Thanks for this, Alastair. I think your analysis of adolescent tendencies all around and a “feminized church system” is worth contemplating.

I’ve yet to be convinced that there is such a thing as “biblical masculinity” or “biblical femininity”. Aren’t the character qualities of responsibility, humility, meekness, self-control and self-sacrifice able to be lived by men and women both? These are some of the high Human qualities to which we are called as image-bearers living in the New Creation. I don’t think they’re sex-specific.

You must have read Volf’s “Exclusion and Embrace”. His treatment of Gender in chp 4 is the best I’ve read anywhere.

Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.06.06 6:23 pm

Dana,

Actually, I have yet to read Exclusion and Embrace, although I have heard all sorts of good things about it. I haven’t really read a whole lot of Volf, apart from some of his work on the Trinity. I also listened to this lecture series a while back.

You are perfectly right in claiming that the character qualities that I list are hardly sex-specific in the sense of being exclusive to men. However, I believe that they are lived out in sexually differentiated ways. Attaining to womanhood and manhood involves attaining to particular forms of expressions of these virtues.

I would not be so quick to dismiss the idea of scriptural masculinity and femininity. However, I do think that it is worth questioning the assumption that there is one form of scriptural masculinity and femininity. I think that scriptural models of masculinity and femininity allow considerable freedom for improvization. I believe that much damage has been done by those who present the scriptural pattern for masculinity as if all men should seek to be married and be fathers and as if all women should stay at home as wives and mothers.

By Al on 11.06.06 7:38 pm

Very interesting post. You work some things out and make some connections that I would not have thought of. Keep it up!

By WTM on 11.06.06 9:20 pm

A-
I’d like to see some scriptural examples of what you’re talking about.
D.

By Dana Ames on 11.06.06 10:20 pm

[...] Alistair responds to Anthony Bradley’s contention that the Haggard situation is a symptom of the feminization of the church. Al says it’s worse than that. This is a hunch, but there might be something to it: I wonder whether the problem with the modern evangelical church is less a problem with the ‘feminization’ of the Church as it is a problem of the ‘infantilization’ of the Church. The fact that many areas of the Church have such a disproportionate number of women may have more to do with the fact that the dynamics of the relationship model that many evangelical churches adopt is one that many women can relate to more easily than men. The infantilization of the evangelical church is generally accompanied by a parentalism, most charactistic of a mother’s relationship to her young child, a parentalism that can become stifling and can hinder personal development if it is not relaxed as the child comes of age. Perhaps the disproportionate number of women in the church may have something to do with women’s finding it easier to relate to both sides of this relationship. The controlled atmosphere of childhood, with its clear boundaries, is not just something that appeals to children; it might have a particular appeal to some sort of ‘mothering instinct’ too. [...]

By The Boars Head Tavern » Blog Archive » on 11.06.06 11:08 pm

What exactly is the “feminazation” of the church? Why is bad=feminine and good=masculine in the church?
Do women really want to be soft on sin and want people to cover up sin? Not the women I know. Not this woman. Sexual sin hurts and it usually hurts a lot of innocents including women. I, for one, would like to see sin to be taken seriously in the church. I would like to see my male leaders not be so mushy and equivocating when it comes to sexual sin. I have seen cover-ups of sexual sin, grevious sexual sin, by male leaders while I and other females want it exposed and dealt with before any more of our children are hurt by it.

So, what again is this ‘feminization’ of the church? How does female=bad when the church is the BRIDE of Christ? And is being a strong Christian and having sound doctrine and practice only a masculine thing? I thought it was a genderless Christian sort of thing?

Thanks!

Corrie

By Corrie on 11.06.06 11:22 pm

Dana,

What particular aspect of my statements are you looking for scriptural examples for?

By Al on 11.06.06 11:41 pm

Corrie,

The ‘feminization’ of the Church is the language used by some to refer to the way in which the Church has suffered a lack of traditionally male virtues, has become afflicted with sentimentalism, has treated from the public realm into areas traditionally seen as ‘feminine’ and has come to be seen as a place for women and children. It refers to the loss of men, and particularly masculine men, men who are creative, strong leaders within the Church.

I don’t believe that the people who use such language mean to belittle femininity. I also believe that there is a significant element of truth to what they are saying. However, I am not sure that ‘feminization’ is a helpful word and I wonder whether it is not just a little sexist.

Anthony Bradley’s post was addressing the problem that many evangelical men struggle to come to terms with their masculinity. I don’t believe that he was saying that women are more prone to sexual sin or anything like that.

By Al on 11.07.06 12:42 am

A-

“Attaining to womanhood and manhood involves attaining to particular forms of expressions of these virtues.”

“I think that scriptural models of masculinity and femininity allow considerable freedom for improvization. I believe that much damage has been done by those who present the scriptural pattern for masculinity…”

Those…

If you can get your hands on Volf’s book, I suggest you read through the cited chapter, or from the beginning through chp 4 if you have time.

I have a quote from Gregory the Theologian somewhere in the house but can’t find it at the moment, wherein he says (paraphrase) that though there are physical differences between men and women, differences in virtue/character are not sex-specific.

How are character qualities sex-specific, according to scripture? Show me some “biblical masculinity” and “biblical femininity” in scripture.

I’m not trying to be snarky. This is a hot button issue here in the US, nad I’ve thought about this stuff a lot. As a fellow admirer of Wright, I think you do some good thelolgical thinking. From my perspective as a 50-year-old woman, I’m not sure you’ve thought through this quite enough.

D.

By Dana Ames on 11.07.06 1:59 am

Looking forward to more of your reflections on this Al. I loved Exclusion and Embrace, but I’m afraid chapter 4 didn’t do it for me, Dana. I’m a fan of great freedom of improvisation, but I wasn’t pursuaded by Volf’s trinitarian thought in order to try and ground it. Seemed to make the intra-trinitarian roles somewhat arbitrary.

By Byron on 11.07.06 3:29 am

Al,

Thank you for your explanation.

I think using the word “feminized” to describe the bad in churches is not good or fair or right.

As a woman, I want to follow scripture. I am not overly sentimental, wishy-washy, soft or weak when it comes to applying and understanding doctrine.

I don’t understand why men are struggling with their masculinity all of a sudden? Why is this? Why is this time in history any different than former times when men didn’t struggle?

I agree with Dana. These characteristics that define dedicated christians are not sex specific. It is offensive, as a woman, to have everything bad related as “feminized” when it comes to spirituality and everything good related as “masculine”.

I would think that feminizing the church is just as bad as masculinizing the church. We, the Church, are the BRIDE of Christ. The Bride is expected to be all those things that some people deem to be masculine traits. That kind of thinking just doesn’t add up. How can the church be too feminized when the Church is feminine in its response to Christ and likened to the female role of Bride?

I guess this whole “feminization” of the church thing doesn’t sit right with me.

Thanks for helping me understand what is meant by this term.

By Corrie on 11.07.06 5:55 am

Byron,
The thing about the Trinity Volf was emphasizing in that chapter was the “not without the other” aspect of trinitarian relationships. He examines other aspects in other chapters. I don’t think the whole book is meant to be exhaustive in describing Trinitarian relations, nor do I think he is advocating any kind of arbitrariness. We may have to agree to disagree on this.

What I was getting at is Volf’s analysis of where our ideas about gender come from. I think this is highly germane to Al’s post.

So Al, I’m going to bed presently. See you in the morning, California time

Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.07.06 6:53 am

Corrie,

I would be careful not to read too much into the use of the word ‘feminization’. It need not have anything to do with a denigration of women. As a term it has been used by people from all sorts of ideological backgrounds, and by women and men. The feminist historian Ann Douglas’ (superb) book The Feminization of American Culture is a good example here. Douglas uses ‘feminization’ to speak of the way in which a sentimentalized culture (as damaging to women as it was to men: elevating women in order to marginalize them) was established in 19th America.

The point that people are making when they speak of the feminization of the Church is that the strong masculine leadership and membership that should be present in a faithful Church is lost and that the men of the Church seem to have lost their backbones. The Church begins to succumb to sentimentalism, touchy-feeliness and the like in a way that it would not without strong men.

‘Feminization’ is thus used to refer to a certain problem of gender-politics, in which the decisive feature is the loss of the virtues that are traditionally regarded as especially characteristic of and necessary for masculinity. The imbalance caused by ‘feminization’ is, I believe, a genuine one and is a bad thing. Femininity is certainly no bad thing, but the loss of masculinity is, and that is the point that people are making.

The ‘masculinization’ of the Church would equally be an evil. Good examples of ‘masculinized’ religion can be seen in Islam. Both masculinization and feminization are negative trends as they entail the creation of an imbalance.

By Al on 11.07.06 9:45 am

Thanks for this post. It makes much more sense to me than a lot of the “feminization” posts I’ve been reading lately. To me the feminine/masculine thing was all kind of vague, but the infantile description makes a lot more sense and I can think of more clear examples in my own experience within this catagory.

By Jamie on 11.07.06 2:36 pm

Dana,

I will try to give a brief sketch of where I am coming from on this.

I believe that men and women have been created to perform different roles and that these roles are at their most focused in the act of worship (for man was created as homo adorans). The differences between men and women are not primarily biological, but liturgical. We are different biologically because we were designed to perform different roles within the task of worship given to humanity. The differences between our preferred ways of thinking, our clothing, our voices, the shape and cabilities of our bodies and our personal and psychological developments are all results of the fact that God created us for different liturgical roles.

