Understanding the Image of God: A Response to Mary L. Conway, “Gender in Creation and Fall”
Written by Peter J. Gentry |
Thursday, July 13, 2023
Conway is right that to describe the woman as a helper does not indicate inferiority. She has strengths that match the man’s weaknesses, and vice versa. They will have to work as a team, but this does not rule out the possibility of the man having a primary responsibility or servant leadership in the relationship. We are getting a one-sided picture from Conway, even if the woman pays a higher price than the man in the task of being fruitful and multiplying.[9]
Chapter two of Discovering Biblical Equality is on “Gender in Creation and Fall” and is authored by Mary L. Conway. Much of her exegesis and interpretation represents a fair treatment of the text. Nonetheless, she summarises the teaching of Genesis 1–3 as follows:
In Genesis, before the fall, there was mutuality, equality, and harmony between men and women. Incorrect understanding and false teaching were influences contributing to the sin of Adam and Eve, although deliberate disobedience was certainly a major factor. The fall destroyed the mutuality and harmony between men and women, resulting in millennia of male domination in both the church and in marriage. In Christ, that consequence is undone, and the mutuality and harmony of marriage is potentially restored . . . if the church allows it (52).
So, neither male nor female has a leadership role in relation to the other sex or a responsibility that differs from that of the other sex in marriage. In the following essay, we shall consider features of Genesis 1–3 that suggest differences in leadership roles and responsibilities, although the term “domination,” in a negative or patriarchal sense, need not be invoked in any way.
We shall evaluate in particular Conway’s treatment of ’adam, the image of God, helper, the enticement by the serpent, and the consequences of human rebellion.
’adam
As Conway observes, the Hebrew term ’adam must be interpreted properly. She is correct to explain that “the Hebrew lexis ’adam is most often a nongendered/collective term for a specific human or humanity in general, male and/or female, unless its meaning is restricted by context” (36). In Genesis 1–5, this term shifts in usage from referring to humanity in general, to referring to the primal or archetypal man to use as a proper noun, i.e., Adam. Normally when this term has no article, it is used as a name. She does not refer to the definitive study by Hess that details this usage, which would have been helpful.[1] In 3:17 she follows a note in the apparatus of BHS to articulate the noun, although absolutely no witnesses support this in the entire textual tradition.
The Image of God
Anyone attending to the text in Genesis 1:26-27 ought to affirm as Conway does, as well as all complementarians,[2] that both male and female are made as the divine image and neither is inferior to the other — both are equal in being (ontology) and worth before God.
To explain “being made in the image of God,” Conway appeals to Middleton’s work as definitive proof that the implications of being created in Yahweh’s image are functional: “the imago dei refers to human rule, that is, the exercise of power on God’s behalf in creation” (38).[3] She rightly rejects the claim that being male and female defines the image of God. She could have strengthened her position by reference to our work in Kingdom through Covenant. Two clauses at the end of Genesis 1:27 are marked by discourse grammar signals as comments or explanatory footnotes that prepare the reader for the commands in v. 28. Also note the chiastic structure:
God created mankind in his image
according to his likeness:
A in the image of God he created him
B male and female he created them
======
B’ be fruitful and increase in number
and fill the earth
A’ and subdue it
and rule over the fish/birds/animals
Binary sexuality, i.e., duality of gender, is the basis for being fruitful, while the divine image is correlated with the command to rule as God’s viceroy. These observations from the discourse grammar of the narrative are crucial. They are decisive in showing that the divine image is not to be explained by or located in terms of duality of gender in humanity.[4]
Nonetheless, significant further light has been cast on the image of God since the work of Richard Middleton was published.[5] A merely functional interpretation is inadequate; we must view humanity in holistic terms as the divine image. The image describes not only function, but also human ontology and structure. In particular, it describes a covenant relationship between God and humanity on the one hand and humanity and creation on the other. The former portrays humanity as obedient sons and daughters while the latter depicts humanity in terms of servant kingship or leadership. Understanding the divine image as entailing a covenant relationship means that this applies not only to the human-God relationship, but also to the relationships in the human family. Not only in the Bible, but all across the ancient Near East, familial relationships were considered covenantal. This is why family language is used in international treaties (where the partners are called “father” and “son”). I have also shown from Genesis 2 that the image of God assigns the role of priest to humanity and that Adam must give leadership in this role.[6]
The image of God means that humanity is not only connected to God but must reflect him. Later revelation of the economic doctrine of the Trinity shows equality among the persons of the Godhead but also different roles in the economy of salvation. Why shouldn’t we expect this in the human family as well?
With regard to “naming” in Genesis 1–3 Conway asserts: “that the man (ha’adam) names the woman, as he previously did the animals, however, is also not a sign of the man’s superiority or dominance. Naming in the Old Testament is an act of discerning a trait or function or ability that already exists in the person being named, not a sign of authority over that person” (48). Her examples from Genesis 16:13 and Judges 8:31 are not particularly persuasive. She does not account well for the context of Genesis 1–3. In Genesis 1, God names entities and structures created on Days 1–3 while Adam names entities filling the structures created on Days 4–6.
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Why Did My Life Have to Be Hard?
No matter what is happening to us, we can recognize that it will ultimately count as little more than a “light momentary affliction” that is “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17–18; Romans 8:18). Our suffering, in other words, can and should prompt us to look up and long for what God has prepared for us.
If you were to ask me what I take to be among Scripture’s most comforting passages, my answer may surprise you: Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes.
