1 + 1 = 1
While lying in bed sick today I wandered onto CBMW’s blog. Todays post touches on one aspect of gender uniqueness that I’ve been thinking about.
With regard to the image of God, Koessler writes,
“It is often said that men and women bear the image of God equally. But it might be more accurate to say that men and women bear God’s image together. Men and women collectively reflect the divine image; one with out the other is incomplete.”
We believe it is inaccurate to describe the image of God in this ‘partitive’ fashion. The Bible does not say that God created humanity in his image. Rather it says he created males and females in his image: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). In other words, each person bears the image of God fully. The image of God lacks nothing in a woman; just as it lacks nothing in a man.
As Wayne Grudem points out (on page 453 of Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth) if men and women each bore the image of God incompletely, then Jesus Christ as a man, would only bear a part of the image of God. But the Scriptures declare he bears the image of God, not in part, but fully (John 14:9, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Colossians 1:15, Colossians 1:19).
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:58 am
Interesting but I wonder if it misses that woman was created at all because it was not good for the man to be alone. Why was fellowship with God alone considered by God to be insufficient that He made Eve for Adam? Even if man and woman individually are fully image bearers of God (which they are) is there possibly a mystery that they reflect God’s image more fully together than apart just as the Father is wholly God but the Father, Son, and Spirit are all one? God is not modalistic so perhaps it is possible that while God the Father and God the Son are equally and truly God that we do not properly understand God’s triune nature without acknowledging Father, Son, and Spirit … and that in the same way while man and woman both bear the image of God they were made to bear God’s image together. Paul did write that though woman was taken from the man all men are born of women.
In this case appealing to Christ seems like it might not really work because of hypostatic union. The second Adam didn’t need a wife, which suggests that Jesus was fully man in a way that anticipates the age to come when, as He said, no one will be given in marriage but Christ will be the bridegroom to His people, the bride.