1 Timothy 2:8-15 (1 Tim.) is part of the teaching about church order which is found in chapter through 3:13. The author is giving the church members instructions on how to behave in the household of God which is the church (3:14-15). The church as God's household was understood as a patriarchal household, the basic structure of the society at that time. The Christian community was hierarchically structured according to the same pattern as the patriarchal household in society. The author urges the bishop, the leader of the church, to behave soberly and to manage his own household well, because if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's household.

Just as members of the household are supposed to be obedient to the head of the house, so in the church the members should be obedient to the male leaders. Wives, children and servants are those people who are always to be obedient in the church as well as in the household. Therefore, in 1 Tim. 2 we find instructions for women. Women should not be elaborately dressed (verse 9) and they are admonished to perform good deeds (verse 10). Furthermore, the author demands silence and submissiveness, and denies them the right of teaching or authority over men. "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent." (verse 12). This passage clearly indicates how subservient the place of women was in the church of Timothy. How much this passage, ever since, has influenced the life of women in the church! What is even more shocking is that such a teaching was legitimized theologically by the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 (Gen.).

How do we evaluate the place of women and the interpretation of the creation accounts by the author of 1 Tim.? We should ask why the author of Timothy has such a view of women and what his interpretation of the creation account reflects. It is also necessary to compare the view of the other biblical traditions on women with the view of women in 1 Tim. In 2:13-15, we find that the author understands that Adam was created first, and then Eve; it was not Adam but the woman who was deceived and became a transgressor; woman's salvation would be through bearing children. Such is the understanding of the creation accounts by the author of 1 Tim.

The core content of the Gospel is the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago. But what we Christians today have is not the Gospel itself but the various traditions of the Gospel given by the early Christians. In other words, what we have in the Bible are the interpreted gospels. There is no way to read the Gospel of Jesus who lived 2000 years ago apart from these interpreted gospels. The New Testament does not give us the Gospel but the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to Luke, etc. This means that the Gospel cannot be conceived of apart from its context. Each gospel tradition comes out of its own context. This suggests that the hermeneutical task of Christians today is to understand the Bible tradition of the gospel from their own context.

The dynamics between the Gospel and context, between text and context, is basic for the interpretation of the Bible. There is always a mutual challenge and interaction between the Gospel and context. We should understand that a given gospel tradition is not "the Gospel" but rather the product of the interaction between the Gospel and its context. Therefore, we need to examine the process by which the interaction between the Gospel and the context took place. We should take that examination as a lesson for our interpretations of the Gospel, that is, the mutual challenge and interaction between the Gospel and our situation.

1 Tim. 2:8-15 has its own history of mutual challenge and interaction between the Gospel and context which we will now examine. Jesus' ministry is characterized by the historical and social dynamics of equality, openness and inclusiveness. Jesus travelled around the countryside of Galilee preaching and teaching the Kingdom of God. He did not intend to settle in any one place and start a church or a community. Rather, he was a wandering preacher of the gospel of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God. The gospel of the Kingdom of God is characterized by equality, openness and inclusiveness. But the early churches, after Jesus, had the task to interpret the meaning of Jesus' gospel in different contexts.

The Christian churches in the Hellenistic world had to deal with different cultural contexts and their subsequent problems. For instance, Christians in Hellenistic world are not like Jesus' followers who left all, family and home, to wander around with him. They accepted Jesus as Saviour while staying at home and keeping their jobs. Because of the Christian vision of equality among believers which was realized in Jesus' ministry and in the early house churches, many slaves, women and children were attracted to the Christian churches and became part of the church community. For them, the equality, openness and inclusiveness of the Gospel was not mere rhetoric. It was a concrete alternative for community life style. The early Christian community was composed of people of various social classes and cultures, including both women and men. Such variety in the membership of the Christian community made for a number of challenges to the interpretation of the Gospel. The Christian churches after Jesus had the task to interpret the meaning of his gospel in a variety of different contexts.

