say that Christ was like them in every way at least leads one to wonder whether the male
gender of Jesus was at all significant in the incarnation and atonement. Although Jesus was a
man (we know from other texts), from this passage we might be prompted to ask, Might our
Savior just as well have been a woman?
Or consider 1 Cor 15:21-22:
through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
comes also through a human being. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be
made alive.
Clearly what the TNIV has said here is true. But, the change from man to human being does
lead one to wonder whether there is any significance to the male gender of either Adam or of
Christ. Could Adam, qua head of the race, been a woman? This seems like an odd question,
does it not, since Adam had a wife, who clearly might instead have been seen as the head of the
human race after all, she sinned first! But, since it was Adam, not the woman, who Paul points
to here, and since Adam was male, is it best to eliminate the male term in reference to him? And
so of Christ. Is it best to drop out of view the male gender of Christ, the second Adam? Again, a
reader of the TNIV might wonder, from this verse, whether it matters that Jesus came as a male
Messiah. Could our Savior have been, instead, a woman?
Consider one more reference, this being 1 Timothy 2:5:
Jesus.
Jesus, himself human.
It should be acknowledged at the outset here, that the dynamic equivalent translation insertion of
the pronoun himself of Christ Jesus helps in retaining a sense of the male identity of Jesus, the
Christ. Still, instead of indicating of Christ, the mediator, that he is a man, who would obviously
also be understood as human (as in the NIV), here Christ is generically and explicitly human,
whose human nature comes in the form of a male human, as implied by the insertion of
himself (TNIV). Again, though, we wonder whether it is merely accidental (in the Aristotelian
meaning, as non-essential) and not necessary that Christ was in fact a male human being. If it is
the human identity of Jesus alone that matters in his being our mediator, then might the
question arise, Could our Savior, then, have been a woman?
surely leaves open a wide door for misunderstanding, and almost invites misunderstanding (A Brief Summary of
Concerns About the TNIV, Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 7.2 [Fall 2002] 7).