To Brovus and Molly

The difficulty in addressing both of your comments is that according to the agreed upon criteria for interpretation I am limited as to what I can say. To remain within the confines of what we are reading (Ch 1-4) I still can extract this much from the text:

Was the serpent evil? That depends on how we define it? As I read the text, the Serpent seemed to undermine the words of God, thus casting doubt on his words. This came from the Serpent and not Eve or Adam ... it was external to man but within the snake. Thus Eve makes the statement that the snake deceived her (v. 13). I would say that the snake sinned or disobeyed God or did wrong because the result of his actions was to be cursed (v. 14). I take this to mean that he did something that he was not supposed to have done ... therefore, I coclude that his actions/questions leading up to this point were malicious in their intention and so sinful in nature. Notice that the LORD curses the snake, but only cuses the ground and not Adam or Eve. I take this to mean that the Serpents actions were far greater than those of Adam and Eve. Later we read that Cain is cursed because he kills his brother. He is cursed because he did the action.

With the limitation of the reading I would not say that GOD DID THIS. Clearly by the text Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and so they, by their own fruition, sinned against God. At this point my understanding of "sovereignty" is that God is the author of life thus he has the fre reign to create it or to take it away.

To Molly's comment about eternal life. I would argue that there is no textual evidence to support that Adam and Eve would die if they had not eaten the forbidden fruit, rather, I think that the text leads one to conclude that if they don't they should continue to live ... forever. I also gather this from the comment that if they had eaten from the tree of life that they would have lived forever (v. 22) ... a good question would be, but in what state? I think they would have lived forever in their fallen state and not their glorified state. They were allowed to eat the fruit from this tree of life prior to the fall for only one tree had restrictions (v. 16-17), thus I have every inclination to think that they would have lived forever.