the knowledge of good and evil

A few days ago I wrote a short paper on the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden.  The last comment that my professor made at the end of the paper was this:  "Is the Genesis narrative somehow suggesting that the ideal life is eternal ignorance?"  My professor's question warrants further discussion.  Is eternal ignorance the ideal?


In Ajax, one of the seven tragedies by Greek playwright Sophocles (5th BCE), the central character, Ajax, says the following to his baby boy:

"O my son, may you become more fortunate than your father with respect to wickedness, but like him in other things!  Please don't become wicked!  Even now I have jealousy for you, in this at least: that you perceive nothing of wicked things.  For the sweetest life rests by no means in understanding, it lasts until you learn joy and sorrow" (550-555; my translation).

It is not eternal ignorance that is ideal, but the ignorance of good and evil.  That is to say, ignorance of the dichotomy separating something "good" from something "evil."  If there were no evil, no rebellion, then there would be no dichotomy.  This is what I will call "the ideal of Edenic ignorance."  Once more, this is not "ignorance" as it is generally construed, but the ignorance of the separation between something "good" and something "evil," which, if evil exists, is a necessary distinction.  Only after humankind disobeyed this all-good God of love, through temptation and mistrust, was there a need to distinguish the "moral quality" of actions.  In Edenic ignorance these primeval humans only needed to know (intimate, personal knowledge, not academic) the good God who walked with them in the cool of the day--and, of course, the names of all the rad animals.

And that very God is remaking it all.  Right now.  The leaves of the Tree of Life, from which we were once banished, are now for the healing of the nations.  The first exile was from Eden, from that place of no dichotomy [between good and evil], to a place of dichotomy.  If 'place' is confusing, then think of it as a state of being.  We are exiled out of the intended state of being -- that of no moral distinction between any word or deed -- and into a place running rampant with gross manifestations of evil, full of dichotomies.


One who walks in the power and knowledge of Jesus the Messiah is brought out of that exile.  There's a new Exodus, and it's happening right now.  I suggest you get your staff and satchel and join us, we're learning to bear the light of love and justice in this strange and dangerous planet.


It begins now and continues into the not-yet.  Live here, today.  God is here now.

The knowledge of God is where we begin:

“Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul."  J.I. Packer, Knowing God