Reading Genesis Together Part 1
An introduction to a walkthrough of some important passage in the gender debates.
Having spent many years in a conservative-complementarian (HC) environment, I took at face value the belief that the order of creation was meant to guide our relationships, especially within marriage. God creating Adam first and Eve second was significant in how God desired relationships to be structured.
The argument was that God taught us in the garden how marriage is to be structured. Passages such as Ephesians 5:22-33,1 1 Corinthians 11:3, 8,2 and 1 Timothy 2:133 help us understand and interpret Genesis 2-3, revealing the order in the story of creation. It all sounds good.4 Scripture interpreting scripture. Clear texts helping us understand cloudy texts…supposedly.
The gist of it all was that men and women were created equally, yet they had different and distinct roles regarding leadership and authority. Or, as I have used in previous posts, the concept of headship.5 Which is, in essence, just a churchy term for these same concepts. And this understanding and doctrine were clear in the Genesis account.
And yet, as I continued studying, I began to see the cracks in the arguments. What was claimed to be clear seemed less so when you just read the Genesis chapters. It seemed more like interpretive layers that were added to the verses. Not only the Genesis passage, but also the primary passages are often used to interpret it. In reality, they are far less explicit than we like to think. Like the classic optical illusion of the young or old woman, you can read the same chapter and come to two different conclusions.
Two reformers, Calvin and Luther, arrived at differing interpretations of Genesis 2 and the existence of hierarchy before the Fall. Now, don’t get me wrong, as I quoted in a previous post, both believed women were inferior to men and believed in their subservient role. But they disagreed on whether this was true before or after the fall.6 I think this was because the text itself is not as explicit as we like to think it is. Whether it be a desire for certainty or some other reason, we do not like not knowing the why behind a story.7
So here is how I want to approach these creation chapters. In the coming weeks, I want to walk through these passages by quoting them and sharing how it has been interpreted. I will attempt to identify the arguments by name, such as the primogeniture argument, as mentioned in footnote 4.
What I hope for you to see is that the claim many HCs/complementarians will make about believing the “plain-reading” of Scripture is not as accurate as it sounds. And, in some instances, it seems more like proof-texting than understanding the passage as a whole.8
Or, to ask it another way, does the HC reading add to the story more than we see in the text itself? Could the point of Genesis 2 be far less complicated, far less focused on primary leadership and responsibility? Could the point of Genesis 2 be about what Moses wrote at the end, in verse 24?
Therefore9 a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
If I'm not careful, I'll get ahead of myself. Currently, I have a challenge for you. Read that chapter again with verse 24 in mind. Do you notice the instances where it appears to be more about companionship than leadership? Do you see how the parade of animals could be less about the supposed authority behind the naming action, and more about God showing Adam needs a comparable, in-kind partner? Then ask, where does it explicitly say anything about leadership or headship responsibility? I would argue it has to be read into the text. However, we have done it so many times now that we take that interpretation for granted, treating it as the Word of God, rather than realizing it is just an interpretation.
That aside, today, I will begin with the end of Genesis 1 and the area where both positions seem to be in agreement—the equality and dignity of humanity, men and women.10
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Almost every HC/Complementarian and MC/Egalitarian today will agree that this passage outlines full equality between men and women. This is a relatively new argument for HC/complementarians, as illustrated in an earlier series commenting on complementarian Dr. Doriani’s piece regarding the shift in historical interpretation.
However, most HCs/complementarians would add a layer of nuance to the claim and the application of that equality. Someone who believes the statement, “Equal in being, different in function,” will acknowledge this equality, while adding the nuance that the distinction is one of leadership.11 The MC/Egalitarian does not add this nuance. Yes, they believe in distinctions and differences, but these are not linked to leadership; instead, other traits within the person are more relevant. Qualities and characteristic traits, although not universal to all men and women, are generally applicable on average.
The MC/Egalitarian will draw attention to the fact that the commands in verse 28 were given to BOTH Adam and Eve. Filling the earth and having dominion were commanded of both men and women. Having places of rule, as vice-regents, as stewards, was given to them both.
Now, a question may arise about the use of “man” in these chapters. It is understood and agreed by both positions that 'man' in these passages refers to the more generic term, 'mankind,' 'humankind,' or 'humanity. ' There is a common Hebrew word, ha’adam, that can be interpreted in a few different ways depending on context. Again, almost everyone agrees that this instance refers to humanity as a whole. It can also be specific to an individual human being or the proper name for Adam in other cases. We will examine instances that illustrate this and also highlight the challenges of determining the best use for the passage.
