Fall of man

God created man purposively and endowed him with the capacities to fulfil his ends. These capacities or capabilities were crowned by a will that was free to pursue the spiritual purposes of the creation. Man's intellect, though enriched with supernatural graces, was nonetheless subordinated to spiritual willing, so that the end or good to which his life tended by providence was not consciously known. Man, however, chose to subordinate the unconscious accord of human and divine will by acquiring knowledge or consciousness of this divine good or end, symbolized by his eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was the knowledge that, as the Old Testament phrases it, man could be as a god: that is, autonomous and creative, embracing the earth and reaching heavenwards into space with his own works. The pride in the realization of the power of such science or gnosis caused the separation or estrangement, from the providential purposes, between humans and the Creator. Man's judgement entered into considerations as to how the human potential could be realized apart from an Edenic dependency. As man freely chose independence and consciousness of his own nature, he lost his state of grace. This included his mystical or unconsciously intuitive knowledge of nature which had also afforded him relief from the necessity of economic activity. His Fall cut off both his mental communion with animals and nature, and with his own unconscious, and hence, with his consciousness of God.