Adam as the Firstborn Son and Eve as his Glory

The Trinity is the Path Ahead

Several weeks ago, I introduced the work of John Schmitt on gender. He sees a steadily-upheld typology throughout the Hebrew Scriptures: (1) male/son/Israel and (2) female/city/Jerusalem-Zion. He suggests that Israel is God’s son, consistently masculine in the Hebrew Scriptures. Schmitt argues that Israel is never pictured as a woman, mother, daughter, bride, or wife. Parallel with the masculine image of son, he finds the feminine image of the city Jerusalem- Zion. The city is never pictured as a man or father or son or husband.  

I began to examine Schmitt’s seminal insight in light of the covenantal theology of Geerhardus Vos. For Vos, Genesis 2:1-4 sets forth in anthropomorphic language God’s movement from six days of earthly work to a never ending heavenly Sabbath day. In the rest of the chapter, God plants a garden in Eden and forms a son from the earth to keep and guard it. He calls him to make every effort to follow God’s work-to-rest example by obeying God’s command (Heb 4:9). If Adam obeys, God promises him, and all united to him, nothing less than abundant, never-ending life in his presence in a realm beyond Eden. Building on Vos, I suggested that the meaning of our differences in Genesis 2 is bound up specifically with the means and end of this covenant. The two parties are God and the son molded from earthen clay, then animated by God’s breath and called to obedience. He acts on behalf of the earth and all that comes from it. At the end of Genesis 2, God constructs the woman. She is God’s last work of creation.  She is after him in order and comes from him. She is for him and stands with him, a strength in his work of obedience, not least by pointing him beyond herself. She beckons Adam to the blessing of the covenant, God’s rest, saying, “Come. let us receive Sabbath life, glory, goodness, and blessedness in God himself, our very great reward.”¹   

I added to Schmitt and Vos, Cornelius Van Til’s representational principle, which Meredith Kline applies  beyond epistemology in what he terms the “replication principle.”² Van Til said that it was impossible for God to create except on the representational plan.³ Representation and replication imply that when God creates, he is revealing himself specifically. His acts in creation and providence come from him as their source and cannot help but point to him as their end. Next, I applied representation to (1) Genesis 1 creation and (2) Genesis 2 providence, God’s covenant with mankind. First, concerning creation in Genesis 1, I began to see that Adam and Eve, made explicitly in the image and likeness of God, reveal God’s unity of essence and his diversity of persons. He exists as the simple and singular divine triune essence, and yet he also exists as three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one mind and will, equal in power and glory. He is one in his threeness, and he is three in his oneness. Both his oneness and threeness are equally ultimate. In other words, his oneness does not precede or take priority over his threeness, or vice versa. In Genesis 1, the one mankind, male and female, mirror God’s oneness as image-bearing mankind in an equally ultimate diversity of persons, male and female. Next, applied to providence in Genesis 2, I suspected that Eve’s secondness as well as their bone and flesh union, mirrored personal processions and divine embrace (perichoresis). 

To be more clear, man and woman’s representation begins first with (1) God as he is in himself outside of space and time, (2) then his manifestation of himself in the angelic realm, his heavenly throne room. (3) Finally comes his self-revelation on earth, most clearly understood by the man and woman in his image and likeness. Concerning (1), the Father begets the Son. From the Father and Son, the Spirit proceeds, permeating, binding, surrounding, enveloping the three persons in the divine embrace. According to Tipton, that embrace simply is the one glory of the triune God. Concerning (2), God’s works begin in heaven, where we find the manifestation of his glory in the angelic realm ((Job 38:4-7; Isaiah 6:1-4).  From the Father and the Son on the one throne of heaven proceeds a glory train that fills the temple, encircling the throne and sealing the three persons in the divine embrace. Perichoresis literally means to “go around” or “encircle.” Based on Kline, I suggest that the train of Isaiah 6 that circumscribes the throne is an epiphany of the Holy Spirit that is replicated on earth in the man and woman of Genesis 2. From Adam proceeds his glory, the woman, a glory intended to seal Adam and all mankind to God. She has the intended effect. Bound to the woman, Adam now binds himself to God in praise, lifting his voice at the culmination of creation.  In summary, Lane Tipton says, “The movement in descending order is this: (1) the trinitarian processions are that immutable beatitude of the triune God apart from creation; (2) the endoxation of the Spirit of the Father and Son in heaven forge the primal historical revelation of God’s glory in the upper register (heaven); (3) and then in Genesis 1:2, the theophanic Glory Cloud, the Spirit, descending out of heaven, reproduces that heavenly reality in visible, earthly forms that culminate in (4) the creation of Adam and Eve as the image and likeness of God.”⁴ Most simply stated, the order is this: (1) Trinity; (2) revelation of the Trinity in heaven; (3) revelation of the Trinity on earth; (4) the representation of the Trinity on earth culminating in the man and woman in the image and likeness of God himself.

