The Genesis Narrative, Essentialism, and the Evangelical Gender Debate

Some time ago, a grader for the college entrance exam told me that he encountered a curious essay. The prompt for the essay was, “Discuss the Women’s Movement in the United States.” He had been reading papers that began by explaining the civil rights movement of the 60s or the issue of inequality in pay between equally qualified men and women, but this paper’s opening sentence was this: “American women tend to swing their hips when they walk.” The issue of gender has been a hot topic for quite some time. What is the nature of masculinity and femininity? What are the masculine and the feminine roles at home or in the society? Do the male brain and the female brain operate differently? Does academic writing privilege males and exclude the distinctly female style of writing? The gender related issues seem endless. In the evangelical Christianity, the situation is the same.

As evangelicals, we distinguish ourselves by our belief in the inerrancy and the authority of the Scriptures. One thing the contemporary evangelical debate on the gender issue taught us is that this belief itself does not guarantee that we can agree on how we read the Bible. It must first be interpreted. Unfortunately, this act of interpretation involves us, the interpreters, who necessarily bring in our own personal, cultural, and historical biases into the reading of the passages. The conflict in interpretation, though unwittingly, touches these sensitive nerves and solicits strong emotional reactions.

It is, therefore, no surprise that the gender issue is one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in the contemporary evangelical Christianity. For the last two decades, the two major camps, the complementarians and the egalitarians,1 have engaged in heated exchanges, arguing for or against their respective positions in a civil and not so civil way. All the passages that pertain to this issue in the Bible have been exegeted and re-exegeted ad nauseam. Organizations and counter-organizations have been formed to promote the respective positions. So why does yet another article need to be written about it, especially, in a book that deals with the historicity of Adam and Eve and their Fall?

The importance of Genesis 1–3 in the biblical discussion of gender is quite evident. Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr. writes, “One way or the other, all the additional Biblical texts on manhood and womanhood must be interpreted consistently with these chapters. They lay the very foundation of Biblical manhood and womanhood.”2 The problem is that the interpretations of these passages (or any other passages of the Scriptures) do not happen in a vacuum: we all have the tendency to read the Scriptures from prevailing ideologies of the day and reread our metanarratives into the simple Biblical narratives to make them say what we want them to say. Kevin Giles, in his forward of a collection of essays written mostly from the egalitarian perspective, thus writes, “Profound changes in how people see the world always force believers to rethink their theology. When a cultural worldview changes Christians have to distinguish between what they believe as those seeking to be guided by the Bible and what they tacitly believe as those living in a given culture.”3 Giles goes on to give three examples that illustrate how our tacit beliefs have influenced our reading of the Bible. The first is the belief in the flat earth: “When everyone thought the

1 Wayne Grudem describes the “complementarian” position as follows: “men and women are equal and different – equal in value and personhood, but different in roles in marriage and the church.” See Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth, 17. n. 1. In contrast, the evangelical egalitarian position stresses the equality and denies the role distinctions.

2 Ortlund, Jr., “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship,” 95. 3 Giles, “Forward,” x.

world was flat, theologians read the Bible to teach this”;; the second, the geocentric cosmology: “When everyone thought sun revolved around the earth, the Bible was read to teach this.” The third and the lastly example he gives, however, is a problematic one: “When everyone thought the world was created in seven literal days about 6000 years ago, Christians read the Bible to teach this.”4 Let us look closely at these three examples. The first two illustrate how the prevailing scientific beliefs of the day were read into the simple, phenomenal language of the Biblical narratives to make them conform to their worldview. The last one is the reverse: the “literal” reading came first. Then the evolutionary hypothesis became the prevailing belief system. Now the literal reading of the Scriptures appears ridiculous to people today, because the “cultural worldview” that we tacitly believe has conditioned us to think that the world is billions of years old. Giles ironically reveals his own tacit belief, which he effectively read into the Biblical text.5 When it comes to our understanding of gender, no detailed argument is necessary to show that the prevailing cultural belief of our time is that of egalitarianism. How then does it affect our reading of the Bible? Did it have a positive effect in helping us break away from the problematic views on gender that the past generations held (as Giles suggests), or did it have a negative effect in causing us to twist the Bible to reflect it? My answer is, “Yes.” The argument I present below is a simple one: taking the Creation and the Fall account of Adam and Eve in the most simple, literal, and historical way6 leads to the view of gender that God wants the New Testament

4 Ibid. 5 As the inclusion of this chapter in this collection indicates, I am writing from the Young Earth Creationist perspective. For this position, see William D. Barrick’s chapter in Four Views on The Historical Adam, 197–227. 6 I am well aware that each of the three adjectives used in this sentence can be highly contested. It is far beyond the scope of this short article to cover the critical, hermeneutic, and linguistic issues involved in the reading of the Biblical narratives. For the hermeneutic issues involved in the Evangelical gender debate, see Paul Felix, “The Hermeneutics of Evangelical Feminism,” 159–84. It suffices here to say that Jesus’ use of a simple reading of Genesis 2:4 to correct the Rabbinical teachings on divorce in Matthew 19:1–12 serves as the model of my reading of Genesis 1–3.

believers to have. In order to do so, I will first examine the important philosophical positions that underlie the discussion of gender, namely the conflict between the position known as “essentialism” and as “constructionism.”

