Give Me Liberty or Give Me a Piece of Fruit?
             The Liberty (or Lack Thereof) of Adam and Eve
             Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. -Milton, Areopagitica, 1644
             If we are to take any one moral from Milton's Paradise Lost, it might very well be that human beings must always be obedient to God. However, the term obedience implies the ability to make a choice. After all, if men are not free to decide to be obedient, then it is really not obedience at all but the only natural state that mankind can achieve. In order to support the moral that all sentient beings must be obedient to God, then we must accept that God created all sentient beings with free will. God says, "I form'd them free, and free they must remain, till they enthrall themselves" (III.123).
             Freedom has only one condition in the paradise of Eden-to be obedient to God's will. Adam and Eve were instructed not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Except for this single prohibition, they were indeed free. Or where they?
             In the Garden, the archangel Raphael explains to Adam that man might someday purify their bodies into spirit, meaning that humans might one day evolve into something more akin to the angels. However, Raphael does condition the possibility. He tells Adam that his obedience is required in order for it to happen. Adam asks about obedience, and Raphael tells him, "Our voluntary service he requires...freely we serve, because freely we love" (V.529-540).
             God's justice depends upon the freedom of his rational creatures. This can be a troublesome declaration because embedded in the notion of freedom is the ability to disobey. So given that God gave us our ability to disobey, then it can be stated that God in ultimately responsible for man's disobedience. If mankind is constituted in such a way that they cannot act contrary to God's commands, there can be no virt...