Cheryl Schatz

Hi Gazza, welcome back!

You asked:

Firstly I understand what you say about the first useage of pain in verse 16 being toil and the logic that this is to do with a shorter lifespan and more babies. The second useage you still seem to interpret as physical pain – “she will still desire her husband in spite of the pain that having his children will cause her” My question is how can a just God inflict this pain on Eve if she is indeed innocent.

Pain in this life is a consequence of the death process. It isn’t necessarily a punishment as we don’t usually see God punishing small babies who suffer pain.

God hasn’t told us everything. But He has told us lots to help us understand. Is it okay for God to completely change a woman’s fertility and her cycle so that she is different then she was created to be because she is now in a dying body? Sure. And can this change create pain without it being a punishment? Absolutely. This body of “death” is now on a cycle of pain. If we can understand that the consequences of being in a body that is dying will be pain and we understand that this is not punishment, then is it too hard to see Eve’s pain in childbearing as a natural consequence of an adjustment in a dying body? I just don’t think that we can assume a judgment unless God states that it is a judgment against the woman. Pain is inevitable.

If she is not innocent as your statements in an answers to Mark might suggest #57 “I agree that Eve fell into sin through deception.” Then how is this pain not a punishment for her sin? – presuming that if she had not have sinned it would have been impossible for a just God to inflict pain on her.

Just as with the Jews who thought that the blind man or his parents had sinned and this is why he was “punished” with blindness, we cannot assume that pain or disease is a result of punishment. Jesus said that the blindness did not come because of sin. The fact is that Eve sinned but her pain is not said to be a punishment but a consequence. If God had said that “because you have done this…I am cursing you with…” then we would have to deal with the issue of Eve’s punishment. But we don’t have to deal with consequences of the dying process or the consequences of a change to her fertility either/or causing her pain that she would not have had. As a mother myself who has had three children, I personally don’t think that it is fair that women have to suffer as they do, but I never blamed my suffering on God’s punishment for me being a woman. I expect that we will get all the answers when we get to heaven, but in the meantime I believe very strongly that we are not to read more into the Scripture than it says. If it tells us that the ground was cursed because of Adam, I just accept that. If the scripture says nothing about a curse for Eve and says nothing about her bringing sin into the world, then I just accept that without reading a prejudice against the woman into the passage. Punishment is always clear in the scripture and an additional punishment for Eve is not clear in the passage.

You also make much about God judging between one sin and another – I agree with you that scripture clearly teaches that there is a disparity between sins. However, it is also clear that the consequence of any sin is severe – Leviticus 4 goes on to state that a life must be sacrificed for even an unintentional sin. How can Eve stay in the perfect garden when she no longer meets Gods standards? Surely this must be considered independently of whether Adams sin was worse than Eves – I believe that it was.

Gazza, that is a great question! And it is a question that is clearly answered by the text. There is not a “standard” that needs to be met to stay in the garden. There is only one reason for not being allowed in the garden and only Adam qualified for that reason. You see God didn’t kick the humans out of the garden because they sinned. He kicked Adam out only because the tree of life was now no longer available to him and Adam was in danger of disobeying God and living forever. Notice carefully that it wasn’t the garden that was to be protected from Adam. It was specifically the tree of life. In Genesis 3:22 after God said that Adam may take from the tree of life and live forever, verse 23 starts with “therefore”…

Genesis 3:23 (NASB)
23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.

God didn’t say that Adam was kicked out because He was a sinner. He was kicked out for one specific reason and that was because he was a threat to eat from the tree of life. So Eve didn’t have to measure up to a “standard” to stay in the garden. She just couldn’t have a rebellious nature that would make her a threat to eat from the tree of life. Does this make sense?

Finally I have a question of the nature of Eves deception. When Paul in Romans speaks of being deceived He was deceived as to the right way to act to please God. His persecution of Christians was an ill-informed zeal.

Gazza, Paul’s deception was more than just “ill-informed zeal”. His deception involved false doctrine that brought about his actions of sin. Paul’s wrong doctrines brought about blasphemy, violence and persecution of God’s people. Paul tell us in 1 Timothy 1 that the law was meant for evil people who do things that are contrary to “sound teaching”.

1 Timothy 1:8–13 (NASB)
8 But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully,
9 realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers
10 and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching,
11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.
12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service,
13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief;

Paul says that he was acting in sin because he was not following sound doctrine but rather he was acting in “unbelief”. When false doctrine is accepted it causes us to break the commandments of God as we follow false human traditions (Matt. 15:3). These false doctrines spoil our minds so that we are so deceived we can think that we are following God when we are actually fighting against God.

Eve here is not deceived in how to please God – she clearly knows she is not to eat the fruit – Eve is deceived into thinking there will be no negative consequences if she does eat the fruit and that it was desirable for gaining wisdom.

I think it goes further than this. Eve believes that there is no real “law” against eating this fruit. She has accepted the false doctrine that eating the fruit is a good thing that has been kept from her and there is no sin in seeking to gain wisdom to be more like God than she already is. Thus when she ate, she was not believing that she was sinning at all. Her previous understanding was not darkened and only the false doctrine taught by the serpent was her “new” truth.

It would seem to me that this deception occurs despite her previously knowing what was right – if you are correct then God Himself had already told her that she would die if she merely touched it. Eve is deceived into trusting a serpent more than God. I can not see any evidence in the text that her motivation was to please God (unlike Paul) rather it is a selfish ambition to be “like God, knowing good and evil.”

The point that Paul makes is that he was acting ignorantly and with unbelief. To say that Paul had not selfish ambitions at all would be overstating the case. After all there is no Scripture that says to kill your Jewish brothers for their particular faith in God. What encouraged Paul to add his own ambition to the point of committing murder?

Yet the real point is not what the exact deception was for both of them, rather it is the fact that both were deceived and they were deceived not because they were wanting to be bad and rebellious people. They were deceived because they believed false doctrine about God. Both then were qualified for mercy because they both sinned in ignorance and in unbelief.

Is it really fair to say that Eves sin was so much less than Adams because she was deceived that she was still entitled to stay in the garden? Surely what she was deceived to believe and do was still an affront to God?

Nothing in the Scriptures say that sin disqualified them from remaining in the garden. And God didn’t say that if you eat of the fruit of this particular tree you will die and I will kick you out of the garden. Being removed from the garden was not a result of sin. It was a result from the continued nature of rebellion. And rebellion is something that is never attributed to Eve. She is said to have been deceived and we know that her deception ended when she understand that she had been lied to. Someone who is no longer deceived and who does not have a nature of rebellion is not a serious threat. If she was, certainly God would have kicked her out to keep her away from the tree of life.

Gazza, I really appreciate your questions. They are well thought-out and come across as being very sincere. I like that. It shows me that you are willing to think these issues through in a non-prejudicial way and to push for answers when the answers given you here seem to contradict the text. I see this as being a real Berean which all of us should strive hard to be. Thanks!

I am always willing to answer questions and to be pushed to prove my points. For if my points do not stand up against the Scripture, they should be dismissed.