Creation Archives - Jack Kilcrease

March 22, 2025March 12, 2025

Male – Female Relationality

The most primal relationship mirroring the relationality of divine life is the male/female relationship. This is a point highlighted in the theology of Karl Barth¹ and Hans Urs von Balthasar.² In Genesis 2 we are told that God sees that it is not good that man is alone and seeks to make him a counterpart as a “helpmeet.” As helpmeet, the woman is created to share in man’s creational/vocational tasks as a partner. This is what St. Paul means when he states that “man [was not] created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Cor. 11:9). He does not mean that woman was created as man’s plaything, or a slave to be dominated. Rather, man was first created and given certain creational tasks which woman was created to share in.

In Genesis 2, woman is derived from man, but not because she is inferior to man. As we may recall, the idea that realities which are derivative are inherently inferior is an aspect of the metaphysics of tragedy. The Bible works on the basis of a metaphysic of comedy, in that movement and generation do not lead to degeneracy but go from the good (the man alone) to the better (man and woman together in relationship). In support of this, Genesis 1 makes both the male and female equal image-bearers of God. This is confirmed in that when seeing the woman in Genesis 2 the man cries out that she is precisely what he is: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). In an analogical sense, the man is homoousios with the woman.

March 16, 2025March 23, 2025

The Imago Dei and Righteous Relationality

Genesis 1:26-27 speaks of humans as made in the image and likeness of God. The meaning of this phrase has been hotly contested in the history of Christian thought. However, we can immediately reject is the interpretation first proposed by St. Irenaeus that “likeness” and “image” are distinct realities.

Early Interpretations of the Image of God

According to Irenaeus, the former refers to natural human faculties, whereas the latter refers to a special grace God gave to pre-lapsarian humans. This grace allowed humans to eventually participate in the divine life (i.e., a precursor of the later concept of theosis). As a result of the Fall, humans retain the image, but have lost the likeness.¹ Modern biblical scholarship has shown that the use of the terms “image” and “likeness” in tandem with each other is simply an example of the literary poetical parallelism common to the Old Testament and much of ANE western Semitic literature. Therefore, “image” and “likeness” possess an identical meaning.²

We can also easily reject St. Augustine’s³ and St. Thomas Aquinas’s⁴ claim that the mental faculties of memory, intellect, and will reflect the Trinity. Not only is there no exegetical basis for this claim, but the Bible knows nothing of Greek faculty psychology.⁵

May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

The Image of God and Freedom

The text of Genesis 1, quite specifically connects existing as God’s image-bearers with the dominion humans possess in creation. After affirming his intention to make humans in his image, God addresses both the man and woman saying: “. . . 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). Because God created humans in his image they share in God’s dominion over the primal creation and in his complete freedom. This freedom exists in two horizons: coram Deo (before the face of God) and coram mundo (before the face of the world).

Coram Deo, although primal humans are free from the law in the manner that Christians would later be free from the law in Christ, such freedom does not mean arbitrary or destructive lawlessness. As the Formula of Concord correctly asserts, the law is God’s eternal will for his creation (lex aeterna) both before and after the Fall. Nevertheless, in the state of integrity, God made human beings in the divine image. Therefore, human creatures wholly desired to perform the law. The law was not contrary to their desires and therefore they did not need to place their desires in subordination to the law since their wills exactly mirrored God’s law. Rules are only positive demands when they are not followed or if we do not desire to follow them. If my expectation is for my children to clean their room, and they do it habitually on their own, then there is no reason to make it a family rule that children must clean their rooms each week. Moreover, when children spontaneously clean their rooms, they are simply doing what they desire and are not subjecting their will to any higher authority than what they naturally desire. In this scenario, they would clean their rooms out of perfect freedom, because in cleaning they would simply be doing what they wanted to do without any external authority telling them they must or coercing them to do so.

Because humans share in God’s dominion and are free from the condemnation of the law in the primal state, they also possess a share in God’s rest as exemplified by the primal Sabbath. Freedom from the law and its condemnation means rest from its demands relentlessly pressing down on humanity and demanding a response. In the primal week, much as in the work of Christ, work led to rest and rest enabled work. Regarding the primal week, God’s work in creation actualized the seventh day of rest. Because God completed his works he could rest and bid his people enter into that rest. Although a literal day in the primal week, the Sabbath as described by Genesis also has a typological meaning as the text itself indicates. Genesis 2 gives the Sabbath has no boundaries since the language of evening and morning is intentionally missing, unlike with the other days. Hence, the Sabbath becomes emblematic of the rest that the people of God enter into. Christians enter this rest when they receive by grace all that God has given them (Heb. 4), namely, the whole of creation along with God’s own self-donating presence with them. This is true in the old creation within the narrative of the seven days. However, it is also true in the new creation when Christ’s work gives rest to the conscience of Christians suffering under sin and the condemnation of the law: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).