To my theologically conservative friends, I beseech you to not let your guard down in such a time as this. You are loving your neighbor, showing hospitality to strangers, suffering well, but then some are offering you a chance to do something remarkable for a cause. They are asking you to globalize your concerns instead of continuing to do those local things that God has clearly called you to do. They are saying that you should show care for this cause, otherwise you are an imbecile worthy of condemnation and to be treated as a denier of “progressiveness,” or good ol’ fashion, “social justice.” But, I say, resist the niceties of liberal agendas.
Remember C.S. Lewis’ exhortation against a theology of niceness. Many will guilt us into causes that are so far detached to the umbilical cord of truth, but they will present it as the “cause of the century,” or “the real battle.” “It’s just nice,” they say, to care about this or that movement. Lewis repudiated such absurdity when he wrote that nice people are difficult to save, and I might add, God is not nice or safe, but He is good.
This is a particular time in history when you are not to forsake your duties to your neighbor to join global causes; this is our time to be even more diligent loving our brother and sister, and serving and caring and committing to those tested and tried Christian duties. Naturally, you will feel a pull to take these causes in the name of making a mark or building your “I care” brand, but don’t be deceived, many of the ideologies of our day come with strings attached. They come right next to unholy agendas of sexual promiscuity and the acceptance of lifestyles far from the kingdom. Remember that the “who” is just as important as the “what” and “how.” Those who perpetuate concepts of reconciliation–from whatever tribe–may very easily wish that you follow your charity by kneeling before dangerous philosophies that do not lead to the cross of the crucified Messiah.
Keep your guard up! Don’t feel the compulsion to enter into the first cause that seems noble. Test the spirits and see if they are of faith for sometimes they dress up as angels of light to deceive you into a nice Christianity devoid of godly conviction and before you know it, the cause you are fighting for has no Gospel at all. God forbid!
The Allure of Social Movements
A Minnesota Murder and its Aftermath: A Lament
More than forty years ago I was a student at a Christian university near St. Paul, Minnesota. During my last year there several friends and I rented a house on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, a neighbourhood with a racially mixed population. During my studies I was attending a vibrant United Methodist congregation in that same part of the city. Many of the families were mixed-race, something I had failed to notice until a row of parents and young teens stood at the front of the church for confirmation one Sunday. Obviously they felt welcome there, and I cannot recall anyone going so far as even to mention this reality.
Fast forward to the start of the third decade of this century. Minneapolis resident George Floyd was allegedly murdered by a police officer within walking distance of that house we lived in. The uproar following this heinous event brought back all the emotions many of us felt during those long hot summers of the mid-to-late 1960s, when race riots consumed entire districts of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit. I remember the fear I experienced on hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968, recognizing that this single event would set off explosive unrest throughout the United States. Indeed it felt as though the country was falling apart. (more…)
Race and the Two Israels: A Primer
We all share a common lineage. Our first earthly father, Adam, thought too highly of his status and overlooked his neighbor, Eve. He neglected the one he was called to love when he failed to protect her. Adam chose selfish ambition over his beloved, and biblical history followed that trajectory closely.
After Babel, God scattered the peoples and gave us tribes and tongues with its cultural norms and values. But this scattered humanity, composed of various expressions, did not have intrinsic goodness in them; therefore, they were not entitled to receive special blessings because they are distinct or superior or unique in any way. Every tribe and tongue must submit to the One who speaks a thousand tongues and for whom the nations sing with a thousand tongues.
A Tale of Two Israels
In the end, the descendants of such cultural milieu must ultimately come under the covenant with Old Israel or the New Israel. Old Israel is filled with ethnic superiority by priding themselves in their lineage as Adam prided himself in his status. They cherished their special relationship with Abraham, and the history of such hubris is the perpetuation of a continual wall of hostility. The religious leaders of the first century chose to be with old Israel because old Israel offered security and heritage and glory. It was familiar and common. But we, like the first-century Jews, can also be comfortable with our familiarity and our ways that we end up despising our brother or sister for whom Christ died who may be from another tribe or tongue.
We can be grateful for where we came from, but once pride becomes the central motif of our heritage, we are no better than the Pharisees. We will tend to belittle or bemoan other tribes and tongues. When we make our central identity our skin color, we fall into the adamic pride which bears no godly fruit. It will cause us to end up looking upon our brother like Cain viewed Abel, angrily and greedily.
It is essential that we then acknowledge that we are part of a new Israel, not the old one with its titles and prizes for the best teacher and most outstanding representative of the Abrahamic religion. In the New Israel, we are all formed into one people, and every tribe and tongue enter into the one narrow gate that leads to Father Abraham and the One to whom Abraham sought, Jesus Christ (Jn. 8). He is the mediator of the New Covenant, and highly exalted as the Alpha and Omega of our faith. Every time we look down on another tribe or tongue, we are behaving as citizens of the Old Creation.
