Few stories have shaped our imagination of paradise more deeply than the Garden of Eden. Before expulsion there is no toil, no pain, no shame, and no death. The man and the woman live amid abundance, unburdened by the struggles that define ordinary human existence. Read in this way, Genesis 2–3 tells a familiar story: humanity begins in perfection and, through disobedience, falls into the difficult moral world we know.

Yet the narrative invites a less familiar question. Was Eden, before the eating of the forbidden fruit, also a place of ethical perfection? Or does Genesis distinguish innocence from the conditions required for mature moral relationships?

The question matters because Genesis describes the first human pair in a striking way. The man and the woman are together and “were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). The image is entirely positive. Nothing separates them. There is no concealment, embarrassment, anxiety, or fear.

But the absence of shame is not necessarily the same thing as the achievement of intimacy. One cannot overcome shame before shame is possible. Nor can one extend forgiveness where no injury has occurred, accept another’s vulnerability where vulnerability has not yet been experienced, or remain faithful when there has been no meaningful possibility of betrayal. Innocence may be morally unblemished precisely because it has not yet encountered the circumstances in which moral character becomes necessary.

This distinction becomes more significant when we consider what Genesis does, and does not, say about the relationship between the man and the woman before the transgression. The man recognizes the woman as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23), an extraordinary declaration of likeness and belonging. The narrator then........

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