Gender Essentialism in Anthropological, Covenantal, and Christological Perspective

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the Spring 2024 issue of Eikon.

In this essay, we seek to provide a clear and robust dogmatic foundation for a distinctly Christian anthropology, one that coheres with critical covenantal distinctions and pressing Christological concerns. We are convinced a lack thereof is plaguing the discourse on this matter in broader Protestant and Evangelical circles. Our thesis is that the classic distinction between essence and existence is the best conceptual tool for articulating an account of gender essentialism, and proves useful in evaluating proper covenant distinctions — between the Creation Covenant, the Covenant of Works, and the marriage covenant — and in understanding the fittingness and necessity of the Son of God’s assumption of humanity as a male.

To prove our thesis, we first demonstrate how the essence-existence distinction for humanity — flowing from the reality that humans are composed of parts, unlike God — is crucial for maintaining a proper perspective on human nature and gender. We then connect the essence-existence distinction to God’s covenantal arrangements to ground male and female equality in the Creation Covenant, and more specifically, the imago dei (essence). Then we show why man is properly and fittingly the covenant head of the woman in the Garden of Eden (existence). Significantly, Adam is the covenant head of Eve in two respects: (1) he is the federal head for the entire human race (Eve included) according to the Covenant of Works (CoW), and (2) he is exclusively Eve’s head according to God’s design in the covenant of marriage. Adam’s headship is typological in both respects, as his headship over Eve in marriage is both the norm for all subsequent marriages, and according to the Apostle Paul, is itself a type of the Christ-church union (Eph 5:31–32). Moreover, Adam’s federal headship in the CoW over all humanity is a type of Christ’s headship over his elect, such that in the CoW Adam is a pattern for the Second/Last Adam; and as such, being male is a necessary precondition by God’s appointment for representing humanity before God. One implication of this that we will draw out is the reality that male leadership is not only good and fitting covenantally in marriage and the home (and the household of God, i.e., the church), but more broadly in society as well, as these covenantal arrangements are reflective of created order. Thus, Christ can truly be said to be made like his brothers (and sisters!) “in every respect,” becoming a merciful and faithful high priest on their behalf, because to be male (existence) is to partake in human nature (essence), and to be male is a prerequisite to represent men and women alike in the capacity of federal representative under God (Heb 2:14–18; 4:15; Eph 1:22, 5:23–24; 1 Cor 11:3).

To amplify why this dogmatic foundation is necessary, as we build our case we will highlight various examples in which influential contemporary theologians in the broader Protestant/Evangelical world lack precision with vocabulary and/or express fundamentally flawed views on human essence^[1], gender, and/or the imago dei. We are convinced these flawed perspectives necessarily have deleterious entailments on anthropology and/or Christology. Put differently, how one understands Christ’s atoning work for fallen human beings is interconnected with how one conceives of human nature, the image of God, and covenant. We find these other perspectives fail to provide a satisfactory account for how these crucial doctrines synthesize. In their place, we argue for a kind of gender essentialism which flows out of a clear distinction between the existence and essence of humanity, so that our anthropology and Christology hold together.

Getting Gender Essentialism Right

To begin, it is necessary to give some account of gender essentialism.^[2] We are convinced that a sexual binary of male/female is essential to being human. As such, every individual human person is either male or female. We believe this to be the clear teaching of holy Scripture. This section of the essay demonstrates this claim exegetically from Genesis 1 before considering the classic distinction between essence and existence as providing conceptual terminology that is particularly fruitful to preserve the unity of male and female as truly human, while also accounting for the robust difference between men and women.^[3] The essence-existence distinction upholds the biblical teaching that both men and women are created in the image of God and that covenant headship belongs uniquely to men. The dogmatic account of gender essentialism offered here also gives us tools to affirm that the male Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the redeemer of both men and women without the need to say his assumed human nature is androgynous^[4] or that he needed to have a unique biological relation to female human nature.^[5]

Exegetical Observations: Genesis 1

In the Genesis account of creation, God makes each living thing “according to its kind” (kind = מין; see Gen 1:11, 21, 24). Each animal kind created consists of a reproducing pair of male and female. When God creates the sea-dwelling creatures and the birds of the sky “according to their kinds” on the fifth day, we read, “And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth’” (1:22). When God creates mankind (אדם, adam) in his image on the sixth day, he makes them “male and female” and says to them, “Be fruitful and multiply” (1:28).

Two observations are important for our purposes. First, living things can be categorized into types that are broader than and inclusive of individual existing instances of the type. This is clear from the fact that different kinds of things are created, each kind including at least two individuals from the first moment of their creation. Thus, the biblical creation account demands our affirmation of what later thinkers would refer to as universal natures, or essences, as distinguished from individual instances, or existing things. There is a kind of thing (its universal nature/essence), the properties of which necessarily characterize the individual instances of the kind (existence). Epistemologically speaking, rational observers of created things can know the universal nature of a thing by observation. As professors, we can look at a room full of students and observe that they are all instances of a common type of being. Of course, there is great diversity among them — size, skin color, hair color, gender/sex, etc. — but they all, without exception, recognizably have many things in common. That is, they are all observably the same “kind” of thing, namely human. In terms of epistemology, the particular existence of the living beings precedes the knower’s apprehension of the universal kind that is shared among them. It is important to note, however, that the creation of each living thing “according to its kind” alerts us to the fact that, ontologically speaking, the logic runs in the other direction. If each living being is created “according to its kind,” then the kind functions as a pattern according to which the existing thing is fashioned by God. In terms of ontology, the universal kind precedes the particular, existing beings. According to Scripture, universal kinds are present to the mind of God who creates according to such wise designs.

Second, being gendered/sexed as either male or female is a necessary property of the kind of living beings identified on days four through six of creation week. It is clear that the universal kinds, according to which living things are created, include both male and female. Living things are created “according to their kinds,” and as such, they are “fruitful and multiply.” In other words, both the male and the female individuals in the reproducing pair belong to the same kind. Stating this coherently requires some careful thought. Neither maleness nor femaleness, as such, can be identified as a necessary property of the kind. Otherwise, the other gender/sex would be excluded, and the reproducing pair would not be of the same kind. The male would be his own kind and the female her own kind, which is not what the text of Genesis 1 indicates is the case. Rather, each existing being within the kind is gendered/sexed as either male or female. What is entailed by the account of the creation of living animals according to their kinds is made explicit by the account of the creation of mankind. “He created them male and female” (Gen 1:27) and both are clearly identified as mankind (אדם, adam) in the previous verse (v. 26). We cannot, therefore, exclude the idea of gender/sex from the universal kind. It seems the only coherent way forward is to recognize that being gendered/sexed as either male or female is a necessary property of the kinds of living beings identified on days four through six of the creation week. This is what we mean when we say that a gender binary of male/female is essential to being human. 

Dogmatic Elaboration: Essence, Existence, and Gender Essentialism

The notion that things exist according to the common properties of a universal kind, and that the properties of one kind differentiate it from another kind, has been recognized by philosophers throughout human intellectual history, even traditions whose key thinkers may have known nothing of the text of Genesis or the rest of the Scriptures. This is not surprising, given the fact that the common properties that constitute a kind are observable from the existence of the particulars. Perhaps no philosophical tradition is more closely identified with the notion of universals than the platonic philosophical tradition. Platonism as a philosophical tradition is complex and multifaceted, and the debate over what constitutes real Platonism is not easily settled. In an effort to identify the broadest boundaries of the platonic tradition, Lloyd Gerson has articulated five key principles of negation, which he believes are the sine qua non of Platonism. That is, he identifies five philosophical claims about the nature of reality that all Platonists reject. He calls this set of principles Ur-Platonism (UP). Gerson explains, “Platonism in general can be usefully thought of as arising out of the matrix of UP. . . . To be a Platonist is, minimally, to have a commitment to UP.”^[6] One of Gerson’s five principles of UP is anti-nominalism. Nominalists deny that different individuals can be the same in any meaningful sense. That is, nominalism is the denial of the reality of a universal kind by which an individual is what it is. Thus, the anti-nominalist principle of Platonism is consistent with the Genesis account of creation. The other principles of UP are: anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. While not developed in the exegetical observations above, these other four principles of UP are also entailments of the Genesis account of creation and the worldview upon which it is based.

The fact that the principles of UP are consistent with the basic worldview demanded by Scripture has led many Christian theologians to argue that orthodox Christianity is fundamentally Platonic. Building on Gerson’s observations, such thinkers as Craig Carter^[7] and Hans Boersma^[8] have argued extensively that a kind of Platonism is essential to the theological commitments of the orthodox Christian faith and that it is necessary for a right reading of holy Scripture. In these arguments for the necessity of Christian Platonism for the Christian faith, it can seem as though the logic of dependence is such that sound Christian orthodoxy depends on Platonic philosophy, as though one cannot have the former without the latter.^[9] For our part, while we happily acknowledge that there is considerable correspondence between the theological commitments of Christian orthodoxy, as revealed in holy Scripture, and the principles of UP, we do not believe that Christian orthodoxy is in any way dependent on the articulations of these principles in the Platonic philosophical tradition. Rather, Scripture itself, as the Word of God written, articulates the content of Christian orthodoxy in its own idiom.

Philosophers who do not know God are able to understand much truth about the cosmos by rational observation and analysis. It is evident to them by general revelation because God made it evident to them (Rom 1:19–20). Furthermore, the reality of the Fall of man into sin and the presence of false teachers among the people of God have generated the need for extra-biblical terminology to articulate in precise conceptual idiom the revealed judgments of holy Scripture.^[10] When false teachers arise who read the same Bible as orthodox thinkers, it will not do to simply read Bible passages back and forth to one another. Extra-biblical terms that emerge from philosophically precise systems of thought have proven immensely useful over the centuries in the defense of the revealed faith against error. We happily acknowledge that the conceptual terminology of the platonic philosophical tradition has been invaluable to this end. We would include Aristotle and, many centuries later, Thomas Aquinas, in this tradition. In fact it is Aquinas who articulates the essence-existence distinction we draw upon here, a distinction that became a mainstay in Christian theological reflection for centuries to come and can rightly be identified as classical for its ubiquity in the late medieval period throughout the periods of post-Reformation Protestant Orthodoxy. In building our argument for gender essentialism from Genesis 1 before moving into dogmatic elaboration aided by Thomistic categories and terms, we are hoping to model the right kind of relationship between divinely revealed judgments and the conceptual terms deployed to articulate and defend those judgments adequately.^[11]

We believe that the Thomistic distinction between essence and existence is a particularly helpful way to articulate the version of gender essentialism revealed in Scripture, as made explicit in the creation account of Genesis 1. Thomas Aquinas famously drew on the categories of Aristotelian metaphysics, putting the conceptual terminology to good use in the Summa Theologiae, especially his treatise on the one God,^[12] his treatise on the triune God,^[13] and his accounts of creation and anthropology.^[14] One way that Thomas modified Artistotelian thought in service of Christian theology is in his account of the distinction between essence (Latin, essentia) and existence (Latin, esse). Whereas the distinction between universals and particulars is woven into the Platonic/Aristotelian philosophical tradition beforehand, it was Thomas who deployed the particular conceptual terms of essence and existence to state this distinction with precision.^[15]

Essence, in the Thomistic sense, corresponds closely (if not exactly) with the understanding of kind suggested above in our analysis of the Genesis account. For Thomas, essence is an abstract notion of common properties by which a being is what it is. Existence, on the other hand, is the individual instantiation of essence. Whereas essence is an abstract notion of common properties, existence names the reality of an actual, particular being belonging to the essence.^[16]

Thomas explains the essence-existence distinction with respect to anthropology: “[T]he essence or nature connotes only what is included in the definition of the species; as, humanity connotes all that is included in the definition of man, for it is by this that man is man, and it is this that humanity signifies, that, namely, whereby man is man”^[17] Notice how Thomas uses the word “humanity” to name the essence of a man. The word “man,” on the other hand, names the individual existing being who instantiates the essence, which is humanity. Put very simply, a man (existence) is human (essence).

Because essence, considered in itself, is an abstract notion of common properties, it belongs to the category Thomas calls potential. Potential means, in short, non-existence with the possibility for existence. Existence, on the other hand, belongs to the category of act or actuality. Existing things are in the act of being what they are. Thus, in Thomistic metaphysics, all beings are a composite of essence (potential, universal kind or nature) plus existence (the actual being of a thing as instantiation of the abstract essence). Put concretely and in terms of anthropology, human nature as a universal kind, like what we see in Genesis 1, belongs to the category of essence. It denotes the kind: humanity. Individual human beings, like Adam and Eve, belong to the category of existence. Adam and Eve exist as instantiations of the essence, humanity.

Since all existing humans are the same with respect to essence,^[18] they can only be distinguished in terms of their individual existence. Distinction between individuals of the same essence can be accounted for in two ways. First, all individuals are distinguished by the particularity of their essential properties. Take rationality, for example. All humans are rational beings, as rationality is an essential property of humanity. But this co-authored essay is written by Kyle and Michael, two males with two distinct rationalities. No matter how much one of us may wish to have the other’s mind, it remains the case that we have our own mind and no one else’s. Thus, we share the essential property of rationality while each possessing our own rational mind. The relation of rationality to this or that rationality is ultimately the same as the relation between essence and existence. The second way that beings of the same essence are distinguished is by their accidental properties. While essential properties name those characteristics that are necessary to being a particular kind of thing, accidents are the properties by which an existing being can change while remaining the same kind of thing. The accidental properties of one existing individual differentiate it in a great variety of ways from other individuals of the same kind. Such properties as size, strength, location, relations, etc. can all change without a change in essence, and all serve to differentiate one existing being from others of the same kind.

