Lecture 25: Introduction and Human Origins
Course: Systematic Theology I
Lecture: Introduction and Human Origins
VI. The Work of God: Decree, Creation and Providence
A Handout on the Work of God was given in class. Dr Ware will not lecture on this topic.
A. The Decree
We do not have a recording of this lecture, but Dr. Ware gave us a detailed discussion of the lectures as a Word document. You will have to unzip it before Word can read it. It can be found at http://www.biblicaltraining.org/class.php?id=115 under the heading Angels.
Doctrine of Humanity Part 1
I. Introduction: Why Study Christian Anthropology?
This is a very good question to ask of any of these areas we study; what are the reasons for it?
A. Who We Are
This answers one of the most critical questions as human beings: who are we? What is it to be a human being? Are we the byproduct of chance, of genetic mutations that have come into existence, into this complex reality called human existence? Are we here by design? Is that design meant to have something to do with God? What is the reason for our existence? Who are we? Why are we here? It is one the most fundamental questions we can ask as human beings. What is our purpose? If you don't have a handle on this question, think about living life, coming to the end of life and not knowing what it is about. Think about whether or not you have been living in a way that would advance the purpose of your being here or not. What a tragedy when you think about failing to live in accord with our created purpose, if in fact there is one. So it is a very important thing to think about.
B. Our Place in relation God
It helps us to understand our place in relation to God. You might remember that Calvin begins his ''Institutes'' by saying there are two things that theology concerns itself with. One is who God is and the second is who we are as human beings. There is an order to that. You have to study who God is to understand who we are as made in the image of God. It is not only that we are images of God that makes it important to understand who God is and then who we are, but rather that we are in fact his creatures. So we recognize in our existence as human beings that we belong to him; we are created by him; we are owned by him; we are dependent upon him; we owe everything to him. To think of ourselves and to study anthropology divorced from God is idolatry. It is to think that we, in ourselves, can understand who we are, make sense of our lives, and make life meaningful apart from God. That is idolatry. This is exactly what Paul said in Romans 1.
Rom 1:21a For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
Instead they focused on the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. So when we come to studying anthropology, one of the purposes is to understand better who we are in relationship to God. We don't leave God in the dust as we move on to us. We, rather, are very much aware that our understanding of who we are has everything to do with who God is and our relationship to him, our dependence upon him and his purposes for us.
C. Our place in relation other humans
One of the great lessons of Genesis 2 is that isolated man is not the ideal. It is amazing that when you read in Genesis 1 God said it was good.
Genesis 1:31 God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Then you come to chapter 2 about Adam; he has cultivated the garden, and he is naming the animals and God says, "It is not good." This is the first time you hear "not good" and there is no sin yet. This is not Genesis 3, this is Genesis 2, there is no sin. And God says, "It is not good that man should be alone" (Gen 2:18). So he makes a helper suitable for him and brings her to him, and he names her ''ishshah'' (woman) because she was taken from ''ish'' (man). You get this sense that the purpose of God at the very beginning is to indicate that ideal human existence is social, not individual autonomous man unrelated to other persons but rather social existence.
You see this in the community of faith. There is the whole body principle that Ray Steadman talked about so much in the 1970's, and the spiritual gifting movement that has come up. We in the West, with our emphasis on individuality and individual achievement and the like, have really missed a central component of biblical teaching; and that is the notion of community and corporate solidarity, the sense that we need one another as body members contributing to one another for the wholeness of the body. So we have to understand that ideal human existence is not isolated human existence but social human existence. That lesson comes right from the very beginning of the Bible. Even Jesus was in community. Did you think it was just phony in the Garden of Gethsemane when he called Peter, James and John to come pray with him? He says, pray with me; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Here you certainly have the "Lone Ranger;" here you have "Superman" who doesn't need anyone else. Did Jesus actually crave and have a felt need for the community of his friends, for these disciples who would join him in praying fervently for this hour of testing and they failed? Was it a genuine longing on his part? Absolutely. In fact this is one of the questions I have to ask the Lord in glory one day. I want to ask Jesus this question, "Was your agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, when you prayed and then prayed again and you sweat drops of blood, was your agony made worse because the disciples whom you asked to pray with you fell asleep and failed to do what you asked them to do? Don't you think that is a good question? I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from him.