In our day, some parade their heritage—on all sides of the debate, by the way– by lording over others, committing violence upon others, and mistreating others with their speech. The solution to this prideful way of life, which mimics the ethics of the Old Creation, is not to borrow the logic of pagans who offer us diversity classes in gender studies. Diversity, according to unbelieving thought, means we forget all our religious commitment and sing kumbaya to whatever tune those in power demand of us. But the New Creation does not function like that. Diversity for the Christian is not open-handedly accepting every cultural nuance and norm but challenging every philosophy that dare disobey the authority of King Jesus.
The Way Forward
We do not make our communities a better place by accepting the demands of Hollywood Instagram stars; we make our communities a better place when we seek the peace of the city, correcting someone who speaks poorly of another, and not tolerating anger towards another tribe to prevail.
Let’s be honest: we all fail at some time in this respect. We all view ourselves much too highly like the Pharisees of old. We are in an identity crisis in this country because we treasure too much tribal identities and put too little interest in our New Covenant identity. If the Spirit abides with New Covenant believers, then any form of ethnic pride needs to die because in the New Covenant every knee shall bow and every tongue must confess that He is Lord to the glory of the Father, and we can be certain that earthly strategies to reconcile humanity will all fail unless they look first to the second Adam, the new and righteous human who broke down the walls of partition and grafted us into a new creation.
Overcoming Division in the Spirit of Pentecost
This past Sunday, Western churches celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. The Spirit came with a sound “like a mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2) and alighted upon the disciples in the form of tongues of fire, incorporating them, us, as the body of Christ. He brings us in to participate, through union with Christ, in the Divine life.
The Holy Spirit forms at Pentecost a New Humanity; just as the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters at creation, just as the dove is sent out by Noah over the waters when the world is judged and renewed, so now the Spirit comes over the new creation, the Church. The Spirit descended upon Christ at His Baptism in the form of a dove, and now, in union with the crucified and resurrected Christ, the Church is formed as the New Humanity.
Just what is new about this New Humanity? Much in every way. But for one, what is new is that, through the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus and effected in us by the Spirit, our fleshly divisions are overcome. Humanity since Babel is torn apart by division, marked by the confusion of language and religious confession. The story of humanity post-Babel is a story of ever-deepening division. Peter Leithart says, “Under Babelic conditions, division becomes institutionalized and permanent. After Babel, flesh separates from flesh.” a
Reversing Babel
God sets out at war against the flesh, against the dominion of sin and death. He covenants with Abraham to bless all the families of the earth. The Lord intends to put death to death and bring humanity to peace with God and with one another.
At Pentecost, the Lord reverses our Babelic division. The Spirit rushes in and breaks through the divisions of the flesh. At Babel, the Lord confused the language of the people; now, at Pentecost, “each one was hearing them speak in their own language” as the disciples proclaimed “the mighty works of God.” (Acts 2:6, 11) The story that unfolds in Acts and through the Epistles is the story of the Spirit working out this new unity in the body of Christ. We are all baptized into Christ, and in that baptismal water the Spirit does away with division between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” brought into the family of Abraham (Gal. 3:26-29). We have been made one body in Christ: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13)
The Church as Model Society
We are seeing these fleshly, Babelic divisions playing out ever-more heatedly in America today. Police brutality and abuse of power, rioting and looting, violence in the streets, deepening partisan divides, fighting over social media, all make clear that our culture is in chaos, living according to the flesh.
The only hope for our divided culture is the peace-giving Spirit of Pentecost. And this peace is found in the body of Christ, the Church. The Church is the New Humanity in Christ, where our fleshly divisions are overcome and all are one in the one Body of the Lord, where we relate to one another in self-giving love. What’s more, the Church is the model-society; we are called to embody in our communal life ideal human society, shaping the world around us. The Church is brought up into the Divine life in union with Christ and by the Spirit, we live out that life among our brethren, and we carry those gifts as we are sent out to disciple the nations.
In His High Priestly Prayer, Jesus prays that the Church will be one “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (Jn. 17:21) Christians have no business feeling frustrated and wringing our hands about current affairs around us. It should be no surprise to us that our society is gripped by division, hatred, and fear, when there is division in the Church. Our call to the world is to repent: repent of brutality, hatred, looting, division, and embrace the peace achieved by Christ and bestowed by the Spirit. But we cannot truly expect that to happen until we repent of our own disunity as the people of God, seek peace with one another, and embody the life of self-giving love of our Triune God.