Thomas subtly applies these two ways of distinguishing individuals of the same kind to anthropology in a telling passage:

Now individual matter, with all the individualizing accidents, is not included in the definition of the species. For this particular flesh, these bones, this blackness or whiteness, etc., are not included in the definition of a man. Therefore this flesh, these bones, and the accidental qualities distinguishing this particular matter, are not included in humanity; and yet they are included in the thing which is man. Hence the thing which is a man has something more in it than has humanity. Consequently humanity and a man are not wholly identical.^[19]

Notice how Thomas refers to “individual matter” and “individualizing accidents,” not as the same thing, but as different ways of distinguishing individuals of the same kind. In Thomistic metaphysics, “individual matter” exists by inseparable union with its form. In the case of a human being, the individual matter, which Thomas describes in terms of embodiment as “this particular flesh, these bones,” exists in union with a particular form, the soul of this or that particular human being. The form (soul in the case of a human being) and the matter are united in the existence of this individual person.^[20] It is essential to humanity to have a material body — matter organized as flesh, bones, etc. Therefore, without exception, every individual human being will be identifiable as “individual matter . . . this flesh, these bones.” This is what we mean by distinction according to the particularity of essential properties. Thomas distinguishes this from “individualizing accidents,” which he illustrates in terms of “this blackness or whiteness.” Blackness and whiteness (or any other variety of skin tone among humans) is an accidental property in Thomas’s account.

Interestingly, the clearest articulation of the essence-existence distinction in Thomas comes in his discussion of the one situation in which this distinction must be denied — the doctrine of God. In his treatise on the one God (De Deo Uno) in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas takes up the issue of divine simplicity in Question 3. Divine simplicity is the doctrine that God is not, in any way, composite. In Article 4 of this Question, Thomas asks whether essence and existence are the same in God. He answers in the affirmative; God is not a composite of essence plus existence. Drawing on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, Thomas explains why God is the only being for whom essence and existence are the same thing rather than distinct things:

[T]hat thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.^[21]

The identity of essence and existence in God further helps explain what is meant when classical Christian theists say that God does not belong to a genus (kind). There is no essence (potential) that logically precedes his existence (act) as the eternal God. He does not instantiate an abstract essence, so he is not one being among others of the same kind. Again, Thomas’s explanation is helpful in drawing the concepts together. He argues that God cannot belong to a genus because all in one genus agree in the quiddity [whatness] or essence of the genus which is predicated of them as an essential, but they differ in their existence. For the existence of man and of horse is not the same; as also of this man and that man: thus in every member of a genus, existence and quiddity — i.e., essence — must differ. But in God they do not differ, as shown in the preceding article. Therefore it is plain that God is not in a genus as if He were a species.^[22]

Notice that Thomas treats essence, the whatness of a being, as synonymous with genus, a being’s kind. This demonstrates that our identification of the Thomistic concept of essence with the Genesis concept of kind does not do violence to Thomas’s intended use of the terminology. The same judgment is being articulated in different conceptual terms. To sum up thus far, essence, as a category in itself, names the kind or genus of a being. Existence instantiates essence as an actual being. While the essence and existence of God are identical (he is pure actuality), all created beings, including humans, are a composite of essence (potential) plus existence (actuality). The use of this essence-existence distinction is a fitting and faithful way to respond to the pressure of divine revelation to give a precise metaphysical account of how individuals, like Adam and Eve, can be the same kind while being distinct in meaningful ways.^[23]

Gender as Essential, Not Accidental

How exactly does the issue of gender map onto this discussion? Given the observations we made above from the Genesis account of creation and our identification of the Thomistic notion of essence with the Genesis notion of kind, we believe it is accurate to affirm that being gendered as male or female is a property belonging to the essence of humanity such that every individual existing human being will be either a man or a woman. Now, being a man is a very different thing than being a woman. How should we account for this distinction? Some might be inclined to say that the particularity of maleness and femaleness represents a distinction of accidental properties. This would suggest that gender is something that admits degrees or may change without altering the essence of the being. On this account, gender would not be essential to humanity. We believe identifying gender as an accidental property would be a fatal flaw because of the way the biblical creation account includes both male and female in the kinds of beings that reproduce in the world, a fact made most clear with respect to the creation of mankind, as argued above.

Recall, however, that there is another, more fundamental way that existing beings of the same essence can differ — particularization of essential properties. Because of the strictures of the Genesis 1 account of creation, we contend that being either man or woman is a case of the particularization of an essential property. The essential property being gendered as either male or female can only be particularized as male or female (not both, and not neither). Thus, the particular form of a human person in union with the matter of that person is such that the person is this gender, just as he is “this flesh, these bones.” In saying all this, we are contending that gender is an essential property of humanity. This is what we mean by our affirmation of gender essentialism.

Scripture depicts the ontology of created things in a way that corresponds to the Thomistic distinction between essence and existence. Human gender is best understood as essential according to this paradigm, which fittingly articulates the judgments of the creation account of Genesis 1 and is consistent with the rest of scriptural teaching. Therefore, theological accounts that deny or misappropriate the reality of universal human essence or fail to distinguish adequately between universal human essence and the individual existence of human persons are bound to result in errors of various kinds.

In the next section, we take up the important theological issues of creation and covenant as these relate to gendered humanity and the respective roles of men and women within various divinely ordained covenantal economies. In so doing, we draw from the dogmatic approach of Herman Bavinck to the biblical idiom of the image of God and the Dominion Mandate related to the covenant of marriage under the rubric of the Creation Covenant and/or created order. We find his appropriation of the Reformed tradition to this topic to be a faithful guide. After building our case, we respond to arguments for the “Christotelic image” advanced by such thinkers as Marc Cortez, in which he and other proponents of this position collapse the Son’s incarnational mission into his divine life. This leads to serious errors as it relates to theology proper, Christology, and anthropology. Following our critique of and response to the Christotelic image approach, we analyze the anthropological imprecision of writers like Michael Clary, Michael Foster, and Dominic Bnonn Tennant, who speak of men and women having “differing natures.” This imprecision graduates to error when these men argue gender distinctions are symbolic of and even image the Creator-creature distinction. We find this to expose the need for more anthropological precision, as found in the dogmatic elaboration on the essence-existence distinction in which the imago dei reflects the triune God’s superiority and authority over all creation.

Distinguishing Between the Covenant of Creation, the Covenant of Works, and the Covenant of Marriage

At its most basic level, a covenant is a formal arrangement between at least two parties. As heirs of the Reformed tradition, we are convinced covenants are central to the biblical storyline. Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum highlight the critical role that God’s formal arrangements with federal/covenantal heads plays in the Bible: “The biblical covenants form the backbone of the Bible’s metanarrative, and apart from understanding each covenant in its immediate context and then in relation to its fulfillment in Christ, we will potentially misunderstand the Bible’s overall message and misapply Scripture to our lives.”^[24] In agreement with this line of thought, we aim to understand how the Creation Covenant, the CoW, and the covenant of marriage function together, so as to rightly apply Scripture to our lives as it relates to gender, marriage, the image of God, dominion, male headship, Christology, etc. We are convinced covenants truly carry the progress of revelation across the canon of Scripture, and therefore we must understand the terms, conditions, context, and fulfillment of these covenants in order to arrive at a sound anthropology and Christology.

The word covenant (ברית) does not appear in the opening chapters of Genesis until Noah enters the scene (see Gen 6:18; 9:9). Gentry notes the important difference between “creating a covenant” (כרת ברית)  and “renewing/establishing a covenant previously created” (קום ברית).^[25] He also observes that only the latter phrase is used for the Noahic covenant (Gen 6:18; 9:9, 11, 17) as opposed to the typical expression for the creation of a covenant. For example, כרת ברית is invoked when the Lord initiates the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 15:18), but by using the language of קום ברית in the Noahic covenant (Gen 6:18), God means “to affirm (verbally) the continued validity of a prior commitment — that is, to affirm that one is still committed to the covenant relationship as established or initiated previously.”^[26]

This logic raises the question: if the word covenant is not used in Scripture until Genesis 6 and 9, how can God speak of reaffirming a previous covenant? Since, as Gentry rightly highlights, God reveals that the Noahic covenant affirms the validity of a prior covenant, it is incumbent upon us to rightly locate the original. To answer this question, we first suggest the need to distinguish between the Creation Covenant and what is commonly referred to as the Covenant of Works (CoW).^[27] We affirm the reality of the CoW.^[28] We believe this doctrine is necessary to getting the creation narrative right. Furthermore, while we are convinced we must not affirm less than the traditional Reformed account of the CoW, we believe it is necessary to affirm more than this. Why? Because God is the Creator-covenant Lord, and in the creation account, this is not reducible to the probationary command with the promise of glorification upon perfect and perpetual obedience (see Gen 2:15–17; Lev 18:5). We find sound warrant for this distinction in the fact that the Bible itself labels God’s creation of the world in covenantal categories. One such example is found in Jeremiah 33:20–21:

​​Thus says the Lord: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers.

Harrison Perkins offers interpretive insight on these verses: “The early Genesis narratives do not say that God covenanted with the sun, moon, day, or night, but Jeremiah does. This passage also reconfirms that God’s promises to David were covenantal [the original narrative recorded in 2 Samuel 7:8–16 does not].”^[29] By distinguishing the Creation Covenant from the CoW, our aim is to confirm the biblical idiom of creation order in covenantal terms, while distinguishing the CoW with Adam from these broader covenantal structures in the Creation narrative. We contend the concept of the CoW/pactum merit is best understood as a (primary/integral) aspect or subset of God’s broader covenantal activity and arrangement with the original creation order. The terms set forth in the Noahic Covenant of Genesis 6 and 9 correspond closely to the mandate the Lord gave Adam and Eve at the end of Genesis 1, the principle differences relating to the reality of a fallen world when the covenant is renewed to Noah and his offspring. We observe that nothing akin to a probationary command whereby the covenant partner might merit life or death for his posterity is given to Noah. We find the Noahic covenant then to ratify God’s previous broader covenantal activity with creation, and, significantly, this arrangement undergirds God’s creation of male and female in the image of God with its entailments.

There is one more distinction we wish to make as we consider God’s covenantal arrangements in Genesis 1–2. And this is the covenant of marriage found in Genesis 2:18–25. The marriage covenant is under the broader creation mandate, but it cannot be strictly identified with it. It is a “sub-covenant,” designed and instituted by God for one man and one woman (two covenant partners) for life.^[30] As with the Creation Covenant and the CoW, marriage is also not explicitly referred to as a covenant in Genesis 2; however, it is clearly understood in covenantal terms later in Scripture (Exod 20:14; Mal 2:14–16; Matt 19:6). Children enter into this covenantal domain and remain under it until they depart from their parents’ household and form their own (Gen 2:24; Exod 20:12; Eph 6:1–2). They do so in distinct/engendered ways, though, in which a son (who by his masculinity carries the potentiality to be a husband and father) takes on the role of covenant head over his wife in marriage, as the father of the bride “transfers” headship over his daughter (who by her femininity carries the potentiality to be a wife and mother) to her husband (see Num 30).^[31]  Biblically speaking, a man leaves his father and mother to be united to his wife, while the woman is given (hence the long-standing and scriptural tradition of the marriage officiant to ask: “who gives this woman in marriage”), so that the two become one flesh and thereby a new family unit under the husband’s headship (Gen 2:24). 

As such, Adam has a unique (as opposed to shared with Eve) federal headship limited to his household in the marriage covenant and a unique federal headship over the whole human race in the CoW. In the Creation Covenant more broadly, Adam’s rule over the created order is shared with Eve. Therefore, men do not have headship over women generally as image bearers/rulers. Each husband following Adam is only the covenant head of his wife and children exclusively within the institution of marriage and family. He does not take up Adam’s or Christ’s role as head/representative/mediator for humanity (Adam) or God’s elect (Christ). We find that these distinctions are crucial for marriage and gender, because they provide a firm covenantal rationale as to why it is proper to say that not all women are under the headship of all men, rather all humanity is either under Adam in the CoW or Christ in the Covenant of Grace (CoG)^[32], and each wife is to submit to her own husband in the covenant of marriage (see Eph 5:22–24; 1 Pet 3:1).

Covenantal Headship’s Fitting Correspondence with Creation Order

The CoW we read of in Genesis 2:15–17 is made exclusively between God and Adam (Eve was not yet created, see Gen 2:18), which is natural, good, and fitting, and explains why the progenitor principle (i.e., “for Adam was formed first, then Eve”) is cited by Paul in 1 Timothy 2:12–13 as the grounds for male-only preaching (function) and thus pastoring (office) in the New Covenant church. What we mean to highlight here is not that male-only eldership is grounded in the CoW, but that the CoW/CoG, and the reality of male-headship in the marriage covenant (Eph 5:22; 1 Cor 11:3) and God’s household (i.e., the church, 1 Tim 3:1–7; 15) flow from God’s creation order design. So, the progenitor principle is therefore revelatory of God’s election of Adam as federal head, such that being created prior to Eve explains how his headship is propagated. In short, Adam’s appointment to this role is not a result of his order of creation, rather his order of creation reveals his appointment. Furthermore, this appointment was not arbitrary, such that God could have interchangeably created Eve first and appointed her the head.