D. Our place in relation creation
There is a lot about who we are in relation to creation that is very important in this doctrine. We are stewards of this world God has made. We were created by God to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the creeping, crawling things on the face of the earth. This means that we have dominion, yes, but that doesn't translate into a kind of exploitation. Having dominion means that we have a responsibility to care; we are caretakers of the world God has made. There ought to be a much more vibrant Christian environmentalism that isn't the kind of radical environmentalism that is so prominent today making monkeys more important than humans. I can remember visiting a zoo many years ago in Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Zoo, and turning a corner there was big sign that said, "You are about to see the one species that has caused the most problems on the face of the earth, and if this species weren't here the world would be a wonderful place." That is a paraphrase. When you rounded the corner a mirror was there. This is the kind of radical environmentalism that makes chimpanzees and eagle eggs much more important than fetuses and human beings. This is absolutely abominable.
In Genesis 9 after the flood, God told Noah, you can kill animals and eat them, but you can't kill human beings because they are made in my image. We have to acknowledge the supremacy of the human race in the world by God's design, but the responsibility that the human race has in the world as caretaker to treat with respect and care and responsibility what God has made. That comes right from the very beginning in our creation.
Looking at who we are, and who we are in all of these relationships, with God, with one another, and with the environment, this doctrine is huge and important. It answers some of the most fundamental questions that we have as human beings, and it is critical.
II. Humanity's Origin
A. God the Creator
1. Creator of all that is
Truly it is true, as you look at Scripture, that God has created everything that is. Wouldn't it do, then, in talking about humanity's origin, simply to say we are part of the creation of God? God created all that is, so that is all we need to say. No, we need to say that we are in a very special way the creation of God. God made all; that is absolutely clear. Genesis 1 outlines everything that happened at the end of it; God says that everything he had made was very good. So we know that everything that God made was good, and God made everything that was made.
Secondly, we need to say that in creation it is also clear that God wants us to see that the place of humanity is special. It is not just like anything else out there. There is a special place for the formation of humanity in particular. This is even clear in Genesis one and two. As you read through those chapters it is hard to miss the fact that the author is intending us to see the special place of humanity in creation. What indicators are there in Genesis one and two that we are meant to see the formation of humanity as special? What are some of the things that are evident to us in those two chapters? It is man who is to name the animals. So obviously there is a sense in which man is over the animals. So we are not just like the others; we name them. What does naming indicate? There is an authority that is invested in you, Adam, by which you are able to name the animals; you name that over which you have authority. Adam does that. This is really a remarkable. Who made those animals? Did Adam make them? No, God brought to Adam the animals he had made. So who has the rights to name them? God does, but he say says, Adam, you name them. Whatever name you give them that will be its name. I can imagine God up there going, "Hippopotamus? Are you sure about that?" Well ok. Whatever Adam named it that is its name. That is what the text says. So Adam has prerogative of rulership.
What other indicators are there that humanity has a special place in creation? We are created in the image of God. In Genesis 1:26-27 there is such a stress on this that whatever it means, it obviously means that we are different; we are special. There is something about the formation of humanity that is highlighted by this.
Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Gen 1:27 God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
That humanity is made in the image of God is a clear indicator that there is something special.
What else? There is so much more detail on the creation of man compared to the rest of creation. The way I like to put it is this; you have six days in Genesis 1 of creation; of those six days, the last half of the sixth day is the creation of man. Only one of those days is given a sort of a movie presentation. You have these pictures, snapshots throughout Genesis 1 of all these different elements of creation and then you have a movie. And the movie is of what? The man and then the woman formed. So it is very clear that God puts special emphasis on the formation of man, of male and female as his image.
Another indicator of his rulership is he plants the garden and puts man in it and says, you tend the garden. It is my garden my earth, my world; I made it, you tend it.
