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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Bruce Ware's discussion of Gen. 1: 26, 27

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Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God

Bruce A. Ware

Introduction

• And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day. (Genesis 1:24-31 - NIV)

Everyone agrees on one thing: whatever the "image of God" means, it's something very significant. Clearly, in Genesis chapter one, the progression of creation builds throughout the six days, culminating in the final creative act, in the second part of the sixth day, to create man as male and female in the image of God.

Some key internal indicators signal the special significance of man's creation:

1) As just noted, man is the pinnacle of God's creative work, only after which God then says of all he has made that it is "very good" (1:31).

2) The creation of man is introduced differently than all others, with the personal and deliberative expression, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness."

3) The one God who creates man as male and female deliberately uses plural references of himself (e.g., "Let Us," "Our image," "Our likeness") as the creator of singular "man" who is plural "male and female."

4) The "image of God" is stated three times in 1:26-27 in relation to man as male and female but never in relation to any other part of creation.

5) The special term for God's unique creative action, bara, is used three times in 1:27 for the creation of man in his image as male and female.

6) Man is given a place of rulership over all other created beings on the earth, thus indicating the higher authority and priority of man in God's created design.

7) Only the creation of man as male and female is expanded and portrayed in detail as recorded in Gen. 2.

What does it mean, though, that man as male and female has been created in the image and likeness of God? What does this tell us about the nature of manhood and womanhood as both male and female exhibit full and equal humanness as the image of God while also being distinguished as male (not female) and female (not male)? And, what relevance do these truths have for complementarian male/female relations with God and with one another?

This article will focus on these three questions.

First, attention will be given to the question of what the image of God is. Obviously, this issue must be settled with some degree of confidence if we are to proceed.

Second, we will explore the particular question of what it might mean that male and female are created in the image of God, stressing both their full human equality and gender distinctiveness.

And third, we will suggest some ways in which this understanding makes a difference in how we understand the complementarian nature of our lives as male and female both before God and with each other.

The Meaning of the Creation
of Man in the Image of God

Through the history of the church, there have been many and varying proposals as to what it means that man is created in God's image. While one would hope to find more agreement, this is not the case. No doubt this lack of agreement is owing, in significant part, to the fact that Scripture declares but does not explain clearly just what it means that man is created in God's image. While varied, the main proposals offered throughout history may be grouped under three broad headings.

Traditional Understandings of the Image of God

Structural Views. The prevailing kind of approach reasoned as follows: the image of God in man must relate to some way or ways in which we (humans) are like God but unlike the other created animals. After all, since humans and other animals are all created beings, those aspects which we share in common with them cannot constitute what distinguishes us from them. And, since we are made in the image of God, this must refer to some resemblance to God in particular that God imparted to humans and is not shared by the animals. So, there must be some aspect or aspects of the structure and substance of our human nature that shows we are created in the image of God. Here are some examples:

1. Irenaeus (c. 130-200) distinguished the image (zelem) and likeness (damut) of God in man. He argued that the image of God is our reason and volition, and the likeness of God is our holiness and spiritual relation to God. As a result, the likeness of God is lost in the fall and regained in redemption, but all humans are image of God by their capacities of reason and will.

2. Augustine (354-430) understood the image of God as the reflection of the triune persons of God mirrored in the distinct yet unified intellectual capacities of memory, intellect and will. While stopping short of calling these an exact analogy of the Trinity, he did suggest that the triune Godhead is what is reflected in us when we are called the image of God.

3. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) locates the image of God squarely in man's reason by which we have the capacity to know and love God. Angels, says Thomas, are even more perfectly in God's image because of their more perfect understanding and love of God. While fallen man loses the added gift of the grace of God (donum superadditum) so they no longer know or love God as they should, they still retain this rational capacity and some natural knowledge of God and hence, they likewise retain the image of God.

4. John Calvin (1509-1564) sees the human soul as comprising the image of God. By soul, Calvin meant both the mind and heart of man by which he could know and love God. Because fallen man has turned to deception and rebellion in regard to God, the image of God has been deformed greatly in the souls of depraved men. Yet even in fallen man there are some "remaining traces" of God's image, since man retains the distinctive human capacities of reason and will.

Relational Views. Only more recently has another very prominent understanding been developed. Rather than seeing the image of God as referring to some aspect(s) of our very human nature, God's image is reflected in our relation to one another and to God. So, while it is true that God has given us reason, soul, volition, and other capacities of our nature, none of these constitutes the image of God. Rather, it is the use of these capacities in relation with God and others that reflects most clearly what it means to be created in God's image.

