I apologize for being so slow in answering.  Your thoughts and your questions are worthy of a new post of their own and I will be doing another post on Eve’s comments.  There is so much to unpack in Genesis that one cannot do it justice in only one or two posts.  I will try to get to the next article as soon as I can.  My time until the end of August is extremely limited. My sisters will be visiting and the day they leave, I leave for Idaho to confront Matt Slick on a Matthew 18 mission regarding his offenses against me.  I am also working on the final pieces of my new DVD and stressed with a September deadline to have all the editing, artwork and stamping finished for its October unveiling in Pennsylvania.  On top of that my Mom has taken ill and she has been very concerned that she will not come out of the hospital alive and I am suffering myself with severe pain and no time at all to do anything but take Tylenol 3s and suffer through it.  I really appreciate all the patience people have for me and as my Son says, after September I should be human again and able to actually have time to converse.  If you remember me in your prayers, pray for me that God will help me through this very stressful time and that my own patience will survive all of the differing levels of tribulation in my life.

Don,
You said:

I think it is important to see that what the woman says God said contains an ambiguous or partial truth.  There were 2 trees in the middle of the garden.  Which one is she referring to?  If she is quoting God, which one is God referring to?
And the important question is: Would God declare a sin of commission in an ambiguous way?

I don’t think that the woman’s answer was ambiguous or a “partial truth” at all.  While there were two trees in the middle of the garden only one tree was forbidden for them to touch and only one tree was forbidden for them to eat the fruit.  Both Eve and the serpent understood her statement.  The serpent showed that he knew which tree she was talking about because he responded that eating the fruit would allow her to know good and evil.

Gen 3:5  “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Would God declare sin of commission in an ambiguous way?  No, not at all.  God is very serious in repeating his commands so that we know what is sin in order to make it clear to us to keep away from sin and evil.  Eve’s testimony shows us that God took her to the tree itself and gave her the command there.

God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”

This would only be ambiguous if one was not in front of the tree itself.  Eve commented on the tree’s location but she did not quote God as commenting on the location.  This would not have been needed since it was clearly pointed out to her.  God’s words are no more ambiguous than the word “it” is.  What is “it”?  Eve clearly understands and the word of prohibition that Eve pulls out of her conversation with God is clear to her and clear to the serpent who talks about the very same tree.

This was all clear to Eve, but is it clear to us?  It is only clear to us if we accept the testimony of the woman that God communicated with her directly.  God pointed out the tree that was forbidden.  He calls the tree “it”.  God forbids both the man and the woman from touching this tree and thus forbids them from testing its fruit and he forbids them from partaking of its fruit in essence showing that eating of the fruit without life in it (without seed bearing fruit) would cause death and this was not good for them.

Was Eve confused?  I do not believe so.  If she was, then why would the serpent so clearly understand what she was quoting from God?  I think it is clear.  Eve understood God who spoke to her directly.  The serpent understood Eve who accurately gave out God’s words to her.  The serpent seduced Eve and she fell for the lie.

More on this shortly in my next post.

Thoughts?  Questions?  While I may be slow right now especially if your questions cause me to have to think and reflect, I welcome your thoughts!

I think it is important to see that what the woman says God said contains an ambiguous or partial truth.  There were 2 trees in the middle of the garden.  Which one is she referring to?  If she is quoting God, which one is God referring to?
And the important question is: Would God declare a sin of commission in an ambiguous way?

Don said:
‘I think it is important to see that what the woman says God said contains an ambiguous or partial truth.  There were 2 trees in the middle of the garden.  Which one is she referring to?  If she is quoting God, which one is God referring to?
And the important question is: Would God declare a sin of commission in an ambiguous way?’
The serpent did not ask about the 1 prohibited tree. So when the woman responded to the serpent saying ‘the tree in the middle of the garden’, how did the serpent know which one she was talking about, if there were 2 in the middle? Did the serpent think she was talking about the tree of life?

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of treeS grow out of the ground—treeS that were a) pleasing to the eye and b) good for food. c) In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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 c) 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 b) good for food and a) 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.

Wish I could read Hebrew! Is there something I cannot see because I cannot rely on translation?

In 2:9, the order is a) pleasing to the eye then b) good for food and then c) in the middle, but in Gen 3, through the woman ‘the order’ is backwards. c) in the middle, then b) good for food and then a)pleasing to the eye.  BUT thing is, the fruit of the tokogae was NOT b) good for food (see 2:9) no matter how she eventualy saw it. We know this because God gave them both while together what was good for food in Gen 1, fruit with seed. God gave them that which was good.

