Here’s a scenario that I think seems very analogous to the story of Adam and Eve: A mother takes her child and places him in a room full of toys. In the middle of the room she places a grenade, and sternly warns the child not to pull the pin, or else he’ll die. She then leaves the room, and lets another adult in who she knows will encourage the child to pull the pin. She comes back an hour later, and finds that the child has in fact pulled the pin to the grenade and is dead.
How is that any different from God leaving the tree of knowledge sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden, knowing that they weren’t capable of understanding the consequences of eating its fruit, and then letting Satan in to tempt them? If any human parent did that we’d charge them with criminal negligence, but we give God a free pass. Can anyone explain this?
As far as I’m concerned the Fall was planned, whether it took place in some literal Garden of Eden or not. Otherwise you’d have a pair of eternally naive humans who had no idea what morality meant - the battle between good and evil, the responsibility of free choice, the responsibility of answering for our actions etc.
Without the Fall, there would have been no possibility of God demonstrating the depth of His own sacrifice, in the form of His own Son.
I don’t doubt God planned for it to happen. If He didn’t then He could hardly be called omniscient. “Erk! I’ve been outwitted by the devil! This calls for Plan B!”
However, and this is the nub, WE are still answerable for our actions. If a teacher puts a box of chocolates on his desk as a test, and walks out of the room, saying, “Don’t touch it!”, the students who all got a bit are
all guilty of breaking his commandment, and will be punished as such. They knew what he said, knew he meant what he said, and still disobeyed.
I suppose it ties in a bit with the odd event which happened when my own father appeared in my room the night he died. During the proceedings, which finished with an almighty terrifying scream on his part just before he disappeared again, he blurted out “I always was doomed! I didn’t really have any choice!” to which I responded, “That can’t be right!”. He replied, “Oh, it’s right, all right. You can see that from here!”
Yet later he admitted, “I was WILLING(!)” (to do and persist in the cruel, stupid things he did that condemned him).
So it may have been part of God’s sovereign that he “always was doomed”, but he also admitted that he was “WILLING” to go along with it. Adam and Eve were WILLING to make the choice they did, Cain was WILLING to kill Abel, Judas was WILLING to betray Christ, even though (in a shade of my own father) he was the man “destined to be lost”, the Pharisees were WILLING to have Christ crucified, even though Christ warned them, “You hypocrites! How can you hope to escape being condemned to Hell?”
Hitler was WILLING to murder millions of people as was Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and all the rest, even if it was part of God’s plan they should be condemned to Hell. I can’t say I like it much, but I long ago gave up telling God what to do. That doesn’t mean I like Him at all times, or understand Him.
If the death-night apparition of my father spoke the truth, we’re going to find at the end of our own life, when the truth is revealed plainly instead of through a glass darkly, “Oh, It’s right, all right. I can see that from here!”
In the meantime we stick to our faith, even if we don’t always understand what we’re talking about.
