how great an evil disobedience is in itself, than that the man became guilty of
Book VIII 363
On the command given to Adam
13, 28. And the Lord God commandedAdam, saying: From every tree that is in Paradise you shall eatforfood; butfrom the tree ofgetting to know good and evilyou all shall not take a bitefrom it; but on the day you all eatfrom it, you all shall die the death (Gn 2: 1 61 7). If that tree had been something evil which God was putting out of bounds to the man, then it would appear that his death was due to poison by the nature of that evil. But because the one who had made all things very good (Gn 1:31) had planted nothing but good trees in Paradise, nor was there anything there that was evil by nature, because there is nothing evil by nature anywhere (we shall discuss this more thoroughly, if the Lord so wishes, when we come to talk about that serpent), that tree, which was not evil, was put out of bounds to him, so that the very keeping of the commandment might be what was good for him, and its transgression what was bad.
29. Nor could there have been a better and more effective demonstration of how great an evil disobedience is in itself, than that the man became guilty of wickedness for the simple reason that he touched the thing he had been forbidden to, when if it had not been forbidden and he had touched it, that would certainly not have been a sin. I mean, ifsomeone says, for example, "Don't touch this plant," he is warning you of death ifyou do touch it, because it happens to be poisonous; so death indeed will follow if you ignore the command; but you would also die of course ifyou touched it without anyone having told you not to. The thing would in itself, after all, be a danger to health and life, whether you were warned off it or not.
Again, take someone forbidding something to be touched, because it would be against his interests, not those of anyone who did touch it; so if anybody laid hands on another person' s property after being forbidden by that person to do so, this would indeed be a sin on his part, because it would harm the one who told him not to. But when something is touched which would harm neither the one touching it if it were not forbidden, nor anybody else whenever it might be touched, for what other reason can it have been forbidden, but to demonstrate that obedience in itself is a good thing and disobedience is in itself an evil?
30. Finally, the sinner was aiming at nothing else but not to be under God as his Lord and master, when he committed an act where the only reason to be attended to for not committing it was the command of his Lord and master. Ifthis were all that was attended to, what else would he be attending to but God's will? What else but God' s will would he be loving? What else but God' s will would he be preferring to a human will? The Lord indeed will have seen why he gave the order; what he ordered is to be done by the servant, and then perhaps he too may deserve to see why the order was given. But still, to avoid spending any more time looking for the reason for this order, if serving God is in itself of great benefit to humanity, simply by giving an order God makes whatever he wishes