- Delivered from the Elements of the World, p. 86. (back)
Father Famine and Rioting
When I wrote the Trinitarian Father some years ago, I did not imagine at that time how the force of fatherhood impacts the home. Now, with almost 12 years of parenting under my belt, some gray hair, and enough anecdotal evidence to fill a few encyclopedias, it is safe to say fatherhood is the critical battle of our day.
In these last few weeks, I have poured over articles and re-read a few portions from books on race, listened to podcasts on the way to my study, and safely concluded that the real danger lies in the unspoken answers to our woes. Indeed, the modern complexities touch on matters of how we relate to our fellow image-bearers, but also as it relates to our discomfort to talk about the heart of many of these issues. And the heart of many of our societal disorientations go directly back to the household, the birth place of ideologies.
Dr. Anthony Bradley, professor at King’s College in New York City, recently observed that fathers “are essential to the child’s development, not peripherally, like in TV sitcoms and movies, but vitally essential.” The recent clip of a mother castigating her son for rioting made national news, rightly so. What is rare, however, are fathers assuming a positive role in the discipline of their children. It is much more common for mothers (even in a two-parent home) to assume the role of mentor and guide than a husband to do so. We live in a father famine age, and our current chaos has much to do with satisfying this hunger.
There is sufficient evidence that what we are seeing are men and women taking to the streets to destroy because their very lives have also been destroyed in their homes emotionally and physically. The rioting is part and parcel the result of a fatherless generation. The Bible places headship at the feet of men not to abuse but to build fruitfulness in the home. But fathers are by and large consumers, and not nurturers. Teenagers in the streets setting things on fire are giving society a taste of their home lives. The male figure is now de-masculinized, and authority and respect are forgotten virtues of a bygone era.
Dads, where are your sons at one in the morning? Why don’t you know where they are? What are their habits? Why don’t you know what they treasure? Why don’t you pour into the new generation of men instead of comfortable sins?
The famine is great, and our fatherly guilt is also great. If revivals and reconciliations are to take place in our generation, we need godly men to raise the banner of hope and satisfy the cravings of their young warriors at home. Otherwise, they will take that ire and show up in a video clip in the evening news next to a burning building.
The Context of Rioting
G.K. Chesterton once noted that true soldiers fight not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. If there is one thing that characterizes the hearts of evil men is opportunism: man who fights for nothing noble and who seeks only selfish ambition. There are human beings of every tribe who share this distinct fallen feature. If we allow the vices of the world to form us, we quickly find ourselves seeking opportunities to set a snare for others (Prov. 26:27). Human beings look for a pretext in alleged contexts to act out their dangerous human fantasies. We assume ourselves too clever to be caught in our own schemes, but as Solomon says, we eventually find ourselves crushed under the weight of our self-deception.
The riots are not the result of an angry mob of diverse tribes seeking justice for a fallen friend who represents their woes. We can assert that destroying property, setting ablaze the few belongings of the homeless, beating defenseless women, attacking the very communities these individuals claim to cherish, is definitively not about race or injustice! What we are witnessing is a generation trained to have, prepared to take, and eager to steal: the objective violation of the 5th-10th commandments. The death of an innocent man is not the context, the barbarism of the human heart is.
We have quickly turned from the theme of “loving our neighbor” during COVID-19 to “destroying our neighbor” in a matter of seconds. Those rioting claimed to love their neighbors last week, but what they were doing was simply building up stamina to hate them as soon as the doors of opportunity were opened.
We are not experiencing the breakdown of human laws, we are witnessing the logic of disobeying the eternal law of God. We prefer a generic god who demands nothing, a private religion which changes nothing, and an education pre-shaped to satisfy our wants. We are now seeing the fruits of our indifference. The godless wish to take the kingdom by force, and the kingdom suffers violence. If we are looking for logical ways to explain this, we won’t find it, unless we are willing to understand that out of the heart the mouth and body speak.
On Racism and Rioting
Racism and rioting have long been part of our history. Our descent into unrighteous acts by those in authority and those who perpetrate pain by destructive acts is an indication of the times. We prefer revolution before regeneration, and as a result we suffer societal decay. It is easier and expedient to take on the eschaton now than to wait for justice to flow in due time. Our instincts are to enact our kingdoms at this very moment, and thus we advance our agendas with no recourse to dialogue.
We should cry our for justice as the Psalmist, but even when we claim we have not been heard, the solution must not be to enact on unscrupulous anger. If we do, we perpetuate the instrumentation of evil and nothing changes. We are all aware that brutality and racism exists in all spheres of society, and our assessment confirms these things again and again. It’s our human reaction to find fault and to indict an entire group of human beings before justice is fully executed. But when we interfere with the process through unethical means, civility suffers and progress in dialogue is stifled.
