Why did God put the Tree in the Garden?
I’m not sure what the hardest biblical question of all time is, but any shortlist has to include this one: why did God put the tree in the garden?
You have a perfect garden, two sinless people, intimacy with God, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, comes the rather arbitrary announcement: ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’ (Gen 2:16-17). Why? Given all the consequences that have flowed from that commandment, wasn’t it a rather odd move on God’s part?
In a superb Q&A with David Eisenbach – superb, in part, because (unlike many Christian Q&As) it’s actually moderated by someone who isn’t a Christian) – Tim Keller gives his answer. The following is a transcript:
David Eisenbach:
Here’s something that’s always bugged me. Why did God put that tree in the garden to begin with?
Tim Keller:
You know what? Finally, you’ve asked me a question I can really answer well. (Laughter). Because I’ve been acting like all my answers are good, but you know some of them are better than others.
What’s interesting about the tree is: there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason to forbid it. Right? I mean, he says, ‘You can eat all the trees in the garden except this one.’ And he doesn’t tell them why.
Now, I had a ten year old, my middle son, he was a very hard child to get to obey. And I would say to him, ‘Obey me. I’m your father, I’ve told you to do this, so just do it because I’ve told you to.’ And you know what he’d always say? ‘Dad, I’d be happy to obey if you could just make it reasonable. Just tell me why this is helpful for me, or the human race, or whatever.’
And I would say, ‘If you only obey me when I explain it to you, then you’re not obeying me, you’re just agreeing with me. I want you to obey because I’m forty-five and you’re ten. (Laughter). I know a little more about life than you do, and I don’t want to have to explain it to you because I couldn’t get into your ten year old brain.’
So God says, ‘Don’t eat from the tree’, and no explanation. The point is, ‘I want you to obey because you love me. Just because I’m God and you’re not. I want you to do something, not because it profits you, not because you know the reason why, but just because I’m Lord and Saviour, and you’re not. Just do it because you love me for myself alone.’ And they didn’t.
You can see the whole thing, plus a fairly hard-hitting interview with Martin Bashir, here.
Footnotes
Hat Tip to Justin Taylor
Comments
By Jack Griffiths on 13/10/2011 at 09:57
Brilliant. Thank you for sharing this Andrew.
By Pete Thorne on 13/10/2011 at 11:59
The video is well worth watching - good to see hard apologetics at work
By Pete Thorne on 13/10/2011 at 12:02
Oh and can any web wizard explain why I’ve become a women!??
By Jamie Franklin on 15/10/2011 at 10:48
Hey guys! This is my first post so I feel a little bit nervous!
I heard Alvin Plantinga talking about the problem of evil on an old edition of Unbelievable recently (http://www.premierradio.org.uk/shows/saturday/unbelievable.aspx - it’s there somewhere), in which he said that all that the apologist needs to do is to show that there is no logical contradiction between the existence of a good, powerful God etc and evil.
To me it seems like this is what Keller is doing here - showing that there is at least a potential explanation for God allowing sin and suffering in the world.
However, I don’t find his line of reasoning very convincing. Keller says that God wants us to obey him without an explanation because that is the essence of true obedience. So God created the potential for sin and all of the suffering in human history because he wanted Adam and Eve to recognize this not all together obvious distinction between obedience and reason? This seems unlikely.
Further, it’s doesn’t imply a logical contradiction to say that God could create human beings as agents who were inclined to obey him without a full list of his reasons for what he’d asked them to do. In other words, God could have made Adam and Eve unquestioningly to obey him but he chose not to. He didn’t make them that way because he couldn’t but because he wanted to make that way.
To me, it seems that those are two reasons why Keller’s explanation is unconvincing.
Plantinga offers an alternative explanation as no more than a possibility, but one that sits a little more easily with me. Maybe, Plantinga says, the story of the Christian gospel is the best story that could have been told, as it contains such things as incarnation, sacrifice and atonement, and maybe it was always God’s plan to create human agents who sinned against him, brought destruction upon themselves and needed rescuing.
I’m pretty sure Piper has a similar view. Not that I can quote a source - but I think I’ve heard him say that this is the best of all possible worlds. If Adam had not sinned then Christ would not have needed to come. Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection glorify God. And, since God’s highest concern is with his own glory, it was always God’s intention that sin be a temporary part of his creation, in order that he might rescue his creation from it through Christ and so glorify himself.
I’m not saying that I’m set on this, but I feel a lot more comfortable with it than with an explanation like Keller’s. Also, it seems to me that it makes a lot more sense of the Bible, even if it doesn’t necessarily present itself to our sense of reason as the most acceptable solution to this problem.
By Jamie Franklin on 15/10/2011 at 11:59
Quick correction: ‘He didn’t make them that way because he couldn’t but because he wanted to make them another way’ should be how the sentence five paragraphs before the end of my comment should read. Sorry!
By David Lyall on 17/10/2011 at 14:49
Thanks for your comment Jamie. The thing I personally find hard about the line of reasoning you quote is that it can end up sounding a bit like “sin exists because ultimately it brings the most glory to God and if a load of people have to go to hell as a byproduct of this then that’s just tough”.
Whereas the Keller line seems to show a greater respect for the dignity which God has graciously given to human beings. And I don’t think the Keller illustration is about God wanting to demonstrate to human beings a fine distinction between reason and obedience, it is about him wanting to create the environment for genuine love.
I guess this debate takes us to the heart of the sovereignty of God v free will of man old chestnut.
I don’t have any answers to this but its good to discuss.
By Nathan Lambert on 19/10/2011 at 10:34
I’ve got to say that I agree with Jamie on this one. It’s one of those difficult situations where you have a sense somewhere that it’s not quite right that God would make people, with an eternal plan of reprobation as well as election (but then doesn’t election imply reprobation, whether active or passive?).
Double predestination seems like the only consistent way forward as a Calvinist (which seems like the only consistent way forward as a Bibl-believing Christian). I suppose A Wilson’s latest post on Olsen, Arminianism and the death of exegesis speaks into this issue best : http://whatyouthinkmatters.org/blog/article/roger-olson-arminianism-and-the-death-of-exegesis
By Daniel Pritchard on 23/10/2011 at 15:54
David, I appreciate your first paragraph. It reminds me of Ivan Karmazov’s critique of exactly that suggestion - he found it sickening and unacceptable.