It is Paul the apostle who was most aware of such a task and carried it out with the utmost sincerity and sensitivity. He was committed to preach the Gospel of equality, openness and inclusiveness in Christ as well as to build up the young churches. Many women today who are seriously questioning what it means to be Christian women take strength and courage for their lives from the powerful statement of liberation expressed in Galatians 3:28. "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Paul takes this passage from the baptismal confession of the early church which provided a new vision, the possibility of new life and a new community for the many people who lived in that patriarchal society.

The community of equality, openness and inclusiveness was in conflict with the patriarchal cultural ethos dominant in Roman society. The Gospel message of equality was a challenge to that culture characterized by discrimination by sex, class and race. The dominant culture counteracted by persecuting the Christian community which in turn responded with a challenge to Christians themselves to cope with the dominant culture's oppression. For people living in colonies of the Roman Empire, for instance, it was not easy to accept the legitimacy of the religion connected to Jesus who had been prosecuted by the Roman authority. In such a situation, it was necessary for church leaders to make clear that the Christian churches were not a political threat to Roman authority.

In order for the early church to carry out its missionary task, it needed to maintain a good relationship with the Roman emperor to guarantee its freedom of mission. Examples of political apologetics are found in the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of Apostles, in Paul's epistles, the Deutropauline epistles and the pastoral epistles in various degrees. It is interesting to find that such Christian political apologetics are closely related to attitudes dealing with women's issues. Anti-feminist references in the Bible need to be understood in the light of the mutual challenges and responses between the Gospel and its context which arose from the Christian apologetics of the patriarchal Roman society.

In Paul's church, there were many problems caused by conflicts among various social classes. He was struggling very hard with the tension between his faith in God's new creation in Christ and the conflicts among the social classes in the churches which needed to survive in the dominant Roman society. In Galatians 3:28 (Gal.), Jesus' message of equality and inclusiveness is expressed at its best. But when we look at 1 Corinthians 11 (1 Cor.), Paul's understanding of the place of women seems to be in conflict with his view in Gal. Although we know that the author of 1 Tim. was not Paul himself, the author's view of women seems to be supported by 1 Cor. 11. In 1 Cor. 11:2-16, it sounds like Paul is arguing for women's subordination to men, based particularly on the creation story.

Paul is appealing to women to cover their heads in church in the first part of 1 Cor. 11. He seems here to be worried lest outsiders be given the wrong impression by the ecstatic behaviour of women with their hair unbound during worship: it might be considered loose behaviour and religious fanaticism. For the sake of the order of worship, Paul urges the women to keep their hair bound up. In order to justify his exhortation, he appeals to the Jewish tradition of his time by saying that "the head of a woman is her husband"; "Neither was man created for the sake of a woman, but woman for the sake of a man" (verse 9); "For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels" (verse 10). Using for his argument the Jewish Midrash of the creation accounts which reflected the patriarchal culture of the time, Paul shows himself as a son of his time. He shows the limitations of his thinking bound by his patriarchal culture.

While it is true that Paul has his own cultural limitations, it is encouraging to find that Paul was not willing to reinforce the patriarchal discrimination to the end. This is clear in the next passage, verse 11 and 12, where Paul points out the Christian order "in the Lord", that is, the equality of women and men, and their interdependence. Paul's statements within this chapter in Corinthians seem to be inconsistent with one another. In the process of trying to interpret his gospel in the patriarchal culture, Paul has to live with his eschatological conflict. While Paul is still a son of his time, he transcends the limitations of this world when he does not lose his eschatological faith in God's new creation of equality and inclusiveness in Christ. Paul lives with the tension between this world and God's world. Although Paul lives in this world, he lives according to the order of God's world. He accepts his suffering as a sign of citizenship in God's Kingdom.

