If you noticed that all of the links I had up for my blogrolls and websites are no longer there, we’re hoping it will be back up soon. My Hubby (who is my webmaster–the advantages to being married to a computer geek) upgraded me to WordPress 2.something, and he has not been able to get the links I’ve added to come up. Hopefully he will have it figured out soon. If you upgraded WordPress and had the same problem, please let us know. My email can be found in the Contact info.
Matthew, I intend to answer your last comment, but I have not had the time to give a proper response, and I refuse to be glib. I just wanted to let you know I had not forgotten about you. 🙂
I disagree. Their claiming to be autonomous included their claiming autonomy from each other, which is just not true and is sinful. We are always always always already inextricably bound to others and cannot separate our identity from other people. We come to have identities through others. In other words, we only exist because there are others. We don’t exist in a vacuum and neither did Adam and Eve.
Her existence (her identity) was dependent on him, just as his existence (his identity) was dependent on her. This drives us up the wall because we want to assert our own authority over our own lives, but that is impossible (and the cause of much neurosis) and we’re lying to ourselves if we say otherwise. Our lives are not our own. We come to an understanding of ourselves only through interaction with others. Eve’s ‘Other’ wasn’t only God, but was also Adam. Eve is bound to Adam just as Adam is bound up with Eve. This is the very thing they were revolting against. To my thinking, you are encouraging this very revolt against our being in communion with others.
The autonomous is easy. From the article I said: “She was created as an autonomous being; she was a complete human being, just as the man was. Her existence was not dependent on him as his existence was not dependent on her: their existence depended on God alone who created them both.”
I never said Adam and Eve were autonomous from God: just that their existence did not depend on them–their existence depended on God.
No problem!
I’ll just add one thing to my comment: your claiming the status of “autonomous being” for Eve really throws up a red flag for me. It seems to me that claiming this very status for themselves was Adam and Eve’s sin in the first place. Their sin was not in their wanting to be like God, but that they wanted to be like the wrong god, namely an autonomous being. They wanted to be self-sufficient, as they thought God was. But He is not. He is relative and endlessly gives of Himself to others. I think that claiming any sort of “power” for Adam or Eve is dangerous ground.