Essentialism Versus Constructionism in the Gender Debate Gender Versus Sex

It is often said that when it comes to discussing the general cultural hot-topics, evangelicals are always about ten to twenty years behind. Such is the case with the gender debate. Although the term “gender” has long existed in the English language, its use as a construct distinct from biological “sex” is a relatively recent development.7 According to the gender theorist Stevi Jackson, “[t]he term gender has been used since the early 1970s to denote culturally constructed femininity and masculinity as opposed to biological sex differences.”8 Jackson traces the origin of this distinction in the works of the psychologist Robert Stoller, which the sociologist Ann Oakley borrowed and popularized in her 1972 work Sex, Gender and Society. Jackson writes:

Oakley suggested that gender is not a direct product of biological sex. She defined sex as the anatomical and physiological characteristics which signify biological maleness and femaleness and gender as socially constructed masculinity and femininity. Masculinity and femininity are defined not by biology but by social, cultural and psychological

7 Oxford English Dictionary lists 1474 as the date of the first occurrence of this term used in the sense, “Males or females viewed as a group.” However, it lists 1945 as the first occurrence of this term designating the socio-cultural (not biological) male/female distinction. 8 Jackson, “Theorising Gender and Sexuality,” 131.

attributes which are acquired through becoming a man or a woman in a particular society at a particular time.9 Here, Jackson is, of course, echoing Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement originally made in French in 1949: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”10 Why then does this distinction need to be made? If masculinity and femininity are biological, then they are universal and cannot be altered. If they are cultural, then we can alter them by changing our culture. Seeing the problems of inequalities between men and women, De Beauvoir, Oakley, and other academic and social activists made us aware that this problem is not natural but cultural. Thus, it can and should be remedied.

Essentialism Versus Constructionism

A positive development of becoming aware of the sex/gender distinction is that we are now able to break away from the deterministic view of masculinity and a femininity known as “essentialism.” Diana Fuss defines it as follows: “Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the ‘whatness’ of a given entity.”11 When it comes to the gender issue, essentialists do not really see the distinction between sex and gender. For them, masculinity and femininity (i.e. how men and women think and behave) are not cultural but the universal and invariable property of men and women. Their essential nature determines the way they act and think. One of the most notable (or infamous) examples of the essentialist view of gender in recent years is Camille Paglia’s Sexual

9 Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society, 133. 10 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 301. 11 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, xi. It is tempting here to diverge into philosophical discussions of essentialisms. See Fuss, 1–21 for John Lock’s differentiation between the “real” and the “nominal” essence, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological essentialism, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic essentialism, etc.

Personae. In the preface, Paglia affirms her biologically deterministic view of sex difference: “My stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences is sure to cause controversy.”12 She thus attributes the history of male dominance in the Western world on male physiology:

My explanation for the male domination of art, science, and politics, an indisputable fact of history, is based on an analogy between sexual physiology and aesthetics. I will argue that all cultural achievement is a projection, a swerve into Apollonian transcendence, and that men are anatomically destined to be projectors.13 If this is indeed the case, then there is no possibility of gender equality.

There is, however, a position polar opposite of essentialism called “constructionism.”

Fuss writes:

Constructionism, articulated in opposition to essentialism and concerned with its philosophical refutation, insists that essence is itself a historical construction. Constructionists take the refusal of essence as the inaugural moment of their own projects and proceed to demonstrate the way previously assumed self-evident kinds (like “man” or “woman”) are in fact the effects of complicated discursive practices.14 Naturally, most feminists take this position. One of the most extreme constructionist positions is Donna Haraway’s “cyborg feminism.” In her highly influential “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway sees that, because of the technological advance, we are no longer bound by the natural category