Excursus on Bonhoeffer
The name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer immediately comes to the front of such conversations. For Bonhoeffer, in his work Ethics, he notes the importance of the community habits as formative in society and to do right was a prerequisite for public life. It’s imperative to note that it wasn’t until 1943a that Bonhoeffer was arrested due to documents linking him to a conspiracy to kill Hitler. Hitler came into power 10 years earlier. Bonhoeffer did not seek to interfere in a physical way until all other options were exhausted. For the Lutheran pastor, civil disobedience was an option but not the first option.
In our day, we have descended into ethical immorality and are poorer as a result. We have made revolution the excuse of the masses. We should be grateful that we are already experiencing some justice in modern cases of abuse of power. No king or police officer is above the law.
Root of Racism
Racism exists because certain humans are content in their towers of Babels. They are satisfied investing in their kingdoms with one speech and one way of doing things. When the outsider begs for entrance, the racist exerts his ideological muscles and fights for his land and language. He argues that any other culture is forbidden and to show off his prowess he may use violence. The Gospel is contrary to this in millions of ways, but central to the Gospel’s thesis is the promise of reconciliation in Jesus Christ.
The Church is called to forsake the tower of Babel and scatter themselves among every tribe, language and people. Racism and riots are byproducts of people who failed to heed the call to be ambassadors of peace. Again, revolution is easier than regeneration; desperate acts are more visible than dialogical ones.
The Church’s role is a long-term strategy. She must embody habits that diminish the very possibility of incivility in her midst. She cannot stand for the voice that diminishes the humanity of others, and she cannot act as the avenger. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. We cannot fall prey to the temptation to disrupt justice by injustices. When we claim that injustice was done, however heinous, our response is to settle our hearts in the sovereign benediction of the Spirit of Pentecost who does all things well, and begin the long and arduous task of petitioning the justice of God through his magistrates and offer the world acts of charity and words of life.
- In October 1940, Dietrich Bonhoeffer began work as an agent for Military Intelligence, supposedly using his ecumenical contacts to help the cause of the Reich. In reality, he used his contacts to spread information about the resistance movement. (back)
A Review of Solomon Says
Young men are hungry for guidance about how to be men. Some turn to Jordan Peterson, with his Jungian evolutionary psychology; others to the red-pill manosphere. While there may be valuable ideas to glean from these unbelieving sources, I will not be turning my sons to them. Instead, we will be reading and studying Mark Horne’s Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men.
Horne’s book is not a commentary on Proverbs, but an application of principles derived from the Bible’s wisdom books. Nor is it exclusively based on Proverbs: Horne helps himself to texts from the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and many other books.
As is clear from the title, Horne’s book is concerned with wisdom. This also means that he is urging us not to look for vending machine-style feedback but to learn how the world works, how human beings are constituted. It is a process, and Horne prepares his readers to work that process: “If God responded to our deeds in a quick and direct way, human beings would never become wise. Such an environment is only appropriate for very young children.”
Wisdom is found in maturity and dominion; these are what men are made for. This involves the lifelong project of cultivating one’s own abilities, mastering one’s vices, and learning how to relate to other people in a way that leads to success. “If a person is sleeping away hours of his life—or, what is the same thing, staying up late partying or playing video games—he is missing an opportunity to work on himself in other areas.” Horne, like Proverbs, exhorts men to prioritize their dominion over themselves. This involves gaining the upper hand over one’s own bad habits: the wicked man “serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” (Augustine)
This is a struggle, not a matter of automaticity: “Remember, one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control (Gal. 5:25)… The fact that self-control is on the list proves that good fruit doesn’t simply ‘flow’ out of anyone.” It requires training. Horne counsels his readers to avoid the sort of foolish machismo that characterizes performative masculinity, e.g. buying firearms when you ought to be saving money and building skills. The goal is dominion, the exercise of godly lordship over the creation.
Two chapters are devoted to the discipline of controlling one’s tongue. Horne is a master of modernizing Biblical imagery to bring it home to us in a new way: “Your mouth is a pistol at your hip and a shotgun over your shoulder that you are never allowed to put in a gun safe. You are armed at all times.” He applies Biblical counsel about avoiding the habit of destructive speech in ways that pierce to the root of that particular sin: “The reason people continue to talk in ways that hurt them (and others) is because they have grown attached to the habit. It is exhilarating to belittle others; it makes you feel special.” Those of us who have sinned with the tongue (or keyboard) will experience a salutary conviction in reading Horne’s words.
