Women in Ministry

This is the third response to the article by Matt Slick called “Genesis 2, Adam and Eve, and Authority“.

The last two responses we have discussed Adam naming the animals Was Authority Withheld from Eve? and Adam’s identifying Eve as “woman”. Special authority to Adam – was it given by God?

Today I am responding to Slick’s comments regarding the naming of “Eve”. Slick writes:

Also, “Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living,” (Gen. 3:20). As God called the light day and the darkness night, so Adam called Eve woman.

There is agreement that Adam took authority over Eve after sin entered the world. The problem is when hierarchists see the naming of “Eve” as if God had commanded Adam to do this before Adam sinned. There is nowhere in scripture that God commanded Adam to take authority over his wife. After Adam sinned, God spoke to Eve and prophesied about what her life would be like outside the garden with her husband who was now a sinner. God did not speak to Adam about granting him authority to rule over Eve, nor did he tell Eve that she must submit to her husband’s rule. He merely stated a fact about what life would be like for her in her sin-distorted relationship with her husband. What hierarchists must do is provide a precedent for God to give Adam authority over another human being (his wife) before sin entered the world. This they cannot do. If Adam was supposed to take authority over her after she was created and before sin entered the world, don’t you think that God would have told him this and recorded it for us to understand? Don’t you think that God would have instructed Eve about what she was supposed to do regarding her “role” if indeed her husband was to have authority over her? It is a significant fact that there is not one word about authority or submission in the pre-fall world except for a mutual authority of Adam and Eve over the animals and the subjection of the animals.

Next Matt Slick points out:

Still, the egalitarians will object and say that an absolute and total equality in all things exists between men and women in the church and the created order and Adam’s naming animals and naming Eve has nothing to do with it. But, is that what is implied in Paul’s words in 1 Tim. 2:12-14?

Notice that in his article he continues to say “implied”. This is significant. The reason he must say “implied” is because there is nothing that says that a man is to take authority over a woman. It has to be read into the text. This is why the best that the hierarchists can say is that is it “implied”. Surely God is capable of issuing a command for a human to rule over another human if he desired it to be that way. The fact that there is no command is very odd if God planned it this way and commanded the first man to rule over his wife. God commanded the man and the woman regarding what they could and couldn’t eat. He commanded them to rule the earth and the animals. He did not give a command regarding Adams right or authority to rule Eve. Did God fail to give a command or is Matt Slick “reading into” the text what God never intended?

Let’s also look at the defense that Adam and Eve gave when they were confronted by God. Did Adam blame the woman for insubordination to his rule? No. In fact he said nothing about her failing to submit to his rule. Eve also did not blame Adam for failing to take authority over her. There is nothing in the testimony of either Adam or Eve that would cause us to imply that Adam had failed in a command to rule Eve or that Eve had failed in a command to submit to Adam. God also did not hold Adam accountable for Eve. Each person was accountable for their own sin.

Lastly, Slick comments about the “divine Zookeeper”:

animals and birds are paraded before the man by the divine Zookeeper for the man to name them, thereby exercising his authority over them.

Not only is calling God a “divine Zookeeper” offensive, but Slick awards Adam with divinely mandated authority over Eve as he implies that the “divine Zookeeper” also paraded the woman before the man. Eve was not paraded before the man in order for him to name her. She was brought to him to be married to him with the blessing of God. Slick has taken a God-ordained marriage ceremony and created a one-woman parade in which the man is given the scepter of rule over her. What a hierarchist can “imply” from the passage is given much more weight than what is actually said in the passage.