Genesis 2-3: The Fall of Man

“And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” – Genesis 2:16 and 2:17

Genesis 2:17 has that peculiar trait of being at once immediately disturbing and yet somehow righteous and comforting. God plays the role of concerned parent has he warns his creation of something potentially dangerous. Admirable. Yet, why would man be forbidden knowledge? Why would knowledge be so unfortunately linked with death?

The answer, it seems, is because knowledge of good and evil belongs to God, as does immortality. Man must choose between one or the other. Knowledge of good and evil or immortality? Which would you choose? Would you rebel against God and choose your intellectual independence? Or would you remain his servant and live in perpetual peace?

Prior to Man’s Fall, existence must have been blissful. There was no good and evil, for man had no conception of such. There was only true and false. Things are as they appear, and there can be subjective judgments regarding them. Only God’s word existed as judgment, and his judgments must have been understood as exact. This must have been a transcendental existence; oh! to be able to comprehend monism! To be able to comprehend noumena and understand things as they are in themselves!

However, when man fell, he gained knowledge of good and evil, and I believe this signifies man’s perception becoming layered by dualism. No longer could the world be understood simply through the schemata of true/false! God’s word no longer held the power that it once did, for it can be (and it was) disobeyed. Man’s perceptions of the world would from then on be schematized by judgments of good and evil.

What does this mean precisely? Should we regret our fall? Should we lament the failure of Adam and Eve? Metaphorically, I believe that The Fall of Man symbolizes humanity’s coming to terms with itself on a deeper level. At some point in our evolution we no longer saw the world the way animals do; in there being merely truth and non-truths. Rather, humanity became the first species to view the world in terms of good and evil.

But dualism means more than just seeing the world through the schemata of good/evil. It is an entire way of viewing the world through relationships between mind and matter.

It is my conviction that there is an absolute way of viewing the world, and it is a way in which humans are now incapable of seeing. There are limits to reason, and we can never know the absolute. As such, dualism should be rejected as ontologically valid, though it should be accepted as a working distinction that can be cast as being functionally valuable, and therefore of pragmatic necessity.

Although we may never be able to comprehend a monist or absolute view of the world, dualism affords us working distinctions, without which man would scarcely render his existence more valuable than that of the sheep he tends. Whether you lament or praise the Fall of Man and our condemnation to dualism, it must be posited that the Fall has given man purpose.