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In the beginning…

Genesis 1, bird’s eye-view: the divine community creates an image-bearing community. “Very good.”

Genesis 2, worm’s eye-view: God creates Adam. “Not good.”

“It is not good for man to be alone.” This is a remarkable claim–that God created something not-good. Surely this not-good man of Genesis 2 cannot be said to be the same very good image-bearing creation of Genesis 1.

Indeed, Adam is not yet fully human, at least not in the way that God is fully God.

So God killed him.

He ripped open Adam’s chest. He broke off one of his ribs, that place that guards the heart, and then raised him from the dead–and with him his beloved: “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). It was the first hypostatic union. [One might even say it was kenosis as an invitation into perichoresis!]:

Now I don’t want to press the point, because I really don’t know what happened, but I do know the imagery is less than idyllic (although, if I would entrust my death to anyone to bring from it fullness of life, it would be God). Adam had been formed from red mud, a perfectly cooperative impress of his maker’s hands, before being thrust into the kiln. But Adam was not complete, because it takes at least two+love to make something like the image of the One God who is Three. No man is an island, because no God is an island. So God took from the heart of this red-mud man and formed the woman out of his red bones:
“The body of Adam broken for Eve, the blood of Adam shed for Eve.”

Adam had found a companion fit for him and God had founded a couple fit for love.

And now: very good.

#theFirstAdaminlightoftheLastAdam