The Son and the City: Thesis and Antithesis

Earthly-mindedness has consequences

I keenly remember a conversation three years ago that I had with a woman who was not happy with me.  She appeared to be mocking my research on sexuality and gender, which was the subject of the master’s thesis I was finishing at the time. I finally asked her, “How do you see our differences as male and female? Why do you think God made us male and female?” She continued laughing. It was as if that question was too ridiculous to answer. She said, “Just because he did.” It seemed to me that for her our gender and sexuality was simply given by God, the reasons being too obvious to even mention. It certainly did not warrant research and meditation. God just did it that way, and here we are. After three more years of thinking, I have even more reason to believe that in mere ascent to the givenness of our existence as male and female, she is missing a well of encouragement. In probing this question, I have found an endless source of refreshment to sustain my soul as God sees me through to the end he has purposed for me.  And I have not journeyed alone but alongside others that are taking deep draughts of that same spring. 

What is the paradigm that God is using for mankind in Genesis 1? And what is the pattern in Genesis 2 when he takes the woman from Adam’s side and brings her to him, to be united with him?  I have come to the conclusion that God is revealing (1) himself; (2) the manifestation of himself in the angelic realm (heaven); (3) his plans to unite heaven to earth on the last day to the joy of his people in never-ending union and communion with himself. He has decreed Sabbath rest for us, a people destined to find their eternal beatitude in him. 

Finding the meaning of our differences in our triune personal God and his plans for us aligns well with our chief end as loving him as well as loving our neighbor, who is his image and likeness.  So here is my central thesis again: God is revealing himself as an equally ultimate unity of essence and diversity of persons in Genesis 1. So, for example, the things God creates are an interconnected unity teeming with diversity. When we get to the culmination of creation and God says, “Let us make mankind (adam) in our image, after our likeness,” he proceeds to make us one adam, marked in our unity by bearing the irreducible image of God, and yet we also are an equally ultimate diversity, male and female. That unity and diversity is further revealed as an unfolding procession and embrace in Genesis 2. In trinitarian language, we are bound as one by the irreducible essence of mankind, and yet we have “incommunicable personal properties” that distinguish us. These “properties” point beyond us. In other words, there is a story being told. There is a revelation from God in our existence as male and female. That story is ultimately his story which has become our story as a people proceeding from him destined for him in glory beyond testing. 

In our oneness and manyness, we mirror not only God as he is in himself in personal procession and embrace, but also his revelation of himself in heaven. From the enthroned Son, who is from the Father, proceeds a glory-train that fills the temple in Isaiah 6. According to Meredith Kline, that glory not only fills heaven, but forms it. For Kline, the Spirit’s manifestation simply is the tent dwelling of God.¹ The Spirit proceeding from the Father and Son wraps the one throne in the light of his glory covering and enclosing them as a garment, sealing the divine embrace. This is the manifestation of the Spirit as “love bond,” to use Augustine’s language.² Heaven is nothing short of an epiphany of the Holy Spirit revealing the beauty of the the divine embrace. The Spirit hovers and covers, surrounding the Father and Son exalted at his right hand, replicating in the heavenly realm the internal trinitarian “clinging” or coinherence from all eternity. That throne room re-presentation of the divine nature is further re-presented on earth in Genesis 1-2, culminating in the man and woman of the garden. So, as Lane Tipton says, there is a descending order here beginning with God as he is in himself, Father, Son, and Spirit exhaustively representing one another. Then comes the representation of themselves in their work in creation, first heaven, then earth, culminating in the man and the woman of the garden, explicitly in the image and likeness of God.  

If the typology that John Schmitt has put forward, which is that maleness is tied to sonship and that femaleness is tied to the son’s glory, the Spirit-Sabbath city, then we would expect to see it right away, beginning in Genesis 4.³ And we would anticipate to see the typology generally sustained throughout the Scriptures, even until Revelation 21-22. So, for example, we might not be surprised to come upon Abraham, the son, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. We might expect to find Moses, the son, singing about God’s holy dwelling and his purchased people planted on the mountain of his possession, his holy sanctuary (Ex 15:16-18). We might finally understand why so much emphasis is given to the building of the tabernacle. We might not be surprised to finally find David, the son, establishing earthly Zion, the joy of the whole earth, or to find David steadfast and resolute in preparing for the building of the temple (Psalm 46, 48). We might not be surprised to find many faithful sons of Israel, the prophets,  pointing to the glory of the city to come. And we would rejoice to see that revelation ends with a Son and sons, and a Spirit-City and a bride, the sons also a bride, and the bride sons of the living God. As a side bar, the proof of the woman’s importance to God has been established by reference to individual women. So, for example, some might say, “Look, God has dignified women in Exodus by referring to Shiphrah and Puah, Jochebed and Miriam, Pharaoh's unnamed daughter, and Zipporah.” And I would add, “God has dignified women in Exodus by spending the entire last half of the book on instructions for the tabernacle, made after the heavenly pattern.” There she is in the glory of what she signifies, the Spirit-tent. Heavenly-mindedness magnifies what God is revealing through her as a woman taken from Adam’s side — the Spirit’s manifestation as the Giver of life, mother realm, sister-friend, daughter, and bridal people. Earthly-mindedness obscures her representation, and worse. as we see right away in Genesis 4. 

