Mark said (a bunch of comments ago, not sure which number it is)

Do egalitarians believe…
1. That women only were under men because of the fall. Pre-fall they were totally equal.
2. With the new covenant of Christ, women were redeemed from the curses of Gen 3, therefore we are again all equal in every aspect of life? Help please!

Answer:
1. God never mandated that women were to be under men either before or after the fall. Men and women have always been equal and even in the future in the coming kingdom men and women will rule together.

2. Women had no curse place on them. In fact neither did man, however God did curse the earth because of Adam’s sin. In the new covenant, God is working from the inside out freeing the last vestiges of man’s tradition.

Thanks for asking these questions! I do appreciate your input also. It is so good to have someone questioning what we (I) believe in a respectful fashion. Mark you are appreciated!

I am heading out on the next leg of my trip to Pennsylvania. If you don’t hear from me for awhile, this is why. I will try to pop in now and again and will be back by next Wednesday for sure.

Kay,
Yes it does surprise people to see that only two things were cursed. For those who still resist, I ask them to look at the words “because you have done this” in Genesis 3:14 and “Because you have…” in Genesis 3:17. I ask them to show me where God said to Eve that anything is being done because of what she did. It isn’t there.

Kay, excellent example.

162 Mark,

I am still concerned from what you wrote in relation to your doctrine of adam and eves sin if im going to be honest. I’m failing to see how you hold to Eve being a sinner and yet say “At the time that she ate she fully believed that there was no command that brought death…Eve now believed that what she was doing was a good thing and not a disobedient thing.”

There is a lot of Eve ‘believed’ this and that in what you are saying. Is this not equally reading into the text?

I do not believe that this is reading into the text and the reason is because we are told that Eve was fully and completely deceived. So let’s take the time to ask ourselves what she was deceived about? Let’s take this passage apart piece by piece to understand Eve’s deception.

Gen 3:4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!

The first thing that Eve was deceived about was that she would not die from eating the fruit. God had said that she would die if she ate the fruit, but the serpent said that she would surely not die! Because she believed the lie, she would of necessity no longer believe that there was a consequence to eating the fruit since death was the only consequence that God gave them.

Gen 3:5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Here the serpent tells her what “God knows”. God knows, he said, that you won’t die but He knows that you will be like Him if you at the fruit. This is what Eve believed. She believed that God knew more than He had been telling them. His “scare tactic” was that they would die if they ate the fruit, but the “real” truth was that they would be given the key to be equal to God. Eve believed this. And believing the lie she not only believed that there was no bad consequence for eating the fruit, but there was a huge prize awaiting her if she would just reach out and touch and eat. We know this because she was deceived by the lie and we know what the lie was.

Gen 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,

Eve was deceived by the appearance of the beauty fruit and she was deceived to believe that beauty was equal to “good for food” even though God said that the fruit that they were allowed to eat came from fruit trees that had seed bearing fruit. Since we know for sure from the Scripture that God gave Adam and Eve permission to eat from every tree that had seed-bearing fruit (Gen. 1:29), and since we know from chapter 2 that there was only one tree that they were forbidden to eat from, we can be certain that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not have seed-bearing fruit. So no matter how beautiful the fruit looked, we know that Eve was deceived to believe that this fruit was “good for food” when it was not good for food.

Gen 3:6 …and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit

Eve was fully deceived to believe that the fruit from this tree was “desirable”. This was a passionately desirable thing because it would give her something that was desirable.

Gen 3:6 …she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

The term “gave” means to present to someone something as a present or a payment. We know for a fact that Eve was fully deceived and she believed the serpent. Her actions after she was deceived was to offer her good fortune to her husband as a gift to him.

So what do we know for sure from the text? We know for sure what Eve believed because she was deceived to believe what the serpent was saying. Since the serpent contradicted God and Eve believed the serpent, we can know that she stopped believing what God said was true. There may be more that Eve believed but anything that we could add to her belief that is not in the text would be reading into the text.

In choosing to believe the tempter over God, she rejected God-that is the essence of sin.

I think that is a leap from the known to the unknown. The text doesn’t say that she rejected God. What we do know is that she believed the serpent’s word that she would be Elohim. The term “like” isn’t actually in the text. The literal Hebrew says that she will be Elohim (God). It is a grammatical plural so it implies that she will be what God is. She isn’t so much rejecting Him as wanting to stand there right beside Him, in essence she would be just as He is.

She had 2 choices, what God told and what the serpent told her, in choosing one, she rejected the other.

You are right in that to believe one means not to believe the other, but there is a huge difference in not believing God and outright rejecting Him. After all if she wanted to be God alongside Him, how was that outright rejecting Him? After all they were going to be buddies, right? Side by side gods at that!

