Thought questions

1.Throughout the creation story, God has pronounced everything He created as “Good.” Specifically, the passage “And God saw that it was good.” is repeated in Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and Genesis 1 concludes with the statement in verse 31 “ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”  The word “Evil” does not appear until it is identified with the tree.  If everything God created is good, where does evil come from?  Is evil the antithesis of good?   Is “Evil” something existing outside of God, not created, but coexisting with God from the very beginning, inactive in God’s creation until “activated” by the act of the eating of the fruit?

2.What do Adam and Eve gain when they eat of the fruit?  The story only tells us that “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

3.After cursing the Serpent, Adam and Eve, God says “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” To whom is God speaking?

4.Who/what is the “serpent”?  Did God create the serpent?  If so, why isn’t the serpent good?  If not, is the serpent the agent of ‘Evil” that has managed to invade the Garden of Eden as John Milton suggests in Paradise Lost?  If God is omniscient how is possible for Evil to enter the Garden without His knowledge?

5.For that matter, if God is the ultimate good, why would he place the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden at all?  Why create it in such a way that “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, “ she was enticed to eat it?  Would a loving father place a particularly attractive, but dangerous object before his children, forbid them to touch the object, leave them unsupervised, and then punish them when they disobeyed? 

6.Again, if God is omniscient, wouldn’t He have known what was going to happen and if He knew what was going to happen and allowed it, doesn’t that suggest that the outcome was His plan all along?