There are two accounts of the creation of humanity in Genesis. While they have elements in common, even the earliest Christian commentaries noticed their differences. Patristic commentators and theologians tried to give explanations for those differences. For example, some suggested the first story concerns the creation of human nature as it exists in eternity, in “the kingdom of God” or heaven, or in relation to human nature, and the second shows us how that humanity was given material or historical form. Others tried to find ways to harmonize the two together, claiming their differences were only apparent. If we do not take Genesis as literal history, but a collection of historical myths full of symbols, it is easier to believe such a harmony is possible. For then we can explain the stories, and what they teach, by giving interpretations to the stories, showing how those interpretations come together to form one harmonious whole. To do this, we would have to explain the stories as giving symbolic and allegorical or spiritual truths, and that the details, which is where the contradictions lie, are not meant to be taken as literal facts.
Scientifically, of course, we have a better understanding of the way humanity emerged in history; thanks to Darwin and evolution, we know that humanity did not emerge ex nihilo, but instead developed out of (or evolved from) others hominids. Scientifically, the evolutionary processes do not appear to have a teleology associated with them; this is why science does not teach us that humanity is the “end” or “fulfillment” of evolution. Theologically, we can believe there is more involved in those processes than science can detect, that is, we can believe that God’s providence, acting in and through grace, influenced evolution so that humanity could eventually come to be (meaning it was something God intended evolution to create, and not just an accident of history). Science will never be able to prove or disprove this, and if we talk about evolution in a purely scientific way, it would be wrong to try to do so; however, if we engage science with theology and what we believe God has revealed to us, we can believe that there was, at least in some stages of evolution, providence working with the processes by establishing the conditions needed to produce humanity.
Genesis gives us a glimpse as to why God created humanity: to be God’s representative in the world, and as God’s representative, to be stewards over the rest of creation:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen. 1:26-28 RSV).
Genesis tells us that humanity was made in God’s image and likeness. Many think, because it only mentions humanity as being made this way, only humanity can be said to be in God’s image and likeness. That is an argument from silence. But if we think things through, we can believe this is not what makes humanity unique. As all things are made in and through the Logos, being given their own logos, everything is a logos reflecting the Logos who is God. That means everything reflects the image and God in their own unique way. Genesis tells us here that humanity reflects God’s image because we are its proper audience. Moreover, it suggests how we are to conceive the way we reflect God, how we can be said to be made in God’s image and likeness: by the way God gave it authority over all creation. For God has absolute authority over all things, and authority God engages out of love (not tyranny). Humanity was made, in part, to reflect that, and humanity does so by acting as a steward over the earth, becoming, as it were, God’s hands and feet, serving creation by helping to preserve and protect it from harm (instead of seeking to dominate and control it for their own selfish ends).
While talking about humanity being made in God’s image, we cannot ignore that Genesis says humanity is made in the image and likeness of God in the way humanity is “male and female.” There are two significant ways this has been interpreted over the ages. One, is only when we see men and women are brought together as one, that is in the combination of the “male and female,” that humanity properly represents God. The other interpretation suggests that every many and woman have their own share of God’s image and likeness in themselves, and that Genesis was trying to remind us this so not to make one naturally superior to the other. When we read those who read the text following the first interpretation, we find that some of them even suggested that humanity, when it first came to be, was established as a hermaphrodite, making Adam originally “male and female”; it was when Eve was created, making Adam only a man and Eve a woman, that humanity was split, and with it, each part of humanity has a part of that divine representation within. To be sure, this was not the normative take; most commentators suggest that Genesis intends us to believe that men and women alike hold the divine image and likeness in them. But, sadly, after this has been affirmed, we find the way Eve is created out of Adam calling this equality into question, as they claim Eve (and all women) should be seen as derivative in nature, making their possession of the image and likeness of God derivative in nature as well (allowing them to become second class humans). This, of course, is an extremely bad interpretation which must be denied; it takes the Genesis story overly literal (which, of course, we should not), and it uses misogyny to read into that story a way to deny women what the first Genesis creation story said was given to them by God.
It is best to understand the two creation stories as complementing each other. There are major differences, on the literal level, leading to contradictions between the two. We should read this, like Origen and others would suggest, that we must not take them as positive (or literal) history. We must read them as myths, and our reading of them must have us seek out and understand the various fundamental truths, especially the fundamental metaphysical truths which we cannot discern through science, that we are intended to obtain from them. Once we do so, we can then use those truths as hermeneutical tools we bring with us to help interpret what we learn from science, for then, we will find a way to bring the results of both investigations together without any fundamental contradictions between the two. Genesis is clear that God not only had a hand in the creation of humanity, God had a special intention for humanity, an intention which explains some of God’s interventions into history. Humanity is special because it was “created” to have control over the earth, not, of course, to dominate and destroy it, but to be God’s representative and servant in history, using the authority given to it to help direct and guide the rest of creation, making sure everything is made better. This intention finds its fulfillment in Jesus, the God-man, who in his humanity is able to show us what humanity is meant to be through his human activity, even as, through his divine activity, we learn more of who God is, and we see in him, how humanity and God can and should come together and work together in one unified (or coordinated) activity.
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