I cant help but feel you are watering this down. Maybe i am misunderstanding you, i dont know. Are you saying Eve accidently sinned?

I am not watering down her sin. She absolutely sinned. And she suffered the consequences of her sin. But her sin was a result of being taken captive by the enemy without her even knowing that he was the enemy. Paul brings out this point when he writes:

2 Cor 11:3 But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

Eve was “led astray” into sin. She did not conceive of her sin by herself as Adam did. She was roped into sin and dragged there by having her mind taken over by an expert liar.

The fact is that God has made a difference between unintentional sin and defiant sin.

Num 15:28 ‘The priest shall make atonement before the LORD for the person who goes astray when he sins unintentionally, making atonement for him that he may be forgiven.

Num 15:30 ‘But the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.

Let’s look again at Eve’s sin. What did God curse because of her sin? God cursed the earth because of Adam’s sin but He did not curse anything on behalf of Eve’s sin. For some reason we have been deceived to believe that God treats all sin in the exact same way. That is not true. Defiant sin is treated as much more severely than unintentional sin.

Is unintentional sin an “accident”? Well the word “astray” in the Hebrew means to “sin ignorantly”. The Hebrew word for “unintentional” sin means:

unintentional wrong, accidental error, i.e., a mistake which has culpability, yet the wrongdoing has not been made by intention or commission
Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament)

In 2 Cor. 11:3 where Eve is said to have gone “astray”, this word means:

To corrupt, with the meaning of to subvert or corrupt opinions
The complete word study dictionary

1b to lead away a Christian church from that state of knowledge and holiness in which it ought to abide. 1c to be destroyed, to perish. 1d in an ethical sense, to corrupt, deprave.
The exhaustive concordance of the Bible

Since those who are led astray are ones who have sinned unintentionally, I think that we can have full confidence that Eve being led astray by the serpent, sinned unintentionally. She still suffered the consequences, but the fact that God held the serpent responsible and God cursed the serpent and all animals because of what one animal did, shows that the blame was laid at the feet of the serpent, not at the feet of the one who sinned unintentionally.

Does this make more sense? It shows that Eve’s sin was very bad, but the fact that she was led astray allowed God to provide a sacrifice for her unintentional sin that led the way for the Messiah to come through the one who had been deceived. I love this part…the deceiver is destroyed by the seed of the one who was deceived. What the deceiver meant for harm, God has turned around for good for all of us who have faith in the Lord Jesus, our Kinsman Redeemer.

161 Mark,

If Adam and Eve’s sin is so different, i.e his is deliberate and hers isnt, why does Eve hide? If Eve’s heart was innocent, she would have had no need to hide or be ashamed.

Eve was not innocent. She sinned. Even though she didn’t sin in a willful way by being rebellious, but because she was deceived, the fact that she sinned cannot be disputed. She fell into transgression through deception and when her eyes were opened to the fact that she had been deceived and she had transgressed God’s laws, she was afraid of God. She knew that she was naked and she was ashamed at being naked in the presence of God. This is what sin does to us.

156 pinklight,

If Gen 1 is the same story as Gen 2 but just told in a different way then “the human” in Gen 1 refers to the first person ever created and not the second who was created FROM the first.

Yes, yes, yes! You got it! Eve is never called “the human”. She is called “woman”. No need for the definite term as there was only one woman there at the time.

pinklight,

When it says “the human” in Gen 1, 2 and 3 I think they all refer to the singular Adam exculding the woman. Even in Gen 5 when God names them it’s “human” not “the human”.

You got it!!

I am going to head off to bed as I have an early start tomorrow. Keep on working through this one because it is important to realize that the grammar is not hit and miss. It is specific and paying attention to the definite nouns will help us to know when God was meant Adam specifically. Those who disregard the grammar will readily accept tradition and it’s interpretation rather than God’s interpretation by the grammar that He inspired.

I have yet to see that paying close attention to the grammar has ever misled me. I trust that God inspired His Word exactly as He did for a reason. Because of this I want to dig deeply to know what God said so that I can hold on firmly to what is good and let go of what is mere human wisdom which holds to human tradition instead of the wonderful inspired Word of God.

pinklight,
You said:

How do I know that “the human” in Gen 1 is inclusive meaning “humankind”

“The human” is not plural. It is Adam alone. It doesn’t mean mankind. It means “one of” the human race, in particular the first man Adam.

So how do I determine when “the human” is inclusive and when it isn’t used in that sense?

This is pretty easy. When the Bible says “the human” it is specific to one. When it says “them” it is more than one human. When the Bible just says “man” it can mean generic mankind or a specific person. The context will tell us whether “man” means more than one, or generic man, or a specific man. But “the man” can never mean anything else but one specific man.