12 Paglia, Sexual Personae, xiii. 13 Ibid., 17. 14 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 2.

of sexes but are able to modify and augment our bodies to seek new possible ways of existence.15 She thus concludes her manifesto: “[I] would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”16 To those that have studied the intellectual history of the West, this opposition between essentialism and constructionism in the gender theory should look familiar. It is just another form of the ancient Sophistic discussion of physis (nature) and nomos (culture/convention), which has developed into the longstanding conflict between philosophy and rhetoric.17 William Barrett presents another name for the same conflict, this time, the opposition between essentialism and existentialism. Barrett notes that the essentialism is deeply rooted in Western science and philosophy. In fact, it originates from the thinking of ancient Greeks that culminated in the works of Plato. Moreover, he states that in this conflict essentialism usually is the victor: The history of Western philosophy has been one long conflict, sometimes, explicit but more often hidden and veiled, between essentialism and existentialism. And it would seem also to be the case that, to the degree to which this history takes its beginnings from Plato, essentialism has always come out on top.18 Why does Barrett say that the essentialism “has always come out on top”? At least, when we examine the field of contemporary feminist theory, is it not apparent that most theorists are anti-essentialists/social-constructionists? Fuss, however, makes an interesting statement: “My point here, and throughout this book, is that social constructionisms do not definitively escape the pull of essentialism, that indeed essentialism subtends the very idea of constructionism.”19 In other words, even though the contemporary feminist theorists appear on the surface as

15 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 149–81.
16 Ibid., 181.
17 See Guthrie, The Sophists, 55–134 and Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, 111–130 for the physis-nomos
controversy. See also Ijsseling, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict for comprehensive discussions of the conflict
between philosophy and rhetoric.
18 Barrett, Irrational Man, 104.
19 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 5.

constructionists, when we examine their theories closely, we will discover that there are hidden essentialisms in them. Therefore, Barrett is correct in that essentialism eventually wins out. What then exactly is this “pull” Fuss refers to, and what makes it so difficult for us to escape from it? There are at least three possible answers: 1. our innate tendency, 2. our desire for political power, and 3. the nature of constructionism itself.

The “Pull” of Essentialism

1. Our innate human tendency favors essentialism. According to the cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom, our basic understanding of the world itself comes from the essentialist perspective. In fact, Bloom suspects that essentialism could be built into us: “We are naturalborn essentialists.”20 Children in general have a strong tendency for essentialization, ascribing common hidden properties in similar objects. For example, Bloom writes, “If nine-month-olds find that a box makes a sound when you touch it, they expect other boxes that look the same to make the same sound.”21 We thus continue to maintain this childhood essentialist tendency into our quest for knowledge.

2. Our desire for political power favors essentialism. Essentialism often serves those that are in the dominant political position to enforce and maintain the power structure. It is, therefore, too tempting even for social constructionists not to embrace an essentialist position. Bloom writes, “In the domains of race and sex and caste, essentialism is a myth invented by the powerful to convince people that these social categories are natural and immutable.”22 One example of this is the 18–19th century “complementarians.”

20 Ibid., xii. 21 Bloom, How Pleasure, 15. See 14–18 for more examples on the child essentialism. 22 Ibid., 15.

The term “complementarian” is now best known for Wayne Grudem and John Piper’s use in the contemporary evangelical gender debate. However, the same term appears long before this in the gender debate among the French Enlightenment thinkers around the time of the French Revolution. Londa Schiebinger notes that the debate first began when they faced the question of the women’s position in society. Schiebinger quotes the Huguenot physician Louis de Jaucourt: “[I]t appears at first difficult to demonstrate that the authority of the husband comes from nature because that authority is contrary to the natural equality of all people.”23 Jaucourt eventually resorts to the argument denying the “natural equality.”

Subsequent thinkers, however, could not ignore the inconsistency between their egalitarian belief and the women’s limited place in society. Ideologically, they should have affirmed the equality of the sexes and allowed the women to participate in democracy. Their desire to preserve the social hierarchy, however, won out; and they sought to resolve the dilemma in the form of the theory of sexual complementarity. According to this theory, “man and woman are not physical and moral equals but complementary opposites…. Henceforth, women were not to be viewed merely as inferior to men but as fundamentally different from and thus incomparable to, men.”24 They explained the “complementary” nature of the sexes by essentializing their nature: men are rational and belong to the public sphere, whereas women are nurturers and belong to the private sphere of home. This is how the essentialism is used to legitimate the traditional division of labor and preserve the social hierarchy.

