Woman as the Deprivation of Man in Reformed Typology and Covenant Theology (2024)

Recently I introduced the work of John Schmitt on gender. I believe that Schmitt’s work aligns with Cornelius Van Til’s “representational principle.” Van Til ingeniously suggests not only that all creation, visible and invisible, is predicated on the mystery of the equally ultimate oneness and manyness of God, but that representation itself is a trinitarian reality.1 The three persons of the trinity exhaustively represent one other. Perhaps this is most explicitly revealed in Hebrews. The Son in Hebrew 1:3 is “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (NASB). Tipton says, “When God created Adam after his image . . . you have a natural religious relation of personal fellowship between this triune God and Adam, and then Adam in covenant comes to represent all who would descend from him by ordinary generation.”2 In Foundations of Covenant Theology, Tipton speaks of mankind’s intensive religious fellowship made to give way to consummated fellowship with God in the highest heavens through covenant.”3 In Tipton’s thought, image, covenant, fellowship, and representation cohere.4

Tipton refers to Adam as the image-bearer who represented God in exercising dominion, God’s representative priest-king. Adam was to “consecrate Eve and the entire garden to the glory of God alone.”5 Adam alone appears as “the image of God and the federal head of humanity under covenant.”6 Tipton ties exhaustive representation within the trinity (horizontal, upper register exhaustive representation), to Adam’s representation of God through bearing God’s image (vertical non-exhaustive representation), to Adam’s federal representation of all those who would descend from him by ordinary generation as the covenantal head of humanity (horizontal lower register [creaturely] representation). I would like to suggest that Tipton’s Foundations falls short of giving us Eve’s representation of the self-contained triune God in Genesis 1-2 (vertical non-exhaustive representation) and Eve’s representation of mankind (horizontal lower register representation).7 Although Tipton does not exclude Eve from image and fellowship, he effectively distances her by connecting image and fellowship in Genesis 1:27 to representation and covenantal headship in Genesis 2:7.8 The woman represents neither God to mankind nor mankind before God.

Can we stop for a moment and consider whether our trinitarian and covenant theology leads us to love our neighbor, relentlessly promoting her person to person fellowship with God? Does the practical application of our understanding of covenant dignify the person beside us? If not, I suggest that there is more work to be done. If our covenant theology does not lead us to a genuine esteem for our neighbor as genuinely better than ourselves, then it has fallen short of the goal of theology, love of God and the person beside us who is from him and through him and to him.

I think there is a deeper Protestant conception of ourselves as male and female, and its fruit will be not only greater love and respect for the person beside us, but greater hope in the future that God has promised us in union with Christ. So I come again to the question: “How do we see Eve’s representation?” In Tipton’s Foundations, I could not find any representation of Eve other than as the creature ruled and consecrated by Adam, God’s representative priest-king in the garden. Adam as king represents God to her, and Adam as priest represents her concerns before God.9 In other words, in Foundations, Tipton finds woman’s representation of creaturely categories over and against Adam as priest-king in the image of the Creator-king. This aligns with Meredith Kline. For Kline, whenever the man-woman relationship is used as an analogy, it is always one between God and man, never interdivine fellowship.10 My question continues to be, is this asymmetry, or better yet antithesis (for what greater distance can there be than that between the Creator and creature?) what we find in Genesis 1-2?

Before I go further, I should mention something about the tendency of covenant theologians to ascribe the three-fold office to only Adam in Eden. To the extent that this reflects a desire to exalt Christ, the second Adam, I rejoice with them in all that Christ is to his people. To the extent that it is applied to anthropology and used to tie maleness to divinity, setting up a Genesis to Revelation paradigm, I am skeptical. Concerning kingship, together they are called to fill and subdue the earth, to rule the creaturely world, God giving them freedom to eat the plants of the ground (1:28-29). Concerning the mission of the prophet, there is no explicit evidence that Adam teaches Eve anything. In fact, Adam never speaks to Eve in the Hebrew Scriptures. Concerning priesthood, Adam does not mediate Eve’s relationship to God through sacrifice. Like Adam, Eve is made in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness for union and communion with God on earth before the necessity of blood sacrifice. She stands coram Deo in the same sense and to the same degree that Adam stands coram Deo. She bears the irreducible image of God in the same sense and to the same degree as Adam who is made for the same person to person fellowship with the triune personal God. Although Adam mediates the blessings of personal, perfect, and entire obedience for all springing up from the earth like himself, his posterity by ordinary generation, and Eve by extraordinary generation, I do not see that covenantal representation implies the Levitical priesthood.

