Article 6: The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Authors note: Due to the sheer volume of articles this series has resulted in I want to take a moment to tell you they are intended to be read sequentially, the ideas building on each other as they progress. While they can also be read individually, a fuller understanding can only be reached by starting at the beginning, found here: https://www.pjbenjamin.net/a-long-overdue-elucidation/

Article 6: The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Rule Three of the Firmament:

All intelligent races in existence likely stand within one or more of these states

• *Primordial
• –Made New and Blameless
• –Corrupted and Afflicted: 
  • Recipients of Passive Wrath
  • Promised and Waiting
  • Justified or Judged
  • Made Blameless Anew
• -Maturing and Blameless
• -Authoritative and Blameless 
• -Mutually Interactive

As I’m sure you noticed the bible does not end after Genesis 2. It is in the remaining pages that we find humanity’s place in the next category and its four resulting subsets. I will explore only the heading of the category in this article. It may make this a relatively short article, but its subsets will require more time to unpack than I can reasonably accomplish within. They will get their own articles. In fact, one could, and some have, written entire books on these subjects. I have neither the knowledge nor the wisdom to be as exhaustive in my explanations. However, if you can come out of this reading with enough understanding to persist in my reasoning, then I will count it a job well done.

 Corrupted and Afflicted

So what do I mean by Corrupted and Afflicted? The simple answer is that it encapsulates the aftermath of a Fall. I say a Fall and not the Fall, and the distinction is important. Because humanity is not the only race to fall. Not narratively for the Firmament, but also not scripturally. We know that Satan and his demons fell as well. In fact, it’s possible that they were not even the first to fall at all. Just as we are possibly not the last. To put it simply, a Corrupted and Afflicted race is one which has made the choice to break its relationship with God, and by doing so corrupted its inherent nature. The next four subsets cover what we know is, and might be, where a race has left itself afterward. Corrupted, because they are not as they ought to have been, their intended nature distorted. Afflicted, because they bear the pains and consequences of the choices made in this broken state. Consequences brought on less by judgment or punishment, and more by a natural reaction of an unnatural element (our corrupted nature) attempting to interact with an otherwise blameless world.

I want to take a moment to discuss creation before zeroing in on the damage of our corruption. Choose any field of hard science to study and the deeper you go you will find a staggering level of perfection. Witness the impossibility of the human immune system or the perfect balance of gravity that stops the universe from flinging its particles apart or collapsing them into a single mass. Creation is a perfectly tuned machine, and our place in it was intended as a point of critical interaction. It is then no wonder why our corruption has affected so many of its systems. Despite some philosophical flaws, environmental activists hit the nail on the head when they teach the world would operate perfectly well without us. In fact, it would have to begin a long process of healing from our abuse, not unlike the lungs of a smoker who recently quit the habit. Paul speaks on it with authority in *Romans 8: 19-22, saying that nature awaits the time that the Sons of God (speaking of believers) will free it from its “bondage of corruption”.

 So then if Corruption is clearly not part of God’s intention, why does a race fall at all? The usual answer is a choice by those with “free will”, but honestly that creates more problems than it solves. For example, if we have truly free will then why can we not live without sin? And if we only have truly free will before a fall, then why did we choose to fall? The nuance that needs to be drawn is the difference between having free will and having a free nature. We do indeed have free will, that is, we have agency in our own choices, choices that we make out of our own desires. We do not however have a free nature, that is we cannot make our choices out of the natural state that was intended for us (how we “ought” to have been). If our free will is guided by our desires (whether that be as base as a ‘want of pleasure’ or as intrinsic as the pursuit of love) then it stands to reason that if our nature should be corrupt then our “Will” will be for and about corruption! 

But let us return to the question of “Why”. It is my premise that all intelligent life begins in a state of needing to be taught. Like a baby, nothing is made simply “knowing”. And one of life’s most important lessons is any creation’s relation with the one who created it. This is just as true with our earthly parentage as it is with our heavenly. There is an important difference between being given rules and our relationship with the rule-giver. It is the corruption of our nature that has led to the necessity of all sorts of situational rules.

Let us take a moment to look at some of the commandments, rules, and laws of God given after the Fall. Largely, most make perfect sense on their own. Stealing is obviously harmful, both to the owner and to the captured thief. And it always will be. It is only by being Corrupted and Afflicted that we think our reasons are acceptable for such behavior. In fact, it is only in a corrupt and afflicted world that situations would arise where legitimate reasons exist. For example, stealing food to keep your family from starving is a legitimate reason, one founded in love. Yet, it would never arise in a world where we were seen as family deserving of the same provision. This is an important realization, that some of the rules and laws that were given by God were because of what we made of the world, not because they would be universally relevant for all categories of intelligent life. If the genuine inclination of an uncorrupted heart was to remain united in one flesh with its spouse, then there would be no rule needed to explain how adultery is counter to God’s intention for us. The most foundational of God’s laws are most often obviously good, and with a little logic could be reasoned out for ourselves. As a matter of fact, this is what philosophy and many world religions are attempting specifically, and their popularity is typically proportional to their success at doing so. 

It is here we come to humanity’s story concerning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is much to be said here, but I want to start by making one point you might not have encountered. The Tree itself is neither evil, nor inherently sinful. God does not and can not create sin, because all sin would correctly be defined as that which subverts God’s intention, an impossibility for God. After all, if he intended it, it could not be classified as a sin! As to the Tree, he had already declared all of his earthly creations “good” and “very good”! So if it is not sinful then why was it forbidden, and if to be forbidden then why have such a thing in the garden?

First, allow me to attempt an answer on why have such a thing in the garden.  Remember, until now we are acting out of a purity of nature, and so the answer is found best when you understand what it means to learn and teach. God wants us to understand something sublime. Something beautiful in a way that most never believe possible, because few have a frame of good reference for it.