1. Karl Barth (1886-1968) was very critical of the entire history of the doctrine of the image of God in man. Barth complained that little attention had been given to what Scripture actually says when it speaks of man created in the image of God. In Gen. 1:26-27 (cf. 5:1-2), as Barth notes, God deliberately speaks of himself in the plural as creating man who is likewise plural as male and female. The image of God should best be seen as the relational or social nature of human life as God created us. That both male and female together are created in his image signals the relational meaning of the image of God in man.

2. Emil Brunner (1889-1966) distinguished formal and material senses of the image of God. The formal image of God in man is his capacity to relate to God through his knowledge and love of God; the material image is manifest through his actually seeking and knowing and loving God. For Brunner, then, the formal image is retained after the fall but the material image is lost altogether. While it is important for Brunner that God made us with the capacity to know and love him (i.e., the formal image), the heart of the concept of the image of God has to do with our relationship with God in which we express real longing for God, trust in him, and a desire to know and love him (i.e., the material image).

Functional Views. While this view can be traced through the centuries, only recently has it been urged with increasing forcefulness. Here, it is not our inner capacities of nature, nor our human or God-ward relationality which comprise the image of God, but it is the functioning of man who is responsible to act as God's representative over creation that shows us as his images. Advocates such as Leonard Verduin and D. J. A. Clines have argued that the double reference in Gen 1:26-28 of man "ruling over" the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, etc., cannot be accidental. Rather, this links the concept of the image of God with the fact that God places man over the rest of earthly creation in order to rule on his behalf. Creation stewardship as God's vice-regents, then, is at the heart of what it means to be image of God. 

Evaluation of these Traditional Understandings of Image of God

Clearly, we should affirm with Karl Barth that our understanding of the image of God should be directed as fully as possible by the text of Scripture. One of the main problems with much of the tradition (particularly with the variations of the structural view) is that these proposals were led more by speculation regarding how are men like God and unlike animals than by careful attention to indications in the text of Scripture itself as to what may constitute this likeness. While it is not wrong to ask and ponder this question, what confidence can we have that when we have answered it we have also answered the question of what the image of God in man is? The relevant passages, particularly Gen. 1:26-28, need to be far more central and instructive than most of the tradition has allowed them to be…

The functional view also has merit biblically in that it rightly points to the double imperative in Gen. 1:26-28 of man to rule over the earthly creation. I agree with those who say that this connection cannot be accidental; it rather must play a central role in our understanding of what it means to be created in the image of God. Yet, function always and only follows essence. Put differently, what something can do is an expression of what it is. So, obviously to the extent that human beings as made in the image of God has to do with their functioning a certain way, then behind this must be truth about their being made a certain way, by which (and only by which) they are able to carry out their God-ordained functioning.

Functional Holism as the Image of God

One of the finest recent discussions of the image of God has been done by Anthony Hoekema. I agree fully with the implication of Hoekema's questions when he asks:

Must we think of the image of God in man as involving only what man is and not what he does, or only what he does and not what he is, or both what he is and what he does? Is "image of God" only a description of the way in which the human being functions, or is it also a description of the kind of being he or she is?

Hoekema defends and develops a view of the image of God in which humans are seen to be made by God with certain structural capacities (to "mirror" God) in order that they might function in carrying out the kinds of responsibilities in relationship he has given them in particular to do (to "represent" God). The stress, then, is on the functional and relational responsibilities, while the structural capacities provide the created conditions necessary for that functioning to be carried out.

Furthermore, Hoekema describes the relational elements of this functioning in terms of how we are to relate to God, to others, and to the world God has made. So, God has made us a particular way, and has done so in order for us to function in this threefold arena of relationality, and this together constitutes what it means to be created in the image of God. Hoekema summarizes his view as follows:

The image of God, we found, describes not just something that man has, but something man is. It means that human beings both mirror and represent God. Thus, there is a sense in which the image includes the physical body. The image of God, we found further, includes both a structural and a functional aspect (sometimes called the broader and narrower image), though we must remember that in the biblical view structure is secondary, while function is primary. The image must be seen in man's threefold relationship: toward God, toward others, and toward nature.

Another treatment of the image of God has contributed much to the discussion and supports this same holistic understanding, with a particular stress on the functional responsibilities man has as created in God's image. D. J. A. Clines considered Gen. 1:26-28 in light of the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) usage of "image of God." Clines notes that the concept of image of God was used widely in ANE literature. Many times inanimate objects (e.g., stones, trees, crafted idols) were considered images of the gods, and when this was the case, they were seen as possessing some divine substance that gave them certain powers. But also often (and more important to the background of Gen. 1:26-28), the image of the god was a king or another royal official. When this was the case, Clines noted three characteristics.

First, the god would put into the king some divine substance (e.g., some fluid or wind or breath) that would give the king extraordinary powers thus making him like the god, to some degree, and able to represent the god to the people.

Second, the king was to function as the representative of the god and rule as the vice-regent of the god, acting as the god would in his place.