With humanity, there is a relationship with God that in not true of the other aspects of creation. God comes to man and he gives a moral command.
Gen 2:16 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; Gen 2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
Here is a special kind of relationship because includes that moral relationship. There is that moral bond between God and the man at that point. He has a moral obligation before God. There is no hint of that with the animals. Nor is there a hint of that today. If your dog jumps the fence and goes out and bites somebody and they die, you may shoot the dog, but what you won't do is take that dog to a court of law and hold it accountable for moral wrong doing. But if a human being does that, you will take them to court. We are moral agents before God. That is clear in the command, in the moral relationship with God.
What else? He blesses them and in a special sense wants them to be productive, reproduce, to fill the earth and rule over that earth.
What else? The tree of Life was something only the man could have. You can eat of all these trees, including the Tree of Life is presumed in that.
What else? The promise of redemption for the man that comes in chapter 3.
Let me point out to you a couple of other things. One is in Geneses 1:26. The language changes in how this is introduced. Up until then all of the previous points of creating are introduced with the phrase "then God said let there be..." Notice the difference in verse 26.
Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness;"
You get this sense of deliberation. I take this as a preliminary indicator of the Triune God. Jewish commentators have a hard time explaining (because they are unitarian, monotheists) the plural here. Some have insisted that it must be God deliberating with the angels. The problem is that we are not made in the image of the angels. This can't be God saying let us, the angels and me, create man in our image. This is not going to work. This is likely the Trinity, the deliberation of the Trinity. He says, "Let us make man," so there is deliberation; there is intentionality and purpose that is stated as the reason for this creation, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over..."
The other thing that I want to point out to you is terms that are used for the formation of humanity. The term ''asah'' is used. The normal ordinary Hebrew word is used, ''asah'', which means to make something.
Gen 1:26a Then God said, "Let us make man in our image,
In Genesis 1:1 the word ''bara'' is used. This is a much more significant term.
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
''bareshith bara elohim'' indicates a kind of creating work only God can do. ''bBara'' is also used in Genesis 1:27.
Gen 1:27 God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
''Bara'' is used three times. This threefold use of ''bara'' indicates an emphasis of creation of human beings. Only God could do this; could make this particular creation of man, male and female in his image.
In Genesis 2:7 the term ''yatsar'' is used. This is a term that is used for a potter shaping the clay into the kind of pot that he wants. It has this notion of both design and artistry.
Gen 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
It is like God formed man of dust from the ground like a potter would take the clay and shape it into the man that he intended. Again it has this notion of intentionality, purpose, design that is attached to it.
Similarly in the creation of the woman in Genesis 2:22 the term ''banah'' is used.
Gen 2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
It could be translated "built into a woman" or "fashioned into a woman." It has the notion of building something. It is like the term you would use in a construction project. You make this into what you have designed it to be.
The language alone, that is, these terms that are used indicate the special place that human beings have in creation.
2. Special Place for the Formation of Humanity in Particular
So we have seen that God has created all that there is. But it won't do to stop there and say that is sufficient for explaining us, to merely say we are creatures. That makes it look as though there is no difference between a frog and a human being. That is not true. There is clearly in the text reason for holding that God views human beings in a very special place in his creation.
3. Brief Theology of Humanity's Creation by God
This is a list of some of the things that I think that flow out of this notion of the fact that we are created by God and have this special place before him.
a. God is ultimate, while all of humanity is dependent on God
At the most basic level this is one of lessons that we must take away from the doctrine of creation, the creation of us as human beings. That is that God is ultimate, and we are not. He is creator; we are creature. He is the owner; we are owned. We are dependent upon him for absolutely everything. Paul says it in Acts 17.
Acts 17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.
