48 The Spiritual Man
God is that the human soul should receive and assimilate the truth
and substance of God’s spiritual life. He gave gifts to men in order
that man might take God’s knowledge and will as his own. If man’s
spirit and soul would maintain their created perfection, healthiness
and liveliness, his body would then be able to continue forever
without change. If he would exercise his will by taking and eating the
fruit of life, God’s Own life undoubtedly would enter his spirit,
permeate his soul, transform his entire inner man, and translate his
body into incorruptibility. He then would literally be in possession of
“eternal life.” In that event his soulical life would be filled
completely with spiritual life, and his whole being would be
transformed into that which is spiritual. Conversely, if the order of
spirit and soul would be reversed, then man would plunge into
darkness and the human body could not last long but would soon be
corrupted.
We know how man’s soul chose the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil rather than the tree of life. Yet is it not clear that God’s
will for Adam was to eat the fruit of the tree of life? Because before
He forbade Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil and
warned him that in the day he ate he should die (Gen. 2.17), He first
commanded man to eat freely of every tree of the garden and
purposely mentioned the tree of life in the midst of the garden. Who
can say that this is not so?
“The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil” uplifts the human
soul and suppresses the spirit. God does not forbid man to eat of this
fruit merely to test man. He forbids it because He knows that by
eating this fruit man’s soul life will be so stimulated that his spirit
life will be stifled. This means man will lose the true knowledge of
God and thus be dead to Him. God’s forbiddance shows God’s love.
The knowledge of good and evil in this world is itself evil. Such
knowledge springs from the intellect of man’s soul. It puffs up the
soul life and consequently deflates the spirit life to the point of losing
any knowledge of God, to the point of becoming as much as dead.