As natural complementarians, we readily affirm male headship (covenantally defined) in the church and home, and male leadership (naturally fitting) as the norm in broader society are not merely a product of Bible verses, as though Scripture speaks such concepts into existence ex nihilo.^[33] Rather, the Bible ratifies God’s design and thus reality. Put differently, we maintain that covenantal headship in the church and home is built upon God’s created order, and therefore the principle of male leadership cannot be confined only to these domains, as though it has no bearing on the broader society.

Since we affirm that male headship in the home and church is a reflection of created order being restored, we conclude that it would be unnatural for egalitarian principles to ground the broader society. God’s gracious covenantal arrangements correspond with nature, meaning they are not arbitrary but fitting with who he has made men and women to be and what he calls them to do. Again, this is not to suggest that all men are the head of all women, as the covenantal headship of men over women is limited to the husband and wife relationship, and the church under its male pastors/elders. So, while natural law or created order as it relates to men leading in broader society does not speak with the revelational specificity that Scripture does regarding male headship in the church and home, we find it foolish and even rebellious against God’s clear design to confine this principle only to these covenantal domains (church and home). In other words, to decry the universal norm of men leading in society implicitly charges God with capriciously placing Adam over the human race as federal head, husbands over their wives in the covenant of marriage, and appointing only men to be pastors/elders/overseers in the church. Moreover, just as a (male) pastor who is over male and female congregants alike in his church office by no means degrades the human dignity of either in this capacity, we contend it is likewise good and fitting for qualified and prudential men normally to govern in society (over both men and women). Unless we find God’s order for the church and home is either arbitrary or outmoded, natural complementarianism is the logical and fitting understanding of God’s design for men and women, such that his design for the church, home, and society correspond with reality.

The Relationship Between the Image of God and the Dominion Mandate

In ratifying the Creation Covenant, the Noahic Covenant reaffirms the Dominion Mandate (Gen 1:28–30), which flows from man being created in God’s image with Noah and his sons in a now sin-cursed world (Gen 9:1–7). God is not reaffirming the CoW with Noah, because upon Adam’s transgression this covenant was/is damning for all his posterity and terminated in accord with the covenant stipulations (see Gen 2:17). We take the time to distinguish the Creation Covenant from the CoW because this then allows for us to preserve the vital concept of God’s CoW with Adam as a positive law,^[34] which provides a pathway to everlasting life,^[35] while not conflating this probationary arrangement found in Genesis 2:15–17 with the universal and abiding norms recorded in Genesis 1:26–30 (imago dei and Dominion Mandate) and 2:18–25 (covenant of marriage). Significantly, the image of God is located or found in the broader Creation covenant, outside the probationary arrangement.

There has been considerable debate throughout the history of the church over what the image of God is and whether it is retained or lost upon the entrance of sin. We contend the image of God is intimately connected to human nature, such that just as God later speaks of his covenanting with the day and night from Genesis 1, so too he has irrevocably arranged that male and female be in his image and therefore reign over the created order together (cf. Gen 1:26–28; Ps 8:5–8). Being created in God’s image entails that humanity is created by the Creator-covenant Lord for dominion, such that humanity is elected to rule over creation according to their essence through God’s covenantal appointment. In other words, the image of God is a formal arrangement through which God places humanity over the rest of creation.

The triune God provides us with a remarkable glimpse into the creation of humanity in Genesis 1:26: “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” (emphasis ours). While “image” and “likeness” are near synonyms (cf., Col 3:10 and Eph 4:24), Gentry has insightfully suggested that דמות, or “likeness” likely refers to man’s vertical relationship to God via his obedient sonship, while צלם, or “image,” likely refers to man’s horizontal relationship as vice-regent/king over creation.^[36] This office (directly flowing from human essence and dignity) confirms the purpose and function of humanity. Or to use the biblical idiom: male and female are created in God’s image (Gen 1:27) and therefore “have dominion . . . over all the earth” (Gen 1:28–30). God’s covenant dealings with male and female ratify who male and female are and how they relate to each other and the rest of creation.

We find it significant that within the Creation Covenant, when God created male and female in his image, there is no mention of superiority/inferiority or differentiation as it relates to being human (essence) or being created in God’s image (office of dominion over the created order). This by no means undermines the reality that God’s other covenantal arrangements in creation (male headship in the CoW and male headship in marriage) are fitting with his design for men and women, and it even helps amplify why men bear a unique responsibility to lead, protect, and provide in God’s created order (Gen 2:15). Humanity, or “mankind,” after all, is named after Adam, not Eve. This is right and proper. Scripture is also exceedingly clear that male and female essence and status before God and over creation is one of essential equality/sameness. This helps clarify why the office of sonship and kingship are intricately connected within the biblical narrative.^[37] And it provides a framework for grasping why Paul argues that in Christ there is “no male and female,” and therefore all Christians (male and female) are “sons of God through faith” (Gal 3:26–28). The “sons of God” language here flows from the saints’ adoption in Christ, which guarantees their inheritance as a royal “son” (regardless of gender) of God (see Gal 4:4–7).

Paul is not upending the created order or arguing for androgyny between the sexes now that Christ has come in Galatians 3 and 4. Rather he is, we find, grounding the saints’ present and future reign with Christ in the shared essence and image human beings (male and female) equally possess. In the creation narrative, Adam equally shares the image of God with Eve, and is simultaneously, by God’s ordination, her covenant head in marriage and her representative before God as the federal head of all humanity. Upon his fall into sin, Adam fails miserably on both counts. In the New Covenant/CoG, Christ replaces Adam as the federal head of all Christians, while modeling for the Christian husband how he is to love and lead his wife in the covenant of marriage.

We must distinguish the concept of federal representation whereby the covenant head stands before God vertically — Adam in the place of humanity and Christ in the place of the elect — and the husband’s covenantal headship horizontally between the spouses in marriage. In the creation account, Adam fulfills both roles of covenantal headship, which is not the case for each subsequent husband. The Dominion Mandate naturally follows being created in God’s image, therefore it is not bound up in Adam’s federal headship. Eve’s status as a true instantiation of human nature (she is essentially human) is not diminished by the fact that her particular human nature is derived from Adam. Therefore, her share in the imago dei is not diminished.^[38] She and Adam bear the image equally, as the mandate in Genesis 1:28–30 makes clear.

Distinguishing Human Dominion Over the Rest of Creation from a Husband’s Headship and Parental Authority

We maintain that it is only in view of sin and the curse that Eve is told Adam will “rule” over her in a domineering way as she undermines and subverts his headship in marriage (Gen 3:16). Male headship within the covenant of marriage is not properly understood as dominion over one’s wife, and the biblical authors are careful to not conflate such categories. While male and female together — by virtue of the imago dei — are called to take dominion over creation, the authority and submission structure for the covenant of marriage/family is different in nature. Thus, the husband’s headship over his wife and parental authority over children reflects an ordered relation of authority and submission and obedience, not dominion. We do not make such a claim to water down the notion of the headship of husbands or the authority of parents, but to not lose the togetherness of the dominion mandate. When instructing Christian households in Ephesians 5, Paul distinguishes between the wife’s submission (ὑποτάσσω) to her husband and children’s obedience (ὑπακούω) to their parents. However, in 1 Peter 3:6 we are told Sarah “obeyed [ὑπήκουσεν] Abraham, calling him lord.” Are Paul and Peter contradicting one another here? No. First, we think it highlights the semantic overlap between “submit” and “obey.” We ought not exaggerate the distinctions between the two words.^[39] Peter, for example, exhorts Christian wives to submit (ὑποτασσόμεναι) to their own husbands (3:1), and then cites Sarah’s obedience as exemplary for wives to imitate in their submission. Second, we would suggest Sarah’s obedience to Abraham must of course be distinguished from that of a child to their parents from Ephesians 6:1–3, due to the nature of the marriage covenant.^[40]

The phrases “as to the Lord” (Eph 5:22) for the wife and “in the Lord” for the children (6:1) tethers her submission and their obedience to God-honoring acts. So, while the husband is the head of his wife, and parents over their children, it is not an unqualified authority for either. In both relationships the man specifically is warned to not abuse his authority (see Col 3:19, 21; Eph 6:4). Moreover, the husband is nowhere authorized to take dominion over his wife, or make her submit. Instead the wife is called to voluntarily submit to her covenant head, which is “fitting in the Lord” (5:22–24; Col 3:18; 1 Pet 3:1–7). Grace restores created order.

The husband is instructed negatively in Colossians 3:19 “to not be harsh” with his wife and positively in 1 Peter 3:7 to “live with your [wife] in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since [she is an heir] with you of the grace of life,” followed by the warning: “so that your prayers may not be hindered.” It is just as unruly for a husband to act harshly or domineeringly in his role of authority towards his wife as it is for a wife to not submit to her husband. While fathers are called to not exasperate their children, “but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (6:4), these same men are instructed to “love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). Parents are authorized and expected to wisely and righteously coerce obedience from their children in a way that husbands are not in relationship to their wives (Prov 13:24; 22:15; 23:13–14; Heb 12:7–11). A husband is not called to enforce submission, he is called to live with his wife as one who is in authority, because he is the head.

We conclude from passages on marriage and the family like the ones cited above that male headship in marriage is a real authority that simply is. It is not so much a command as it is a reality. Thus in a fallen world, sinful men will plague society as domineering despots or apathetic abdicators. The question is not whether men will lead, but how? A Christian husband will lovingly lead his wife as Christ leads his corporate bride, living with her in an understanding way as the weaker vessel, cherishing her as a fellow heir of the grace of life (1 Pet 3:7). A Christian wife will readily and voluntarily submit herself to her husband in everything as the church submits to Christ, respecting and supporting his leadership (Col 3:18; 1 Pet 3:1–6). Christian fathers (and mothers) will raise their children in the fear and instruction of the Lord, without exasperating them, training them in the way of wisdom, such that their children never depart from it (Prov 22:6; Col 3:21). Christian children will obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right and proper, anticipating a long life in the land as they apply the wisdom learned from their father and mother (Prov 1:8–9; Eph 6:1–3). The gospel of grace restores Christian households to operate in alignment with God’s created order, yielding the fruit of love, peace, and harmony.

We take the time to unpack the husband’s headship and parental authority under the rubric of the covenant of marriage so as to distinguish it from the Dominion Mandate, which is given equally to husbands and wives, and reflects the triune image in which male and female are each created. 

The Image of God Is Reflected in Male and Female Taking Dominion Over the Earth Together

Like the marriage covenant, since the imago dei is located under the broader Creation Covenant structures that are ratified in the Noahic covenant “as long as the earth remains,” we conclude humans retain the image of God postfall (Gen 8:22; 9:5–7). One takeaway from the Creation Covenant and CoW distinction is that there are no stipulations given whereby male and female could cease to be the image of God in Genesis 1:27–28, unlike how in the CoW, sin and death terminate that specific covenant arrangement in Genesis 2:17. As Bavinck explains, “Humans are fully human even after the fall. But when man lost his original righteousness, he lost the harmony and health of his nature and became a sinner through and through. His nature in the sense of substance or essence remained, but the moral qualities naturally belonging to his nature were lost.”^[41] Since the whole person is the whole image, and since sin affects the whole person, Bavinck is right to conclude that the Reformers acknowledged there is both a sense in which the image of God is lost (narrower) and retained (broader), even with our sin nature.^[42] The fact that humans retain the image and likeness of God is evidenced in texts like Genesis 5:1–3, Genesis 9:5–6, and James 3:9.

If the image of God remains, which we affirm, then so too does the Dominion Mandate and its entailments for humanity. Bavinck is therefore correct to suggest, “Psalm 8 testifies, human royal dominion remains, together with wealth and culture, as part of God’s rich provision, given to us to enjoy.”^[43] As we seek to demonstrate in the table below, when Genesis 1:27–28 is compared with Psalm 8:4–8, the language of “image” and “crowned him” are conceptual parallels, highlighting the reality that being created in the “image of God” speaks of God’s irrevocable appointment of male and female to rule and reign over the created order.

Dominion is not a constitutive element of the image of God, rather, as Bavinck argues, “Genesis 1:26, 28; 2:19–20; 9:2–3; and Psalm 8:7–9 clearly teach that this dominion is most closely tied in with the creation in God’s image and given in it. It is not an external appendix to the image; it is not based on a supplementary special dispensation; but being the image of God, man is thereby at the same time elevated above all other creatures and appointed the lord and king over them all.”^[44] In other words, the fullness of what God intends for the office of image/son/king is realized as those created in and for this office fulfill their calling. Bavinck helpfully distinguishes between dominion being constitutive of the image of God versus a consequence of it: 

To have dominion over the earth was not an end goal for human striving through considerable conflict. It was not a distant ideal, a destination at the end of a path of exertion. No! It was a part but not the sole content and consequence of being made in God’s image. Adam did not have to become lord and master of the earth and conquer it, and exercise dominion over it. Instead, he was the lord and master and sovereign and had to demonstrate this fact and continue to exercise lordship.^[45]

Now, in speaking of Adam becoming lord and master of the earth in keeping with his status as the image of God, ought we include Eve (as his wife) under his dominion? In a word, no. Just as covenant must be distinguished but not separated from creation (i.e., the CoW corresponds with creation and beckons it to glory), the existence of humanity cannot be separated from essence. This means that while the gender distinctions between men and women are grounds for ordering relationships in church, home, and society, we do not then conclude that men take dominion over women—either generally in society or in the covenant of marriage/the church. Men and women take dominion over creation together as image-sons in distinct/engendered ways that are both covenantally appropriate and aligned with their existence as male and female. We are not suggesting there is no hierarchy, or that hierarchy is antagonistic to the shared image status between men and women, but to clarify that it is categorically distinct from dominion. In other words, to return to the passage we considered in the previous section, it is fitting for Sarah to refer to Abraham as “lord” due to his headship within the covenant of marriage (1 Pet 3:6). Abraham’s headship over Sarah and his children is an ordered covenantal relation between those who are in essence complete equals. The Dominion Mandate, on the other hand, is God’s formal arrangement in which those with a superior essence (male and female, who are crowned with glory and honor due to being created in God’s image) are elected to rule over that which is inferior in essence (the rest of creation). The Creator-creature distinction is therefore imaged and represented in male and female (who are the same in essence) taking dominion over creation and subduing the earth together (Gen 1:26–30). 

