’s like this: If God had told Adam that he could eat from every tree in the garden except for one, but then never placed that one tree in the garden to begin with, then there would be no way for Adam to choose, meaning whatever freedom God had given him was fake. Only when something is truly testable can it actually be tested.
Make better sense?
January 30, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Adam and eve were kicked out of the garden because “Genesis 3:22 – Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”–
Genesis 3:23 – therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
Genesis 3:24 – So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
So the knowledge of good and evil makes us like God. Adam and eve did not have that before the “deed”
February 17, 2013 at 7:30 pm
Adam and Eve did not know the true nature of good and bad. They naturally assumed that good is good and bad is bad. When Eve saw that the fruit was not poisonous, she assumed that because it was physically good it must therefore be actually good. So she ate it.
The knowledge of good and bad is that good is bad and bad is good: physical good is really bad, and physical bad is really good. In a pure sense, physical pleasures are temptations for dysfunctional behaviors. While long and hard toil for ultimate achievement is the essence of true goodness.
Adam and Eve should have gained the tree’s knowledge just by looking at it and avoiding it by God’s command. This showed that physical good without God’s approval is bad. And physical deprivation with God’s approval is good. But they instead gained its knowledge in sin, and that had a calamitous affect.
March 4, 2013 at 3:32 pm
I was interested to find this thread. I’ve been contemplating this topic for the last year or so. Here’s sort of how I see it.
I think God made Adam and Eve perfect. When he finished his work he said everything was very good. So it seems to me that God created them only with the ability to do good and nothing else. But, he didn’t make them with a way to self-analyze themselves. In other words, they didn’t know they were doing good; they were just naturally doing good without knowing it. Like a bird doesn’t need to analyze its ability to fly; it just does it.
Satan had introduced sin into the universe. he was no doubt accusing God of mismanaging the universe (suggesting he could do better). He he really wanted to be worshiped himself and had already seduced a good number of the angels with the same type of subtle lies he was now telling Eve.
To Eve he was telling her that God had withheld something from them that was necessary for their advancement. He was making it seem as though God was arbitrary. He focused on Gods prohibition instead of what he had freely given.
God had said: Of all the trees in the garden you may freely eat. Satan said this: Has God said that you shall not eat of every tree in the garden? The spin he put on Gods words drew Eve into the conversation. She felt obligated to correct him and tell him what God had really said. Once she engaged with him in the conversation his task was easy.
Once they ate of the tree, they immediately gained the ability to look at themselves and determine that what they did was wrong, and as a result felt guilt and shame.
God had not withheld anything from them that was for their own good. The were perfect without the ability to know they were doing good. If anything, the tree was a protection for them. It was the only place where Satan had access to them.
If God had not placed the forbidden tree in the garden, Satan would surely have used this to further his claims against God; proving to the other angels who hadn’t sided with him that his accusations were true.
Once they had this knowledge they immediately went to work to rid themselves of their guilt; and this has been mans problem every since.
I can think of no better definition for the Law than – the knowledge of good and evil. Now, its as if God sets out to answer the accusation Satan had made against him.
Its as if he says: You thought this knowledge was so good and necessary? OK then, let me give you an abundance of it. And so he creates a people, and gives them the knowledge of good and evil in abundance. He not only gave them Ten Commandments, but a total of 613 laws, and then he let them run with that program for about 1800 years.
When the fullness of time came, he sent his Son. Had they benefited from the law? Had it mad them good people? Certainly they were the best law-keepers in the world; but it had produced no righteousness.
So God makes them an offer. I’ll take away the law and give you back what you forfeited in the garden. If you choose my Son, you wont need the law because you’ll have it written on your heart.
His desire is to bring us back to our innocence where we do good without knowing it; like the sheep in the parable who feed, clothe, and visit; all without knowing their doing good.
I believe we are faced with the same choice today as were our parents in the garden. Christ is the Tree of Life, and the Law is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Sorry for such a long post. I didn’t know how to say in in a shorter version.
April 1, 2013 at 9:14 pm
How long were Adam and Eve and Eve in the garden before partaking of the fruit? It could have been millions of years or a few months. Either way they seemed to stay away from it until Satan was allowed to tempt them. The tree was in the middle of the garden, not in a separate orchard. It was one tree of good and evil, not two trees, one of good and one of evil. It stood as the bitter fruit of death as opposed to the tree of life.
