The Ontological Being of God and the Relational Vocation of Humanity

Because husband and wife together bear and reflect the divine image, any theological account of marriage appropriately begins with God. God is, that is, God exists in and of Himself, uncreated and self-sustaining, the source of all that is and the ground of all being. Unlike created beings, whose existence depends upon external causes, God’s existence is necessary rather than contingent. He simply is (Exod. 3:14). While God is eternal, He graciously engages with creation within the order of time, revealing Himself through historical events and entering human experience (John 1:14). God is omnipotent, possessing unlimited power to accomplish His will (Jer. 32:17); omniscient, knowing all things actual and possible (1 John 3:20); and omnipresent, present in every place and moment without being confined by space (Psa. 139:7-10). He is also immutable, unchanging in nature, and faithful in character (Mal. 3:6), even as He dynamically relates to creation (Heb. 13:8). God transcends all limitations of human existence (Isa. 55:8-9) while remaining intimately involved with it, a being both beyond comprehension who yet is personally knowable to the degree He reveals himself (Eph. 3:18-19).

As God is immutable, God’s knowledge, love, and will are not contingent attributes added to divine being; rather, they are God’s very essence (Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q.3, a.4). God is not a being who happens to know, love, and will, but is knowledge, love, and will in the most absolute sense: God’s will, therefore, is not a process or sequence of choices; it is identical with divine essence, God’s willing is God’s being (Davies 2011, 35-36).

The Nature of the Triune God is Love Perichorically Expressed in Perfect Relational Harmony

God’s love (1 John 4:8, 16) is expressed relationally in the eternal and mutual indwelling of three Persons: the Father, Son, and Spirit. The classical formulation, each divine Person “in each” and “all in all,” makes clear that this indwelling is ontological rather than merely functional. Such an account resists inadequate models that construe intra-divine life as either isolated individuality or undifferentiated oneness (Augustine, De Trinitate VI.10; John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa I.8). This mutual indwelling is self-giving and receiving, a reality described by the term perichōrēsis (Moltmann 1993, 56–58). Which is derived from the Greek peri (περί), meaning "around" and chorein (χορεῖν), meaning "to give way" or "to make room," perichoresis names the ontological reality that each Person of the Trinity fully indwells the others without confusion or division of the ontology of the other Persons. The concept conveys an image of divine communion so profound that the three distinct Persons move together in perfect relational harmony, as though in a dance, their unity so complete that they appear as one in essence and will. This perichoretic being both preserves divine unity and affirms personal distinction, with divine love constituting this mutual indwelling as a self-giving communion (Letham 2004; Stăniloae 1994). Where divine love is present, the act of giving does not diminish but enlarges it, so that each expression of love deepens the well from which further love may be offered (Moltmann 1993, 174; Volf 1998, 412; Zizioulas 2006, 104). Perichoresis thus functions as a central theological framework that safeguards the oneness and threeness of the Trinity while reflecting forth human relationality (Ayres 2004, 206; Torrance 1996, 168). 

God’s Self-giving Communion Overflows into the Creation of Adam in His Image

The distinction between God and humanity rests in their respective modes of being: God is love essentially, eternally, and independently, the inexhaustible fountainhead of all existence, while humanity reflects this love dependently, existing only in relation to its divine source. God is the overflowing fountain; humanity is the stream drawn from it. God is necessary and self-sufficient; humans are contingent, participatory, and derivative, akin to a stream drawn from the overflowing fountain of divine life. From this superabundant source, divine love not only brings creation into being but also continually sustains it.

The triune God is a fullness of glory and delight that needs nothing yet delights to be shared. This inner divine life provides the generative logic for creation, for God wills to extend the inexhaustible, self-giving love of His triune communion beyond the three Persons of the Trinity (Stăniloae 1994; Letham 2004). Creation therefore arises not from deficiency but from God’s superabundant generosity. As LaCugna observes, “Creation is the action God takes in order to communicate the Trinitarian existence opera ad extra [meaning “external works”] and, more precisely, in order to generate a community of love that reflects the inner life of God” (1991, 377). From this inexhaustible, superabundant love, God brings forth Adam, the original human.

Adam is created in God’s tselem (צֶלֶם, ), meaning “image” and after God’s demut (דְּמוּת), meaning “likeness” or “reflection,” terms that, while nuanced, function together to underscore the comprehensive character of Adam’s God-given personhood (Westermann 1984, 146–47; Brueggemann 1982, 32–33). At the outset, Scripture does not define Adam by tasks but by being. He is one who, through God’s creative act, images and represents God’s nature within creation. His primary vocation is thus to bear, manifest, and image so that God’s nature becomes visible in and through Adam’s existence (Westermann 1984, 148; Middleton 2005, 27–29). Vocation (from Latin vocatio, “calling”) refers not merely to occupation but to the totality of one’s life lived in response to God’s summons (Veith 2011, 17; Nichols 2011, 8). Vocation is rooted in creation and is distinguished from occupation by its divine origin and purpose. Here Adam is called into vocation as priest. He is a God-appointed mediator who serves within God’s covenant with humanity by guarding the sacred space entrusted to him, embodying obedient worship (Gen. 2:15), and sustaining the communion between Creator and creature. In this work he cultivates and protects the sphere in which divine–human fellowship flourishes (Beale 2004). This vocation is not merely a set of faculties or a role, but a constitutive reality: “to be” is already “to be called” as God’s image (Sands 2010, 30–32; Cortez 2010, 45–47). 