So God made the human in his own image, in the image of God he made him, male and female he made them.

We could translate this verse as “God made the first human in his own image, so that in the image of God, God made him and God made them (male and female God made).

So that it is exactly as you summarized – that it was humanity that God made in his image. The first of humanity was the man and the male and female were both in his image as both were made in their humanity in the image of God.

pinklight,
The word for “know” here is an intimate experience of. God has no experience with evil since He cannot sin. Adam experienced this evil when he rebelled. The “knowing” or experiencing of evil is what made Adam “unlike” God even though he was made to be “like” his Creator.

pinklight,

Both the man and the woman were “like” God in the beginning, but only the man experienced rebellion “evil”, treason, treachery. This is why only the man was said to need the tree of life guarded by the angel so that he couldn’t get to it. The woman was not in rebellion and was not a threat to disobey God’s withholding the tree of life from the dying pair. Only the man passed on the sin nature to his offspring. It was the woman who experienced deception, while the man experienced evil. Who can understand why he chose to experience evil? Maybe we will have to wait until we are in heaven to ask God why Adam rebelled in such an evil way by letting his wife be destroyed by the enemy.

Okay, hopefully the graphic came through on everyone’s computer especially for Mark. This is the best way to show the specific grammar of this passage and you should be able to see clearly that the man “was” like God not “is now” like God. You see Jesus told us that there is no truth in satan. He is the father of lies and he did not get this one right. God did not agree with satan that man “had become” just now as God was. No, no, no! Man was created in the image of God and when man rebelled against God and experienced evil, he was no longer “like” God in the same way as he had been created.

There is so much more that I would like to share. I think pinklight found some of my older posts and linked to them. I would recommend that you read the linked posts as they will shed some light on this important topic. I may sound like a broken record, but the grammar is of key importance. We cannot completely understand these passages until we get the grammar right. It is too bad that our bibles make it seem like man had “just become” like God. That is not what the Hebrew says. Satan is and always has been a liar and God and satan were not agreeing with man would become like God by eating of the fruit.

I really have to run. I am not yet back for my next flight and time is running out on me tonight. I really love this conversation because it is respectful, deep, passionate and it challenges us all to dig into God’s Word! Keep digging because the deeper we go, the more the Word opens up for us to trust God!

I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Cheryl

Let’s see if I can get this Hebrew grammar picture to fit.

138 Mark,

You said:

When God created the human, God created the human as male and female. And God named them human. This is all gender inclusive.

God didn’t create one person as two genders in one. That has been tried by some egals in their comments on this blog and I don’t accept that egal position. God create a male and he called him human. In creating them male and female He called them both human. God didn’t take the female out of Adam. He took a rib out of Adam and from the rib God created the woman.

My sentence was regarding Gen 2&3 where the grammar is definatley ‘the man’ not ‘man’ or ‘human’

I agree that the grammar is “the man”. This refers to none other than the male man. (Now no jokes, guys, about this being the “mail man”!)

But i think it would be good to discuss what does ‘read into’ mean? 2 options in my opinion.
1. read into a passage something that is not consistent with scripture.
2. read into a passage something that IS consistent with scripture (my view).

You forgot a third option.
3. read into a passage something that is not in the passage at all.

I believe that you are doing #3.

Any time we deduct a meaning from a passage it is vitally important that we look at it inductively- that is, in the broad spectrum of the rest of scripture. My view does this.

If this was so, Mark, then we would find somewhere where it says that Adam was created to be the authority over the woman. Or we would find that the man was to have authority over all women. Both the man and the woman are said to be the ruler over the home but the man is never said by God to be the legitimate ruler over the woman.

For example, if we read the book of James just on its own it would appear we have a works based salvation. However if we try to understand it in relation to saved by grace alone, accompanied by obedience to God and His commands, then we are reading the passage inductively before drawing out our deduction. This is faithful to understanding scripture and what my position does in relation to Gen 1-3.

I appreciate that you are trying to do this but in adding to Genesis an authority of the man over the woman, it is contradicting the passage. Contradictions are not acceptable.

i.e Cheryl’s big emphasis on inspired words and grammar. But i have shown how this fails simply in Gen 3 with the grammar contradicting her understanding of the passage.

Actually the grammar does not contradict my view at all.

The grammar of Gen. 3:22 is obscured but is clear in the actual Hebrew. Man “was” like God.
Hebrew: “was”, “come to pass”, “came”, “has been”,

The literal is that the man “was” like God in the original creation but now he has intimately experienced good and evil (implying that he is no longer “like” God as he was created to be). The rebellion of the man brought him into a new dimension and he took on a sin nature that would take the male away from his first created roots. Only the male took on the sin nature of rebellion. The female indeed sinned but she did not do so in direct rebellion so no sin nature was passed on from her to her descendants.

