2. The Manner of the Woman’s Creation out of Man

Genesis 2 suggests the principle of headship and submission not only by the order of creation of Adam and Eve, but also by the manner of their creation. God created man first and then made woman out of his rib (Gen 2:21-22). He did not make Adam and Eve from the ground at the same time and for one another without distinction. Neither did God create the woman first and then man from the woman and for the woman. God could just as easily have created the woman first and made man out of Eve’s rib, but He did not. Why? Most likely because that would have obscured the distinction between the male-headship and the female-submission roles that God wanted to make clear.

Our Women in Ministry author rejects the possibility that the woman’s derivation from Adam implies submission. He argues that "derivation does not imply submission. Adam also was ‘derived’ from the ground (v. 7), but certainly we are not to conclude that the ground was his superior. Again, woman is not Adam’s rib. The raw material, not woman, was taken out of man, just as the raw material of man was ‘taken’ (Gen 3:19, 23) out of the ground. . . . As the man was asleep while God created woman, man had no active part in the creation of woman that might allow him to claim to be her superior or head."¹⁰

These arguments are based on invalid reasoning. First of all, they ignore the biblical distinction between Adam and the ground from which he was formed. The ground could never be Adam’s superior because it is inanimate matter given to man to cultivate. To compare Adam with the ground is worse than comparing apples with oranges, because there is no similarity of nature and function between the two.

Second, the fact that Adam was asleep when God created woman is irrelevant, because male headship is not based on Adam’s part in Eve’s creation but on God’s assigned roles revealed in the order and manner of the first couple’s creation.

Third, the different ways God created man and woman are closely related to the different tasks they are called to fulfill. This point is well expressed by Werner Neuer: "The man is formed from the soil, whose cultivation is entrusted to him by God (Gen 2:15; 3:17), while the woman is created quite differently, out of man’s rib, to be his helper. This is her God-given task in life (Gen 2:18). The appointed tasks of the sexes are as basically different as the ways in which they were created by God. Their different modes of creation are intimately related to their tasks in life. It is worth noting that Genesis 2 and 3 in their own language make clear the very different world-outlooks of the sexes. . . . While the man has an immediate relationship to the world of things, the woman is primarily directed to the world of persons (i.e., in the first instance to her husband)."¹¹

Lastly, the notion that "man had no active part in the creation of woman that might allow him to claim to be her superior or head" again reflects the subtle and deceptive assumption that headship implies superiority—-a concept that is foreign to the Bible and to the issue of women’s ordination.