May I offer some comments from my perspective of human development. It appears a mistake has been made concerning the understanding of the beginning of sin. The beginning of the story must be understood in terms of two pure innocent beings becoming self-aware through the consequences of choices made in an unknown world. This story must be understood from the perspective of compassion which emanates from love that is the spark that we retain from our original parents.
John Paul II seems to have mistakenly inserted the end of the story of our relationship with God into the beginning of our journey to God. I believe JP II attributed to Eve and Adam a mature knowledge of God and themselves which they never possessed in the first place. The story of Eve and Adam seems to be about two creatures who through the gift of being self-aware have the freedom to explore the infinite unknown in a finite body with finite senses.
God is not known to them except through the senses. Adam must become familiar with the earth and he must also become familiar with his Creator. This seems like an enormous task to me. Being made in the “image” of God, creates in me a desire to identify and understand what particular traits I share in common with God. James 1:14-15 states “…each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death.”
Desire is also a trait that God seems to possess and creation is the result of His desire.
To have full knowledge of creation is also the reality of God. We as an image of God seem to possess the desire to have knowledge of who we are and why we are here. God then begins with Adam by giving him a little on the job training. In the order of portrayed events it is depicted that God plants a garden for him. I would imagine that Adam is observing this. I know that I learn best by observing and doing rather than being told what to do. God creates animals and brings them to Adam. Adam looks at them and names them according to his developing reasoning and observational skills. So he and the animals are made from the same earth but Adam is beginning to know that he is different.
Adam is still a mystery to himself and God is still a mystery too.
The next part of the learning process is to begin to teach Adam to look internally at himself in order to begin to identify in himself what he cannot see with his senses.
Adam has not learned to look internally as yet. He is put to sleep and a part is taken from him and made into a mate. This part of him is unknown but is identified by him through the five senses. She identified by him as “…flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.” However, she is one step removed from connection to the earth. She is not created from clay. She is created from the unknown and unconscious part of the man who must discover the significance of this gift from God that he is immediately attracted to and identifies as himself but not himself.
She only knows herself through Adam’s description which is incomplete at best. We human beings desire to know who we are. When others tell us who we are through their prejudiced beliefs we are left with a sense of emptiness because the finite mind cannot know the infinite which is at the foundation of our identity. This reaction to another’s description of us awakens a desire to discover who we are and where we come from.
This then brings us to the two trees.
There is no disobedience to God because there is no knowledge nor experience as yet with choice. To use the term disobedience at this point in theological interpretation of the events in the garden seems to be a reflection of the effects of sin that have hardened the human heart and prejudice our understanding of an innocent and naive beginning of our original parents relationship to God, the world, each other and with themselves.
Must go now.
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thanks. I still don’t know why God didn’t say that
