There seems to have been some confusion about my previous post concerning the image of God and how the woman partakes in the image, so I've opted to attempt to explain it as plainly as I can.
There is often a breakdown in an egalitarian understanding of genders due to antinomian assumptions of salvation. If salvation is nothing more than justification then when Paul says something like "there is neither male nor female but all are one in Christ" that describes the equality of men and women in their union with Christ then equality in Christ completely defines the identity of the man and the woman. "There is no" male or female, so genders are not distinct. Both have become the new man, the restored image of God, and that is the end of the story.
The problem is that justification via unification with Christ is not the sum total of salvation as though antinomianism was true. Those who have been created in Christ Jesus must now realize that they have been created in Him, united to Him, for the purpose of putting His character on like a new garment (Rom 13:14).
In Ephesians 4:24 // Colossians 3:10, believers are exhorted to put on the new man, which is being renewed into the image of God. In other words, they have been restored as the image through Jesus Christ and His imputed righteousness, holiness, and true knowledge but they must now put this on, which implies that they do not have this character already. The new man is being conformed to it in sanctification, which assumes that the new man is only the image positionally but not practically. The image of God in Christ that has been imputed to both males and females must now become who they are not only positionally but practically.
The question now becomes whether the character of Christ expresses itself differently through the male and female, and therefore, whether their sanctification, their Christ-clothes look different. In other words, does the positional image in a man work itself out in a different way than it does in a woman?
We see throughout the Bible that they do. The man and woman are created for different roles in the first work with which God tasks them, i.e., to be fruitful and multiply. Adam's role as husband and father is to govern as king and priest. Eve's role as wife and mother is to help him in submission to his role. She joins with him in order to participate in his work rather than assigned a separate task by God.
Likewise, in the restoration of this created order in Christ, Paul tells us that the sanctification of the man in the family looks very different than the sanctification of the woman. He is to love and sacrifice himself for her. She is to acknowledge his God-given role and submit to him.
This means that she does not express the new man in the same way that he does. She is not sanctified the same way that he is. Although she is imputed the image of God through Christ positionally, as the man is, having positional equality with him in Christ, she does not practically become that image of God in the same way that he does, as this would be to argue that she is sanctified as a woman in the same way that he is sanctified as a man.
Hence, Paul argues that the woman should not take upon leadership roles in the church over men because she is to be saved/sanctified through childbearing, i.e., motherhood, the role of Eve, in submission to the men in authority over her life (1 Tim 2:11-15). Instead, the man is to take upon leadership positions because that is fitting to his role and how he is saved/sanctified.
In both Ephesians and Colossians, we are told that the man's new man/person is conformed to the image of its Creator via loving his wife in a leadership role but the woman's new man/person is conformed to the image of its Creator via submitting to her husband, her federal head.
What this means is that the woman's path of sanctification is through submission to her federal head, as this restores who she was created to be as a woman. Hence, if the image of God is not only relational but functional, she is restored to the image via unification with Christ relationally and in participation with her federal head functionally. She, therefore, allows him to function as the image of God practically, as one cannot be father without a mother nor husband without a wife.
Both are the renewed human in Christ but that renewed human expresses itself through each human's respective gender and not in disregard of it. But this means that they do not participate in the work of the image of God in the same way, and hence, if the image of God is functional, and they do not function the same way, they are not the image of God in the same way.
Although the woman is the image of God relationally through Christ, she now functions as the image through participation in the man's functional expression of the image. In other words, having been restored as the image of God, the man receives his task given to him in the garden back to him and so does the woman, which means that the woman is not the functional image of God by herself but must become his helper in her role in order to become/put on the image practically. The man, likewise, would not become the image of God practically if he shunned his role by rejecting the task God gave him in creation. Hence, as many theologians in history have argued, her practical function as the image of God is derivative of the man, as it requires her to be connected to a federal head in order to be practically conformed to the image of God. As many have described it, her glory is that of the moon's light that is dependent upon the sun's. She must join with a man (e.g., father, husband, elders) in order to work out her character in Christ.
This brings us back to the antinomianism of egalitarianism. It would be absurd to say that one was united to Christ and justified by Him if he or she rejected the role of the image given to him or her in the renewed human. Hence, sanctification is the sign of justification. To argue that one is the image of God due to unification with Christ but deny the need to express the image in the respective roles of each gender is to deny the necessity of sanctification that always follows justification. If the woman must participate in the functional image through a federal head then to reject this is to reject the biblical path of sanctification, and therefore, to give evidence of a lack of justification and unity with Christ. In other words, being restored to the image of God in Christ positionally will always lead to the differing expressions of the male and female roles whereby each engendered human becomes the image of God practically in different ways, i.e., each by applying him or herself to the task given to them in creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment