The first human approach to knowledge was to attempt to know the essence of all things on our own, apart from obedience to God, apart from the help of God — to know the good and evil of all things. Therefore we come now to the final consequence of this process, which is as it must be, all out war with God. For even though it is only God's mercy that continues to sustain our existence, we make war with God, now in every way we can, trying ourselves to be God.
Our approach to knowledge in the Garden of Eden was to attempt to be the great hero for all creation, to obtain the essence of all knowledge, to know the good and evil of all things, on our own, to take responsibility to give eternal perfection to all creation. This is the way that seemed right to us but its end is death.We have been following this way that leads to death ever since. We cannot correct ourselves from this action, from this process of seeking by means of our own intellect alone to possess the knowledge of the essence of all things, the good and evil of all creation, the knowledge that we think contains all wisdom and understanding. We cannot correct ourselves from trying to make our own intellect the God and Master of all things. We cannot change ourselves from being what we have made ourselves to be: the thieves of Divine understanding. We have destroyed ourselves. But there is One whose love sustains us despite ourselves.
How has this One sustained us? He has transformed the knowledge of good and evil into that which transcends itself. What does this mean? He has revealed His own understanding of good and evil, the understanding of good and evil which is possessed by the Creator, which transcends the knowledge of good and evil which has destroyed our intellect. This is His wisdom to reveal this higher Divine understanding.
In acquiring in the isolation of our own intellect the knowledge of the essence of all creation, the good and evil of all creation we acquired the knowledge of the essence of ourselves and ourselves knowing ourselves in isolation in endless reduction. We have made our knowledge of ourselves to be infinitely alone. We have destroyed ourselves through endlessly knowing ourselves knowing ourselves, with no escape of knowing ourselves through God, through God's knowing us. For we rejected God's knowledge of us by disobeying His commandment and eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, attempting to acquire all knowledge with our own intellect alone.
Now God has revealed the hope of our salvation in revealing His own understanding in His own wisdom as the Creator of the good and evil of all creation, including His creation of Adam. In this His revelation of His own mind, He has attached us to Himself. Only by being and by remaining attached to Him through His revelation can we be saved from the death of our lonely self-knowledge, caught in the hell of infinite endless reduction. This revelation from God is His revelation of the Anointed One of Israel.