The grammar is of utmost importance. I will see if I can get a copy of the Hebrew phrase marker analysis into a comment field so you can see it.

138 Mark,

You said:

When God created the human, God created the human as male and female. And God named them human. This is all gender inclusive.

God didn’t create one person as two genders in one. That has been tried by some egals in their comments on this blog and I don’t accept that egal position. God create a male and he called him human. In creating them male and female He called them both human. God didn’t take the female out of Adam. He took a rib out of Adam and from the rib God created the woman.

My sentence was regarding Gen 2&3 where the grammar is definatley ‘the man’ not ‘man’ or ‘human’

I agree that the grammar is “the man”. This refers to none other than the male man. (Now no jokes, guys, about this being the “mail man”!)

But i think it would be good to discuss what does ‘read into’ mean? 2 options in my opinion.
1. read into a passage something that is not consistent with scripture.
2. read into a passage something that IS consistent with scripture (my view).

You forgot a third option.
3. read into a passage something that is not in the passage at all.

I believe that you are doing #3.

Any time we deduct a meaning from a passage it is vitally important that we look at it inductively- that is, in the broad spectrum of the rest of scripture. My view does this.

If this was so, Mark, then we would find somewhere where it says that Adam was created to be the authority over the woman. Or we would find that the man was to have authority over all women. Both the man and the woman are said to be the ruler over the home but the man is never said by God to be the legitimate ruler over the woman.

For example, if we read the book of James just on its own it would appear we have a works based salvation. However if we try to understand it in relation to saved by grace alone, accompanied by obedience to God and His commands, then we are reading the passage inductively before drawing out our deduction. This is faithful to understanding scripture and what my position does in relation to Gen 1-3.

I appreciate that you are trying to do this but in adding to Genesis an authority of the man over the woman, it is contradicting the passage. Contradictions are not acceptable.

i.e Cheryl’s big emphasis on inspired words and grammar. But i have shown how this fails simply in Gen 3 with the grammar contradicting her understanding of the passage.

Actually the grammar does not contradict my view at all.

The grammar of Gen. 3:22 is obscured but is clear in the actual Hebrew. Man “was” like God.
Hebrew: “was”, “come to pass”, “came”, “has been”,

The literal is that the man “was” like God in the original creation but now he has intimately experienced good and evil (implying that he is no longer “like” God as he was created to be). The rebellion of the man brought him into a new dimension and he took on a sin nature that would take the male away from his first created roots. Only the male took on the sin nature of rebellion. The female indeed sinned but she did not do so in direct rebellion so no sin nature was passed on from her to her descendants.

The grammar is of utmost importance. I will see if I can get a copy of the Hebrew phrase marker analysis into a comment field so you can see it.

Mark,

You asked:

A note to everyone else- i am currently reading through ‘Discovering Biblical Authority’ and would be greatly interested in discussing issues in it with people- Cheryl should this be done on another blog?

I don’t have a problem with the discussion of male authority here, but I will be doing a post later on when I get back from Pennsylvania, on the issue of the male as a “covering”. You can post questions/answers on this post or wait until the “covering” one if you would like.

There is so much that has been said while I was gone (and I leave early tomorrow again!) that I am not sure I will be able to cover everything with the little time I have left. If I have time (or opportunity) in the hotel or at the conference I will contribute more.

Starting from the end and working backwards, Mark you said:

I am worried about the theology that Eve was just ‘decieved’ and Adam deliberately sinned. They both deliberately sinned! Eve quoted what God had said and yes she believed the lie, but she deliberate didn’t obey what God had said.

First of all, can we agree that the Bible is what tells us that Eve was deceived? Good! Next, she was not “just” deceived and the deception removes her guilt. She is still guilty of sin. However God looks on the heart and Eve’s motive for sinning was not the same as Adam’s. Adam sinned in a treacherous way by sinning with his eyes wide open. He knew at the time that he ate the fruit that he was disobeying God’s command.

Yet with Eve it was different. At the time that she ate she fully believed that there was no command that brought death. She believed that God was just directing them away from the fruit that would make them equal with God. She no longer believed God meant the command because she was deceived. By being deceived, Eve now believed that what she was doing was a good thing and not a disobedient thing. Adam on the other hand was not deceived and he knew that he was acting in a willful, disobedient and rebellious way. Did Eve “deliberately” disobey God? No. She no longer believed that there was a legitimate command or a legitimate consequence. Does this make sense?

