Tag Archive - gender

What’s On Your Plate?

January 2, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Culture with 14 Comments

Slowing the blogging pace and stepping back for a week or two over the holidays, I started to think about what streams of conversation are flowing with particular force these days.

Over the past couple of years there have been emergent or missional conversations that always provided ready fodder for conversation. But those streams have largely dried up as ever-present conversation pieces.

Here are a couple of things that strike me as continuing points of interest as I scan the blogosphere. But I’d also love to hear from you: what are you thinking about and finding yourself in vigorous conversation about as you strive to work out what it looks like to faithfully follow Jesus in 2012?

  1. The Gospel. I know that sounds rather broad and… well… settled, but here’s what I mean: in the more or less evangelical circles in which I run, we are finding a good deal of traction in conversations that press us to articulate a holistic gospel that affirms the “spiritual” dynamics of a restored relationship with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus while also affirming that the spiritual work of being at work in the world for the good of all God’s creatures is integral to the faith.

    Recent books by Scot McKnight, Tom Wright, and yours truly are all working to contribute to such a recalibration of the evangelical gospel, that has been too long denying what it should have been affirming (in many circles). The gospel is good news for the whole world.

  2. Human origins after evolution. As denial of evolution becomes a rallying cry for both religiously and politically conservative movements, it moves certain brands of Christianity into more of a backwater. Too many Christians now have too much education for this non-viable position to continue to hold sway among thoughtful evangelicals.

    But, this means that we are confronted with a monumental task. And here is where the conservatives are right: to affirm evolution entails a reconfiguring of the narrative of humanity in significant ways. What can Christians say about the significance of humanity’s place in the cosmos once the story of evolution displaces the story of one-off creation? What can be retained? What must be replaced? Pete Enns’ book, and the interest it is generating even prior to publication, is one piece of bookish evidence about the continuing significance of this issue.

  3. Gender in the church. Here’s one for which I have no direct evidence in terms of tell-tale books. (I apologize.) But, with the continuing surge of the neo-Reformed movement, there has been a concomitant surge theological conviction about male dominance of the church.

What do you think? Are these issues the ones that are active points of conversation in your world? Are there others? I started to wonder if “what the Bible is” might not be another significant point where evangelicals are entering a new place (cf. Christian Smith’s, The Bible Made Impossible), and if folks find themselves increasingly in conversations about sex and sexuality?

Anyone?

Steal, Kill, and Destroy

July 30, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Culture with 16 Comments

Please bear with me in a little gender stereotyping. And forgive and extend grace as necessary. Or rant in the comments–as you wish.

Last weekend we were camping with a bunch of other family’s from our daughter’s school. As the boys exercised their wills on the environment around them, I had Jesus’ words echoing through my mind: “…comes to steal, kill, and destroy.”

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are there tadpoles in the river? Those, clearly, are for fishing out and giving to the cats.

Are there cats? Those, clearly, are for carrying around, forcing affection from, and being compelled to eat and drink on demand.

And let’s not even talk about the baby birds.

Destruction and misery were in their wakes as the boys took charge of the world around them by exercising their superior size and force in myriad situations.

My daughter isn’t like that. My son shares some of those traits.

Shift gears with me to the church.

As Mark Driscoll promotes his own particular brand of macho church leadership, one of his deepest concerns pertains to the feminization of the church, and of our culture more generally. What we clearly need is more macho, more bravado, more “manly men” who can keep our world running… well…

… running like it’s in the hands of boys who never grew up.

When Obama was running for president, one of the greatest hopes of the people on the political center to left was that his gift of oratory might bode well for a new era of international relations. Perhaps the ability to speak clearly would translate into speaking as a means for peace-making rather than the killing and destruction that had been the choice of his predecessor.

In politics, it seems, at least in the presidency, a different way to lead and seek for peace is still some time off.

Back to Driscoll’s concern, I hope he’s right. I hope we are experiencing a feminization of our culture. Now, there are, of course, ways in which women control their environments as well. Stereotypical ploys of manipulation and social ostracism have their own insidious character.

But there seems to be a boy’s way of dealing with the world–wrestling, grabbing, fighting, killing, that has, in fact, been the way that grown up boys have controlled the world over most of the history of our human race. And we need a better way forward.

The church, of course, has had its own share of mishaps as its boys have led their crusades both literal and figurative: gaining control and exercising often destructive power, heedless of relationships, heedless of the wisdom of cooperation, heedless, of course, of the way of the cross.

If the feminization that Driscoll fears brings with it less of the stereotypical power gaming, more cooperation, and more concern for real people, it can only be seen as a welcome transformation.

