"Equality with and without Innocence: Genesis 1-3" (Ch 4) by Richard S. Hess

The fundamental biblical teaching on manhood and womanhood finds its fountainhead (like so many other key Christian doctrines) in the first three chapters of the Bible. Furthermore, the apostle Paul gives us the definitive, inspired, new covenant expositions and applications of this passage to the issue of male-female role relationships in the church in 1 Timothy 2-3, and in marriage and family in Ephesians 5. Naturally, then, Genesis 1-3 has been a key text in the ongoing debate between evangelical egalitarians and complementarians. In Discovering Biblical Equality, chapter four, "Equality with and without Innocence," Richard Hess, Old Testament Professor and husband of a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister, has the unenviable task of attempting to make a positive case for evangelical egalitarianism and to reply to the moving and pastoral exposition of this great passage by Ray Ortlund, Jr., found in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.¹

Hess begins well when he acknowledges that "Genesis 1-3 may contain more doctrinal teaching concerning humanity as male and female, as well as the state of the fallen world, than any other single text in the Bible" (79). But when he reaches his conclusion, there is precious little left to be learned from these chapters about biblical manhood and womanhood. He seems more interested in asserting what Genesis 1-3 does not say, than in making significant positive affirmations for our lives together as man and woman. This suggests that Genesis 1-3 is unfriendly ground for egalitarians, one on which they must simply try to hold their own, rather than make a positive case.

To be welcomed and applauded is Hess's affirmation that "Genesis 1-3 is a matter of God's revealed will for his people so that they might live in communion with him" (79). However, his attempt to discount the significance of Moses' use of 'adam as his term for mankind is problematic for a robust embrace of the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture.

Hess argues that since the "generic 'adam was part of the West Semitic lexicon before Genesis 1-3 was revealed and written in the form in which it occurs . . . it is somewhat inaccurate to suggest that there was a conscious divine decision to use a masculine term to describe the human race" (80). Nonetheless, since the Bible makes it clear that every word of Scripture is given by inspiration (2 Tim 3:16) and that no prophetic word was ever given, nor any prophecy "ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Pet 1:21), and since Paul tells the Thessalonians that he constantly thanked God "because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe" (1 Thess 2:13), and since Jesus himself made biblical arguments that rested on the tense of just one word of Scripture, the Christian is going to take care to consider the significance of every single word of Scripture, out of reverence for God's word and out of devotion to our Lord. Thus, we are never wise simply to assume that the special terminology of Scripture is simply reflective of cultural linguistic norms, and without any further theological significance.

Hess also wants to aver that the relationality of humanity as male and female, though reflective of the nature of God, is not itself part of the image of God. He says that the text "does not explicitly identify this as part of the image of God that all people possess" (81). But this kind of reductionist exegesis cannot comport with Paul's exposition in Ephesians 5. This whole section of Hess's piece, though interesting, is hardly persuasive, and certainly fails to sustain the case that the image of God in man is to be restricted merely to the concept of dominion. His observations are suggestive,² but his deductions are arbitrary³and simply asserted-not proven, or even adequately argued.

Indeed, the demonstration of argument throughout the article is surprisingly sparse and can be summarized in seven points. (1) Hebrew has only two genders and thus there are no theological implications of the Hebrew use of the masculine in reference to mankind in general in Genesis 1-3, and therefore also no implications for male-female distinctions or distinct role relationships (79-80). (2) The doctrine of the image of God in man has nothing to say about male-female role relationships, only about dominion (80-82). (3) Genesis 1:26-28 does not have anything to say about male-female role relationship distinctions. It only affirms the equality of male and female (82; though this latter fact is asserted without any argumentation). (4) The creation order of male first, then female, does not indicate headship (83-86; despite the apostle Paul's explicit insistence to the contrary-more on that later). (5) The term "helper" in Genesis 2 in reference to the woman does not indicate role distinctions or male headship (86-87). (6) Adam's naming of the animals does not indicate his dominion over them, and so his naming of Eve does not indicate headship (87). (7) Male headship is a result of the Fall, but is not the ideal for husband-wife relations (89-90, 94-95).

Several points deserve special mention in this series of contentions. First, Hess is to be applauded for not pitting Genesis 1 and 2 against one another, as was the manner of the critics of old and some feminist scholars of late. Hess is on record denying this contradiction, and this is a cause for appreciation for all those with a high view of Scripture (82).