This sort of insight is on nearly every page. I was struck by Horne’s diagnosis of how actors reciting scripted lines on sitcoms give us a false ideal of rapier wit: “a system of writing, memorization, and rehearsal is used in our culture to promote an ideal of how people should talk to one another in a quick, witty manner.” By contrast, in the Bible, knowing the right thing to say is considered hard. “When Jesus told his disciples they would have to speak for him, he promised them supernatural aid.” There is a congruence between popular culture’s false portrayals of wit and its false portrayals of sex: in both instances, there is the mirage of a shortcut, a promise of an ego-boosting enjoyment of unearned pleasure, but the whole thing is actually a sham.
Horne offers similarly perceptive comments on questions of debt, money-management, sloth, and fitting oneself to be a husband. Throughout, his exhortations are delivered with striking and perceptive exegesis of Scripture, often juxtaposing verses that I had never compared before. If you are a disciple of Jesus, seeking to please Him by the exercise of self-discipline and responsibility, or if you have sons whom you want to guide so that they will walk in this path, I heartily recommend this short book.
The Synthetic Gospel of Liberation Theology
As an undergraduate student, I was briefly attracted to liberation theology while never completely signing on. At the time I fancied myself something of a campus radical, relishing the responses I received from my fellow students at our American Christian university in the upper midwest. To be sure, we weren’t UC Berkeley, and I wasn’t Abbie Hoffman or Daniel Cohn-Bendit. I searched through Karl Marx’s writings to find a pithy slogan to put on my dormitory wall, but, to my disappointment, found nothing worthy of even the bare plaster of a monastic-like cell. I genuinely believed that the Christian faith in which I was raised demanded structural social change. Liberation theology was not the first choice in my efforts to apply my faith to the ills of society, but I believed I had to take it seriously and at least look into it.
A Byrd’s-Eye View For Remodeling The Church: A Review of Aimee Byrd’s “Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood”
In Rule 11 of non-Christian Jungian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life, Peterson talks about how boys playing games with girls is not beneficial for boys. A girl can move up within the female hierarchy when she competes with and wins against other girls or boys. However, a boy only moves up in the eyes of his male peers when he competes with and wins against other boys. Competing against a girl puts him in an awkward position to begin with. What is he doing challenging or accepting the challenge of a girl? If he wins, he should have because he’s a guy, and guys shouldn’t lose to girls. He gains no respect from his male peers and may even be disrespected because he “beat up on a girl.” If he loses, he loses all respect from his male peers. He will never live it down. Men are created to protect women, not war with them physically or verbally.
It may seem inappropriate to bring a non-Christian Jungian psychologist to a debate about Scriptural truth, but what Peterson communicates fits the present situation. Aimee Byrd, in her recent book, Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, challenges the church’s male-only ordained leaders to examine themselves. A truth that is intrinsic to our creation and recognized by Peterson but seemingly not recognized by Byrd is that this puts male theologians and pastors like me who review her book in a place to receive quite a bit unjustified unfriendly fire. The reactions are visceral because of the way God created the sexes to relate. If we disagree with Byrd, Byrd is a female martyr and we are misogynistic. Men shouldn’t be “attacking” a woman. Social media will explode with all sorts of condolences for her and condemnations for the patriarchy that “attacked” her. If we agree with Byrd, we forfeit historic and (I believe) Scriptural positions of the church in the area of intersexual dynamics within the world and the church. Men tend not to treat women the same as other men, generally speaking, when it comes to games or debates. We know that we will draw the ire of both female and male feminists, and, quite frankly, sometimes it’s just not worth the hassle.
Because I believe that this book has the potential to be influential in a church culture already rife with feminist tendencies, I enter this fray with a few other men who have gone before me to review this book. Byrd’s title and content reveal her ax to grind with the Counsel of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). Andrew David Naselli’s review does a good job answering Byrd’s critique of CBMW’s positions as well as pointing out biblical flaws in her work. Mark Jones’s review is quite deferential but shows several errors in the way Byrd constructs her biblical-theological approach to the issues of intersexual relationships. (Scot McKnight will, no doubt, be seen as a champion for women because of his endorsement in the book blurb and his review in Christianity Today.)
As these men point out, there are glaring omissions in Byrd’s treatment of the subject. Byrd doesn’t deal with many of the Scriptural passages that address head-on the issues of intersexual relationships in the world and church. This may be because she believes that this is a simplistic “Biblicist” approach.
