Very interesting, and I agree with much of what you said. I, too, recently coined a word--integratarian instead of complementarian or egalitarian. I need to read more of your articles--this is the first I have read. My research has led me to another conclusion--Adam is representational of God the Father and Eve is representational of God the Comforter. I agree that the sin of the Garden was because Adam did not stand beside Eve when confronting the serpent, and Eve spoke without waiting for him.
It was a two-fold sin of pride. However, while each is representational of something else, each person also has agency. Each person also represents all Three Persons of the Godhead by our minds (the Father), the Body (the Comforter), and the Soul (Christ). This frees us, not constrains us. In the freeing, I believe that men will naturally gravitate toward more of the speaking, calling, exhorting role of prophet and women more toward the connecting, healing, welcoming role of priest. We won't know, of course, until women are freed to make their own decisions, not imposed upon them by others.
Anyway, I am glad to have found your blog and look forward to reading more. Thanks for your insights.
Thank you, Sheila! I like integratarian. I agree with you that before we link man's representation to origin (earth, man) and telos (woman, heaven) in Genesis 2, we have to consider one mankind, male and female, made like God (Elohim). I strongly believe God is telling us something by Elohim (plural in form and yet all but six times in the Hebrew Bible grammatically singular) having plural predicates in Genesis 1:26. "Let us" make mankind in "our image," after "our likeness." It is remarkable and points us in the direction of considering ourselves as imaging the unity and diversity within God himself. Thanks so much for commenting.
Anna, I keep returning to your words here. As they set my mind on things that are above. Or as you phrased it, our gender symbolism points to something that is beyond ourselves. The way that you present the creation order is edifying, and elevates both the man and the woman. I'm considering the significance of Eve being created inside Eden, the divine council meeting place for the human rulers to co-rule in partnership with the Unseen Realm rulers, the lesser elohim that God created to rule the heavenly places. Michael Heiser book The Unseen Realm communicates that Adam and Eve would have attended divine council meetings with the rulers of the heavenly realms in the garden of Eden. Does Eve's creation location, being formed from the side of Adam, while inside the "command room", if you will, speak to her fitness to rule? I'm wondering if the Nachash, what we call the serpent, may have plotted Eve's downfall so that the lesser elohim could rule the earth without the partnership of the human rulers. Creating an imbalance of power that we struggle with today. I'll post more thought on this as they develop. Your gender ideas are extremely helpful. Thank you for leading the church in this.
Sarah, thank you so much for these insights! They sound so much like Meredith Kline, and I will definitely be ordering Michael Heiser's book. Kline sees that part of the prophetic call was being caught up into the heavenly throne room, and he also sees the garden as a mountain top sanctuary. He ties Eden to Har Magedon (Har Mo ed; most high mountain seen in Is. 14:13; Ps. 48; Ezekiel 38-39; Rev. 16:16) and Yarkete Sapon (Heights of Zaphon in Ps. 48) (Kline, God Heaven and Har Magedon [GHH]). Eden was the visible heights of Har Magedon, the Mount of Assembly of men and angels (elohim beings), a place of work and judgment, and yet there were invisible heights which were extended if Adam would obey, heights of rest. He sees the mountain paradise of Eden as battleground. Concerning male and female, in line with Reformed and covenant theologians, he sees Adam as the prophet, priest, and king of the garden, called to holy war with Satan.
"The story of the earthly Har Magedon goes back to the beginning of human history when this mountain of God rose up as a cosmic axis in Eden. There the battle of Har Magedon was joined as Satan challenged the God of the mountain and overcame the first Adam, the appointed guardian of the garden-sanctuary" (GHH, 259).
In line with the lop-sided anthropology of the Reformed world, Eve by name appears without Adam only once in Kline's 300-page book, as the mother of those being "mustered into the army of the Lord" (71). You are right. It is remarkable that covenant theologians find such asymmetry in the text. It seems that they either ignore the call *given to both* to rule, or they understand Gen. 2:15 as clarifying Gen. 1:28, or more likely they introduce sphere separation. My first ThM advisor said that Adam was created outside the garden, which means men in general face outward toward the untamed world from which they came. He said that the significance of Eve's creation in the garden was that she was a domestic creature, made for the tame world of the garden. It seems to me that all this is read into the text from the foundation of Aristotle, most especially his Politics. Women lack the deliberative capacities of the soul which are necessary to "rule and subdue."
