What Really Happened in the Garden After the Fall?
Below is my argument that the post-fall Genesis narrative is illustrative of the Doctrines of Grace. Here it is in kernel form:
1. Rom 5:10 and a host of other scriptures teach that sinners are enemies of God. However, Gen 3:15 clearly implies
that by God sovereignly decreeing enmity between the Serpent and Eve, He also removed the enmity between her and Himself
that resulted due to her sin. For how could Eve have been at enmity with Good and Evil at once (God and the devil, respectively)? God, therefore, reconciled Eve to himself by decreeing enmity between her and the serpent. Adam, however, is conspiculously absent in that decree.
2. God also placed enmity between the woman's seed and the serpent's, which which a highly unusal way in the ancient world of expressing progeny, for this was commonly expressed in male terms. Moreover, these two seeds represent the woman's godly line and the serpent's ungodly line. The fact that the godly seed does not descend from Adam can only mean that Adam was very likely the seed of the serpent.
3. Eve manifested faith toward God after the Fall by giving credit twice to Him for giving her a "man-child", which she doubtlessly believed was the promised "seed" in Gen 3:15 (cf. 4:1,25).
4. Adam named his wife Eve, which means "mother of all living" (Gen3:20). This phrase means more than Eve merely being the grand matriarch of the human race; it's much more likely that she is the mother of all the godly spiritual seed by virtue of the ultimate promised "seed" (Christ) who would descend from her to crush the serpent's head, thereby significantly adding more weight to her redemptive status.
5. Eve is a type of the Bride of Christ in several respects. See next post for these details.
6. Not only isn't there any evidence that Adam had true faith, but his sin is characterized as "transgression" (Rom 5:15). Additionally,
Adam was quite arrogant toward God when he was asked by God what he had done. Adam insinuated to God his culpability for Eve's sin when he said, "The woman YOU gave to me..." (3:12), implying that God had given him defective goods. (And this kind of retort to this day is a favorite argument among atheists and other skeptics.)
7. Adam hid his transgression from God (Job 31:33), which is extremely displeasing to Him (Prov 28:13; Mat 23:25-28) and the consequences, thereof, can be seen in the lives of Cain, Saul and Ananias and Sapphira (Gen 4:9; 1Sam 15:13-24; Act 5:1-11, respectively).
8. It's clear from 3:22-25 that God's anger was directed solely toward Adam. It was "the man" whom God drove out of the Garden. Eve is conspicuously excluded.
9. It was "the man" who God explicitly kept from the "tree of life". Again, Eve was excluded.
10. The Hebrew word "garash" (Strong's 1644) translated "drove" (Gen 3:24) is a strong term that denotes being cast out, driven away, thrust out. Adam wasn't politely showed the gate out of the Garden; he was in no uncertain terms unceremoniously "evicted". This term is frequently used in the OT with respect to either God driving out his enemies or the enemies of his chosen people (cf. Gen 4:14; 21:10, Ex 6:1; 10:11; 11:1; Num 22:6; Deut 33:27; Josh 24:12, etc.)
Moreover, in the Greek, the term "ekballo" translated "drove out " or "cast out" is employed in the NT with respect to Christ's enemies
(cf. Mat 8:12). It is used also when Jesus casts out demons (Mat 10:1; 13:50). And used again when he casts out the money
changers from the temple twice (Mk 11:15; Mat 21:12; Lk 19:46.
11. Adam is the only individual type of Christ that has the dubious distinction of being portrayed in the NT by contrasts to Christ (Rom 5:12-21; 1Cor 15:20-21,45.) There are no positive statements about Adam in scripture. A very dubious distinction indeed!
12. Whereas Eve's name means "mother of all living" (interestingly, the Septuagint renders "Eve" literally as "Life"), Adam is not the spiritual father of God's chosen people; rather, Abraham is (Rom 4:11,16-18; Gal 3:7, etc.)! This strongly suggests that Adam, unlike Abraham, was not a man of faith!
13. Adam, like the angels, had direct empirical evidence for God's existence, as God directly communicated with him, communed with him, brought the animals to him and created Eve from his side. Since God chose to not provide any salvific remedy for the fallen angels who had this kind of direct knowledge, Adam's salvation, under these circumstances, would be unprecedented in scripture.
14. All the foregoing strongly supports Remnant Theology in scripture, as God has always had but a remnant of his faithful witnesses upon the earth during any particular time period -- the "7,000 who have never bowed a knee to Baal", Noah and his family during the Flood, etc. The exclusion of Adam, therefore, from salvation is consistent with scripture; whereas the salvation of both our first parents would be unprecedented since they comprised the entire human race at the time of the Fall.
15. The election of Eve and the exclusion of Adam also set the precedent for how God dealt with other pairs of humans, e.g. Ishmael and Issac and Jacob and Esau. This pattern, again, demonstrates the consistency of scripture, thereby strongly reinforcing the conclusion to this argument.
For all these reasons, I do not see Adam's salvation in scripture. While one might argue that God provided coverings for both Adam and Eve (Gen 3:21),these coverings were very likely the skins of innocent slain animals, this doesn't necessarily mean that Adam embraced that symbolic sin covering through repentance and faith; whereas, there is evidence that Eve did so. Cain wore coverings, too, but obviously did not accept their significance or the significance of blood sacrifices. Israel, too, went through all the ritualistic motions of sacrifices for atonement purposes that God had ordained, but both Judah and Israel were apostate nations!
Also, we should not be distracted by the fact that Eve was also evicted from the Garden along with her husband, and she was also forbidden to eat of the Tree of Life, as Adam was. Eve suffered temporal (or natural) punishment for her sin, as Adam did for his. Eve's punishment (discipline) served as the template for how God often deals with his saints' sins in this world (Heb 12:7-11; Psalm 32, etc.). But nonetheless, Eve was not condemned, whereas the foregoing preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that Adam was. With this kind of evidence I can only conclude that God sovereignly elected Eve unto salvation and adopted her into his family. Conversely, all the negative arguments against Adam can only suggest God election of him unto reprobation. Notwithstanding the very weak argument of Gen 3:21, there is not one positive indicator in Adam's favor throughout all the bible.