The problem with 1 Tim. is that such an eschatological tension is absent. The idea of Christian life reflected in the church of 1 Tim. differs greatly from Paul's understanding of Christian life. The church in 1 Tim. wants to become a part of this world. The instructions for the congregation's life correspond to instructions to citizens about how to live in the society. Here we find the beginning of Christianity's accommodation to the world.

While the author of 1 Tim. shows his respect for Paul's tradition by writing this letter in Paul's name, he fails to maintain Paul's eschatological tension in his understanding of the Gospel. It is necessary for us to look carefully into the changed situation of the church of 1 Tim. The letter to 1 Tim. appears to be a personal letter from Paul to Timothy but in fact, this letter was written in the name of Paul after Paul's time. It is not a personal letter but a kind of official document to give instructions to the community where Paul's authority was still operative.

Through careful reading of the concrete references in 1 Tim., we can discover something of the situation and culture of the community. First of all, it is certain that the perceptions of 1 Tim. are quite different from those of Paul. Paul believes that "the appointed time has grown short" ( 1 Cor. 7:29). But for the church of 1 Tim. this is no longer a relevant issue. History has moved along and the church can no longer maintain its sectarian character and remain a community basically opposed to the world. The church's urgent need is rather to secure a stable position within the Roman society. Of course, the author is still committed to the convictions of Paul and the early Christians that God's eschatological judgement is to be expected, but his emphasis on matters of church order and of administration certainly suggests that his eschatological interest is fading.

In 1 Tim. 2:1-2, the author asks that prayers and intercessions be made for kings and all who are in high positions that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. What he is doing here is advocating the cautious accommodation to the secular society of the Roman Empire to maintain a relationship of peace with the world. For example, he insists that a bishop must be well thought of by outsiders. By conforming to the moral and social mores of Roman society, the author hopes that the church may gain a good reputation from outsiders, even from opponents, and thus lead a quiet and peaceable life in the world.

It is likely that this church must feel threatened from the outside as well as the inside. It seemed to be threatened by the antisocial behaviour of heretics. Heretics not only distorted the orthodox doctrine of the church, they tended to evoke the hostility of Roman society by upsetting its social and moral order. The church's desire to have a relationship of peace with the world was related to its effort to get rid of the heretical thought and practice within its own body. The author feared that if the liberating antisocial behaviour and thought of heretics prevailed, the Roman authorities might threaten the survival of the church.

Another feature of the church reflected in the pastoral epistles is the institutionalization of the church whereby the offices of the local church are strengthened. Previously, the authority of prophets and apostles, who received revelation directly from the risen Lord, was highly esteemed. But as time went by, leadership roles of the bishop, deacons and elders became greater. In the context of all these changes in the life of the church, the author of 1 Tim. gives instruction to meet the need for a new church order. Because of its fading eschatological interest, in those instructions for new church order, the author gives up the principle of equality inherent in the Gospel, adopts a patriarchal pattern for church order and seeks peaceful coexistence with the world.

Instead of making the world obedient to God's Lordship, the author makes the church conform to the world to maintain peace with the world. In so doing, he seems to be faithful only to the need for the church to survive in Roman society as a legitimate religion. Accordingly, he failed to transcend the limitations of the patriarchal culture of the time. The church lost the principle and power to critique the culture. Here we see how the patriarchal order of the Roman society became, without critique, the ideal of church order. The ideal image of Roman citizenship became the ideal image of a Christian. Here we find how the equisite tension between the Gospel and its cultural context was broken, and the good news of equality and openness was overwhelmed by the culture of patriarchy.

In this process, the author's interpretation of the creation account in Gen. provides the theological justification for the patriarchalization of the church. The creation account was interpreted not in the light of the principle and experience of the equality of the Gospel but by the patriarchal experience and principle of the church and society. In 1 Cor. 11, we saw how Paul used the Jewish Midrash of the creation stories with its patriarchal point of view as one basis for his argument to support the wearing of a head covering by women during worship. Right after this, however, he introduced the new order of equality in the Lord.