You bring up a great question: Why did Satan tempt Eve and not Adam? I was taught that Satan knew that she was easier prey, more gullible. Whether the people who taught this to me knew it or not, this derives from the ancient Greek understanding of the woman as associated with the lower functions of the soul like intuition and emotion over against man associated with rationality. All that as background to say that I am still thinking about why Satan approached Eve. This is what I have come to thus far. Adam represents the Son, eternally begotten of the Father. Eve represents the Son's glory, the consubstantial Spirit who proceeds from the Father and Son (the Lord and Giver of Life who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified). I see "sonship" and "city" as unique but not exclusive representation. With Adam, Eve partakes in Sonship, the alpha of humanity. With Eve, Adam partakes in the glory of his telos and the omega of humanity, the tent-city of God, the epiphany of the Holy Spirit in the heavenly realm. So my thinking at the moment aligns with Christ's temptation in the wilderness. Satan extended to the Second Adam this present world and age, its "splendor and authority." He took Christ up onto a high mountain where he could see the glory, saying, "Worship me and it will all be yours." This seems to me to be the significance of Eve's temptation. Eve represented the glory of the age to come to Adam. She beckoned him to pass through testing and receive heavenly glory through obedience. Through this beckoning she was to allied herself with God and with Adam as his ezer kenegdo. She stands before him as the representative of heaven's glory, the Sabbath realm, and says, "Come" (Rev. 22:17). Satan's temptation and Eve's fall transformed her in Adam's eyes into a representative of the temporal, transient, and passing glory of this age. In her transgression, she took on an alien glory, the glory of this world, and said to Adam, "Come." He failed to do what Christ did on the mountain in the wilderness as Christ surveyed the kingdoms --- Adam failed to rebuke Satan and to worship and serve God alone (Luke 4:7).
There is one more thing --- I see in Satan approaching Eve first a recapitulation of the cosmic order. The heavenly angelic realm, linked symbolically with the woman, came under temptation first. Satan fell from the heights in the unseen realm, which is why we find him in on earth. There is a correspondence between the woman and the angelic realm which we find in 1 Cor. 11. Satan and one-third of the heavenly hosts fell in heaven before Adam and Eve fell on earth. Eve, the symbol of heaven, transgressed before Adam, symbol of earth, fell and with him the entire earthly order. And as you so well point out, this is why we see Satan in the garden. He situates himself before the woman to devour her first as part of his scheme.
Please write any more comments. I LOVE your thoughts. So helpful!
Thank you so much for the education. I was first introduced to the divine council by Brook at Faith in Twenty podcast. I enjoy the way she communicates Michael Heiser's 15 yrs of research.
She talks about the divine rebellion, the human rebellion, and the tower of Babel rebellion. The divines rebelled against God's will first, for them to rule together with the humans. The church focuses primarily on the human rebellion, probably out of ignorance. We end up misapplying verses that are referencing the rebellion in the heavenly realms to us, and I think in some ways it leads to high control religion inside some of our faith communities.
I haven't looked at that closely, but it seems to me to be talking about some sort of official work or order supported by the church, analogous to women serving at the tabernacle and temple under the Old Covenant, a NT example being Anna's work in Luke 2. Perhaps because this order was supported, it drew widows who were not otherwise called or inclined to the work of the order, just the security offered by the compensation???? What do you think?
Hi Anna, I want to connect you to Nicole Mason and what happens to women when the church doesn't understand the restoration mission that God is willing to happen.
I'm reading Michael Heiser's book The Unseen Realm. Eve was created inside the divine council room of Eden, to co-rule with the divine creatures. Adam was created outside of Eden, to guard and also co-rule. The Nachash, the serpent, rebelled against God's will of co-rulership, mutual partnerships, and plotted against the human rulers to bring them down. We've struggled with an imbalance of power since then.
