The Eve of Mankind
On the Nobility of Women
Christianity brought the concept of childhood to children and womanhood to women. She is not the temptress. She is the God-bearer bringing the presence of the divine to the ordinary days of our lives.
“Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20).
The English transliteration of the Hebrew is Adam (א ֹדם, and Adam is from the Hebrew word for “soil). Adam is God’s word for Mankind (male and female) (and, yes, it is faithful to the original to say, “Mankind”). Adam is also the personal name God gave to the first human being made in His image. While there was no death or decay in Eden before the Fall, there was loneliness (Genesis 2:18). Adam was lonely. So, God made Issha (” woman”). Relatively speaking, there was no need to speak of “male” until God made woman. As a woman finds an essential identity in “Adam,” Adam locates his masculinity in “Eve.” Both male and female can know the ultimate identity in the Triune God through repentance and faith in Jesus our Lord. Yet, our complimentary persons are directional signs to see a greater truth of our essential need to return to our Creator. God’s final and most beautiful creature was (is) the one Adam named, “Eve.” As in an ecclesiastical, academic, or other processional where the last individual is of the highest rank, so Eve, and by representation, womankind, is the highest order of creation.
The Hebrew word for “Eve” is Chava (ָּוה ַח ). The root word is often said to be the word for “life.” There is a good reason for that. However, the closer etymological antecedent appears to be a word we use called “symbiosis.” “Sym” is “with” “bio” speaks of ”living things,” and the appendage, ”sis,” means a “process.”Symbiosis means bringing lives together in harmony. The so-called “woman’s touch” is not a meaningless phrase. It is God’s truth revealed in Genesis. Observe how woman seems to have an intuitive, God-given ability to bring unity, meaning, beauty, and community out of disharmony, despair, drudgery, and isolation. Woman is not only“Mother” and “life-giver,” she is God’s symbiotic force of human flourishing for all Mankind. That is why I have always taken “Mother’s Day” to honor all women. I was an orphan. I was reared by my Aunt Eva (from the Greek New Testament word for Eve), my father’s sister, a widow who had not born children, and a woman in her sixties when the state gave me to her to rear. This, without the aid of a man I was brought up. My wife gave me life and purpose when I felt I had neither. My daughters, and daughters-in-Christ (including our granddaughters and my cherished sisters, and mothers in the Lord) show me an expression of God’s love that is incomparable. These realities and all the teachings of Scripture are why I reared our son to show honor unto all women as if unto God. I sought to inculcate this divinely revealed virtue in the congregations I served, and the seminarians I taught. I seek, however falteringly, to honor Eve each day in some way. It is not a duty of law but a duty of love and of gratitude and wonder.
Observe how woman seems to have an intuitive, God-given ability to bring unity, meaning, beauty, and community out of disharmony, despair, drudgery, and isolation. Woman is not only“Mother” and “life-giver,” she is God’s symbiotic force of human flourishing for all Mankind.—M. A. Milton
Christian manners arose in large part from these fundamental biblical truths about women. She is to be honored for her role in all life. So, we stand when she enters. We take off our hats or tip them when we (soil-based Adams) encounter her. We bow to kiss her hand as one who is in the presence of a noble creaure greater than ourselves. Likewise, we “put her on a pedestal” out of honor to God for His wonderful and greatest Creation. We promise the moon. But we end up getting flowers from the grocery. But our deficiencies can’t suppress our desire—a desire to give. The male of Mankind intuitively desires to give gifts to women, just as little boys bring their mothers wildflowers—perhaps, with a few weeds (our gifts often reveal our clumsiness before her)—humble jewels from the forest and the meadow, or as a young man showers a girl with bouquets and chocolates, or an old man tries to outdo himself after fifty years of gift-giving.
When God announced the coming of the Messiah, our Lord first revealed this to women. When Jesus rose again from the dead, the first witness and the first one to tell others about Jesus’ resurrection was woman. She is redeemed from any prior notion of having first sinned by the deceit of Satan by bringing forth the Savior of the world without the biological participation of a male. God planned that redemption from the beginning. For to the devil, God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15, English Standard Version). Thus, St. Paul writes, "Yet she will be saved through childbearing—[i.e.,bearing the Son of God—author’s note] if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control" (1 Timothy 2:15, ESV). An individual woman is not saved from divine judgment by giving birth—a theological impossibility, and a physical act that excludes little girls and a great number of women (and some of those out of vows to the Lord for a life of intensive service)—but, rather, womankind is redeemed, as in a covenantal reversal. The ruling motif of life in Christ is paradox. And there is no more conspicuous or wondrous paradox than the covenant story of God’s final creation, Woman.
So, it is good, and right that mankind pauses to give thanks for the highest order of divine creation, We are nothing without you: a house is not a home, a home is not a family, and life itself is drab and dull without the “fearfully and wonderfully made” sparkle of life called woman. “How fair and how pleasant you are, O love . . .” (Song of Solomon 7:6 New King James Version).
So, we thank the Lord for the beautiful gift of women in our lives. And dear daughters, sisters, and mothers: you, literally, bring beauty to life.