You also asked:

This has major results on the banishment aswell. If Eve only ‘followed’ Adam and was not banned, what are we to make of sin? The garden was God’s presence on this earth. God cannot tolerate sin, therefore if Eve sinned, there is no way she could have been allowed to stay in the garden. This is a contradiction of what we know about the character of God who cannot tolerate sin.

Losing the garden was not why God kicked Adam out of the garden. The text doesn’t say that God didn’t want Adam to have the garden as his home. It says that God didn’t want Adam to eat from the tree of life so that he wouldn’t die. What about God’s toleration of sin? First of all He talked to both Adam and Eve after they sinned, didn’t He? He could tolerate the sinners in doing that. Whether He would walk with them in the garden after sin is another issue. But the text explicitly tells us why Adam was kicked out and it had nothing to do with the garden and Adam’s home. It had everything to do with Adam rebelliously disobeying God’s no longer allowing Adam to eat from the tree of life. This was the issue.

Since Eve did not deliberately disobey God and since God knew her heart and since God did not ascribe rebellion to Eve, it is apparent that God was not concerned that she was the one who would deliberately disobey Him by going against the second prohibition with would be the eating from the tree of life. The fact is that the rebellious one was the only one kicked out.

It is dangerous to suggest the quality of sin was different between Adam and Eve and in my view this simply is coming because the egalitarian position doesn’t fit with the bible.

The Bible is what tells us the difference between deliberate and unintended sin. I don’t have time right now to find the scriptures for you, but I suggest that you check out the Old Testament and the difference between “unintentional” sin and sinning with a “high hand”. Then I suggest you also check out 1 Timothy 1 where Paul gives the reason for why he received mercy. There is absolutely no doubt that God makes a difference between a deceiver and the deceived.

Likewise suggesting that ‘knowing good and evil’ is somehow related to Adam’s deliberate sin and not related to Eve, is a big stretch i am unwilling to make.

Let’s be Biblical here, okay? The Biblical term is “deceived” and “not deceived”. Because Adam was not deceived (see 1 Timothy 2), his knowledge of the lie puts him in a different category than the one who has been deceived to see “the lie” as the truth. It doesn’t make the consequence any different as they both died, but it does make a difference in the curse. God did not curse anything because of Eve’s actions, but God did curse the earth because of Adam’s actions. If God sees a deliberate act of rebellion and a silent watchman who watches his wife being deceived, as acts that are more serious and deserve further punishment than the act of a fully deceived person who has walked into the trap because her eyes are blinded, then we need to believe God and not rely on our own understanding.

I see what some here are suggesting that poor Eve was innocent in her sin. Sin is not innocent. It is a deliberate act to go against God.

No one is saying that Eve is “innocent”. All we are saying is that the Bible says that she was “deceived” into sinning. It was a “deliberate” act of satan’s to deceive Eve. Eve did sin against God. However in her sinning, the Bible says that she was deceived into the transgression and I simply believe the Bible.

She was equally guilty, equally banished.

This is not true. God never said that Eve was guilty of treachery. He did say this about Adam. God also never said that Eve was banished from the garden. To assume this action when Eve had not acted in rebellion is to assume evil when the Bible does not attribute this evil to Eve.

We are treading on dangerous ground when messing with the doctrine of sin and its introduction into the world.

No one is messing with the doctrine of sin. We both believe that sin entered the world through Adam. The issue is not “what” by “why”? I believe that the Bible is clear on why Eve did not equally bring sin into the world. It was because there was only one in rebellion and there was only one in deception.

Let me ask you some questions, Mark. Where does the Scripture say that Eve was kicked out of the garden? Where is Eve said to have sinned with treachery? Does the Bible ever say that Eve brought sin into the world?

The fact that God deals primary with ‘the man’ can only be understood as his function as the ‘head’ of the family.

The Bible never makes the man as the only “head” of the family. Ephesians 5 shows that the woman is also the ruler of the home. The fact that God dealt with both the husband and the wife defies the logic of the man alone as the “head”. If the man was the one responsible only because he had a “function” of responsibility, then not only should God have told us this, but God should not have addressed the woman at all. Also God should have asked Adam about his wife. Why did God not address Adam about his wife’s sin and ask Adam to be responsible for her sin?

Mark,

I am going to try to get through as much of your questions as I can before I have to leave.

2. In Gen 2 there is the introduction of the definate article so it is rightly translated ‘the man’ dealing directly with Adam not Eve.

Whenever it says “the man” it most certainly is talking about Adam and not Eve. We need to pay close attention to this so that we can properly understand the passage.

3. However in Gen 3 when they are banished from the garden, it is again ‘the man’, not ‘man’ (gender inclusive). Should we assume then that only Adam was removed from the Garden- i don’t think so.

