gengwall

I know Cheryl is going to start a new post on Adam’s sin nature and I think that is good. But I want to add a pre-fall question here, because it applies to Eve and her potential for post garden sin.

We know that Adam sinned out of rebellion and Eve sinned out of deception. Cheryl has, I believe rightly, pointed out on many occassions that Eve’s deception came about because of a lack of knowledge. But that raises further problems with a sinless Eve after the fall.

If Adam’s sin nature is a result of the fall, and he didn’t have it before the fall, then we would have to say that both he and Eve were alike in “nature” as it relates to sin. Indeed, they are both equally endowed with God’s image, so whatever propensity or capability to sin existed in one must have existed identically in the other. So, doesn’t that make Eve just as likely to sin out of rebellion as Adam? Isn’t the rebellios “nature” in both of them? Eve was deceived, so didn’t get to the point of rebellion when she ate the fruit. But that doesn’t mean she was incapable or immune from rebellion. It just didn’t happen to her at the fall. And although her susceptability to deception may have changed as a result of the fall, her core capability to rebel was unaffected. Isn’t it possible that she, maybe even more than Adam, had potential for rebellious sin after they left the garden?