Immediately after revealing to us the shared image status of male and female, Moses writes, “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’” (Gen 1:28, emphasis ours). The third person suffix on the particle את is singular here, but collective, as it also is in Genesis 1:27. We know this must be the case because (1) otherwise only men are said to be created in the image of God in 1:27; and (2) obviously man alone cannot be fruitful and multiply (see Gen 2:18). The fruitful multiplicity and the dominion in these verses are therefore interlocked and accomplished as men and women enter into distinct marriage covenants, build households, and subdue the earth together. Man can only subject the earth under himself with the assistance of woman, whose God-honoring and voluntary submission, with her wisdom, support, and child-bearing/rearing helps “in fostering a kingdom of rational and moral citizens, and thereby in bringing the earth into subjection to the human race that comes forth from her.”^[46] Not only do the man and woman “become one” in the marriage covenant, the Dominion Mandate is a sacred calling so inextricably bound in this union it is only rightly conceived of as a single work. And what God has joined together, let not man separate.   

The Dominion Mandate is directed toward a single objective: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14). Bavinck rightly maintains, “For only in the human race is the image of God unfolded, and only in its dominion over the whole earth does the human race achieve its vocation and purpose.”^[47] Adam and Eve’s divine task was to be fruitful and multiply and thus expand the borders of Eden to the ends of the earth. As Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2 remind us, this task was not accomplished under Adam’s headship. Tragically, rather than expanding the borders of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned and were exiled outside Eden’s boundary markers, never to return (Gen 3:23–24). This is why Hebrews 2:9 teaches, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (emphasis ours). The “him” in context, we contend, can be none other than the “man” from the Psalm 8 citation the author of Hebrews just quoted in 2:5–8. Therefore, the author highlights how mankind in Adam cannot fulfill the Dominion Mandate. However, fallen humanity retains the imago dei and is still responsible to fulfill this task, as it is irrevocably stamped upon them. Due to sin, fallen man can only follow in Adam’s footsteps: abdicating responsibility, blame-shifting, and/or domineering and exploiting others and the creation God has called them to steward. Just as the institution of marriage is hampered and complicated by sin, so too the Dominion Mandate is impeded but not rescinded. The reason for the continuation of both is the same: they are Creation Covenant callings and vocations, which naturally flow from the imago dei. 

God in his mercy and grace has not left fallen sinners to their own devices. Adam and Eve surely left Eden both heartbroken for what they had done, but heartened by the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15). Their only hope was the divine promise that the Seed of the woman (“the mother of all living,” see Gen 3:20) would crush their enemy and “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb 2:15). In the fullness of time, the Bible makes it known that this serpent crushing Son would allow the snake to bruise his heel on the cross, such that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (2:14). But no mere man could die and destroy the devil, sin, and death. Hebrews teaches that since Adam/mankind has failed to subject the world to themselves, “We see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (2:9).

The “him” in Hebrews 2:8 (Adam) was “crowned with glory and honor” (imago dei), but “at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” So, we “see him” (Christ) in 2:9 is “made lower than the angels” (as the Athanasian Creed explains, Christ is “equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity”), so that because of the suffering of death Christ can be crowned with glory and honor. The author of Hebrews brilliantly weaves together the Psalter in his opening two chapters and connects how Psalm 2 and 8 are fulfilled in Christ’s person and work. The crown of thorns was a necessary precursor for the crown of glory as the Last Adam fulfills God’s promise to David in Psalm 2:7 through his obedience unto death and resurrection unto eternal life (Isa 9:6–7; Acts 13:33; Heb 1:4–5; 2:5–18; 5:5–10). Adam and Eve, by virtue of being created in God’s image, were “crowned with glory and honor,” but they failed to subdue the creation. But in Christ’s person and work, what was once lost is regained. Under Adam’s failed headship in the CoW, both Adam and Eve experienced the curse of sin in their marriage and distinct vocations, and the curse of sin would eventually lead to their physical death (see Gen 3:16–19; 5:5). Therefore, in the CoG Christ “partook of flesh and blood” (Heb 2:14, i.e., assumed a human nature), to take the penalty of death. In so doing, Christ takes upon himself the covenant sanctions of Genesis 2:17 and becomes the faithful head who can restore fallen humanity to their image-son vocation.

Since Christ perfectly kept the New Covenant/CoG, as Wellum correctly avers, “In Christ and his work, the last Adam, we, as his people, are restored to our Adamic role as image-sons in relation to God and the creation (Heb 2:5–18).”^[48] Thus, while the image remains (though vitiated) in fallen man, and while the Dominion Mandate is ratified in the Noahic covenant, the curse of sin which impedes the proper exercise and/or realization of this mandate due to the broken CoW has already begun to be restored in Christ’s New Covenant people even as we await the full realization at the consummation. Just as grace restores human marriages and realigns them with God’s created order, so too grace restores human dominion, such that in Christ believers are restored and conformed to the image of Christ, enabled to righteously fulfill their office over the rest of creation, according to God’s intention.

Contemporary Confusion: Confusing the Imago Dei with Bearing Adam or Christ’s Image and Likeness

In the same way that it is proper to speak of God the Son becoming son, thus succeeding where Adam “the son of God” failed (Luke 3:38), we can also say God the Image (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3) became the image to succeed where the “first image” failed. This is precisely what Paul means to communicate in 1 Corinthians 15:47–49 when he writes, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Here we must distinguish between the notion of bearing the image of Adam/Christ in which his fate is our fate, and the reality that humans are “crowned with glory and strength,” that is, made in the image of God. We agree with Bavinck’s insistence on this point: “In our treatment of the doctrine of the image of God, then, we must highlight, in accordance with Scripture and the Reformed confession, the idea that a human being does not bear or have the image of God but that he or she is the image of God.”^[49] Humanity is created in the image of God (Gen 1:26–28), and Seth is born in the image and likeness of Adam (Gen 5:1–3). The former is an irrevocable covenantal office written into the very constitution of humanity, the latter speaks to the CoW and Adam’s fallen headship. Seth, therefore, joins the chorus of all ruined sinners who appeal to Christ: “Adam’s likeness now efface, Stamp Thine image in its place.”^[50]

It is crucial that we not conflate being in the image of God with bearing Adam’s image/likeness under the now broken CoW, or even bearing Christ’s image under the now inaugurated New Covenant. ​​It is increasingly popular in our day for some to posit that Christ is the archetypal image of God and that human beings are ectypes. According to this logic, leaders in this movement, like Marc Cortez, explicitly reject the notion that the image of God is “possessed” by humans, and posit “the image of God is shown to be something that unfolds over time as God manifests himself in and through the narrative of his covenantal relationship with humanity . . . the image of God involves the continual unfolding of God’s personal being as he manifests himself in and through his covenantal relationships with his people, Israel and the Church.”^[51] We find this notion to be fundamentally at odds with the biblical teaching that all humans are created in God’s image. The logical entailment of this claim is that only Jews under the old covenant and Christians under the New Covenant would be participants in “God’s image.” The anthropological, theological, and even ethical repercussions of this error are manifold and catastrophic.^[52]

Sadly, the errors with this approach to the imago dei do not remain in anthropology, but they infect theology proper. The Christotelic model posits that the incarnation of the Son discloses true humanity and the fullness of the imago dei for the first time, revealing that humanity had been created in the Son’s image from the beginning. To substantiate this notion, Cortez appeals to divine timelessness, according to which there is no distinction in God’s perspective between a time when the Son was incarnate and a time when he was not incarnate. We find the rejection of a logical distinction between the divine Son’s life apart from the incarnation and the same Son’s having become incarnate to be a fatal theological error.^[53] When its entailments are considered, this move collapses the Creator-creature distinction, thus eroding the proper starting point for all faithful theological reflection.^[54] This model conspicuously lacks a classical/orthodox doctrine of God.

The Bible teaches that the Son is indeed the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), and the exact imprint of his nature (Heb 1:3); however, such texts reveal divine processions, not missions.^[55] This vital biblical-theological distinction is lost in Cortez’s account of the incarnation, and as a result, the Son’s procession cannot be logically distinguished from his mission. Instead, we argue texts like Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:3 do not imply Christ is the archetypal man, rather they reveal the Son’s eternal generation/begotteness. Missions reveal processions, they do not ground processions.

A “prooftext” often cited by proponents of the Christotelic image approach is Romans 8:29, which reads: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” They find Paul’s phrase “conformed to the image of his Son” to support their conclusion that humans were made in the Son’s image from the beginning, because Christians are being restored/conformed to the image of the Son. We would note that Paul is by no means indicating here that the image of God exclusively belongs to the Son, nor is he revealing humanity was always created in the Son’s image. We know this because Paul predicates the image in this context on the Son’s human nature when he says the Son is the “firstborn among many brothers.” In other words, because of Christ’s perfect obedience unto death, those who are “in Christ” are united to or conformed into his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and ultimately, his glorification. Therefore, Paul is saying the exact same thing in Romans 8:29 that he does in Colossians 3:10-11: “You have put off the old self [man] with its practices and have put on the new self [man], which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here [in Christ] there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” In Ephesians, Paul says something rather similar: “Put off your old self [man] . . . and . . . put on the new self [man], created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22, 24).

Notice first, how image and likeness are virtual synonyms in the parallel passages above. And second, the image that is being restored in these passages is said to be after the likeness of “God” and “Creator.” So, when the “us” of Genesis 1:26 (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is aligned with the “God” and “Creator” language in Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24, we conclude the image is reflective of the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, not only is humanity created in the image of the triune God, but this image (an office, not a “manifestation of God’s personal being”) is whole and healthy in the state of integrity, because human nature was not yet corrupted by sin.

In place of Cortez’s model, we find Bavinck is correct to contend that “the Son is not only the mediator of reconciliation (mediator reconciliationis) on account of sin, but even apart from sin he is the mediator of union (mediator unionis) between God and his creation. He is not only the exemplary cause (causa exemplaris) but also the final cause (causa finalis) of creation.”^[56] The language of exemplary and final cause is vital to comprehend, as Bavinck uses it to suggest the telos of creation is inherently Christological. For the Son is preeminent over creation (Col 1:15–20). It is therefore proper and fitting to appropriate to the Son preeminence over creation as the “Image of God.” Bavinck rightly adds, however, that God’s telos for the imago dei will be fulfilled only when “humanity in its entirety — as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation — only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God.”^[57] He clarifies what he means by “fully finished image” when he adds, “the image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be,” and as a result, “Humanity cannot be conceived as a completed organism unless it is united and epitomized in one head. In the covenant of grace Christ has that position, and he is the head of the church; in the covenant of works that position is occupied by Adam.”^[58] Bavinck is assuming and explicating here the idea that the image as an office (e.g., prophet, priest, king) is demonstrated and realized as the whole of humanity (each member equally representing God) spreads out across the glorified cosmos to God’s glory and praise. It is not, therefore, God’s personal being that is manifested in the imago dei, but humanity’s telos — both form and function — that is realized.  

A crucial point for the purposes of this essay is how Bavinck pins the full realization of the imago dei in the completed Covenant of Works (CoW), and ultimately, the Covenant of Grace (CoG) in Christ as the Last Adam. Since the CoW/CoG is the pathway to glorification, the glorified image of God is found in humanity living under their faithful covenant head, who blazes the trail to glory. Those created in God’s image need a faithful federal representative, not necessarily the Son’s incarnation. The incarnation becomes necessary once humanity breaks covenant with God in Adam. We therefore strongly disagree with the notion that “everything we think we know about humanity must be reinterpreted in light of the supernatural telos we see in Jesus.”^[59] Any proposal that makes the image of God synonymous with the image of Adam/Christ fundamentally confuses God’s restoration of his image in fallen man for the image and likeness of Adam/Christ. Neither humanity nor the image is somehow incomplete until the incarnation of Christ. This undermines the integrity of the CoW, and locates the human problem in either human nature or the lack of revelation, rather than in human rebellion against God’s goodness and authority. The clearest statements of the Son’s incarnational mission in Scripture refer explicitly to the need for salvation and redemption from sin (Gal 4:3–5; John 1–18; 3:16–18; Phil 2:6–11). The Nicene Creed captures this as well with its language that Christ assumed human nature and came down from heaven “for us and for our salvation.” If the image is found in the divine life of the Son and is only understood in his incarnation, then humanity and the imago dei are rendered incomplete without the Son’s incarnation. Therefore, if recent Christotelic treatments of the image are accurate, then Adam and Eve were incomplete and incapable of keeping the Creation Covenant and the CoW by nature and design. We find this notion fundamentally irreconcilable with Scripture. Adam’s disobedience, not his created nature, is the problem, and Christ’s person and work is the solution.  