In 1 Tim., the creation account was used to justify the patriarchal order of church life without any experience of the Gospel of equality and inclusiveness. It is our task today to make new Christian midrash based on the experience of the Gospel of equality in our own time. This is to reinterpret the Gospel in a fresh, new way for a new age.p

The place of women in the Korean church: 1 Timothy 2:8-15 and the cultural context of the Korean church

More than seventy percent of Christians in the Korean church are women. Yet a great majority of the ordained ministers are men and decision-making is in the hands of men. Most church constitutions in Korea deny women leadership in the church so that they cannot be ordained as ministers or elders. The text of 1 Tim. 2:8-15 is used to justify such practice. Many Christians still believe that this text provides the absolute standard for Christian life. They measure life in the church according to this text. Furthermore, the instruction that women should learn in silence with all submissiveness and should not be allowed to teach or have authority over men was supported by the Confucian patriarchal view of women in Korean society. The patriarchal view of women in Timothy was strengthened in the Korean church so that Korean Christian women were discriminated against. Even now at the end of the twentieth century, the largest Protestant denomination in Korea, the Presbyterian Church in Korea, still refuses the ordination and eldership of women. Women who want to be in ministry can only be evangelists. Even though the ordained man and the woman evangelist have exactly the same education and qualifications, and do the same kind of ministry, the woman receives only one third of the amount of salary.

The patriarchal tradition of Korean Confucianism strengthened and distorted the patriarchal instruction of 1 Tim. For example, due to the Confucian requirement that a woman remain faithful to only one husband to the last, some conservative churches in Korea allow a widow to be a lay leader in a congregation but they do not allow a divorced woman or a person born out of wedlock to hold offices in the congregation. Also Korean churches emphasize that women should be silent and obedient to men. Such teaching and practice is strengthened by the Confucian ethical maxim of Sam Chong Ji To, that a woman, when she is young, must be obedient to her father, when married, to her husband, and after her husband's death, to her son.

According to Confucian teaching, only one who is self-disciplined and able to manage his own household is qualified to rule the nation. Thus, Korean Christians easily accept the teaching of 1 Tim. 3:5. "For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church?"

Further, when we read, "she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty" ( 1 Tim. 2:15), it is difficult to understand what this means for us. This kind of soteriology cannot be drawn from the creation accounts or Jesus' message. But it was not difficult for the Korean church to accept this interpretation in a culture dominated by Confucianism where a woman's position was confirmed through bearing a son. The Korean church, oriented to a Confucian view of women, easily accepted the patriarchal view of women in 1 Tim. The sexually discriminating Confucian practice was rather strengthened in the name of the Gospel in the Korean church. Therefore, the text of 1 Tim. 2:8-15 has not been the gospel of salvation for Korean Christian women; not good news of salvation, but rather, bad news which legitimatizes women's oppression in the church and society.

The place of women in Genesis 1-3: partnership in life and work

We have been considering the significance of the history of the mutual challenges and responses between the Gospel and culture behind 1 Tim. and we have come to realize that the text of 1 Tim. is but one text and one gospel tradition among many. Just as the author of 1 Tim. gives us a Christian midrash which, from his own patriarchal experience, is oppressive toward women, so now it is our hermeneutical task to interpret the creation tradition in Gen. from our understanding of the Gospel of equality in Christ as well as our liberating experience as women.

size=-1>The context from which we must interpret the creation accounts is very different from that of the author of 1 Tim.. First, with the passing of 2000 years, our understanding of patriarchalism has changed in the sense that the concept of equality of women and men is not something yet to be proved but is now established even by law. For instance, in the society of Timothy 2000 years ago, the idea of equality was in contrast to the established ideology of the culture. But now, with certain limitations, no one denies the basic idea of equality among human beings. Not only that, but as women, we ourselves are conscious of our equality; we experience it, and so we are assured of its ultimate realization. That is to say, the experience of today's interpreter, a critical factor in interpretation, is one of equality. Our interpretation will be done from a feminist perspective, an essential point of view for today's woman.

