ectypal.net

That Adam’s merit is covenantal, rather than simplistically natural, is obvious from the fact that Adam’s success depended most pointedly or most concretely upon passing his probation concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Even though that probationary command circumscribes and encompasses Adam’s natural obligations by focusing them into a concrete expression, no explanation reasonably accounts for the tree of knowledge as the probationary fulcrum apart from a positive command that cannot be reduced to the sheer natural relation between God and his image-bearing creature....The natural law did not intrinsically forbid eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.