Contemporary Confusion: Citing the Male-Female Gender Distinction as Symbolizing/Imaging the Creator-creature Distinction

Since male and female are both created in the image of the triune God, the dominion of mankind over the rest of creation symbolically reflects the triune God’s dominion over creation. This is what it means to be created in the imago dei. While on the one hand, some in our day (as evidenced in the previous section) are collapsing the Creator-creature distinction in defining the image in relation to the incarnation, others imprecisely speak of “differing natures” between male and female, or even invoke the Creator-creature distinction as the archetype for the male and female relationship. We do not find this error to be as dangerous as the previous, but we do find it to undermine the essential equality shared by men and women that its proponents claim to want to uphold. We will return to two recent books, the first by Michael Clary, and the second by Michael Foster/Bnonn Tennant that were previously reviewed in Eikon, not to beat a dead horse, but to demonstrate how the essence-existence distinction may bring some closure to these discussions. 

Michael Clary. In his otherwise insightful book God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality, Clary claims men and women have “differing natures,”^[60] and he does so after connecting gender roles to the Creator-creature distinction. While we appreciate his quickness to qualify such a claim with the assurance that “this does not mean that men are more like God than women, or that women are less like God than men,” we find it theologically misguided to claim that the “creator-creature distinction is mirrored in the sexual differences between men and women.”^[61] As natural complementarians, we resonate strongly with Clary’s desire to defend the biblical practice of referring to God in strictly masculine terms.^[62] We also are in agreement that God’s design for male headship in the church and home, and the fittingness of men to lead in society are both natural and good. Speaking of differing natures between men and women, however, and especially claiming gender distinctions reflect the Creator-creature distinction, are significant categorical errors. 

The position that men and women have differing natures opens the door for the equal and opposite error of EFS/ERAS,^[63] because while rightly avoiding the mistake of reading creaturely realities back into the nature of God, this wrongly cites the ontological transcendence of Creator over creation as being symbolized in distinct male and female nature(s) and roles. Instead, as Samuel Parkison argues in his review of Clary’s work, men and women “do not have different natures . . . they substantiate a common nature (i.e., human nature) in distinctly gendered ways — an individual existence of the human essence is always either male or female. Unfortunately, Clary’s imprecision of language opens the possibility that he intends to communicate that men and women are of a different ontological kind.”^[64] It is this very miscommunication (we are convinced Clary does not intend to make such an argument) we seek to correct and avoid by clearly distinguishing between existence and essence. The need for this we trust will be further proven as we move into Christology below.

Michael Foster and Bnonn Tennant. Foster and Tennant, in their popular work It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity, likewise cite the Creator-creature distinction as being imaged or symbolized in gender distinctions and maintain:

Man is the image of God; yet also, male and female are an image of the creator and creation. . . . the principle of male and female doesn’t originate in Adam and Eve, but in God and creation. . . . What happens when [man] denies the distinction between God and creation? He continues following the devil in confusing, denying, and ultimately trying to obliterate the image of that divide.^[65]

Matt Damico has offered a salient response to this logic:

The distinction between God and his creation is absolute — there is an ontological chasm between God and man that finds no parallel among image bearers. Further, the Creator-creature distinction, in addition to highlighting the superiority of God over his creation, actually accentuates the similarities between men and women, not their differences: both bear the divine image, both are given the creation mandate, and both reside on the “creature” side of the distinction.^[66]

Both authors have since offered appreciative responses to Damico’s critique, and we wish to draw attention to Tennant’s in particular. He contends, “This is actually basic biblical symbolism . . . it should be obvious that the hierarchical, spiritual, and physical distinctions between men and women are symbolic of the distinction between creator and creation. As should it be obvious that symbols must not be confused with, or collapsed into, the ontology they symbolize.”^[67] While we are grateful for Tennant’s clarification that he and Foster only intend to use the Creator-creature distinction “symbolically,” not ontologically, we would reiterate that nowhere does the Bible invoke the Creator-creature distinction as being illustrated or symbolized in marriage/gender distinctions and/or roles.

If the marital relationship is patterned after the Creator-creature distinction, even “symbolically,” we find it to be an example of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too, because then gender is patterned after an ontological distinction, even admitting men and women have “differing natures,” while also saying they share in human nature. In his response, Tennant seems to imply that to not see gender distinctions as patterned after the Creator-creature distinction is to “sacralize androgyny.” This misses the point of Damico’s critique. One need not use the ontological distinction between God and his creation as symbolized in male and female distinctions to provide a robust (albeit biblically chasented) account of gender essentialism.

Curiously, Tennant cites Genesis 2:4–7 in defense of his position, arguing that Adam’s (literal) creation from the dust, combined with the reference in Genesis 2:4 to the “generations” (or “offspring”) of the earth means he was “physically formed from the earth, the dirt, the ground — which is his mother. And he is spiritually formed from heaven, from God — who is his father.”^[68] He then cites Job 1:21 and Psalm 139:13-15 as prooftexts which (in his mind) legitimize the language of “mother earth.” First, we agree that Adam was literally formed from the earth. But we disagree that Job 1:21 and Psalm 139:13–15 validate Foster/Tennant’s argument that the image of the Creator-creature divide is male and female. Recall that we have already established male and female are each equally created in the image of the triune God. In other words, the image does not reflect the divide between God and creation, but the equality of Father, Son, and Spirit over creation. Foster/Tennant argue they do not intend for such symbolism to reject the ontological equality of male and female, however to say that God as Creator is imaged by Adam, while mother earth/creation is imaged by Eve, decouples the imago dei. We would reiterate that Scripture is clear male and female are the image of God and therefore image or symbolize God’s authority over creation. We argue below for the fittingness of the Son in taking on a male gender (body and soul) as it pertains to both his eternal relation to the Father, and because only men can function as covenant heads. The Bible, however, does not cite Christ’s divine nature as Creator, but his shared human nature as incarnate Savior to ground headship/representation, and therein he sets the example for Christian husbands in relation to their wives. 

Far from being an argument from silence, we contend the incarnation and Christ’s headship over his bride (the church) is the anti-type of which the husband and wife relationship is the type. For Paul, the Christ-church union is the “profound mystery” to which marriage always points (Eph 5:31–32). Tennant wants to read the “hierarchical, spiritual, and physical distinctions between men and women as patterned after the Creator-creature distinction,” but the Bible instead stresses the husband’s covenantal headship is a type of the Christ-church union. In Christ, God the Son assumed human nature, therefore becoming a human “in every respect,” and is thus the head of the church, since he shares in the same nature as the people for which he gave his life. It was a necessary precondition that the divine Son assume a human nature in order to become the Savior and Redeemer of his corporate bride, to bridge the very Creator-creature distinction Clary/Foster/Tennant cite.

But Ephesians 5 is not the only place where Paul uses the language of headship in relation to Christ and gender distinctions/marriage. In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul writes, “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God . . . [man] is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (11:3, 7–9).^[69] Does this passage cite male headship as symbolizing the Creator-creature distinction? If, as we are convinced, the reference to Christ is predicated on his human nature, then is this not potentially an example of Paul teaching God’s (divine) nature over Christ (who is inferior as it relates to his humanity) as the archetype for gender roles in Scripture? We find such logic both unconvincing and problematic, because this text is not using the God-Christ connection as Paul uses the Christ-church union in precisely the same way. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul’s concern is that the Corinthians “maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you” (11:2). As is well-known, Corinth was a most perplexing and disordered church, and in chapter 11, one particular manifestation of this disorder is found in husbands and wives and/or men and women within the congregation eschewing cultural customs which displayed gender distinctions (see 1 Cor 11:10–16). Paul therefore ratifies the created order and instructs men and women to realign themselves with God’s design. We are thus in full agreement with Foster and Tennant when they interpret this passage as follows: “Authority flows downward from God, to Christ, to man, to his wife.”^[70]

This is where the distinction between Adam’s two forms of covenantal headship is crucial. Had Adam never sinned, humanity would not have needed Christ (according to his human nature) as a federal head. Because Adam sinned, a new and better representative before the throne of God is needed. So, when Paul teaches God is the head of Christ, he is assuming Christ is the Last Adam (cf. 1 Cor 15:45–49) under whose representational authority both Christian spouses now live in 11:3. When the church gathers, if gender distinctions are blurred or despised, or if marital order is cast aside, the corporate bride/body of Christ defames their Creator and Redeemer by rebelling against his design for men and women. When Paul writes that man is the image and glory of God, while woman is the glory of man, he is by no means suggesting women do not bear the image of God, or that they bear God’s image to a lesser degree. Paul is not addressing the essence of male or female generically, rather he is specifically arguing that when a man covers his head and a woman does not in the Corinthian church’s gatherings, each maligns the gospel by defaming God’s created order. Paul’s intention, then, is to recalibrate the Corinthian church’s disordered loves to realign with God’s design. Unlike Ephesians 5, which explicitly calls for Christian marriages to conform to the Christ-church union as a model for the husband-wife relationship, in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul is emphasizing the proper order: (1) God, (2) the federal headship of Christ over all humanity (including husbands and wives), and then (3) the covenantal headship of husbands in marriage.

To sum up, in Ephesians 5, Paul instructs husbands and wives to reflect the Christ-church union in their marriages. In 1 Corinthians 11, he is rebuking and correcting the Corinthians, urging them to: (1) realign with God’s creation order design for husbands and wives, and (2) readily display God’s goodness in gender by honoring cultural customs which admit and appropriately amplify such distinctions. In fact, the three phrases in 11:3: “the head of every man is Christ,” “the head of a wife is her husband,” and “the head of Christ is God,” are just what we would expect given the connections and distinctions between creation order, the CoW/CoG, and the covenant of marriage established previously. Since the CoW/CoG and the marriage covenant correspond with creation order, Christian men and women ought not act out or adorn themselves in church gatherings in ways that subvert God’s design.             

Our aim in drawing attention to this is for correction and unity, in that we find the error of citing the Creator-creature distinction here as following the grain of created order, but misplacing the type-antitype. In short, we find such arguments to be earnestly pursuing both the biblical idiom and the reality undergirding the biblical teaching. As both Parkison and Damico have pointed out in their reviews of Clary and Foster/Tennant, we find it both refreshing and invigorating to read these authors’ non-anxious approach to biblical sexuality. Even though we disagree with the usage of the Creator-creature distinction as being imaged in gender distinctions, we resonate with their indefatigable commitment to follow the grain of created order. Below, we respond to the unbelief of feminist theologians as expressed in manufacturing a so-called “problem of the male Savior,” because such efforts kick against the goads of both Scripture and Nature.^[71] We rejoice in the shared commitment we have with those we critique in this section to unashamedly confess the goodness of God’s design for male headship in the CoW and the covenant of marriage prior to and after sin. It is indeed good to be a man (and a woman), and we find the gender essentialism (essence-existence distinction) and covenantal distinctions (Creation Covenant, CoW, and marriage covenant), combined with the relationship between the image of God and the dominion mandate we unpack in this essay, provide a firm dogmatic rationale for holding all these pieces together coherently.

Now that we have established these crucial distinctions, we are ready to move into the doctrine of the person of Christ where the metaphysics of the essence-existence distinction and the observations regarding covenant and creation will be applied to the question of the male Savior’s ability to save women. Here, we critique the distinct errors of Marc Cortez, Amy Peeler, and a host of feminist thinkers as we seek to offer a better way forward.

In Every Respect: The Son’s Assumption of Male Humanity

The author of Hebrews makes a clear case for the necessity of the Son of God’s true humanity. If the assumed humanity of the Son is not the same as those he came to save, then he is not qualified to be the Savior. He says, “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17). According to this text, if Jesus Christ’s humanity is not like the humanity of those he came to save “in every respect,” then cannot be a “merciful and faithful high priest,” cannot “make propitiation for the sins of the people.” Gregory of Nazianzus summarized the point well in his famous line to Cledonius: “Whatever is not assumed is not healed.”^[72] In order to save Adam and his posterity, the Lord Jesus Christ has to be everything Adam was, and he had to succeed where Adam failed.

But what about Eve? What about women who need saving? Did Jesus need to be everything Eve was? The most enduring articulation of this question comes in the infamous words of feminist Rosemary Radford Reuther: “Can a male savior save women?”^[73] She answers no. In her view, the inescapable maleness of Christ positions Christianity against women and their liberation in irredeemable ways. Since that time, this question has been ubiquitous in feminist literature, representing the centerpiece of feminist theological revisionism.^[74] Some feminist theologians find the problem without solution and therefore abandon Christianity altogether rather than attempting to “save” it.^[75] Others take an approach more in line with the liberal German theologian Schleiermacher in their optimism that Christianity can be preserved as a true religion if only some of its core, historic commitments are revised. Thus, it has become commonplace among feminist theologians to argue that Jesus was, in fact, androgynous. That is, the human nature assumed by the Son of God was both male and female.^[76] Of course, the idea of an androgynous Jesus cannot stand up to the scrutiny of faithful exegesis because of the clarity and consistency with which the Old Testament anticipation and New Testament presentation declares him to be a man, not a woman.

So what are we to make of the so-called problem of the male Savior? Given the need for the Redeemer of humanity to be like humanity “in every respect,” does the maleness of Christ present an obstacle to traditional Christianity? We stand in continuity with the prophets and apostles and with the consensus of Christian theological orthodoxy across all Christian traditions in saying, emphatically, no. The fact that the Son of God assumed human nature as a male is not a problem to be solved but a truth to be celebrated.

