Adam, Eve, and Human Dignity
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” – Gen. 1:26
Christian ethics. – “The study of how humans ought to live as informed by the Bible, Christian tradition and Christian convictions. Christian ethics attempts to describe how Christian convictions and teachings regarding God’s relationship with the world and particularly with human beings ought to inform the conception of the moral life and influence moral choices.” [1]
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” – Psalm 139:13-14
The concept of human dignity lies at the heart of Christian ethics. Unlike modern society and philosophy that often root dignity in autonomy, productivity, or social usefulness, the Christian tradition locates human worth in creation itself: every person bears the image of God (“imago Dei” – Gen. 1:26–27). This theological truth has real implications for the ways that we live, think, and speak about other people. If human dignity is received from God rather than achieved, then compassion toward the weak, marginalized, and forgotten is not optional—it is a moral obligation rooted in faithfulness to God. In the same vein, extending dignity and worth to all people is not a matter of preference but a requirement of fidelity for Christians.
“The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” – Job 33:4
One of the places that we see this ethic of human dignity extended is in the words of the Apostle Paul. This Sunday, we are going to once again be in a passage that is particularly uncomfortable for us as a modern audience. In this section, Paul is going to talk about the roles of men and women in the Corinthian context in pretty stark terms. When we read this passage in English and process it with our modern and Western cultural convictions, we miss much of the deeper reality of what Paul is actually doing. To understand Paul, we have to understand the world of Paul and how he understood the creation account of Adam and Eve in comparison to the Greek household codes of Aristotle.
Let’s talk about the “household codes” for a moment. Aristotle’s concept of household codes, or oikonomia, was articulated primarily in his work Politics. In this text, Aristotle views the household (oikos) as the basic unit of society and explores its internal structure and relationships. His understanding of the household revolves around three key relationships: master-slave, husband-wife, and parent-child. Aristotle’s household codes reflect a hierarchical structure where the relationships are based on a concept of natural authority and subordination, with the purpose of maintaining order and achieving the good life both within the household and in the larger political community. Aristotle also applies this logic to humanity’s relationship with God when he expresses the expectations of love for the superior when he states: “For it would be ludicrous if one were to accuse God because he does not return love in the same way as he is loved, or for a subject to make this accusation against a ruler; for it is the part of a ruler to be loved, not to love or else to love in another way” (Eth. eud. 7.3.4). Do you hear the asymmetrical relational expectations of Aristotle? The one who is in power, the “head”, is to be loved but is in no way expected to return love. Why? Ultimately, because there is no equality between the two parties.[2]
This is the cultural expectation of Paul’s day and Roman society. So when Paul talks about husbands and wives serving each other (Eph. 5), husbands and wives’ bodies being equal (1 Cor. 7), and the creation account of Adam and Eve (1 Cor. 11), he is actually advancing a very counter-cultural ethic of human dignity that was distinct and exclusive to Christianity. Author and theologian, Michelle Lee-Barnewall helps to explain this when she writes,
“Paul’s instructions for the believers to obey government (Rom. 13) and pray for their rulers so they can live a “tranquil and quiet life” (1 Tim. 2:2) certainly attest to his desire for Christians to live peacefully in the broader community. His language of headship and submission for husbands and wives in Ephesians may at first glance seem to reflect another attempt for Christians to live according to larger social expectations. But a closer look at the cultural context reveals that while Paul was aware of these expectations, he does not conform to them but rather subverts the traditional order by describing an ethic that asks the head to act in a socially shameful and dishonoring way, that is, the way of the cross (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:18–31). Rather than being accommodating, Paul proposes a way that would be seen as causing great social disruption. The irony is that he says that in Christ it actually leads to the opposite, creating intimate unity and harmony between husband and wife.
As Gombis has noted, Ephesians is concerned not so much with apologetics to the outside world as with “the internal life of the new creation communities.” Gombis draws on the oikonomia tradition, in which the household was “a chief basis, paradigm, and reference point for religious and moral as well as social, political, and economic organization, interaction, and theology.” As noted earlier, the household would be seen as a microcosm of the state, and so would be a “concrete model” for how believers could live out their calling as the “household of God” (Eph. 2:19). Rather than upholding the traditional model of the husband as ruler over the wife, Paul instead presents the kingdom model of the husband as head of the wife in the same manner that Christ is the self-sacrificing head of the church. In this way marriage demonstrates the relationship of Christ and the church in which the two are bound together deeply as a result of Christ’s love.”[3]
Paul’s footing and foundation for this kind of thinking and radical ethic of human dignity was found in his understanding of the creation of Adam and Eve. They were both created by God and were created to bear his image. Eve was created “out of” Adam, that is, created of the “very same stuff” as Adam. This is profoundly different from Aristotle, who understood humanity to be created by the gods to be the servants of the gods. And man was made of far “greater stuff” than women. For Paul and his worldview, equality, dignity, and respect are crucial components. For Aristotle and his worldview, the very opposite was true. So, when we hear Paul talk about the relationships and roles of men and women in ways that challenge our modern sensibilities, we need to go back to what we know was fundamentally true in Paul’s mind so that we can understand his actual instructions to various churches in the New Testament.
Paul wants them (NT believers) and us (believers today) to live in a way that defies our cultural expectations because we are a “new creation” community.
What modern cultural expectations and demands does the cross and way of Jesus defy?
In what ways do we still look at a person’s worth and dignity as being tied up in their ability to be productive or useful?
Is there anything else in our world today that provides a better foundation for the ethic of human dignity than the Bible and the creation account of Adam and Eve?
[1] Stanley J. Grenz and Jay T. Smith, Pocket Dictionary of Ethics, The IVP Pocket Reference Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 19.
[2] Lee-Barnewall, Michelle. Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate (p. 226). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[3] Lee-Barnewall, Michelle. Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate (pp. 235-236). Kindle Edition.