My own thoughts were that God created Adam and Eve with the default position of being led by the Spirit -- essentially trusting God. Therefore, if they only trusted God's words, they would continue to move in the default motion according to God's will.
Even so, even if this is the case, it seems to me that they wouldn't be "automations" simply because they were led by the Spirit. Within the parameters of their actions they could still make many different choices, each guided by the Spirit's motion -- such as loving each other, eating food, partaking in fellowship with one another, etc.
In this sense, I'm not trying to suggest that Adam and Eve had no choices laid out before them. They could certainly choose from a variety of different paths all guided by the Spirit -- such as being a shepherd, or some kind of agricultural work, or even perhaps some kind of crastman, etc.
In other words, as the Scriptures quite plainly states, whatever you do, do it for the Lord. It comes by his Spirit
What would be restricted from their "default actions" would be anything which essentially broke the laws written upon the hearts of all people -- the commandments against lying, stealing or coveting for example.
So, to clarify this example, if one were to be a shepherd, that's a fine choice according to the freedom they have within the Spirit's motion -- they just wouldn't break the commandments when being a shepherd because that would go against the Spirit's motion.
As a default motion in the Spirit, so long as they trusted God, they would effectively continue to move in God's Spirit no matter what actions they might choose to do.
That they were not automations seems to be fairly evident by the fact that they could apparently choose to
not obey the Spirit at any given time -- effectively falling out of God's grace. In fact, in my own opinion anyway, it seems to me that Adam and Eve had already sinned well before they ever partook in the tree of the knowlege of good and evil.
Many people have speculated as to the reasons why God would have left Adam and Eve alone in the Garden. They think, "Why on earth would God leave them alone with the serpent?"
However, I would like to point out that, according to the Scriptures, God's eyes are apparently too pure to look on evil; he apparently cannot tolerate wrong. If he left, it seems to me that it was because Adam and Eve were already coveting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil well before they ate from it.
Isaiah 59:2 planely states, "But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear."
It seems resonable to me that God left Adam and Eve because iniquity was already found within them -- and since God cannot tolerate this his Spirit left their presence. In short, their iniquities had effectively separated them from God -- and they were no longer moving by God's Spirit during this time.
Many people have speculated at the meaning as to exactly what the tree of knowledge represented. For me the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is actually symbolic of the serpent that was "guarding" the tree. However, instead of "knowledge" I would prefer to use the word "experience".
In other words, the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil might be better translated as the tree of
experiencing good and evil -- with one half of the experience being something that they had formerly "known" about by the natural world around them but had not directly "experienced" in their own lives.
It's kind of like, in my opinion, watching children tragically starving on a Worldvision commercial -- but not having ever really known was it was like to actually be starving for food in real life. In other words, it seems to me that they were very much aware of the "knowledge" that things could go wrong around them -- and were very aware that this could happen to themselves -- but they never directly "experienced" the bad things they knew of.
In this sense, it seems to me that God allowed them just enough knowledge to know what
could go wrong without them having to directly suffer the consequences of
doing wrong themselves.
Or, in other words, it seems to me that it was a matter of trusting what God said over what they were tempting themselves to do.
If they simply continued to trust God (the default position), then they would be moved by the Spirit to immediately partake in the tree of life before the temptation to eat from the tree of "experiencing" good and evil took over. In short, they would have passed the test -- and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would have been cut off from therein.
If, however, they failed to trust God (the alternative position), then they would be moved by their own spirit (breaking the Spirit's motion within them) to eventually partake in the tree of "experiencing" good and evil before the Spirit's motion to eat from the tree of life was completed in them. In short, they would have failed the test, effectively cutting themselves off from the tree of life -- and according to the Scriptures, they did.
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