What is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Tonight, I have time for a few questions I want you to think about. If God is setting the stage to give the man and woman a test of faith where the test goes beyond the abilities of human intellect, what textual clues do we have that could help predict what the content of the test will concern. The first and most obvious element of the test is the command in Gen. 2:17: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

On the surface of it, that does not seem like that momentous of a trial of faith. Big deal, only one tree among all the trees that we cannot eat. They had no other laws to worry about at all, only one. One insignificant law, one "Thou shalt not" to keep in mind. On top of that, they had not suffered the results of original sin yet so their minds were stronger and clearer and their wills were naturally inclined to the good; they were endowed with sanctifying grace, and their minds and wills worked in a perfect harmony; they suffered not from sickness or death.

In many respects, it is a wonder that they could even sin at all. Today we have the Ten Commandments together with a seemingly endless list of things we are not supposed to do and another long list of things we are supposed to do. Not only that, we suffer under the burden of original sin with our darkened intellects, our weakened wills and our inclination to do evil. It should be no surpise at all when I or you sin. And many of us are able to eke out a humble, ordinary, holy life. Considering all of this, it is a wonder that our first parents sinned, at least when we only look at the surface and not understand their test. My point here is that the test had to be one doozie of a trial to get these beautiful and grace-filled people to fall.

The other textual clue that I want to look at for a minute is that they actually have one other command: "Be fruitful and multiply" (1:28) From my reading of Genesis one and two, there are no other commands. We have one negative one and one positive command in our narrative. Since this is a test that bypasses their intellects, I would think it would make sense that God would give the man and woman (she does not receive the name Eve, mother of the living, until after the Fall) two commands which seem to contradict the other. God gives them two commands, and the first one flies in the face of the second so that, from the point of view of the humans, what God is asking does not make sense. They are left with the choice: do we believe in God and what He has commanded or do we choose for ourselves what we see to be the good?

I don't think I will do much more preperatory work before revealing what the tree of knowledge of good and evil is, but you never know. You'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.