Our perspective today, 2000 years after Timothy's day, allows us to see the whole spectrum of the gospel traditions of the early church. Within the New Testament, we can easily find diversity in understandings of the Gospel. At the same time, within this diversity we find the unity of the Gospel, the coherence of the Gospel. The unity of the Gospel is found in the liberation and equality of the Gospel. Such a critical principle of liberation and equality runs through the Bible from the creation accounts, through the prophetic tradition, and on to Jesus's tradition and Pauline tradition.

The context from which we interpret the creation accounts today includes both our experience of equality and our understanding of the diversity within the unity of the gospel tradition of the early church. Also, today we have available to us the development of a variety of methodologies for biblical interpretation. So we are much further advanced than the author of 1 Tim. in our ability to examine the mutual challenges and responses between the Gospel and culture. With such experience, maturity and advanced methodologies, we take as our task the interpretation of the creation accounts. It is widely accepted that there are two different accounts of God's creation of human beings and the whole universe in Gen.: chapter 1 and chapter 2-3. In order to gain a good understanding of God's creation, we need to listen to both accounts, even though they reflect different traditions within ancient Israel.

Partnership in work

The first creation account has a cosmic setting, as indicated in the order of the words "the heavens and the earth" ( Gen. 1:1). The climax of this account is found in Gen. 1:26-30. "Then God said "Let us make humankind in our image, and so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (1:27). Here we find, first, that from the beginning, humanity was a dual being male and female, and secondly, as such humanity is the image of God. The word "man" in God's proclamation "Let us make man in our image" is the Hebrew word "adam", which is used in its generic sense. This is clear from the following specification, "male and female he created them".

It has been suggested that the terms "image" and "likeness" refer to the human beings' spiritual nature, reason, free will, conscience, etc. Such spiritual capacity is certainly implied. We should note, however, that its meaning is suggested in the action that follows from it, that of "having dominion over the earth". We read in verse 26 "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." The reference to dominion implies that human beings are to be God's representatives in caring for creation. Such an idea is also found in Psalm 8 which is the creation psalm. When human beings are declared to be created in the image of God, the intention of the story is concerned with the special honour and the responsibility of stewardship to which God has assigned human beings in creation.

Created in the image of God, human beings are not representatives of themselves, but of God; not the agent of their rule on earth, but of God's rule on earth; not the owners of the earth, but stewards of the earth. Such an honour and responsibility of stewardship over the earth is given to human beings, man and woman together. So we read again, "Male and female he created them." The equality of man and woman is further underscored in the next verse in which God gives blessings to human beings. "God blessed them, and God said to them "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air."

We should note that the terms in which God gives blessing are all expressed in the plural form. This is less obvious in English, but very clear in Hebrew. The fact that the plural form of the verb is used makes it absolutely clear that both woman and man are the recipients of God's blessing. Furthermore, God's command to "subdue" and "have dominion over" the earth is given to woman and man together.

In the creation story of chapter 1, being equally created - equally honoured, blessed and made responsible by God - woman and man were intended to be partners in work in God's created world. In the order of creation, as understood in Gen. 1, there is a sexual differentiation between male and female, but there is not even a hint of any pattern of domination and subordination. Created beings, men and women, are to work together in partnership with equal honour and responsibility for the world which God created, sustains and loves so much.

Partnership in life

The second creation account has an earthly setting, as indicated in the reverse order of words "the earth and the heavens" ( Gen. 2:4b). This account, unlike the first story in which man and woman are created together on the sixth day, begins with God's creation of the human being (ha'adam). Although this has usually been understood as a proper noun, throughout chapter two this word is prefixed by the definite article ha and therefore should not be regarded as a masculine term. Wherever the word has a definite article, the more precise meaning is simply "the human being". The word adam is a play on the word adamah which means "earth" or "ground". Adam is simply the being who came out of the adamah, without specifically denoting either sex exclusively.