Biblicists emphasize proof texting [sic] over a comprehensive biblical theology. What often happens unintentionally is that the Biblicist readers become their own authority, since they often don’t notice they are also looking through their own lens of preconceived theological assumptions. Indeed, this is something we all need to be aware of in our Bible interpretations. The troubling teaching of biblical manhood and womanhood has thrived under this rubric of popular Biblicist interpretive methods. (159)
Apparently, Byrd’s biblical-theological approach is so advanced that it can omit key passages that deal directly with these issues. There is no discussion of 1Timothy 2 or 1Corinthians 11. There is a treatment of 1Corinthians 14 and the issue of women keeping silent in church, which she turns on its head by saying that women really can speak in the gathered assembly in some type of leadership in the worship service as long as it is not the sermon. The command to “let them ask their husbands at home” is conveniently left out of the exegesis. (231-2)
The reviews by Naselli and Jones do a good job pointing out the obvious deficiencies of RBMW. My review will overlap theirs at points, but I want to deal with what I see as some of the more fundamental, presuppositional issues of intersexual relationships throughout creation and in the church.
Whose House Are We In?
If you are familiar with the book at all, by this time you know about the yellow wallpaper, a trope she uses throughout the book. As she explains in the Introduction, the image comes from a nineteenth-century novella by Charlotte Perkins Gilman entitled, The Yellow Wallpaper. The wallpaper is a metaphor for the hermeneutical structures and strictures that determine the way we have understood the place of women, “the female voice,” in Scripture, and, thus, in the church. Byrd’s mission is to peel away the yellow wallpaper that distorts our understanding.
As mentioned in the quote earlier, Byrd acknowledges that we all come to the Scriptures with our “own lens of preconceived theological assumptions,” and for that reason, we need to take care in approaching the Scriptures and be ready to have those assumptions changed. I whole-heartedly agree with that sentiment. But that forces us to ask the question, With what preconceived theological assumptions is Byrd approaching the text?
Byrd gives her history with CBMW’s literature and trying to be a godly woman in light of what she learned from these men. Her assumptions changed. She triangulates herself above the fray now, being neither complementarian nor egalitarian. (121) The reader is asked to believe that Byrd has no wallpaper of her own anymore; that she is looking at the Scriptures through purely objective eyes. But the reader must ask, How much has literature such as The Yellow Wallpaper, written by a feminist, affected Byrd’s view of Scripture? How much has the general American feminist milieu colored Byrd’s thinking? Many of the views she espouses share much more in common with egalitarian feminism than they do with the historic Christian church’s interpretation of the callings of men and women. Byrd has her own wallpaper.
Battle For The Center?
In an attempt to prove to the radical feminists that God’s word is not an “androcentric text that lacks female contribution,” (91) Byrd directs the reader to hear the “female voice” of Scripture through figures such as Ruth, Deborah, Huldah, and others. She strives to prove that the male and female voices “operate synergetically in Scripture” (94, 126) as opposed to being at war with one another. However, her approach to prove synergism is to adopt language that pits the voices against one another.
Borrowing primarily from Richard Bauckham, Byrd speaks of the Scriptures in terms of gynocentric versus androcentric voices. (51) Throughout Part 1, she refers to “gynocentric interruptions” in an “androcentric” text when the stories of women such as Ruth (chapter 2) or the Canaanite woman (88) are told. All of these women are “overturning stereotypes.” (e.g., 90)
Though she wants to show how men’s and women’s voices work together, with the “centric” and “interruption” language, she is leaving the reader with this civil war of the sexes. Men’s voices dominate and the women have to “interrupt.” At best this leaves the reader confused as to whether or not men and women in Scripture are at war with one another or if they do work synergistically as Byrd proposes. At worst, Byrd disproves her own point by the language she uses, leaving the reader to think that women are oppressed and must fight–even in Scripture–to have their voices heard.
The concerns for the female voice being heard in the church are Byrd’s primary concern. This is done through teaching. “Any divinely ordained differences that men and women have do not prohibit women from teaching. It would be disobedient to Scripture to withhold women from teaching.” (174) Make no mistake about it, what she means by this is that she believes women ought to be able to teach adult men. That is the way the female voice is truly heard. She leaves the reader with the sense that women being relegated to teaching children and other women is some sort of inferior teaching. “While some give the nod for women to teach other women and children, they are sending the message that this is ancillary work to be done.” (188) Are they “sending the message,” or is that only what she is thinking? What if women, because of their God-given nature as women, are generally better than men at teaching children and other women? Is that a deficiency or just a difference?
Must a woman formally teach men to have the female voice heard in the church? Were not the female voices of Lois and Eunice heard through Timothy as tradents of the faith? (2Tim 1.5) Are not older women specifically exhorted to teach younger women how to be good wives and manage their homes? (Titus 2.3-5) Is there any married pastor who is not influenced by his wife in his teaching ministry? Byrd leaves the impression that if women aren’t able to teach men, then the church is an oppressive patriarchy, squashing the female voice. Just because women aren’t able to do exactly what Byrd thinks they ought to be able to do, doesn’t mean that the female voice doesn’t contribute to the work of the church. I’m sure that there are outlier churches that completely squash female voices, but I’m not aware of any conservative churches that “withhold women from teaching.” I’m not even certain that is possible, considering the fact that mothers and wives have tremendous power with children and husbands.
