Eqbo - Why were Adam and Even cast away from Paradise ?

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Published at : September 22, 2021

This Eqbo asks a very interesting question.. സ്വന്തം തോട്ടത്തില്‍ നിങ്ങൾ എങ്ങനെയന്യന്മാരായി? How did you become strangers to your own Garden ? The only reason for me to upload this Eqbo was to try to answer it.
If we answer that with a very superficial knowledge of the Holy Bible, we may answer it as below:
- Adam and Even disobeyed God
- As punishment, God cast them out of the Garden of Eden, so that they won't eat from the Tree of Life.
- That is how they became strangers to their own Garden.
The problem with this oversimplified answer is that it portrays God as a vengeful God, whose punishment for just one disobedience is so harsh. That is the problem when we start interpreting scripture ourselves without relying on the Holy Fathers.
Let us see what Mor Aphrem the Syrian (AD 306 to AD 373) says about this:
"God did this, lest this life giving gift that they would receive through the tree of life become misery, and thus bring worse evil upon them than what they had already obtained from the tree of knowledge. From the tree of knowledge they obtained temporal pains, whereas the tree of life would have made those pains eternal. From the latter they obtained death which would cast off from them the bonds of pains. The tree of life, however would have caused them to live as if buried alive, leaving them to be tortured eternally by their pains. God therefore withheld from them the tree of life."
The above is an English translation. I have posted the Syriac Original on my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/malankara.syriac/photos/a.1647716502130994/3007109272858370/

You can see the very same theme in the writings of Mor Ireneous (AD130 to AD 202)
“Wherefore also God drove Adam out of Paradise, and removed Adam far from the tree of life, not because God envied Adam the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because God pitied Adam, and did not desire that Adam should continue a sinner forever, nor that the sin which surrounded Adam should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. But God set a bound to Adam's state of sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.”
In other words its the Love of God, that made Adam and Eve strangers in their own Garden... the true Love of God that wanted to ensure that Adam and Eve spend eternity in Theosis.
You can read more about my understanding of what I have learned from the Fathers on this by reading my following article:
https://sites.google.com/view/malankarasyriacorthodox/home/articles/original-sin-and-baptism Eqbo - Why were Adam and Even cast away from Paradise ?
Paradise