Until their fateful encounter with the snake, Adam and Eve avoided several errors that plague the human race to this day. They did not posit a false ontological similarity between themselves and God, nor did they assume an absolute ontological dissimilarity with God. They did not presume an independent and transcendent rationality to which they and God were both accountable. They rejected secularity, which would leave some aspects of existence devoid of God’s care or accountability. They did not presume an objective or neutral posture apart from the covenant, as if anything lacked divine interpretation. They did not assume a critical or skeptical stance before God and hold him to account. They did not embrace instrumentalism, whereby knowledge exists for pragmatic purposes alone or for the manipulation of the divine. (Such a Mind as This, 41–42)