Expert: Michael Clark, Ph.D. - 2/25/2004

Question
Hello Dr.:

If God knew that Adam and Eve were to sin, why was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil planted?

Or, did God not know that they would sin.

Or, is this a battle betwen Satan and God that we will not comprehend and that God did not know satan would tempt man in the garden? And that this was his beginning of rebellion towards God.  OR, did God know satan would rebel?


Thanks,



Paul  

Answer
Paul.. this is a good question, one which many grapple with. Really, what you're asking points to what theologians call the problem of theodicy. Theodicy is a defense of God's goodness, in view of the real presence of evil in the world.

Recently, Catholic teaching takes Adam and Eve as a mythical story which points to the reality of Evil. Although there was a time when any of the Church's faithful would have been branded as heretics for doubting the historical validity of this story, things have changed.

In actual fact, the Church adheres to some antiquated ideas but rejects others. But even if we as Catholics are not to take the story of Adam and Eve literally today, it still has a moral teaching within it.

So instead of asking, "why was that tree planted," perhaps we could just say, "why did GOd create a world in which evil would enter." If God is all-knowing, as Catholic theologians insist, then yes, God knew that evil would arise.

Theologians have tried to answer by saying that evil is somehow necessary. Why necessary? One view is that a soul which knows the difference between good and evil is of more value than one which just does good like a robot would (i.e. if the soul never knew evil, it couldn't do evil things).

The soul which knows the difference between evil and good is of more value than one which would just automatically be good--because the knower of evil is able to choose.

By being able to choose, the soul has free will. I think most would agree that a free soul choosing to do good would be of more beauty and value than one which never knew evil and just automatically did good things.

Not everyone agrees with this view though. They would say that automatically good souls would have been better, because the world would have never known, for instance, hatred, torture, and other kinds of barbarism.

Another group, more biologically oriented, would say that man's life depends on killing and eating other creatures. And it's not such a huge step to see that man would also kill other human creatures for political reasons. So it's not really evil in many cases, this group would say, but just an "aggressive drive" or perhaps a "survival or territorial instinct" which we share with animals. After all, man is part animal, if a social one too.

One last concern is to look at the nature of time. To say that mankind "fell" at one point in history is to view time in a linear fashion. Physicists are now viewing time in a more holistic way. The idea of worm holes and the like make us think, even though they are just hypotheses, that time may not always go in a straight line. On top of this, we have the concept of eternity, which in some strange way interacts with out experience of time (entirely linear or not).

I sincerely hope that I haven't confused you by outlining some of the major issues in the area! I haven't tried to provide a tight answer to your question, because really, it's one which is still given much thought by many different kinds of thinkers today.