Many who make an argument for Adam’s priesthood take it from the two Hebrew words “keep,” avad, and “guard,” shamar, two common words in the Hebrew Bible, used separately over 1,500 times in the Old Testament. True, Adam was placed in the garden to keep and guard it. True, those exact words are rarely used together. True, avad and shamar are found together for the Levitical work of keeping and guarding the sanctuary in Numbers 3:7–8; 8:25–26; 18:5–7. However, if we are set on finding unequal representation, a case could be made from the word “helper,” ezer, that Eve represents the Creator over and against Adam the creature. God says, “I will make an ezer,” a word most often indicating divine help for the defenseless or dependent. Sixteen out of the 21 times that ezer is found in the Hebrew Scriptures, it refers to God as helper and ally of his people, and it always refers to strength over and against weakness. But I suggest we should not go there. As opposed to finding asymmetry in Genesis 1-2 based on “keep and guard” or “helper,” I suggest that we find symmetry between the man and woman, indicated by the word kenegdo. They correspond. They both represent God, but in distinguishable ways. And they both represent mankind, but distinctively.

How do the man and woman of Genesis 2 represent God? The clearest answer I have found comes from good work done on the Son and the Spirit by (drum roll). . . Kline and Tipton. Kline’s Images of the Spirit gives us the man of the garden, a royal son, encompassed by a cosmic royal residence, a garden sanctuary, the holy mountain of God. Kline refers to Adam as under the Edenic tent of divine glory.11 We could go on with Kline’s imaginative language for Eden — theophanic glory canopy, microcosmic house of God, Glory-Spirit temple. And we could go on with Kline’s imaginative language for how Adam is surrounded by this theophanic Shekinah glory in Eden — shaded, robed, clothed, covered, invested, enclosed. As revealed by the title of Kline’s book, Images of the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity manifests himself as the glory temple Eden. He hovers over it and encloses it with his glorious presence, setting it apart for worship. For Kline, Adam, the priest-king son, is clothed with Eden’s glory mirroring the glory of the Spirit which clothes the eternal Son in heaven, Eden’s archetype, but Kline finds no representation for the woman other than as all that is not God. When the man and woman are juxtaposed, the man always stands for the Creator over and against woman as the creature. Kline says that Adam represents both Son and Glory-cloud, both priest and garment. Kline, recalling Aaron’s robes, writes, “ . . . Aaron’s investiture recalls the Genesis 1 episode of the creation of man in the likeness of the Glory-Spirit as the personal image-temple of God.”12 All divine representation devolves on Adam. He images the Son and the Spirit.

For Kline, the woman stands for the one who needs to be clothed by the Glory-Spirit. She represents “the woman Israel” of Ezekiel 16, naked and destitute, who is washed, anointed, and adorned. Kline writes, “The Lord takes his bride-people into a covenantal union by the promissory act of spreading his robe of Glory over her and then by clothing her in garments fashioned after the pattern of his Glory-robe, so that she stands before him transformed into the image of His glory.”13 This Glory-robe, according to Kline, comprehends both image and covenant. Kline’s woman has no direct symbolism. For Kline, the man is the image of God, and the woman is the image and likeness of the man, which he then ties to covenant. He writes, “And the man-husband received the woman, his image, in a covenant of marriage (Gen. 2:22-24), under his lordship, to bear his name, and to be his glory, not least by bearing him image-sons to fill the earth with his name.”14 Please understand that I do not want to diminish the help Kline gives us here as we worship, seeing ourselves immersed in and indwelled with the Spirit of God through the images of water, wind, oil, garments, cloud, fire, smoke, tabernacle, temple, garden, city, mountain, all pointing to the mission of the Spirit who has set us apart for love unfathomable and joy unspeakable. I also do not want to diminish the revelation and personal mission of the Spirit, who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified, but I do think we need to consider how Kline relates this glory to male and female.