The divine restoration project is to get us back to God's will of shalom mutual partnerships. We see Jesus repenting, as we understand repentance, by commission women both before and after the cross. Jesus repents, on behalf of fearful men, by partnering with women as leaders of the new covenant. Do the men in the church have a correct fear of God or a wrong fear of God. Do they understand the mission?
I had been thinking something similar, though not specifically related to Hymeneaus and Alexander, that God does not want women placed on the frontlines of spiritual warfare, because women, as the mothers of the living (Genesis 3:20), are the especial enemy of the serpent dragon, as seen in Genesis 3:15 and the vision of the dragon and woman in Revelation 12. Men, as the firstborn of Creation*, have the responsibility to stand on the frontlines in the spiritual battle Paul describes in Ephesians 6:10-18. Christ, the second Adam (Romans 5:15-17) is the Firstborn of the Resurrection (Romans 8, and his finished work assures both men and women who follow him of spiritual victory.
*It is significant, in the story of the Passover, that it is the firstborn males of the Egyptians who die and, because of that, the firstborn males of Israel "who open the matrix" are God's (Exodus 13:1, 12-13, also Numbers 3:12, 44-51) and have to be redeemed. Incidentally, statistically, more firstborn children who "open the matrix" are female.
Thank you, Holly. Very interesting observations. Although I believe that Paul does not want women leading the offensive against false teachers in the church at Ephesus (and elsewhere), it seems to me that the wrestling that Paul is talking about in Ephesians 6 is unavoidable for all of us, including children (6:1-3), fathers (6:4); slaves/servants (6:5-8); masters (6:9). As one of my favorite theologians reminds me, Ephesians 6 directs all of us to the work of the Divine Warrior, who clothes us in his righteousness that we might know that we are blameless because he has gone into battle on our behalf (Is. 59:17-20; 61:10). Ephesians 6 is talking about Christ's vicarious work which we appropriate by faith and put on when Satan attacks.
Very interesting, and I agree with much of what you said. I, too, recently coined a word--integratarian instead of complementarian or egalitarian. I need to read more of your articles--this is the first I have read. My research has led me to another conclusion--Adam is representational of God the Father and Eve is representational of God the Comforter. I agree that the sin of the Garden was because Adam did not stand beside Eve when confronting the serpent, and Eve spoke without waiting for him.
It was a two-fold sin of pride. However, while each is representational of something else, each person also has agency. Each person also represents all Three Persons of the Godhead by our minds (the Father), the Body (the Comforter), and the Soul (Christ). This frees us, not constrains us. In the freeing, I believe that men will naturally gravitate toward more of the speaking, calling, exhorting role of prophet and women more toward the connecting, healing, welcoming role of priest. We won't know, of course, until women are freed to make their own decisions, not imposed upon them by others.
Anyway, I am glad to have found your blog and look forward to reading more. Thanks for your insights.
Thank you, Sheila! I like integratarian. I agree with you that before we link man's representation to origin (earth, man) and telos (woman, heaven) in Genesis 2, we have to consider one mankind, male and female, made like God (Elohim). I strongly believe God is telling us something by Elohim (plural in form and yet all but six times in the Hebrew Bible grammatically singular) having plural predicates in Genesis 1:26. "Let us" make mankind in "our image," after "our likeness." It is remarkable and points us in the direction of considering ourselves as imaging the unity and diversity within God himself. Thanks so much for commenting.
Anna, I keep returning to your words here. As they set my mind on things that are above. Or as you phrased it, our gender symbolism points to something that is beyond ourselves. The way that you present the creation order is edifying, and elevates both the man and the woman. I'm considering the significance of Eve being created inside Eden, the divine council meeting place for the human rulers to co-rule in partnership with the Unseen Realm rulers, the lesser elohim that God created to rule the heavenly places. Michael Heiser book The Unseen Realm communicates that Adam and Eve would have attended divine council meetings with the rulers of the heavenly realms in the garden of Eden. Does Eve's creation location, being formed from the side of Adam, while inside the "command room", if you will, speak to her fitness to rule? I'm wondering if the Nachash, what we call the serpent, may have plotted Eve's downfall so that the lesser elohim could rule the earth without the partnership of the human rulers. Creating an imbalance of power that we struggle with today. I'll post more thought on this as they develop. Your gender ideas are extremely helpful. Thank you for leading the church in this.
