Creation One. Almost done! We’ve been exploring a totally epic story and so ought to begin wrapping up in suitable style. What we need is the beating heart of the narrative on display, its most astounding image or challenging truth…
God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth’. God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it… See, I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food. (vv 26-29)
Apart from God, of course, it turns out we’re the big story: HUMANS, or, if you prefer, Homo sapiens. One might say it’s a story of the blindingly obvious and befuddlingly mysterious. In a way, we are history. There is no story to tell without us. It’s confusing we would be so important in the grand scheme of things! The sixth day represents the apex or climax of God’s activities, which relates directly to the central mystery of Christianity: God Himself became human. The royal seal of approval!
These realities are so far beyond articulation that only stories and the power of image can serve as appropriate signposts. Even then, all paths ultimately lead away into the prayerful silence of sacred darkness. Nonetheless, it’s still the express purpose of stories to shine like the brightest stars. They are designed to startle, and there’s nothing more astonishing than the idea that we are made in God’s image and likeness! The Hebrew words connote carving: like we’ve been crafted into living effigies of God.
The writers appear to be aware of the preposterousness of such a comparison. How can bounded humanity be compared in any credible way to unbounded divinity? Of course, strictly speaking, we can’t. Nevertheless, a fundamental part of the power of story resides in making imaginative leaps. God Himself told us as much. Such truths cannot be approached head-on (pun intended). We call it analogy.
So, what specifically does this comparison reveal?
Complementarity
The first truth about image and likeness is that it only finds proper expression in male and female taken together. The word man should be understood as generic in the Genesis passage: as in, human. This is echoed in the poetry of the great John Donne:
No man is an island entire of itself
And, most notably, distinction isn’t by division this time. Diversity is less significant than unity. We are all us. It isn’t about eros here, either. The hardwired reciprocity of the sexes has more to do with mission. Women and men working together more effectively, because enhanced by respective and respected differences. Gender antagonism runs directly counter to this vision.
We’ve already noticed that there are often unspoken words bubbling away beneath the Genesis text and this time the word is love. God’s love brings us into being, and so our likeness to Him is rooted in our love for one another as sisters and brothers. In a hyper-sexualised world, flooded with fake valentines, the story that we’re simply made for each other is really the true romance, and incredibly liberating. It casts a whole new light over the search for life partners.
And this is captured in the DNA of stories. In a broad sense, they are all essentially about this I-Thou: protagonist and antagonist; heroes and villains; genius and foil; master and apprentice; the lovers; parents and children; aliens versus us; divinities and humanity; even, solipsist me against the whole world. And, of course, stories are told to be heard, written to be read. The audience is the other, often unstated, Thou. Story is performance. Even a personal diary, destined for your eyes only, is written in shared language. Even if written in a private language, it’s still articulation; an external decipherable form. Language is inherently dialogical. The words of each story yearn to be discovered.
Procreation
Notice there follows a standalone blessing for procreation. It’s portrayed as an additional vocation relating directly to this particular couple. They first represent the idealised brother-sister template for human cooperation but then, in addition, they embody the fundamental meaning of Genesis: generation. To this end, they must be more than friends, and so also represent the fecundity of a divinely ordained coupling. God literally speaks fruitfulness into their lives. The meaning of this blessing is explored more deeply in Creation Story Two but, suffice to say, this is clearly the originating Biblical aetiology for marriage.
Amid modern overpopulation doomsaying, the imperative to fill the earth can seem gratuitous, yet this is portrayed as a blessing/imperative/duty. It represents the flourishing or blossoming implied in the Hebrew word for blessing. Of course, as an ideal, not everyone has this calling. It’s more a broad brushstroke: no kids, no future.
Stewardship
Thorny words these: mastery, conquest, subduing and dominance. They’re curiously muscular, almost hubristic. Why not rather go and turn the whole world into a work of art, or a hippie commune? The writers appear to be deliberately alluding to the struggles of lived existence and the contesting subliminal chaos. It’s nowhere near as effortless for humanity as for God, who simply speaks Creation into being. This is a foreshadowing of the human toil and striving stalking the near horizon (3:17).
