The "What if" question is always intriguing, but also always unanswerable. We're into pure imagination whenever we try to go there. Fascinating to think about, frustrating to never come to reliable conclusion. No harm in wondering, though. We just can't go anywhere with it.

> The tree wasn't to give them a choice, but to establish boundaries.

Given my consequentialist mindset, I'm curious what would have happened if God hadn't established boundaries.

Great question. I had to confer with some OT scholars in case I flubbed here, and it seems that I have. So I'll need to backtrack a little bit and eat some crow. Although they didn't live in the Garden, and it probably was a dangerous world in general fraught with many perils, only those things that went against the command of God would have been authentic rebellion. Since the statement to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it was a blessing (not a command), that wouldn't have been a possible point of rebellion. The direct command they had was not to eat from the Tree.

Now, as I've also said, the tree represented wisdom and their ability to decide. God had established order in his way—what Genesis 1 is about. When they took the fruit, that was a statement that "we want to order the world the way *we* want to order it. "We want to be the center of order." The tree wasn't to give them a choice, but to establish boundaries. It's wasn't just rebellion, but orienting themselves as sovereign. It was a departure from what God had ordered.

> It doesn't prove that at all. The opportunities for rebellion were all around them, just as they are for us. Our choices are innumerable.

I'll acknowledge your point here. According to this source (https://discourse.biologos.org/t/our-odd-view-of-the-tree-of-knowledge/35612), Adam and Eve could have rebelled by not multiplying, not subduing the Earth, or not taking care of the garden. However, since the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil wasn't necessary to give the couple a choice to rebel, why create the tree in the first place? To create a symbol for human choice? If so, why was such a symbol necessary?

You are so quick to condemn God.

It doesn't prove that at all. The opportunities for rebellion were all around them, just as they are for us. Our choices are innumerable. You seem to have a picture of a pristine paradise where all is sunshine and roses, and in the middle is this beautiful tree that God has forbidden. Not so.

There is no indication that A&E lived in the Garden of Eden. Eden was where they met with God. A&E were archetypes of all humanity (not allegories, not metaphors...), representing the race. They were so typical of homo sapiens that we can deduce that whatever they did could easily be what any human would do given the same circumstances. They were brought into the garden so God would meet with them, be their God, and teach them about himself and about sacred space. Their role and function was to care for sacred space (Gn. 2.15: "work it" and "take care of it" were priestly terms, not agricultural ones). They could come into the Garden at any time, and it would be the locus of their relationship with God. There is no magic in Eden. It was not a place where they passed their time in idyllic and uninterrupted bliss with not demands or their daily schedule. Instead, they were participating with God in the ongoing task of sustaining the equilibrium God had established in the cosmos (Gn. 1.28b).

But as far as we know, they lived out in the big bad world, full of danger, difficulties, and potential distresses (Gn. 2.5-7).

It is immediately after we read that God ordained them as priests to care for sacred space (very similarly to the book of Leviticus, and yet pertaining to the earth, not just a building and its courts) that we read about the tree, so we have to look at the context and the point at hand to discern the meaning.

God's world is one of abundant blessings, magnanimous gifts, and access to His presence. But it is also a place of choices (and therefore ineluctably dangers), since we are free agents and are not divine. The tree symbolizes those choices. The opportunity for disobedience lurked around every corner. It's part of life. This tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the one God told them represented their right to decide. God's care for them was overwhelmingly extravagant, and what he desired for them was life (keep eating from that tree). But he also warned them that if they chose against Him, there would be inevitable natural consequences to their choice. But, as God said, they were free.

There is nothing in the prohibition that suggests God set them up. There is nothing to suggest he wanted them to fail. There is nothing to suggest he had to manufacture a rule just to create an opportunity for rebellion.

> It was wrong only because it was forbidden, not because it contained harmful properties.

Which only proves that God had to manufacture a rule just to create an opportunity for rebellion.

Stepping on the surface of the moon was one small step for man, but a large step for mankind. Insignificant events can be indicators of a much larger picture. John Calvin writes, "Why was the tree forbidden to man? Not because God would have him to stray like a sheep, without judgment and without choice; but that he might not seek to be wiser than became him, nor by trusting to his own understanding, cast off the yoke of God, and constitute himself an arbiter and judge of good and evil." The tree represented obedience or rebellion. It was wrong only because it was forbidden, not because it contained harmful properties. Peter Grieg writes, "Right at the heart of the creation story, we see God establishing this principle of free will by planting a tree from which Adam and Eve were not to eat. In so doing, we understand that God created for them the dangerous possibility of disobedience in order to create the higher possibility of voluntary submission."

