The truth, goodness, and beauty sovereignly preserved in the nations are a foretaste of the glory... more The truth, goodness, and beauty sovereignly preserved in the nations are a foretaste of the glory to come when ethnic and cultural diversity will realize the end for which it was created. We will see the redeemed of all nations and their gifts not only as blessings from God but the very reflection of His essence in a fullness not otherwise understood. This will resound to His eternal glory from the redeemed race of men, the crown of His creation. Ethnic and cultural diversity ordained when God created man and placed him in Eden reflects the glory of the triune God in His heavenly temple before time. Furthermore, the diversity we experience now is just the beginning of a richness that God will finally bring when the redeemed tribes and tongues and nations are gathered to Him in His eternal temple dwelling. Though this present world and its glory are fading away, God’s people in their diversity will remain. They are the image and glory of God and with them reside the gifts of the nations which will be cultivated in eternity with ever-increasing and unfading glory.
God has made us in his image, directing our contemplations concerning ourselves back to him by “m... more God has made us in his image, directing our contemplations concerning ourselves back to him by “many bonds” of representation. He is an equally ultimate unity and diversity. The three persons exist as the one essence distinguished from one another by incommunicable personal properties and an order of unfolding, with corresponding missions which terminate in time. We represent the paradox of the trinity as one image-bearing mankind, male and female. We are distinguished from one another as male and female in Genesis 1, and we are seen in an order of processions in Genesis 2, with corresponding missions. He has also made us signs and symbols of the earth and heavens. Man represents earth in its heavenward press toward consummation. Woman represents heaven, the goal of Sabbath rest. Man represents the first order, the order of innocence under probation, and woman represents the second order of confirmed blessedness. As each other’s bone and flesh, man and woman represent the confluence of heaven and earth on the last day. It is that convergence that holds our highest joy as the bridal people of the Lamb. Our differences as male and female bring us to worship our thrice holy God, who has revealed himself to us and written upon us his plans for us.
The church has not always understood our differences as male and female well. The prevailing unde... more The church has not always understood our differences as male and female well. The prevailing understanding of women when Christ came was based on Aristotle's scale of nature. 1 Women were understood to be "deficient and misbegotten," a poor outcome of the active male seed, mutations of nature because of loss of heat in utero. They were associated with weakness, passivity, irrationality, matter, and the material body set against the strength of men, activity, rationality, form, and the functions of the immaterial soul. 2
I believe that the Bible presents a rich theology of gender that points to God's plans to unite h... more I believe that the Bible presents a rich theology of gender that points to God's plans to unite heaven and earth to the joy of his people in union and communion with himself. We can never escape the story, because we embody it, by what we are in light of what we are not. By looking at myself, I realize that I am a woman, and not a man. But now I go further and ask, "What does that mean ultimately?" I believe that God is revealing a story to us through our differences. He is bringing us to understand ultimate realities through the temporal and passing institutions of marriage and life in the local church, both patterned according to the heavenly and enduring life and worship of Zion. Paul tells us that there is a glorious symmetry, reciprocity, and dynamism inherent in the two ways of being human, man and woman. If this is true, you would expect to find it heralded and celebrated in Scripture, and I believe that you do. It is there from the beginning in Genesis 2, when God forms Adam from the earth and builds Eve from Adam's sacred side and brings them together to know and be known.
The church fathers were unanimous in their opinion that both the woman's desire and man's rule ov... more The church fathers were unanimous in their opinion that both the woman's desire and man's rule over her were good. The woman turns to her husband, and he rules over her, for her good. Like Aristotle, they 5 judged that the woman by nature was incapable of ruling herself and required the man's governance. Aristotle's reasons were biological, not theological. He considered the female a poor outcome for the active male seed. Thus woman was regarded as sub-ideal and situated between man and the animals on
VAN TIL’S REPRESENTATIONAL PRINCIPLE APPLIED TO THE WOMAN, 2021
Van Til, building on Vos, has a from-above approach to anthropology, beginning with the self-cont... more Van Til, building on Vos, has a from-above approach to anthropology, beginning with the self-contained Triune God who formed and animated mankind. He bestowed on them his image, constituting a bond of natural religious fellowship with them, to the end that they might glorify and enjoy him forever. This defies the from-below approach that elevates the “brute facts” of a neutral creation as worked on by autonomous human reason. The discussion of nature abstracted from the Triune Creator has been particularly harsh to the woman. Reformed anthropology must be consciously unfounded on the brute fact of the woman, especially as she is compared naturalistically to the man, and re-founded on the self-attesting Scriptures that typico-symbolically reveal her as Zion, mother-city, bride, sister, and friend, indeed Christ’s eternal complement.
The female metaphors for the Old and New Testament saints as related to Yahweh and Jesus Christ a... more The female metaphors for the Old and New Testament saints as related to Yahweh and Jesus Christ are manifold. Strictly correlating the images of the church produces a perplexing picture; yet assuming their compatibility, a full picture emerges of the church as pleroma. She is a chaste virgin, daughter Zion (and her synonym, daughter Jerusalem); yet, she is also a bride, 1 2 betrothed to both Yahweh and to Christ. In addition, she is a fruitful mother, bearing, birthing, 3 4 and bringing her children to strength. As such, she is foreshadowed in Eve, the mother of all-loving, the wives of the patriarchs, and also Deborah, who arose as a mother in Israel, and in the figure Mother Jerusalem in Isaiah. In Galatians 4, she is Sarah, an allegorical covenant-city, 5 whose child through promise is the free Jerusalem above (vv. 23, 26-27). In Revelation 12, she is mother of both the "male child" (vv. 4-5) and "the rest of her offspring" (v. 17), and in Revelation 21-22, she is the fruitful bride of the Lamb (21:9; cf. 22:2). It soon becomes apparent that daughter, bride, and mother are all images representing the one reality of God's people throughout time in relation to God upon the throne and the Lamb. From various 6 relationships comes forth the one telos of humanity, union with the triune God. In this paper, I intend to give specific attention to the royal mother image of the church, not neglecting other feminized images of the church, that coalesce to give us the one city-people-the 1 "Daughter of Zion, used 23 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, is only found in the mouth of the prophets.. 2 "Daughter of Jerusalem is used 5 times by the prophets, four times immediately paralleled with Daughter of Zion and appearing in the same verse. 3 See Isaiah 54; Jeremiah 3, Ezekiel 16, Hosea 2 (indeed the context of the whole of Hosea's prophecy).
This paper, submitted for a class at Greystone Institute, investigates Genesis 3:16cd, the "desir... more This paper, submitted for a class at Greystone Institute, investigates Genesis 3:16cd, the "desire" of the woman and the "rule" of the man, in light of the biblical-theological unfolding of man and woman.
In the father of Proverbs 7, we have Solomon, the Davidic king and anointed shepherd of God’s peo... more In the father of Proverbs 7, we have Solomon, the Davidic king and anointed shepherd of God’s people, calling his son to faithfulness. His message came by way of warning about the snares of embracing the stranger to the covenant.
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