The symbolism of sex is hardwired into the biblical narrative. Whether we look to the creation, the narratives of the old and new testaments, the prophetic analogies, the sacrificial system, the design of the temple, the larger movements of redemptive history, etc., all presuppose symbolic differences between men and women. The man is the initiator; the woman is the perfector. The man is protological, the woman eschatological; alpha male, omega female. The woman is the one who glorifies, not the man. The man is called to spend His strength in the service of the woman, not in order to dominate her. The woman is called to perfect and glorify what the man has initiated.

In Scripture, the relationships between men and women are related to the Trinity, creation and the order established by the gospel. The Scripture does not present the differences between men and women as arising out of an arbitrary projection of cultural metaphors. The fact that many in our day understand them in such a manner seems to me to be attributable to little other than cultural arrogance, biblical ignorance and unwillingness to listen to the Scriptural pattern. To understand it in such a way is to seriously compromise the message of Scripture on many levels. Humanity was created to image God. Men and women were created to play different symbolic roles in humanity’s imaging of God.

The relationships between men and women should be characterized by ‘asymmetric mutuality’. Each exists for the sake of the other. The Scriptures are opposed to raw male power and calls for the breaking of such power. The society of promiscuous and macho men must give way to the society of fathers, husbands, brothers, etc. who are willing to lay down their lives in service of women and surrender their masculine power in such a manner.

My point about sexually-differentiated expressions of the virtues is to do with the fact that men and women have differing roles to perform and that, given these differing roles, different virtues come to the fore. The role of warfare, for example, is biblically presented as a particularly male role. It is men who are called to lay down their lives for women and children. It is men who must sacrifice themselves for the sake of the community. A society that sacrifices its women and children is evil and corrupt.

In Scripture the priest is a warrior. The great priests are men of violence. Levi was a violent man that God turned to his service (Genesis 49:5-7). It was the act of sacred violence in which the Levites killed their brethren that preceded their being set apart for divine service. The Levites were the armed cherubim guard at the symbolic Garden of Eden of the tabernacle. It was Phineas’ thrusting of a javelin through a man and a woman that led to him and his descendents being set apart for special priesthood (Numbers 25). The true priest is the one who, like Samuel, will hew Agags to pieces in the presence of God. The true priest is the one who, like Saul, has his violent zeal mastered by God for his service. Whilst women are, on occasions, called to play an exceptional role and drive tent pegs through people’s skulls, or something like that, they are not set apart for such a role.

The role that such men are called to perform is one that requires particular virtues, virtues that we need to encourage in the leaders of our churches. However, the virtues of a godly warrior are primarily ‘masculine’ virtues. A society that trains its women to be soldiers threatens femininity. It would not be fitting for women to do what God called the Levites to do in Exodus 32. The woman is primarily called to be a nurturer. This is not the primary task of the pastor; he is called to guard the boundaries, protect the flock and lead them from the front. Nurture is not absent from his role, but it is not as central as modern evangelicalism has made it. His primary task is martial and sacrificial.

The virtue of courage, for example, that should be characteristic of the godly warrior is something that the woman should also possess. However, the virtue is expressed differently. There are good reasons why the Scriptures will not countenance women pastors (besides the fact that a woman could not be a pastor however much she wanted to be, much as a man cannot be pregnant, not primarily because it is not permitted, but because it is impossible). These may be hard to understand in an egalitarian society and in a society that has lost sight of what it actually means to be a pastor, but the Scripture is pretty clear on this. The gifts of leadership and teaching that many women have are certainly not denied expression (as they sadly have been in much of the Church’s history), but the way in which and the realms in which they are expressed.

As regards the issue of improvization, my point is that the Scriptures present us with many different types of women and men. I believe that the Scripture gives us examples of women theologians, economically active women, women political leaders, etc. However, the theological task performed by the woman should be qualified by her sex, just as it should be when performed by a man. We don’t practice theology, or anything else for that matter, as androgynes.

I have since read almost all of the chapter of Volf that you recommend and there is not much that he says that I haven’t heard before. I disagree with him in founding the differences between the bodies on differently sexed bodies. I also am disappointed with his failure to recognize the degree to which specific gender roles are hardwired in the symbolic structure of the Scriptural world and narrative. Whilst there is far more fluidity in scriptural gender identity than most conservative Christians would like to admit, there are clearly demarcated roles.

Furthermore, the asymmetry between men and women seems to be related to the asmmetry between the persons of the Trinity on a deeper level than Volf seems to recognize. There is a very clear order and form to the relationships of the Trinity and this form is imaged, to some extent, both within the Church and in relationship between the sexes in general. Whilst God is always spoken of as grammatically masculine in relationship to the world, I believe that substantial sexual differences between men and women and not just the existence of difference per se are means by which we image God as humanity. God is beyond sex, but He is also the archetype of the masculine and the feminine. I will probably post something that I wrote on this last year sometime soon.

By Al on 11.07.06 3:23 pm

[...] OK, the subject of masculinity and femininity has been a subject of discussion following one of yesterday’s posts. I thought that I would post this as somewhat relevant to the questions at issue. It is certainly not the best thing that I have ever written and I decided not to post it when I first wrote it over a year ago. I would probably want to add a lot, lot more to it if I had written it today. However, I will post it now, more or less in its original form, as I do not have the time or energy to write anything much new on the subject. Someone like Dennis should post on this subject, as it would be far more insightful than the following thoughts. [...]

By alastair.adversaria » Christ and the Possibility of Feminine Identity on 11.07.06 4:10 pm

I have a friend who wrote his dissertation on the infantilization of the Hispanic male. I think you are right on in your assessment of the church. If your a interested in emailing my friend for a copy of his dissertation let me know. Pax, Jose

By jose on 11.08.06 2:54 am

Hi Al,

Thank you for your explanation. I think that in a lot of places the word “feminine” is used to label anything that is bad or lacking. I don’t think I am reading anything into it that I am not getting from very clear statements.

That being said, I wouldn’t group you in with these “other places”. I agree with many of the things you have written and have appreciated how you have answered my questions in a forthright and honest manner.

Yes, the church has lost its backbone. It is just as frustrating to me as a woman. Sin is covered over in the name of “peace”. All leaders want people to do is hold hands and sing “Kum Bai Ya” even if there has been gross, unconfessed sin. They don’t want problems and they don’t want to confront and expose and hold anyone accountable.

Someone very close to me has been damaged because of the spinelessness of such systems.

In the comment you wrote to Dana, I think that is one of the best and most accurate biblical descriptions of the roles and purposes of male and female.

Thank you.

By Corrie on 11.08.06 4:18 am

[...] alastair.adversaria » A Crisis in Masculinity in the Evangelical Church [...]

By Two Tack’s Thoughts » Blog Archive » Alpha Male, Omega Female on 11.08.06 4:20 am

I’m reminded of R.J. Rushdoony’s excellent Revolt Against Maturity. See: http://freebooks.commentary.net/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/newslet/preface/04pref.pdf

By Christopher Witmer on 11.08.06 4:25 am

Al, I have some thoughts but I am too tired right now for them to be coherent. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.
Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.08.06 7:00 am

One of the touchstone guys claims that the ‘feminization’ of the church (particularly, more women in churches than men) is something that touches all churches and eras back to somewhere in the middle ages. IIRC, he traces it to medieval mysticism and (a mistaken) seeing of “Church as bride of Christ” as implying men as individuals were to be ‘feminine’ before a male Christ.

By pduggie on 11.08.06 8:24 pm

Al, this is going to be long, and for that reason, and because of you being away from the blog for a while, it’s going to be my last comment here. Please feel free to e-mail me if you want to continue the discussion.

First of all, I appreciate your reading Volf. Too bad you don’t see the cultural construction and negotiation of gender roles. To me it is so glaringly obvious and makes the utmost sense. But ok.

I like your thoughts about the act of worship. I do believe that we are first and foremost homo adorans. Your totus Christus ideas go along with this. If one’s liturgical act is that of Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, where the priest symbolically enacts Jesus coming from the holy place to deliver himself into the church with his life and presence in the Eucharist, then it makes sense for the priest to be a male. Of course, all the rest of the males present at the liturgical event would then symbolically be part of the “feminine” church. But outside of the actual liturgical event, these difference would not hold. I think my Orthodox friend who is a seminary instructor would agree with me about that.

As to “masculinity” and “femininity” being “hardwired into the biblical narrative”- well, Al, I think this is your interpretation of the narrative based on what you believe about reality. Not everyone sees the biblical narrative like this; I certainly don’t. There are many instances in the biblical narrative, for example, of women protecting men: the Hebrew midwives, Deborah, Rahab, Abigail, etc. etc. Scripture does not explicitly present or address the differences between men and women in creation other than on a physical level. The point of the Genesis story of the creation of humanity is not that God is gendered, or that there is absolutized masculinity and/or femininity within God, but that humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creative activity. God Created: God Created male and female; God Created humanity in his image. There is only one Role of Humanity as image-bearers: to image God in his life-giving love/love-giving life with respect to other humans and with respect to the rest of creation. Sometimes this occurs through the power of sexual reproduction, and other times in ways that don’t involve sexual reproduction/genital expression.

Have you read Wright’s “The Word, the Church and the Groaning of the Spirit” in his little book, “The Crown and the Fire”? It is simply fabulous; the whole book is great, but this chapter (and the one following, on the Eucharist) is outstanding. It’s an exposition of Romans 8:17-27, and he says that “the theme of this passage is the extraordinary vocation of the people of God, within the overarching plan of God for the healing and rebirth of the entire cosmos.” It “points us to the genuinely Christian view of the world, and of God, and of the Church’s task in between God and the world.” The outline consists of the context of the three instances of the use of the word “groaning” in this passage, which is “rather like a threefold Russian doll; each time we open up a set of ideas, there’s another one, similar but compressed, inside. Within each section the connecting words (all the ‘fors’ and ‘becauses’) are vital.”

