Here’s the part I find fascinating: If they had not sinned, man would have no knowledge of good and evil. I wonder if that would have left us like the squid creatures in Galaxy Quest. Or, more down to earth, if it would have made us more like the animals.
i.e. in the end, will our condition, after our resurrection, be BETTER than it would have been had they not sinned?
I’m just asking for discussion’s sake. I’m not trying to start a new theology. :)
i.e. in the end, will our condition, after our resurrection, be BETTER than it would have been had they not sinned?
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I believe so. It will give us a better appreciation and understanding of how good God really is.
There are two possible answers I can think of, which go in very different directions.
1) We don't know what God intended; we only know what God commanded, when he prohibited eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is possible that God intended for A&E (not the TV network, the happy couple) to never eat it; it is also possible that God would have intended for A&E to eat it, but not at that time. If the latter were the case, then the result would have been better than what actually occurred: A&E would have, at the right time, learned the nature of good and evil--presumably at a time that they would have been able to, of their own volition, choose good instead of evil, and have avoided both having a sinful nature, and giving authority over the earth, which had been given them by God, to Satan.
But there is a second possibility...
2) The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a tree that gave one a knowledge of good and evil, in an axiological sense. The phrase "knowledge of good and evil" could have been, in the times that the Bible was being written, a euphemism for sex.
The evidence for this can be found in II Samuel 19:35, when Barzillai the Gileadite describes his lack of physical abilities due to his 80 years: he can't hear singing, he can't taste his food...and he can't distinguish between good and evil (הַאֵדַע בֵּין־טֹוב לְרָע), the same words (towb and ra) found in the description of the tree in Genesis 2:17 (וּמֵעֵץ הַדַּעַת טֹוב וָרָע).
It would make no sense that an 80yo patriarch would say he was incapable of discerning between good and evil in the midst of talking about physical attributes...but it would make perfect sense that he would talk about the three most common attributes of very old men, that they can't taste their food, or hear high pitches ("singing girls") well...or do the nasty.
Further evidence is what happens to A&E when they eat the fruit. What is the first thing they do: enter into a discussion of the nature of good and evil a la Socrates or Aristotle or Confucius or Kant? Not at all. Instead, the first thing they do is notice that they are naked.
Finally, what are the punishments given to A&E? Eve is going to suffer in childbirth, but won't be able to keep herself from getting pregnant again and again, meaning having sex; having eaten from the tree of sex, she won't be able to stop herself. Adam will have to work hard, with the clear implication (since he gets his curse after Eve) that he is doing this to take care of his family, fighting the earth all the way to do this--all the while taking the sex that Eve is cursed to desire, all because, having eaten from the tree of sex, he can't help himself.
If this interpretation is correct, the point of the Eden story shifts: it's still a story of sin bringing death requiring salvation (the snake and the seed of the woman show this), but it is also a specific story about two trees, the tree of sex and the tree of immortality, and when A&E eat the fruit of the first tree, God has to keep them from eating the fruit of the second tree--they are like God in that they know how to beget (create) whenever they feel like it (Gen. 3:22), and without death there would be no end to their begetting.
That's how the second theory goes. Given that there is no indication in Scripture which one was meant by the phrase "knowing good and evil," it can't be said which one is the more likely scenario. From a theological standpoint it makes no difference: A&E do what they are told not to do, but what the snake deceivingly gets them to do, with the result that Eden is lost, the snake (Satan) gains temporary authority over the earth, and the plan of salvation, designed from the foundation of the world, begins its implementation, with its manifestation in Christ, and its fulfillment at the end of the age.