3. Finally, the nature of constructionism itself forces it to revert back into essentialism. The point that Fuss makes throughout her book is that, no matter what kind of constructionist

23 Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, 215. 24 Ibid., 217.

position one employs, there always is a hidden essentialism in it.25 When constructionists attempt to show how gender is constructed, for example, by its cultural environment, they must essentialize the cultural environment itself in order to describe how it is done. Thus they slip right back into essentialism from which they attempt to escape. Stanley Fish puts this as follows: “Indeed, any claim in which the notion of situatedness is said to be a lever that allows us to get a purchase on situations is finally a claim to have escaped situatedness, and is therefore nothing more or less than a reinvention of foundationalism [i.e. essentialism] by the very form of thought that has supposedly reduced it to ruins.”26

Essentialism in the Evangelical Gender Debate

When we look at the contemporary evangelical gender debate, we can easily recognize the influence of essentialism. Grudem and Piper’s complementarian position restricts the male headship strictly within marriage and church. However, not everyone that affirms the male headship places this restriction but extends it beyond these two spheres. Willard Swartley thus describes one of the tenets of what he calls the “hierarchical” position as follows: “Women are expected to be subordinate to men – in the home, church, and society” [my emphasis].27 By extending the male headship role and the female subordination role to society in general, this position universalizes the masculine and the feminine role. Thus it takes the essentialist position regarding gender.

25 In particular, Fuss examines the Lacanian psychoanalysis and the Derridian deconstruction. She sees the “vestige of essentialism” in Lacan’s notion of “The Woman” and Derrida’s use of the phrase “always already.” See Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 6–18. 26 Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally, 348–49. 27 Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women, 151.

What about the evangelical egalitarians? In her statement about the goal of the organization Christians for Biblical Equality, Rebecca Merril Groothuis writes, The goal of evangelical feminism is that men and women be allowed to serve God as individuals, according to their own unique gifts rather than according to a culturally predetermined personality slot called “Christian manhood” or “Christian womanhood.”28 On the first glance, Groothuis’s statement looks like a constructionist statement, since she characterizes Christian manhood/womanhood as “culturally predetermined.” However, in denying the male headship anywhere, she essentializes the egalitarian nature of the sexes and makes it the universal standard for every Christian. Her case is a classic example of what Fuss and Fish describe as the anti-essentialists falling back into essentialism.

In sum, we first looked at how the concept of “gender” came to be understood apart from the biological “sex.” Then we examined the two philosophical positions regarding the nature of gender: essentialism, which views masculinity/femininity as a universal and invariant characteristic of every male/female, and constructionism, which views masculinity/femininity as a local and cultural construct. We then saw that in the essentialist-constructionist conflict, essentialism usually comes out on top. Finally, we saw the influence of essentialism in the evangelical gender debate, especially how the “hierarchal” position essentializes the male headship and the egalitarian position essentializes the notion of equality.

We must now turn to the Bible and examine what it says about the nature of gender and the gender role in the light of the above discussions. Specifically, let us deal with the question: does the Scriptural evidence call for the essentialized view of gender?

28 Groothuis, Women Caught in the Conflict, 110.

The Biblical View of Gender and Essentialism

Regarding the gender role, I believe that the Bible clearly teaches the male headship, but not from the essentialist position. In the below, I will discuss four reasons in support of this position.

First, the biblical command for the male headship is not universal, but local and specific. In 1 Timothy 2:12–13, Apostle Paul writes, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man;; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” The context of this passage makes it clear that this command is restricted to the context of the New Testament local church and not the society in general. Also, in Ephesians 5:22–24, Paul also commands, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” Thus he limits the scope of the wife’s submission only to her own husband, not men in general. The male headship only applies within church and within marriage.

Second, the biblical command for the male headship is not permanent. This is easy to see in the marital relationship, because death annuls marriage. In Romans 7:2, Apostle Paul uses this principle to illustrate our death to the Law: “For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.” Does the marital relationship continue after the resurrection? Our Lord clearly answers this question in his reply to the Sadducees in Matthew 22:23–33. In this passage, the Sadducees attempt to entrap Him by pointing out the possible complications in the levirate marriage custom after the resurrection: when seven brothers had the same woman for a wife consecutively, whose wife would she be? “But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven’” (Matt 22:29–30). So then, the wife’s submission to her husband ends at the death of either one and will not continue after this. The question regarding the male headship within church, however, is less clear. The phrase “neither marry nor are given in marriage” in the above passage indicates that the reproductive function of our physical body is no longer needed in the glorified, resurrected state: we will no longer be differentiated on the basis of the (biological) sex differences.29 Therefore, it is most natural to assume that the male headship within the local church should no longer exist after the resurrection. Further, if the headship within marriage is not permanent, there is no reason to assume that the one within church is permanent either.

