Man's Free Will in the Garden of Eden?

In this blog below is a response I had given today to a friend who is strongly opposed to man's 'Free Will' as seen in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

 

Johnny Soporno Larry makes an interesting point!

The 'Gift of Free Will' was unrealized by Mankind, who had been kept enslaved by God as docile and unreasoning/uncritical pets, in the Garden of Eden - given the freedom to do all they pleased, providing they didn't engage their 'Free Will'... (After all, there was only *ONE WAY* to experience free will, and that was to eat the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge!)

You'll remember, Lucifer got himself booted out of God's good books for complaining that Humans has this potential for Free Will (despite their unwillingness to utilize it) by alerting Eve to this truth...

Free Will, the application of which got Adam & Eve chucked out of Paradise, and condemned their entire breed to damnation from that point forward...

Anyway, Man is commanded by God to drink alcohol, and forbidden by God to have anything other than unprotected sex, so essentially the only way to defend oneself is to operate OUTSIDE God's boundaries, no?

Jerry Douglas Sheppard Johnny, you make an interesting point about man's free will. However, I disagree with your conclusion about the matter. Man was never "kept enslaved by God as docile and unreasoning/uncritical pets, in the Garden of Eden. That's a gross exaggeration. God did give us a brain to think and reason with. The truth is God gave man the "gift of free will" for a reason. Not for enslavement as you suggested, but for the freedom to choose. Everyday we all make decisions based on the freedom of our will to choose. However, there are consequences associated with the choices we make in life. For example, If I choose to shoplift at some store and get caught in the act, and end up going to court to suffer the consequences. Remember, I made the choice according to my free will to do so. It was a bad choice on my part. However, if I exercise my free will to help a friend who is in desperate financial need. I chose to do so, which is a good use of my free will. So in referring to God "chucking" Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and suffering the consequence of their choice they had made as being somehow unfair of God to do that. Not so my friend. To begin with, Adam and Eve's free will was already in operation before they chose to eat the forbidden fruit.

This of course leads me to the rest of the point you had made: “given the freedom to do all they pleased, providing they didn't engage their 'Free Will'... (After all, there was only *ONE WAY* to experience free will, and that was to eat the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge!)” Your statement, “given the freedom to do all they pleased” is a contradiction, because you are assuming Adam and Eve never “engaged their ‘Free Will’...” and then you added that “there was only ONE WAY to experience free will,...was to eat the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge!)”  You argue that Adam and Eve had “the freedom to do all they pleased,” but on the other hand, you say they never “engaged their ‘Free Will’” and that “there was only ONE WAY to experience free will” and that was to partake of the forbidden fruit that God had warned them not to eat of. Do you not see the contradiction in your statement here? The fact Adam and Eve had “the freedom to do all they pleased” in the Garden of Eden clearly indicates by your own admission that they had free will. For example, Adam and Eve by the exercise of their ‘Free Will’ could choose to eat of the number of other fruits available to them on the various trees in the Garden of Eden.

God’s command for Adam and Eve to not eat the ‘Forbidden Fruit’ from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil (see Genesis 2:9, 15-16) was a test to see if man would freely choose to love God by obeying His command. “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (John 14:23). Man was not made for himself, he was made for God. He owes his existence to God period. “Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his...” (Psalm 100:3). If man can convince himself that God does not exist, then he is not responsible to Him. Apart from God, man seeks to set himself up as god.