Mark

Cheryl,

Why are you back peddling. In your post you were quite confident that verse 22 shows God ‘naming’ Eve before Adam, and now you have just incorporated pinklights idea of ‘identity’ to support yourself. Either verse 22 says God named woman or it doesn’t. You can’t say that God did, and then try to skirt your way around it by justification.

We all agree on the sovereignty anf foreknowledge of God I hope. I am not questioning that. We know that God knew that Eve would call her sons, Cain, Abel and Seth, but that doesn’t mean Eve didn’t do the actual naming of her sons. The parellel is the same with Adam and the woman. Just because God uses a human agent does not detract from God’s foreknowledge. The text simply saids that it was the man who ‘named’ the woman.

“Try as you might, you cannot take away the accuracy of God’s story just as He relayed it.”

Whats with this? First of all it was you who said God ‘named’ the woman. I have simply said that is not what the text saids. And now you say I am the one distorting the accuracy. Are you serious. Is this the way you approach all people who challenge your views, just say that they are tampering with the text.

“What has culture got to do with God’s story?”

And here is the problem. You are approaching scripture the same way Muslims do, as if the historical setting is unimportant. Which is interesting because when it comes to 1 Tim 2 you revert the other way and say it is all cultural.

“Sure it is easy for complementarians to want to set aside the inspiration of the text as pure truth exactly as it happened because it contradicts their theory”

Whats this got to do with what I said. It was you who said something that is not in the text, and simply because it is your view that is contradicted. If you can try and dismiss the fact that it was Adam who named Eve then your view might stand, but the text is against you. Again please engage with my comments not attack comp theology and say it denies the inspiration of scripture. Arguing these lines makes me feel like you are avoiding the real issue. Not once have I questioned your belief in the inspiration of scripture, but you consistently say it about me under the label ‘comps’.

“then I guess we will have to agree to disagree as I hold to the account exactly as it is written”

Where have I ever said that I am denying the account as it happened. I have no problem saying that God was in control of what Adam said and knew what he said. In the same way I do no doubt that Jesus was the vessel chosen before the foundation of the world to save the world.I fully believe in that God’s plan was executed from the beginning. I am not denying scripture nor the attributes of God. If you really held to the account as it is written you would not have said God ‘called’ her woman before Adam, since that is not in the account.

“So God had nothing at all to do with the fact that she had her identify as woman?”

And what did I say “This was God’s purpose and plan for it to happen this way.” How can you assume that I am saying God had nothing to do with what Eve’s identity when the words you quote me on say the opposite. OF course God knew Eve before Adam did. The text simply shows that it was also God’s plan for the man to name the woman. I wonder with some of your comments Cheryl.

You seem to be throwing ‘identity’ around a lot now. If you have changed your opinion of what you said about verse 22 just admit it. We are on the same page that God’s plan existed before any human- just don’t ignore the way God uses human instruments to fulfil his purposes.

“Let’s just accept the text for what it says.”

Yes, lets do that and not say God called her woman before the man which is clearly not in the text.

“We are not discussing all the nuances of naming here. This is a blog about the comp/egal debate and the discussion is whether identifying the woman by name of title is an act of a God-given authority of the man over the woman.”

This is interesting! You want to support your view with the idea about prophetic naming and the like, yet you try and ignore the Hebrew culture in which naming was authoritative, but apparently this is a nuance. Why is it that the real important aspects of the text and culture you continually dismiss as nuances or ‘rabbit trails’ as if they have no bearing on the discussion. It bewilders me. You are refusing to look at all the relevant information before making your stance on what the text actually says. If you were serious about whether naming Eve was authorative, then you would look into what it meant in the Hebrew culture to give someone a name, and why in these accounts we have play on words and things like that, before criticising comps and just labelling them as denying the inspiration of scripture.

More soon