Third, the biblical command for the male headship is not based on the nature of sex differences. What does the Bible teach us about the (biological) sex and (cultural) gender distinction? Genesis 1:27 clearly tells us that God created two separate sexes: male and female. What about the gender? If the gender is socially constructed, it was still being formed in the Garden. (Tragically, however, the Fall took place to mar the formation of what could have been the perfect and harmonious gender relationship.) Nevertheless, the Bible does specify one aspect of the gender relationship at the time when man and woman were created: the male headship. As it was discussed above, 1 Timothy 2:13 states that the command for the male headship in church

29 John Frame, although weakly (by his own admission), argues that we still maintain our sexual differences after the resurrection. His reasoning is largely based on the physical appearance of post-resurrection Jesus and of the angels, which, in my mind, does not prove it one way or the other. See his “Men and Women in the Image of God,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 232. Daniel Heimbach also argues that sexual identity is eternal. His argument, however, consists almost completely of references from Augustine. I see little exegetical argument in it. Regarding Matthew 22:30, he believes that Jesus does not deny the possibility but the practice of marriage. See Heimbach, “The Unchangeable Difference,” 281–287. It is inconceivable for me that we continue to retain the biological function no longer needed throughout eternity. Nevertheless, since the Bible is not specific about this, it is best to restrain from making any dogmatic conclusions.

is based on the order of creation, that man was created first, and not on how they were created. In other words, the Bible does not ground the male headship on the essentialized nature of masculinity and femininity. It is therefore wrong to assume that men are biologically programmed to be leaders and women, followers.

Unfortunately, many commentators of old have succumbed to the essentialist trap. John Calvin, for instance, makes the following statement in his commentary on 1 Timothy 2:12: [W]oman [is] by nature (that is, by the ordinary law of God) is formed to obey; for gunaikokratia (the government of women) has always been regarded by all wise persons as a monstrous thing; and, therefore, so to speak, it will be a mingling of heaven and earth, if women usurp the right to teach [my emphasis].30 Again, he comments on 2:13:

Now Moses shews that the woman was created afterwards, in order that she might be a kind of appendage to the man; and that she was joined to the man on the express condition that she should be at hand to render obedience to him. (Gen. ii. 21.) Since, therefore, God did not create two chiefs of equal power, but added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of that order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed [my emphasis].31 Calvin’s comments are a great reminder for all of us that, no matter how great a theologian one is, we are still very much a victim to the cultural values of our day and cannot escape from our tendency to read them into the interpretations of the Scriptures.

Another approach that can fall into the essentialist trap is a biological approach, which takes the scientific findings about the nature of sex differences and read them into the Scriptures.

30 Calvin, Commentaries on the First Epistle to Timothy, 68. 31 Ibid., 69.

Having examined physiological and neural differences between the sexes, Gregg Johnson gives the following conclusion:

We should not conclude automatically that because men and women may have different gifts, traditional roles are the only way they may be expressed. Yet it seems very significant that these different gifts correspond very well to the different roles given to men and women in Scripture…. These unique abilities, coupled with the traditional roles, have served mankind well and enabled us to fulfill the commission to multiply and fill the earth very efficiently.32 Johnson, however, is careful in presenting his view. At the beginning of his study, he offers two cautions. First is that many of the findings are based on animal studies and cannot be conclusively applied to humans. Second, the findings are “averages and patterns that cannot be completely universalized.”33 Here, it is important to make the distinction between sex and gender. It is one thing to present the evidences about sex differences, but translating them directly into gender role distinctions is highly problematic. The gender theorist Judith Butler explains the mind-boggling complexity involved in the gender formation as follows: Gender is not exactly what one ‘is’ nor is it precisely what one ‘has.’ Gender is the apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes. To assume that gender always and exclusively means the matrix of the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ is precisely to miss the critical point that the production of that coherent binary is contingent, that it comes at a cost, and that those

32 Johnson, “Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior,” 293. 33 Ibid., 281.

permutations of gender which do not fit the binary are as much a part of gender as its most normative instance.34 To reiterate, the male headship in family and in church is a specific biblical command and not a universal biological necessity or inclination.

Lastly, the biblical command for the male headship reflects the inter-Trinitarian (in particular, the Father and the Son) relationship. If indeed the male headship mirrors the role relationship within the Godhead, then it certainly is not based on the essence of the Persons within Trinity, because, as one being, the three persons’ essence is the same. (Regarding the nature of the Second Person of the Godhead, the Nicene Creed states that He is one substance [homoousion] with the Father.)35 This point requires further elaboration.

Interpretive History of the Image of God

The key passage in understanding the Biblical view of sex/gender is Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” [my emphasis]. Why did God specifically state here that His image involved both male and female? If we understand what the “image of God” is, then we can also have a much better idea about the biblical view of the nature of masculinity and femininity.