Every now and then I consciously sit at my desk or sit in the car and take a deep breath and think, "That breath was a gift of God, as is every one through the day, 99.9% of which I am not even aware of." How many times have you breathed since you sat down in the chair you are in today? Every breath is a gift. God hold our lives in his hand, every moment, everything we have, every possession, every dream and aspiration, every relationship, everything. We are dependent upon God for absolutely everything.
b. Humanity owes God obedience, loyalty, worship (we were made to glorify God)
By virtue of God being creator, we owe to him our obedience, loyalty, and worship. This is owed to him; this is not something from a moral stand point as optional. When God commands that we worship the LORD our God and worship him only, what he is commanding is that we do what is right and obligatory for us because he is God. He is God. He demands what he deserves: our obedience, our loyalty, our worship. This is not an optional thing. Just as for children it is not an optional thing for them to obey their parents or not. They may think it is. They may behave like it is, but it isn't. It is not an option. And even more so is this the case with creator and creature. We owe to God our absolute obedience. It is a travesty of moral justice for us to disobey. This is why Hell is what it is. Most people don't have a clue why Hell is what it is. They don't have a clue who God is and what his demands are upon us because of his rights as creator. So we really are made to glorify God. Our inherent designed purpose is to bring glory to God through our obedience to him, our love for him, our adoration for him, our loyalty to him. When we do that, we fulfill part of that which we were created for.
c. Humanity, as created by God, was entirely good (body and soul)
You may have noticed that I separated the doctrines of humanity and sin. I do that intentionally, not that you and I are not sinful humans. Those two things do go together; we are sinful humans, but we dare not think that humanity is sinful. But we do think that way. I can remember times when I hear someone who has been involved in some immoral relationship, and the comment will be made, "Well they are just human." Or somebody is involved in some other kind of scandal, and they yield to the temptation that was in front of them and we say, "Well, they were just human." What are you saying by that? Wasn't Christ human? He was tempted in every way yet was without sin. Who was more human in the way he lived his life, him or us? The answer is him, Christ. He lived a more authentically human life than we do. So here is the difference: two cars are in the parking lot, both BMWs, same year, same vintage, same horsepower. This one is bright and shiny and tuned up and absolutely runs great. The other one right next to it is dented and rusted, three spark plugs are out, and the thing hasn't been maintained at all. Which one is the more authentic BMW? It is pretty clear isn't it? Christ is the first one, and we are the second one; we are the marred expression of humanity. Humanity as created by God is good. We will be human one day in our glorified state, and we will never sin. We will be more fully human than we are now. It is just like if you took that beat up BMW and put a lot of money into it and fixed it and got it back to what it is suppose be. It is a whole more BMW than it was before. That is what God is doing. This reclamation project is to take a marred, dented demolished humanity and make it what it ought to be.
The other point I want to make on this is the aspect of body and soul, of human sexuality. God thought it up. He invented it. Everything that goes into human sexuality, he made it. He drew the blueprints for it. He made the genetics for it. It is an incredible thing. I have often times wondered why God made human sexuality to be just what it is. I will tell you my hunch. Why did he make human sexual expression to be this sort of experience of ecstasy which it can be? What happens with sexual expression between a man and a woman? What is connected to that? Reproduction. Here you have God who creates human beings in his image. Have you ever noticed this, in Genesis 5 when Seth is born, it says,
Gen 5:3 When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
How is Seth in the image of God? By being in the image of Adam who is the image of God. So what does God do? Instead of creating a billion people at one time the way he did with angels who don't reproduce, he makes a couple, one pair. He says that he is going to give them a piece in his role in creation. You become creators; procreation procreates. You become creators, and just to show you what a great thing it is to create in the image of God, I am going to make this experience like nothing else in life. That is what it is about. It is meant to express the joy, the pleasure, the exuberance God has in creating us as his image. The body is good. Sex is good.
