Marriage as a Pre-Fall Creation Ordinance

Mr. Wagner walks through the garden imagery — its abundance, the four rivers, the tree of life carried forward into Ezekiel and Revelation — and the eschatological pull of Eden toward the city of God. He then turns to the not-good of Adam's solitude. Adam cannot fulfill the dominion mandate alone, so God demonstrates the deficiency by parading the animals before him and then builds woman from his side. The class defends marriage as a pre-fall creation ordinance, gender as God-given rather than a social construct, and the complementarity of male and female as central to the propagation of the race and the spreading of God's image.