Lin

“I do not agree with this at all. It is once again blaming the woman for what others did. I think that it is unhelpful to state that the woman turned her back on God when she left with her husband as if she couldn’t have both her God and her husband. The text doesn’t say this and if we add to the Scriptures we can have serious problems with what we believe.”

Cheryl, Lets look at the facts:
-Eve DID follow Adam out of the Garden. That is a fact.
-Her first child was a murderer, that is also a fact.
-Only a few generations (long) generations later, the world had to be flooded because of terrible wickedness

Yet, what would have happened if Eve had not turned to Adam and stayed in the Garden? (After all, Adam was willfully wicked)

To deny that Eve shares blame in the outcome of her choices is to deny the facts in the Word.

We rightly emphasize that those who teach women are to enable husbands by treating them as gods ARE chief sinners, but women who listen to such teaching are sinning too. Yes they are deceived in many cases, and we make egal known so they can open their eyes. But many are not; they know about us but hate us and call us names. They are in sin, oppressed or not, because idolatry is sin!

“God did not warn Eve that she should not leave the garden because it would be a turning away from Him. He warned her about what life would be like with her one-flesh husband”

Turning requires both ‘toward’ and ‘away’, it is impossible to turn toward Adam without turning away from God. Eve surely regretted it later, but if you want to argue from silence, then you must allow it for others too.

Bushnell: In fact there is no variety in the three sentences, excepting in the proper nouns implied in the pronouns used. The sense of the three passages must be similar.”

You responded: If what Eve did is sinful, (her desire or turning) then by implication all the three passages must have sin as a result. This would make the passage about Christ’s desire to be sinful too. It just doesn’t fit.”

That is a strawman answer, Cheryl! Bushnell never said that desire/turning was sinful in itself, but only derives its meaning (good or bad) from the context. You know that context gives the meaning!

Whether one calls this case sinful or only a bad choice, it had terrible consequences that you cannot deny. And the Song of Sol. reference is not at all about Christ, unless one wishes to highly allegorize the whole book, as many do. But the immediate and non-allegorical view does not see Christ even inferred, but only the ‘desire’ of a wife for her husband. That particular context is certainly about sensual desire, while Cain/Sin’s is about hatred, and Eve’s is about not wanting to be separated from her husband who was being driven out of the garden. All three are ‘desire’ or ‘turning’; that is Bushnell’s point. It is NOT that all must be positive or negative! And the major point of Bushnell and all egals is that this is NOT about lust or usurping authority, and that God did not command it but only predict it.

“n my opinion Bushnell fails in this part of her teaching because she assumes a sin on the woman’s part by her leaving God as if He is restricted to the garden.”

No, she assumes nothing like God being restricted to the garden; that is preposterous. That Eve turned from close, face-to-face, RECONCILED communion with God cannot be denied, for to leave with Adam was to reject that she herself would bear the Messiah. I thought I made it clear that I do not believe God was restricted to the Garden, especially when we remember that God Himself gave the reason for Adam’s expulsion: to keep away from the Tree of Life. But who can deny that people after Adam and Eve had a more distant relationship to God than had been the case inside the garden?