Sarah, thank you so much for these insights! They sound so much like Meredith Kline, and I will definitely be ordering Michael Heiser's book. Kline sees that part of the prophetic call was being caught up into the heavenly throne room, and he also sees the garden as a mountain top sanctuary. He ties Eden to Har Magedon (Har Mo ed; most high mountain seen in Is. 14:13; Ps. 48; Ezekiel 38-39; Rev. 16:16) and Yarkete Sapon (Heights of Zaphon in Ps. 48) (Kline, God Heaven and Har Magedon [GHH]). Eden was the visible heights of Har Magedon, the Mount of Assembly of men and angels (elohim beings), a place of work and judgment, and yet there were invisible heights which were extended if Adam would obey, heights of rest. He sees the mountain paradise of Eden as battleground. Concerning male and female, in line with Reformed and covenant theologians, he sees Adam as the prophet, priest, and king of the garden, called to holy war with Satan.
"The story of the earthly Har Magedon goes back to the beginning of human history when this mountain of God rose up as a cosmic axis in Eden. There the battle of Har Magedon was joined as Satan challenged the God of the mountain and overcame the first Adam, the appointed guardian of the garden-sanctuary" (GHH, 259).
In line with the lop-sided anthropology of the Reformed world, Eve by name appears without Adam only once in Kline's 300-page book, as the mother of those being "mustered into the army of the Lord" (71). You are right. It is remarkable that covenant theologians find such asymmetry in the text. It seems that they either ignore the call *given to both* to rule, or they understand Gen. 2:15 as clarifying Gen. 1:28, or more likely they introduce sphere separation. My first ThM advisor said that Adam was created outside the garden, which means men in general face outward toward the untamed world from which they came. He said that the significance of Eve's creation in the garden was that she was a domestic creature, made for the tame world of the garden. It seems to me that all this is read into the text from the foundation of Aristotle, most especially his Politics. Women lack the deliberative capacities of the soul which are necessary to "rule and subdue."
You bring up a great question: Why did Satan tempt Eve and not Adam? I was taught that Satan knew that she was easier prey, more gullible. Whether the people who taught this to me knew it or not, this derives from the ancient Greek understanding of the woman as associated with the lower functions of the soul like intuition and emotion over against man associated with rationality. All that as background to say that I am still thinking about why Satan approached Eve. This is what I have come to thus far. Adam represents the Son, eternally begotten of the Father. Eve represents the Son's glory, the consubstantial Spirit who proceeds from the Father and Son (the Lord and Giver of Life who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified). I see "sonship" and "city" as unique but not exclusive representation. With Adam, Eve partakes in Sonship, the alpha of humanity. With Eve, Adam partakes in the glory of his telos and the omega of humanity, the tent-city of God, the epiphany of the Holy Spirit in the heavenly realm. So my thinking at the moment aligns with Christ's temptation in the wilderness. Satan extended to the Second Adam this present world and age, its "splendor and authority." He took Christ up onto a high mountain where he could see the glory, saying, "Worship me and it will all be yours." This seems to me to be the significance of Eve's temptation. Eve represented the glory of the age to come to Adam. She beckoned him to pass through testing and receive heavenly glory through obedience. Through this beckoning she was to allied herself with God and with Adam as his ezer kenegdo. She stands before him as the representative of heaven's glory, the Sabbath realm, and says, "Come" (Rev. 22:17). Satan's temptation and Eve's fall transformed her in Adam's eyes into a representative of the temporal, transient, and passing glory of this age. In her transgression, she took on an alien glory, the glory of this world, and said to Adam, "Come." He failed to do what Christ did on the mountain in the wilderness as Christ surveyed the kingdoms --- Adam failed to rebuke Satan and to worship and serve God alone (Luke 4:7).
There is one more thing --- I see in Satan approaching Eve first a recapitulation of the cosmic order. The heavenly angelic realm, linked symbolically with the woman, came under temptation first. Satan fell from the heights in the unseen realm, which is why we find him in on earth. There is a correspondence between the woman and the angelic realm which we find in 1 Cor. 11. Satan and one-third of the heavenly hosts fell in heaven before Adam and Eve fell on earth. Eve, the symbol of heaven, transgressed before Adam, symbol of earth, fell and with him the entire earthly order. And as you so well point out, this is why we see Satan in the garden. He situates himself before the woman to devour her first as part of his scheme.