Not surprisingly, the history of the interpretation of the “image of God” shows that it too was affected by the essentialisms of the day. When we examine the history of the interpretation of Genesis 1:27, we can see that what was considered to be the essence of the human is often read backwards into the understanding of the image of God. In his article “Male and Female

34 Butler, Undoing Gender, 42. 35 http://www.creeds.net/ancient/niceneg.htm.

Complementarity and the Image of God,” Bruce Ware divides the historical understandings of the phrase “the image of God” into three groups:36

1. The structural views, which include:

a. Irenaeus’ view that it is our reason and volition (as opposed to our holiness and spirituality, which he attributes to our “likeness” of God)

b. Augustine’s view that it is our memory, intellect, and will, mirroring the triune nature of God

c. Aquinas’ view that it is our rationality

d. Calvin’s view that it is our soul with its capacities (however diminished after the Fall) of reason and will.

2. The relational views, which include:

a. Karl Barth’s view that it is the social/relational nature of human life

b. Emil Brunner’s view that it is both our “formal” capacity to know and to love God and their “material” manifestation in our actual knowing and loving God.

3. The functional views, which include Leonard Verduin’s and D. J. A. Clines’s view that the image of God refers to our function as rulers over the creation.

Ware goes on to point out the problems of these approaches:

One of the main problems with much of the traditional understandings (particularly with the variations of the structural view) is that these proposals were led more by speculation regarding how men are like God and unlike animals than by careful attention to indications in the text of Scripture itself as to what may constitute this likeness.37

36 Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity,” 73–75. 37 Ibid., 75.

It is interesting to note that all the structural views involve some reference to human rationality, as I have highlighted in the above. In addition, they all do not deal with the fact that God’s image in Genesis 1:27 includes both male and female. Also, the structural views have significantly older history: Iranaeus is the oldest, dating the first century A.D., and Calvin, the youngest, dating the 16th century. We can very well suspect here that they were all under the obvious influence of the essentialist thinking inherited from the ancient Greeks, which equated masculinity with human rationality.

Not being satisfied with any of the “traditional understandings,” Ware himself, following Anthony Hoekema and Clines, takes the view he calls the “functional holism,” which attempts to combine all three views: “[A]ll three are needed, the structural serves the purpose of the functional being carried out in relationship” [his emphasis].38 Yet the long definition he gives is rather ambiguous:

The image of God in man as functional holism means that God made human beings, both male and female, to be created and finite representations (images of God) of God’s own nature, that in relationship with Him and each other they might be His representatives (imaging God) in carrying out the responsibilities He has given to them. In this sense, we are images of God in order to image God and His purposes in the ordering of our lives and the carrying out of our God-given responsibilities. [His emphases]39 If we are to come up with the all inclusive definition of the image of God, we may have to tolerate this definition. But if we want to understand Genesis 1:27, then we must answer two questions: first, what specifically is “God’s own nature”? Second, what exactly are the “responsibilities” we are to carry out? The answer to the latter question is easy: as Ware himself

38 Ibid., 79. 39 Ibid.

points out in his discussion of Clines’s position, it is to rule the creation.40 God repeats His command to rule the creation twice in the immediate context: the first time in 1:26b, “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”;; and the second time in 1:28b, “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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The first question about the nature of God, however, brings us back to the same problem that confronted the structural views, that is, we are tempted again to essentialize the human nature and read it back to the nature of God. Is there anyway to understand the nature of the image of God without falling into the essential trap and reading non-biblical understandings of human nature into Genesis 1:27? I believe there is, and to do this we must revisit the relational view.

Image of God as a Unified Husband-Wife Relationship

There is a lot to like about the relational view. First and foremost is that it seeks to understand the phrase “image of God” strictly from the context of the passage. Ware writes, “Clearly we should affirm with Karl Barth that our understanding of the image of God should be directed as fully as possible by the text of Scripture.”41 Both Ware and Frame nevertheless object to the relational view because other references to the image of God (such as in Genesis 9:6) only refer to one man and not to male and female as a unit.42 If indeed the image of God refers to the

40 Ibid., 75. Clines convincingly argues that the image of God in the Old Testament is an image of the king
as a ruler. See Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” 92–99.
41 Ibid., 77.
42 Ibid., 76. Also, Frame, 228.

social and relational nature of the humans as represented in the phrase “male and female,” we see it only in Genesis 1:27 and nowhere else.

