Paradise

How would the world have been if Adam&Eve had never eaten of the forbidden tree? That could have been because they had free will, right?! In his Cosmic Trilogy CS Lewis already speculated on unfallen worlds. God's plan for creation would have been fulfilled, but what was that plan actually? Let's try to speculate a bit ourselves on living in Paradise...

✓ To start with, we would all have been naked; man as a soul-unity of body and spirit doesn't have to hide certain parts. Clothes only became necessary to protect our personhood against objectivation. Our soul-body doesn't automatically point one to our spirit-soul anymore as the gigantic porn industry clearly shows. So much for the hippie ideal, LOL

✓ Secondly, there would have been no suffering, violence, diseases or disasters. God's essence is Love and out of Love He created a perfectly harmonious world. Would you want your loved ones to suffer? So God didn't order any 'struggle for existence' either, not for us and not for the lower creatures, whom St Francis also sees as our brothers and sisters. In short: ”God saw that [all of creation] was very good” (Gen 1:31).

NB natural events have no intrinsic morality: the sun can support life ánd can burn it or cause droughts; vulcanic eruptions and floods fertilize the earth ánd can cause destruction; earth quakes (the sliding along each other of tectonic plates) recycle minerals ánd can destroy, just as that forest fires recycle organic material. Their morality depends on their effect; in moderation (without causing suffering) those are all good things!

✓Thirdly, death wouldn't have existed; love's nature is to connect, is relationship and the separation of a loved-one (and her spirit-soul from her soul-body!) is a bad thing. Interestingly, scientists confirm there is no biological need for death. Multiple Bible verses equally express that death is a consequence of sin and not part of 'the Plan' [1 Prov 12:28 "On the road of justice is life; and on its path there is no death;" Jam 1:15 "Then when lust has conceived it generates sin: and sin completed generates death;" Rom 5:12 "And so, as through one man sin came into the world, and death through sin; and thus death is passed on to all mankind, so all have sinned;" Rom 8:22 "The whole creation moans and suffers still as in birth pangs;" 1 Kor 15:21 "That's why through man came death, through man also came the resurrection from death;" 1 Kor 15:26 "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death;" Isa 25:8 "He will swallow death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe the tears of all faces"].

The vegetarian diet prescribed to Adam&Eva (Gen 1:29) is another clue that animals didn't die; otherwise they could just as well have eaten them as God explicitly ordered Noah to do right after the Flood (Gen 9:3). 

NB would an absence of death not quickly have lead to overpopulation of the earth? Laudato Sí tells us that the current problems come from a widespread consumism and not from overpopulation. The earth can house a great multiple of the current amount of people if only we lived in harmony and peace with nature and with each other, in other words obedient to God's will (the actual starting point of this writing). At the end of times procreation, the conception of new people, would have ended (will end!) anyhow just as that a great but finite amount of angels exist (whether or not fallen), created before the start of time.

But didn't the Tree of Life stand in the middle of the Garden of Eden, next to the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of good and evil? Yes, but that doesn't mean that man had to eat from it. Wouldn't it be somewhat sadistic to put a forbidden tree next to THE tree that man would need?! And would he have needed anything but God alone?! So the Tree of Life could just have been there to distract from the temptations of the forbidden fruit, or even to heal its deadly effects! Adam&Eve were namely send away ”in order that they wouldn't also eat from the Tree of Life and live forever” (Gen 4:22; indicating that they didn't do it yet, right?).

♥ And what about the bond of Holy Matrimony, don't spouses promise to love each other "until death do us part"? So if no death, then no separation;-). The Woman was created as a "help fitting for Man" (Gen 2:18) so not in the first place for procreation, although that constitutes a prominent part of it. God namely told them (before the Fall) to be "fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28). Catholic marriages can even be annuled if one of the spouses is infertile?!

