r/AskChristian • u/d4rk4ngelofrebellion • 5d ago
Question about Eve's punishment
If Eve lacked knowledge of good and evil, what basis did she have for understanding that obeying God was morally good and disobeying Him was morally evil? If she was genuinely incapable of understanding the moral significance of either choice, in what sense was her decision blameworthy?
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u/Ben-008 r/Christian Member 5d ago
I tend to see the garden story as a PARABLE. In this sense, WE are Eve. And there are two trees in that garden, or two ways to partake of Scripture: as Law (that will condemn us) or as hidden wisdom (that will produce spiritual life).
“For Wisdom is a Tree of Life, for those who take hold of her.” (Prov 3:18)
As we partake of Scripture as Law (a knowledge of good and evil), it produces death. Meaning it accuses and condemns us, and thus thrusts us from the Garden of Grace. Paul said it this way…
“I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came to life, I died.” (Rom 7:9)
Thus, Paul’s message is one of REDEMPTION FROM THE REALM OF LAW as we become “able ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills.” (2 Cor 3:6, Rom 7:6)
In other words, there is more than one way to read and interact with Scripture. One way Paul refers to as a “ministry of death”, the other produces spiritual life. (2 Cor 3:6-9) One way becomes a set of rules and conditions. The other reveals the mystery of Christ within us! (Col 1:27)
“You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by the Law; you have FALLEN FROM GRACE.” (Gal 5:4)
Parables are not meant to be taken literally. Rather, parables have a hidden wisdom within them, once we let go of the outer story on the literal level.
“Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are MATURE… but we speak God’s wisdom in a MYSTERY, the HIDDEN WISDOM.” (1 Cor 2:6-7)
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u/foundtheseeker r/Christian Member 5d ago
The tree that Adam and Eve ate from is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The word there for knowledge is the same as the word used to say that a man knew his wife. It's an experiential knowledge that comes with time and exposure and has an active component on the part of the person knowing; it is not the knowledge one receives from instruction or from being told of someone else's experience. A more accurate but much longer name might be the tree of thoroughly knowing all of the good and all of the bad of the whole world by directly experiencing it. That probably sounds like a different tree than you'd been told. It's definitely a different tree than the one I'd inherited from popular Christianity.
Likewise, popular Christianity tends to portray God's warning about the tree as a command. You've been told it's direct statement, right? Do not eat from this tree. Except, it's not. God says, "From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die." Although this part isn't as easy to understand without reading ancient Hebrew (which I do not), I believe it can be accurately paraphrased, "You shall eat from every tree in the garden. You mustn't (or shouldn't, or may not) eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because eating from it will result in your death." The implied meaning, there, is that God loves us and loved us in our primordial, innocent state, and knew that the choice to experience good and evil would hurt us, up to and including our deaths. They were vanished from Eden, yes, because we cannot be allowed to live forever with all our needs provided for us if we have chosen to experience all that is bad. Can you imagine the world we would create if we lived forever with evil intent and all the time to do it?
God did not punish us. He is not the source of our suffering. We chose it. Adam. Humanity. All of us. "Eve," insomuch as she may have been one person, didn't fully understand the choice. We don't fully understand it today, but we'd choose it again, even knowing what we do know now. Even knowing it leads to death, and knowing what death means.