Next I add the insights of Tipton on the immutable Son, the Creator.⁵  Even as we confess “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” we acknowledge that the Word, the immutable Son, is explicitly and repeatedly tied to the creation of all things. All things were created in Genesis 1-2 through the Son (John 1:1-3), by and for the Son, who holds together all things, both visible (things on earth) and invisible (things in heaven) (Col 1:15-20). The divine Son, the essential radiance of the Father and the Father’s exact representation (Heb 1:3), who upholds heaven and earth by his powerful word, was the eternal surety of their coming together on the last day (Eph 1:9-10). For this reason, the immutable second person took to himself mutable flesh to mediate the consequences of the fall, reconciling all things to himself, making peace by his blood shed on the cross. Thus the Son has brought his people from “alienated and hostile” (Gen 3:8-13) to “holy, faultless, and blameless” (Rev 19:7-8). 

Based on Hebrews 1, Tipton speaks of how the Son specifically mediates the glory and joy of the creature with the Creator.⁶ In this sense, I suggest that Adam’s pattern is the eternal Son, the Mediator, specifically as the first born son from the earth, called to obedience, mediates the glory and joy of all the things that have sprung up from the earth like himself (1 Cor 11:3).  Notice this in the language of 1 Corinthians 11:3a, “Christ is the head of every man.”  Christ is the person of the eternal Son from whom comes the man of Genesis 2, both in terms of creation and covenantal representation. When God’s son Adam failed to mediate the glory and joy of the earth, the archetypal Son, enthroned over creation in Genesis 2, became the incarnate Son, foreshadowed in Genesis 3. After accomplishing redemption, the Son became the first born son from the dead, ascended and enthroned as a man in the heavenly realm (Heb 10:12). Adam was the son called to keep and guard the garden, to bring the glory and joy of Eden to a glory and joy beyond Eden in the Sabbath garden of God. He was the “little s” son in the likeness of the big “S” Son. Adam stood as the fountainhead of all that was created in Genesis 2, just as the “Big S” son is the alpha of all created reality, whether in heaven or on earth.  Adam’s work mirrors and reveals the Son, eternally begotten of the Father, from and through whom God created, upholds, and unites all things in him. As united to Adam in Genesis 2, and to the Second Adam after Genesis 2, Adam with the earth is called to seek the perfection of earthly creation’s joy in the things to come, things, I suggest, that are represented by Eve. 

In the woman of Genesis 2, the symbols of sacred space, life, and the veiled realm of Sabbath rest coincide. Eve is in the image of the Spirit, not the Son. She is most particularly identified with the third person who proceeds from the Father and Son. As such she is the glory of the man, from whose side she came. If we apply these categories to 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, Adam is the head of the woman.⁷ She is built by God from what proceeds from his side, and she also represents his glory, the end for which he was made (11:7).  Adam displays the glory of God as her source; Eve displays the glory of Adam, especially as concerns the Spirit-temple as his ultimate destiny. Order is important in 1 Corinthians 11, and that order is horizontal and egalitarian, not vertical and hierarchical. First comes Adam and then comes Eve, but notice how Paul pivots in verse 12. He introduces Eve’s primacy in Adam’s return to God. Man comes through woman, most importantly the incarnate Son, the Seed of the woman (1 Cor 11:12).  In this passage particularly, Paul gives us a clear view of the proportional representation of Eve, perhaps the clearest vision of her representation. She wears a veil, not because of her weakness and shame, but because she represents a presently veiled realm. She mirrors the realm of life, the epiphany of the Spirit of life-givingness in the heavens. I suggest seeing her representation gives us insight into the enigmatic reference to “authority” and “because of the angels” in 11:10. Consider that verse in the light of Nehemiah 9:6: “You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.” The woman represents the realm of life-givingness, the highest heavens, the place of the Son’s enthronement in glory and authority. There the angels, the “multitudes of heaven,” worship in God’s temple. That realm under innocence was further represented by the woman’s hair, her glory. In Genesis 2, Eve’s hair represented the “train” that filled the temple in Isaiah 6. Under sin, that glory is hidden from our sight until the great unveiling of the Spirit realm, the final apocalypse of God’s glory in Revelation.

