The first two chapters of Genesis present God’s creation as He intended it to be. We have seen that God built male headship (not male domination) and female submission into the glorious pre-Fall order of creation. The third chapter of Genesis describes the disruption and distortion of creation brought about by the Fall. Our purpose here is to analyze briefly how the Fall affected the relationship between man and woman.

Genesis 3 is a crucial chapter for understanding what went wrong with God’s original perfect creation. If human life started out in Edenic bliss, how do we account for the pain, sorrow, conflicts, and death that afflict mankind today? Genesis 3 explains their origin and gives us hope for God’s provision of redemption and ultimate restoration.

Much of the chapter consists of what might be called a trial, in which God interrogates Adam and Eve, establishes their guilt, and pronounces punishment over the serpent, the ground, the woman, and the man. Of special interest for our study is the judgment pronounced upon the woman in Genesis 3:16. This judgment has two aspects. The first relates to childbearing and the second to her relation to her husband. Childbearing, part of the pre-Fall divine design for filling the earth (Gen 1:28), was now to become a painful process (Gen 3:16). The husband-wife relationship would also experience a painful distortion: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Gen 3:16).

The Author’s Interpretation. Our author finds in this passage the beginning of the submission of woman to man which he believes did not exist before the Fall. He maintains that it was only "after the Fall, according to Genesis 3:16, that the husband was given a servant headship role to preserve the harmony of the home, while at the same time the model of equal partnership was still set forth as the ideal. This post-Fall prescription of husband headship and wife submission was limited to the husband-wife relationship. In the divine revelation throughout the rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament witness, servant headship and voluntary submission on the part of husband and wife, respectively, are affirmed, but these are never broadened to the covenant community in such a way as to prohibit women from taking positions of leadership, including headship positions over men."²⁶

So far we have examined the author’s thesis by focusing on his interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2. We have found his attempts to negate the presence of male headship and female submission in these two chapters to be unsuccessful. A close study of significant details of these texts in the light of Paul’s interpretation of the same passages has shown that the principle of male headship and female submission is rooted and grounded in the very order and manner of Adam and Eve’s creation.

At this juncture we need to analyze the Women in Ministry chapter’s interpretation of Genesis 3:16. We intend to address two questions: (1) Does Genesis 3 mark the origin of male headship and female submission, as our author claims? Or does it allow for the possibility of a painful distortion of an already existing headship-submission principle? (2) Is male headship restricted to the home, as the author contends, or does it extend also to the community of faith in such a way as to exclude women from serving in headship positions over men? We shall attempt to answer these questions by considering first the role of Adam and Eve in the Fall and then the divine judgments passed on them.

The Nature of the Temptation. In the first five verses of Genesis 3, Satan, masquerading as a serpent, plants seeds of doubt in Eve’s mind which lead her to question the limitation God had placed on them regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent pretended to disclose an important secret to Eve, namely, that by partaking of the forbidden fruit she would reach her full potential and become divine. Eve succumbed to the deception. Genesis describes in a matter-of-fact way the actual acts of Adam and Eve: "She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Gen 3:6 KJV).

What happened has significant implications. The text clearly indicates that Eve played the leading role in taking the fruit, eating it, and giving it to her husband, who enters the scene at a later time. The latter is suggested by the prepositional phrase "with her" (immah) which, as H. C. Leupold points out, "strongly suggests that at the outset, when temptation began, Adam was not with Eve but had only joined her at this time."²⁷ Ellen White states even more plausibly that Adam was not at the tree during the temptation at all, but that Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, went in search of Adam and brought some to him.²⁸

Note that Adam did not take the fruit from the tree but received it from his wife, who played the leading role in the Fall. Adam willingly let his wife take the lead. Apparently, as Ellen White indicates, Eve "was flattered [by the serpent] with the hope of entering a higher sphere than that which God had assigned to her"²⁹ at her husband’s side. She usurped Adam’s headship, and instead of being his helper to live as God intended, she led him into sin.

A careful reading of Genesis 3 suggests that the original sin of Adam and Eve was largely due to role reversal. The Fall did not originate male headship and female submission, as our author contends, but actually resulted from a failure to respect these roles. Adam failed to exercise his spiritual leadership by protecting Eve from the serpent’s deception, and, on her part, Eve failed to respect her submissive role by staying by her husband’s side. The tragic consequences of the first sex role reversal carry a solemn warning for Christians today who are told that Role interchangeability is a sign of human emancipation.