Second, Hess's denial that the order of creation (male, then female) reveals anything about complementarity or headship does so only by ignoring any significance of Paul's exposition of Genesis 1-2 in 1 Timothy 2. Grant for a moment that Paul is only making an ad hoc argument there to the Ephesian church, speaking to a specific situation of abuse and without any implication for other cultural or ecclesial situations (a view to which I would strenuously object); even so, it is obvious that Paul is making this argument regarding the restriction of women from certain functions in the church (whatever its nature or extent) based on a deduction he makes from the order, the sequence of the creation of man and woman in Genesis 1-2. Paul may be (and has been) mocked for such an argument, but there is no use debating his meaning. It is crystal clear. Let me state the argument again in a minimalist way for the sake of illustration: According to Paul, certain women are to refrain and indeed to be restricted from certain activities in the Ephesian church because of the fact that God created Adam first, then Eve.⁴ We may not like Paul's view of the meaning and significance of the creation order of male then female in Genesis 1-2, or his application of it. We may not accept that view and application, but that it is indeed Paul's view and application of Genesis 1-2 is incontrovertible. And because Christians understand that the New Testament is in many ways God's divinely inspired hermeneutical manual for the Old Testament, when a New Testament passage tells you what an Old Testament passage means, for an orthodox Christian that interpretation becomes a matter of dogma.

Third-and in connection with Hess's same contention that the creation order has no significance for headship and complementarianism-instead of engaging the unfriendly turf of a substantive wrestling with the implications of 1 Timothy 2, which he dismisses with the wave of a hand in one-half of a one-sentence paragraph, Hess spends two fruitless pages on primogeniture. It is a classic strategy of diversion. But even though he puts his eggs in that basket in attempting to defect the force of the significance of male-female creation order as a telling argument against his own position, the very biblical stories he cites to defend his analysis of the question of primogeniture support the complementarian application of the arguments of Tom Schreiner, which Hess is trying to refute. For example, Hess says that there is no evidence of primogeniture in the patriarchal stories, since second and third sons sometimes end up with the blessings. But this completely misses the patently obvious point of the biblical narrative. In the stories of Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, and Ephraim and Manasseh, the whole plot turns on a reversal of the expected, natural order of blessing because of God's gracious, sovereign, overruling choice. You are meant to expect one brother to be blessed because of primogeniture, and to be surprised and educated by his non-receipt of it, and his young sibling's corresponding reception of it. So, without some sort of primogeniture assumed, those passages, so charged with irony, twists, and turns are fattened out and one of their main points is utterly lost.

Fourth, Hess's insistence that "the text nowhere states that the man exercised authority over the animals by naming them" (87) is notably obtuse. How explicit does Moses have to be before this point is conceded? In Gen 1:26, God explicitly gives man rule or dominion or stewardship authority over all animals. Scant verses later, in the parallel account in Gen 2:19-20, we come across Adam's naming of the animals. God makes them, then Adam names them-action of the Lord followed by the privilege-action of his steward and vice-regent. The significance of names and naming in ancient near-eastern cultures is well-known.⁵ Indeed, even in our culture today, feminists, who wish to throw of the "oppression" of patriarchy in marriage, sometimes either do not take their husband's name, or simply add his to their own. The point is obvious-a woman who does this does not want to intimate some kind of "subordination" to her husband through the loss of her name and the corresponding replacement of it with her husband's. This is an indication of the ongoing way even our modern secular Anglo-American culture⁶ perceives the significance of names for male-female role relationships in marriage, and is illustrative of the same principle beautifully and positively seen in Adam's naming of Eve (Gen 2:21-23). Note there again the identical pattern of the Lord making and Adam naming. Of course, it is this latter inference that Hess is attempting to avoid by his denial of Adam's authoritative stewardship being manifested in naming the animals. Naming is an act of leadership-a point so obvious as to require no argumentation whatsoever.

It will undoubtedly be disappointing to pre-committed egalitarian readers of Discovering Biblical Equality to discover an exposition of a text like Genesis 1-3 that is unable to generate any positive, constructive, exegetical or theological argumentation for the egalitarian position-especially considering the author's own admission that this is perhaps the most fertile text in the Bible regarding mankind as male and female.⁷ Furthermore, the article's counter arguments to the classical, historic, Christian exposition of this text's teaching on manhood and womanhood amount to a series of undemonstrated assertions, accompanied by interesting but tangential observations with no direct, obvious (and certainly not conclusive) bearing on the debate. All the main complementarian points, adeptly set forth by Ray Ortlund in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and by many other complemetarians elsewhere, remain untouched by this rejoinder. The fault does not lie with Hess's abilities, but with the inherent weakness of the position he is espousing.