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Abstract
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Part I
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part II
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
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Part I: Embodiment — and The
Incarnation
Chapter 5
A Woman is Born of a Man
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam,
and he slept;
and He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof;
and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made
He a woman
and brought her unto Adam.
Genesis
2:21, 22
From the Christian
point of view, the formation of Eve out of Adam was a biological
fact of tremendous theological importance. From an evolutionary
point of view, it is a sheer impossibility and nothing more than
a piece of imaginative nonsense. From the point of view of the
Creator Himself, there may well have been no alternative.
It may surprise the reader that
had Eve been a separate creation and not formed out of Adam,
she could not have shared in Adam's redemption! Nor could her
descendants! It is necessary to emphasize "her descendants"
because her title as the "mother of all living" (Genesis
3:20) is just as crucial to the Plan of Redemption as Adam's
title "the father of all dying" (1 Corinthians 15:22).
The reasons for this will become clear later.
With this as a kind of summary
statement, let me set forth as simply as possible, without departing
from well-established fact, what I believe to have been the circumstances
from both a theological and a biological point of view. The record
forms a meeting place of profound importance between revealed
truth and scientific fact.*
*For a fuller treatment of the statements
in this chapter, see Arthur Custance, The
Seed of the Woman, Doorway Publications, 1980.
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When
Adam was first created and introduced into the world, there may
very well have been a number of man-like creatures already in
existence, the result of creative activity before the fashioning
of Adam. And it would seem reasonable to assume that some of
these creatures were among those presented to Adam as potential
mates.
That not one of them was truly
human is borne out by the fact that not one of them was accepted
by Adam. It is a law of nature, clearly established by the Creator
to preserve order, that no species will accept a mate from any
other species, no matter how similar in appearance they may seem
to be. Thus even the most likely candidates by our judgment were
thereby proven not to be human.
By this means it was now made clear
that only those who were, effectively, "in Adam" could
be acceptable as mates for a human being, and only these were
in the future to be counted as true members of the Adamic family.
Whatever covenant was made with Adam as Head of this family of
Man, that covenant was thereafter applicable only to members
of the Adamic species. This Adamic species was the sole subject
of all blessings and cursings which were to follow except in
so far as there were repercussions throughout the whole of nature.
Now these observations apply also
to Eve whose relationship to the family of Adam is quite unique.
It has to be borne in mind that by definition a species is an
interbreeding
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community which naturally
produces fertile offspring. Such a community by general agreement
is always viewed as a family of related individuals who are all
derived from a single parentage — by evolution according
to
the evolutionists, and by creation according to the creationists.
As we have already seen in Chapter
4, angels do not multiply by propagation as man does but as a
direct result of the creative activity of God. They neither marry
nor are given in marriage (Mark 12:25). Thus as a class of beings
they do not form a single species: instead, each individual becomes
a species in itself, and there are no family relationships between
them. It follows that they have no ancestral Head, no single
representative, no "First Angel" from whom all other
angels are descended. Since the only Plan of Salvation of which
we have any knowledge involves a Saviour who assumes the position
of Headship of a new family, the Bible gives us no clues as to
how angels as a class could be redeemed. If such is possible
at all, we have no model. Logically, it would
seem that a separate saviour would be required for each individual
angel, millions of saviours for millions of angels.
Bearing in mind therefore that,
because direct creation produces separate species whereas procreation
produces families, it is clear that while Adam as a first man
had in the very nature of the case to be created, his descendants
are subsumed under his Headship by reason of their procreation.
All are his relatives by descent.
What, then, is to be done with
Eve? How can she be created separately, like Adam, without being
unrelated to Adam — and therefore a separate species no matter
how alike physically in all appropriate respects? Adam and Eve
under these conditions of origin would also be precisely what
angels are — unrelated separate species. All of their descendants
would therefore enter the category of hybrids rather than a pure
race.
What, then, becomes of the Headship
of Adam over his family? Would we not have, in fact, two Heads?
And must
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there not therefore be
two Second Heads, a "second" Adam and a "second"
Eve? Remember that we are dealing with a real situation, a critical
moment in the history of the race. And one of the best ways of
assessing the true importance of such a moment is by logically
considering the consequences.
Only those can be redeemed who
by reason of being "in Adam" are in the lineage of
Adam and counted as his seed. The redeemed are always of this
species. No evolutionary antecedents, if human evolution were
true, can qualify as redeemable — nor any of those other
species who may have been his contemporaries and continued to
share his world.
