Tool Alpha
Genesis, the Beginning
What the first eleven chapters say, what they do not say, and where the real arguments are.
Let us make
God speaks in the plural and acts in the singular one verse later. Lennox and Heiser read the plural differently. Walton's argument does not turn on it.
Genesis 1:26-27, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: who is God talking to when he says "let us make"? We are not amused. A queen alone can say we. A man talking himself into a job says let's go. A captain says it to the team. A plural can mean more than one person, or a way one person speaks, and the candidates for this "us" are the Trinity, a heavenly council, or a way of speaking.
Genesis 1:26 has God say "let us make man in our image." Genesis 1:27 has God create, singular verb, in his image. Any reading has to hold both verses at once.
The verb in 1:26 is a plural cohortative, let us make. The verb in 1:27 is singular, he created. The image and likeness language uses first-person plural pronouns, our image, our likeness.
Lennox reads the plural, together with the Spirit hovering in verse 2 and the repeated "God said," as statements that surely anticipate New Testament teaching on the Trinity. John 1 and Colossians 1 then identify the Word through whom all things were made with Christ.
Walton's functional argument does not depend on the plural. His treatment of day six focuses on the image as role, identity, representation and relationship, and he notes that both asah (1:26) and bara (three times in 1:27) are used for the making of humanity.
Heiser reads 1:26 as God announcing his intention to his divine council, with 1:27 recording that God alone did the creating. The singular verb answers the charge that this view makes the council co-creators. The full case is in the Divine Council Index entry linked below.
The Trinitarian reading may be theologically true and still not describe what a first hearer would have understood. The council reading has to say who was in the room, and the text does not say. Neither pole of this tool is built on the verse.
Not multiple creators. The singular verb in 1:27 closes that off on every reading.
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- Lennox, Seven Days that Divide the World (2021), ch. 5
- Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP Academic, 2015), proposition 3
- Heiser, The Unseen Realm (2015), chs. 3 and 5