There is a proportionality principle that you can see on just about everything in life. The greater the potential for good, think of technology or nuclear capabilities, the greater the potential for evil goes with it. If all you've got is a BB gun, you have that much potential for good that can be done and that much potential for evil. Up the scale you go in terms of technology. Sexuality is one of the most powerful aspects of life that God has given to human beings; there is no doubt about it. There is great potential for good in marriage with a husband and wife who love each other for life. Jodi and have been married for 24 years, and we have loved our life together as a married couple. By God's grace I have never had sex with another woman other than my wife Jodi. She has never had sex with another man other than me, her husband. We don't know what it would be like with another person. I don't want to know what it would be like with another person. I love being with my wife. It is wonderful. When it is done right, it is absolutely glorious. When it is done wrong it is devastating. Look around at the devastation and how Satan works to make the devastation look nonetheless attractive. Talk to your typical prostitute and find out what her life is really like. Don't judge this kind of thing by pictures in the magazines; ask her, find out. It is devastating. Humanity as created by God was good. Sex is good. It is not a bad thing; it is a wonderful gift. It is powerful gift. It is a gift by which creation of image-bearers of God happens, but also enormous evil.
Augustine bequeathed a lot of good to the church, but not everything that he left to the church in his wake was good. One of the clearest examples was his view of sexuality. Augustine came to Christ out of a very licentious immoral lifestyle, and his mother Monica prayed for him. He finally came to Christ and was saved out of this but because of the way of life he lived before he was a Christian he was convinced that sexuality was evil, that it was inherently evil. Therefore, the only justification for a sexual relationship was procreation. Hence the Roman Catholic view against any kind of birth control and the Roman Catholic view that unless you are able to procreate then sexuality is wrong, unjustified. Furthermore it you can avoid sexuality altogether, even better. So celibacy is this highest ideal before God. The problem with this is 99 % of us were not made by God to have the gift. I believe God gives the gift to some. He says this in 1 Corinthians 7. He gives to some the gift of celibacy, and praise God for single people.
A dear woman friend of mine who I love in the Lord and respect so very very highly is Nancy Demoss. She took Elizabeth Elliot's place on the radio and writes wonderful books. She wrote a wonderful book called ''Lies Women Believe''. It is one of the best books for women that I know of anywhere out there. Nancy Demoss is a single woman about my age, 48-49 years old, and is very content in her singleness. She knows that God has given this gift to her so she can devote more time to ministry in ways that he has called her do. Some are given this gift, but most are not. So when you create the ideal of celibacy for a group of people who are not celibate, that is, people who don't have the gift of it, what are you doing? It is pretty obvious isn't it? This idea has just caused enormous harm because it denies the truth.
d. Humanity invested with moral freedom and responsibility
God gives a moral command to the man in the garden; this is an amazing thing. We are morally responsible. When they sin God comes to them and demands an accounting, as he will for every one of us. We will all stand before the bar of justice one day, every one of us. So we have this enormous weight that none of the rest of the created order in this world carries. Of course angels are moral beings as well, but dogs and fishes and cats and octopuses don't have this burden of moral responsibility that is huge, and there is no doubt it is part of what it means to in the image of God, to love, to worship, to obey, to keep a promise. To keep a promise is godlike to do that. Your dog can never do that, can never keep a promise. When you do that you are godlike.
e. Equality yet differentiation in the creation of man and woman
Man and woman are equal in essence; both are made in the image of God; both are human; both before God are equal in importance, value, rights, dignity. But man is man not woman, woman is woman not man. The differences are to be respected just as the equality is to be respected. Currently we live in a culture that has set aside the differences and respects only the equality of men and women. What Scripture calls us to do is respect the equality and respect the difference. If we don't respect the differences among us we don't function right because the differences have so much to do with how we function as men and women. Are there differences in creation? Yes.
Here are seven reason for thinking that God intended us to see in the created order male headship, that Adam was head over Eve, that there was an authority structure, that Eve was to submit to Adam. This was true in the garden before there was sin.
'''1) Adam was created first'''
If God wanted to make the point that they needed each other, couldn't he have created her first? Yes he could have but he didn't so the question comes is there a reason that he created Adam first? Or did he just flip a coin? Was it totally arbitrary? We know the answer to that because Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 2:13 and 1 Corinthians 11:8.
1 Tim 2:13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
1 Cor 11:8 For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man;
God creating man first and then the woman indicates male authority. If we have the Apostle Paul telling us that is the point of it, we ought to accept that.
'''2) Woman was made for the man's sake.'''
Gen 2:18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9.