I believe, however, that this is not a sufficient enough reason to dismiss the relational view. The image of God reference in Genesis 1:27 is uniquely different from other references. Here, it refers to the pre-Fall humanity. The image of God in Genesis 9:6, in contrast, refers to the post-Fall (post-Flood) humanity. It is exegetically conceivable that the reason the “male and female” aspect of the image of God does not appear after 1:27 is related to this change in the human condition (as we will see in the below). As Clines (and Ware) points out, the aspect of “rulership” is at the core of the notion of the image of God.43 Yet how the “rulership” manifested before sin tainted the humanity must have been different from after the Fall. The notion of the image of God is broad enough to emphasize different aspects of God’s character within the common core reference about His “rulership.” In the below, I will examine the context of Genesis 1:27 to (modify the relational view and) argue that in this narrative Moses emphasizes one aspect of the image of God by using the phrase “male and female”: the unity and role differences within the Godhead as reflected in the male-female relationship.

So what does the immediate context of Genesis 1:27 say? 1:26 begins with this: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” [my emphasis]. The New Testament believers can readily identify these repeated plural references that God uses about himself as a reference to His triune nature. Moreover, there is one other passage in Genesis where we encounter God yet again using “us” to refer to Himself. Genesis 11:6–7 reads, “And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for

43 Clines, ibid.

them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech’” [my emphasis].

What do these two passages have in common? They both have something to do with the unity within the interpersonal relationships. Genesis 1 deals with male and female reflecting the triune nature of the godhead, and Genesis 11 deals with the people uniting themselves under one language to build the tower, obviously, against God’s will. If these textual implications are indeed correct, the image of God is more than just the social nature of humans as Barth suggests.44 It refers to the unity of the interpersonal relationship that a husband and a wife ought to have had in marriage before the Fall.

The emphasis on the marital unity is abundant in the immediate context. The entire creation of Adam and Eve account emphasizes the unity of the first couple. Genesis 1:27 sets the stage: humans are created as a male/female pair. Then the more detailed account that follows in Genesis 2 specifically emphasizes the close union of the husband and the wife, first, by the manner in which Eve was created, second, by Adam’s exclamation upon seeing Eve, and, finally, by the institution of marriage. In 2:21, God takes a part of Adam to form Eve, rather than using more dust and breathing into it like He did with Adam, emphasizing the unified nature of the two. Adam’s response to seeing Eve also emphasizes the unity between them: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23b). And the institution of marriage indicates that the married couple forms a closer unit than the parent-child relationship: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

44 Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1, 185.

Not only the creation account, but also the account of the Fall in Genesis 3 (in particular, the curse proclaimed against the wife in 3:16b) emphasizes the unity of the married couple, albeit in a negative way. In her classic study of the “woman’s desire” in 3:16b, Susan T. Foh concludes: God’s words in Genesis 3:16b destroy the harmony of marriage, for the rule of the husband, part of God’s original intent for marriage, is not made more tolerable by the wife’s desire for husband, but less tolerable, because she rebels against his leadership and tries to usurp it.45 This explains why the image of God in the sense of the unity between husband and wife is not repeated again after Genesis 1:27 in the Scriptures: it is forever broken because of the Fall. If the image of God in Genesis 1:27 refers to inter-Trinitarian unity and the pre-Fall marriage relationship, this carries enormous implications for the issue of biblical gender. As we saw above, the command for the male headship predates the Fall and is based on the order of creation (1 Tim 2:13). If the marriage relationship mirrors the inter-Trinitarian relationship, then difference of roles in the marriage relationship also mirrors the roles within the Godhead. Wayne Grudem thus writes:In fact, the idea of headship and submission did not even begin with the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2. … It began in the relationship between the Father and Son in the Trinity. … It has always existed in the eternal nature of God Himself. And in this most basic of all authority relationships, authority is not based on gifts or ability (for the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal in attributes and perfections). It is just there. [Grudem’s emphasis]46

45 Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?” 383. 46 Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth, 47.

Both the gender role difference, just like the role difference within the Trinity, is not based on the essence: every male is not born to lead and female to follow. We know very well, both from history and from personal experience, that some women are much more gifted in leadership than some men. Yet the Scriptures explicitly command these gifted women voluntarily to restrict their gifts and assume the submissive role within marriage and within church. Why does God give us such a seemingly unfair command? Is not our God the god of justice and equity? We see the answer in how the Son of God dealt with His role. Philippians 2:6–8 says:[The Son], though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a [slave], being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus Christ was equal in essence with God the Father, but He voluntarily restricted His equality and voluntarily took on the lowly form of a slave to accomplish our redemption by dying on the cross! When Christian women (no matter how gifted they are) voluntarily restrict their freedom and assume the submissive role in marriage and in church, they reflect the humility of our Lord. This act is far more precious in God’s eyes than any exercise of their leadership gifts.

