Almighty In Authority, part two

The Suspects

In the garden of Eden we have an ideal case for investigation. Like the guests on the island manor, we are dealing with a limited geographic area and, of course, a limited number of suspects.

Who are the suspects? On whom can we pin the blame for the introduction of evil into the world? There are five possibilities: Adam, Eve, Satan, God, and the birds and the bees and the rocks and the trees. This last group might seem a little puzzling. After listing all the personal moral agents--beings capable of moral behavior--we should include the possibility that the blame could be pinned on the impersonal matter present at the scene.

What was the situation before the crime? Adam and Eve had been created by God, who had declared His creation "good." They lived in a garden paradise, vice-regents over the created order under God. They walked with God and talked with Him. They enjoyed fellowship with God and with each other. They had nothing to fear. They were at peace and were comfortable in their surroundings. They had everything they needed.

And suddenly, there was sin.

As we enter the crime scene, like all good investigators we will question first those who were present when the crime was committed. So let's look at Eve. She certainly was present, and so had opportunity. The next question is whether she had the means. Did Eve have it in her power to create sin? To answer that question we need to learn a lesson from the greatest analytical mind ever to grace the American scene--Jonathan Edwards. This gentleman's intellect makes Holmes look like a dolt. Another Holmes, Supreme Court jurist Oliver Wendell Homes, not one to carry a brief for orthodox Christianity, said of Edwards that his was the greatest mind of the last two hundred years.

Edward's most enduring and influential work was his lengthy essay, "The Freedom of the Will." The argument is he makes in this essay can be used to prove conclusively that Eve could not be the culprit, for she had not the means. The argument is surprisingly simple. Edwards wrote that all men everywhere always act according to their strongest inclination at any given time.

Stop to consider whether there was ever a time when you acted against your strongest inclination. If you were like most kids, when you were told to eat your vegetables, you certainly weren't inclined to eat them. But if you in fact ate the vegetables, that must have been your strongest inclination at the time. It's true that fear of a whack on the seat of your pants might have been part of the equation, but given your choices, eating vegetables was the strongest of the two inclinations at the time. Even when choices are unpleasant, we choose. Jack Benny illustrated this in a routine in which he was approached by a thug who said, "your money or your life." A pregnant pause followed until Benny explained, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking." Of course, there are times when we are the victims of violence and don't really make choices. Most muggers, when they say, "your money or your life," actually mean, "Your money, or your money and your life." As with taxes, there is no option which lets you keep your money.

I've asked hundreds of people who have difficulty with this concept to give an example in which they chose to do something other than their strongest inclinations. Each and every time the choice may not have been what was desired, all things being equal, but things are never equal. Edwards was right; we always choose according to our strongest inclination given our choices.

Consider, then, Eve. She was in the garden when the serpent approached her. He began the dialogue with a question, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1). Eve corrected the serpent, explaining that she is free to eat of any tree save one. She then erred, adding to God's restriction by saying she must not even touch the fruit, lest she die. So far she has erred but is without sin. [Auty speaking- has she really erred and yet not sinned? Is an error a sin, or is it not? Was the act of eating forbidden fruit what brought sin into the world, or was the seed of sin already in her and beginning to grow? Things my mom and I have pondered in our own perusal of this chapter] The serpent then directly contradicted God by declaring, "You will not surely die" (Gen. 3:4).

So Eve considered the fruit. She weighed her options. The text tells us she recognized that the fruit was good for food, that it was pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable to be wise. And so she ate. But she couldn't have eaten on her own. Remember God had earlier made a declaration concerning Eve: "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). If Eve was good, this must mean that her inclination was only good. Remember Jesus, who alone was good, said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish His work" (John 4:34). Goodness, at least with respect to personal moral agents, means the desire to obey God. Certainly God couldn't call good that which has anything other than the desire to obey and please Him. To be good is to have only good inclinations, to have a good nature. And can someone who is good do bad? Someone far more astute than Edwards said no in the most famous sermon of all time, "You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit" (Matt. 7:16-18).

So we have a problem. According to what Jesus said, if Eve was good, she couldn't have done bad. God said that Eve was good, and yet she did bad. The only conclusion we can reach is that at some time between God's pronouncement of Eve's goodness and the eating of the fruit, she had to stop being good. So what or who changed Eve's inclination?

This is the real crime. The eating of the fruit, if you will, is the fruit of a crime which had already taken place. Did Eve change her inclination from good to bad? Fortunately for Eve, she cannot be guilty. She cannot be tho one who changed her inclination, because she didn't have the means. She didn't have the means because she didn't have a motive.

Eve was by the tree, contemplating whether she would change her inclination from good to bad. Her inclination at the time was good. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to change one's inclination from good to bad? For Eve to have ad her strongest inclination the inclination to change from good to bad, she would have to had to be bad. She couldn't have changed her own inclination any more than a leopard can change its spots or a good tree and bear bad fruit. We must excuse Eve from our investigation. Something outside of her must have been the agent of change, that which changed her inclination from good to bad. Though she was the one who first ate of the tree, she cannot be the one who introduced evil into the world.

To be continued...

The above quote was copied from the book
Almighty Over All, Understanding the Sovereignty of God
by R. C. Sproul Jr
Published by Baker Books