1 Cor 11:8 For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; 1 Cor 11:9 for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake.
So we have again in a clear statement from Paul that this meant to mean something to us; she was made to assist him. God had already given him his calling in that garden. He was to tend the garden, name the animals, exercise rulership and stewardship, and God gives the woman to him as a helpmate, helper to him in accomplishing that.
'''3) The man named the woman both before and after sin.'''
I find both of these significant because it indicates that sin does not make any difference with male headship. Before sin God brought the woman to the man and he called her ''ishshah'' for she was taken from ''ish''. And then after sin Genesis 3:20 he named her Eve, mother of all the living. To name is to indicate authority over.
'''4) Eve was taken from or out of Adam'''
She was made from his side or from his rib. Paul indicates in 1 Corinthians 11:9 that there is something significant about that. He is called the image and glory of God, and she is called the glory of the man. It doesn't mean that she is the not image of God, but how is she the image of God? Because she is taken from the man, she is bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. Her being made in the image of God is derivative from the man and dependent upon the man. Again an indicator that he is perceived as having headship in the relationship.
'''5) Adam is given primary responsibility in the garden.'''
If God were egalitarian in his mindset, it would make a lot more sense to create the man then the woman and then tell both of them, here is my common job description for you both. God didn't do that. He created the man, and he gives him the job description. He gives him the moral command in regards to the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. And he tells her what these things are. So clearly he sees the man as ultimately bearing that responsibility before him.
'''6) In Chapter three the tempter comes to the woman.'''
I think that indicates his understanding of male headship and turning it on its head. Satan acknowledges male headship by the very fact that he goes to the woman instead of the man. In other words he subverts what God had designed. Who sinned first? The woman takes the fruit, eats of it and then she gives to husband who is with her and he eats. So she sinned first, but who does God come to first? Adam where are? Give an account. So God holds Adam accountable, and this is confirmed in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 where it is the sin of Adam, not Eve, that is passed on to the whole human race. It is his sin that is the fountainhead for all human sin and not hers, even though she sinned first. Adam tried to make that point; the woman you gave me. she gave me fruit of the tree. It didn't work. God held him accountable for this.
These are reasons for thinking that God intended from the very beginning for there to be male headship. Equality in essence. Men who treat their wife or treat women generally as inferior invite the judgment of God.
1 Pet 3:7a You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman;
He has just told wives in the previous six verses to submit to their husbands even if they are not believers, and to have a gentle and quiet spirit so that it may lead them to Christ. So he just made the point that she is to submit to him.
Yes, there is this difference. Yes, there is male headship. That is not denied, but here is the rest of the verse.
1 Pet 3:7b and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.
Do you understand what that means? Honor her as one who is absolutely equal with you in everything you share in Christ. She, with you, is a co-heir of everything. Don't you dare treat her as less than an equal in Christ or your prayers will not be heard. We husbands ought to fear when we read that. How important is it to be a praying husband and father? You do not want to be in a position where God will not hear your prayers. So honor your wife as a co-heir.
So there is both equality and difference in creation.
Class questions (the questions are inaudible)
I think we are less fully expressive of what human beings are to be. God gave us minds and hearts and wills and bodies to be used in a particular way. Everyone of those aspects, mind, heart, will, body, has been used for purposes that are both dishonoring to God and destructive of our well being that are in conflict with our created design. In that sense we are less human, less fully expressive of what it is to be human than Christ was. Christ lived an authentically human life. He obeyed the Father every moment of every day. That is the authentic human existence. We have it all wrong when we think that authentic human existence is freedom to do anything we want to do, go anywhere we want to go, feel anything we want to feel, experience anything we want to experience. This is in exact conflict with the way Jesus lived his life and he was fully human. Jesus said, I do not do anything that the Father doesn't tell me to do; I don't speak anything the Father has not told me to speak. In John 8 he tells his disciples, if you are disciples of mine you will follow me, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Live like me, and you will be free. Freedom is not doing anything I feel like doing, it is doing exactly what God wants me to do. That is freedom. So human existence as God designed it is marred horribly by sin that pulls in autonomy from God, independence from God.
