If Adam and Eve were equal in their roles and responsibilities in the garden prior to the fall, then Eve would have been held equally responsible as Adam in keeping the covenant, but this was not the case. It is Adam who was held responsible for breaking the covenant, not Eve, because he was the federal head (Gen. 3:17-19, cf. Hos. 6:7). Adam and Eve no longer existed in true righteousness and holiness as they did before the fall. The prior ordered relationship that already perfectly existed between Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 is altered post-fall, with the husband and wife both having sinful natures.

There is a lot of debate going on currently regarding male and female roles in marriage and the church. Increasingly, some Christians are arguing that there was no authority structure in Adam and Eve’s relationship in the garden of Eden prior to their fall into sin.

According to this line of thinking, if there was no relationship order before the fall, then authoritative male headship was not God’s original design but rather part of the post-fall curse. The conclusion of those who argue this way is that husbands and wives are to equally submit to each other, and all those verses in the New Testament about wifely submission and women not being able to teach authoritatively in the church must mean something else. Is this actually true? No. Here’s why.

We learn about God’s original design for men and women in the second chapter of Genesis.

In Genesis 2 God made a conditional covenant with Adam before Eve was created:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,  but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:15-17)

In Genesis 2 we also learn that God made Eve, an image-bearer of God, to be a helper to Adam:

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.  The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2:18-24)

In these two passages we learn that God made Adam first and then made Eve from the rib of Adam for the specific purpose of being a helper to Adam. Additionally, before God created her, God gave Adam the direct command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, along with specific sanctions if Adam failed to pass the test of fidelity to his sovereign King. God also gave Adam authority to name the animals before Eve existed.

Authoritative male headship was part of God’s original design in the garden of Eden.

As Denny Burk points out in an article for The Gospel Coalition, one of the key arguments against authoritative male headship is based on an interpretation of Genesis 3:16 that denies the reality of order in marriage before the fall.[1] (See below for more on Genesis 3:16.) Yet, Adam’s headship before the fall is on display in the following circumstances:

• Adam—not Eve—was given the responsibility to keep God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Genesis 2:16-17, God made a conditional covenant with Adam (also known as the covenant of works) to test his fidelity to his Creator. Eve had not been created at the time God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was the covenant head who represented all of humanity, and by his disobedience he brought condemnation on himself and all his posterity. Similarly, Jesus was the covenant head who, by his fully obedient life and perfect sacrificial death, secured salvation and eternal life for all who trust in him (see Romans 5:12-21 regarding the first Adam and the last Adam).
• Adam exercised authority over the animals by naming them (Gen. 2:19). Similarly he called the helper God gave to him “Woman” (Gen. 2:23). Post-fall, Adam would give his wife the name Eve, “because she was the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20), showing his faith in God’s promise to provide a savior for mankind.
• Even though Eve sinned first, God placed the fault on Adam, as he was the one who bore the responsibility to keep God’s command in Genesis 2:16-17:

And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:17-19)

Satan sought to overthrow God’s established order for the human family.

The fact that the serpent approached Eve and not Adam is an indication of Satan’s attempt to overthrow God’s design for the order of creation:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1; see also Gen. 3:2-7)

According to theologian Meredith Kline in Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview,

Various factors may have entered into the tempter’s strategy of approaching the woman rather than Adam. Certainly in maneuvering Adam out of the position of primary response Satan was defying and subverting the structure of authority God had appointed for the human family. Moreover, there would be greater contradiction of this same divine institution if Eve could be induced to lead the family head into sin than if it happened the other way around.[2]

Kline continues regarding Satan’s attack against the social structure God had ordained:

Satan’s challenge to God’s authority compelled man to choose between two masters. It was part of Satan’s falsifying of the situation that he projected for himself the image of lordly benefactor. While he was getting the woman to separate in theory between God’s interests and her own and to act in a spirit of self-interest over against the (insinuated) inconsiderateness of God, Satan managed to strike the pose of one who was himself concerned for man’s best interests. At every turn he forced onto man this choice between authorities.

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