Women have tremendous power. The adage, “the hand the rocks the cradle rules the world” has much truth in it. The female voice is heard throughout the church. It doesn’t have to be heard in one specific area of teaching adult men to be heard.
The tenor of Byrd’s book exudes a battle for equality … in everything but the pastorate. She rightly concludes that men, and men only, should be ordained representatives of Christ in the preaching of the Scriptures. (231) Of course, everything else in leading the liturgy should be open to females (except the pastoral prayer of the church, 232 n. 54). Much of this push for equality derives from her conclusions drawn from certain linguistics describing certain women in the church. Paul speaks of women as participating with him in the ministry, giving them special status. (149) Byrd spends a great deal of time on Phoebe, whom Byrd assumes Paul entrusts with the explanation of the letter to the church of Rome. (146-51; 213ff.) She also speaks of Junia as an apostle. (223ff.; Naselli deals well with this in his review) Paul uses the same verb translated “work hard” about women as he does his own ministry. Because Paul uses similar words to speak about himself and women, because he speaks about Euodia and Syntyche as laboring side by side with him in the gospel (Phil 4.2-3), the reader is to assume, I suppose, that Paul has eradicated various callings for the sexes. So, if they “work hard” in the gospel as Paul does, does that mean that they occupy the same calling in the church? If Junia is actually a woman and is called an apostle in Romans 16, might that mean something different for a female than it does a male? If we look at those avoided passages in 1Timothy 2 and 1Corinthians 11 where the same apostle is speaking, we learn that he doesn’t commend women to occupy the same callings as men. They are … dare I say it … complementary. Women labor as women. Men labor as men. Both are working toward our common mission, but both must stay in their lanes.
Transcending The Sexes?
We are, indeed, working toward a common mission. Byrd affirms this by speaking of our joint telos. (111) She follows this up by saying, “However, this is not an androgynous calling.” (111) Both egalitarians and complementarians are critiqued in their views of the sexes. Because egalitarians don’t recognize distinctions, women feel undervalued because there is no development of the distinct masculine and feminine contributions. Complementarians set up femininity and masculinity as something to strive for in itself. Byrd shows us a more excellent way: a transcendent sexuality.
Several times she speaks of “transcending” our genders or sexuality. Jesus did it (122), and we should too. Quoting Andrew Bartlett approvingly, Byrd writes, Does your church witness to the fact that ‘relationships in the church are shaped by the new creation,’ where ‘created gender distinctions remain in existence, but are also transcended’?” (231) Indeed, “There are no exhortations in Scripture for men to be masculine and women to be feminine. As the Roman Catholic theologian Dietrich Von Hildebrand points out, the calling for both man and woman, our telos, is ‘to be transformed in Christ, to become holy and glorify God, and to reach eternal communion with God…. The specific tone of masculinity and femininity must appear by itself’ as we strive together toward this same mission.” (111) “We are not directed to biblical manhood nor biblical womanhood; we are directed to Christ. Our aim is to behold Christ, as his bride, as fellow sons in the Son.” (132) We need a communion between males and females that is “platonic–intimate but nonerotic.” [sic] (172) We are being prepared for eternal communion with the triune God and one another, (109, 233) and it appears that transcends our sexuality.
Don’t get Byrd wrong. Males and females have “distinct relational responsibilities that color our discipleship. Men will never be daughters, sisters, aunts, wives, or mothers. Women will never be sons, brothers, uncles, husbands, or fathers.” (116, emphasis mine) Even though males and females are colored by their sexuality in discipleship, masculinity and femininity are cultural constructs, not commands in Scripture (111). She agrees with Mark Cortez that there are cultural norms that are associated with our gender that should not be considered essential to our sexuality. (123)
What does transcended sexuality look like? If it is not some form of androgyny, then what is it?
By deconstructing the whole “masculine-feminine” paradigm while still upholding a distinction between the sexes, Byrd reduces the difference between men and women to physiology. Male = masculine and female = feminine are tautologies. “I simply am feminine because I am female.” (114) “I don’t need to act like a woman; I actually am a woman.” (120, emphasis original) The result of this little trick is to eliminate the distinctive responsibilities of men and women. Oh sure, our maleness or femaleness “colors” our discipleship. One is a sperm donor and the other provides a womb for gestation and glands for nursing, but those are the accidents but not the essence of our existence; they “color” our discipleship, but they are not specific callings into which we are to grow. In some sense, we need to grow out of them.
