The 21st Century in the Garden of Eden

Because humanity is a unity (meaning that we are all descended from Adam and we all therefore constitute the human race), it ought not surprise us to continually see expressions of its fallen nature throughout history (including the history recorded in the biblical text) even if our fallen nature often takes on various expressions. Human nature, in Adam, is depraved, no matter the time or the place at which it exists.

In reading Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, I came across the passage below. I was struck by how contemporary the events of the Fall sound from his pen, and how effectively someone from the late 1800s has articulated it for someone in the early 21st century. Biblical truth really is transcendent and eternally practical. See if you don't agree, as he discusses the meaning of God's prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil:

[It means] the ability to stand on one's own feet and to find one's own way and speaks of the desire of humans to emancipate themselves from God by cultivating that ability (emphasis mine). In Genesis 3, the issue is not primarily the content of the knowledge that humans would appropriate by disobedience [as though God wants to keep his creatures ignorant of what is good and what is evil, what is wise and what is foolish] but the manner in which they would obtain it. By violating the command of God and eating of the tree, they would make themselves like God in the sense that they would position themselves outside and above the law [of God] and, like God, determine and judge for themselves [rather than trusting him for] what good and evil was. The knowledge of good and evil is not the knowledge of the useful and the harmful [which is necessary to living wisely and avoiding folly], of the world and how to control it [which is necessary to having dominion over the earth in], but the right and capacity to distinguish good and evil on one's own.

The issue in Genesis is indeed whether humanity will want to develop in dependence on God, whether it will want to have dominion over the earth and seek its salvation in submission to God's commandment; or whether, violating that commandment and withdrawing from God's authority and law, it will want to stand on its own feet, go its own way, and try its own "luck". When humanity fell, it got what it wanted; it made itself like God, "knowing good and evil" by its own insight and judgment.

BHT