Why does God use masculine language?
There are some feminine metaphors on occasion in Scripture but no descriptive terms that are used of God are feminine; all are masculine: King, or Lord or Father but not mother or queen or something else like that. I think the main reason is that God has created human beings male and female in such a way that he invested authority in male headship. So he depicts himself in the role of male, not that he is male; he is not, but because he is the chief authority over us. So he is Father to all of us. He is King to all of us. He is Lord over all of us in that sense. A similar thing can be said of Christ and the church. He is the bridegroom; we are the bride. Then the question becomes how come these men are the bride? That is a hard thing to swallow, for men to think that way, that we are in the role of submission to the Groom. So God is not male but he deliberately casts himself in the place of the male, using masculine terms to depict that. This is why I think that there is a contradiction in the egalitarian movement. It is one of those points of tension that won't last forever. Conservative egalitarians are conservative on the evangelical spectrum because they believe in inerrancy and so on, but they are egalitarian because they believe there is no distinction between male and female. They are in favor of women's ordination and believe in mutual submission in the home for husband and wife; there is no significance to the male in the relationship of the husband and wife; male and female are completely equal. But they also hold that God ought to be called Father, that the language of the Bible ought to be retained, that it is dominantly masculine and exclusively masculine in terms of denotation. Never is God referred to as a woman in any way shape or form, but he often times is referred to as a man, Father King or something. How do you maintain this? How do you account for the masculine language if at the human level there is no significance to male authority? What is the point of this? The answer to that question, according to egalitarians is we don't know, there really is no answer. I have written an article about this you can read in the JBMW (The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood). It is also in this book that just came out by Eric Johnson. I wrote a chapter in there on the Trinity, and you can see it in that book as well.
I think what is going to happen in egalitarianism is that they are going to draw the conclusion that because there is no significance for male authority, we also ought not continue calling God Father; we ought not to use masculine terms because that perpetuates the notion that there is something about male that has headship or authority. In other words these two things don't square with one another. This one that affirms God in masculine terms undermines our egalitarian view of men and women over here. I fully anticipate the movement going in the direction of moving toward embracing the notion of gender inclusive language ''vis a vis'' God which they haven't done yet for the most part, but I anticipate that will probably come to that. One of the reasons that we are concerned about the TNIV, with the gender language, is just what they have done, period. But another reason is that the next step is going to be God language. God is going to become parent instead of Father and Jesus won't be the Son of God but the child of the parent. There are already translations out there that do this but they are not used by evangelicals. But that is around the corner; you know that this is where this is heading.
B. Note on the Historicity of Adam and Eve
1. Biblical support for Adam and Eve as the first human pair
You are probably aware of the fact that this has been disputed by many critical scholars. Ever since Darwin's evolutionary theory took hold in the late 19th century this has been a question; whether or not you can hold that Adam and Eve are a literal pair of human beings. In fact, some people who claim to be evangelical are waffling on this these days. It just astonishes me that this would be the case. Evangelical scholarship is not what it was ten years ago in terms of the centrist positions that were held by most. There are all kinds of people out there who claim to be evangelical who are proposing all kinds of views that are unacceptable altogether. One of them is here. Should we as Christian people hold that Adam and Eve are the first human pair. Yes. For example, when you read in Scripture that Adam lived a certain number of years and had children, is he treated any differently than other of the individuals in the book of Genesis? You have to ask yourselves that question. Does the author want us to think of Adam as a special case, a mythical figure? Think of chapter five of Genesis.
Gen 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Gen 5:2 He created them male and female, and he blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. Gen 5:3 When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Gen 5:4 Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. Gen 5:5 So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
If you ask the question, "What is the author's intended meaning of that?" wouldn't you have to say he intends us to understand Adam just the same way we would any of the other figures in the book of Genesis whom he portrays as real historical people who had children, who lived a certain number of years, and did certain things and died at a certain age. So there is absolutely no basis in Genesis for thinking Adam is a special case. He is a human being like all others.
