Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
Sorry about being so slow in answering. I am really stretched thin right now so I can’t be as prompt as I would like.

The issue is whether Adam had a responsibility that Eve did not. According the Cheryl (which i agree) the answer is yes.

You have misunderstood me. Adam and Eve and all of us have a responsibility to use the knowledge that we have been given. Eve used her knowledge to answer the serpent’s question and to defend God when the serpent originally suggested that God had not given them permission to eat from the fruit of the trees. Adam kept silent and did not share that knowledge.

And when Adam had knowledge that Eve did not, he was also required to give of what he had. He again was silent.

Was Adam alone the protector of the garden? While God doesn’t say that Eve was not given that task, we do know that she was the ruler of the garden just as He was. It is a part of the rule that one protects. But one can only protect with the knowledge that one has. Eve did what she could until she was deceived. Adam did nothing with his knowledge and so he allowed evil into the garden when he recognized that evil.

Now what you have said is quite true but ONLY if everyone has the same responsibility to stop deception.

Everyone has the same responsibility to stop deception if one is aware of the deception. It isn’t the responsibility that was different. It was the knowledge that was different. Adam was the one who was not deceived.

The question is would Eve have had the same responsibility if the situation was reversed. From what Cheryl has stated the answer has to be no, simply becasue as Cheryl defined it- Adam saw God create and Eve did not. Adam had the mandate to protect the garden, Eve did not.

No, that is not right. Eve was a ruler just like Adam. Now if she had been created before Adam and it was Eve who had uniquely seen God’s work as Creator, then she would have had more responsibility for what she knew. But both were rulers and neither was the sole ruler of the garden.

This therefore is the problem. Cheryl is asserting that Adam had a responsibility that was impossible for Eve to have, but yet Cheryl holds onto an equality of roles and rulership.

You are defining this as a “role” instead of its proper definition of knowledge. If one has more knowledge of something, it is their responsibility to share. But having more knowledge doesn’t mean that there are unequal “roles” or unequal “rulers”. God said in the beginning that they were both rulers and His Word is what we measure ideas of “roles” that would cause us to create false ideas about unequal rulership.

Like i said, they were either completely equal in role/function or they were not. You cannot blame Adam for a lack of ‘resposibility’ if in fact you believe that Adam did not have more responsibility than Eve.

They were completely equal in rulership. Yet they were not the Bobbsey twins. They were individuals who had differences of knowledge because one was created before the other. It didn’t mean that Eve lacked a “role” because if we were going to say this, then you would have to say that Adam was the only one given the prohibition therefore she was exempt from this law. Rather, the laws applied to both and she was just as much a ruler as Adam was. If Eve had as much knowledge as Adam did, she would have been just as culpable as he was. Again – knowledge is not the same thing as a “role” nor does it make unequal “rulers”.

Now clearly the Bible teaches that Adam did have more responsibility, and clearly only he was given the mandate to guard the garden. This is clearly a differentiation of roles or functions between the man and the woman is it not?

Guarding the garden is part of the rule. If you think this is not true, please show me your case from the Scriptures where Eve was exempt from being ruler of the garden.

Mark, you also said:

However i reject that a pastor, elder, seminary lecturer do not therefore have authority over those they are ministering too. This is clear in the Bible that we are to submit to those who lead us because of that extra responsibility.

The Bible never says that a pastor, elder or seminary lecturer has “authority over” others in the body of Christ. While those who take the lead have a responsibility to protect us, this doesn’t mean that they have authority over us.

Hebrews 13:17 (HCSB)
17 Obey your leaders  and submit to them, for they keep watch  over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.

In this verse we are told to allow these ones to persuade us so that their work of protecting us (which they will have to give an account to God of how they did their work) will not be filled with grief when they work to protect and we don’t heed the warning. But they are not responsible for us. They are responsible for their work.
They will never stand before God and give Him an account of anyone else but themselves. If they had authority over us, Paul wouldn’t need to tell the church to submit to them. They would just take their authority. But because they don’t have authority, they need us to submit for them to do what they are called to do.

They are still equal in their salvation (Gal 3:28)- we are all one in Christ, but some are still in authority because of the position God has put them in.

This is tradition. But the Bible never tells the leaders to take authority over the brothers. It just isn’t there. If you think I am wrong, please show me where Paul or Jesus or anyone in the Bible instructs the leaders to take authority over others.

Where is that in the text if we are only going off the text? You are reading that into the text! I can’t see how you can say they had equal rulership in the garden, but include an extra subclause for Adam. Either they have equal rulership or they don’t. Equal is equal, anything else is not equal.

This is where you would need to get my DVD and look at my material on Genesis. I go through it very thoroughly using the Genesis text and I don’t have time to redo what I have painstakingly taken two years to create and produce.

Now if you want to say they are equal in essence yet distinct in role then i agree, since this is what we see in Genesis.

Sorry but there was only one “role” as ruler. God never restricted Eve to doing her ruler jobs in a different way than Adam. Never once.

It just seems to me that you are admitting that Adam had a different role, but are trying to divert around the fact therefore, that they had different roles/authority in the garden.

No, I am not saying that Adam had a different role that was restricted from Eve. I think that you have worn your complementarian glasses so long that you just can’t see outside of your own boundaries. I hope that one day you will be able to see things differently especially if any of your children are girls. I would think that you would owe it to them to be sure of what God does and doesn’t allow for females so that you don’t harm them especially if God were to call and gift them differently than you think He should.