Yet there still remains the issue of fairness and equity. Regarding the women’s role, Grudem writes, “[S]ubmission to a rightful authority is a noble virtue. It is a privilege.”47 Regarding the nature of men’s role, Ortlund makes a useful distinction between male headship and male domination. He describes the former, “In the partnership of two spiritually equal human beings, man and woman, the man bears the primary responsibility to lead the partnership

47 Ibid.

in a God-glorifying direction,” and the latter, “[T]he assertion of the man’s will over the woman’s will, heedless of her spiritual equality, her rights, and her value.”48 These statements do mitigate the implications of unfairness in the biblical gender role, but do not eliminate them. Still then we must ask: is not our God the god of impartiality?

The answer, again, is found in the role that Jesus assumed in Trinity. The role of Sonship involved not only His voluntary submission and humiliation but also a reward. The Philippians passage quoted above continues:

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (2:9–11).

His exaltation is the reward for His voluntary submission to fulfill His role. What about the Christian women that voluntarily submits to their role in marriage and in church? There is no question that their act of obedience will be richly rewarded, if not in this life, it will surely be in the kingdom to come. In Colossians 3:23–25, after giving instructions to wives, husbands, children, and fathers regarding their role, the Apostle Paul gives the following instruction to the slaves: Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Here, the slaves receive a promise of future inheritance for their faithful service to their earthly masters, because they are really serving their heavenly Master in doing this. This promise is the

48 Ortlund, “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship,” 3.

evidence that God shows no partiality: the faithful acts of service, be it by the slaves to their masters or by women under the headship of men in marriage and in church, will receive compensation, if not in this life, then in the life to come.

Once we realize that the male-female role relationship reflects the relationship among the godhead (especially, between the Father and the Son), we can also realize that, just as the subordinate role of the Son in Trinity came with the great reward, the subordinate role of women in the marriage and in church also will involve the future exaltation. God is indeed a god of impartiality.

Conclusion: Biblical Suspension of the Ethical

We began this study with the discussion of how we have the tendency to read the prevailing ideology of the day into our interpretation of the Scriptures. In the study of gender, this tendency appears in the form of essentializing masculinity/femininity: when the prevailing ideology was patriarchy, as in the days of Calvin (and even in the 18–19th century France), the concept of male superiority was essentialized and then read into the Bible. Today, we do the same thing with egalitarianism: we essentialize the notion of gender equality, make it into a universal principle, and then read it into our interpretations of the Bible. The simple, literal, and historical reading of the Genesis account, however, gives us a different view of gender: masculinity and femininity in the Bible are never essentialized, that is, they are never made into a universal and invariant principle that applies to every male and female. The Bible does command the male headship not as a universal principle but as a local, specific instruction limited only within the sphere of marriage and church. If this command sounds unethical to our ears, it is because we have essentialized the notion of gender equality and accepted it as our universal ethical principle. So then, the evangelical gender debate really is a conflict between the simple reading of the Scriptures and our universalized ethical sense derived from the essentialization of gender.

The conflict between what God says in His word and what our ethical sense informs us is not unique to this debate. One of the best-known expressions of this is Soren Kierkegaard’s exposition of the Abraham’s sacrificing of Isaac narrative (Gen 22) in his Fear and Trembling. What God commanded Abraham to do can be considered “unethical” in more than one way: it was an act of murder, not only of an innocent, but also of his own child, of his only child, of his only child of old age, and of his only child of promise that God specifically gave Abraham. Yet he suspended his “ethical” sense in favor of obedience to God’s specific command. Kierkegaard calls this act the “teleological suspension of the ethical.”49 Of course, what Abraham had to do was extraordinary and incomparable. Yet the principle stays the same. In his commentary on Kierkegaard, the philosopher Calvin O. Schrag points out that the “ethical” here stands for “a universal moral requirement.”50 When this universalized ethical code contradicts with what the Bible says, we must make a choice. We must biblically suspend the ethical in order to obey the Word of God.

As we see in Genesis 3, the gender problem is one of the oldest problems that confronted humankind. And it still continues on to this day. Throughout history, the essentialized notion of male superiority has been used to dominate women; and now the essentialized notion of gender equality is making it difficult for Christian women to accept their role in marriage and in church. As long as the curse is in effect, there is no end to the conflict between the sexes. The only remedy we have is in the hands of the redeemed with the help from the Holy Spirit to obey the Word of God in love, humility, and simplicity of faith. Thus we will truly become the image of

49 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, 54–67. 50 Schrag, “Note on Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of the Ethical,” 66.

God by reflecting the unity and unbroken fellowship of Trinity. Our Lord prays this on our behalf: “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11b [my emphasis]).