Cheryl Schatz

gengwall,
You asked:

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?

No, there is no rebellious nature until one acts out in rebellion. They were both created perfect and without either sin or a sin nature. Could Eve have sinned out of rebellion after the fall in the garden? If she did then it would be important for us to know this. This is because rebellion is passed on to us from one human alone. If Eve had sinned out of rebellion before the fall or after the fall, then she too would have had a sin nature and she too would have passed that sin nature onto whatever children she had after her rebellion. This would have affected her one seed. However we know that she never ever sinned out of rebellion because the Bible says that sin came into the world through one man and this was written after she was dead.

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.

She certainly was not immune from rebellion however rebellion is an unusual sin for perfect creations. In the angels only one angel originated rebellion and 1/3 of the angels followed satan in that rebellion while 2/3 never sinned in all the eons of time since they were created.

As far as Adam and Eve, according to the age they were when a child is said to have been born, it is possible for them to have lived in perfection for a hundred years or more before the fall. That is normal for perfect humans who are not sinners but only “capable” of choosing to sin. Now that sin has come into the world none of us could ever say that we have lived for 80 years without sin. It isn’t possible for us while it was absolutely possible for them.

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?

I think that it is certainly possible for her to have chosen to become rebellious however the account of sin and her seed appears to disprove any actuality of rebellion. The 2/3 of the angels that didn’t sin with satan stayed with God. Eve had her eyes opened so she wasn’t going to be deceived again, but she also did not start with a spirit of rebellion and no such spirit is ever recorded in the Scriptures. Since Eve’s seed had to remain free from any inherited rebellion, we can be confidently sure that she remained free of rebellion even outside the garden.