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| It Began in a Garden |
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If we assume that the Fall of Man was a mistake, whose mistake was it? Clearly Adam and Eve made the mistake which resulted in the Fall, but surely God foreknew this. The image of the God of the Universe having the most important work we know about thwarted by the very first Man leaves serious questions about whether God really knew what He was doing. Surely He could have done a little better than to loose everything on the first try! There is only one solution to the dilemma. God made no mistake, His prescience was not only intact, but the Fall of Man was what God intended. That, of course, leaves another smaller problem to be resolved. While comprehending that the Fall was part of the plan, we must now comprehend how God could not only condone, but expect Adam and Eve to disobey an express commandment given to them in the Garden. The answer to that is also simple and powerful, but requires that we learn more of the nature of the Garden and the events which took place there. 8. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9). When Eden is created, it is as Good a place as you might expect God to make it. Nevertheless, the Goodness of the Garden really gets very little discussion. The next several verses simply define the lay of the land. 10. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12. And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates (Genesis 2:10-14). For modern man, these verses hold little importance. They do not seem to advance the crucial story of the Garden. For the ancient world, however, they were a direct tie between their world and the primordial world described in Genesis. As an anthropologist examining the Garden story as I would any other creation story from any civilization, these verses fit a clear pattern which helps to establish the link between the current real and the past extra-real. For the Israelite, the Garden story not only described the reason why their life was full of hardships, it also defined their physical geography. The next set of verses set up the tension of the story: 15. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17. but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Genesis 2:15-17). In verse 9, when the Garden was formed, there were two prominent trees, the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet in these verses, only the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is mentioned. In spite of the lack of an explicit presence, the Tree of Life is implicit, and helps to set the contradictions which are the crux of the story. The first complementary dichotomy is that of Good and Evil, represented by the Tree of Knowledge. The second is that of Life and Death, represented by the Tree of Life, and the penalty of death pronounced upon those who partook of the Tree of Knowledge. The whole impact of the story of the Garden of Eden is condensed into the tension between the two symbolic trees, and that tension involves two sets of polar opposites. By implication of the Goodness of the Garden, Life and Good have been set as the standard, and should prevail, unless man partakes of the Tree of Knowledge. The symbolic tension between the two Trees is even greater when we ask more questions about it. If there was a Tree of Life, was there a Tree of Death? Yes and no. No, there was no tree so named, but clearly the Tree of Knowledge was for Adam and Eve the Tree of Death, for that was the penalty for eating the fruit thereof. If there was a Tree of Knowledge, was there also a Tree of Ignorance? While not explicitly a tree, nevertheless the Knowledge contrasts with the naive ignorance which was the natural state of Adam and Eve. Symbolically, the structure of the Garden story provides a series of polar opposites, and Adam and Eve are placed in a situation where their actions will select one of the sets. By their obedience to the commandment not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, they "choose" Life and Ignorance. By partaking, they "choose" Death and Knowledge. The story of the Garden is not simply the story of a Fall, it is the story of a choice. The instrument of the choice is the serpent: 1. Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5. for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons (Genesis 3:1-7) As is always the case with Satan, there is half-truth in all he says. He truthfully tells Adam and Eve that their eyes will be opened, and that, as the gods, they will know Good from Evil. That was indeed the effect of eating the fruit. Their eyes were opened. The only hint we have at their subsequent ability to tell Good from Evil was that they noticed their nakedness and sewed fig leaves. It must be presumed that in the context in which this tale was told to ancient Israel, the nakedness was clearly on the "evil" side of the equation, since it is structurally used to prove that point in this story. What of Satan's assertion that they "shall not surely die" (Genesis 3:4)? Clearly this is in direct contradiction to God's pronouncement of penalty of death, a penalty so great that it could be imposed if Adam or Eve even touched the fruit (Genesis 3:3). Again, it is bits and pieces of truth. Neither Adam nor Eve died immediately, so Satan was right, or at least apparently right. Mortality was imposed upon Adam and Eve at that point, however, and so God's word was fulfilled. Depending on which time point is selected, both statements were correct. The result of this episode with the serpent is that the fruit was eaten, and the choice was made. Since we know from a purely logical standpoint that puny Man cannot so simply thwart the designs of the Almighty, we logically know that this was God's desired outcome. The two questions which we must examine, then, are what was Satan doing in the Garden, and why were Adam and Eve placed in such a situation of dichotomous choices. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
Mainstream Christianity
finds itself in a logical bind with its version of the Garden of Eden. It is all right and good that God should
want us to live in an Edenic state, and the Bible is clear that Eden is the first location in which God placed
Man. What is totally incomprehensible is that this omnipotent, omniscient (and therefore clearly prescient)
God had his entire plan for humanity destroyed by the very first Man He created.|
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