Susanna Krizo

Gengwall, that was a brilliant thought! (that Paul says explicitly that the head cannot control the body) Come to think of it, this principle was behind Augustine’s concept of original sin. (I write so much about Augustine because I am studying his texts right now, but also because he gave us most of our theology whic his why the (almost) all theological thoughts lead to him). He observed that the mind cannot control the body and as an example he used unwanted erections which he could not get rid of regardless of how much he tried. Because of this observation, he argued that the body and the soul used to live in perfect harmony but when the mind corrupted the body through sin, the body begun to rebel against the mind and corrputs now the mind. This rebellion he equated with original sin. He was influenced by Manechianism and Platonism, in addition to the fourth century changes in theology, which led him to equate the rebellion with sexual passion. From this there was only a short step for him to transfer the whole concept to men and women, although he had to reverse the first part of the scenario: the woman corrupted the man, who corrupts all subsequent humans due to original sin (Adam’s sin being transmitted to posterity through natural generation), the man cannot control the woman, who rebels against the man and is therefore placed under the man’s authority, just as the soul must subdue the body.
Comps use this argument when they find a connection between Gen 3.16 and 4.7 and argue that the woman rebels against the man, as sin tries to control humans, who must therefore rule over the woman.
But once again the man’s rule is caused by the existence of sin, for what need was there of such a rule in the garden when the two were innocent of evil?