God then planted a garden in Eden and in this place nothing was lacking except that this human being (ha'adam) was alone, and God considered this to be not good. "It is not good that the man (ha'adam) should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." (Gen. 2:18). It is interesting to note that by this time a masculine point of view has emerged here. In the story itself there is a certain element of ambiguity. The "helper as his partner" is obviously a reference to woman, thus suggesting a masculine interpretation of ha'adam. Yet the story has categorically not wished to make this differentiation at the beginning, even though a sexually neutral human being cannot be imagined. Although this creates a difficulty for human understanding, the point should still be made that at the beginning of this second creation story a sexually non-specific human being is intended by the word ha'adam.

The fact that the being who was created as a "helper as his partner" is a woman has often been used to justify the traditional view that woman is the assistant of man, occupying merely an auxiliary and secondary position. It is necessary to examine whether this view is true to the meaning of the biblical text.

The Hebrew words for the phrase "helper as his partner" is ezer kenegdo. The word ezer occurs more than twenty times in the Old Testament and means "help" or "helper". This word has great theological importance. In almost all instances the word is used to refer to the help which God provides for Israel; thus it denotes divine help (Psalm 33:20, 70:5, 115:9,11, 121:1-2, 124:8, 146:5, Deuteronomy 33:7,26,29, etc.). In the Old Testament it refers primarily to God's help toward Israel, by which it is upheld and saved. It is very significant, therefore, that precisely this word is used in reference to the creation of woman. Woman was created as the ezer of man. Far from woman being an inferior assistant to man, she is the essential helping companion without whom he cannot be.

The other part of the Hebrew word for "helper as his partner" is kenegdo. This is a compound word which literally means as his neged. The root meaning of neged is "over against", "facing" or "corresponding to" and thus it has come to mean "correspondence" or "counterpart". In short, neged denotes equality of relationship; there is no connotation of a superior and inferior position. The fact that God created woman as neged to man means she was created as an equal counterpart to man. Their relationship is one of equality and mutuality. In other words, the human being needs a partner who is neither superior nor subordinate, but who is equal, yet mutually dependent and mutually helpful. A human being needs not a subordinate assistant, but an equal partner. Man and woman are equal partners who correspond to each other. The only one who can correspond to a human being is another human being. In this story, the relationship of woman and man is not that of subordination but one of equality and mutuality; it is not that of obedient assistant, but that of equal counterpart. To be created by God as woman and man is to have a partnership in life.

As we find in 1 Tim. 2, this second creation story has traditionally been interpreted to indicate the double weakness of woman; she was created last and sinned first. However from the viewpoint of the literary structure of the story, this account begins with God's creation of a human being who is sexually undifferentiated and ends with God's creation of human beings who are sexually differentiated. In this second creation story, the two stages of the creation of human beings do not indicate the superior and inferior state of man and woman, but the beginning and fulfilment of God's creation. Here God's creation is climaxed in the creation of the partnership of human beings.

In chapter three, we find the story of the fall, describing the fallen reality or the fallen order. Having shown the way things should be, the writer moves quickly to the account of the temptation and fall. God provided human beings with good and beautiful surroundings and allowed them to enjoy everything with one exception. It was commanded not to eat the fruit of one certain tree. As the story goes, the serpent approached the woman. Some have interpreted this to mean that the woman was easily tempted, while the man was the innocent victim. Is there any justification for this view? If we read Gen. 3 carefully we will discover that the responsibility for the fall is by no means the woman's alone, but is at least equally shared by the man. First, in the conversation between the serpent and the woman, the serpent always speaks in the second person plural form. In English the second person pronoun and verb form are the same in the singular and the plural, but in Hebrew they are clearly distinguishable. Therefore, when the serpent says, "You will not die", "...when you eat of it your eyes will be opened", and "...you will be like God", in each case the serpent is not speaking to the woman alone, for everything is in the plural form; woman and man were being addressed together.