Why can we so confidently assert that Jesus’ maleness does not jeopardize his ability to save all who will believe in him, both men and women? At one level, this is a simple matter of believing the Bible to be true. Scripture says Jesus is a male, and Scripture says he saves women, even going so far as to say that the very real differences between men and women are of no consequence in terms of the soteriological benefits of the New Covenant (Gal 3:28).^[77] Nevertheless, it is legitimate to inquire into the coherence of this claim, so long as the inquiry is a matter of faith seeking understanding, as opposed to a matter of demanding understanding as the basis for faith (see Prov 3:5–6). We believe Scripture itself leads readers to think about such questions as the maleness of Christ in relation to the claim that he is the vicarious substitute for all humanity, men and women, as a “merciful and faithful high priest.”

The essence-existence distinction, discussed in some detail above, gives a wonderfully coherent and biblically faithful account regarding how Jesus can be a particular human being, complete with a wide variety of particularizing distinctives, all the while being like all human beings “in every respect.” We contend that when the writer of Hebrews declares the necessity of Jesus’ solidarity with those he came to save, he is saying that Jesus had to have all of the essential properties of humanity. That is, the concrete, particular existence of Jesus of Nazareth (according to the human nature he assumed) had to be a genuine instantiation of the essence of humanity. Jesus’ maleness does not differentiate him from females essentially. Rather, his particular maleness demonstrates his solidarity with all gendered human beings, male and female, because being gendered as either male or female is an essential property of humanity. In principle, the question of Jesus’ ability to save women is no different than the question of how this particular human being, whose body is composed of “this flesh and these bones,” this soul rather than that one, can save other human beings who have their own flesh and bones, their own souls. The question is one of the particular (human existence) and the universal (human essence). Jesus can save particular human beings whose existence is distinct from his own because he shares in common with them the essence of humanity.

The notion of shared essence is the preferred way that the Christian tradition has spoken about both Jesus’ unity with the Father as divine Son in eternal relation and his unity with mankind as our Savior. The Nicene Creed famously declares the Son to be of the same essence as the Father with its use of the Greek word homoousios (homo = same; ousia = essence).^[78] Of course, saying that the Son is of one essence with the Father means that he shares identically and numerically the same divine essence because, in God, essence and existence are the same. Later, the Definition of Chalcedon takes up the word homoousios. The Chalcedonian fathers affirm that the Son is homoousios with the Father according to the Godhead, and they add that he is homoousios with us according to the manhood.^[79] To be homoousios with the rest of humanity is different than being homoousios with deity simply due to the difference between the Creator and the creature. In the case of all creatures, including humans, existence is distinct from essence. Thus, the only way to be of the same essence with humanity is to be distinct in concrete existence.

As we have attempted to demonstrate above, the essence-existence distinction is stated in the Genesis account of creation in the idiom of “kind.” We find this distinction further clarified in the Scriptural account of the creation of both male and female in the image of God and the shared dominion of men and women over the rest of creation on behalf of God who made them. The so-called “problem” of the male Savior is a problem fabricated by minds held captive to the spirit of the age. The male Savior can most certainly save all men and women who believe in him, as the Scriptures testify. The only obstacle to experiencing the saving benefits of the male Savior’s atoning work is not one’s gender, but one’s unbelief.

The Necessity of Christ’s Maleness for Covenantal Headship

All of this raises a further question: was it necessary for the Son of God to assume male human nature? Since all that is required vis-a-vis gender to be truly human “in every respect” is that the Redeemer be particularly gendered as either male or female, might it have been possible for the Savior to have been a woman? Could a woman have saved people from their sins? We believe the biblical answer to this question is a clear and resounding no, for two reasons.

First, there is a fittingness to the Son’s incarnation as a man owing to his eternal identity as the Son of God. It would be confusing, to say the least, for the eternal Son to enter history and live a human life as a daughter. The Redeemer would then be both a Son and a daughter (in two different respects). The theological mistakes that result would be manifold. Imagine how much easier it would be to conceive of Christology on Nestorian terms in which the Redeemer is two persons based on this scenario. The Chalcedonian repetition of the phrase “one and the same Son” to refer to the unity of Christ’s person contra Nestorianism would be a muddled phrase, nonsensical at worst, if the Savior was both Son and daughter. Further, consider how much more confusing a proper understanding of human gender would be if we were committed to the belief that a Son became a daughter. Uniqueness of the incarnation aside, this would result in massive confusion over the fixed difference between men and women according to God’s created design. No. The fact that the eternal Son of God entered history and lived a human life as a human Son is supremely fitting.^[80]

Secondly, the Son of God had to assume human nature as a male because God has ordered creation in such a way that only men function as covenant heads. This is owing to the elective purpose of God who “made them male and female” with gender-specific ordered relations in view. In the argument above regarding covenantal structures, we sought to distinguish between the dominion men and women share over the created order as bearers of the imago dei (Creation Covenant) and the kinds of covenantal headship Adam bears in relation to all mankind (CoW) and in relation to his wife (marriage covenant). We also sought to show how Christ, as the last Adam, succeeded where Adam failed and became the covenant head of his elect in the New Covenant/CoG. Thus, the essential solidarity of Christ with all those he came to save (men and women) is not the only relevant factor with respect to the specific gender of the Son’s assumed humanity. The Son had to be gendered as either male or female to be truly human; he had to be gendered as a male to be the last Adam and federal head of the redeemed people of God.

Contemporary Confusion: Essence-existence Conflation in Christology

Marc Cortez. In his influential monograph Resourcing Theological Anthropology, Cortez is reluctant to affirm the reality of a universal human nature as ontologically prior to the existence of particular human beings. He takes pains to ensure that his argument is not dependent on such a commitment. In his chapter entitled, “The Male Messiah: Sexuality, Embodiment, and the Image of God,” Cortez takes up the question of whether a male Savior can save women. He considers the possibility that the Son’s solidarity with both men and women might be grounded in a universal human nature, only to dismiss this view as problematic. He says, “The challenge of this approach for many is that it requires the existence of a universal human nature in which we all somehow participate.”^[81] He goes on to propose another answer, one he believes to better preserve a “universal/particular distinction.” Following the work of David Bentley Hart,^[82] Cortez suggests that a universal human nature cannot be prior to the existence of particular humans. Rather, the order of the relation runs the other way. For Hart (and presumably Cortez), universal human nature is the effect of the totality of the particulars. Cortez explains:

In other words, the universality of humanity derives from the very particularity and multiplicity of all those individuals who comprise the totality of the humanum, which is itself grounded in Jesus. Rather than leading with the undifferentiated essence and then dealing with particularity as a problem, this approach emphasizes particularity as essential to being human.^[83]

The fact that this view names particularity as essential should alert wary readers that this is a radical departure from the classical essence-existence distinction. This way of framing things, in fact, turns the classical understanding completely on its head. It so redefines the notion of essence as to render it unintelligible. In historical accounts of essence, as well as most contemporary philosophical models of essentialism, the essence names what the particulars have in common a priori and therefore cannot be particular itself. In this account by Cortez, the very distinction between the common essence and the particular individuals is collapsed, as what is essential seems to be the sum total of all particulars a posteriori. On the classical account, rational knowers can apprehend the reality of the universal (essence) by observation of what is common among the particulars (existing beings). This is the way of knowing. But this is distinguished from the way of being in which the universal is ontologically prior to the particulars. To use the idiom of Genesis 1, the individual beings are created “according to their kind.”

Furthermore, it is difficult to see how this view of the universal/particular distinction solves the so-called problem of Christ’s maleness and his ability to save females. In fact, it seems to undermine the particularity of Christ’s maleness altogether. For Cortez, Christ is the archetype of humanity and the true imago dei. If, as he suggests, the totality of the humanum (the universal) is comprised of the multiplicity of all individuals, and if the humanum is grounded in Jesus, it is impossible to maintain the particularity of Christ’s maleness at all. The totality of the humanum consists of male and female. As the ontological ground of the humanum, Christ would have to be the basis for every particular, male and female. This leaves one to wonder if an androgynous Savior (having the properties of both male and female humanity) is the logical entailment of Hart’s view (which, again, seems to be the view favored by Cortez). Of course, this is not what Cortez wishes to suggest, and he would rightly reject the idea of Jesus as some kind of androgyne. But this account of the relation between the universal and the particular suggests just such a view. We contend the only coherent way to preserve the particularity of Jesus’ maleness alongside his solidarity with both men and women is to uphold the classical essence-existence distinction.

Amy Peeler. In her recent book Women and the Gender of God, Peeler takes up the question of how the male Savior can save women. Peeler acknowledges with appreciation the “intriguing and often fruitful speculation” of radical feminist theologians who have proposed that Jesus may have been intersex in such a way that he bore the distinct features of both male and female humanity in his own flesh.^[84] She ultimately rejects this view, recognizing it to be inattentive to the clear biblical portrayal of Jesus as a man.

Even in her affirmation of the true maleness of Jesus, we find Peeler’s account to be lacking. In her view, the maleness of Jesus was by no means necessary. As an egalitarian, Peeler would reject the notion that only men are appointed by God as covenant heads. She also would reject the argument that the Son’s assumption of human nature as a male is particularly fitting given his eternal identity as Son of God the Father. For Peeler, the logic runs the other way. The names Father and Son for the first and second person of the Trinity are fitting precisely because the second person assumed humanity as a male and was born to a human mother. While contending that we should favor the revealed names of Father and Son, Peeler suggests that feminine or gender-neutral names for the first and second persons of the Trinity are not improper and can be appropriate because the names Father and Son are metaphorical. The reason these masculine names for God are given in Scripture is simply because of the historical reality of the incarnation. It would be confusing to call the second person of the Trinity “daughter” since, in the incarnation, he is a Son. Furthermore, it would be confusing to call the first person of the Trinity “Mother” since, in the incarnation, the Son has Mary as his mother.

We find this argument to flip the logic of Scripture on its head. We contend, against the current of feminist and egalitarian literature, that human sonship is the analog to the eternal sonship of the second person of the Trinity in relation to the first. That is, the second person of the Trinity is not named Son as a metaphorical extension of human sonship. This would make the analog of sonship run from the creature to the naming of the divine person, and the name of the second person of the Trinity would be a mere figure of speech. On the contrary, just as human fatherhood is an analog to the original Fatherhood of God, as Ephesians 3:14–15 makes explicit, so human sonship is an analogy to the original Sonship of the eternal Son in relation to the Father. Peeler’s reversal of this paradigm represents a failure to understand the diversity of ways analogical language functions in Scripture and in theological discourse. Not all analogical language is figurative. Some theological predications are proper, meaning the primary referent is God and the analogical reflection is in creation.^[85]

Peeler’s account of Christ’s maleness suffers from another problem as well. Having rejected the common feminist solution to the problem of Christ’s maleness (appeal to androgyny), Peeler proposes another way to account for his ability to save women. For Peeler, Jesus is a “male who became embodied like no other.”^[86] Because Mary was a virgin when she conceived, there was no male involved in Jesus’ conception in her womb. Therefore, the male flesh of Jesus is female-only derived. For Peeler, Jesus’ unique connection to female flesh qualifies him to save women: “In short, a male-embodied Savior with female-provided flesh saves all.”^[87]

It is not clear how a female-derived flesh renders Jesus’ particular male flesh a suitable representative to women. The so-called problem of Christ’s maleness, as expressed in feminist literature, is based on the fact that he is male, and the derivation of his male flesh from a female  only does not change his maleness. As Peeler acknowledges, Jesus is a man, not a woman. It is hard to imagine this solution to be satisfying to those who find Christ’s maleness to be a serious problem for women. Even so, Peeler’s account also suffers from a failure to understand the essence-existence distinction and therefore a failure to understand the ontology of gendered embodiment. The so-called “problem” of Christ’s male flesh and his ability to save women assumes that men and women are not of the same essence. It assumes that men are of one essence and women are of another essence rather than that men and women share the same essence as humans. The argument runs thus: the Savior has to be like those he came to save “in every respect,” and this necessarily means he has to be like men to save men and like women to save women. But we have already shown that a proper understanding of human nature in the category of essence makes the so-called problem of Christ’s male flesh go away entirely. The Savior does not have to be like women in the particularity of their female gender in order to save women. Rather, he has to be like humans in the essential properties of their shared human nature to save both men and women, and he must be male to properly act as their covenant head.

Conclusion

In this essay, we have sought to prove the classic/Thomistic distinction between essence and existence corresponds faithfully with holy Scripture. To do so, we synthesized this model with the key covenantal distinctions in the creation account — the Creation Covenant (which includes vital doctrines like the image of God and the Dominion Mandate), the Covenant of Works, and the marriage covenant. We find this approach provides a firm dogmatic foundation for gender essentialism and even natural complementarianism, granting theological precision to aid us in not conflating these categories to the detriment of our anthropology and Christology.

We pursued our argument in six steps: (1) All existing humans are the same with respect to essence, but they can be distinguished by the particularity of their essential properties and their accidental properties, gender being an essential property; (2) Male and female are each created in the image of the triune God from and for one another, and thus share equally in the Dominion Mandate over the rest of creation; (3) Adam was the covenant head of Eve in two respects, both as her representative before God – a federal representation which included the entire human race – and exclusively as her covenant head in marriage; (4) God’s covenantal arrangement for male headship in marriage –and the church – correspond with reality and thus reflect creation order; (5) It was necessary for the Son of God to assume human nature as a male due to the divinely ordained strictures of covenant headship; (6) In assuming a human nature, God the Son incarnate became a human in every respect, therefore the maleness of the Son’s human flesh in no way undermines his ability to be the Savior of both men and women who receive him by faith.