Adam and Eve did not understand death at the time. There had been none die before. This is why they were able to be tempted by the concept of not dying. The idea of wisdom may have been curiosity but they were not capable of pride.
Adam and Eve could not have sinned in choosing the fruit. They knew no other law to establish sin. There was no adultery, stealing, bearing false witness etc. The tree of death (good and evil) was as has been said an innocuous tree. Not bad in itself but was set as a rule or boundary God had given. The penalty for breaking the rule was mortality and death. God chose the penalty to suit his purposes.
The choice was to leave innocence. To become adults in a sense, now capable of exercising faith in their Redeemer and the glorious eternal life he would deliver. It would appear that Adam had pretty much decided not to eat the fruit on his own so God allowed the enemy to hasten the process of Adam’s making the decision that God needed in order to begin the real salvation of Adam’s and Eve’s souls. Their bodies wouldn’t be perfected until they were resurrected. Their character would also be perfected through choice, repentance, mercy and grace.
They would now have to find humility with the existence of pride pushing on them and voluntarily living with good and evil with an opportunity to forsake evil by choice. The continued existence of mankind with the tempter present would bring sin and sorrow. Redemption would be wrought by faith in a redeemer, even the Son of God. Adam and Eve were the world’s first Christians. God gave them laws applicable to mortality and they taught their children.
Many theologians don’t understand what happened in the garden. They make Jesus a contingency (if they think man was to remain in the garden and the fall was a mistake). Satan induced what Adam and Eve resisted on their own. God saw his evil intent and used it against him. Jesus was the only plan for salvation all along, from before the beginning of the world. He was not a plan B as misguided doctrinal conclusions about the fall would imply.
Satan was cast to earth and allowed into the garden to make sure the fall took place. He was the contingency to Adam’s obedience. Misguided as he was, he thought he was causing the Father’s plan to derail when he was actually putting it into effect. The plan B effect seems to be the thinking of theologians of classical theism as well. It just isn’t so.
Jesus was foreordained to be our savior before the earth was established. He came because mortality was an essential element of salvation. Another necessary element is freedom, which also allowed for sin and necessitated an atonement. The reason the garden setting existed was so that the sorrow of mortality and death was chosen voluntarily by Adam and Eve, though induced by a tempter. It was not forced upon them. The two choices before them were the limit of their freedom at the time. Their choice brought Jesus Christ to the earth.
April 10, 2013 at 6:51 am
An interesting discussion indeed. We do all know that the original Hebrew had Adam listening with great interest as Eve spoke loudly and often to him on the subject and that he ate of the fruit with gusto. What does this suggest as Adam sat between the two trees (both in the middle of the garden) and deliberately chose as he did. And, when the punishment came he did not choose to ask for forgiveness but very willingly chose separation from God (He renamed his wife “Eve”- from “woman”- which means “mother of all the living”) seeming to say “I am the father of all the living”). Adam was walking with God daily and yet he did this.
This was not an everyday arguement. From the words, God could not permit Adam to continue in the garden as he would specifically have access to the Tree of Life. Why would this have been such a problem?
My theory is that Adam may have seen things in the garden that he did not agree with and yet God permitted them to happen.
For example, we know that Adam was the gardener. This seems to say that the garden needed a gardener. Is it possible that this gardener did not like it when a fire destroyed some of his precious trees (as we know, fire replentishes the chemicals in the ground so further growth can take place). He might see this fire as bad and want to prevent it in the future. The problem here is that the trees get older and drier and eventually all of Eden would burn, or the ground would become so depleted of minerals, the trees would all die, or stop producing nuts and fruit.
In other words, Adam came to think that he had a better solution than God (short sighted), became angry and rejected God’s authority (the opposite of Jesus Christ). God could not permit Adam to cuntinue in Eden because, as the servant king, He would have had to accept Adam’s decisions which would lead necessarily to destruction. God could not do this or He would not be God.
I see this as interesting today. We all want to know what is good or identify ourselves with “doing good things for God”. However, not even Christ did “good things for God” (no one is good except God). Christ simply held fast to the original commandments which was to first submit fully His God and then to “Love your God with all your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind and all of your strength; and love your neighbour as yourself.