After taking the fruit from the tree, the woman gave some to her husband who was with her. Many English translations omit this phrase, "who was with her" ('immah'), but the Hebrew text clearly includes it; the word 'immah' means "with her". We can safely conclude that the man was not absent. According to the text, when the man was given the fruit, "he ate" (3:6). But some ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew text, including the Samaritan text, have a different form of words, namely "they ate". This means that they ate together. The culminate force of these points leaves little room for doubt that the man was with the woman in the place of temptation. The two together, forsaking the commandment of God, fell into the hands of the tempter.

The point of the story of the fall lies in the content of the temptation which is very serious. The very temptation is to be like God. The fall of human beings into the serpent's temptation results in the disruption of the creation order. The behaviour of human beings in disobeying the command of God in order to be like God was the denial of the sovereignty of God the Creator and the creatureliness of human beings.

It is interesting to look carefully at the reaction of the woman to the temptation of the serpent. It is certainly not the woman who tempted the man, but neither is she asking any advice or permission from him. She appears as a very independent person, quite unlike the traditional image of woman. Although the man was with her at such a critical moment, she doesn't discuss the matter with her partner at all. Exceeding her creatureliness, or her own limitations, she feels no need to be helped by the man. On the other hand, although the man was there, he doesn't speak out about the temptation or the behaviour of the woman, nor does he raise any question or objection. He failed to act the part of a partner, as was intended in God's creation. Although he appears to be only a bystander or an innocent victim, the sin of the man can be characterized as one of disobedience, in the form of irresponsible passivity, neglecting and denying his right and responsibility as a partner for work and living.

In short, the first human beings, who fell into the temptation to be like God, experienced the disruption of God's creation order, which is manifested in the collapse of partnership. The fallen reality, due to the disruption of the creation order, is manifested as isolation or enmity between God and human beings, between man and woman, and between human beings and nature.

Surprisingly enough, God doesn't curse the man and woman, but instead, as punishment for disobeying God's command, declares that for the woman, pain in child-bearing will be intensified, and for the man, the labour of cultivating the land will be increased. In connection with this punishment, the woman's desire for her husband is mentioned. This means, that in spite of the brokenness of the partnership between the man and woman, the desire of the woman is still directed towards man, and also the husband's rule over his wife is mentioned, too. Thus her partner becomes her master! So, in the brokenness of partnership, one partner becomes a helpmate while the other struggles to help himself. In her book Becoming Human, Letty Russell describes the reality of the fallen condition as: The man wants to show that he doesn't need help, all the while enslaving the woman as his 'helper'. The woman wants to show that she is helpless and dependent, and does need help, all the while acting as helper. So human sexuality is now distorted to become the domination of one partner over the other member of the partnership.

In this story we find the origin of the brokenness of partnership between man and woman in the fallen relationship. In the fall, the relationship of man and woman was changed from a relation of partnership to a sex-oriented relationship. The state of male domination is not a condition to be perpetuated; it is one which should be redeemed.

Conclusion

Even today, we are living in a world of sexual discrimination and inequality as far as women are concerned. Regrettably, the situation is not much better in the Christian church. As mentioned above, women form the majority of Christians in Korea, but in most denominations they do not have the same rights and responsibilities as men. They are expected to play a supportive and secondary role. When we proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, we celebrate the new creation over the old order of the fall. As Paul the apostle said, "For everyone who is in Christ, there is new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here" (2 Corinthians 5:17 - Jerusalem Bible). Accordingly, Christians are to live to the gift of this new creation, and are summoned to the task of healing and restoring the broken relationship between woman and man to the relationship which God intended for them at creation. God wills us, as women and men, to live and work together in equality and partnership.