The story of the Fall in Genesis is the essence of brevity. Because it is so short, it leaves the reader with a multitude of questions, not the least of which is what is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? What does its' fruit reveal? What specifically is meant by the "Knowledge of Good and Evil?" What do Adam and Eve gain by eating the fruit of the Tree and what do they lose?
One of the more popular speculations about the story of Eden is that what the Tree gave humankind was sexual awareness. This common Christian understanding has advanced the belief that the sin of Adam had something to do with sex: either sex caused the Fall or was a result of it. This theory, initially advanced by Augustine of Hippo (354-430), taught that Adam's sin is transmitted by concupiscence (intense sexual desire). In his letter to the Pelagians, Augustine wrote:
Although, if those members by which sin was committed were to be covered after the sin, men ought not indeed to have been clothed in tunics, but to have covered their hand and mouth, because they sinned by taking and eating. What, then, is the meaning, when the prohibited food was taken, and the transgression of the precept had been committed, of the look turned towards those members? What unknown novelty is felt there, and compels itself to be noticed? And this is signified by the opening of the eyes… As, therefore, they were so suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, which they were daily in the habit of looking upon and were not confused, that they could now no longer bear those members naked, but immediately took care to cover them; did not they–he in the open, she in the hidden impulse–perceive those members to be disobedient to the choice of their will, which certainly they ought to have ruled like the rest by their voluntary command? And this they deservedly suffered, because they themselves also were not obedient to their Lord. Therefore they blushed that they in such wise had not manifested service to their Creator, that they should deserve to lose dominion over those members by which children were to be procreated. [1.31-32]
Augustine made the assumption that because Adam and Eve covered their genital, realizing they were naked, in an attempt to hide those body parts that had participated in the sinful act. If eating the fruit had been the sin, they should have covered their hands and mouths, but instead they cover their sexual organs, leading Augustine to conclude that these were the body parts responsible for the original sin. While modern theology holds that the original sin stems from disobedience to God, the idea that that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was a metaphor for carnal sex has been a persistent current throughout Christian history.
More modern theories include those that take the fruit of the tree literally and suggest that what Adam and Eve gained by eating the fruit was the literal knowledge of good and evil, but since evil would not have naturally existed in the God-created Garden, a literal reading is that evil was created when the couple disobeyed God’s commandment and ate of the fruit. This is the premise of Jewish tradition where the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represent the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potentia. The the eating of the fruit released the “yeitzer hara,” the Evil Inclination that refers to the misuse of things the physical body needs to survive, hence hunger begets gluttony, the sexual urge turns to lust, self-preservation leads to preemptive violence, etc. Thus the knowledge Adam and Eve gain is the evil they set free through the act of disobedience, the first act of evil.
A second understanding also comes down from Jewish tradition. The phrase in Hebrew: (tov V'ra), meaning good and evil, is a figure of speech known as a merism. This literary device pairs opposite terms together, in order to create a meaning, so that with the phrase "good and evil" it means "everything.” This interpretation makes sense of God’s statement “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil,” suggesting man now knows everything that God knows. This however is clearly not the case. There are still limits on what man knows, but knowledge, like evil, perhaps exists in potentia, meaning that man’s act of eating the fruit released his potential to lean and grow. Before the Fall, man had little incentive to learn and grow because all of his needs where met by God and his environment. After the Fall, man is forced to learn and grow in a new harsher environment as a result of his sin, but he has also acquired the intellectual tools to do so.
Akin to this understanding is the proposition that Adam and Eve received self-awareness as a result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Self-awareness is said to be that feature that most clearly separates man from all other animals. Their new-found self-awareness made them aware of their individuality and their separation from both God and the animals. As a result of eating the fruit, Adam and Eve became aware that they were uniquely different from the animals and superior to them. Nakedness was a characteristic Adam and Eve shared with their animal companions and they were ashamed of their nakedness because it too closely associated then with the inferior animal kingdom.
More importantly, in their emerging self-awareness, they became conscious of their own mortality. The awareness of the inevitability of death that compelled then (and us) to make something of life and is sometimes tied to the idea of the “fortunate Fall” and the “felix culpa” or “happy fault.” If not for the Fall, we would not know evil and virtues like compassion, integrity, and generosity would have no value. In the fallen world, choosing the good over the bad, in a world of pain, encourages us grow in virtue. We refine and ennoble our souls by overcoming obstacles and enduring disappointment and pain. It is our consciousness of inevitable death that compels us to live more deeply, to live our lives so that every minute counts. In this context, the evils man must endure are ultimately for the good.
This theory answers the question about why a benevolent and omniscient God would place the Tree of Knowledge within man’s grasp, and then enjoin him not to touch it. God is not just giving man an opportunity to prove his loyalty, but is giving him an opportunity to either live his life as an innocent and pampered child, never to grow beyond his idyllic state or to choice to live a life rife with challenges and pain, but one that encouraged the ability to choose between right and wrong, and accept responsibility for those decisions. While it certainly true that Adam lacked sufficient information to make an informed decision about his fate and the fate of his descendants, he was warned that defiance had consequence and still in an exercise of his free will, he ate of the fruit. For the secularist who may choose to see the story of Eden as an allegory, the Fall from Grace represents the fall every child must experience when it becomes aware that it must leave the Eden of primary narcissism, the bliss of being the center of the parents’ world, a world where their every need is met and where they experience themselves, for a brief time, the center of the known world. This idea raises an interesting question: if given the choice, how many of us would exchange our current existence for one of complete childhood innocence and dependency? Many can think back to their childhood and their most vivid memories are associated with their desire for individuality and independence. Perhaps this explains the real nature of original sin, not that it is something passively passed along to us by our parents, but the fact that given the choice Adam made in relative ignorance, we would follow suit to gain our independence, even with foreknowledge of the fate that awaits us.
