The Biblical Tree

No matter how the story of the Garden of Eden is told, the focus lands on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that meaning of that phrase (that Adam and Eve must not eat of that tree) is obscure; and it is not related to some translation judgment. The phrase is correctly translated, and  I think there is a profound message here.

The central idea is that having certainty of one's assessment of good and evil is impossible. When a human being defends his acts on the basis of KNOWLEDGE of good or evil, he is falsely judging his choice. The Garden parable suggests clearly that moral judgments may be based on outlook, prejudice, race, ethics, commands.......anything but knowledge. Every decision we make arises from our character; we are responsible; we cannot know that we are making the right choice. 

I think of the assessment of U.S. presidents: "we won't know whether he was a good president or not for fifty years."  Think of the bitter appraisal of  Lincoln's presidency that  prevailed through the rest of the 19th century, condemning his unwillingness to compromise, citing his opposition to the Dred Scott decision, deriding his bias toward Negro rights. It suggests that we are incapable of calculating the effects of our decisions.

In his book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, Michael Sandel proposes that we "do what is right."   The writers of the Garden parable would not disagree.  But they would emphatically add, "but don't suppose that you can be certainly right." Every decision is more a declaration of faith than a moral certainty

That is why we have the phrase "have the courage of your convictions." The courage to be is the beginning of our journey. The courage to act is a daily challenge.