The Judgment Upon Man. The divine punishment for Adam’s disobedience contains three significant points worthy of consideration. First, man’s relationship to the ground is distorted: "Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; . . . In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread . . ." (Gen 3:17-19). Work is not the punitive element, just as childbearing was not Eve’s punishment. The punitive element is the pain in cultivating the ground in the sweat of one’s brow.

The second important point is God’s rationale for inflicting the punishment. The first reason God gave for inflicting the punishment was not "Because you have eaten of the tree which I commanded you," but "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you" (Gen 3:17). The point here is obvious. Adam sinned first of all because he listened to the voice of his wife rather than to the command of God. By so doing, he abdicated his headship. Second, and as a result of the first, Adam sinned by transgressing the simple and plain command God had given him (Gen 2:17).

Note that God issued a formal indictment only before sentencing Adam, and not before sentencing Eve. The reason is that Adam was the head and thus ultimately responsible for the disobedience of both. God did not place the blame on both as if both shared equal responsibility. God says: "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife . . . cursed is the ground because of you" (Gen 3:17). The "you" refers exclusively to Adam, because he had been entrusted with the responsibility to serve as the spiritual and moral leader.

A third point to note is that God told only Adam that he would die: "till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen 3:19). Eve died too, of course, but God pronounced the death sentence on Adam alone, because he was the head, and the death sentence upon him included Eve and all members of the human family that he represented.

Paul’s Use of Genesis 3. In our study of Genesis 1 and 2 we noted that Paul faithfully appealed to the implication of these chapters to support his teaching that women ought not "to teach or to have authority over men" (1 Tim 2:12). We must now turn our attention to Paul’s use of Genesis 3. His main reference to Genesis 3 is found in 1 Timothy 2:14: "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." This is the second of the two reasons Paul gives to support his teaching. The first reason is the priority of Adam’s formation (1 Tim 2:13).

This second reason, based on Eve’s deception, has produced many dangerous interpretations. Some have assumed that this verse teaches that women are disqualified to act as leaders in the church because they are more gullible than men. Paul "may have in mind the greater aptitude of the weaker sex to be led astray."³⁷ A variation of this interpretation is that women "are inferior in their gifts so far as the teaching office is concerned."³⁸

These interpretations are wrong because nowhere does Scripture suggest that women are more prone to err than men or that their teaching gifts are inferior. If the latter were true, how could Paul admonish women to teach their children and other women (Titus 2:3-5; 2 Tim 3:15)? How could he praise women fellow-workers for their roles in the missionary outreach of the church (Rom 16:1, 3, 12; Phil 4:3)?

To understand the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:14 we must note that this verse is linked to the preceding one by the conjunction "and" (kai), which Paul often uses as an explanatory connective (see 1 Tim 4:4; 5:4-5). In this case the connective "and" suggests that the typological meaning of Adam’s having been formed first, as mentioned in verse 13, is connected with the typological meaning of Eve’s deception, mentioned in verse 14.

Apparently Paul is saying that both Adam’s formation and Eve’s deception typologically represent woman’s subordination to man. As we have noted, Paul’s first reason for his teaching appeals to the order of creation and the second reason to the Fall. The second reason shows what happens when the order of creation is disregarded. When Eve asserted her independence from Adam she was deceived.

The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary supports this interpretation, "The apostle’s second argument for the submissiveness of women is that when Eve tried to assert leadership she was beguiled."³⁹ In a similar vein George W. Knight writes: "In 1 Timothy 2:14 Paul also refers to the Fall after citing the creation order . . . to show the dire consequences of reversing the creation order on this most historic and significant occasion."⁴⁰

Our study of the first three chapters of Genesis has shown that the principle of male headship and female submission was established by God at creation and not, as Women in Ministry contends, after the Fall. We have found that Genesis 1 simply affirms that man and woman are equally created in the image of God but are sexually different. By twice calling the human race "man" (Gen 1:26-27), God whispers male headship already in Genesis 1, though it is explained in chapter two.

Genesis 2 clarifies the equality and gender distinctions of Genesis 1. Man and woman are equal in nature, because they share the same human flesh and bone and have the same spiritual value before God. Yet they are different in function, because woman is to be submissive to man. The latter is indicated by the following four elements of the narrative: (1) the priority of man’s creation (Gen 2:7, 22), (2) the manner of the woman’s creation out of man (Gen 2:21-22), (3) the woman’s creation to be man’s helper (Gen 2:18-20), and (4) man’s naming of the woman both before and after the Fall (Gen 2:23; 3:20). The headship of man is implied also in chapter 3 where God calls upon the man to answer for the pair’s transgression and indicts the man (not the woman) for failing to fulfill his headship role by listening to the voice of his wife rather than to His command.

Genesis 3 describes the distortion of the creation order brought about by the Fall. This distortion affected not only the serpent, the land, work, and childbearing, but also the submission of woman to man. Sinful man would now take advantage of his headship to dominate and oppress his wife. Contrary to our author’s view, the curse on the woman marked not the institution of submission but rather its distortion into oppressive domination.

Paul attaches fundamental importance to the teachings of the first three chapters of Genesis. We found that he appeals to the pre-Fall order and manner of creation as the basis for the submission of woman to the leadership of man, both in marriage and in the church. Paul’s appeal to the order of creation is in line with Christ’s teaching that calls for a restoration of the creational relationship (Matt 19:8) by the members of His kingdom. The function of redemption is not to redefine creation but to restore it, so that wives may learn godly submission and husbands may learn godly headship.

Paul bases his teaching concerning the role of women in the church not on the consequences of the Fall described in Genesis 3, but on the pre-Fall order of creation presented in Genesis 1 and 2. The foundation of his teaching is not the divine judgments pronounced at the Fall but God’s original purpose manifested in the order and manner of human creation. It is unfortunate that in his interpretation of Genesis 1, 2, and 3, our author consistently ignores Paul’s appeals to these chapters to support his teachings in regard to male-female role distinctions in the home and in the church. Ignoring the internal witness of the Bible can give rise to private interpretations.

Genesis 1-3 deals primarily with husband-wife relations, but the underlying principle of equality and submission has broader implications for the roles of men and women within the community of faith. This will become evident in the next two sections, where we examine the ministry of women in both Old and New Testaments. We shall see that though women ministered to God’s people in a variety of vital religious roles, including that of prophet, there are no indications in Scripture that they were ever ordained to serve as priests in the Old Testament or as pastors, elders, or bishops in the New Testament. The reason is to be found, not in the patriarchal mentality of Bible times but in the recognition of the headship role which God appointed man as the "firstborn" of the human family, to be fulfilled in the home and in public worship. The Bible implies this principle in the creation story of Genesis 2 and upholds it in both the Old and New Testaments.