. . . No God did not intend for man to be in the Garden. . .
I’m going to expand on this.
Starting with the basics, the Garden is a story, a part of the Church’s traditions and teachings about who we are, our world and its Creator. It is naturally placed at the beginning the Bible, which is history described in symbolic language. Scripture is inspired by God, and reveals the Word, from the creation to His incarnation, death and resurrection, in Jesus Christ. It tells us who we are, how it is we came to be and where we are going, all in relation to God. It speaks of what happens in the intersection of the temporal with the eternal. Here, things get kind of funny. The cause need not necessarily precede the effect; they may be one and the same, or it may be at the end, pulling us forward. As a story, Genesis is historically and ontologically true. But what are we to make of it?
:twocents:
The Garden is materially this earth, in terms of the laws and constants of physics and chemistry, as well as the biology. The trees and their fruits are the gifts that come with being human: art, science, music, philosophy, the various sensual pleasures, our camaraderie, and so on. The Garden describes our relationship with the world and with God. He is to be at the Centre. The two trees that sit there can, in fact be understood as being the Word of God.
Had we chosen to not appropriate what belongs to God, in that moment we would have chosen to be Christ-like. Our will would be surrendered to God. We can still do that, but the choice that the first man made was our choice that we struggle with every day. We seek God and our own interests in defiance of His will. We were never meant to be in that original Garden state, in the sense that we were not yet formed until we chose. We could have attained the Beatific Vision at that point, but we want to do it our way.
In eating of the fruit that belongs to God, against His will and in spite of His warning, we took on the consequences. We now truly, to our core, know good and evil. In reaching out for the fruit of the wood that is ultimately the cross, we drove the nail into that hand. We wanted to be gods, thinking we can do so without God, and here we are.
But, we have Jesus and the Beatitudes. Through Him and His teachings, through the Church that He established, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are reconciled with God, with each other and the world. Love your neighbour as yourself and God, with all your heart, and you are in the Garden, in right relation with God. It’s a struggle, but it gets ever lighter as He bears with us the load of His yoke.
Keeping on track: free will (choice is less appropriate a word) is as real as are the consequences to what we chose. This is the Garden where we can be one with Christ.