With this, I am off. . If the Son and the Spirit-city is the key to understanding our differences as male and female, we perhaps would find sonship and cityhood magnified right away in Genesis 4. And we do. Immediately we see the son and the city in their antithesis. We see the first son, Cain, and his city, the city of man in rebellion against God. After Cain murdered his brother Abel, he “went out from the presence of the Lord.” With his back toward Eden, he fathered a son (4:17a) and built a city (17b), naming the city after his son. Next comes the inevitable distorted representation of the son and city in marriage. Genesis 4 ends by laying out a faithless representation of the son and his glory, a city. The builder and maker of Cain’s city is himself, and it leads to a disfigured marriage. In the sixth generation of the line of Cain, his great, great, great grandson, Lamech, boasted of killing a child, a mere yeled (boy). That boast had a context. He was using it as an example to intimidate his two wives. He had already more than one, distorting the representation given in Genesis 2 — one side, one woman built from that side, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, embraced by him in a faithful and enduring communion of persons. Now he threatens his wives with physical harm. Genesis 4 displays the son and the city in polar opposition to what God is revealing about himself in making one mankind, male and female, in procession and embrace. In other words, the first half of Genesis 4 shows rapid disintegration — the first son of the earth kills his brother. That son then becomes the origin of the first city, his glory as a marked murderer wandering from God’s presence. By the end of Genesis 4, we get the distorted ectypes of the son, Cain and his city in the marriages of Lamech. This chapter reveals the antithesis of the enthroned Son and his Glory-Spirit temple.  Lamech, a man of violence, exploits his wives, distorts the sacred symbolism at work in marriage, and then appears to threaten their lives. We are given a son and his city, but it looks nothing like the faithful son and the faithful city that we see in Revelation 21-22. That Son laid down his life and conquered all of his and our enemies. That city is a bride, his glory, a royal bride, his beloved, his possession, in whom he finds never-ending delight.  

Genesis 2 gives us covenantal representation, the Son and the Spirit-City symbolically in their untainted types in the garden. Adam images the enthroned Son; Eve images his glory, the Spirit, which proceeds from him. Genesis 2 ends with a faithful son and city in their representation as husband and wife in union and communion, naked and unashamed. But in Genesis 3, Eve eats the forbidden fruit and takes on a dark mission, distorting her representation. She offers Adam an alien and fleeting glory, the glory of the city of mere man. Adam eats the forbidden fruit, yet God does not abandon them in their sin. He revives their representation in the promised son and his city. The woman’s Seed, born from the glory realm above, Mother Zion, will become a son of Adam who will build his city and bring her to rest. From that promised Son will proceed his glory, a city-bride. Because of his grace, she will turn to him, and he will rule over, bringing her to the Sabbath day and place that he has promised her. The bride will not fail because the one whom she represents, the Spirit, will not fail. She is rooted in nothing less than the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified. Likewise the son of Adam will not fail because he is rooted in the eternal Son, the image and radiance of the Father. In becoming the second Adam, he will do just that. 

Genesis 4-6 leads me to believe that we will recognize the son and the city throughout the Bible as God works through faithful representation set over and against faithless representation. In Genesis, for sure we see this alternating pattern. In chapter 4, we get the faithless son, a murderer, and his city; but in Genesis 5, we find Seth, according to Adam’s image, a “son” in Adam’s likeness. Through Seth, will come the faithful representation of sonship, and from him will also come the future promised Son.  After Seth, the word “son” is not mentioned again in chapter 4 until verse 25. Throughout the chapter, the genealogy reads, “________ fathered_______, and he fathered other sons and daughters.” Rather than the singular son, the emphasis is on fathering. The next explicit mention of son is at the end of the chapter, “Lamech was 182 years old when he fathered a son. And he named him Noah saying, ‘This one will bring us relief from the agonizing work of our hands, caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.’”  Noah is the faithful son who is the true image and likeness of the eternal Son, Lamech’s greater son. That son will come through Shem, whose tents will be the dwelling place of Japheth. Shem is the son; his tents are the city of promise, the Sabbath dwelling of the people of God (c.f. Is 54:1-3).

In Genesis 6, we are back to the antithesis of the son in the multiplying sons of God.  The evidence of the faithless son is found in his distortion of marriage. When the son is faithless, the city-bride is desecrated. Faithless sons of God seek glory in the violent exploitation of their wives in Genesis 6:1-8: “ . . . the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful and they took any they chose as wives for themselves” (6:2).  We should note that this is the only specific complaint of God against the “sons of God.” This is the outstanding substance of their wickedness despite the Spirit’s restraining presence and witness — they profane the daughters of mankind. This leads to the ominous proclamation of God, his first direct speech since confronting Cain, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt . . .I will wipe mankind, whom I created off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky — for I regret that I made them.” The “sons of God” rather than representing God, distorted the eternal Son and his Glory Spirit. They perverted the revelation of the Son and his glory in the heavenly realm. They came to wholly misrepresent the God who formed them in his image and filled them with his breath. 

Though some may be tempted to look at the genealogies of Genesis and the fronting of the sons of God and come to the conclusion that women are secondary to the narrative, it is far from the case. The Son and his Glory-Spirit are front and center throughout as God deals with wayward mankind, forging a path through the Son to the City of promise. The women may not be named, but their symbolism is clear, setting eyes that can see on the Sabbath city of God.⁴ 

In the weeks ahead, I hope to continue to move through Genesis, finding the Son and the City in the historical narratives of Genesis.

1. Meredith Kline, God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, 10-17.

2. Augustine, De Trinitate, 6:7.

3. John J. Schmitt, “Israel and Zion—Two Gendered Images: Biblical Speech Traditions and their Contemporary Neglect,” Horizons, 18/1 (1991), 18-32. See also “The Gender of Ancient Israel,” JSOT, 26, (1983), 115-125. 

4. Geerhardus Vos, “Heavenly Mindedness,” accessed here.