In this view, the Fall was part of the divine plan. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:28: “… we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Thus, from our limited human perspective looks to be evil may in the broader scope be a positive good. In his book The Case for Faith, author Lee Strobel recorded excerpts from his interview with Villanova University and Boston College professor of philosophy Peter Kreft who attempted to explain this concept with an analogy:
Akin to this understanding is the proposition that Adam and Eve received self-awareness as a result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Self-awareness is said to be that feature that most clearly separates man from all other animals. Their new-found self-awareness made them aware of their individuality and their separation from both God and the animals. As a result of eating the fruit, Adam and Eve became aware that they were uniquely different from the animals and superior to them. Nakedness was a characteristic Adam and Eve shared with their animal companions and they were ashamed of their nakedness because it too closely associated then with the inferior animal kingdom.
More importantly, in their emerging self-awareness, they became conscious of their own mortality. The awareness of the inevitability of death that compelled then (and us) to make something of life and is sometimes tied to the idea of the “fortunate Fall” and the “felix culpa” or “happy fault.” If not for the Fall, we would not know evil and virtues like compassion, integrity, and generosity would have no value. In the fallen world, choosing the good over the bad, in a world of pain, encourages us grow in virtue. We refine and ennoble our souls by overcoming obstacles and enduring disappointment and pain. It is our consciousness of inevitable death that compels us to live more deeply, to live our lives so that every minute counts. In this context, the evils man must endure are ultimately for the good.
This theory answers the question about why a benevolent and omniscient God would place the Tree of Knowledge within man’s grasp, and then enjoin him not to touch it. God is not just giving man an opportunity to prove his loyalty, but is giving him an opportunity to either live his life as an innocent and pampered child, never to grow beyond his idyllic state or to choice to live a life rife with challenges and pain, but one that encouraged the ability to choose between right and wrong, and accept responsibility for those decisions. While it certainly true that Adam lacked sufficient information to make an informed decision about his fate and the fate of his descendants, he was warned that defiance had consequence and still in an exercise of his free will, he ate of the fruit. For the secularist who may choose to see the story of Eden as an allegory, the Fall from Grace represents the fall every child must experience when it becomes aware that it must leave the Eden of primary narcissism, the bliss of being the center of the parents’ world, a world where their every need is met and where they experience themselves, for a brief time, the center of the known world. This idea raises an interesting question: if given the choice, how many of us would exchange our current existence for one of complete childhood innocence and dependency? Many can think back to their childhood and their most vivid memories are associated with their desire for individuality and independence. Perhaps this explains the real nature of original sin, not that it is something passively passed along to us by our parents, but the fact that given the choice Adam made in relative ignorance, we would follow suit to gain our independence, even with foreknowledge of the fate that awaits us.
In this view, the Fall was part of the divine plan. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:28: “… we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Thus, from our limited human perspective looks to be evil may in the broader scope be a positive good. In his book The Case for Faith, author Lee Strobel recorded excerpts from his interview with Villanova University and Boston College professor of philosophy Peter Kreft who attempted to explain this concept with an analogy:
“’How can a mere finite human be sure that infinite wisdom would not tolerate certain short- range evils in order for more long-range goods that we couldn’t foresee?’ he [Kreft] asked.”
“’Okay, then, imagine a bear in a trap and a hunter who, out of sympathy, wants to liberate him. He tries to win the bear’s confidence, but he can’t do it, so he has to shoot the bear full of drugs. The bear, however, thinks this is an attack and that the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn’t realize that this is being done out of compassion.’”
“’Then, in order to get the bear out of the trap, the hunter has to push him further into the trap to release the tension on the spring. If the bear were semiconscious at that point, he would be even more convinced that the hunter was his enemy who was out to cause him suffering and pain. But the bear would be wrong. He reaches this incorrect conclusion because he’s not a human being.’”
“Kreft let the illustration soak in for a moment. ’Now,’ he concluded, ‘how can anyone be certain that’s not an analogy between us and God? I believe God does the same to us sometimes, and we can’t comprehend why he does it any more than the bear can understand the motivations of the hunter. As the bear could have trusted the hunter, so we can trust God.’”
“Dentists, athletic trainers, teachers, parents—they all know that sometimes to be good is not to be kind. Certainly there are times when God allows suffering and deprives us the lesser good of pleasure in order to help us toward the greater good of moral and spiritual education. Even the ancient Greeks believed the gods taught wisdom through suffering. Aeschylus wrote: ‘Day by day, hour by hour / Pain drips upon the heart / As, against our will, and even in our own despite / Comes Wisdom from the awful grace of God.’”
So like the bear in the analogy, we are ultimately obligated to put our faith in God, to trust that God is working for our good even in our misery and that our limited human knowledge cannot discern or even define what that good might be. While man continues to strive for greater independence, suffering draws him back to dependency on God. Like the bear, man can resist his rescuer, drawing away and snapping at the hunter, but he cannot be released from his misery in the trap until he gives in and accepts what the hunter must do regardless of the pain the extrication inflicts.
