Cheryl Schatz

Paula,

But I disagree that she was “perfect”. Adam and Eve are never called perfect, but clearly they were created “innocent”– they did not yet know good from evil. They were also intelligent: their progeny could not have exceeded them, and look in the following chapters of Genesis for what they invented, especially knowing it was all truly new. So being innocent, intelligent people and with nothing to distract or confuse them, Adam and Eve could hardly be mistaken about anything God had expressly stated. We have to be careful not to project current conditions onto the pre-sin environment or people.

I would call this “perfect”.  It is “perfect” in our way of measuring things.  In God’s books they were not perfect, of course, because no one and no thing is perfect except for God.  So both Adam and Eve were innocent, intelligent, without sin at their creation, and had no bodily or mental defects. In our books, we could call them “perfect” as they represented “human” perfection, the very highest that we could ever attain to.  We do know that when Jesus comes back we will be much better than that because we will be like him in his resurrected body which goes beyond our standard of human perfection.

Good points, though, and I heartily agree.  I think it is time that we do not give a foothold to the hierarchists who insist on denigrating Eve with either a childlike inability to get a simple command right or who charge her with sin against God by importing into scripture a charge that Eve added to God’s words without one speck of evidence to support the claim and three witnesses (the serpent, Adam and God) who all were silent on any claim that Eve added to God’s words.