It most certainly was only the man who was banished from the garden. God makes this clear in what he says about the man. It was the man who took of the forbidden fruit even though he was not deceived. Since Eve was no longer deceived, she would not be the one who would disobey God’s command not to eat from the tree of life. Adam is the only one who sinned in a willful way and who would likely do the same thing again with the tree of life. We cannot assume that Eve was thrown out of the garden, because the text clearly says that it was “the man” who was kicked out. If God wanted us to know that it was the woman too, them the grammar would be “them”.

We do know that the woman left the garden with the man but she was not kicked out. Why did she go? God clearly told us when he said that she would desire the man and the man who rule over her. She desired to be with him and the man took his sinful rule over her making sure that she went with him. He wasn’t about to leave without her.

This passage has had many think that God kicked the woman out of the garden because of our prejudice against women. Throughout church history the woman has been blamed for deceiving the man so that he ate, but Paul makes it clear, and the context in Genesis makes it clear that Adam was not deceived. Adam was not deceived by the serpent and Eve was not the deceiver nor did she deceive Adam.

Hosea 6:7 shows that it was Adam alone who sinned in a treacherous way. Eve is never said to have sinned by treachery.

Therefore my argument is that to get hung up on the combined function of ruling animals to prove equality and no leadership soley by the gender inclusive language is weak. Clearly we all except Eve to have been banished from the Garden also, even though the inspired words are directed to Adam only

It would be an error to accept that Eve was driven out of the garden when the text clearly says that it was only “the man” who was kicked out because of his propensity to disobey God in a treacherous way.

It is not a weak argument to use the specific grammar of Genesis 1-3. It is a very weak argument to ignore the specific grammar. This is what has been done by many that has caused them to read into the text something that isn’t there.

So i am happy to read into the text that ‘the man’ was held primarily accountable for the fall and thus is addressed first by God, and is the primary one spoken of in the banishment.

You shouldn’t be blaming Eve for something that God did not blame her for. It was not Adam that was “primarily” accountable for the fall. He was the only one accountable for the fall. While Eve sinned too she did not sin on her own initiative without the blindness that deception brings. She did die because God said that she would, but she did not bring rebellion into the world since she did not sin with rebellious treachery. Adam is the one who sinned this way and his actions caused sin to come into the world. It was Adam alone. When we blame Eve for something that Adam alone did, we then become guilty of being an accuser of Eve. God did not accuse her of treachery and she did not bring sin into the world.

A quick question for Cheryl or others. Egals claim that Adam was ‘with’ Eve when she was conversing with the serpent and thus dismiis the notion that Eve strayed from the protection of Adam as reading into the text. Where in Gen 2 is it explicit that Adam was there during the conversation?

In Genesis 3:6 we see some specific grammar that identifies Adam’s position.

Gen 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

The grammar says that Adam was “with” Eve. It doesn’t say that she gave to Adam “when” with her. The Jehovah’s Witness Bible translates this passage was “when with her” (I am going by memory) because their doctrine teaches that Adam was not with Eve. But there is no grammatical justification for adding to the text that Adam was not with Eve until later.

Rather there is a conjunction used in the Hebrew that connects the actions of Eve sequentially to her eating. The Hebrew says that she did this “and” that and it is a sequential conjunction that is not divided by a time frame.

Secondly we know that God referred to Adam being “with” Eve since God said that Adam “listened” to the voice of his wife. This was the treacherous act of Adam as he “listened” and did not sound the warning. No other words of Eve’s are recorded other then her speaking to the serpent while she is being deceived.

Thirdly Adam being “with” Eve is not being just in the garden because according to BDB the word means beside or side. Adam was “beside” Eve while she was being deceived. We cannot get around the specific Hebrew grammar and when we disregard it we can so easily go into error.

Also Cheryl, how have you come to the conclusion that the curse of the woman is not a mandate given by God, but just a prophecy of what fallen man would do? Could you point me to the text where it explains this?

I have to go now to church so I don’t have time to finish this one. I may not be able to get to it until later tonight or perhaps in another day or two when we have arrived at our next location.

Hi Mark,

I am just popping in as we are waiting for family to arrive at my daughter’s house for our Canadian Thanksgiving celebration.

I would like an opportunity to answer your two questions.

1. Egals believe that there is no rulership of one person over another set up by God’s original creation of our human parents. The rulership spoken of in Genesis 3 was a prophesy given to Eve about the sinful nature of her husband that she would have to endure because she had been deceived to eat the fruit. Her husband, in active sin, would take authority over her and rule her, forcing her underneath his own human will. God never gave the man a position of rulership over the female or over her will in the original creation. And after the fall God did not give His permission for the man to rule the woman. Adam was about to force himself into the position of ruler all on his own.

