Now, I have mentioned several times that man in this Adam / Eve condition had the ability to resist sin. Indeed, their task was arguably pretty simple comparatively. They had effectively one law, or perhaps we could expand it to three if we tried real hard. There is the positive commandment to go forth and multiply. I don’t think we see that as a commandment so much anymore, but I do know that the more conservative Jewish community does, and does not consider the commandment satisfied until at least one son and one daughter have been produced and presumably brought to maturity. There’s the positive commandment, although requiring perhaps more work, to subdue and have dominion, to superintend over God’s creation. But, then there’s that one negative commandment: Don’t eat from that one tree over there. That’s it. That’s all he had to get right, and we must understand that as designed, Adam had the capacity to get it right.
Adam, according to design, and particularly in conjunction with Eve, could have obeyed in full. It was possible. If it weren’t possible, then the whole and entire work of Creation becomes a farce and a crime. But it isn’t a farce, and God has committed no crime. Adam could have, at minimum, refused to join Eve in partaking of that one thing they weren’t supposed to eat. We might argue that if they had no knowledge of good and evil prior to eating, on what basis were they to resist? If you don’t know good and evil, can you possibly know right and wrong? At first blush that seems like we must answer that no, the one knowledge is required for the other, but then if we consider an infant, we discover that indeed, right and wrong are knowable apart from understanding good and evil. An infant, as concerns his parents knows only good, it is sincerely to be hoped. Here is sustenance. Here is sanitation. Here is every provision for life wrapped up in these two large beings. To what degree that infant even recognizes a connection to these two creatures is an unanswered question for me. But, it knows that, from its limited perspective, this is where everything comes from. If, then, one of these providers says no, the appropriate response is to cease and desist. If one of them says yes, then it is safe to proceed. This requires no sense of good and evil, only of trust.
There is your picture of Adam’s and Eve’s condition before God at the outset. They neither had, nor required any sense of good and evil, only of trust, and trust in the God that both were quite fully aware had made them. They had no parents to confuse the issue. They had no other but God, and knew Him to be their provider, and to the degree that they knew any need of protection, their protector. He was Good, but this they could not really know yet. He was Father, and that was enough.
This complicates the picture when the serpent comes along, for again, without a sense of good and evil, how was Eve to recognize that here was one to distrust? What possible cause to even understand distrust yet existed for Eve or for Adam? They had been born, created into trust, and known nothing else. But, now enters untrustworthiness. Now comes the test. Adam and Eve were capable of passing. At the same time, we must fully recognize that God, from the outset, indeed from before the outset to the degree that before applies, knew perfectly well that both would fail. They would fail not only of the one negative command. They would fail as well of the positive command to subdue and superintend creation, having in that moment effectively handed the keys of the kingdom to another.
