Order of Redemption vs. Creation
In our own reflections we wish to advance two arguments. (1) In discussion concerning the continuing relevance of gender the relation between the “order of creation” and the “order of redemption” often arises. Many think that the “order of redemp- tion.” transcending and transforming the “order of creation,” presents a different configuration of human existence all-together. Many others, and here I would classify most Missouri Synod Lutherans, think of the “order of creation” was the implanted will of God in the structure of things and as such it is the expression of God’s immutable will. The “order of redemption”, on the other hand, constitutes a new existence in a new world brought by Christ, and this existence is determined by grace. This is, in fact, the very posturing of these two “orders” in the 1985 CTCR document, “Women in the Church.” Here, to be sure, the “order of creation” is said to be sanctified and hallowed by Christ’s work. There is between the two “orders” are relationship of continuity (the first is not destroyed in the second, but continues as sanctified in the second). Yet, one searches in vain in the CTCR document for any organic relationship between the “order of creation” and the “order of redemption” whereby the purposes of God for the world in Christ are already envisioned, presaged, and prophesied in the “order of creation” itself. I have already referred to the striking phraseology of Susannah Herzel’s that the creation is “prophetic material” pointing to some greater and more complete future. Along that same line, I would like to suggest that the creating activity of God and the redeeming activity of God are not two qualitatively distinct ways of the divine working, but that they are organically related. The way God works creatively (and this from the beginning) and the way God works redemptively are not intrinsically different but are united in intention and purpose. Perhaps one can express the point like this: the redemptive work of God brings the creative work of God, presently under the alien dominion of sin and death, to its intended purpose and goal. If this is the case,then the “order of creation” is not transformed in the “order of redemption” but is rather illuminated in the “order of redemption”. We perceive the “order of creation” most clearly in the “order of redemption.” That Christ, the Head of the new humanity, was male was not due, therefore,to some requirement to maintain the “order of creation.” It is not that Christ was a male human person because in the “order of creation” God had given headship and authority to the man, Adam. Rather, God who created humankind in order that He might have communion with it in and through His Word gave the headship of humanity to the man, Adam, in view of the eschatological goal of humanity which is Christ and His Church. Because in the final purpose and telosof God for the world the man Jesus Christ was to be the Head of his Body, the Church (which relates to Christ as Bride to Bridegroom), God in the beginning gave Adam to be head to Eve. As Paul says, “the head of woman is the man” (I Cor. 11:3) and “Adam was created first (or perhaps “as the first”), then Eve” (I Tim. 2: 13). This makes perfectly good sense of two passages of Paul. The first we have already clearly implied, Eph. 5:23-33. As is evident in this passage, Paul is implicitly appealing to the creation story of man and woman in Genesis 2. This passage intimately combines the creation of Eve from Adam, the recognition of Adam that the woman is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and the unity they have together as “one flesh” in the marriage bond. That Adam possesses “headship” within this “one flesh” of the marriage bond is clear. However, in Ephesians 5 Paul’s point is not that Christ’s love for his Bride, the Church, is patterned after what was to be the case between Adam and Eve in the Garden. Rather, it is in view of Christ’s love for his Bride, the Church, that husbands are to love their wives and that wives are to be subject to their husbands as to their head. The true marriage was not that marriage in the Garden. The true marriage is that between Christ and the Church. Al other marriages (including that first one in the Garden)—and this is true the more marriages are blessed by love—are faint images and icons of that Marriage of the Lamb with his Bride, the Church.
–Dr. William Weinrich, “It is not Given to Women to Teach” A Lex in Search of a Ratio, 22-23.
Your thesis presupposes the Fall. But the order of creation existed before the Fall. How could the order of creation look forward to Christ before the Fall, unless you are positing that God knew the first parents would fall into sin? I’ve always thought that the creation seemed to be designed to provide for a fallen mankind (medicines, etc.) but wouldn’t go as far as saying God planned for the Fall (although that might actually be the correct answer). He may, in fact, have planned for the possibility of the Fall.
It does. Rev 13:8 is helpful here. Also Acts 2:23.