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RenewingMinds
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Adam and Eve in the Garden
The Basis for Male and Female Culpability
Question: "Is a married woman’s individual responsibility before God (culpability for both SIN and SINS) either set aside or altered by reason of the New Testament teaching of the headship of the husband?
Answer: No. The wife is neither a child nor a ward, neither does the husband have any role as some "High Priest". The teaching that a husband is ultimately responsible for the behavior of his wife is a distortion of the doctrine of headship, and contradicts biblical revelation. This error is often advanced by Mormonism or other sects, or in reaction to so-called evangelical feminists who work to substitute their own theology of humanistic equality in place of God’s balanced and hierarchical pattern for marriage and family (but not ontology or sexuality). See The Theology of Sexuality in the Beginning: Genesis 1-2, Richard M. Davidson.
The husband is responsible for exercising loving leadership and the wife is equally responsible for her respectful submission. The hierarchy established in the marriage covenant pertains to the issue of role or stewardship, not responsibility. Both have equal access and are equally answerable to God.
The foundation of individual culpability for both men and women is established early in the Genesis narrative—in the account of the Fall—Adam and Eve’s disobedience, (Genesis 3).
When God comes to the Garden after Adam and Eve sinned, he initiates an encounter that constitutes nothing less than "a legal process," a "trial and punishment by God." God begins the legal proceedings with an interrogation of the "defendants," and the defensive and accusatory responses by Adam and Eve (vss. 9-14) indicate the rupture in interhuman (husband-wife) and divine-human relationships that has occurred as a result of sin. Following the legal interrogation and establishment of guilt, God pronounces the sentence in the form of curses (over the serpent and the ground, vss. 14, 17) and judgments (for the man and the woman, vss. 16-19). The Theology of Sexuality in the Beginning: Genesis 3, Richard Davidson.
Now the serpent(1) was more crafty than any other of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?"
The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’"
"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Succumbing to the Satanic lie and illusion of autonomous knowledge and so-called free will, Eve chose to ignore God's words of warning and enshrined her own rationality and sensory experience as authoritative—becoming the Grand Madam of Rationalism and Empiricism. Adam followed his wife's disobedience and thereby plunged humanity into both spiritual and physical death, and the universe into corruption and decay. The philosophies of rationalism and empiricism assert that all knowledge is respectively derived from reason or sensory experience, or some blend of the two.
The InterrogationThen the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"
He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
And He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some from fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
God starts His interrogation with Adam. Adam was left in charge of the Garden (the crime scene) and he was responsible for its care (Genesis 2:15-17). Adam was also the representative Head of the human race.
Note carefully that God did not pass by the married woman, but spoke directly to her during His interrogation. This action clearly established her moral and volitional culpability. Had the woman been a child or a ward, God would have dealt directly with Adam as legal guardian regarding her behavior. However, this was never the case.
The Verdict and Sentencing
Satan’s:
So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel."
Eve’s:
To the woman He said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
Adam’s:
To Adam He said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.
Again, God’s dealings with both Eve and Adam establishes their individual culpability, respectively.
Effects of this Error
If either a husband or wife denies culpability, their conscience may become dull regarding the obligation to personally deal with SIN and SINS. They may avoid the sanctifying work of the Cross, ignoring the truth of the believer's identification with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and thereby giving the flesh license to act and create a trail of wreckage. Further, they may also avoid confessing sins and thus cloud their fellowship with the Father and become burdened with a guilty conscience. As this tragic condition spirals out of control, the individual may seek to blame others (parents, husband, wife, children, demons, etc.) thereby refusing to accept personal responsibility before both God and men.
The answer to this serious problem is genuine spiritual growth via the truth of the Apostle Paul's Gospel of Grace.
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(1) - “The Great Deceiver clothed himself as a serpent, one of God’s good creatures. He insinuated a falsehood and portrayed rebellion as clever, but essentially innocent self-interest. Therefore “the devil, or Satan,” is later referred to as “that ancient serpent” (Rev. 12:9; 20:2).” New International Study Bible, page 10. [Back]
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