Obedience.

Obedience is a world with a terrible history. It is terrible because humans think of obedience as to another human, or else ideologies they have chosen or been forced to believe. To the perception of the western world in particular, there is no appreciable difference between asking for obedience, and intending oppression. Few stop to wonder if obedience might become inherently good if the object of its sovereignty were inherently good. Yet the logic is simple, obeying that which gives good, perfect, and loving advice only is no hardship, only blessing. The question of obedience then must be sourced in trust, and in the character or nature of the one to be trusted. Obedience is a lesson that must be learned, and as with most God-driven lessons the first time is simple, and only grows in complexity and severity as the necessity gains imminence. I am reminded of the author of Hebrews when he says of Christ (referred to elsewhere as our second Adam) **“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.  And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him”. It took God himself to come down and learn it for us so that he might then impart it to us in a new nature.

Let us return to the Tree. Humanity was given but one basic edict; Do not eat from it. It was the first and only forbidding and it met us where we were as creatures living simply out of our nature. Beginning there, God then clarified that while this thing seems good to eat, humanity is not to do so. This is important because while a blameless nature is a starting point for life, it cannot on its own encompass all potential danger. Not any more than a child might intuit the necessity of a helmet when they see how fun the bike looks to ride. There must be safe boundaries to learn that cover what a blameless nature cannot. In that place lies the beginning of wisdom for a race. This here was the very first lesson all intelligent life must learn, the thing that must by its very nature come before all other education, or else forever exposing the student to danger. The lesson of obedience. Adam and Eve were to learn the honor, the unparalleled beauty, of obeying out of trust and love. To learn it humanity must be asked to do something for the sole purpose of obeying it and none other. To invite us to trust first, until obedience has matured to where that trust has ripened into a profound relationship. Otherwise, they might continue in their education on the dangers in the world and be tempted out of curiosity, as they haven’t yet learned the lesson of a trust that stands beyond mere nature. When seen this way, it seems clear that the Tree was not evil, only awaiting its proper time.

It is my opinion that once we had learned this trust, and experienced a fullness of relationship with God out of maturity, he would have taught us greater things. He would eventually have removed the forbidding of the Tree’s fruit after the fulfillment of “Made New and Blameless” just as how he removed the ‘uncleanliness’ of pork after the fulfillment of the Law. We might have eaten and experienced the horror of what Evil is, much as missionaries do when encountering child sacrifice or mutilation for the first time. When we were mature enough we would have had the capacity to understand such things without any temptation to take part in them.

But instead, we were tricked out of any such plan. We were toddlers free to enjoy our parentally provided chicken nuggets until the petulant neighbor child convinced us to turn on the deep fryer and make our own. With disastrous results guessed by all but the toddler. The fall of humanity was not any sinfulness of the fruit, it was our disobedience that broke the relationship between us and God. Such a thing did not happen in a vacuum, but rather in an interaction with one whose nature was already corrupted and intended our corruption.

We have covered our Fall pretty thoroughly, as it is the one with the greatest detail known to us. I will use our remaining time together to talk some more about the reality and practicality of a Fall in regard to the Firmament. Firstly, for a creature to freely choose good then it must also be able to choose an alternate. Even a creature with no intention to steal is still physically capable of picking up an object someone has for a specific intention, and never returning it. It is in this way Eve, who knew no sin as of yet, was physically capable of eating the forbidden fruit. There are few sins we are physically capable of now that they were not then. Further, if there was such a thing as a “knowledge of good and evil”, and if that knowledge was not inherently evil, then we must logically conclude an eventual need to be educated on it.

Any intelligent Race in the Firmament will be capable of sin, that is, capable of doing the opposite of intention. It will only be by having a blameless nature inclined towards intention and the loving guidance of God (or perhaps his servants) that a Race will avoid danger until equipped to perceive it safely. Additionally, although they may differ in substance, Races will all need to learn and develop a trusting and obedient relationship. They will always have something forbidden to them to that end. The Fall of a Race might be breaking the forbidding as it was for us, or some other way of exposing them to an inclination towards disobedience. I do not think it needs always be the first forbidding as it was for us. In our case, we faced a fall very close to our beginning. Satan, it would seem, was ready and eager to attack our nature. For other races, there may be some other instigation, at some other point in their development. For example, it does not seem as though Satan was tempted by any other creature but rather broke his relationship in full knowledge of the transgression. This would seem to indicate that he was in a greater state of development, one in which his own education on the “Knowledge of Evil” was advanced enough that his rebellion was not out of deceit or nature, but of will. I have in fact mapped out an entire Firmament novel where I cover one of my many possible guesses surrounding this,

The final point is one that I will cover in significantly more detail in the following articles, but it needs at least mentioning here. Redemption. The God we know, the God of the Bible, the God of the Firmament, is a redeemer. He is not a creature of pure logic, but of heart. He loves us, loves whom he has made. So far as the Firmament is concerned, an offer of salvation has a number of factors, not the least of which is the category of racial maturity one was in when the fall occurred, and the situations surrounding it. We know that this offer is not made to all creatures, as it isn’t to Satan and his angels. This must mean that there are circumstances where the chance for redemption is thwarted by an unavoidable need for justice. Perhaps Satan and his followers might have had a chance at redemption once. Maybe it was their attack and corruption of humanity in full knowledge of the abuse that disallowed just grace. Maybe it has nothing to do with us at all. Whatever the reality, this is high up on my list of questions for God when I get up there. I pray when I ask he will have grown me in maturity enough to have the capacity to understand the real answer.

*https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%208&version=ESV

**https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+5&version=ESV

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