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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

   

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.    

     pg.1 of 9    

      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

 

     pg.2 of 9    

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

     pg.3 of 9    

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.

     pg.4 of 9    

"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.

     pg.5 of 9    

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;

     pg.6 of 9    

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 of 9    

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 of 9    

     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.

     pg.9 of 9    

Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights reserved

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