Psalm 90 is Israel’s poignant lament that, even though they are God’s chosen people, they are also Adam’s children, subject as he was to God’s righteous anger at their sin. Moses’s poetry in Psalm 90 leads us, step by step, deep into the cellar of their life’s brevity, pain, and toil. The third verse begins that descent by echoing God’s words to Adam in Genesis 3:19:
You return man to dustand say, “Return, O children of Adam!” . . .You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,like grass that is renewed in the morning:in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;in the evening it fades and withers.For we are brought to an end by your anger;by your wrath we are dismayed.You have set our iniquities before you,our secret sins in the light of your presence.For all our days pass away under your wrath;we bring our years to an end like a sigh. (Psalm 90:3, 5–9)
We aren’t exactly sure of the details — perhaps, as Allen Ross argues, Moses penned this psalm at the end of Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness (A Commentary on the Psalms, 3:26–27). Whatever the specific backdrop, the Israelites had gone through a period of intense suffering and had thus learned the hard way that God’s anger against their sin meant that, even if they lived unusually long lives, their best years would be but toil and trouble that would soon be gone, and then they would fly away (verse 10).
Good But Unfathomable Providence
Ecclesiastes is best understood “as an arresting but thoroughly orthodox exposition of Genesis 1–3,” as David Clemens observes. In particular, it makes “the painful consequences of the fall . . . central,” clarifying how disconcerting life after the fall can be. The Preacher knows that God generally administers his providence through the world’s regular causal processes (Ecclesiastes 1:4–7, 9). Fools and sluggards generally get what they deserve because they refuse to conform to creation’s ordered patterns (Ecclesiastes 4:5; see also Proverbs 6:6–11; 20:4; 24:30–34). Wisdom is better than folly because the wise understand and honor those patterns and thus can see where they are going, while fools stumble around in the dark (Ecclesiastes 2:13–14).
But still, “time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). In other words, what God, in the course of his ordinary providence, ordains creation’s structures and processes to bring us, is not only outside our control but also beyond our finding out. Yet nothing can be added to what God does, nor anything taken away from it. “God has done it, so that people fear before him” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
A healthy, holy fear of God’s providence thus keeps us humble and dependent as we acknowledge that he has so ordered life “under the sun” that, however hard we may strive to understand what was or is or will be, we won’t fathom much. “No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning.
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Feeding the Sheep
Good preaching is not just teaching what to do this week or how to think about a single issue. It is forming us in the likeness of Christ. It is a means of grace used by the Spirit to chip away the remaining sinfulness and carve us more and more in the form of Jesus. It is training discernment, teaching us not only how to view one thing but learning how to look at everything through the lens of creation and covenant, Scripture and the life of our Savior, cross and future crown.
By the grace of God I am what I am… (1st Corinthians 15:10)
One of the greatest challenges in weekly preaching is remembering that you must meet your audience where they are and help them in their daily walk with Christ. The typical Reformed pastor spends a lot of time with books, reading old volumes of theology and sermons written by men who have been dead for many years, sometimes centuries. He may also spend time online or actively corresponding with other men about current theological controversies and the latest issue which has been designated the true test of orthodoxy. But when it comes time to write his weekly sermon(s), if he is a good pastor, he must remember that he was sent by Christ to shepherd a particular flock of sheep. He is not pastoring an audience on YouTube. He is not enlightening the broader presbytery by the brilliance of his exposition or saving his denomination by the power of his elocution. He is a shepherd sent to lead, feed, water, and protect particular sheep, and most of those sheep have very different priorities than their theologically attuned pastor.
Reformed churches are, rightly, critical of evangelicalish churches where the sermon is always something like Seven Ways to Have a Better Marriage or What Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Can Teach Us About Loving Jesus. Such preaching neither edifies saints nor points the unbeliever to Jesus Christ.
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Irresistible Grace & Shepherding
We use different terms to describe the Christian minister: pastor, teacher, ambassador, evangelist, preacher, steward of the mysteries of God. In fulfillment of these various but related roles, ministers confidently hold forth the truth of Christ, assured that God is effectually calling and irresistibly drawing His wayward sheep into His fold.
Front office and back office, cast and crew, sales and operations, business development and customer care: what do each of these pairs have in common? Typically, members of the first group in each couplet will have very little—if anything—to do with working in the second group. Such separation may be necessary for large businesses or entertainment productions, but what about for the church? Are evangelism and pastoral care two mutually exclusive functions in which pastors may, or must, choose to specialize? The doctrine of God’s irresistible grace—or, effectual calling—clarifies the answer as we continue our study through shepherding and the doctrines of grace.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines effectual calling as “the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, He doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.” It is the Holy Spirit’s work of giving us a new spiritual vitality such that we recognize the horror of our sin and respond in faith to Christ’s call to “repent and believe” on Him alone for salvation. What does this have to do with relating evangelism and pastoral care to one another?
In the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, Christ Jesus identifies Himself as the “Good Shepherd” (vv. 11, 14). In connection with this self-designation, Christ asserts that He lays down His life for His sheep (v. 11), and that He knows His sheep who in turn know Him (v. 14). These are indispensable features of faithful pastoral care in the church. However, Christ continues in verse 16, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” For His immediate hearers, Christ expanded the definition of His flock to include those outside the nation of Israel. What’s more, He has expanded the nature of His shepherding to include bringing foreign sheep into His fold, and He does so by means of calling out with His voice.
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