As for the boys at school? Well, to be honest, my daughter caught some tadpoles and was permitted by one of her parents to bring them home in a bottle.

Fair enough.

But she wasn’t the one who intentionally dumped them out in the middle of the playground.

Complementarian Interpreations of Creation

June 18, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 10 Comments

Over the past week or so we have been revisiting the creation narratives of Genesis 1-3. In reading them, I suggested several indications of how especially Gen 1 but also Gen 2 could be read as indicating a basic equality between male and female. They share in the rule of God in Gen 1, the woman is “helper” to the man as God is “helper” to Israel.

But the NT reflections on the creation narrative tend toward a hierarchical reading.

In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul appeals to creation. Echoing Gen 2, the passage reads:

7 A man shouldn’t have his head covered, because he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is man’s glory. 8 Man didn’t have his origin from woman, but woman from man; 9 and man wasn’t created for the sake of the woman, but the woman for the sake of the man. 10 Because of this a woman should have authority over her head, because of the angels. (CEB)

Conflating the two creation stories, 1 Cor 11 assigns the image language to the man in particular: he is God’s image and glory, derived from God, as God’s son, it would seem. The woman, derived from the man (made from his rib) is created for the man’s sake (an allusion to her as “helper”) and is his glory.

In this passage, Paul uses Adam’s being “first” in creation as the basis for an argument that dress in public worship should reflect the hierarchy of God/Christ over man, and man over woman.

Thus, Paul gives significant weight to a hierarchy based on creation order here. But even as he does so, we should notice that the role of the “subordinate” is considerable: man is God’s glory. Woman is the man’s glory.

But more significantly is that Paul is not willing to give creation the last word. Even more important than creation is life “in the Lord,” i.e., the life of the redeemed community in Christ:

11 However, woman isn’t independent from man, and man isn’t independent from woman in the Lord. 12 As woman came from man so also man comes from woman. But everything comes from God. (CEB)

More significant than hierarchies is mutual interdependence on one another, and mutual dependence on God.

While Paul has used a complementarian reading of Gen 1-3 to argue for certain dress codes in worship, he does not give that reading the last word. There is a mutual interdependence that comes into the narrative both because of creation (both the idea of man’s birth through woman and our mutual dependence on God) and because of our having been united to Christ.

Two things are significant here, as we think about how the Adam and Eve story helps us understand how the world is versus how it should be.

First, Paul himself does not give merely a hierarchical reading of Gen 1-3. He also gives an egalitarian reading when he appeals to birth and mutual dependence on God.

But even more importantly for those of us who are committed to reading the Bible as a narrative, it is the Gospel that finally will not allow hierarchy to stand. Who we are “in the Lord” transforms our understanding of mutual interrelations, so that it no longer makes sense to say, “Here is man, who simply rules over his wife and family.” Now mutual interdependence and dependence come to the fore, such that both depend upon the other–a kind of relationship in which there can not, for long, be any sense of one ruling the other.

This picture of a redeemed humanity, of an order of new creation that does not simply affirm a first-creation subordinationism, is the picture in which fits Paul’s statement in Gal 3:28: there is no longer “male and female”–a precise echo of Gen’s statement that God creates them “male and female.” In the Gal 3 context, the paragraph is undermining hierarchies of superiority whereby one would have to become like the other to be fully a part of the kingdom of God.

Paul’s new creation theology will not allow him to give a creation-based hierarchy the last word. Even if he does not work it out with full consistency in his own letters, he tells us how the story is supposed to play out. If male is first and therefore female is his subordinate based on creation order, then in new creation we must affirm that something has been transformed–there is no longer “male and female” in this hierarchical sense.

Thus, even if the NT contains complementarian readings of Gen 1-3, the very gospel story it tells demands that we reread the eschatology anticipated by those stories as an end in which male and female are not only of equal worth, but equally positioned to serve as God’s under-rulers in God’s Kingdom.

Theological Adams: Gendered

June 16, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 37 Comments

Someone asked what the ramifications would be for male female relationships if the Gen 1-3 stories are not intended to be “history,” as such.

Here, I don’t think that literal history matters very much.

The point of the story is to describe how things came to be the way they are. They provide indicatives that fall short of ideals. Between Gen 1 and Gen 2-3 we get some pointers for what gender means for our relationships.

Here we will run into some of the challenges of two different stories making, at times, very different points.

Genesis 1 depicts the creation of humanity as male and female created in God’s image–to rule the world on God’s behalf. The striking implication would seem to be that we are all created to rule the world for God, not just men.