But someone had to be a help-meet,
a mate to be his partner in the propagation of the species. If
such a partner must belong to the Adamic species, a created Eve
would not do, for all of Adam's species must be one and "in
Adam" to qualify as redeemable. It is in accordance with
this fact that Paul said, "God has made out of [so the Greek]
one * all nations of men . . . on all the face of the earth"
(Acts 17:26). And it should be noted that it says "out of
one," not "out of a pair."
Then how were our first parents
to be constituted so as to form a pair "out of one"
without two separate creations? The secret of our truly human
identity lies in our all being "in Adam," whether for
good or ill. This must include Eve. In order that Eve might
also be "in Adam" it is clear that she must be taken
out of Adam as to her origin: she cannot have been either evolved
independently — nor even created independently.
The taking of
part of Adam for the formation of Eve's body, while Adam was
in a state of deep sleep, was tantamount to a process of divine
surgery under anesthesia. The
* The word blood almost certainly does
not belong in the original text.
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"closing up of the
flesh thereof" which left Adam in some way reduced but whole
nevertheless, must signify that after the operation his body
was significantly different. A radical change in the functioning
of his body had now come about.
The divine surgery involved in
the formation of Eve may quite possibly have had nothing to do
with a "rib" * at all but only with some structure
that was on one side of Adam's body, since the word for rib
could equally well mean a side member.
Presented with
Eve when he awoke, Adam was apparently immediately conscious
of a creature born "of his flesh and of his bone,"
a creature somehow once part of his very self who was now "the
other half."
It was as though, before her formation,
Adam was a whole person and a whole man; but now that Eve was
formed from part of him, though he was still a whole person,
he was only half a man. This seems to be the sense of
the words in Genesis 2:24 that together they shall be "one
flesh," since the word for flesh in the original
Hebrew (basar) in the Old Testament never has any other
meaning than that of body. It does not signify 'lower
nature' as it may sometimes in the New Testament.
It may be thought the concept of
an Adam somehow combining within himself both male and female,
as would seem to be implied, is a repugnant one. But it must
be borne in mind that to a greater or lesser extent this is true
* Regarding the "rib": precisely
what it was that God took from Adam for the building of Eve has
long been a matter of dispute
among commentators. In Seed of the Woman by the author
mentioned above, there is an extended excursus on the identity
of the "rib" in the light of ancient traditions and
more particularly of Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform words
and ideograph for "woman." Some thought is also given
to the possible etymological development of the Hebrew word (tsela)
rendered "rib" in most versions. Perhaps the simplest
explanation of what occurred in this surgical operation is that
sexual dimorphism was initiated in man. It is also conceivable
that a very similar process accounts for sexual dimorphism wherever
it is found in every other animal species, if they, too, were
all direct creations.
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of all of Adam and Eve's
descendants, including ourselves. Yet it must also be borne in
mind that wherever there arises a "confusion of gender,"
it can only be described as an aberration, if not a pathological
condition.
As man is now constituted, resulting
from the separation of Eve out of Adam, the two sexes have been
divinely allotted to two differently constituted bodies —
without any such aberration under normal circumstances. Adam
as created was a perfect creation. The union of the two principles
of maleness and femaleness (both hormonal and functional) must
in him have been perfectly ordered. When these organs (and the
hormones they generate) were separated and appropriately re-housed,
two equally perfect bodies resulted. It is only when, due to
some fault in the mechanisms of development within a particular
individual an aberrant form emerges, that we are distressed by
it. Abnormal reunion of structure, which God has designed to
be separated, is bound to
be an aberrancy. Such aberrations are not strictly a fusion of
male and female such as must have been in Adam, but a confusion
such as must inevitably arise when fusion occurs contrary to
what God intended.
It must be borne in mind that in
Adam's undivided body (i.e., before the formation of Eve) the
two elements compounded in one organism may have produced in
one organism an internal organization different from anything
which exists at the present time — save under very exceptional
circumstances. It often happens that combinations of elements
produce results quite different from either element alone.
Originally Adam may well have had
a form which did accommodate maleness and femaleness perfectly.
After all, Adam was a creature formed to reflect physically the
personal nature of the Creator Himself who is spiritual, in whom
there is no division of things which we now view only as antithetical.
We know from Scripture that God is presented in the role of both
Father and Mother — as Father, for instance, in 1 Chronicles
29:10 and Isaiah 64:8;
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and as a Mother in Isaiah
49:15 and 66:13. This applies also to the Son as is evident from
Isaiah 9:6 and Matthew 23:37.