So, if everything a man does is masculine, how does Paul’s characterization of men as “effeminate” in 1Corinthians 6.9-10 fit into this construct? What does Paul mean when, in 1Corinthians 16.13, he says literally, “Act like a man?” (Byrd prefers other translations such as “be courageous,” “valiant,” or “brave.” 112) Must men act a certain way that is truly manly? If everything a man does is masculine by definition, why characterize certain behaviors as acting like a man and others as being non-manly?
If it is true that men are called to act in certain ways that are considered manly or masculine, then would it not also be true that women must act in certain ways that would be considered womanly or feminine? Would these ways of acting not correspond with the creation and commands for the woman just as they do for the man? The attempt to deconstruct masculine and feminine into biological realities apart from responsibilities, or making masculine and feminine merely cultural constructs that don’t have the weight of Scriptural responsibilities is anti-Scriptural and dangerous.
Though Byrd would have us believe that we are not commanded to grow toward biblical manhood or Biblical womanhood, (132) I must ask, Are Christian virtues asexual? Does love, faithfulness, et al. look different in a woman than it does a man? Christian virtues are embodied in males and females differently. Of course, there is overlap between the two, but they express themselves beautifully in our different orientations toward God, one another, and the world around us.
For instance, Byrd speaks of how she is a fierce protector (125-6). I don’t doubt it. Women are protectors, but they are not protectors in the same way men are protectors. Women protect children, and men protect women. This is the way God set things up in Genesis. This is also why it upsets sports and the military to go coed. Add a female to the situation with males, no matter how much she wants to be treated as an equal, she won’t be. You, the reader, know this instinctively. It is a created part of us to the smallest strand of DNA in our bodies. It can’t be transcended into some semi-gnostic functional androgyny.
Seeking to show our equality before God through our culpability in sin, Byrd addresses the fact that Eve was “equally culpable for her sin, as God directly addressed her.” (116) “Equally culpable” is tricky. Yes, Eve was culpable for her sin, but she is not culpable in the same way as Adam. Adam failed his responsibility as a man, leaving Eve vulnerable to be deceived. Eve committed a sin of inadvertency or being led astray. Adam committed a high-handed sin. Because of Adam’s responsibility as a man, it is through him that sin and death entered the world, not through the woman (Rom 5.12). The man and the woman are judged differently based on their created and commanded differences, and the sins of each have consequences corresponding to their sins. The woman’s consequences correspond to her calling in child-bearing and in relationship to the man. The man’s consequences correspond to his orientation to the world. (Gen 3.16-19) Is each responsible for his and her sin? Yes. But the sin and its consequences correspond to the calling of males and females as males and females.
The promise of redemption is the restoration and glorification of the man and the woman, not the transcending of their sexuality into a communion that virtually eliminates the distinctions. The beauty is in the differences. Our sexualities are neither an immaturity that we must eventually transcend nor a remnant of sin that must be eliminated.
These created differences between us orient us toward the world in different ways, both needed to complete our common mission. While our differences do speak to our callings as husbands and wives directly, they also speak to our broader responsibilities in our dominion mandate. We know that our created differences establish a certain order in the church. Paul says this clearly in 1Timothy 2.8-15 and 1Corinthians 11.2-16. Even though, as Byrd rightly says, not all women are to submit to all men, (105) the world is gloriously patriarchal. The Man, Christ Jesus, is Lord of the world. His bride, the church, rules with him, but does so as the bride and not as the husband. Jesus hears the feminine voice, but he gets the final say (cf.107).
This patriarchal structure that governs the new creation is to be imaged in the world. Men should be leading societies, the church, and the home. Isaiah says that when women and children lead, that is an indication that a society is being punished. (Isa 3.12) Men are created to be oriented to the creation in a way that women are not. Women are created to be oriented toward men in a way that men are not oriented toward women. (1Cor 11.8-9) This is creation glorified, not transcended.
Because a woman can do something doesn’t mean that she ought to do it any time or in any space she wants. The same goes for a man. We have God-given lanes to stay in to use the abilities God has given us in the structures in which he has commanded us to use them. Not to stay in our lanes as men and women will be debilitating to our kingdom mission. Consequently, we don’t need to recover from biblical manhood and womanhood. We need to grow into and delight in the beauty of them.
Despite her best efforts to distance herself from egalitarianism, Byrd, in the end, practically promotes a baptized version of egalitarianism. In the end, I don’t think Byrd has a good eye for redecorating the church, so she needs to be careful about ripping down wallpaper in the church.