^[1] Throughout the essay, we will use the terms essence and existence precisely and consistently as defined herein. Other related terms will appear as well. Ontology refers to the being of existing things and includes aspects of both essence and existence under its purview. Thus, the term ontology is broader in scope than essence and existence. The term nature will be used, at times, as a synonym with essence, as when we speak of human nature as a universal. The term nature can also be used to correspond more closely with existence, as in when we speak about the particular human nature assumed by the Son of God. This use of nature, with both universal and particular frames of reference, is common in classical philosophical and theological literature and corresponds with fine distinctions that are beyond the scope of this essay to discuss at length.

^[2] In this essay, we are intentionally avoiding the vast body of literature on gender theory and different ways to account for gender essentialism. Our aim is to give a positive account of gender as essential to humanity on the basis of biblical teaching and the use of classic conceptual terms. We will leave it to others to sort out where this proposal fits among the categories of gender essentialist proposals. For a survey of different types of gender essentialism, see Jordan Steffaniak, “Saving Masculinity and Femininity from the Morgue: A Defense of Gender Essentialism” Southeastern Theological Review, 12.1 (Spring, 2021): 15–35.

^[3] Some accounts of gender essentialism speak in a way that obscures the unity of man and woman as belonging to the same universal human nature while also holding to some kind of gender essentialism. The result is that men and women are different kinds of beings essentially, which raises significant problems for proper understandings of imago dei, covenant, and Christology.

^[4] Feminist theologians have long argued that Jesus of Nazareth was not male, nor was he particularly female, but he was androgynous (a combination of the Greek words for male, andros, and female, gyne), having the particular properties constitutive of both men and women in his assumed human nature. Consider the words of Virginia Ramey Mollenkot: “[T]he whole issue concerning modern woman’s representation by and in Christ is solved by the realization that Jesus is clearly depicted in the Bible not as a male, but as androgyne” (“The Androgyny of Jesus,” Daughters of Sarah Magazine, March 1976).

^[5] This is the argument advanced by Amy Peeler in Women and the Gender of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022), 118–151. Peeler argues that Jesus’ male nature raises the difficult question of his ability to represent females. Her solution is to point out that his male human flesh was female-only derived because he was born of Mary without a human father. The virgin conception thus grounds Jesus’ solidarity with women.

^[6] Lloyd P. Gerson, From Plato to Platonism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 9-10.

^[7] Craig Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition:Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2018) and Idem., Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2021).

^[8] Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011) and Idem., Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew (Downers Grove: IVP, 2021).

^[9] For example, Boersma claims, “The Bible cannot be interpreted without prior metaphysical commitments, and we need Christian Platonism as an interpretive lens in order to uphold Scripture’s teaching” (Five Things, 39)

^[10] For the distinction between conceptual terminology and judgments, see David Yeago, “The New Testament and Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis” Pro Ecclesia, 3.2 (1994): 152–164.

^[11] The online think-tank Christ Over All published a theme on the issue of Christian Platonism in August 2024. For a helpful introduction to Christian Platonism written at the popular level, see Robert Lyon, “What is Christian Platonism? (Part 1): An Introduction in Three Steps,” Christ Over All (August 5, 2024), https://christoverall.com/article/longform/what-is-christian-platonism-part-1-an-introduction-in-three-steps/. For Lyon’s critique of Christian Platonism, see “What is Christian Platonism? (Part 2): A Preliminary Critique,” Christ Over All (August 6, 2024), https://christoverall.com/article/longform/what-is-christian-platonism-part-2-a-preliminary-critique/. For a critique of Christian Platonism as undermining Sola Scriptura, see Michael Carlino, “Know Scripture, No Need for Platonism: Revelational Epistemology has Priority over Remnantal Sophistry,” Christ Over All (August 26, 2024), https://christoverall.com/article/concise/know-scripture-no-need-for-platonism-revelational-epistemology-has-priority-over-remnantal-sophistry/. Finally, for a critique of the hermeneutics of Christian Platonism, see Knox Brown, “The Wild, Wild West, The Sirens of Rome, and the Hermeneutics of Christian Platonism,” Christ Over All (August 7, 2024), https://christoverall.com/article/concise/the-wild-wild-west-the-sirens-of-rome-and-hermeneutics-of-christian-platonism/. The above Christ Over All essays were accessed Oct. 1, 2024.

^[12] ST I, QQ. 1–26

^[13] ST I, QQ. 27–43

^[14] ST I, QQ. 75–76

^[15] Thomas Joseph White says of this Thomistic distinction, “[It is] the central article in Aquinas’s treatment of divine simplicity…. It addresses what he takes to be the most fundamental type of composition in created beings, more profound and universal than the form-matter distinction.” White goes on to note that the essence-existence distinction is “one of [Aquinas’s] more original philosophical contributions to the history of human thought.” See Thomas Joseph White, The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God, Vol. 19 of Thomistic Ressourcement Series (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 249.

^[16] Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of essence and existence is taken up by many of the leading thinkers among the post-Reformation Reformed Orthodox. For definitions of these terms as they are put to use by the Reformed Orthodox, see Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2017). Muller’s entries for essentia, esse, and essential dei summarize the common understanding of the Reformed Orthodox on this matter.

^[17] ST I, Q.3, A.3, Respondeo.

^[18] To anticipate our later discussion of Christology, this is precisely why the Definition of Chalcedon says that the Lord Jesus Christ is “consubstantial with us according to the manhood.” “Consubstantial” translates the Greek homoousios where homo means “same” and ousia means “essence.” Quite literally, the Chalcedonian fathers are saying that the Lord Jesus Christ is of the same essence (humanity) as those he came to save.

^[19] ST I, Q.3, A.3, Respondeo.

^[20] This Aristotelian account of metaphysics is called hylomorphism from the Greek words for matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Thomas modifies the Aristotelian account when it comes to human beings by saying that the soul, which is the form of the body, has a subsistence independent of its matter. This is necessary to account for the intermediate state in which the soul persists after the death of the body. A robust account of Thomistic hylomorphism is well beyond the scope of this essay.

^[21] ST I, Q.3, A.4, Respondeo.

^[22] ST I, Q.3, A.5, Respondeo.

^[23] For a helpful discussion of the way the biblical text “pressures” its readers to explain its revealed truths in a coherent way, see C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics” Pro Ecclesia, 11.3 (Summer, 2002): 295–312.

^[24] Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 32n2.

^[25] Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 187.

^[26] Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 187.

^[27] We find the Reformed tradition has correctly affirmed an original covenant of works/Adamic covenant. The covenant of works is defined well by Richard Barcellos, “The covenant of works is that divinely sanctioned commitment or relationship God imposed upon Adam in the garden of Eden. Adam was a sinless representative of mankind (i.e., a public person), and an image-bearing son of God. The covenant God made with him was for the bettering of man’s state, conditioned upon Adam’s obedience, with a penalty for disobedience. Here we have: 1) sovereign, divine imposition; 2) representation by Adam (i.e., federal headship), a sinless image-bearing son of God; 3) a conditional element (i.e., obedience); 4) a penalty for disobedience (i.e., death); and 5) a promise of reward (i.e., eschatological potential).” Getting the Garden Right: Adam’s Work and God’s Rest in Light of Christ (Cape Coral, FL: Founder’s Press, 2023), 38.

^[28] A crucial prooftext for understanding Genesis 2:15–17 as covenantal is Hosea 6:7, which reads: “But like Adam [Israel and Judah] transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” Passages like this one give sound biblical and theological grounds to conclude God made a covenant with Adam as the federal representative of all humanity, one that Adam failed to keep.

^[29] Harrison Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2024), 27.

^[30] Herman Bavinck captures this well, “God created the woman from the man and for the man (1 Cor. 11:8–9), but also simultaneously unto the man, even as he created the man unto the woman. God made two out of one, so that hecould then make the two into one, one soul and one flesh. This kind of fellowship is possible only between two. From the very beginning, marriage was and is by virtue of its essential nature monogamous, an essential bond between one man and woman woman, and therefore also a life-long covenant, indissoluble by human authority; therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt. 19:6, 8). A man separates from his parents, forsakes father and mother, and cleaves to his wife; but he never abandons his wife! Love for parents is surpassed in both intensity and extent by love for one’s wife. Such love is stronger than death. No other love resembles God’s love so closely, or reaches such height.” The Christian Family (Grand Rapids, MI: The Christian’s Library Press, 2012), 7.

^[31] See Joe Rigney’s essay, “Indicatives, Imperatives, and Applications: Reflections on Natural, Biblical, and Cultural Complementarianism,” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 4.1 (Spring 2022): 28–36.

^[32] When we use the term Covenant of Grace (CoG) in this essay, we use it synonymously with the concept of the New Covenant. We are convinced the CoG was first promised in Genesis 3:15 but not inaugurated until Christ’s death (Luke 22:20). We maintain that every saint throughout all redemptive history is rightly conceived of as members of the New Covenant/CoG. However, prior to Pentecost and the inauguration of the New Covenant in Christ’s person and work, the CoG was not constituted, so we find saints who hoped in the promised Seed of the woman are proleptically members of the CoG (Heb 11:39–40).

^[33] The term “natural complementarianism,” to our knowledge, is coined by Joe Rigney, who uses it as a synonym with “broad” or “thick” complementarianism. We prefer the language of “natural complementarianism,” for the reasons Rigney provides in his explanation: “For natural complementarians, the biblical restriction of the ministerial office to qualified men simply cuts with the grain of God’s design in creation. Biblical imperatives are built on divine indicatives. Nature and Scripture speak with one voice. Male headship in the home is unavoidable; it’s not a command, but a baseline reality, a fact, and the only question is whether a husband will be a faithful head or an unfaithful head. Likewise, male leadership in the church is simply an outworking of the way that God made the world and the way that he is remaking it in Christ. The Pauline restriction in 1 Timothy 2 is built on God’s design as testified in Genesis 1–2 and manifested in the concrete ways that he has made men different from women. Thus, for natural complementarians, male leadership outside the home and the church is normal and expected, and is why the Bible regards a nation ruled by women and children as a sign of God’s judgment (Isaiah 3:12).” “Empathy, Feminism, and the Church,” American Reformer (last modified January 26, 2024), https://americanreformer.org/2024/01/empathy-feminism-and-the-church/. For more on natural complementarianism, see Doug Ponder and Bryan Laughlin’s essay “Complementarianism and the Rise of Second-Wave Evangelical Feminism,” Sola Ecclesia (February 26, 2024), https://solaecclesia.org/articles/complementarians-and-the-rise-of-second-wave-evangelical-feminism/ and Ponder’s essay(s) “Different From and Different For,” American Reformer (last modified, April 5, 2024), https://americanreformer.org/2024/04/different-from-and-different-for/, and “A Biblical Vision of the Sexes: Harmonious Asymmetry,” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 6.1 (Spring 2022), 28–40.

^[34] Positive laws are those laws added to the natural or moral law. They are dependent upon the will of God. The first example of such a law is in God’s probationary commandment with Adam as recorded in Genesis 2:15–17. Positive laws are “good because God commands them.” Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols., ed. James T. Dennison, Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–97), II: 174. They become righteous, because they are commanded by God (because God said so), and since they become righteous by the will of God, they can also be abrogated. Other examples of positive laws in Scripture are the old covenant rite of circumcision, the ceremonial and sacrificial laws in the Mosaic covenant, and in the NT, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are positive laws.

^[35] We are in full agreement with Francis Turretin’s understanding of pactum merit: “If therefore upright man in that state had obtained this merit, it must not be understood properly and rigorously. Since man has all things from and owes all to God, he can seek from him nothing as his own by right, nor can God be a debtor to him—not by condignity of work and from its intrinsic value (because whatever that may be, it can bear no proportion to the infinite reward of life), but from the pact and the liberal promise of God (according to which man had the right of demanding the reward to which God had of his own accord bound himself) and in comparison with the covenant of grace (which rests upon the sole merit of Christ, by which he acquired for us the right to life). However, this demanded antecedently a proper and personal obedience by which he obtained both his own justification before God and life, as the stipulated reward of his labors.” Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I: 578.

^[36] Peter Gentry, “Humanity as the Divine Image in Genesis 1:26–28,” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 2.1 (Spring 2020), 56­–70.

^[37] Tom Schreiner rightly notes that the author of Hebrews was well-aware of this sonship/kingship connection and argues, “Hence, the author has not randomly found the word Son and applied it to Jesus. He applies a text to Jesus that relates to kingship, so Jesus fulfills the covenant promise that a man will always reign on David’s throne. Sonship is again tied closely to ruling and reigning,” Hebrews: Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), 65. For more on this, see Robert Jamieson’s excellent treatment on the twofold sonship of Christ in The Paradox of Sonship: Christology in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021).

^[38] For more on this, see Rigney’s essay “Indicatives, Imperatives, and Applications,” 33–4.

^[39] To be clear, we are not suggesting there is no value in distinguishing these words, but that Paul and Peter use these same words differently to articulate the same theological judgements. Our interest in this essay is on the apostles’ shared judgements and their implications on the marriage covenant.

^[40] We find the referent in 1 Peter 3:6 is to Genesis 18:12, wherein Sarah laughs to herself upon overhearing the news she would have a son in her old age. When God calls her out on this, she refers to Abraham as lord, and then obeys him and ultimately God in having a child (Isaac). Would Abraham have been justified in enforcing her obedience in this context? Of course not, rather Sarah, who like Abraham, had a body “as good as dead,” chose not to “fear anything that was frightening,” models how a holy woman hopes in God (Rom 4:19; 1 Pet 3:5).