In 1 Chronicles 1, the very first word of the book of 1 Chronicles (the first 10 chapters are genealogies) is Adam. It starts the chronology. The human race starts with Adam. Does the Chronicler view Adam as the first human being? Yes.
Does the New Testament view Adam as historical? Yes. Luke 3:38 records Adam at the end of Luke's genealogy of Jesus.
Luke 3:38 the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Each one of them has a father who is a son of so and so all the way through to Adam who is the son of God. Here we come to the end of the line of the human race, and it's Adam created by God.
Romans 5:12 and following speaks of this one man who brought sin to the entire human race and of course he is talking about Adam, there is no question that is what he is referring to.In 1 Corinthians 15:22,45 Adam is named.
1 Cor 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
1 Cor 15:45 So also it is written, "The first , Adam, became a living soul." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
In Romans 5:12 and following it is clear he is talking about Adam through this one sin, one transgression that happened sin came to whole human race.
If Adam is not a historical person, how do you account for the origin of sin in the human race? Paul clearly indicates this is an actually literal transgression. It is as actual and literal as the action is literal of the redemption in Christ as spoken of in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. As in Adam all died, in Christ all are made alive. They are both historical genuine individuals.
First Timothy 2:13,14 speak of Adam and Eve as real people.
1 Tim 2:13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 1 Tim 2:14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
Likewise 1 Corinthians 11:8,9 speak of the man and woman in the garden. Paul goes back to the garden to talk of the role of men and women relationship and talks about the two of them.
1 Cor 11:8 For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; 1 Cor 11:9 for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake.
So is it clear that Adam and Eve are human beings created by God? Yes.
2. A comment on Genesis 1-3 and the theory of microevolution
Micro evolution is not a problem for anybody, any Christian, anyone. In this room we have some people of different races in one room yet we believe that Adam and Eve were not simultaneously Caucasian, African American, or Asian. Whatever
they were, they were one thing. From this one pair has come this variety of human beings that we call races. That is microevolution; it is small genetic changes that are within a species, within a species boundaries. What the Bible denies is macroevolution, that is changes that produce new species. Changes can be multiplied so you end up with a species that didn't exist before. Now this one has lungs, where there weren't lungs before. Now you have wings, or now you have eyes, and all of these things come about. There are many reasons for thinking that macroevolution as a theory is dead in the water. Read works by Phillip Johnson, Bill Dembski, Michael Behe; this whole movement of Intelligent Design has produced a lot of material in the last ten years that is devastating to Darwinian Macroevolution.
Biblically, God created individual species, as he says for example in Genesis 1:20
Gen 1:20 Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens." Gen 1:21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
This indicates that he creates the species and it propagates after its kind. Back in 1865 when Darwin's Origin of the Species was published there was a huge excitement about going out there, digging up the fossil record and finding what they anticipated, namely evidence of small changes that had the cumulative effect of bringing about new species. They expected to find that in the fossil record. One hundred thirty five years later the fossil record has shown instead two very stubborn facts. Number one is sudden appearance; species all of a sudden appear without any previous history. In other words, there is no previous fossil record showing incremental changes that lead up to this. It is just bang; it is fully formed and complex with no evidence of where it came from. The second thing is stasis, stability. Yes, there are small changes within species, but they stay pretty much the same as long as they are here, and then they die out in some cases, or in other cases they continue. Sudden appearance and stasis fits Genesis one beautifully. God created it, and it reproduces after its kind.
So the fact of the matter is that for biblical reasons we have every reason to believe that Adam and Eve were the literal first human pair. Scientifically, we have absolutely no reason to bow our heads in some kind of embarrassment. There is every reason to believe that what the Bible teaches us is in fact what we find in life and the record of life on this planet. It is really wonderful. What a difference it is now than what it was in the beginning of the 20th century. What a difference a hundred years can make on this issue because of how much more knowledge we have acquired in that time. It is clear that the scientific record is strongly supportive of what Christians have claimed; life is by God's design; it comes fully formed, and it reproduces after its kind.
Blessings on you.