Third, it was only the king or another high official who was the image of the god; ordinary people were never the image of the god.

When applied to Genesis 1-2, it appears reasonable that the author may have had this background in mind. At least, one must wonder why the author does not define "image of God" when it is apparent to all that this is a term of extraordinary importance. Perhaps the meaning was widely understood.

If so, as Clines suggests, "image of God" in Genesis 1-2 contains three elements which are parallel yet not identical to the three characteristics of the ANE understanding of image of god.

First, man was created with such a nature that divine enablement was given him to be what he must be in order to do what God would require him to do. Clines points to the "breathing" into Adam the breath of life in Gen. 2:7 as indication that his formation included this divine empowerment requisite to function as God's image.

Second, immediately upon his being created in Genesis 2, God puts man to work, stewarding and ruling in the world that is God's own creation. Man is given responsibility to cultivate the garden, and man is called upon to the name animals. So, while the garden in which man dwells is God's, God gives to man the responsibility to steward it. And, importantly, while the animals are God's, God gives to man the right and responsibility to name them (note especially the statement in Gen. 2:19 that whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name). By this, man shows his God-derived authority over creation, for to cultivate the garden and especially to name the animals is to manifest his rightful yet derived rulership over the rest of creation.

Third, the place where Genesis 1:26-28 departs from the pattern of the ANE usage is that both male and female are created in God's image. While the ANE king or royal official only is image of the god, in the creation of man, all men, both male and female, are fully the image of God. Man and woman, then, both are fully the image of God and together share the responsibility to steward the earthly creation God has made.

Hoekema's and Clines' proposals are complementary insofar as they both stress that the structural, relational and functional elements need to be brought together to understand what it means in Genesis 1:26-28 to be made in the image of God. Yet, while all three are needed, the structural serves the purpose of the functional being carried out in relationship. One might think of this proposal, then, as advocating a "functional holism" view of the image of God. That is, while all three aspects are involved, priority is given to the God-ordained functioning of human beings in carrying out the purposes he has for them to do. Perhaps our summary statement of what it means to be made in God's image could employ this language:

The image of God in man as functional holism means that God made human beings, both male and female, to be created and finite representations (images of God) of God's own nature, that in relationship with him and each other, they might be his representatives (imaging God) in carrying out the responsibilities he has given to them. In this sense, we are images of God in order to image God and his purposes in the ordering of our lives and carrying out of our God-given responsibilities…

Male and Female Equality as Image of God

Complementarians and egalitarians have agreed that the creation of male and female as the image of God indicates the equal value of women with men as being fully human, with equal dignity, worth and importance. While Genesis 1:26-27 speaks of God creating "man" in his image, the passage deliberately broadens at the end of verse 27 to say, "male and female he created them." Hear again these central verses:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Clearly the intention of the text is to say both that the man and the woman share a common humanity and equal worth before God (hence, both are "man"), and yet they do so not as identicals (hence, they are distinctly "male and female").

Genesis 5:1-2 only confirms and reinforces this understanding. Here, we read:

"This is the written account of Adam's line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them man."

As with Genesis 1:26-27, we see the common identity of male and female, both named "man," and yet the male and the female is each a distinct expression of this common and equally possessed nature of "man." As is often observed, since this was written in a patriarchal cultural context, it is remarkable that the biblical writer chose to identify the female along with the male as of the exact same name and nature as "man." Male and female are equal in essence and so equal in dignity, worth, and importance.

• Editor’s note: This is a very important point. The story of Adam and Eve was written thousands of years ago, during a time of patriarchal rule. And yet the narrative instructs us of the equality of male and female – a notion far outside the bounds of the spirit of the times. This suggests that the writer was a most enlightened person, one receiving direction from the Spirit World.

Another clear biblical testimony to this equality is seen in the position of redeemed men and women in Christ. Galatians 3:28 ("There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus") makes clear that gender distinctions (along with race and class distinctions, as well) are irrelevant in relation to the standing and benefits we have in Christ…

Male and Female Differentiation as the Image of God

After affirming the complete essential equality of men and women as created in the image of God, an obvious observation must be made that has important implications: while male is fully human, male is also male, not female; and while female is fully human, female is also female, not male. That is, while God did intend to create male and female as equal in their essential nature as human, he also intended to make them different expressions of that essential nature, as male and female reflect different ways, as it were, of being human. Now, the question before us is whether any of these male/female differences relate to the question of what it means for men and women to be created in the image of God.

Some might reason that since Gen. 1:26-27 and 5:1-2 speak of both male and female created fully in the image of God, any male/female differences one might point to cannot bear any relationship to the united sense in which they possess, equally and fully, the image of God. That they both are the image of God equally and fully manifests not their differences but their commonality and equality...