While there are seemingly two places where Adam and Eve fail (they disobeyed God’s explicit command and they didn’t await God’s gift of knowledge), here awaiting grace takes precedence. The cosmic repercussions that God declares in Genesis 3 is not so much because a divine command was violated, but because what was meant to be a gift was not patiently awaited, and was taken without grace.
The reason for my apotheosis of grace (in contradistinction to an "apotheosis of nomos,” to borrow Taubes’ phrase) is that, not only is awaiting grace a posture that implies a more radical trust in God (that God’s grace instead of our obedience to God’s particular commands will save us), it also relieves us of the impossible task of explicating God’s commands and rigorously following them (not to mention the terrible possibility of our declaring God’s will and enforcing it).
With this approach, God’s commands, or laws, such as the prohibition to Adam in GENESIS 2:16-17, take place within the grace movement (Adam was, after all, already graced with life at this point and called to grace others), and as such they are defined by it, or for it, and are fulfilled with its completion, so that as long as we remain faithful to God in the more radical sense of awaiting grace, the law will be upheld whether we can cite it or not.
Now, this isn’t to say that obeying the law isn’t important, but only that it is secondary to, and defined by, a greater responsibility, which the law is designed to help us meet, even as, once given to us, the law becomes an occassion for sin, a possible idol. Our greatest responsibility, which voids the idolatrous potential of the law even as it fulfills God’s particular commands, whatever they may be, is to await grace. The law can be set aside; it is not necessary. All that is necessary is that we take only when given, and only what’s been given. All that is necessary is that we await this saving grace through death itself, if that’s our fate.