> People feel that Donald Trump being elected president is a portent of our country going down the tubes. He symbolizes something evil to them. People consider that If Kim Jong Un fires a missile at Guam he will have "crossed a line in the sand" that has devastating symbolic meaning. Hey, it's just a small island, so why should we care? Because it's a symbol of something far more ominous. I disagree with you that symbolism alone isn't a sufficient reason.

Certain people are afraid that Donald Trump's attitude and policies will lead to America's downfall, so they want him impeached to save our country. If Kim Jong Un fires a missile at Guam, then it means he is growing aggressively bolder and we must take action before he can do further harm. In both cases, it's an issue of preventing negative consequences. Since the forbidden fruit didn't contain harmful properties, why prohibit Adam and Eve from consuming it?

> Why do you think this is true?

Because it's how love works. Love means vulnerability. It has nothing at all to do with omnipotence. God's omnipotence is the power to accomplish what he purposes. Love is a different dynamic subject to different praxes.

> I said planned.

God's foreknowledge doesn't necessitate that he planned, i.e., determined, what will take place. He knows it because he can see it, not because he caused it or planned it.

> Good bye science.

You think humanity as robots would be a better world?

> Logic still exist

Au contraire, mon frère. If I can't legitimate weigh options, consider various courses, think through pros and cons, or infer the most reasonable decision, there is no such thing as reason. I am an automaton, not intelligent, not able to reason, not able to think. All is determined and I am merely a cog in the wheel of time.

> I would argue that the two are equivalent.

Then you and I disagree. There is one thing to feeling a lack; it's another to be satisfied and desiring even more of the joy.

> I would argue that it is the only way to do things given the premise of omnipotent and perfect God

You seem to give an outrageous capability to omnipotence. You want God to take away your free will, science, your ability to reason, and your ability to experience life. You want either Adam or Eve to kill Jesus, as if that would make everything all right. Obviously not, because Jesus was killed 2000 years ago, and many people still scorn him, refusing to come into relationship with him. What's really to be accomplished by slam bam boom done. If you think that would somehow keep subsequent history from corruption, you're not realistically looking at the last 2000 years, or even the last 100. I don't quite know where to go from here. We obviously see things radically differently.

> I would argue that it is the only way to do things given the premise of omnipotent and perfect God

This is very incorrect. Honest scholarship starts with the text and tries to understand it. We have to follow truth where it leads. Starting with a premise that it has to make sense is starting with a bias, and trying to reconcile every seemingly contradictory point as a premise is to approach the text with a slant and an agenda. That's not scholarship.

> Love means vulnerability. When you choose to love a free agent, you open yourself up. It's not a logical necessity that an omnipotent being, who is also omniscient, and who is also love is never going to get hurt because of that love.

Why do you think this is true? I can see how this is true for us non-omnipotent beings, but for an omnipotent being like God?

> I am suggesting that God is omniscient and stands outside of time. He could see it before it happened, but he didn't plan it. Knowledge isn't causative...

I didn't say anything about causation. I said planned. I know something is going to happen, doesn't imply I am causing that something.

> For God to zap away all physical problems would be a complete abrogation of science.

Then so be it. Good bye science.

> And if nothing were predictable, there wouldn't be such a thing as reason.

That doesn't follow. Logic still exist, we've already established earlier that God's omnipotence does not extend to square circles.

> I don't mean satisfied in the sense of "less than fully complete," but in the sense of desiring more.

I would argue that the two are equivalent. If you can love your spouse more, then you weren't loving your spouse fully. Progressing to an even richer and more fulfilling implies a less rich and less fulfilling relationship before.

>the person had to die as an innocent, who's going to take his life if there are only 2 people?

One of the 2 obviously.

> you missed the point of the Bible tracing through history...

That's the point, all of that can be missed, had Jesus paid the wages of sin there and then. It is a complete waste of time. There would not have been any reason to see things differently through life experience and history, had sin became an non-issue immediately after the fall.

> bam here, boom there, no waiting, no considering, just slam bam boom. That's no way to do things.

Why not? I would argue that it is the only way to do things given the premise of omnipotent and perfect God. Such a being does not and cannot compromise.

> No, I used scholarship...

Except said scholarship starts with the premise that the Bible has to make sense as a whole and every seemingly contradictory point can and should be reconciled.