Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
To continue on with your comments:

And, finally, she minimizes her privileges by proclaiming “we may eat” of the fruit of the trees; God had said that they “may eat freely” from the trees (again a double verb appears for emphasis).”

Again Eve was quoting from what God told her and God surely has the ability to say things in a different way. In fact when He tells Adam and Eve additional things that they can eat, He doesn’t say “eat freely” at all. God says:

Gen 1:29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;

This is very different than how God gave His permission to Adam in chapter 2. There is no contradiction and to accuse Eve of being a false witness is a pretty serious thing. She was a witness of God and God never accused His witness so why should we?

She sees that the tree is “desirable”- the hebrew term used in the Ten Commandments of coveting

This is the deception that the woman was under. She was not “coveting” the fruit as if she was “coveting” something that was forbidden to her. She no longer believed that the fruit would cause her to die. Eve believed the lie that the fruit was good for her. She believed that it was permissible because it looked good. The test now was how it looked, not whether it had seeds or not. She was deceived.

Cheryl, do you really think that the hebrew grammar can actually support your view? The conversation between Eve and the serpent gives us a worldview into the situation. There are subtle hints of her early distortion of the word of God.

Yes, I believe that the Hebrew grammar supports my view because Eve speaks the truth before she is deceived into believing a lie. There is no proof of deception when Eve first speaks to the serpent. Mark, do you actually believe that Eve distorted God’s word and God failed to reprimand her for this distortion? Why do you think that God failed to prove her a liar?

Let me share with you something a great Anglican man shared with me over here. “If you come across a ‘new’ teaching you’ve either been revealed to something no-one else has ever seen or more likely the teaching is wrong”. Unfortunately i feel your teaching here falls in the later category.

Well, thanks for sharing that with me. The fact is, though, that the charges against Eve are what is “new”. Neither God nor Adam charged Eve with adding to God’s word. This is a “new” sin that is found in no version of the Bible. It is a faulty tradition that distorts God’s word and those who follow it have not thought through God’s requirements for the proof of sin. I feel that it is my obligation to speak the truth in love with those who have been deceived about false tradition. If I was the one who was in the wrong, I would sure like to be corrected. In fact I freely admitted that I was wrong in my understanding that Eve did not intimately know God’s name. In Genesis 4 it is clear from the text that she did know it. I, for one, am never ashamed to admit whenever there is evidence that I am wrong. After all, none of us is perfect. I believe that it is an honorable thing to admit to a misunderstanding when the Scriptures are there to correct us. I am wondering how willing complementarians are to admit their own misunderstanding?