Ortlund begins with what appears to be a fairly straightforward interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. Both men and women are created in the image of God, and both are given authority by God, to rule over creation. But this is such a strong statement of male/female equality, that Ortlund feels the need to qualify it.
Most evangelical feminists would heartily agree with this interpretation of the text. Genesis 2 and 3 are more controversial. But I must challenge two points of feminist interpretation before moving on to chapter two.
Ortlund begins a proper defense of the complementarian view, by challenging two claims made by egalitarian authors.
1. Bilezikian’s claim that, the word “man” in Genesis 1:26 should be understood as “humanity”
2. Spencer’s claim that, both men and women together are needed to reflect the image of God.
I will look at each of these in turn.
#1: Man = Humanity
In his book “Beyond Sex Roles,” Gilbert Bilezeikian comments on Gen 1:26 noting the word “man”, is a simply a generic term for human beings, both male and female. This conclusion does not immediately seem very different from Ortlund’s own conclusion in the first couple of paragraphs. For some reason however, Ortlund takes exception to this seemingly innocuous statement, calling it “a striking fact,” that “demands explanation”. What is he so worked up about? He goes on to explain
if any of us modern people were to create a world, placing at its apex our highest creature in the dual modality of man and woman, would we use the name of only one sex as a generic term for both? I expect not. Our modern prejudices would detect a whiff of “discrimination” a mile away. But God cuts right across the grain of our peculiar sensitivities when He names the human race, both man and woman, “man.”
It is at this point that we realize that Ortlund has not been referring to humanity as “man” out of mere convention. For him the word carries theological significance that qualifies the message of chapter 1. Ortlund believes that God made a purposeful choice of a masculine term (man), in order to reveal something about humanity. He goes on
Why would God do such a thing? Why would Moses carefully record the fact? Surely God was wise and purposeful in this decision, as He is in every other. Surely His referring to the race as “man” tells us something about ourselves. What aspect of reality, then, might God have been pointing to by this means?
The problem with Ortlund’s view is that it assumes that the word adam is the name of just one of the sexes.
There is a term that more specifically refers to man in the sense of “male” or “husband”, the Hebrew term ish, which can be contrasted with the feminine ishah. Ish is a word that has binary gender connotations, The word adam is not. The feminine version of adam, is adamah, and that refers to the soil from which the humanity was formed – it only has gender in the grammatical sense.
Hebrew, like most languages, but unlike English, is a language with grammatical gender. One of the things this means, is that every noun is assigned a gender. So even if the word adam is grammatically masculine it should not be considered a nod to male headship. There simply are no non-masculine words in Hebrew, to refer to humanity. Adam is in fact the closest thing Hebrew has to a gender neutral term. Whenever it is not used as a proper name, it refers to the human race, much like the English word mankind.
The Septuagint was the version of the Bible used by Greek speaking believers in the first century. When an OT passage is quoted in the NT, it is almost always from this translation. If we look to the Septuagint however, we see that the people who translated the Old Testament into Greek, when confronted with a choice aner(man), or the more generic anthropos(man as in humanity) the authors chose anthropos. The Septuagint was the Bible used by Greek speaking believers in the 1st century. They accepted this translation as inspired. Co-author Borland, acknowledges this as a gender neutral term, and uses it in his chapter to indicate that when the apostles sought a replacement for Judas, they were looking for a man (aner), not just a person of either gender (anthropos).
From the available evidence we must conclude that God did not intend to communicate male headship in Gen Ch. 1. If God had wisely and purposefully chose to communicate anything through his choice of the word to designate humanity, it was their equality.
#2: Man + Woman = Image of God
Ortlund’s second objection comes from Beyond the Curse, a book by Aida Bensançon Spencer. In it she makes the following statement:
There is no possibility, according to [Genesis 1:26-27], that Adam, the male, could by himself reflect the nature of God. Neither is it possible for Adam, the female, by herself to reflect God’s nature. Male and female are needed to reflect God’s nature.13
I am a bit confused by the vehemence with which Ortlund tries to disprove this position. No doubt he is reacting to Spencer’s claim that each gender’s partial representation makes it necessary for leadership to have both male and female representation. But in his eagerness to throw down this argument, he inadvertently takes an egalitarian position stating that men and women each represent the divine image fully. Such a conclusion is important for the egalitarian position, because to suggest that the divine image is only partially represented in each gender, opens the door to the possibility of seeing leadership as an essentially male responsibility.