1) The world waits to be fully redeemed.“…The cosmos itself will one day thrill to respond to the wise rule/glory of God’s redeemed- and now redeeming- humanity. That is the vision. Instead of worship of creation by humans, as in Romans 1, we now have creation rescued by humans… Within that vision…Paul uses the great image from Genesis 3. No longer Eve, but now the whole creation, playing as it were female to God’s male, is groaning together and in travail together…The present state of the world is just this: that it is groaning in the pangs of giving birth to the new world that God desires and intends. And the result is a view of the world which leaves no room for either exploitation or idolatry.”

2) The world waits for the church to be fully redeemed. “If the world is playing out the Eve-theme, groaning in travail as it waits for the new world to be born from its womb, so the Church is also groaning as she waits for her own full adoption….The female image of the Church, groaning in travail, is placed as it were within the female image of the world….Paul is deliberately interpreting the two in relation to each other. The present task of the Church is not only to share the sufferings of Christ but in doing so to share and bear the sufferings of the world….The church is not to be insulated from the pain of the world, but is to become for the world what Jesus was for the world, the place where its pain and grief may be focused and concentrated, and so be healed…Does this mean that some of our wounds are Christ’s wounds, and that some of our wounds bring healing? I think Paul’s answer is Yes.”

3) God is at work in the world through the church to bring about the full redemption. “‘In the same way too’, Paul says in verse 26: what is true of the world and the Church is actually true also of the Spirit. Within the groaning of creation, and within the groaning of the Church, God - this strange God - is groaning also….God is sharing, by his Spirit, in the groaning of creation and the groaning of the Church. But this image remains inescapably the Eve-image, the female one giving birth…Prayer, at the deepest level, is here understood as God calling to God from within the created and groaning world, …from within the redeemed and groaning church, God the Spirit dwelling in the hearts of her people as they dwell in the midst of the broken world, and calling to God the Father, the transcendent one, and being certainly heard….The Church, then, is caught up in this divine dialogue,…comes to share the pattern of the life and death and resurrection of the Son. Verse 17 stands as the rubric over the entire passage: when the world and the Church look out on the darkness and ask why they have been abandoned, at that very moment they share the agony of the Son; so that the complaint of God’s absence becomes, paradoxically, the evidence of God’s presence….We in the West have assumed for too long that the word ‘God’ is univocal, and that we all know what it means. This passage holds out the startling picture of God as the creator and as the one at work to bring healing and hope within the world, and, in the midst of that, as the one who suffers and dies under the weight of the world’s sin, and rises again as the beginning of the new creation.”

Glory! I’ll go there joyfully with Wright. And farther than that, in terms of symbolic “maleness” and “femaleness”, I think scripture does not go.

Which leads me to thoughts on Priesthood. First of all, God’s ultimate intention was to make a kingdom of priests (Ex 19:5-6, Is 61:6, 1Pet 2:9-10), in that all the redeemed would offer God right worship. Hebrews 5:13 through 10:25 seems to say that Jesus’ final sacrifice fulfilled the purpose for the Levitical priesthood and that the LP was over with; the only “priest” in that sense that remains is Jesus, the High Priest after the pattern of Melchizedech. I find no intimation in scripture that God wanted to set up a hierarchical ecclesiastical system such as is found in the High Church traditions. I think the Christologic symbology was meant to be focused on the Eucharist, not on who is presiding over its celebration.

In light of this, I find the notion of the priest as warrior to be off base. First of all, God’s instruction to the priests to kill idolaters was a demonstration that idolatry always leads to death, whether that death is caused “directly” by God or not. Sometimes God sent a plague, which was a chance to repent and through which some people repented and lived. This had nothing to do with the “masculinity” of the priests. Secondly, as above, the Levitical priesthood was only meant to be temporary. Some people, most notably Rene Girard, think that God set up the LP in order to get people to stop sacrificing one another as scapegoats and focus the violence onto animals, temporarily, until the final Sacrifice where God took all the violence into Himself on the cross and defeated it. Which is thirdly, the example of Jesus the Ultimate Priest, not striking back when he was reviled, and empowering us by his Spirit to do the same. Part of the core of Jesus’ message, according to Wright, was the constant admonition to the Jews drop the agenda of violence, which they thought was what was going to effect their deliverance. The weapons of our warfare do not have their source in the flesh (death and corruption and all that leads thereto- NTW). Dallas Willard’s exposition of the Sermon on the Mount in “Divine Conspiracy” makes it clear that force and manipulation have no place in kingdom-of-God relations, either toward others in the church or toward the world.

I do believe Jesus had to be a male in order to correspond to the male sacrificial animals, in order to demonstrate that his Way was not simply another fertility religion, and in order to effect his work in the time and place (history) in which he was incarnated. No problem with that. I do not deny the historicity of anything about Jesus and his redeeming work. Women were drawn into that redemption from the beginning with Jesus receiving his human body from Mary (Athanasius, De Incarnatione, II/10).

Of course we humans don’t practice anything as androgynes. We have sexed bodies, and that is not unimportant to our identities. But it’s not the core of our identities; otherwise, those who don’t have all their “parts” due to birth defect, trauma or disease would be less than human. I don’t think you would go there, Al. I’ve read some of Podles; I’d like to agree with some of what he says, but I think he too can’t see very far past his own cultural conditioning, esp. as part of the Roman Catholic culture and how that plays into his view. I don’t agree with Reuther, Fiddes or Irigaray and I’m not a pan/en/theist.

I do wish you would consider how exactly the culture of the West views women. It is in fact not egalitarian “on the street”, or even respectful. If it were, there would not need to be laws against rape, laws to curb sexual harassment, or laws to ensure the same rate of pay for the same work done by men and women- which is still not at parity in the US. (My best friend has a saying: Law is for the lawless.) In the States, the leading cause of women admitted to hospital because of “accident” is domestic violence, and nearly all murders of women are committed by their spouses/boyfriends. Look at advertising, at music videos, at mass marketed film and TV, and really see how women are portrayed, especially “smart” or “powerful” women. Please ponder that for a while. A good long while.

Finally, as to the “asymmetry of male and female roles” reflecting trinitarian relations, if by this you mean the kenosis and/or subordination of the Son to the Father, those were also meant to be temporary, not eternal; my understanding was that was pretty well settled during the patristic period. I refer you also to Wright on Daniel’s vision of God sharing his own glory with the Son of Man. Also, Kevin Giles, Oz Anglican, has written about this: see book review here:
http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2006/08/jesus_and_the_f.html
In addition, if you have time, you might peruse Michael’s posts on the book “Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy”, found here:
http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2006/10/discovering_bib_1.html
He’s been blogging this chapter by chapter and has a helpful index at the above address, so one doesn’t have to spend a lot of time looking for the individual posts.

I don’t want to have a fight about this; if you don’t agree, we can agree to disagree. I ask that you think about these ideas. I hope you continue to treat the females in you life with the same regard you would want for yourself, consistent with being a follower of Jesus. I hope your blog fast is peaceful and your studies are fruitful. Looking forward to the Wright podcast. God bless you.

Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.09.06 1:37 am

Not to mention the bizarrely eroticized psychological “relations” that vowed celibates have often sought with Christ, His mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene over the centuries. This is primarily a Roman Catholic phenomenon but seems to have carried over, to an extent, into Protestantism as well. The problem we are considering here is much more comprehensive and widespread than just this one point, of course. Even though Rushdoony’s book above is not primarily concerned with the topic of this thread, the book’s title (Flight from Maturity) nails it. Basically, the church and its individual members are called to a fully orbed maturity, and the church’s crisis can be largely described as a flight from our calling to maturity.

By Christopher Witmer on 11.09.06 1:56 am

“There are many instances in the biblical narrative, for example, of women protecting men: the Hebrew midwives, Deborah, Rahab, Abigail”

But (except for deborah) they ‘protect’ in decidedly non masculine ways.

The midwives and Rahab lie, they don’t foment a revolution and swing swords.

Jael lies, uses a domestic object as a weapon, and GIVES MILK as part of her lie.

Deborah is close to ‘masculine’, but she’s obvioulsy presented as exceptional in her milirary leadership: she wants Barak to do his “manly duty”, but since he refuses, Jael gets to kill the leader, and she does it in a non-masculine way.

Even the aboriginal Dyirbal have masculine and feminine, though they might cut the pie a little bit different (pace Lakoff).

By pduggie on 11.09.06 3:55 pm

Dana,

Whilst I will not be posting anything for the rest of this month, I will be able to continue commenting on some existing posts. I don’t believe that it would be right to drop out in the middle of a discussion. However, I would prefer not to get caught up in any really lengthy discussions as I have a lot of work on and it would rather defeat the purpose of my blogging fast!

I must confess to being just a little frustrated by some of the things that you say in your response. I think that you misunderstand where I am coming from in a number of respects.

I have never denied the cultural construction and negotiation of gender roles. There is no culturally unmediated form of femininity or masculinity. I do not even believe that we would be able to arrive at some ‘pure’ masculinity or femininity if we were to strip away all of our cultural conventions and social constructions. There is no culturally unmediated substratum of gender. I have argued in the past that ‘nature’ itself is a social construction (albeit not a mere construction).

As you point out all of this is glaringly obvious. However, I don’t believe that the recognition of this entails the conclusions that you and Volf seem to draw. Part of the problem with your position, from my perspective, is the degree to which it seems to rely upon a rather suspect nature/culture opposition at certain points. Nature is never ‘acultural’: Adam was placed in a garden.