Please write any more comments. I LOVE your thoughts. So helpful!
Thank you so much for the education. I was first introduced to the divine council by Brook at Faith in Twenty podcast. I enjoy the way she communicates Michael Heiser's 15 yrs of research.
She talks about the divine rebellion, the human rebellion, and the tower of Babel rebellion. The divines rebelled against God's will first, for them to rule together with the humans. The church focuses primarily on the human rebellion, probably out of ignorance. We end up misapplying verses that are referencing the rebellion in the heavenly realms to us, and I think in some ways it leads to high control religion inside some of our faith communities.
I might share more of my thoughts in my substack.
If you're interested in listening to Brook...
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyNlQ29ed7zKYB_d5PV6U5ezv109ffP88&si=JJToekQ9aAFSxG0N
Wonderful, Anna. Sign me up for third-way representationalism. Now I’m curious how your approach could enable a better reading of 1 Tim 5:14-15.
I haven't looked at that closely, but it seems to me to be talking about some sort of official work or order supported by the church, analogous to women serving at the tabernacle and temple under the Old Covenant, a NT example being Anna's work in Luke 2. Perhaps because this order was supported, it drew widows who were not otherwise called or inclined to the work of the order, just the security offered by the compensation???? What do you think?
Hi Anna, I want to connect you to Nicole Mason and what happens to women when the church doesn't understand the restoration mission that God is willing to happen.
I'm reading Michael Heiser's book The Unseen Realm. Eve was created inside the divine council room of Eden, to co-rule with the divine creatures. Adam was created outside of Eden, to guard and also co-rule. The Nachash, the serpent, rebelled against God's will of co-rulership, mutual partnerships, and plotted against the human rulers to bring them down. We've struggled with an imbalance of power since then.
The divine restoration project is to get us back to God's will of shalom mutual partnerships. We see Jesus repenting, as we understand repentance, by commission women both before and after the cross. Jesus repents, on behalf of fearful men, by partnering with women as leaders of the new covenant. Do the men in the church have a correct fear of God or a wrong fear of God. Do they understand the mission?
Nicole Mason on threads.
https://www.threads.net/@_nicolemason_/post/C_owBDXtMrd/?xmt=AQGzCJH3pMKLQ72dIee67Z1v_f5fCikNFqftLmvMU1-ZuA
Thank you!
Thank you! This is so helpful!
I had been thinking something similar, though not specifically related to Hymeneaus and Alexander, that God does not want women placed on the frontlines of spiritual warfare, because women, as the mothers of the living (Genesis 3:20), are the especial enemy of the serpent dragon, as seen in Genesis 3:15 and the vision of the dragon and woman in Revelation 12. Men, as the firstborn of Creation*, have the responsibility to stand on the frontlines in the spiritual battle Paul describes in Ephesians 6:10-18. Christ, the second Adam (Romans 5:15-17) is the Firstborn of the Resurrection (Romans 8, and his finished work assures both men and women who follow him of spiritual victory.
*It is significant, in the story of the Passover, that it is the firstborn males of the Egyptians who die and, because of that, the firstborn males of Israel "who open the matrix" are God's (Exodus 13:1, 12-13, also Numbers 3:12, 44-51) and have to be redeemed. Incidentally, statistically, more firstborn children who "open the matrix" are female.
Thank you, Holly. Very interesting observations. Although I believe that Paul does not want women leading the offensive against false teachers in the church at Ephesus (and elsewhere), it seems to me that the wrestling that Paul is talking about in Ephesians 6 is unavoidable for all of us, including children (6:1-3), fathers (6:4); slaves/servants (6:5-8); masters (6:9). As one of my favorite theologians reminds me, Ephesians 6 directs all of us to the work of the Divine Warrior, who clothes us in his righteousness that we might know that we are blameless because he has gone into battle on our behalf (Is. 59:17-20; 61:10). Ephesians 6 is talking about Christ's vicarious work which we appropriate by faith and put on when Satan attacks.