And so Chapter 1 ends with the declaration that his creation is very good. As chapter 2 begins,12 we come to the day of rest. God has completed his work. These verses provide a broad overview of God's work in creating all that we see around us from nothing.
But our story is not done. As I mentioned, depending on your interpretative framework, Chapter 2 will present two different pictures for us. And this is where the interpretative divide widens.
For now, I encourage you to read the chapters with the questions I posed earlier:
Do you notice the instances where it appears to be more about companionship than leadership? Do you see how the parade of animals could, in fact, be less about the supposed authority behind the naming action, and more about God showing Adam needs a comparable, in-kind partner? Then ask, where does it explicitly say anything about leadership or headship responsibility?
See you next week!
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man,[a] and the head of Christ is God.
8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man;
13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
There were aspects of the arguments used that I just outright didn’t buy. Primogeniture is a good example of one. Primogeniture means the legal or customary right by which the firstborn son inherits the family estate or title, to the exclusion of younger siblings. In the ancient Near East, primogeniture was a common practice, particularly among patriarchal societies, where the eldest son inherited leadership, land, and the majority of the family’s wealth. The problem was that God had a definite pattern of ignoring birth order. And, on top of that, Adam and Eve were not siblings.
I use the words "headship" and "leadership" interchangeably because I have come to find that many people use them in the same way. There are quite a few authors who shy away from the word “Headship” because it carries some connotations that they do not want their readers to have. This shift is similar to the one observed in the literature, which has moved away from the use of superior-inferior language to one that focuses on roles and functions. Or, as another example, away from authority to servant-leadership. Or finally, away from hierarchical or patriarchal to complementarian, a story I referenced in an earlier post.
Calvin believed that “gentle subjection” turned into “servitude” after the fall (Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis). This matches many current complementarian views. It is echoed in John Piper and others, like the Danvers Statement, points 3 and 4. This definitely warrants a fuller post, but the idea is that God-ordained “rule” was transformed into “harsh rule” after the fall. There are lots of interpretative problems with that, though. Luther, on the other hand, argued that women’s subordinate role or place was because of the fall based on the reading of Genesis 3:16 (Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1-5). John Chrysostom is another example of a church father who believed in the equality of all before the fall. This position was very rare.
I know some will argue that we do know the why, after all, Paul provides us with those reasons in the passages mentioned. But again, that is assuming our interpretation of those passages is also correct. Like an onion, this whole argument is one layer built upon another. This is not a wrong concept in and of itself, but as you begin to see each layer can be understood differently, the onion itself begins to change overall. This is why I have struggled with knowing how to unpack all of my study. It has definitely been challenging to condense everything and determine the best order to present it.
To elaborate on this in a footnote, I would argue that the Danvers Statement is an example of proof-texting. Note the passages used to support the points. Again, those verses can mean what is claimed, but it is not explicit in those verses themselves.
Therefore is almost always understood as providing the reason behind what was just shared. Another way of phrasing it would be, “This is why,” Or “Because of this.”
In this series, I have chosen the ESV as my translation for this post. This is not because I believe it to be the superior translation. Rather, it tends to be the one most commonly used by complementarians. Translation choice is a whole separate topic I would rather not delve into. Overall, ESV is a fine choice, as are several others. The differences do come down to interpretative choices of certain passages. And many a centered around this very debate.
I would argue, in line with others, that no matter how you slice it, claims of permanent leadership based on a trait outside the skills or competencies of an individual carry implications of inequality and inferiority. I draw attention to this in an earlier footnote from the series on the changing why behind the position.
Why does day 7 fall in chapter 2 and not chapter 1? Perhaps you are familiar with the notion that chapter and verse breaks were not part of the original texts. This is true and can be traced back in two ways. Many attribute the origin of the modern chapters and verses to Stephen Langton, a 13th-century Archbishop of Canterbury. There are also some older Hebrew texts that contain breaks, which can be traced back to the scribal traditions of the 6th century. I think it is not too strong to say that the original writings, the Old and New Testaments, did not have chapter and verse breaks as we know them today. This itself can be very helpful for referencing and finding passages. And yet it can also lead to the problem of proof-texting.