When I speak of certain differences between men and women being ‘natural’, it should be remembered that I do not ascribe to a substantialist ontology (although sometimes I might give that impression). I also see telos as part of the concept of ‘nature’. When Volf treats the differences between male and female as primarily cultural ways of negotiating biological differences, I think that he falls short of a fully biblical understanding of nature and creation and is applying another rather modern assumption (the nature/culture dichtomy) to the biblical data.

God’s creation is ordered to an eschatological end from the start and the different creatures within creation all have their own telos. There is no more basic non-teleological reality. The biological differences between men and women cannot be reduced to some underlying ‘substance’ that culture has to negotiate, but have to be regarded as value-laden facts belonging to a teleologically ordered reality that culture has to operate in terms of. The problem, it seems to me, is that many accounts of social constructivism haven’t actually moved beyond a nature/culture dichotomy; they have just privileged one side of the equation. With a Christian doctrine of creation such a movement becomes possible in a way that it doesn’t seem to be for non-Christian understandings of nature.

I believe the fact that sex is only appropriate within the context of a relationship between a husband and wife is a fact of nature. Of course, many will object to this, putting forward a range of arguments to claim that sexuality and marriage are social constructions. They certainly are, but this does not make them any less facts of nature, when we recognize the fact that nature was not created acultural and that God’s creation of the cultural reality of marriage was part of His creation of the natural reality.

In the context of worship, there are overlapping masculine and feminine roles to be played. In relationship to God the Church is feminine and the priest represents the Bridegroom in the dialogue of the service. However, there are also relationships within the congregation itself and differences between men and women are important here as well, something that we see in such places as 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11. As the context of worship is the starting point and telos of the whole of the week, one would be surprised if the roles modelled in worship were not intended to have much bearing on regular life. Worship is certainly a time of heightened differentiation, but this differentiation isn’t altogether absent outside of that context.

It is also important to recognize that the masculine/feminine symbolism of worship goes all the way back to creation. The argument for an exclusively male priesthood from the masculinity of Christ is not actually an argument that we find in Scripture (although it is founded on good Scriptural principles). What we do find in Scripture are arguments appealing to the order of creation.

This is why the homo adorans argument is so important. Man’s most fundamental identity is found in worship, in his relationship to God. The woman was created to play a particular role in worship, to assist the man, who was to lead in their common task of worshipping God. This is one reason why Volf’s position is deficient. Sexual differentiation is not primarily a matter of sexed bodies, but a matter of the telos for which man and woman were created (which is reflected in sexed bodies).

God created man to relate to Him and to relate to the creation as His imagebearers. Men and women both image God, but they image God differently. The man is the image of God in a sense that differs from the woman and the woman is the image of God in a sense that differs from the man. Such a difference in the way in which men and women image God is suggested in verses such as 1 Corinthians 11:7. Man is the ‘image and glory of God [that is God the Father]’. As the glory of the man, the woman images the Triune God differently. I would suggest that the woman particularly images the Spirit as the One who glorifies and perfects.

When relating directly to God gender differentiation is at its height. When relating to each other gender differentiation is present to some extent, more so in some situations, less so in others. When relating to the creation gender differentiation is seldom an issue.

You bring forward a number of biblical examples to challenge my claim that masculinity and femininity are hard-wired into the biblical narrative. I actually think that they go some way to proving my point. Most of the examples that you bring forward actually prove my point beautifully. Paul’s response is important here: there performed their duty in ways that differed from their male counterparts. Deborah does not seem to have taken part in the actual killing of the battle itself, but presses Barak to do his duty.

But we can go further than this: most of the examples that you list are actually playing the key feminine role within a typological script that is repeated many times in the biblical narrative. Eve was deceived by the serpent. From that point onwards in Scripture, faithful women are repeatedly presented as the deceivers of tyrants. Sarai deceives Pharaoh and Abimelech. Rebekah deceives Abimelech. Rachel deceives Laban. The Hebrew midwives deceive Pharaoh. Rahab deceives the men of Jericho. Jael deceives Sisera. Michal deceives her father Saul. Esther deceives Haman. Others could be mentioned.

The woman defends men through her wisdom and cunning that exceeds that of the serpent. She does not defend in the same way as men are called to defend, though. The woman is not set apart to guard the boundaries in the same way as Adam and other men were. Woman are not called to go into battle, for example. Her role within the Holy War differs.

I take issue with the claim that the Scripture ‘does not explicitly present or address the differences between men and women in creation other than on a physical level.’ Where on earth does the Scripture explicitly present or address the differences between men and women in creation on a physical level? The differences between man and woman have to do with the differing roles that they were given in Genesis, roles for which they were physically equipped. The text just does not seem to support your theory at this point. Many within our culture may regard the differences between men and women in such a way, but this is not what the Scriptures give us.

I stand by my original claim that differences between masculinity and femininity are hardwired into the biblical text. Take, for example, the sign of circumcision. In the choice of that particular sign God gives sexed bodies covenantal significance. Many other things could be listed. Whilst it is certainly true that in most human activities, sexual differentiation fades into the background, it is not true to say that for Scripture sex is primarily a mere fact of physicality. I also believe that the maleness and femaleness of human imaging of God goes beyond sexual reproduction. As a single man, I can image God in my masculinity, just as a single woman can image God in her femininity.

I have read the section of Wright that you mention. What he says is quite correct, but the symbolism of sex goes far, far deeper in Scripture. The more that one studies the Scripture, the more it is there. Furthermore, this symbolism does not merely float above us, like oil on water, but calls us to live in terms of the symbolism that it presents in our own lives. For example, married women are called to be like the Church (Ephesians 5:24), like Eve (1 Timothy 2:15) and like Sarah (1 Peter 3:6).

On the issue of priesthood, a few comments. God’s purpose was that of forming a priestly nation. Israel was a priestly nation, even though it was hierarchical in strcuture. Relative to Gentiles every Israelite was a priest. There are good biblical theological arguments for the claim that every Israelite was in some sense a priest. For my thoughts on new covenant priesthood see here.

The connection between priesthood and war is not the primary argument that I would use to support male priesthood. However, I remain convinced that the scriptural evidence for the connection is robust. The Levites were warriors and sacrifices for the nation. They were warriors as the armed guard of places of holiness (cf. 2 Chronicles 23:2-7; Nehemiah 13:22). They played the role of the cherubim who guarded the garden of Eden. If you went to the wrong place a Levite would thrust you through with a sword. In Israel’s war camp, they were God’s crack troops, guarding the place of His presence with His people.

When Israel went to war, the men of Israel had to sanctify themselves and had a sort of elevated level of (priestly) holiness for a time as God was in their camp. The regular warrior became a ‘priest’ for a time. The Levitical priesthood, however, was sort of permanent divine army. Their role corresponded to the angelic host who serve God, but are also counted as His army.

The priests were also sacrifices. The firstborn sons of Israel had already been dedicated to God as a sort of sacrifice, but the Levites substituted for them (Numbers 3:45). They were dedicated to God for the sake of the whole of Israel as a sacrifice. The same logic can be seen in war, where the sons of the nation are set apart and sacrificed for the nation as a whole.

Other reasons why the priests of Israel were exclusively male can be given, but I don’t want to make a long response even longer.

René Girard has some extremely helpful things to say on occasions. However, on a number of occasions his theory risks silencing the text. This is one such occasion. Whilst there is probably a measure of truth to Girard’s position, the setting apart of the Levitical priesthood seems to be more complex than his theory might suggest. At best Girard is only part of the explanation.

Returning to the issue of priests as warriors, this is a theme that continues in the NT. Jesus is the great Warrior, who goes out to do battle with the forces of evil. He takes the Nazirite vow (vowing not to drink wine until His battle was done), which was a vow of holy warfare. We do not engage in holy warfare with physical weapons as they did in the OT, but it is warfare nonetheless. Furthermore, the task of warfare is one that men have been equipped to lead in a particular way and this is not limited to physical warfare.

The idea that Jesus had to be male to correspond to the male sacrificial animals seems to raise a few questions. Why were the sacrificial animals in question male in the first place? Not all sacrifices were male.

As I have pointed out above, in most areas of life, differences of sex need not be more than a background issue. Male and female are more like ‘neighbouring’ sexes than ‘opposite’ sexes. We have far more in common in shared personhood than we have things which distinguish us from each other. As for Podles, I have problems with a number of things that he says myself. I think that his case is quite weak at a number of points. However, where I agree I am quite happy to quote him.

I stand by my description of our society as ‘egalitarian’. Whilst there are certainly elements of our society that are deeply sexist and should be condemned, such things are frowned upon by most leading figures within our society. I also quite willingly admit that there is a lot of sexism in the media. I call our society ‘egalitarian’ in much the same way as I would call it ‘postmodern’. Most people don’t have a clue what ‘postmodern’ means and many are decidedly modern in their attitudes. However, that is the general way that the wind is blowing.

As regards ‘hierarchy’, I don’t understand hierarchy in the same way as most do. There is certainly not a hierarchy of power. However, there is a relational hierarchy without the slightest suggestion of inferiority or what has been called subordinationism. I have no interest in defending such unscriptural positions as patriarchalism for one moment. This expresses my position well.

Blessings,

By Al on 11.09.06 9:39 pm

Well Al, I’m not into arguing. I do appreciate the respectful discussion. I believe I understand where you’re coming from, and I see it differently. I’m glad that different opinions don’t necessarily divide us from one another.

Do have a great term.
Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.11.06 8:47 pm

[...] The L.A. Times had an interesting article about yet another Christian mens’ movement - this one titled GodMen. Besides the obvious problem that there is only one true GodMan, it immediately brought to mind an excellent post over at Adversia a few weeks back. [...]