Moreover, it is a well established
fact that the embryo at first exists for some time in a sexually
undifferentiated condition, (41) exhibiting the potential for development in either
direction. Then hormones begin to take over and drive the organization
of the growing body towards one pole or the other. If it should
be argued that the X and Y chromosomes have already determined
which way things are to go, two qualifying factors must be recognized.
In the first place, every male body carries
both X and Y chromosomes in every cell in the body and therefore
they are available as triggering devices in either direction.
And in the second place, these X and Y chromosomes are now known
not to be absolute determinants (42): there are other directive agencies at work which
do on occasion override them.
And finally, the developing embryo
does not at first display the structural differences which
characterize the male and female body in the adult. Moreover,
some of these differences may be remarkably late in developing.
This is sometimes termed paedomorphism, since it amounts
to an embryonic stage which persists till later in life than
is normal. (43)
In which case, it could have been that Adam was physiologically
paedomorphic since he was presumably created as an adult, not
as an embryo. I'm not speaking of his moral or intellectual development,
only of his physiology before Eve was separated from him.
But let me repeat a previous observation.
We all of us, individually, begin where Adam began. The only
difference is that by the time of birth, a male child is manifestly
male and a female child manifestly female. Yet both, even in
the adult stage, retain certain features in their constitution
which seem to be more characteristic of the opposite sex. In
old age these features sometimes find expression: in women as
facial hair, baldness, deepening of the voice, etc., while on
more than one occasion men have successfully
41. See Arthur C. Custance, Seed of the Woman,
, Brockville, Doorway Publications, 1980, p.182, ref.166 (chp.
15, pg 10).
42. Ibid., p.527, ref.166, (at paragraph 3, "Do Genes
Determine Sex?").
43. de Beer, G. R., Embryos and Ancestors, Oxford University
Press, revised edition, 1951, p.31.
pg.7
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suckled a child when
the mother died in childbirth. This is known technically as gynecomastia.
(44)
If we had seen Adam after the divine
surgery we would not distinguish him from today's male figure,
even on the dissecting table: but if we had seen him as he first
came from the hand of God we might well have observed some very
significant differences. Though, unlike us, he was created in
an adult form, he may well have begun as we all begin — sexually
neutral and capable of developing either way.
It is perhaps worthy of comment
that the concept of a male/female (androgynous) nature in Adam's
constitution as created was widely held by Jewish commentators
in pre-Christian times and by some early Christian commentators
— under their probable influence. (45) Pagan traditions show clear evidences of a similar
view, though unlike the Jewish traditions they are filled with
absurdities and are far less matter-of-fact. (46)
The biblical
account itself, of what took place during these crucial events,
is a miracle of literary condensation. It does not tell us all
that we might like to know, but nothing can be ignored in the
record without destroying the meaningfulness of the whole. It
will bear microscopic examination and yet the account is simplicity
itself. This very simplicity enlightens the naive but confuses
the worldly wise. The words are for children but the thoughts
are for men, written as it were "for all sorts and conditions"
that they may understand the truth at their own level. The record
is agelessly up-to-date.
In order to explain the appearance
of such a creature as the First Adam was, it is quite pointless,
if not patently absurd, to appeal to any evolutionary process.
Because what amounts to the division of the sexes and the initiation
of sexual dimorphism is considered by the evolutionists to have
already been a fait accompli millions of years before
the appearance of man who merely inherited it. (47)
44. Gynecomastia: see Seed of the Woman, ref.182,
p.187 (chp. 15, pg.
7).
45. Androgynous, (Jewsh view): ibid, p.191, in. Ginsberg (chp.
16, pg. 2).
46. Androgynous (pagan view): ibid, p. 191, in. Lenormant.
47. Sexual dimorphism: see ibid, p.108, ref.132 (chp.
9, pg. 4).
pg.8
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Thus
it becomes apparent that we must recognize a strictly biological
aspect in any theology of man and his redemption. There is a
very complex physiological undergirding to the account of the
formation of Eve out of Adam that is not merely intriguing but
is essential to the whole working out of the Plan of Salvation.
There can be only one creative
act, the creation of Adam. Every other human being, including
Eve, must be a derivation from this one Federal Head of the human
family. If Eve was not "in Adam," and therefore did
not originate out of Adam, Adam was not her generic Head and
the Lord Jesus Christ could not be her Saviour.
To refuse to recognize this fundamental
fact is to undermine the very foundation of Christian theology
in its strictly logical coherence.
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Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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