To anticipate the questions that 1 Timothy raises: women are created to share in the authoritative speaking and acting for God that defines humanity and that is reembodied in ecclesial leadership.

Gen 2-3 is a bit more tricky. People rightly note that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, his side, and that she was created as a “helper.” Far from “helper” indicating subordinate, in the OT ‘ezer language often refers to YHWH in relationship with Israel (Gen 49; Exod 18; Deut 33). So there are indications of equality.

But there are also indications of male primacy. The Man names all the animals. The Man names the Woman. The Man receives God’s command and is presumably responsible for propagating it. The Man is given charge of the garden, and the woman is given to help him in his task. So there are also indications of subordination.

As the story plays out, the disobedience of the first couple creates tensions: the Man blames the Woman, the Woman blames the serpent. The creation will give evidence of rebellion and brokenness. Food will come through thorns and thistles. Children will come through pain.

And, the Woman’s desire will be for the Man and he will rule over over.

By the time we’ve moved from Gen 1 to Gen 3, the story has fallen apart. Almost entirely. Reading the stories back-to-back, canonically, humanity’s God-given gift of rule has been marred almost beyond recognition.

The epitome of the disorder of the world is that human rule is no longer shared, shoulder-to-shoulder, male-and-female standing before God on behalf of the world and standing before the world on behalf of God. Instead, the man rules his co-ruler. Creation is undone.

As a story of beginnings, Gen 3 tells us about a world gone awry. And in the middle of that skewed situation is hierarchy displacing partnership in the relationships of Man and Woman.

History, it seems, matters little for making this point, that subordination is a result of the fall, and to perpetuate subordination as God’s intent is to give up on the power of new creation to undo the disorder of the world.

So what are we to do with 1 Tim 2 and 1 Cor 11? We’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Common English Bible at Fuller

April 27, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Fuller with 35 Comments

During both Advent and Lent I participated in blog tours that were designed, in part, to get word out about the Common English Bible.

Recently, Fuller Seminary’s Bible division voted to place the CEB alongside the NRSV as the translations that may be used by students in our courses. Though not the minutes from the meeting, the press release gets it about right:

“Fuller’s mission is to prepare men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his church. We work out this calling with an eye toward both academic excellence and service to the church. The Biblical Division’s decision to approve the Common English Bible for classroom use reflects these commitments,” says J. R. Daniel Kirk, assistant professor of New Testament at Fuller. “We’ve approved the Common English Bible because it’s an academically excellent translation, because it communicates the underlying Greek and Hebrew texts in a clear and accessible fashion, and because it reflects the reality that the communities for which the Bible was written consist of both women and men.”

You can read more here.

As readers of my blog will know, it is an important part of my own theological and ecclessial agenda to have us think and act in all ways as though women and men are equal members of the body with equal access to all gifts and graces. CEB handles gender-inclusive language well, without sacrificing style. Especially in the wake of the death of the TNIV, the advent of the CEB at this point is a tremendous gift to the church, being both more up-to-date and often more accessible than the NRSV.

The whole Bible will be available in August. The New Testament is available now in various formats, and online. You can download Genesis for free right now as well.

Check it out.

Why I Use a Clunky Neologism

March 13, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 11 Comments

I recently tweeted the following:

Who God is in Godself is insufficient cause of praise: http://bit.ly/flAoBS

One of my Facebook friends wanted to know what was up with this “Godself” business. Besides being a horribly clunky neologism, doesn’t the Bible constantly use masculine language to refer to God?

Here’s what she commented:

    Daniel, I enjoy and appreciate so much of what you write – including this post. I’m wondering about the use of the (I think) very awkward “Godself” in the title. I’ve seen it before, but don’t get it. You’re making a biblical case about the God of the Bible but don’t seem comfortable using the language of the Bible to talk about Him. He has revealed Himself as the Eternal Father and Jesus as the Son, etc., etc. Why dispense with male pronouns? This is truly not intended to be snarky. I’m interested in your thoughts. I considered sending you a private inbox message, but figured some of your FB followers might have insights to share as well.

It is a great question! Here was my probably not-as-great reply:

    great question.

    I don’t have a problem with the Father-Son language of the Bible / NT; more that that, I think it’s important and should be preserved and promoted.

    But I do otherwise attempt to refrain from using masculine pronouns when referring to God, in part because the use of awkward neologisms like “Godself” draw attention to the fact that I’m avoiding masculine pronouns.

    I do this because I think it’s important to remind ourselves that God is not “male” as that those of us who are male humans are male. Consistently referring to God in masculine terms has the potential to serve the notion that those of us who are males on earth are more like God, closer to God, or occupying on earth the role that God occupies in the heavens.