By Labarum » on 12.07.06 5:08 pm

Thanks for this, Alastair. I think your analysis of adolescent tendencies all around and a “feminized church system” is worth contemplating.

I’ve yet to be convinced that there is such a thing as “biblical masculinity” or “biblical femininity”. Aren’t the character qualities of responsibility, humility, meekness, self-control and self-sacrifice able to be lived by men and women both? These are some of the high Human qualities to which we are called as image-bearers living in the New Creation. I don’t think they’re sex-specific.

You must have read Volf’s “Exclusion and Embrace”. His treatment of Gender in chp 4 is the best I’ve read anywhere.

Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.06.06 6:23 pm

Dana,

Actually, I have yet to read Exclusion and Embrace, although I have heard all sorts of good things about it. I haven’t really read a whole lot of Volf, apart from some of his work on the Trinity. I also listened to this lecture series a while back.

You are perfectly right in claiming that the character qualities that I list are hardly sex-specific in the sense of being exclusive to men. However, I believe that they are lived out in sexually differentiated ways. Attaining to womanhood and manhood involves attaining to particular forms of expressions of these virtues.

I would not be so quick to dismiss the idea of scriptural masculinity and femininity. However, I do think that it is worth questioning the assumption that there is one form of scriptural masculinity and femininity. I think that scriptural models of masculinity and femininity allow considerable freedom for improvization. I believe that much damage has been done by those who present the scriptural pattern for masculinity as if all men should seek to be married and be fathers and as if all women should stay at home as wives and mothers.

By Al on 11.06.06 7:38 pm

Very interesting post. You work some things out and make some connections that I would not have thought of. Keep it up!

By WTM on 11.06.06 9:20 pm

A-
I’d like to see some scriptural examples of what you’re talking about.
D.

By Dana Ames on 11.06.06 10:20 pm

[...] Alistair responds to Anthony Bradley’s contention that the Haggard situation is a symptom of the feminization of the church. Al says it’s worse than that. This is a hunch, but there might be something to it: I wonder whether the problem with the modern evangelical church is less a problem with the ‘feminization’ of the Church as it is a problem of the ‘infantilization’ of the Church. The fact that many areas of the Church have such a disproportionate number of women may have more to do with the fact that the dynamics of the relationship model that many evangelical churches adopt is one that many women can relate to more easily than men. The infantilization of the evangelical church is generally accompanied by a parentalism, most charactistic of a mother’s relationship to her young child, a parentalism that can become stifling and can hinder personal development if it is not relaxed as the child comes of age. Perhaps the disproportionate number of women in the church may have something to do with women’s finding it easier to relate to both sides of this relationship. The controlled atmosphere of childhood, with its clear boundaries, is not just something that appeals to children; it might have a particular appeal to some sort of ‘mothering instinct’ too. [...]

By The Boars Head Tavern » Blog Archive » on 11.06.06 11:08 pm

What exactly is the “feminazation” of the church? Why is bad=feminine and good=masculine in the church?
Do women really want to be soft on sin and want people to cover up sin? Not the women I know. Not this woman. Sexual sin hurts and it usually hurts a lot of innocents including women. I, for one, would like to see sin to be taken seriously in the church. I would like to see my male leaders not be so mushy and equivocating when it comes to sexual sin. I have seen cover-ups of sexual sin, grevious sexual sin, by male leaders while I and other females want it exposed and dealt with before any more of our children are hurt by it.

So, what again is this ‘feminization’ of the church? How does female=bad when the church is the BRIDE of Christ? And is being a strong Christian and having sound doctrine and practice only a masculine thing? I thought it was a genderless Christian sort of thing?

Thanks!

Corrie

By Corrie on 11.06.06 11:22 pm

Dana,

What particular aspect of my statements are you looking for scriptural examples for?

By Al on 11.06.06 11:41 pm

Corrie,

The ‘feminization’ of the Church is the language used by some to refer to the way in which the Church has suffered a lack of traditionally male virtues, has become afflicted with sentimentalism, has treated from the public realm into areas traditionally seen as ‘feminine’ and has come to be seen as a place for women and children. It refers to the loss of men, and particularly masculine men, men who are creative, strong leaders within the Church.

I don’t believe that the people who use such language mean to belittle femininity. I also believe that there is a significant element of truth to what they are saying. However, I am not sure that ‘feminization’ is a helpful word and I wonder whether it is not just a little sexist.

Anthony Bradley’s post was addressing the problem that many evangelical men struggle to come to terms with their masculinity. I don’t believe that he was saying that women are more prone to sexual sin or anything like that.

By Al on 11.07.06 12:42 am

A-

“Attaining to womanhood and manhood involves attaining to particular forms of expressions of these virtues.”

“I think that scriptural models of masculinity and femininity allow considerable freedom for improvization. I believe that much damage has been done by those who present the scriptural pattern for masculinity…”

Those…

If you can get your hands on Volf’s book, I suggest you read through the cited chapter, or from the beginning through chp 4 if you have time.

I have a quote from Gregory the Theologian somewhere in the house but can’t find it at the moment, wherein he says (paraphrase) that though there are physical differences between men and women, differences in virtue/character are not sex-specific.

How are character qualities sex-specific, according to scripture? Show me some “biblical masculinity” and “biblical femininity” in scripture.

I’m not trying to be snarky. This is a hot button issue here in the US, nad I’ve thought about this stuff a lot. As a fellow admirer of Wright, I think you do some good thelolgical thinking. From my perspective as a 50-year-old woman, I’m not sure you’ve thought through this quite enough.

D.

By Dana Ames on 11.07.06 1:59 am

Looking forward to more of your reflections on this Al. I loved Exclusion and Embrace, but I’m afraid chapter 4 didn’t do it for me, Dana. I’m a fan of great freedom of improvisation, but I wasn’t pursuaded by Volf’s trinitarian thought in order to try and ground it. Seemed to make the intra-trinitarian roles somewhat arbitrary.

By Byron on 11.07.06 3:29 am

Al,

Thank you for your explanation.

I think using the word “feminized” to describe the bad in churches is not good or fair or right.

As a woman, I want to follow scripture. I am not overly sentimental, wishy-washy, soft or weak when it comes to applying and understanding doctrine.

I don’t understand why men are struggling with their masculinity all of a sudden? Why is this? Why is this time in history any different than former times when men didn’t struggle?

I agree with Dana. These characteristics that define dedicated christians are not sex specific. It is offensive, as a woman, to have everything bad related as “feminized” when it comes to spirituality and everything good related as “masculine”.

I would think that feminizing the church is just as bad as masculinizing the church. We, the Church, are the BRIDE of Christ. The Bride is expected to be all those things that some people deem to be masculine traits. That kind of thinking just doesn’t add up. How can the church be too feminized when the Church is feminine in its response to Christ and likened to the female role of Bride?

I guess this whole “feminization” of the church thing doesn’t sit right with me.

Thanks for helping me understand what is meant by this term.

By Corrie on 11.07.06 5:55 am

Byron,
The thing about the Trinity Volf was emphasizing in that chapter was the “not without the other” aspect of trinitarian relationships. He examines other aspects in other chapters. I don’t think the whole book is meant to be exhaustive in describing Trinitarian relations, nor do I think he is advocating any kind of arbitrariness. We may have to agree to disagree on this.

What I was getting at is Volf’s analysis of where our ideas about gender come from. I think this is highly germane to Al’s post.

So Al, I’m going to bed presently. See you in the morning, California time

Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.07.06 6:53 am

Corrie,

I would be careful not to read too much into the use of the word ‘feminization’. It need not have anything to do with a denigration of women. As a term it has been used by people from all sorts of ideological backgrounds, and by women and men. The feminist historian Ann Douglas’ (superb) book The Feminization of American Culture is a good example here. Douglas uses ‘feminization’ to speak of the way in which a sentimentalized culture (as damaging to women as it was to men: elevating women in order to marginalize them) was established in 19th America.

The point that people are making when they speak of the feminization of the Church is that the strong masculine leadership and membership that should be present in a faithful Church is lost and that the men of the Church seem to have lost their backbones. The Church begins to succumb to sentimentalism, touchy-feeliness and the like in a way that it would not without strong men.

‘Feminization’ is thus used to refer to a certain problem of gender-politics, in which the decisive feature is the loss of the virtues that are traditionally regarded as especially characteristic of and necessary for masculinity. The imbalance caused by ‘feminization’ is, I believe, a genuine one and is a bad thing. Femininity is certainly no bad thing, but the loss of masculinity is, and that is the point that people are making.

The ‘masculinization’ of the Church would equally be an evil. Good examples of ‘masculinized’ religion can be seen in Islam. Both masculinization and feminization are negative trends as they entail the creation of an imbalance.

By Al on 11.07.06 9:45 am

Thanks for this post. It makes much more sense to me than a lot of the “feminization” posts I’ve been reading lately. To me the feminine/masculine thing was all kind of vague, but the infantile description makes a lot more sense and I can think of more clear examples in my own experience within this catagory.

By Jamie on 11.07.06 2:36 pm

Dana,

I will try to give a brief sketch of where I am coming from on this.

I believe that men and women have been created to perform different roles and that these roles are at their most focused in the act of worship (for man was created as homo adorans). The differences between men and women are not primarily biological, but liturgical. We are different biologically because we were designed to perform different roles within the task of worship given to humanity. The differences between our preferred ways of thinking, our clothing, our voices, the shape and cabilities of our bodies and our personal and psychological developments are all results of the fact that God created us for different liturgical roles.

