“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’”
Why did God place the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the Garden of Eden, and then tell Adam and Eve not to eat of it? Was it to tempt them to disobey, knowing that they would fail, and thus securing the Fall of Man? First, God does not tempt anyone: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” (James 1:13-15) However, God does test people. The difference between tempting and testing is that temptation is made with the intent that someone fails, whereas testing is made with the intent that someone passes.
Second, the Tree of Knowledge was not the only special tree in the Garden of Eden, as there was also the Tree of Life:
Genesis 2:9: “Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
There was no mandate against partaking of the Tree of Life until after Adam and Eve had first partaken of the fruit of the forbidden tree.
Genesis 3:22-24: “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’—therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”
The fruit from the two various trees represented two different choices. One produces life while the other produces death. One relies on the knowledge that comes from God, while the other steals knowledge from God. One seeks to trust in God’s ways, while the other seeks knowledge to govern by one’s own judgment. The evil choice was not placed within them. That came from themselves. God had given them a choice, similar to the angels. Hence, we see that God values choices.
Could Adam and Eve have chosen to be obedient like the faithful angels? If so, then there would not have been a need for Calvary. As for the predetermined plan of the Cross, that takes into account God’s foreknowledge of Adam and Eve’s eventual disobedience, but not that God caused their disobedience so as to necessitate Calvary.
Calvinists often ask:
If God foresaw the fall of man, then why didn’t He prevent it by simply removing the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden?
Our reply:
For God to either allow or forbid every choice of man based upon what He foreknows will be chosen is not real life, and is just another way of describing fatalistic determinism, and we do not believe God was pleased to create such a world, though He certainly could have, if that was what He wanted. In fact, it seems relatively easy for God to have created a world full of such automatons, though resulting in divine mediocrity.
We do not believe mankind was created with strings. God created mankind with autonomy of reason, or free-will, in order to serve as adequate caretakers of God’s living ways. Therefore, for mankind to form its own choices is necessary to its intended function (Psalms 115:16). Moreover, philosophical speculations on how God’s omniscience relates to the temporal choices of morally free creatures are just that—speculative.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