Which trees grew out of the ground? Ones that were a) pleasing to the eye and b) good for food. What was truley pleasing to the eye and good for food? Trees that grew out of the ground, not the fruit of the tokogae.

Give me a break!  When someone writes this type of non-argument, it means they have no better arguments.  What do the non-egals do?  They suppress dissent.  So they see this as what egals do.

I think it is important to see that what the woman says God said contains an ambiguous or partial truth.  There were 2 trees in the middle of the garden.  Which one is she referring to?  If she is quoting God, which one is God referring to?

And the important question is: Would God declare a sin of commission in an ambiguous way?

The full article by Denny Burke and John Hamilton is here:
https://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-12-No-2/Younger-Evangelicals-and-Women-in-Ministry-A-Sketch-of-the-Spectrum-of-Opinion
“Mars Hill Church has published a little book that describes the church’s posi­tion on various issues related to church leadership. In this book, Driscoll insists that “Paul’s clear teaching” is that “only qualified men should be elders/pas­tors.”32 Driscoll comes to this position in part as a result of his understanding of 1 Tim 2:12-14. Driscoll writes,
Without blushing, Paul is simply stating that when it comes to leading in the church, women are unfit because they are more gull­ible and easier to deceive than men. While many irate women have disagreed with his assessment through the years, it does appear from this that such women who fail to trust his instruction and follow his teaching are much like their mother Eve and are well-intended but ill-informed.33
 
Driscoll’s droll interpretation of 1 Tim 2:12-14 is precisely what makes his ap­plication of the text so surprising. Mars Hill Church endorses gifted (but ap­parently “gullible” and “easily deceived”) women to lead and to teach men so long as such women are not ordained as pas­tor/elder.
 
It is the opinion of the present writers that not only is Driscoll mistaken in his interpretation of 1 Tim 2:12, but also his application of it to the ministries of his church is a non-sequitur. Why would one allow a person from the “gullible” and “easier to deceive” sex to lead and to teach God’s people? How could such a person possibly be qualified to teach and to lead when they are so easily brought under the spell of error? We are not ready to concede Driscoll’s interpreta­tion of Paul on this point.36 Yet even if we were to grant his interpretation, we believe that his praxis is hardly a legiti­mate implication of his exegesis. ”

The article ends with this:

 ”The whole process led Wayne Grudem to comment, “Suppression of any al­ternative point of view is probably the most common way for an egalitarian viewpoint to be advanced in a church… Mars Hill [followed] that pattern ex­actly.”53 ”

The entire article is interesting because one can see they are moving away from the term ‘complementarian’ which I think is good. It does not fit and it is not honest. I also noticed that the only scripture they reference for their view on woman teaching men is 1 Tim 2.

I always thought it was ironic that the one whom the deceiver deceived would be the very one through whom the Messiah would come.  So the deceiver will be destroyed by the seed of deceived.  God has a way to turn everything around and bring good out of bad.

There really is so much more underneath the tradition that we have been taught.  We are corrected by the text itself.

I like the way you pose a series of questions just like a series of hypotheses, and then test them with scripture.

Too much of what has gone on in the past, and has indeed been passed off as sound theology, is nothing more than extrapolation into thin air.

Scripture testing scripture is what you’ve always taught here on your blog, and for that many of us are indebted.  If it ain’t in the text, don’t try to import it in, or build it on-site.

On the other hand, what does one do when observed reality seems to contradict scripture?  For example, Luther once took Copernicus to task over the then heretical concept of heliocentrism (earth revolves around sun), saying:

“So it goes now.  Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem.  He must do something of his own.  This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down.  Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Jos. 10:12].”

Pinklight #4 ~ I used the illustration above (Luther on Copernicus) to show that there exists a wide gulf between figurative Hebrew poetry used to drive home a deeper truth (God’s sovereign power) vs. a  literal mechanical truth (sun orbiting earth).
In the case of God putting enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, I believe that God allowed the hatred to germinate and become a malignant fungus vs. an actual mechanical decree.  Why? because the very next verse (v16) when understood in context is also descriptive vs. prescriptive.

In the New Testament the Spirit was poured out upon the church and He was given to stay with them forever.  There is nothing in scripture that would say that the Spirit was taken away from women.  And if this was so, women would not have the spiritual gifts at all.  No, when the Holy Spirit came, He opened women’s mouths and sadly it is enemy who seeks to shut women’s mouths.