Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

Gen 2:20  The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. Gen 2:21  So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. Gen 2:22  And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Gen 2:23  Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

1Co 11:7  For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 1Co 11:8  For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 1Co 11:9  Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

As Paul refers back to Genesis chapters 1 and 2 he makes a pretty profound statement about the creation of man and woman.  He kind of answers the age old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg”.  Actually the Bible answers this very clearly, the chicken came first.  We can understand this question coming from the confusion of the lost man who assumes evolution.  But evolution can’t explain the origin of life; at best it is an attempt to explain where we find ourselves today or the process of life.  Darwin wrote “The Origin of the Species” not the “Origin of Life” because he and the lost have nothing to say on the subject of how life began other than it just happened.

But naturally speaking if the egg came first then we wonder what produced the egg since only an adult hen can do so.  If the chicken came first… well, the naturalist can’t even think like that or their whole worldview collapses.  So they pontificate about the “process” of evolution and more or less ignore the elephant in the room, how did it all begin.  Paul speaks to all this when speaking of male headship and female submission when he reminds us that the first man was not born by natural process from a female but that he already existed first and that the female was taken from him.  In other words, the natural order God set in motion after creation was completely undermined in the beginning.

Humans could not have come from lower species; they were created fully formed and completely contrary to the natural order.  So this is huge in the area of science and anthropology and how we understand ourselves and we see that God made man first because he was to have that position of headship and the woman came next as she was made for man.  For a man and woman to understand who they are they must understand how they came to be and why.  Man was created and then woman was made to help him serve the Lord.  That is something we need to meditate on for a while, especially in this day and age.

I would finish by reminding us as well that both Jesus and Paul quote from the first two chapters of Genesis and they do so taking them literally.  There is no question that they believed Adam and Eve to be the first humans.  And we need to be very careful of trying to play games with these two chapters which is so fashionable today.  One thing is clear; Adam was created fully mature and ready to assume the role of a responsible adult.  So why could not the universe and the earth be created at the stage in which they were fully capable of being the dwelling place of man with everything they needed to sustain us? 

If God unquestionably did this with Adam and Eve then why would we assume anything different for the rest of creation unless we don’t like being dismissed by the evolutionists?  But we are given light so let us walk and talk and think like children of light and not darkness.