This is the message throughout the Bible. Only God knows the concequences of any action. We must trust Him totally that His decisions are perfect.
So, when we say that we are doing good things or that somone else is or has done good things, we a flying in the face of God. We must simpply “do the RIGHT thing each and every time, thinking fist of God and then of everyone else in humanity. Only then may we think of ourselves.
We learn all of this in the first few chapters of the Bible.
Enoch is interesting in this regard.
Therefore, the
April 11, 2013 at 8:27 pm
“To know”meant they would determine good and evil based upon human reasoning and standards learned from the Devil rather than accepting what God previously instructed them was good and evil.
April 12, 2013 at 7:35 am
Then you agree with me, we have two different aspects of good and evil, God’s perspective and man’s perspective; as you said: “they would determine good and evil based upon human reasoning and standards learned from the Devil rather than accepting what God previously instructed them was good and evil.”
In other words there are two kinds of evil, one intentional and the other consequential. The fundamental consequences of disobeying/disregarding God’s commandments (based upon man’s definition of good and evil) lead to evil, destruction and death. God “prophesied” the demise (death) of Adam, fully knowing in his Godly knowledge but understanding in his Godly understanding of what would be the result of Adam’s action i.e. the knowledge of “good and evil”.
The evil that Adam did was to fundamentally understand the consequences of his action yet choose to act in a way that destroyed the future. This is the “devil” fully at work. He used man’s need to do good against man by using man’s feelings of pride in accomplishing something that God was not doing. There are more examples in history than you can count of this. Man does good, or at least what he thinks is good, and the result is famine, war and death.
April 12, 2013 at 10:02 am
I don’t see how there could be two kinds of evil. Evil is based on law. There is only one law giver, that is God. There is no sin without a law. God’s laws are based on eternal principles of order and good. He doesn’t change. The law protects us from evil. The consequences of breaking the law is spiritual death, being cut off from God. Through repentance and subsequent forgiveness the spirit can be regained. This happened with Adam and Eve.
Other consequences of sin are emotional and physical, the same as breaking a natural law. Violate the law of gravity and you will suffer some injury. Violate the law of chastity, kill or steal and you may suffer emotionally and physically. All mankind have the light of Christ to begin with to guide them unless they ignore it. John 1:9
Adam and Eve did not have another law as they were not mortal at the time and walked with God. They had one opposing choice with a consequence chosen by God. They, the God’s (plural, the Father and the Son) did not say that Behold, the man has become like Satan because they chose to eat. God said ” The man has become as one of us, to know good and evil”. That was the consequence God wanted and attached to that one tree. Now God could instruct the man and his posterity in the ideals of freedom and choice.
Partaking the fruit was not evil. The fall was the consequence of taking it. Sin and sorrow followed because mankind would now multiply with evil and a tempter present. Freedom would allow all to choose good or evil. Sorrow would multiply as well because of sin and the numbers of people choosing evil. Death would free man from Satan. Christ would free man from death. Evil would be overcome and every man would be held accountable for his own choices.
April 13, 2013 at 4:29 am
I have always taken that scripture to mean that they gained the desire to compete with each other on who was better and who was worse. I see it as a shift from being committed to each other and to god to one of being a competitive “betterthan”. It the old “Would you rather serve in heaven or rule in hell” problem. Humans take the latter at alarming rates. Mostly, because they are afraid of each other. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of judgementalism, If there is a devil, it is the notion that you need to be better than everyone else or have a really good excuse for not being that way.
April 13, 2013 at 11:04 am
Hello Charlie
“I don’t see how there could be two kinds of evil. Evil is based on law. There is only one law giver, that is God. There is no sin without a law.”
I did not mean there were two kinds of law at all. What I meant was our idea of where evil comes from and my interpretation is that more evil comes from man trying to do good than form man trying to do evil. In fact, I believe that all evil comes from man trying to do good!
That said, I also believe that all of the conclusions or ideas that we have should be reckoned against the Truth and the Truth is Christ, and Christ is God. If God does not seem to be Christ, probably we have the wrong answer and probably the wrong original premise.