    In other words, referring to God consistently as “he” has the potential to empower patriarchal systems that exalt men at the expense of women–such as the male-only leadership that is sadly practiced, still, in the majority of churches in the 21st century.

    Reminding ourselves that God is not “masculine” in this sense is an important step in remembering that we are not able to lead because we are biologically closer to God, but because the Spirit of God has endowed certain ones of us with the gift and calling.

What do you think? How important is it to preserve the masculine depictions of God in Scripture? How do we do justice to the fact that God is not male, despite these masculine depictions? How do we communicate that men are not more God-like either in nature or in function than women?

Language and Social Programming

June 29, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 47 Comments

In Fuller’s Biblical Division, we have a requirement that students use a gender-inclusive translation of the Bible (NRSV or TNIV) as their English translation. My students often ignore this, despite my desperate pleas, so I have to find ways of compelling them against their will. *ahem*

This spring a student asked some good, pointed questions about this requirement, so I figured I would answer him here, perhaps in hopes of getting some discussion going.

To the overall question, why require a gender-inclusive translation? My overall answer is this: to keep transforming the culture of the church until we actually believe (and therefore act like) that women and men are equal members of the body of Christ, equally addressed by the word of God, and equally empowered by the Spirit to serve in it (and therefore lead it).

My non-theological answer to why gender-inclusive language is essential: I am raising a daughter. At the age of 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 gender identity is one of the key ways she’s making sense of the world. She counts boys and girls (and whether the presence of a female dog ups the ante on the girls side so that they win). And, when she hears masculine language, she automatically excludes herself from the addressees.

As a man, this is something that experientially I will never be able to relate to, but as a dad I know that I want my daughter to hear the words of the Bible and know that they are expressed to her as much as they are to her brother. I don’t want girls or women who pick up the Bible to think that they are only members of the family of God by implication or by necessary consequence.

My student asked specifically about requiring the now defunct TNIV and the NRSV that was sponsored by the World Council of Churches and has not been well received in evangelical circles.

This is a crucial question. In my estimation the reason that these gender inclusive translations have not caught on in evangelicalism is precisely because conservative churches are theologically opposed to gender equality. It is because they are guarding against the sort of transformation that I think needs to take place that they choose to preserve and further language of masculine hegemony. In resisting even gender-inclusive language for humanity, however (e.g., not allowing α͗δέλφοι to be translated “brothers and sisters,” but instead insisting on “brothers”), the English translation expresses an exclusivity that was not there in the Greek. This is a case where “more literal” is not equivalent to “more accurate.”

The final couple of questions from my student were along the lines of who cares? and why bother? Why not use “mankind” and “man” rather than human? In addition to what I’ve outlined above, the reason I care is that women who are learning to locate themselves, as women, in the world, need to be told and have reinforced from every angle that they do not have to become male (or approximate maleness) in order to fully realize their humanness, to become who God desires them to be as restored image-bearers of Christ.

The church has been shackled by the idea that maleness is ontologically superior to femaleness. This has ramifications for how the church thinks about Jesus and how it thinks about gender among us humans.

With respect to Jesus: the ESV gives some hints as to the necessity for certain people to hold onto Jesus’ maleness as a sine qua non of salvation. A translation that prides itself on rendering words consistently and accurately translates ἄνθρωποι as “people” in 1 Timothy 2:4, “…desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” With this desire for all people as the set-up, however, the ESV simply cannot bring itself to say that a human is a sufficient category for a savior. No, it has to be male: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men [!, ἄνθρωποι], the man [! ἄνθρωπος] Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

We need to embrace gender-neutral terminology for humanity so that we can start to disentangle ourselves from skewed notions about maleness and salvation. And if you think I’m just making up the idea that the maleness of Jesus is an essential part of conservative evangelical theology, then maybe you can drop a note to Paternoster Press and ask why, after printing Neil Williams’ new book The Maleness of Jesus, they canceled the contract and are refusing to distribute it.

Of course, as soon as being male is required to represent humanity before God, then being male is required to represent God before God’s people. The continuing deafness of the evangelical world to the biblical passages that give counter-testimony to 1 Timothy 3 from the early church is another lingering effect of gender-exclusive Bible translation. So long as we think that to be truly human is to be man, and so long as we think that a man must be the mediator between God and man, women will never be able to participate as full, co-equal partners.

So yes, I care. And as a man I think it’s more important for me to champion this cause than it is for women to champion it themselves. Because the call of the gospel isn’t to spend all our time getting worked up over our own rights, but to spend all our time getting worked up over how life can come to the other.