The symbolism of sex is hardwired into the biblical narrative. Whether we look to the creation, the narratives of the old and new testaments, the prophetic analogies, the sacrificial system, the design of the temple, the larger movements of redemptive history, etc., all presuppose symbolic differences between men and women. The man is the initiator; the woman is the perfector. The man is protological, the woman eschatological; alpha male, omega female. The woman is the one who glorifies, not the man. The man is called to spend His strength in the service of the woman, not in order to dominate her. The woman is called to perfect and glorify what the man has initiated.

In Scripture, the relationships between men and women are related to the Trinity, creation and the order established by the gospel. The Scripture does not present the differences between men and women as arising out of an arbitrary projection of cultural metaphors. The fact that many in our day understand them in such a manner seems to me to be attributable to little other than cultural arrogance, biblical ignorance and unwillingness to listen to the Scriptural pattern. To understand it in such a way is to seriously compromise the message of Scripture on many levels. Humanity was created to image God. Men and women were created to play different symbolic roles in humanity’s imaging of God.

The relationships between men and women should be characterized by ‘asymmetric mutuality’. Each exists for the sake of the other. The Scriptures are opposed to raw male power and calls for the breaking of such power. The society of promiscuous and macho men must give way to the society of fathers, husbands, brothers, etc. who are willing to lay down their lives in service of women and surrender their masculine power in such a manner.

My point about sexually-differentiated expressions of the virtues is to do with the fact that men and women have differing roles to perform and that, given these differing roles, different virtues come to the fore. The role of warfare, for example, is biblically presented as a particularly male role. It is men who are called to lay down their lives for women and children. It is men who must sacrifice themselves for the sake of the community. A society that sacrifices its women and children is evil and corrupt.

In Scripture the priest is a warrior. The great priests are men of violence. Levi was a violent man that God turned to his service (Genesis 49:5-7). It was the act of sacred violence in which the Levites killed their brethren that preceded their being set apart for divine service. The Levites were the armed cherubim guard at the symbolic Garden of Eden of the tabernacle. It was Phineas’ thrusting of a javelin through a man and a woman that led to him and his descendents being set apart for special priesthood (Numbers 25). The true priest is the one who, like Samuel, will hew Agags to pieces in the presence of God. The true priest is the one who, like Saul, has his violent zeal mastered by God for his service. Whilst women are, on occasions, called to play an exceptional role and drive tent pegs through people’s skulls, or something like that, they are not set apart for such a role.

The role that such men are called to perform is one that requires particular virtues, virtues that we need to encourage in the leaders of our churches. However, the virtues of a godly warrior are primarily ‘masculine’ virtues. A society that trains its women to be soldiers threatens femininity. It would not be fitting for women to do what God called the Levites to do in Exodus 32. The woman is primarily called to be a nurturer. This is not the primary task of the pastor; he is called to guard the boundaries, protect the flock and lead them from the front. Nurture is not absent from his role, but it is not as central as modern evangelicalism has made it. His primary task is martial and sacrificial.

The virtue of courage, for example, that should be characteristic of the godly warrior is something that the woman should also possess. However, the virtue is expressed differently. There are good reasons why the Scriptures will not countenance women pastors (besides the fact that a woman could not be a pastor however much she wanted to be, much as a man cannot be pregnant, not primarily because it is not permitted, but because it is impossible). These may be hard to understand in an egalitarian society and in a society that has lost sight of what it actually means to be a pastor, but the Scripture is pretty clear on this. The gifts of leadership and teaching that many women have are certainly not denied expression (as they sadly have been in much of the Church’s history), but the way in which and the realms in which they are expressed.

As regards the issue of improvization, my point is that the Scriptures present us with many different types of women and men. I believe that the Scripture gives us examples of women theologians, economically active women, women political leaders, etc. However, the theological task performed by the woman should be qualified by her sex, just as it should be when performed by a man. We don’t practice theology, or anything else for that matter, as androgynes.

I have since read almost all of the chapter of Volf that you recommend and there is not much that he says that I haven’t heard before. I disagree with him in founding the differences between the bodies on differently sexed bodies. I also am disappointed with his failure to recognize the degree to which specific gender roles are hardwired in the symbolic structure of the Scriptural world and narrative. Whilst there is far more fluidity in scriptural gender identity than most conservative Christians would like to admit, there are clearly demarcated roles.

Furthermore, the asymmetry between men and women seems to be related to the asmmetry between the persons of the Trinity on a deeper level than Volf seems to recognize. There is a very clear order and form to the relationships of the Trinity and this form is imaged, to some extent, both within the Church and in relationship between the sexes in general. Whilst God is always spoken of as grammatically masculine in relationship to the world, I believe that substantial sexual differences between men and women and not just the existence of difference per se are means by which we image God as humanity. God is beyond sex, but He is also the archetype of the masculine and the feminine. I will probably post something that I wrote on this last year sometime soon.

By Al on 11.07.06 3:23 pm

[...] OK, the subject of masculinity and femininity has been a subject of discussion following one of yesterday’s posts. I thought that I would post this as somewhat relevant to the questions at issue. It is certainly not the best thing that I have ever written and I decided not to post it when I first wrote it over a year ago. I would probably want to add a lot, lot more to it if I had written it today. However, I will post it now, more or less in its original form, as I do not have the time or energy to write anything much new on the subject. Someone like Dennis should post on this subject, as it would be far more insightful than the following thoughts. [...]

By alastair.adversaria » Christ and the Possibility of Feminine Identity on 11.07.06 4:10 pm

I have a friend who wrote his dissertation on the infantilization of the Hispanic male. I think you are right on in your assessment of the church. If your a interested in emailing my friend for a copy of his dissertation let me know. Pax, Jose

By jose on 11.08.06 2:54 am

Hi Al,

Thank you for your explanation. I think that in a lot of places the word “feminine” is used to label anything that is bad or lacking. I don’t think I am reading anything into it that I am not getting from very clear statements.

That being said, I wouldn’t group you in with these “other places”. I agree with many of the things you have written and have appreciated how you have answered my questions in a forthright and honest manner.

Yes, the church has lost its backbone. It is just as frustrating to me as a woman. Sin is covered over in the name of “peace”. All leaders want people to do is hold hands and sing “Kum Bai Ya” even if there has been gross, unconfessed sin. They don’t want problems and they don’t want to confront and expose and hold anyone accountable.

Someone very close to me has been damaged because of the spinelessness of such systems.

In the comment you wrote to Dana, I think that is one of the best and most accurate biblical descriptions of the roles and purposes of male and female.

Thank you.

By Corrie on 11.08.06 4:18 am

[...] alastair.adversaria » A Crisis in Masculinity in the Evangelical Church [...]

By Two Tack’s Thoughts » Blog Archive » Alpha Male, Omega Female on 11.08.06 4:20 am

I’m reminded of R.J. Rushdoony’s excellent Revolt Against Maturity. See: http://freebooks.commentary.net/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/newslet/preface/04pref.pdf

By Christopher Witmer on 11.08.06 4:25 am

Al, I have some thoughts but I am too tired right now for them to be coherent. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.
Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.08.06 7:00 am

One of the touchstone guys claims that the ‘feminization’ of the church (particularly, more women in churches than men) is something that touches all churches and eras back to somewhere in the middle ages. IIRC, he traces it to medieval mysticism and (a mistaken) seeing of “Church as bride of Christ” as implying men as individuals were to be ‘feminine’ before a male Christ.

By pduggie on 11.08.06 8:24 pm

Al, this is going to be long, and for that reason, and because of you being away from the blog for a while, it’s going to be my last comment here. Please feel free to e-mail me if you want to continue the discussion.

First of all, I appreciate your reading Volf. Too bad you don’t see the cultural construction and negotiation of gender roles. To me it is so glaringly obvious and makes the utmost sense. But ok.

I like your thoughts about the act of worship. I do believe that we are first and foremost homo adorans. Your totus Christus ideas go along with this. If one’s liturgical act is that of Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, where the priest symbolically enacts Jesus coming from the holy place to deliver himself into the church with his life and presence in the Eucharist, then it makes sense for the priest to be a male. Of course, all the rest of the males present at the liturgical event would then symbolically be part of the “feminine” church. But outside of the actual liturgical event, these difference would not hold. I think my Orthodox friend who is a seminary instructor would agree with me about that.

As to “masculinity” and “femininity” being “hardwired into the biblical narrative”- well, Al, I think this is your interpretation of the narrative based on what you believe about reality. Not everyone sees the biblical narrative like this; I certainly don’t. There are many instances in the biblical narrative, for example, of women protecting men: the Hebrew midwives, Deborah, Rahab, Abigail, etc. etc. Scripture does not explicitly present or address the differences between men and women in creation other than on a physical level. The point of the Genesis story of the creation of humanity is not that God is gendered, or that there is absolutized masculinity and/or femininity within God, but that humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creative activity. God Created: God Created male and female; God Created humanity in his image. There is only one Role of Humanity as image-bearers: to image God in his life-giving love/love-giving life with respect to other humans and with respect to the rest of creation. Sometimes this occurs through the power of sexual reproduction, and other times in ways that don’t involve sexual reproduction/genital expression.

Have you read Wright’s “The Word, the Church and the Groaning of the Spirit” in his little book, “The Crown and the Fire”? It is simply fabulous; the whole book is great, but this chapter (and the one following, on the Eucharist) is outstanding. It’s an exposition of Romans 8:17-27, and he says that “the theme of this passage is the extraordinary vocation of the people of God, within the overarching plan of God for the healing and rebirth of the entire cosmos.” It “points us to the genuinely Christian view of the world, and of God, and of the Church’s task in between God and the world.” The outline consists of the context of the three instances of the use of the word “groaning” in this passage, which is “rather like a threefold Russian doll; each time we open up a set of ideas, there’s another one, similar but compressed, inside. Within each section the connecting words (all the ‘fors’ and ‘becauses’) are vital.”

