What Happened to Us in Eden? - Psychology of the Fallნიმუში

WHAT DID GOD MEAN TO SAY?

Without a doubt, one of the hardest tasks for any Christian is learning to distinguish the voice of God from every other voice—including our own.

This becomes especially important when we come to Scripture, where we seek to discern not just the letter but the spirit of what is written. And because this is such a difficult task, as the apostle Peter reminded us, we do well to set aside dogmatism and reflect calmly—knowing we may make mistakes, but remaining open to review and correction on all sides.

• According to God’s voice in Eden, what kind of relationship was expected between husband and wife before the Fall?
• Was it one of complementary equality?
• Or, as some argue, was God’s voice establishing woman’s submission to man by design—prior to the Fall—so that the expectation was not oneness and teamwork in equality and difference, but hierarchy and subjugation?
• Was Adam given a divine assignment to be the marital or family leader? The answer to this shapes how we understand the rest of the passage.

Differences in how functions are assigned to man and woman have been based largely on the order of creation, but also—and perhaps primarily—on a question of:

• essence (being man or woman, even though, as Adam himself left no doubt, they were made of the same “stuff”),
• rather than on presence (being there first has certain implications, and arriving second has others).

So, if we speak in terms of essence, the differences might sound like: “Because you are a man, you must do A; because you are a woman, you must do B.”

If we speak in terms of presence, however, it might be expressed more like: “Because you were here first, and I have now crafted a gift to be your suitable helper, I expect of you A. And you, who have just arrived in a place where someone was already before you, must keep in mind B—or else you cannot truly be that suitable helper.”

As we can see, the question of order shapes everything. Perhaps that is why God asked the man first, “Where are you?” But maybe not for the reasons we’ve always thought. We’ll need to go back to the details of the account to clarify this.