2. The redemption that was achieved by Jesus was for original sin and our own sin. It did not reverse a leadership scheme set up by God in creation. But the redemption of Jesus overcomes sin and the enemy, Satan, so that as citizens in the Kingdom of Light we are not to follow the pattern of the world where one man lords it over another man. Instead we have been transferred into the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus where all are equal heirs to all that God has As equal heirs we have full freedom as God’s “sons” to freely operate in the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given us without restrictions due to age, education, nationality, social status or gender. If I missed one of the restrictions, just add it in. The Holy Spirit does not hold us back in service because the gifts that He gives us are to be used for the benefit of all so that the body grows in unity of the knowledge of the Son of God.

Leadership is a place of protection of the flock, not a place to demand that others submit to us so that we can rule them. We have only one Lord and Master and no mere man will “rule” the body of Christ.

Because of our being equal “heirs” in Christ, a woman does not have to worry about being culturally bound to man-made tradition but she may serve as a servant of Christ without fear that using her gifts for the benefit of all is a sin.

Does this make sense?

Lauren,

Welcome to my blog! I am writing this on the road as I on away from the office on a two week trip. You will find many resources on this blog that should help you. I would also recommend that you get a copy of my DVD that will answer all of your questions in one place as it is on every one of the hard passages of scripture on women. “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?” (a 4 DVD set) can be purchased on Amazon.com or at mmoutreach.org. There are several clips on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e9TL5TWdac This is the introduction and the remaining clips are found under “More From: inhistime2007”

There is good dialog here from many people who visit my blog and I will pop in and out as I have the time.

Blessings!
Cheryl

Mark,
I will take a stab at this one:

Why is it that wifes are told to submit? Why is it that husbands are told not to be harsh?

Husbands are told not to be harsh because this is their problem area that they need encourage to change.

Wives are told to submit because in the culture of the day they were forced to submit. When Christianity freed them from forced subordination many of them would love their freedom too much to want to serve their husbands. They needed to be reminded that submission is a Christian attribute so that we can be like Jesus and the husband is not exempt from our service.

Does this make sense?

Also I do believe that comps get their view from parts of Scripture. The problem is that the verses they use are taken removed from their complete context and also the verses are “filled in” with mounds of tradition. We can clearly see this from a couple of examples. Eph 5:21 is so often neglected entirely and in the book of Genesis a tradition of male leadership and a male “role” is imported into the text from the hallowed halls of tradition.

It is hard to do but I do think it is important to see what the Scripture says without the addition or subtraction of tradition.

16 Kay,

Normally I would be typing as fast as I can, but this is an extremely busy time of year for me. We leave tomorrow for Canadian thanksgiving with family and just as soon as we come back we are heading off for another ministry trip to Pennsylvania for almost another week so my time is extremely limited right now.

When I get back I will be concentrating on my new book and will try to fit in time for my blog as well as research for my next DVD series. I hope I do well at balancing all of the balls I currently have up in the air 😉

There are lots of problems with the view that only men lead. First of all we need to realize that none of us can “make” another be more Christ-like. Only Jesus can do that working with the person’s will.

One of the main problems is a husband’s inability to lead. Perhaps it is by his natural tendency to shy back from leadership or his inability to care as much about spiritual things as his wife. But if only a man is to lead in spiritual things, then is it a sin for a wife to take the initiative? I was misled for many years by thinking that it was wrong for me to lead. If I just stepped back, then he would lead because there was a vacuum, right? But it didn’t work. If I didn’t lead way back then, it didn’t happen. And when I permanently stopped leading it was a detriment to my family. I feel bad about that.

So the patriarchal way that only a man can lead spiritually, often leads a family into a wilderness of dryness. It silences the woman’s voice in spiritual matters that would be considered “leading” and either causes her to become a nag (that he resents) or she remains in silence when she could do something in a way that honors him as her husband and enables him to benefit from her gifts. The whole issue of male only leadership in the home is wrong. It sets men up to be failures by giving them a sole duty that is not theirs alone to bear. Women are to bring the strength of leadership as a godly ezer (helper with strength) and if we tie their hands behind their back, how can women be anything but a child-like one who waits to be led?

Mark, I am so glad that you didn’t just disappear for good! I am very happy to have you back and you are welcome here anytime you want to pop in. I for one have a lot of love for any brother in Christ who is a respectful Jesus-loving, God-honoring complementarian. There is always room for dialog here.

