From Cornwell's bio of JPII:
The Fall of Adam and Eve, as it is understood in Catholic orthodoxy, was the result of illicit cravings in three areas of human activity: in knowledge, in stewardship of the earth, and in sexuality.
I tend to forget about illicit knowledge craving. Clarity in matters theological is a gift, not a right, especially when we see St. Paul himself said we look through a glass darkly. In Boswell's Johnson, the great man was completely tongue-tied when it came to reconciling free will and God's sovereignty. It always comes down to a naked trust in God doesn't it? Jesus trusted the Father even as he pondered the bitter taste of the God-willed crucifixion, while Adam & Eve did not trust as they contemplated the sweet taste of the God-forbidden fruit.
Concerning theological enlightenment, JPII believed like St. John of the Cross that "suffering, doubt, and prayer can lead to an infusion of divine knowledge. As the late Cardinal John Krol would say admiringly of JPII, 'He studied theology on his knees.'"
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Another interesting passage from Cornwell:
What gave [Tymieniecka's & Wojtyla's] philosophical exchanges a sense of exhilaration was the political and social relevance that had inspired his earlier philosophical model, Max Scheler. Wojtyla was in conflict with a totalitarian tyranny in which individual self-determination had been suppressed and denied. Together with Tymieniecka, he was exploring the scope of self-determination as well as its limits. For a society that stresses self-determination without social cooperation is equally doomed. Was America and the capitalist West a culture of malevolent individualism?...Tymieniecka was hard-pressed, she tells us, to persuade him that America was not a country of greed, selfishness and hedonism.
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