1) The world waits to be fully redeemed.“…The cosmos itself will one day thrill to respond to the wise rule/glory of God’s redeemed- and now redeeming- humanity. That is the vision. Instead of worship of creation by humans, as in Romans 1, we now have creation rescued by humans… Within that vision…Paul uses the great image from Genesis 3. No longer Eve, but now the whole creation, playing as it were female to God’s male, is groaning together and in travail together…The present state of the world is just this: that it is groaning in the pangs of giving birth to the new world that God desires and intends. And the result is a view of the world which leaves no room for either exploitation or idolatry.”

2) The world waits for the church to be fully redeemed. “If the world is playing out the Eve-theme, groaning in travail as it waits for the new world to be born from its womb, so the Church is also groaning as she waits for her own full adoption….The female image of the Church, groaning in travail, is placed as it were within the female image of the world….Paul is deliberately interpreting the two in relation to each other. The present task of the Church is not only to share the sufferings of Christ but in doing so to share and bear the sufferings of the world….The church is not to be insulated from the pain of the world, but is to become for the world what Jesus was for the world, the place where its pain and grief may be focused and concentrated, and so be healed…Does this mean that some of our wounds are Christ’s wounds, and that some of our wounds bring healing? I think Paul’s answer is Yes.”

3) God is at work in the world through the church to bring about the full redemption. “‘In the same way too’, Paul says in verse 26: what is true of the world and the Church is actually true also of the Spirit. Within the groaning of creation, and within the groaning of the Church, God - this strange God - is groaning also….God is sharing, by his Spirit, in the groaning of creation and the groaning of the Church. But this image remains inescapably the Eve-image, the female one giving birth…Prayer, at the deepest level, is here understood as God calling to God from within the created and groaning world, …from within the redeemed and groaning church, God the Spirit dwelling in the hearts of her people as they dwell in the midst of the broken world, and calling to God the Father, the transcendent one, and being certainly heard….The Church, then, is caught up in this divine dialogue,…comes to share the pattern of the life and death and resurrection of the Son. Verse 17 stands as the rubric over the entire passage: when the world and the Church look out on the darkness and ask why they have been abandoned, at that very moment they share the agony of the Son; so that the complaint of God’s absence becomes, paradoxically, the evidence of God’s presence….We in the West have assumed for too long that the word ‘God’ is univocal, and that we all know what it means. This passage holds out the startling picture of God as the creator and as the one at work to bring healing and hope within the world, and, in the midst of that, as the one who suffers and dies under the weight of the world’s sin, and rises again as the beginning of the new creation.”

Glory! I’ll go there joyfully with Wright. And farther than that, in terms of symbolic “maleness” and “femaleness”, I think scripture does not go.

Which leads me to thoughts on Priesthood. First of all, God’s ultimate intention was to make a kingdom of priests (Ex 19:5-6, Is 61:6, 1Pet 2:9-10), in that all the redeemed would offer God right worship. Hebrews 5:13 through 10:25 seems to say that Jesus’ final sacrifice fulfilled the purpose for the Levitical priesthood and that the LP was over with; the only “priest” in that sense that remains is Jesus, the High Priest after the pattern of Melchizedech. I find no intimation in scripture that God wanted to set up a hierarchical ecclesiastical system such as is found in the High Church traditions. I think the Christologic symbology was meant to be focused on the Eucharist, not on who is presiding over its celebration.

In light of this, I find the notion of the priest as warrior to be off base. First of all, God’s instruction to the priests to kill idolaters was a demonstration that idolatry always leads to death, whether that death is caused “directly” by God or not. Sometimes God sent a plague, which was a chance to repent and through which some people repented and lived. This had nothing to do with the “masculinity” of the priests. Secondly, as above, the Levitical priesthood was only meant to be temporary. Some people, most notably Rene Girard, think that God set up the LP in order to get people to stop sacrificing one another as scapegoats and focus the violence onto animals, temporarily, until the final Sacrifice where God took all the violence into Himself on the cross and defeated it. Which is thirdly, the example of Jesus the Ultimate Priest, not striking back when he was reviled, and empowering us by his Spirit to do the same. Part of the core of Jesus’ message, according to Wright, was the constant admonition to the Jews drop the agenda of violence, which they thought was what was going to effect their deliverance. The weapons of our warfare do not have their source in the flesh (death and corruption and all that leads thereto- NTW). Dallas Willard’s exposition of the Sermon on the Mount in “Divine Conspiracy” makes it clear that force and manipulation have no place in kingdom-of-God relations, either toward others in the church or toward the world.

I do believe Jesus had to be a male in order to correspond to the male sacrificial animals, in order to demonstrate that his Way was not simply another fertility religion, and in order to effect his work in the time and place (history) in which he was incarnated. No problem with that. I do not deny the historicity of anything about Jesus and his redeeming work. Women were drawn into that redemption from the beginning with Jesus receiving his human body from Mary (Athanasius, De Incarnatione, II/10).

Of course we humans don’t practice anything as androgynes. We have sexed bodies, and that is not unimportant to our identities. But it’s not the core of our identities; otherwise, those who don’t have all their “parts” due to birth defect, trauma or disease would be less than human. I don’t think you would go there, Al. I’ve read some of Podles; I’d like to agree with some of what he says, but I think he too can’t see very far past his own cultural conditioning, esp. as part of the Roman Catholic culture and how that plays into his view. I don’t agree with Reuther, Fiddes or Irigaray and I’m not a pan/en/theist.

I do wish you would consider how exactly the culture of the West views women. It is in fact not egalitarian “on the street”, or even respectful. If it were, there would not need to be laws against rape, laws to curb sexual harassment, or laws to ensure the same rate of pay for the same work done by men and women- which is still not at parity in the US. (My best friend has a saying: Law is for the lawless.) In the States, the leading cause of women admitted to hospital because of “accident” is domestic violence, and nearly all murders of women are committed by their spouses/boyfriends. Look at advertising, at music videos, at mass marketed film and TV, and really see how women are portrayed, especially “smart” or “powerful” women. Please ponder that for a while. A good long while.

Finally, as to the “asymmetry of male and female roles” reflecting trinitarian relations, if by this you mean the kenosis and/or subordination of the Son to the Father, those were also meant to be temporary, not eternal; my understanding was that was pretty well settled during the patristic period. I refer you also to Wright on Daniel’s vision of God sharing his own glory with the Son of Man. Also, Kevin Giles, Oz Anglican, has written about this: see book review here:
http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2006/08/jesus_and_the_f.html
In addition, if you have time, you might peruse Michael’s posts on the book “Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy”, found here:
http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2006/10/discovering_bib_1.html
He’s been blogging this chapter by chapter and has a helpful index at the above address, so one doesn’t have to spend a lot of time looking for the individual posts.

I don’t want to have a fight about this; if you don’t agree, we can agree to disagree. I ask that you think about these ideas. I hope you continue to treat the females in you life with the same regard you would want for yourself, consistent with being a follower of Jesus. I hope your blog fast is peaceful and your studies are fruitful. Looking forward to the Wright podcast. God bless you.

Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.09.06 1:37 am

Not to mention the bizarrely eroticized psychological “relations” that vowed celibates have often sought with Christ, His mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene over the centuries. This is primarily a Roman Catholic phenomenon but seems to have carried over, to an extent, into Protestantism as well. The problem we are considering here is much more comprehensive and widespread than just this one point, of course. Even though Rushdoony’s book above is not primarily concerned with the topic of this thread, the book’s title (Flight from Maturity) nails it. Basically, the church and its individual members are called to a fully orbed maturity, and the church’s crisis can be largely described as a flight from our calling to maturity.

By Christopher Witmer on 11.09.06 1:56 am

“There are many instances in the biblical narrative, for example, of women protecting men: the Hebrew midwives, Deborah, Rahab, Abigail”

But (except for deborah) they ‘protect’ in decidedly non masculine ways.

The midwives and Rahab lie, they don’t foment a revolution and swing swords.

Jael lies, uses a domestic object as a weapon, and GIVES MILK as part of her lie.

Deborah is close to ‘masculine’, but she’s obvioulsy presented as exceptional in her milirary leadership: she wants Barak to do his “manly duty”, but since he refuses, Jael gets to kill the leader, and she does it in a non-masculine way.

Even the aboriginal Dyirbal have masculine and feminine, though they might cut the pie a little bit different (pace Lakoff).

By pduggie on 11.09.06 3:55 pm

Dana,

Whilst I will not be posting anything for the rest of this month, I will be able to continue commenting on some existing posts. I don’t believe that it would be right to drop out in the middle of a discussion. However, I would prefer not to get caught up in any really lengthy discussions as I have a lot of work on and it would rather defeat the purpose of my blogging fast!

I must confess to being just a little frustrated by some of the things that you say in your response. I think that you misunderstand where I am coming from in a number of respects.

I have never denied the cultural construction and negotiation of gender roles. There is no culturally unmediated form of femininity or masculinity. I do not even believe that we would be able to arrive at some ‘pure’ masculinity or femininity if we were to strip away all of our cultural conventions and social constructions. There is no culturally unmediated substratum of gender. I have argued in the past that ‘nature’ itself is a social construction (albeit not a mere construction).

As you point out all of this is glaringly obvious. However, I don’t believe that the recognition of this entails the conclusions that you and Volf seem to draw. Part of the problem with your position, from my perspective, is the degree to which it seems to rely upon a rather suspect nature/culture opposition at certain points. Nature is never ‘acultural’: Adam was placed in a garden.