Frank,
The only thing that I can come up with, is that an “agenda” has blinded some to the beauty of the one who was turned into two and then back into a united oneness as anything other than equality. A boss and a follower has no beauty in it but when one wants the preeminence, it is amazing to what extend that one will go to hold on to that preeminence.

gengwall,

We should have some great discussions on “covering” when I get to that post. It will probably be a very happening comment thread. 🙂

Hi Ken,
Welcome to my blog!

Authority taken over another person can be a very destructive thing. There are many different situations where this can be done and the elders/pastors of a church can cause great harm in “exercising authority” over the sheep. Instead of feeding the sheep, some shepherds eat the sheep. I think that we can agree that anytime someone has this kind of attitude of being a boss or ruler over another human, it is not acting in a Christlike manner. The pain from such actions can be long lasting and devastate a family.

You have my sincerest sympathy.

This is totally off topic, but I have posted a preview of the video on youtube that I just finished editing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDW-2MTrHr0 It is Lorri MacGregor’s script which is a documentary on Word Faith. Now you can see what I was working on until all hours (1 a.m. to 3 a.m. at the end of the project). It has gone off for replication and I can now concentrate on other things and trying hard to work on my own book on the issue of women in ministry. Never a dull moment around here 🙂

Sam,
Thanks for sharing your story! I think it would be a good idea at some point to cover the issue of a woman’s “covering” to see where these groups get such an idea and why it is unbiblical. When I am not so busy, I would like to work around that one.

I also believe that there are some men who are prejudiced and arrogant (sorry for being so blunt) who will not attend a church that has women involved where a man has to encounter her gifts. The abusive churches are filled with these kinds of men. I have met a few through other on-line venues as well a few have shown up here. One called Happy Promise Keeper was an especially abusive sort. He spoke for God in denouncing women but the fact is that he went around looking for women to denounce. He purposely chose to visit women’s blogs and spout off. I think it gives them a sense of power.

Men who are not respected in one or more areas of their lives are also susceptible as they use abusive encounters to meet a need in themselves for controlling something or somebody. I have learned that those who come here to abuse me or other women will not be tolerated as l have found that letting them speak this way just gives them a platform. While I consider myself a nice person, I have also learned that niceness is not a virtue if it tolerates abuse.

gengwall,

Maybe Ware has not ever heard that “two wrongs don’t make a right”.

Well he apparently doesn’t “get it” even if he heard it.

Moreover, if this was to be a God directed remedy to Eve’s rebellion, why did God not issue the command to rule directly to Adam?

That is a key point that comps have never adequately answered. They have no reason for why God warned Eve about what the future would be like, yet never commanded Adam to rule over Eve.

After all, Ware claims that “Adam would have to assert his rule over her”. That presumes it was not asserted prior to the fall (although, mysteriously, was available as an option for Adam???)

Perhaps they would say that he just had to assert it in a stronger way after the fall. But if Adam was made the ruler over Eve, then what kind of ruler was he if he didn’t take his authority over her? And is he supposed to be a good “ruler” know that sin has distorted his ability to rule? Why would God set a sinner who had failed in protecting the garden over his wife? His failure certainly would have proven his inability. So should God tell Adam to take a harsher rule with Eve now that Adam is a confirmed sinner? None of this makes any sense and makes God to be a poor manager of people.

Since God is now dictating that something needs to happen that has never happened before, wouldn’t you think God would give Adam a little shove?

You would think so, wouldn’t you?

God’s chastisement of the parties involved with the fall contains nothing positive to say about any of them.

I think God said something positive to the serpent about Eve by predicting that the serpent’s demise would come through her seed. The only hope that we have as the human race will be through the Messiah who will one day end all of this bickering and bring an end to our sin nature that we fight with. Boy won’t that be a wonderful day when we can look at all of our brothers in Christ without seeing a spirit of prejudice and arrogance in them! I can’t wait for that day!

Hi Sam,

I will let my readers respond to your questions, however not everyone reads the comment section and not everyone who reads the comments even feels comfortable to comment.

As far as the complementarian position in the Evangelical Church, it is a big position in the Southern Baptist Convention, and according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism):

Groups of churches that broadly support this position include some members of the Southern Baptist Convention,[2] the Presbyterian Church of America, the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Conservative Mennonites, Newfrontiers, the Dutch Reformed Church, and Sovereign Grace Ministries, among others. A moderate form of complementarianism is espoused by the Calvary Chapel movement.

The couple whose loss of friendship that I endured that pushed me into this area including my DVD series and this blog were from a Calvary Chapel church.

Why do people (women) put up with this nonsense? That’s a good question. I know that for myself I am always wanted to please and standing up for myself really wasn’t an option. It appears that I am not unusual as there are many women who have put up with all kinds of abuse and still came back with the thought that it has to get better. I think that this is the way many women are “wired”.