Moving Toward a Different Understanding of Male and Female

Don't you think we can do better . . .

I think that there are better models for gender than the ones that we have been using.  As I expressed in my last two Substacks, I believe that we can begin where God begins in Genesis 1. God made us like himself. He didn’t make us in the likeness of the animal world. Or even in the likeness of one another. We don’t get a better understanding of ourselves as male and female by looking at one another and comparing ourselves to ourselves. Polarizing and stereotyping our neighbor who is different from us doesn’t help us.  We get an understanding of who we are as male and female by looking to God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I have come to think that the best understanding of the trinity should lead to the best understanding of ourselves. In academic language, Theology Proper, the study of the triune God as he is in himself, should be the starting point for Theological Anthropology, the study of man whom he made for forever fellowship with himself. In my quest to understand the male and female of Genesis 1:27, I have landed on God himself and his plans for us as the best model for understanding ourselves as an equally ultimate unity and diversity. The man and woman are symbols and types, directing our gaze to God himself. When I ask, “Who am I?,” God gives me himself as the pattern and for good reason. He made us like himself so that our thoughts would turn toward him from whom we came. Meditating on who he is — God in three persons, blessed trinity — feeds our souls and sustains us as we move toward the end he has purposed for us. 

You, God, are my God,

   earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,

    my whole being longs for you.

As I have walked the road to a trinitarian understanding of ourselves, I have had to reject loud voices in modern evangelicalism. These voices would otherwise deter me from the joy of this work. This is one of the reasons why I write. I would hope God would use me to invite my sisters to join their brothers in the great conversation. The church operates best with all our voices, despite what we are often told. Women were not made to make notes in the margins of their cookbooks, leaving the Bible to our brothers. And women were not made to be wells which can be filled with a knowledge of God but never drawn from publicly if any man is in the vicinity.  How tragic that the anthropology of the church has been hijacked by such sentiments, convincing many that women are unsuited by nature, prohibited by “role,” or banned from spheres where their brothers seek and speak the deep things of God. These voices have robbed many of the joy of receiving and giving what God has set apart and revealed in his Word to all of us.

In past Substacks, I have written about how the image of God in both man and woman is an analogy of the simple essence of God. God’s essence is not made up of parts. Likewise the essence of man, the image, is not parceled out among us, each of us getting a portion. We all bear the image of God equally. This is why we love our neighbor as ourselves, because our neighbor is like us.  The image exists in its fullness in the anencephalic baby who will never live outside the womb, as well as those we celebrate here for their physical and intellectual strength, creative gifts, power, influence, and beauty. The image is mysterious, with a trajectory beyond this life. I also spoke of the second way we mirror God, the unity of mankind. Just as God is one, we are revealed as one mankind, people, nation, priesthood, tabernacle, temple, vine, olive tree, body, building, bride, holy city, etc. I see here an analogy to the “absolute person/personality” of God (Herman Bavinck, RD 2:302-303; 523-529). Our solidarity as one mankind also magnifies God, who has mirrored himself in the one people he formed for life in his presence. Each of us bear the same undivided essence of mankind, and we are a unity, called to live in line with our solidarity. We are to strive as one — with one mind, pulling with one strength, united in one spirit, because this is what we will always be, an ultimate unity. And an equally ultimate diversity. Forever reflecting and celebrating God’s nature.  

Photo by Wylly Suhendra on Unsplash

So the next question is how the diversity of God is mirrored in mankind. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit, and the Son is not the Father or the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son. The Father is unbegotten, from whom are all things. The Son is begotten, proceeding from the Father, through whom are all things. From the Father and the Son proceeds the Spirit, in and by whom are all things. I suggest that these are differences that will be showcased in the man and the woman of Genesis 2. 

I believe that whereas Genesis 1:26-27 proclaims our likeness to God through our unity, Genesis 2 reveals our likeness to God through our equally ultimate diversity as the man and woman whose origins and missions are equally from God but different.  The male and female of the first chapter are the same substance (image-bearers), equal in power and glory, and they receive one and the same commission from God, but when we come to Genesis 2, the male and female are different. They are not the same. They have “incommunicable personal properties” which set them apart from one another. In other words, the male and female have things unshared. They are ordered. First comes the man, and second and last comes the woman. You could say that the woman proceeds from the man, leading our thoughts to the Son, who proceeds from the Father . . . and to the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and Son. Is procession not what Adam celebrates in the last verses of chapter 2? First he celebrates her unity with him, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh . . .” and then her diversity, “ . . . she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.”  But now we are getting ahead of the story told in Genesis 2.

Photo by Andre Revilo on Unsplash

Like chapter 1, chapter 2 begins with two cosmic spheres — the heavens, God’s throne room, and the earth, God’s footstool (Is 66:1). Next two sets of days — a set of creation days and the seventh day. And finally, two missions — God’s earthly work and his Sabbath rest. With Geerhardus Vos’s GINORMOUS insight, we understand that God is not just describing his movement from work to rest, but calling Adam and Eve to enter that rest as well (Heb 4:11). In other words, God is setting the pattern that Sabbath rest proceeds from their earthly work. In fact, Genesis 2:4 seems to point to exactly this. In 4a, the order is first heavens. . .  and then second and last earth. But, notice the reversal in 4b: “. . . in the day the LORD God made the earth (first) and the heavens (second and last).” With the first use of this very uncommon order of “earth and heavens,” God is about to create the man from the dust of the earth and then the woman from Adam’s consecrated side. I suggest that Adam and Eve are creatures that in themselves tell a cosmic story, God’s story of Genesis 2:3. And they tell the story of mankind’s path to glory. God “moves” from earth to heaven and calls Adam and Eve to make that same move from their earthly work of obedience under testing . . .  to heavenly rest beyond testing. So important is this that when he makes them, he inscribes it on them. They become symbols of their own path to full and final fellowship with God. Adam represents the earth, and Eve represents the heavens, the Sabbath realm.  If Revelation 21-22 comes to mind now, you are tracking with me.

Photo by Muneeb Ul Hassan Khan on Unsplash

In my next Substack, I want to give the evidence for this. Genesis 2 abounds with allusions to the meaning of the man and the woman’s differences, all pointing them to their supernatural end. In my opinion, the modern day complementarians have been barking up the wrong tree and missing the glory of what we say as man and woman about God himself and what he has in store for them that love him.