When I speak of certain differences between men and women being ‘natural’, it should be remembered that I do not ascribe to a substantialist ontology (although sometimes I might give that impression). I also see telos as part of the concept of ‘nature’. When Volf treats the differences between male and female as primarily cultural ways of negotiating biological differences, I think that he falls short of a fully biblical understanding of nature and creation and is applying another rather modern assumption (the nature/culture dichtomy) to the biblical data.

God’s creation is ordered to an eschatological end from the start and the different creatures within creation all have their own telos. There is no more basic non-teleological reality. The biological differences between men and women cannot be reduced to some underlying ‘substance’ that culture has to negotiate, but have to be regarded as value-laden facts belonging to a teleologically ordered reality that culture has to operate in terms of. The problem, it seems to me, is that many accounts of social constructivism haven’t actually moved beyond a nature/culture dichotomy; they have just privileged one side of the equation. With a Christian doctrine of creation such a movement becomes possible in a way that it doesn’t seem to be for non-Christian understandings of nature.

I believe the fact that sex is only appropriate within the context of a relationship between a husband and wife is a fact of nature. Of course, many will object to this, putting forward a range of arguments to claim that sexuality and marriage are social constructions. They certainly are, but this does not make them any less facts of nature, when we recognize the fact that nature was not created acultural and that God’s creation of the cultural reality of marriage was part of His creation of the natural reality.

In the context of worship, there are overlapping masculine and feminine roles to be played. In relationship to God the Church is feminine and the priest represents the Bridegroom in the dialogue of the service. However, there are also relationships within the congregation itself and differences between men and women are important here as well, something that we see in such places as 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11. As the context of worship is the starting point and telos of the whole of the week, one would be surprised if the roles modelled in worship were not intended to have much bearing on regular life. Worship is certainly a time of heightened differentiation, but this differentiation isn’t altogether absent outside of that context.

It is also important to recognize that the masculine/feminine symbolism of worship goes all the way back to creation. The argument for an exclusively male priesthood from the masculinity of Christ is not actually an argument that we find in Scripture (although it is founded on good Scriptural principles). What we do find in Scripture are arguments appealing to the order of creation.

This is why the homo adorans argument is so important. Man’s most fundamental identity is found in worship, in his relationship to God. The woman was created to play a particular role in worship, to assist the man, who was to lead in their common task of worshipping God. This is one reason why Volf’s position is deficient. Sexual differentiation is not primarily a matter of sexed bodies, but a matter of the telos for which man and woman were created (which is reflected in sexed bodies).

God created man to relate to Him and to relate to the creation as His imagebearers. Men and women both image God, but they image God differently. The man is the image of God in a sense that differs from the woman and the woman is the image of God in a sense that differs from the man. Such a difference in the way in which men and women image God is suggested in verses such as 1 Corinthians 11:7. Man is the ‘image and glory of God [that is God the Father]’. As the glory of the man, the woman images the Triune God differently. I would suggest that the woman particularly images the Spirit as the One who glorifies and perfects.

When relating directly to God gender differentiation is at its height. When relating to each other gender differentiation is present to some extent, more so in some situations, less so in others. When relating to the creation gender differentiation is seldom an issue.

You bring forward a number of biblical examples to challenge my claim that masculinity and femininity are hard-wired into the biblical narrative. I actually think that they go some way to proving my point. Most of the examples that you bring forward actually prove my point beautifully. Paul’s response is important here: there performed their duty in ways that differed from their male counterparts. Deborah does not seem to have taken part in the actual killing of the battle itself, but presses Barak to do his duty.

But we can go further than this: most of the examples that you list are actually playing the key feminine role within a typological script that is repeated many times in the biblical narrative. Eve was deceived by the serpent. From that point onwards in Scripture, faithful women are repeatedly presented as the deceivers of tyrants. Sarai deceives Pharaoh and Abimelech. Rebekah deceives Abimelech. Rachel deceives Laban. The Hebrew midwives deceive Pharaoh. Rahab deceives the men of Jericho. Jael deceives Sisera. Michal deceives her father Saul. Esther deceives Haman. Others could be mentioned.

The woman defends men through her wisdom and cunning that exceeds that of the serpent. She does not defend in the same way as men are called to defend, though. The woman is not set apart to guard the boundaries in the same way as Adam and other men were. Woman are not called to go into battle, for example. Her role within the Holy War differs.

I take issue with the claim that the Scripture ‘does not explicitly present or address the differences between men and women in creation other than on a physical level.’ Where on earth does the Scripture explicitly present or address the differences between men and women in creation on a physical level? The differences between man and woman have to do with the differing roles that they were given in Genesis, roles for which they were physically equipped. The text just does not seem to support your theory at this point. Many within our culture may regard the differences between men and women in such a way, but this is not what the Scriptures give us.

I stand by my original claim that differences between masculinity and femininity are hardwired into the biblical text. Take, for example, the sign of circumcision. In the choice of that particular sign God gives sexed bodies covenantal significance. Many other things could be listed. Whilst it is certainly true that in most human activities, sexual differentiation fades into the background, it is not true to say that for Scripture sex is primarily a mere fact of physicality. I also believe that the maleness and femaleness of human imaging of God goes beyond sexual reproduction. As a single man, I can image God in my masculinity, just as a single woman can image God in her femininity.

I have read the section of Wright that you mention. What he says is quite correct, but the symbolism of sex goes far, far deeper in Scripture. The more that one studies the Scripture, the more it is there. Furthermore, this symbolism does not merely float above us, like oil on water, but calls us to live in terms of the symbolism that it presents in our own lives. For example, married women are called to be like the Church (Ephesians 5:24), like Eve (1 Timothy 2:15) and like Sarah (1 Peter 3:6).

On the issue of priesthood, a few comments. God’s purpose was that of forming a priestly nation. Israel was a priestly nation, even though it was hierarchical in strcuture. Relative to Gentiles every Israelite was a priest. There are good biblical theological arguments for the claim that every Israelite was in some sense a priest. For my thoughts on new covenant priesthood see here.

The connection between priesthood and war is not the primary argument that I would use to support male priesthood. However, I remain convinced that the scriptural evidence for the connection is robust. The Levites were warriors and sacrifices for the nation. They were warriors as the armed guard of places of holiness (cf. 2 Chronicles 23:2-7; Nehemiah 13:22). They played the role of the cherubim who guarded the garden of Eden. If you went to the wrong place a Levite would thrust you through with a sword. In Israel’s war camp, they were God’s crack troops, guarding the place of His presence with His people.

When Israel went to war, the men of Israel had to sanctify themselves and had a sort of elevated level of (priestly) holiness for a time as God was in their camp. The regular warrior became a ‘priest’ for a time. The Levitical priesthood, however, was sort of permanent divine army. Their role corresponded to the angelic host who serve God, but are also counted as His army.

The priests were also sacrifices. The firstborn sons of Israel had already been dedicated to God as a sort of sacrifice, but the Levites substituted for them (Numbers 3:45). They were dedicated to God for the sake of the whole of Israel as a sacrifice. The same logic can be seen in war, where the sons of the nation are set apart and sacrificed for the nation as a whole.

Other reasons why the priests of Israel were exclusively male can be given, but I don’t want to make a long response even longer.

René Girard has some extremely helpful things to say on occasions. However, on a number of occasions his theory risks silencing the text. This is one such occasion. Whilst there is probably a measure of truth to Girard’s position, the setting apart of the Levitical priesthood seems to be more complex than his theory might suggest. At best Girard is only part of the explanation.

Returning to the issue of priests as warriors, this is a theme that continues in the NT. Jesus is the great Warrior, who goes out to do battle with the forces of evil. He takes the Nazirite vow (vowing not to drink wine until His battle was done), which was a vow of holy warfare. We do not engage in holy warfare with physical weapons as they did in the OT, but it is warfare nonetheless. Furthermore, the task of warfare is one that men have been equipped to lead in a particular way and this is not limited to physical warfare.

The idea that Jesus had to be male to correspond to the male sacrificial animals seems to raise a few questions. Why were the sacrificial animals in question male in the first place? Not all sacrifices were male.

As I have pointed out above, in most areas of life, differences of sex need not be more than a background issue. Male and female are more like ‘neighbouring’ sexes than ‘opposite’ sexes. We have far more in common in shared personhood than we have things which distinguish us from each other. As for Podles, I have problems with a number of things that he says myself. I think that his case is quite weak at a number of points. However, where I agree I am quite happy to quote him.

I stand by my description of our society as ‘egalitarian’. Whilst there are certainly elements of our society that are deeply sexist and should be condemned, such things are frowned upon by most leading figures within our society. I also quite willingly admit that there is a lot of sexism in the media. I call our society ‘egalitarian’ in much the same way as I would call it ‘postmodern’. Most people don’t have a clue what ‘postmodern’ means and many are decidedly modern in their attitudes. However, that is the general way that the wind is blowing.

As regards ‘hierarchy’, I don’t understand hierarchy in the same way as most do. There is certainly not a hierarchy of power. However, there is a relational hierarchy without the slightest suggestion of inferiority or what has been called subordinationism. I have no interest in defending such unscriptural positions as patriarchalism for one moment. This expresses my position well.

Blessings,

By Al on 11.09.06 9:39 pm

Well Al, I’m not into arguing. I do appreciate the respectful discussion. I believe I understand where you’re coming from, and I see it differently. I’m glad that different opinions don’t necessarily divide us from one another.

Do have a great term.
Dana

By Dana Ames on 11.11.06 8:47 pm

[...] The L.A. Times had an interesting article about yet another Christian mens’ movement - this one titled GodMen. Besides the obvious problem that there is only one true GodMan, it immediately brought to mind an excellent post over at Adversia a few weeks back. [...]

By Labarum » on 12.07.06 5:08 pm