Adam Had The Authority, Not Eve

 

 

All the arguments that Adam and Eve were created equal in authority, and that male headship only came to exist after the fall, collapse down on one point, a point that is central to the gospels, central to the state of humanity and that if one denies they unravel all of Paul's theology of sin.

That point: Eve sinned first, but it was through the disobedience of the man that sin entered into the world, not the sin of the woman. Adam had the authority and responsibility to stop sin in its place, but he failed.

Eve sinned first, but Adam was responsible.

Hierarchy was built into the created order as Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians, “3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). Not just hierarchy either, more specifically patriarchy: that is leadership and therefore the responsibility of the man. Nowhere in scripture, not on any page, is this order rescinded. It is in fact reiterated again and again in both covenants and is central to our understanding of sin: The first Adam let sin into the world, the second Adam, Christ, defeated it.

It's no wonder people cannot submit or handle this order in large measure, the first man and woman inverted it. But it is there none the less.

It's not an accident that our egalitarian world is less Christian, egalitarianism strikes at all the most fundamental hierarchies of the Scriptures. Including the initial ones that give us our understanding of how the world fell. Egalitarianism is to the family, what evolution is to concept of creation: a destabilising force, that undermines how God wants us to think about ourselves. Evolution says we are not special, we are products of random chance being modified by natural law (it can't even begin to say how natural law exists). Egalitarianism say that no one should submit unto anyone else, especially not a wife to her husband. It undermines the entire family structure.

To put it more bluntly egalitarianism and the gospel are mutually exclusive concepts. If egalitarianism is right, then the gospel cannot be correct to say that Adam was responsible, and that a man was necessary to reverse Adam's sin. If the gospel is correct, which is the correct position, then egalitarianism cannot be correct because the man was responsible for his charge, the woman.

This is why our egalitarian age is so anti-Chrisitan, the logical impulse of egalitarianism is to reject Christianity which is not egalitarian. The secular egalitarian is just being more consistent and logical than the Christian one, who is building a house of cards under their Christian faith. Not only should you not be surprised that an egalitarian culture is less Christian, you should expect it. As the falsehoods of egalitarianism becomes more and more apparent, you should expect to also see the reverse happen and more and more people be attracted to traditional Christianity, that is if Islam doesn’t get a leg up first.