^[41] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols., ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003–2008), II:553.

^[42] According to Bavinck, “Reformed theologians continued to speak of the image of God in a broader and a narrower sense. In Holy Scripture they read that man, on the one hand, is still called the image of God after the fall and should be respected as such (Gen 5:1; 9:6; Acts 17:28; 1 Cor 11:7; James 3:9); and that, on the other hand, he had nevertheless lost the primary content of the image of God (i.e., knowledge, righteousness, and holiness) and only regains these qualities in Christ (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). The whole being, therefore, and not something in man but man himself, is the image of God. Further, sin, which precipitated the loss of the image of God in the narrower sense and spoiled and ruined the image of God in the broader sense, has profoundly affected the whole person, so that, consequently, also the grace of God in Christ restores the whole person, and is of the greatest significance for his or her whole life and labor, also in the family, society, the state, art, science, and so forth.” Reformed Dogmatics, II:550, 554.

^[43] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, Volume 1: Created Fallen, and Converted Humanity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 162.

^[44] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:560–561.

^[45]  Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, I:42.

^[46] Bavinck, The Christian Family, 6–7.

^[47] Bavinck, The Christian Family, 7.

^[48] Stephen Wellum, Systematic Theology: From Canon to Concept (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 131.

^[49] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:554.

^[50] This glorious line is from the often forgotten fifth verse in “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” since George Whitefield edited Charles Wesley’s hymn down to four verses, and this rendition became the norm in Christian hymnals. For a brief explanation on this verse, see Rob Brockman’s essay, “The Forgotten Verse of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,’” TGC, (last modified December 24, 2021), https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-forgotten-verse-of-hark-the-herald-angels-sing/. 

^[51] Marc Cortez, Resourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 36–37.

^[52] Colin Smothers has drawn attention to a clear example of how fraught with anthropological error this perspective is in his review of Christa McKirland, “Rejecting Gender Essentialism to Embrace Transgenderism?: A Response to Christa McKirland, ‘Image of God and Divine Presence,’” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 5.1 (Spring 2023): 46–53. McKirland, a leading proponent of the Christotelic image approach, suggests gender essentialism is to blame for the “internal angst of some trans persons,” and that the biblical emphasis “is on following Jesus, not being ‘real men’ or ‘real women.’ For those who are discerning whether their givenness should be altered, the New Testament rubric for any such choice (which would include all bodily modifications, not just those affecting sexual anatomy) is how such can be done in submission to the Spirit and in order to become more like Christ.” In agreement with Smothers, we find such arguments from the likes of McKirland to be not just the trajectory of problematic approaches to the imago dei, but the application of it to anthropology, in which “rejection of gender essentialism inevitably leads to an ontological interchangeability, which is the complete abandonment of God’s design, who makes us male and female in his image” (Smothers, 53). If gender is at best an accident then it can be treated as an obstacle to be overcome in pursuit of Christlikeness. However, as we have sought to establish with the essence-existence distinction, such an understanding of gender denigrates human dignity, and treats God’s good design for creating humans male or female as arbitrary and even at odds with some humans’ best interests. This perspective is offensive to the Creator and harmful to those made in his image. 

^[53] We are convinced this is the same error relating to the image and incarnation that Cortez and others who hold to this model make in claiming the universal is an effect of the particular in their confusion on the essence-existence distinction, and that is backward causation. This is also known as retrocausality, and is the idea that an effect can occur before its cause in time, which is a metaphysical absurdity, in our estimation. Appeal to divine eternity (timelessness) does not help because such an appeal collapses the Creator/creature distinction. A created effect cannot precede its cause temporally because time is the condition of creaturely life, change, cause, effect, etc. Divine timelessness rightly affirms that God is not somehow experiencing the cause-effect relationship in himself. But the temporally constrained cause-effect relationship among creatures cannot just be erased because the Creator is timeless. 

^[54] Cortez appeals to the well known mantra of Karl Barth that there is no logos asarkos, no Son of God behind the incarnate Son (see Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromily [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010], 33). We find this way of thinking about the incarnation to be highly problematic. Given divine eternity, of course it is true that there is no time differential between the Son’s experience of non-incarnate life and his experience of life incarnate. Indeed, even speaking of an “experience” of anything, in the proper sense, only applies to the Son’s human life. Nevertheless, the logical distinction between the absolutely necessary, full plenitude of God’s triune life in himself and the contingent existence of creation must be maintained to uphold the clear biblical teaching of creatio ex nihilo and to avoid collapsing the Creator/creature distinction altogether. One way that biblical idiom and traditional Christian theologians have maintained this distinction is by the use of temporal language analogically applied to a situation in which temporality is not a proper category. For example, Paul says that the elect are chosen “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). Moses praises God for his glorious existence “before the mountains were brought forth,” even before he “brought forth the earth and the world” (Ps. 90:1–2). This same Creator/creature distinction must be maintained in the incarnation. The Son assumed a created human nature. If there is no logical category for the Son’s fullness of eternal divine life apart from or before the incarnation, we collapse the Creator/creature distinction in the person of the Son. Both John and Paul are explicitly maintaining this very distinction by speaking of the Word who was God in the beginning and who became flesh (John 1:1, 14) and the Son who existed in the “form of God” and took the “form of a servant” (Phil. 2:6-7). Long live the glorious and beautiful notion of the logos asarkos!

^[55] Processions refers to an eternal relation by which one person (the Son or the Spirit) is in relation to another person eternally (Son from the Father, Spirit from the Father and Son). Missions refers to the temporal sending of a divine person (the Son or the Spirit) that reveals the eternal procession.

^[56] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, IV:685.

^[57] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:577.

^[58] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:577–578.

^[59] Cortez, Resourcing Theological Anthropology, 66.

^[60] Michael Clary, God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality (Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion Publishing, 2023), 46.

^[61] Clary, God’s Good Design, 29, 32

^[62] For more on why we find this to be proper, see Kyle Claunch’s essay “Theological Language and the Fatherhood of God: An Exegetical and Dogmatic Account,” Eikon. See also Kyle Claunch’s forthcoming book, The Trinity and the Gender of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2026).

^[63] For more on why complementarianism is in no ways dependent upon ERAS, see Stephen Wellum’s excellent treatment of this topic: “Does Complementarianism Depend on ERAS?: A Response to Kevin Giles, ‘The Trinity Argument for Women’s Subordination,’” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 5.1 (Spring 2023): 60–67. Therein Wellum argues, “When Scripture does unpack the relation between husbands and wives as analogous to Christ and the church, and how God as the head of the incarnate Son (1 Cor. 11:3) is analogous to human relations, it is not in terms of the eternal relations among the persons, but more in terms of the incarnation and the divine economy. The main warrant for complementarianism, however, is Scripture itself, starting in creation and culminating in the new creation.”

^[64] Samuel Parkison, “God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality (Book Review),” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 5.2 (Fall 2023): 109.

^[65] Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tennant, It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 61, emphasis original.

^[66] Bnonn Tennant, “Masculine & feminine symbolize creator & creation: a response to Matt Damico’s critique of It’s Good To Be A Man,” True Magic (Substack), last modified June 19, 2024, https://www.truemagic.nz/p/masculine-and-feminine-symbolize. 

^[67] Tennant, “Masculine & feminine symbolize creator & creation.”

^[68] Tennant, “Masculine & feminine symbolize creator & creation.”

^[69] The term ἀνήρ can be translated man or husband, and γυνή may be translated woman or wife, as the ESV translation alternates from husband to man in this passage, because context is determinative. Tom Schreiner offers a good mediating position between the debate that 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 is referencing husbands/wives or men/women, arguing: “It should also be noted that when Paul addresses husbands and wives exclusively, there are clear indications in the text of a married relationship (see 1 Cor 7:2–5, 8-16; Eph 5:22–23; Col 3:18–19; cf. 1 Pet 3:1-7). Still, some of the evidence for seeing wives in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is quite strong. I suggest, therefore, a mediating solution. Paul’s instructions in this text are for both married and unmarried women in the congregation. Nevertheless, there is a fluidity and a looseness in his discussion; thus, even though Paul refers to women in general, he glides over to the relationship between husbands and wives, especially in 11:4–5. Such a move is not surprising since most of the women were probably married. Indeed, the corresponding discussion in 1 Corinthians 14:33b–36 may suggest that wives in particular were the offenders in this case. When we think about 11:3 in particular, Paul does not restrict himself exclusively to husbands and wives. It does not follow from this that every man is the head of every woman in the congregation. Instead, Paul thinks more generally and cosmically — we could say ecclesiologically — in the passage; thus in verse 3 he reflects on the creational differences between men and women. Paul’s instructions, then, naturally apply in a specific way to the marriage relationship, but his main concern in this text is not marriage but the adornment of women in the corporate assembly. Hence, he naturally thinks of the relationship between men and women in general, not just wives and husbands.” 1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2018), 226. For more, see Andy Naselli’s helpful essay, “Women and Head Coverings: Explaining and Applying 1 Corinthians 11:2–16,” Christ Over All, (last modified March 28, 2023), https://christoverall.com/article/concise/women-and-head-coverings-explaining-and-applying-1-corinthians-112-16/.

^[70] Foster and Tennant, It’s Good to be a Man, 47.

^[71] See Joe Rigney’s essay, “With One Voice: Scripture and Nature for Ethics and Discipleship.” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 2.1 (Spring 2019): 26–37.

^[72] Gregory of Nazianzus, “Letter 101: To Cledonius,” in On God and Christ, ed. and trans. Lionel Wickham (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 158.

^[73] Rosemary Radford Ruether, To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), chapter four.

^[74] See Felipe Do Valle, “Can a Male Savior Save Women? The Metaphysics of Gender and Christ’s Ability to Save,” Philosophia Christi, 21.2 (2019): 309-324. Do Valle says that Radford’s question has been the “departure point” for most feminist theology. He further observes that most feminists have answered the question in the negative (309). According to the logic of feminism, a male Savior cannot, in fact, save women.

^[75] Recall Mary Daly’s famous one-liner: “If God is male, then male is God” (Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation [Boston: Beacon Press, 1973, with a new Introduction by the author added in 1985]. Daly abandoned Christianity because of its radical incompatibility with feminist ideals.

^[76] As noted earlier, this is the argument of feminist theologian and cultural critic Virginia Ramey Mollenkot. See fn. 3.

^[77] The fact that Jesus was born as a male is declared in manifold ways in Scripture. The prophetic expectation and New Testament testimony is that Jesus is born as the Son of Mary, not the daughter (Isa 9:6, Luke 1:31). The apocalyptic description of the cosmic battle between the serpent (dragon) and the seed of the woman in Revelation 12 names the focal seed of the woman, destined to rule the nations as God’s anointed king, as “a male child” (Rev 12:5). The fact that Jesus saves women is equally clear in Scripture. Consider the beloved sisters of Bethany, Mary and Martha, whose confession of faith in Jesus is central to the narrative of their brother Lazarus being raised from the dead (John 11). The story of Lydia of Philippi is a wonderful testimony of the power of the Spirit awakening a woman to faith in Jesus by means of the preaching of the gospel (Acts 16:14). One need look no further than Jesus’ own mother Mary, who, upon hearing and believing the angelic announcement that she would bear a Son, declared, “My spirit rejoices in God my savior” (Luke 1:47).

^[78] The Creed declares the “only begotten Son of God” to be “of one substance [homoousios] with the Father.”

^[79] The wording of the Definition is: “truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood.”

^[80] We contend, against the current of feminist and egalitarian literature, that human sonship is the analog to the eternal sonship of the second person of the Trinity in relation to the first. That is, we do not believe that the second person of the Trinity is named Son as a metaphorical extension of human sonship. This would make the analog of sonship run from the creature to the naming of the divine person, and the name of the second person of the Trinity would be a mere figure of speech. We believe it is exactly the opposite. Just as human fatherhood is an analog to the original Fatherhood of God, as Ephesians 3:14-15 makes explicit, so human sonship is an analogy to the original Sonship of the eternal Son in relation to the Father. For a more detailed account of the logic of analogical predication in the doctrine of God and the difference between proper and figurative analogical predication, see Kyle’s essay, “Theological Language and the Fatherhood of God: An Exegetical and Dogmatic Account” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 5.2 (Fall 2023): 46–77.

^[81] Cortez, Resourcing Theological Anthropology, 196. Cortez shows his own confusion regarding the coherence of a universal human nature by his use of the word “existence.” As we have shown, universal human nature (essence) does not exist, as such. It is a category of potential. The actual existence of the human essence is always particular and individual.

^[82] Cortez appeals for the view summarized here to David Bentley Hart, “The ‘Whole Humanity’: Gregory of Nyssa’s Critique of Slavery in Light of His Eschatology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 1 (2001): 64.

^[83] Cortez, Resourcing Theological Anthropology, 196.

^[84] Peeler, Women and the Gender of God, 140.

^[85] For a more detailed account of the logic of analogical predication in the doctrine of God and the difference between proper and figurative analogical predication, see Kyle’s essay, “Theological Language and the Fatherhood of God: An Exegetical and Dogmatic Account” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 5.2 (Fall 2023): 46–77.

^[86] Peeler, Women and the Gender of God, 121.

^[87] Peeler, Women and the Gender of God, 137.