Tree of Knowledge

Tree of Knowledge - also see "Tree of Life", SEPARATION

Knowledge = discernment or choice between good and evil

To know good and evil entails the kind of knowledge required in order to make adult decisions on one's own behalf. But who is to decide what is best for humanity - the God who created humanity or the creature who was created? Deciding for ourself what is best is in rebellion against our Creator [because we tried to reach for something more and we rejected the idea that what God created was very good]. Our decisions lack the breadth and depth of God's wisdom. (Collegeville Bible Commentary, Gen 3:1-24)

The Tree could have been regarded as a sexual awakening, thereby offers a rival immortality to the tree of life, in the proceation of a family and a posterity. The Tree of forbidden knowledge as prohibited presented an alternative to discipleship: to be self-made, wresting one's knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator. "To be as God" and to achieve it by outwitting Him is human arrogance. Adam and Eve [and humanity] made self-fulfilment the goal, but man's lifeline is spiritual, namely God's word and the response of faith; to break it is death.(Tyndale Commentary, Gen 3)

Adam and Eve were expelled from the divine presence not because they sought an immortality denied to humanity from the tree of life, but because they aspired to divine wisdom. They sought the practical wisdom that would give them blessing, to gain a fuller experience of life. Blessing is not something we grab for ourselves. It is obedience that leads to blessing. Blessed human beings know how to live harmoniously and responsably. Intercourse with God is not easy, instead we have to struggle to make sense of God's world and catch only glimpses of an a distant and puzzling deity. (In the Beginning by Karen Armstrong, Knowledge, Possibilty of Evil, Sin and Curse)