Tipton takes Kline’s work, especially Kline’s reference to the Spirit’s terminal work, the “endoxation” (glory-filling) of the heaven temple, and helpfully relates it more fully and exactly to the order of personal processions, the Son from the Father, and the Spirit from the Father and Son.15 According to Tipton, in the absolute beginning of the Genesis 1:1 creation of the heavenly throne and earthly footstool, the Son is “encoronate” from the Father. He is enthroned over creation in the highest heavens at the beginning of creation (Col 1:15-20). From the Son’s coronation comes the glory temple, a tent that fills with smoke enveloping the seat of the Father who enthrones (from whom are all things) and the Son enthroned (through whom are all things). This event appears in view in Isaiah 6. The train of Lord’s robe which fills the temple in v. 1, garment language, seems analogous to the smoke that fills in v. 4, atmosphere language. Both are consistent images of the Spirit. Tipton ties the first “eternal movement,” of filiation (the Father begetting the Son) to (1) processions and (2) image; and he applies the second “movement,” procession of the Spirit from the Father and Son and the subsequent filling of the temple throne room with the glory of the triune God to (1) perichoresis (divine embrace) and (2) covenant. Reflecting the internal divine “circulation,” the Father enthrones, the Son is enthroned, and Spirit endoxate (robed in the Father and Son’s glory) manifests the glory of the triune God in embrace. To behold divine procession and embrace comprises our never-ending joy. For Tipton, God’s relationship with Adam specifically mirrors the heavenly archetypes of image, processions, perichoresis, and covenant. Again, like Kline, I do not find Eve in Tipton’s work on divine processions and perichoresis, encoronation and endoxation. Her relation to God does not appear to mirror any of it except through Adam. Though Tipton believes that Eve is made in the image of God, Eve does not mirror divine processions nor does her fellowship with God in the garden mirror divine perichoresis and covenant. Who she is and what she represents are mediated by Adam’s immediate relation to God through image and covenant in Genesis 2:7. So my question continues to be, “Does this reflect how God reveals the woman of Genesis 2?”

I believe that Schmitt’s work on gender in the Old Testament which I introduced earlier this month gives us eternal categories to think about the man and the woman of Genesis 2. Schmitt’s son and city align with what God is telling us about himself in procession and embrace and the manifestation of his glory in the heavenly temple throne room. As Tipton so well points out, these “eternal movements” are the divine beatitude, and beholding this “epiphany” will be the unspeakable substance of our never-ending beatitude as well. What God has given us here and now by making us male and female leads our thoughts to Father, Son, and Spirit, as they were, are, and forever will be. The manifestation of the triune God is our theme here and there, in glory.

It seems to me that for Kline and Tipton, Adam represents all that is in God, and the woman represents what is not God. Their trinitarian and covenant theology develop her representation as the deprivation of God. Eve represents the creature; Adam represents the Creator. I believe that Schmitt can reorient us to see the glory of our neighbor in her representation — the female representation of the “theophanic glory-cloud,” the glory of the encoronate Son, the tent pitched in the heavens, Zion, Jerusalem, our mother above. Schmitt argues that Israel symbolizes the people of God as one collective male, a son, beginning in Exodus 1, and that female represents the people of God as one collective city moving through time patterned after the heavenly archetype. If I were using Schmitt’s paradigm and incorporating Kline and Tipton, I would trace it back further to God’s son, Adam, and his glory, Eve, and then I would go back even further and suggest that Adam represents the eternal Son in his generation from the Father and points us to the telos of sons in the Son (Rev 21:7), and I would trace Eve to the city of God, the tabernacle made without hands, the epiphany of the eternal Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and Son, our telos as a city (Rev 21:1-2; 9-27). Through Adam, Eve understood something of her alpha and omega outside of herself. Through Eve, Adam understood something of his beginning and end outside of himself. This brings us back to my opening quote by Van Til and representation within the trinity, each person exhaustively representing the other persons. Perhaps it is worth considering if the correspondence of Adam and Eve lies in their truly reciprocal and corresponding representation of one another as son and city.

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Next week, I hope to write new thoughts developing after reading an article by Barbara Kaiser on the image of Daughter Zion in poems of suffering.