The Trees of Life and Knowledge

19. To those who say that the enjoyment of the good things we look for will again consist in meat and drink, because it is written that by these means man at first lived in Paradise.

But some one perhaps will say that man will not be returning to the same form of life, if, as it seems, we formerly existed by eating, and shall hereafter be free from that function. I, however, when I hear the Holy Scripture, do not understand only bodily meat, or the pleasure of the flesh; but I recognize another kind of food also, having a certain analogy to that of the body, the enjoyment of which extends to the soul alone: “Eat of my bread” (Prov. 9:5; Amos 8:11), is the bidding of Wisdom to the hungry; and the Lord declares those blessed who hunger for such food as this, and says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink”; and “drink ye joy” (cf. Is. 7:3) is the great Isaiah’s charge to those who are able to hear his sublimity. There is a prophetic threatening also against those worthy of vengeance, that they shall be punished with famine; but the “famine” is not a lack of bread and water, but a failure of the word—“not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.”

We ought, then, to conceive that the fruit in Eden was something worthy of God’s planting (and Eden is interpreted to mean “delight”), and not to doubt that man was hereby nourished; nor should we at all conceive, concerning the mode of life in Paradise, this transitory and perishable nutriment: “of every tree of the garden,” He says, “thou mayest freely eat” (Gen. 2:16).

Who will give to him that has a healthful hunger that tree that is in Paradise, which includes all good, which is named “every tree,” in which this passage bestows on man the right to share? For in the universal and transcendent saying every form of good is in harmony with itself, and the whole is one. And who will keep me back from that tasting of the tree which is of mixed and doubtful kind? For surely it is clear to all who are at all keen-sighted what that “every” tree is whose fruit is life, and what again that mixed tree is whose end is death. for He Who presents ungrudgingly the enjoyment of “every” tree, surely by some reason and forethought keeps man from participation in those which are of doubtful kind.

It seems to me that I may take the great David and the wise Solomon as my instructors in the interpretation of this text: for both understand the grace of the permitted delight to be one—that very actual Good, which in truth is “every” good—David, when he says, “Delight thou in the Lord” (Ps. 37:4), and Solomon, when he names Wisdom herself (which is the Lord) “a tree of life” (Prov. 3:18).

Thus the “every” tree of which the passage gives food to him who was made in the likeness of God, is the same with the tree of life; and there is opposed to this tree another tree, the food given by which is the knowledge of good and evil—not that it bears in turn as fruit each of these things of opposite significance, but that it produces a fruit blended and mixed with opposite qualities, the eating of which the Prince of Life forbids, and the serpent counsels, and he may prepare an entrance for death; and he obtained credence for his counsel, covering over the fruit with a fair appearance and the show of pleasure, that it might be pleasant to the eyes and stimulate the desire to taste.

20. What was the life in Paradise, and what was the forbidden tree?

What then is that which includes the knowledge of good and evil blended together, and is decked with the pleasures of sense? I think I am not aiming wide of the mark in employing, as a starting-point for my speculation, the sense of “knowable” [cf. Gen. 2:9 LXX: “the tree of learning the knowledge of good and evil”]. It is not, I think, “science” which the Scripture here means by “knowledge”; but I find a certain distinction, according to Scriptural use, between “knowledge” and “discernment”; for to “discern” skillfully the good from the evil, the Apostle says is a mark of a more perfect condition and of “exercised senses” (cf. Heb. 5:14), for which reason also he bids us “prove all things” (1 Thess. 5:21), and says that “discernment” belongs to the spiritual man (cf. 1 Cor. 2:15): but “knowledge” is not always to be understood of skill and acquaintance with anything, but of the disposition towards what is agreeable—as “the Lord knoweth them that are His” (2 Tim. 2:19); and He says to Moses, “I knew thee above all” (Ex. 33:12 LXX); while of those condemned in their wickedness He Who knows all things says, “I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23).

The tree, then, from which comes this fruit of mixed knowledge, is among those things which are forbidden; and that fruit is combined of opposite qualities, which has the serpent to commend it, it may be for this reason, that the evil is not exposed in its nakedness, itself appearing in its own proper nature—for wickedness would surely fail of its effect were it not decked with some fair color to entice to the desire of it him whom it deceives—but now the nature of evil is in a manner mixed, keeping destruction like some snare concealed in its depths, and displaying some phantom of good in the deceitfulness of its exterior. The beauty of the substance seems good to those who love money: yet “the love of money is a root of all evil” (1 Tim: 6:10): and who would plunge into the unsavory mud of wantonness, were it not that he whom this bait hurries into passion thinks pleasure a thing fair and acceptable? So, too, the other sins keep their destruction hidden, and seem at first sight acceptable, and some deceit makes them earnestly sought after by unwary men instead of what is good.

Now since the majority of men judge the good to lie in that which gratifies the senses, and there is a certain identity of name between that which is, and that which appears to be “good”—for this reason that desire which arises towards what is evil, as though towards good, is called by Scripture “the knowledge of good and evil”; “knowledge,” as we have said, expressing a certain mixed disposition. It speaks of the fruit of the forbidden tree not as a thing absolutely evil (because it is decked with good), nor as a thing purely good (because evil is latent in it), but as compounded of both, and declares that the tasting of it brings to death those who touch it; almost proclaiming aloud the doctrine that the very actual good is in its nature simple and uniform, alien from all duplicity or conjunction with its opposite, while evil is many-colored and fairly adorned, being esteemed to be one thing and revealed by experience as another, the knowledge of which (that is, its reception by experience) is the beginning and antecedent of death and destruction.

It was because he saw this that the serpent points out the evil fruit of sin, not showing the evil manifestly in its own nature (for man would not have been deceived by manifest evil), but giving to what the woman beheld the glamor of a certain beauty, and conjuring into its taste the spell of a sensual pleasure, he appeared to her to speak convincingly: “and the woman saw,” it says, “that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes to behold, and fair to see; and she took of the fruit thereof and did eat” (Gen. 3:5-6 LXX), and that eating became the mother of death to men. This, then, is that fruit-bearing of mixed character, where the passage clearly expresses the sense in which the tree was called “capable of the knowledge of good and evil,” because, like the evil nature of poisons that are prepared with honey, it appears to be good in so far as it affects the senses with sweetness: but in so far as it destroys him who touches it, it is the worst of all evil. Thus when the evil poison worked its effect against man’s life, then man, that noble thing and name, the image of God’s nature, was made, as the prophet says, “like unto vanity” (Ps. 144:4 LXX).

The image, therefore, properly belongs to the better part of our attributes; but all in our life that is painful and miserable is far removed from the likeness to the Divine.

*From the treatise On the Making of Man, translated by William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson in NPNF Series 2, pp. 409-410.