Yet I think it can be argued that original sin is connected to sexual procreation. God knows best how to regulate the amount of people, when it is good to procreate and when not, right? Man was told not to eat from the "Tree of Knowledge of good and evil." When they did "their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked" and they were ashamed (Gen 3:7). Doesn't this strongly suggest something sexual, the loss of childlike innocence? The sexual urge in man is strong and goes very deep, and seduces him to a multitude of sins of impurity, pornography, fornication (premarital sex) and adultery (abortion?!). And Eve's punishment was to receive and generate children in pain and to desire for her husband who would rule over her (Gen 3:16), another indication that the broken relationship between man and woman is of sexual origin. BTW to have sex in Genesis is to "know" a woman (4:1), to go “into her” (16:2, 19:31, 29:23), while God in Eden said that man would "attach" himself to his wife (Gen 2:24), a subtle difference! Remarkable further is that original sin is passed on from one generation to the other and that sins of a sexual nature play a prominent role in the story of the patriarchs (Noah's nudity, Abraham's impregnating his slave, Lot's incest, Juda’s prostitution, David's adultery, Salomo’s thousand wifes, King Ahab's and Samson's marriages with heathens). Moreover, the Jews have many ritual purity rules related to sexuality and the flow of blood (menstruation). In many oriental countries blood on the bed sheets still has to prove the virginity of the newly wed woman; not really a smart design that something must be broken to function, right? ;-)

On the other hand, Mary is "ever virgin" expressing her continuing wholeness (also during giving-birth?! CCC499); her marriage with Joseph was nevertheless valid as well without consummation. BTW ever wondered where the second half of Jesus’ DNA came from? He was called “the son of the carpenter” (Mat 13:55), who had “brothers and sisters” (Mark 6:3); it would have been a bit strange if God had used the DNA of an Aboriginal, African or Indian man, right?! To Joseph was entrusted the task of Caretaker (High Priest) of the Temple/Ark (Mary) who contained the Word of God (Christ); he was an ‘abba’ and example to the Son of God, who was obedient to Joseph and Mary for 30 years in Nazareth. Additionally, the places at Jesus’ "left and right hand in His Kingdom" (Mat 20:23) are well suited to "honor your father and your mother" (Ex 12:20), just as Matthew and Luke, respectievely, show Jesus’ fatherly (legal!) and motherly descent. From these  genealogies we can moreover deduce that sexual procreation in a 'fallen world' is not inherently sinful; just as the eating of meat (cf. Gen 9:3) it was blessed and even forms the backbone of Salvation History?!

† And what about Jesus, would the Word still have become Flesh in an unfallen world? No Saviour would have been needed, as expressed in the "Felix Culpa" from the Exultet of St Thomas Aquinas. Yet if that was what brought about the Incarnation, man would actually have been rewarded for sinning, right?! Moreover, man is made after the "Image of God" (Gen 1:27), just as that Genesis speaks about God "walking" in the garden of Eden (3:8). Couldn't that, at least in part, point at Jesus the God-Man born before all ages too? Then Jesus would have been born from Mary to become the Son of Man, our brother, irrespective of Adam&Eve's choice.

✓ The New Earth, to conclude, that we are promised (Rev 21:1, Isa 65:17, 2 Pet 3:13) will not just be a "restoration" (Acts 3:21) of Eden, but will contain unfathomable things (1 Cor 2:9). Similarly to the reasoning on the Incarnation above, this probably would have happened in any case at the end of times (of creating and testing mankind). We will have glorified, resurrected bodies, yet still recognisable to be ours (Christ’s wounds for example are still present). And as Jesus' apparitions weren't subject to the laws of nature, so we won't be anymore either (already indicated by ”the end of time”?!): no more need to eat or breath, having the ability to walk through doors, to travel instantaneously and to fly. Many saints however already showed similar abilities; combine that with Jesus' words "if you only had faith as big as a mustard seed..." (Mat 17:20) and we might suspect that these are 'only' restorations already in line with the laws of nature (ultimate "Quantum-Zeno effects;" see the post on Free Will)?!