I would like to end by summarizing Eve’s personal representation of the heavenly city, also associated in the Hebrew Scriptures with the temple, gardens, dwellings, vineyards, mountains, and citadels.⁸ I arrived here through the work of Kline and Tipton on the “endoxation of the Spirit.”  For Kline, the Sabbath city is nothing less than the visible manifestation of the Spirit in the heavenly realm, veiled from our eyes, but the eternal joy of all that inhabit that realm above.⁹ Both angels and souls at rest, having been made perfect, dwell in its light. So, for example, we sing of the Son, “veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity,” and I would guess that Kline would sing of the Spirit, “clothed in Zion the Godhead see, hail the ‘indoxate’ deity.”¹⁰  The Spirit’s visible manifestation is the glory realm of heaven, the city of Sabbath rest.¹¹ All those united to the Son find Sabbath rest in that Spirit-city. 

The Son’s ectype is the man of 1 Corinthians 11; the Spirit’s ectype is the woman.  The man and woman are proportional in their representation. In Genesis 1-2, Eve is unveiled, her hair representing the Spirit-train proceeding from the throne that fills the heavenly temple, the realm of authority and angels.  In Genesis 3, under sin, she is veiled until that day and hour when the city descends to earth.  The woman of 1 Corinthians 11 is shrouded, but behind her stands the Spirit, the glory of the eternal city, in whose personal likeness she is made. As the ectype of the Spirit, she mirrors the Spirit as the Giver of life. Far from losing this important symbolism in Genesis 3, which is the key to understanding her in a fallen world, she is eternally rooted there. Heaven is Mother Zion, and from her earthly Zion gains her significance. Both the son of God, Adam-Israel, and the daughter of God, Eve-Zion, are rooted in God in three persons, blessed Trinity.  Perhaps in following this line of thinking, we will find our significance as male and female and fortify our souls to love our neighbor as ourselves. 

1. In Danny Olinger’s words, “. . . the goal put before man at the creation, full communion with the living God forever, forfeited in Adam’s sin, had been achieved for believers through the person and work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ . . . the Holy Spirit’s intention (being) to bring those whom the Father had chosen and Christ had died for to the realm of the Spirit, the heavenly Jerusalem above. Christ’s resurrection from the dead, by which he was declared to be the Son of God in power, and the subsequent down payment of the Spirit, were unto this end.” See Danny Olinger, “Geerhardus Vos: New Beginnings at Princeton,” (https://opc.org/os.html?article_id=603).

2. See Meredith Kline, God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, 32.

3. Cornelius Van Til, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 79.

4. Lane Tipton, “Lane Tipton — Perichoresis, Endoxation, and the Glory-Spirit in the Works of Meredith G. Kline,” see minute mark 36:05.

5. Lane Tipton, “Steadfast Savior: Unveiling the Immutable Mediator in Hebrews,”

. 

6. Ibid., beginning at approximate minute mark 45:00.

7. He is the source of her person, not her image-bearing essence (Genesis 1:27; 1 Cor 11:3b).

8. All these images are found in Song of Songs. They are attributed to both the Solomonic Shepherd-King and the Shepherdess, as they mirror one another as the creatures of Sabbath rest. As others have noted, the root consonants of both “Solomon” and “Shulamite” are the same as shalom, associated with the consummate peace that awaits God’s people in union and communion with the Son (Gen 2:2-3).

9. Kline, God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, 5-9.

10. I have seen both “indoxate” as well as “endoxate” as referring to the same principle. I see the Spirit’s “endoxation” paired with “encoronation,” the crowning and session of the Son at the Father’s right hand, and I see “indoxation” paired with “incarnation,” parallel manifestations of the Son and Spirit as from the Father. Kline’s trinitarian theology is occasionally problematic. At the heart of his problem, I believe that he has a “patriarchal trinity.” He sees the Father as the source of the divine essence for the Son and Spirit. He appears to prioritize the glory of the Father. In contrast, our creeds and confessions state the three persons exist as one mind and will, equal in power and glory. See God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, 17.

11.  Lane Tipton, “Perichoresis, Endoxation, and the Glory-Spirit in the Works of Meredith G. Kline,” minute mark 30:08-36:42.