Adam’s secondary vocation is to be in vertical relationship with God. Scripture introduces Adam by his posture of relational openness before God. The plural speech of Genesis 1:26–27, “Let Us make man in Our image,” “Us” and “Our,” expresses the nature of humankind. Adam cannot be “us” alone. He cannot have “our” alone. Communion with another, in this case divine-human communion is formative for him (Hoekema 1986).

Theological tradition clarifies this relational vocation. The imago Dei confers reason and will (Augustine 1991, 14.4.6; Aquinas 1920, I.93.4), grounding human dignity, agency, and the capacity for communion with God. Divine-human communion in this vertical context is a divinely initiated participation in the life and presence of the triune God, in which Adam responds with trust, obedience, and fellowship imaged and reflecting God’s own perchoretic relationship. Relationship thus becomes vocation before any particular task (Sands 2010, 35; Farris 2020, 62–65). This vertical orientation is deepened by the narrative depiction of God placing Adam within the divinely planted garden, a sanctuary of God’s presence, where Adam is addressed, commanded, and encountered by God (Gen. 2:8, 15–17).

This communion is central to Adam’s personhood, meaning the state of being a distinct and relational subject who bears the imago Dei and is called into a Spirit-enabled vocation to love God and neighbor, ordering one’s life toward God’s glory in communion with others. He enjoys direct fellowship with his Creator, evidenced by God’s intimate act of breathing life into him and engaging him personally within the garden (Wenham 1987). The imago Dei illuminates this vocation as fundamentally relational and spiritual, distinguishing humanity by its capacity for knowledge of and fellowship with God (Berkouwer 1962; Middleton 2005). Scholars such as Walton and Madueme further highlight the priestly dimension of Adam’s calling: he is placed in Eden not only to cultivate and guard the garden but to dwell in God’s sacred presence and mediate creation’s worship before the divine (Walton 2001; Madueme 2014). Adam’s existence is thus oriented toward continual communion with God, a vocation that constitutes both the foundation and the fulfillment of his created purpose (Aquinas 1947; Ware 1993; Bavinck 2004).

God communed with Adam in a divinely planted sanctuary “in the east, in Eden,” characterized by abundance, order, and sacred beauty. The Hebrew ʿēḏen (עֵדֶן), meaning “delight” or “pleasure,” conveys fertility and blessing, depicting a place of divine generosity and flourishing (ten Hoopen 2021, 172). A river flows from Eden to water the garden and then divides into four headwaters signifying the life-giving extension of divine provision throughout creation (Gen. 2:10–14; Alexander 2008, 8–10). Within this fertile landscape, “every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food” grows, including the two central symbols of vertical divine-human relationship: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9). Eden’s orientation and imagery suggest an enclosed, elevated, and ordered space, what later Scripture calls the “holy mountain of God” (Ezek. 28:13–14), rich with precious stones, vegetation, and flowing water (Beale 2011, 617–622). Its eastward entrance and enclosed design mark it as a protected gan (גַּן), meaning “garden,” a cultivated domain, where divine presence dwells with humanity (Wenham 1987, 401–403). At the conclusion of this creative act, God beheld all that He had made and declared that it was “very good” (Gen, 1:31), affirming creation in its original state.

Beyond imaging God and being in relationship with God, Genesis 2:15 provides the clearest articulation of Adam’s trinary vocation: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.” The paired verbs ‘avad (עבד), meaning “to work, serve, cultivate,” and shamar (שָׁמַר), meaning “to keep, guard, watch over,” carry both agricultural and priestly significance. As Beale (2004) and Wenham (1987) demonstrate, these terms later describe the duties of priests and Levites within the sanctuary, suggesting that Adam is commissioned not merely as a cultivator but as a priestly steward entrusted with the space of Eden (Beale 2004, 66–70; Wenham 1987, 67–68). His vocation was not burdensome or punitive, it is a joyful participation in God’s creative order (Hamilton 2017, 23–25).

Adam’s vocation keeping the garden extended to naming the animals (Gen. 2:19-20) and functioned as a pedagogical moment through which God leads him to recognize his own nature as a relational being. Naming signified discernment and relational insight rather than mere classification, and scholars such as Janzen (1984) and Brueggemann (1992) emphasize that Adam’s task reflects an engaged, perceptive encounter with creation. Within the narrative structure that frames this episode, God’s declaration that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18), the naming of the animals emerges as a formative process that awakens Adam to the absence of a partner who corresponds to him. As he discerns the nature of each creature, Adam discovers that none who shares his likeness can join him in his vocation, and this discovery prepares him to receive human fellowship as God’s gift.

Adam’s naming of the animals reveals that humanity’s God-given vocation cannot be fulfilled in isolation, for this divinely guided path to self-knowledge awakens him to his need for a partner who stands “corresponding to him.” His personhood is inherently relational, rooted first in divine-human communion with the triune God and then expressed in horizontal engagement with creation, and yet this vocation remains incomplete so long as he stands alone. Because the God whose image he bears exists eternally as a communion of Persons, Adam’s imaging of God cannot reach its fullness apart from embodied relational reciprocity. The narrative therefore clarifies that humanity is constituted for communion rather than isolation, and that Adam’s solitary stewardship rightly prepares him to receive the corresponding spouse through whom relational life may find its proper expression.

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