Fallacy # 3: Imago Dei
Ortlund attempts to explain why Genesis 1 speaks of equality if the man was created to have authority over the woman. He gives the word "adam" the meaning "male human," but by doing so, he makes Genesis 1:26-28 utterly nonsensical.
Find it in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Ortlund: p 98
Ortlund, who resorted to a paradox to explain the contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2, must explain the absence of an explicit reference to the man’s headship in Genesis 1-3.[1]
Moses
does not explicitly teach male headship in chapter 1; but for that matter,
neither does he explicitly teach male-female equality. We see neither the words
“male-female equality” nor “male headship” here or anywhere in Genesis 1-3.
What Moses does provide is a series of more or less obvious hints as to his
doctrine of manhood and womanhood. The burden of Genesis 1:26-28 is male-female
equality. That seems obvious – wonderfully obvious![2]
But
God’s naming of the race “man” whispers male headship, which Moses will bring
forward boldly in chapter two. God did not name the human race “woman.” If
“woman” had been the more appropriate and illuminating designation, no doubt
God would have used it. He does not even devise a neutral term like “persons.”
He called us “man,” which anticipates the male headship brought out clearly in
chapter two, just as “male and female” in verse 27 foreshadows marriage in
chapter two.[3]
“On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all
those born in his household or bought with his money, every male [zakaar] in his household [‘yish], and circumcised them, as God told him.“ (NIV)
The
term ‘adam, afterward consistently
with a definite article, which is used both here [Genesis 1:27] and in the
second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human beings,
not a proper noun. It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially
not without the prefix ben, “son of,”
and so the traditional rendering “man” is misleading, an exclusively male ‘adam would make nonsense of the last
clause of verse 27.[4]
What Alter means by
“nonsense” becomes clear when the words in verse 27 are changed into colors:
“God created blue … blue and red created he them.” Blue cannot contain red and
remain a distinct color. Similarly, a man cannot be both male and female and
remain distinctly male. But humanity can
include both male and female and remain a distinct entity of its own, just as the
color purple includes both read and blue. Hence the correct English translation
is, “God created humanity…male and female created he them.”[5]
In the following comparison of 21 languages and 42 translations, ‘adam is translated either “man” or “human.”
Man
– man and woman (3 translations, 2 languages)
French (La Bible du Semeur, Louis
Segond), Portuguese (O Livro)
Man
– male and female (17 translation, 4 languages)
Spanish (Reina-Valera 1960, 1995,
1569, Dios Habla Hoy), Italian
(La Nuova Diodati, Conferenza Episcopale Italiana), Hungarian, English
(NJKV, ASV, Amplified, Darby, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition; English
Standard Version, Holman Christian Standar, KJV; NASB, NIV, New Life Version,
Young’s Literal Translation)
Human
– man and woman (14 translations, 13 languages)
German (Luther Bible 1545, Elberfelder), Spanish (Nueva Versión
Internacional), Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Haitian
Creole Version, Maori, Dutch, Swedish, English (ESV),
Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic
Human
– male and female (8 translations, 5 languages)
Arabic, Albanian, Polish, Russian Synodal version (/man and woman), English
(New Century Version, New Living Translation, The message,
Today’s NIV)
Then the man and
his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in
the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the
garden. But the LORD God called to the
man, "Where are you?" (Gen. 3:8-9, NIV)
The LORD God made garments of skin for the man and his wife and clothed them.
And the LORD God said, "The man
has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to
reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live
forever." So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the
ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden
cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the
tree of life. (Gen. 3:21-24, NIV)
[1] Grudem writes, “It is surprising that evangelical
feminists can find this requirement [mutual submission] in the New Testament
when it is nowhere explicitly stated” (Piper and Grudem, 199). Grudem rejects
Ephesians 5:21 due to faulty exegetics, but his words are an apt description of
Ortlund’s claim that we can find male headship in Genesis 1-3, although it is
never explicitly stated.
[2] Piper and Grduem, 98.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Alter, 19.
[5] Hurley disagrees with Ortlund, “Man in 1:26 and 27 is a collective noun (adam = ”mankind”). The
plural membership of the collectivity is indicated by the phrase “male and
female” in verse 27, and then both male and female are given the task appropriate
to those created in the image of God (verse 28)” (Piper and Grudem, 227). Also Gregory of Nyssa (A.D. 380) wrote, “What is it
then which we understand concerning these matters? In saying that “God created
man” the text indicates, by the indefinite
character of the term, all mankind;
for was not Adam here named together with the creation, as the history tells us
in what follows? Yet the name given to the man created is not the particular,
but the general name: thus we are led by the employment of the general name of
our nature to some such view as this—that in the Divine foreknowledge and power
all humanity is included in the first creation. (Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, XVI, 16).
[6] Everything in the new creation was given a name which
revealed the characteristic of the object: God called the day yowm (“hot, the warm hours”) and night layil (from luwl, “to fold back”). The earth he called ‘erets (“to be firm”); the sea, yam
(“to roar”); herb, ‘eseb (“to glisten
or to be green”); fruit, periy (“to
be fruitful, grow”); morning, boqer
(from baqar, “to break forth”),
evening, ‘ereb (from ‘arab, “to darken”), creature, nephesh (from naphash, “to breath”); the bird ‘owph
(from ‘uwph, “to fly”); animal, behemah (“to be mute”).
[7] Piper and Grudem, 108.
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