Cheryl

Lin,
The events after Adam and Eve ate the fruit show a couple of things:

1. Eve realizes that she had been deceived. Her eyes were opened to her state of deception and who deceived her.

2. Adam’s blaming of the woman (the fact that he was offered the fruit by a deceived woman is no excuse for Adam to eat. Eve did not deceive Adam) and God (blaming God for giving him the woman) shows that Adam was acting in rebellion against God and he took no responsibility for his sin.
   God knew their hearts and knowing their hearts allowed God to give an act of mercy to Eve. God treated Adam differently by kicking Adam out of the garden. God determined that it was the man who had a heart that would rebel against God and eat from the now forbidden tree of life if he were left in the garden.

Also God did not ask Adam what Eve had done and this proves that each person was held responsible for their own sin and that the man was in rebellion while the woman was deceived and she did not act out of a desire to be in rebellion. There is no other reason given in scripture for why it was only Adam who brought sin into the world and hierarchists who want to read an authority over all of humanity given to Adam have no scripture that states this “fact”. They have to read it into the text. I believe it is time that we start reading scripture for what it says and that we should also pay attention to what scripture doesn’t say instead of relying on the presupposition that church tradition has taught us.