Although a story, the garden word is not to be read merely as a story for it is Holy Scripture. As Holy Scripture, it has been positioned by God with purpose. According to design based upon purpose, it is a word from the Mouth of God (albeit through Moses) about how to exalt truth even in the midst of our own human depravity, and by the strength of truth, it has the power to lift us up even though we are the spiritually blinded. Yet while purposed for our deliverance to overcome the evil, even this truth is a veiled test, positioned to examine our otherwise reprobate minds and even doing so while speaking to us from every direction. We hear the voice of God, the voice of Adam, the voice of Eve, the voice of the serpent, and finally we hear “the voice” of what we would have ourselves to hear as deeply embedded within our own mental structures.
For this reason, to rightly interpret the garden word one is sure to fail if purposed to do so without complete regard for the Foreknowledge of God and if from anything other than the God-Perspective alone. We serve a God who knows all things at all times. Keeping this in mind, we must never imagine that God experienced the garden story in real time (so to speak) as we ourselves experience this garden saga according to the read of the human mind. Given this, the very voice of God in the garden is our compass. That is, what God and only what God alone speaks, sets the standard for rightly evaluating truth.
Relevant to our discussion then, when if ever is it right to set the knowledge and truth standard of God aside and instead operate and receive “truth” as given from the mind of an unchecked Adam? Specifically, do you believe Adam in the garden story or do you believe God?
For example, we know by Genesis 2:19 the man was called “Adam” yet in Genesis 2:23 this man “Adam” called himself “Man” instead and instead of “Eve” he called the female “Woman.” Yet upon His return into the garden, in Genesis 3:9 God still called the man “Adam” and for the female (in Genesis 3:20) He compelled a now punished “Adam” to call her “Eve”.
Both cannot be right, who are we to believe? This is merely just one example from the garden regarding what becomes contradiction in word if Adam did not lie, or in the very least, prove to be wrong. When we exalt what God says only the truth as we have traditionally received it, is made to stand upon what I believe to be, its undisciplined head. Do you agree that it is right to exalt the God-Perspective first and if so, how might that change your reading of this word?
In your review of the garden word, keep these things in mind:
1. God purposed and gave the man the name of “Adam”. (Genesis 2:19)
2. Adam sought to rename himself “Man,” but God still called him “Adam.” (Genesis 2:23 and Genesis 3:9)
3. Adam sought to call the female “Woman” but God compelled the name of “Eve” from a now punished Adam. (Genesis 2:23 and Genesis 3:20)
4. God desired to use the “flesh” of Adam in the creation of Eve to symbolically demonstrate His design for marriage but used “bone” only instead. (Genesis 2:21-22 and Genesis 2:24) Please consider why, according to the Foreknowledge of God, the “flesh” of Adam was both cut and then rejected by God.
5. God instructed Adam to only not “eat” from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” but to otherwise “dress” and “keep” the garden (Genesis 2:15). Could an obedient Adam “dress” and “keep” fallen fruit which he could not touch? (I speak specifically now regarding fruit belonging to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). And if Adam engaged in “keeping” the fruit according to the command of God, then where did, (a future honored by God) Eve’s idea of not even being able to “touch” this fruit (Genesis 3:3) come from? And when she spoke these words, why did a present Adam remain silent?
6. Adam was present during the temptation of Eve (Genesis 3:6) yet did not correct her words to the serpent and was later punished by God for “hearkening” (that is responding) to the (stilll living) voice of one whom Adam surely thought would likely die from eating the fruit (Genesis 3:17). That is, God understood the evil really perpetrated by an Adam who only then responded (and not at a time when he could have saved Eve) and also freely ate of the fruit, do you?
7. In the end, a confessed Eve was honored by God in both name and title. Her name “Eve” means “life-giver” and she received reward/title from God as “mother of all living” (even in a now fallen garden). If the reward/title received by Eve from God in a newly fallen world was not speaking to the spiritual, then where also was the like title of Adam? A man who we know physically fathered every child belonging to Eve, yet he was not respectively also recognized by God in the same manner. A man with a name given by God defined according to the Hebrew as to be made "ruddy" (embarrassed) and a man or person of "low degree," "common sort" or "hypocrite". Allow yourself to consider why not, why was he not equally recognized on a spiritual level as well?
8. And of course, we cannot not ignore, do you think God would reward the evil? According to tradition, Eve was the dark perpetrator in the garden and yet as we know, she alone stood rewarded by God. According to tradition also, a man (Adam) not rewarded by God in the face of one who however was (Eve), is yet exalted as the person created to be on an elevated level in God, while the person even honored by God is then rooted in subjection, that is, created to be “beneath” and not equally “above.” As a result, despite call she is denied equal access to the pulpit, silenced in the churches, and stipped of her right/equal identity and authority as both a female and a wife. How does this make sense before God?
I hope to hear from you soon . . .