Indeed, such words might not feel wholly out of place in the works of Darwin or Nietzsche. We’ve already explored how the two narratives of natural history and salvation history might intertwine. Mastery and conquest, subduing and dominance can be read as an aetiology for human environmental dominance on this planet. Of course, this is relative to human measurement and perception. That Speciesism could even be a thing, never crossed my mind until I studied moral philosophy. I believe cases have been made for viruses, fungi, ants or worms being more dominant in their respective domains. But, as said, they’re not the ones telling the story!
Our natural history highlights developments such as opposable digits, tool- and weapon-making, bipedalism, predation, campfire cooking, diet innovation and food storage, communication, cooperation and construction, but most of all, relatively large highly complex brains, which appear to have underpinned this competitive advantage. The conclusion might be along the lines of: curious mutations leading to greater environmental adaptation leading to overall competitive dominance (for now). Essentially, a tale of pluck and luck for us, but not really for everything else.
This is an impressive but hardly overwhelming narrative. Just because we’re a single species doesn’t necessitate there being an us at all, (see Lord of the Flies, 1984 etc). This type of dominance might lead to any number of divisions or oblivions: sleepwalking into selfishly frying ourselves off the face of the planet; wiping ourselves out with viruses of our own nefarious making; the nuclear elephant still very much in the room; genetic engineering and autonomous AI; the manipulation of voters and demise of effective democracy; reemergent totalitarian ideologies; permanent wealth inequity; global erosion of human/civil rights and intolerance towards (particularly religious) minorities; the vast silent destruction of babies in the womb; the vast vociferous destruction of people on the internet, etc.
Which is why Creation One is also at pains to express mastery and conquest, subduing and dominance in a rightful vocational context. That is, inside a corrective framework.
In the ancient world, only the monarch was endowed with the incomparable dignity of being the gods’ representative on earth. The rest of humanity formed the largely expendable masses. So, it’s an incredible counter-statement of worth that we’re all to be masters on God’s behalf: lieutenants, deputies, understudies, royal stewards, ambassadors. We’re directly accountable to Him in our managing of His creation: dominance with duty, conquest with care, subduing with sense, mastery with mercy. This is the archetypal vocation of all humanity; the gift and onerous responsibility of the children of God. Cooperation is elevated over competition. We do not truly own anything. It’s all on loan. Entrusted to us not to exploit, including one another.
Notice there isn’t even predation here, which is highly significant given the natural narrative. Order implies complete harmony between creatures. All God’s creatures are given only the plants to eat, (1:30). Meat-eating comes later, in the Noahic Covenant, (Gen 9:1-7), arguably marking a further fearful distancing from the once pristine order.
The survival/ascendance story of natural evolution is still significant given the events to come in chapter three, but it’s not the key narrative. Our most primitive identity is care. The story told here, one to inscribe upon our very hearts, is that we only become most fully ourselves when we treat our common home and all within it as God would have us so.
Conclusion
What an incredible opening story of the Bible: a mosaic of beauty and breathtaking portrait of reality! It has taken us from the birth of the universe itself at the dark margins of space/time to a vision of ordered benevolence and joyful flourishing. Through the unparalleled power of Word, story itself is brought into being along with language and history. God’s spirit sweeps across the narrative, banishing fear, and marking out humanity for special honour and responsibility. This momentous integration of spirit and matter forms the foundation of all romance and tragedy. Paradoxically, the frenetic energy of creating gently swings inside a divine hammock. And one word, too obvious for stating, saturates the story from start to finish: love. Love brought all this into being, sustains it in being, and will bring it to completeness of being. Because Creation is in motion, it has a purpose, a direction, and like us all, is also on a journey in search of final fulfilment.
Creation One answers the question rooted deep in every human heart - who am I? The answer it gives resounds like cathedral bells across a clear morning sky: you are my beloved child, an echo of my living voice, my most precious work of art.
As God takes a well-earned rest and this chapter of the story draws to a close, the question left ringing in the air is: will you live out this destiny with all your heart?
Header photo: Shane Rounce, Unsplash