Anna, you have captured exactly the dilemma of women in the church as well as the inability of men to perceive our dilemma. "It is not good for man to be alone." And that aloneness was not problematic simply in terms of human companionship, but also in terms of "correspondence." God made woman of the same "stock" (imago Dei) as man so she would be able to communicate with him. He also made her different enough (taking away something of him to create her) to enable her to counter him, to show him a different point of view. Male scholars and leaders seem unable to translate "different" in any other way than hierarchical and in so doing deprive themselves of the remedy God provided for their primary deficiency. In fact, they are acting out that deficiency. It is a huge loss to that pastor and his congregation that he would not listen to you. And very frustrating.
You see it for what it is, Donna. Thank you. Underneath our lack of esteem for our neighbor is a superficial view of gender that continues to reign among us, driven by our pride and fear, that distances the very ones that can help us forward.
Anna, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your work - and the fact that you are sharing it here. I haven't commented before, but eagerly read each of your posts as they hit my inbox. I was raised Baptist, but am currently a member of the OPC. TBH this very topic of male and female in church and in theology is my John 6 "hard saying" issue. The theology as it is understood and taught, and the church culture that is built up around it hurts people. But I am compelled with Peter to coness, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life."
When I read what you have to say, it's as if you are examining and answering the scattered questions, accusations, and protests that have littered my ruminations on the topic for most of my life. I have T-charts written down during my angsty teens and twenties that catalog the elements of the male/good and female/not good dichotomy you discuss in this particular post. My husband gently cautions me not to let abuses of God's design cause me to reject the design itself. But, it's not just behaviors that are clearly abuses that bother me. It's that on an existential level, what I have experienced as a female believer is that I am the "not-good" foil to the male "good" reflection of God. My unwillingness to just let go of the issue and trust that God has His reasons is that my soul - my humanity - screams that there has to be more to it. Either we are missing a vital aspect of the design in our teaching, the restoration of which will restore and broaden our understanding of female dignity, or the design for male and female that we have been taught is itself wrong.
Thank you for your deep, Biblical thinking on the topic and your willingness to follow the evidence even when it takes you into "novel" territory. We the church need you (whether some of us realize it or not!)
Beth, your reply is a deep well encouragement to me, even as I fight back tears as I read it --- for the circles you are in and what you are seeing and how helpless you feel to even survive there. As I recently wrote a friend, an OPC pastor, "I can't live in their heads (their thoughts about their sisters) or in their spaces." You have put words so well to my own experience, " . . . my humanity - screams that there has to be more to it."
I was not looking to find female dignity. I rarely consciously thought about it until about six years ago after a perplexing conversation with a professor. That's where it began for me. I wondered, "How does he see me?" And then, "Is he right? Is that how God sees me?" I made it a matter of prayer --- "Lord, who am I as a woman?"
In seminary, I got a new lens to understand the Bible, big picture Genesis to Revelation unfolding, and I imagined that the key to who I was as a woman would be there. Shortly after that, a very close friend went through spiritual abuse in her OPC church. I saw her inner world caving in and her well-being spiral. Walking with her through those years (!) opened my eyes. I didn't want to see it, and yet there it was. I couldn't help but see it. Once you see it, you can't help but keep noticing it. So, for example, all the other women in the church heard the same sermon I did, and yet they didn't hear what I did. I could wish to be unaware of what many of my brothers think of me, especially as a woman presuming to work on these things alongside of them hoping to help them, but I can't. (Actually, very few of them are working on sexuality and gender because they think the paradigm they have is tried and true. Most can't see or understand the pain it causes.)
In my story, we had to leave our former circles and find a better place. My husband saw that it was too much for me to be fighting poor thinking about women all week as I did research for my degree, only to battle on Sundays as well. He saw that there was no rest for me. By God's grace, we are in a place now where I take deep breaths of belonging from my brothers and sisters in Christ. What a blessing from God to find love and respect in the air, where gender is not front and center because women are seen as just, well, people (!), and where our pastor is able to mirror the meek and lowly Shepherd of my soul as he beckons us to follow in the Shepherd's tracks.
Please know that your comment has deeply encouraged me, and that I will pray for you. Thank you.
Yes, we are all doing typology! Thank you for your continued work and showing how this affects our reading of Scripture, our sitting in the pews, and the value assigned to our sex. And mostly, for pointing us to Christ!
Anna, I agree with the use of typology. However, I don't agree that the woman represents heaven and man the earth. I believe that the "Man," the hu-man represents the earth. What we often forget is that God made the earth the perfect place for Man. Man and earth were linked. The earth was not inherently evil, but the exact opposite--the good. When the woman was drawn from man, she became more associated with the earth and the man from whom she came becomes associated with heaven. Woman, as representative of the earth, is (in this typology) inherently good.
Woman is the glory of man. Glory, as I am sure you know, means weight. Weightiness describes the being of the feminine. How? Just as the feminine Holy Spirit brought the masculine Father to Mary to give birth to the Human God, the Messiah, women bring the masculine into reality by giving birth to them. Giving weight is a feminine trait.
A comment I made on another blog is pertinent here: "The woman gives man his reality by pulling him...I was going to say out of the clouds but let me change that to out of his mom's basement. In turn, he frees her from the endless demands made upon her by the world--giving her the support, encouragement, and space needed to grow. If I go back to the word ‘clouds,’ we can see that they serve in complementary ways (not that I consider myself a complementarian Christian). She pulls him down from the clouds; he pulls her up from the ashes (think Cinderella--the drudgery of the work often imposed upon women). Sadly, we seldom see this in action."
This, then, is the Way the man is the "rest" for the woman. How? As Boaz did for Ruth--making her life easier. This is the Way the husband is to emulate Christ. He serves her to pull her up, to exalt her, so that she can stand beside him, so that she does not have to face the serpent alone. The wife pulls her husband into the reality of the world--"This is your home. I am your family. You must become alert, not only to outside dangers, but to the dangers I face by overworking in maintaining family life."
There's nothing inherently "bad" in the woman but she has had to bear the brunt of being the cause of man's sin when it's his alone to carry. Why? The first man stood back and let his wife approach the serpent alone. That was his great sin. (Of course, he probably should have kept the serpent out of the garden completely.)
The point is that for the man to represent heaven is to do for his wife what Jesus did for us--to bring heaven (goodness) to earth. I agree with NT Wright that the Kingdom is being brought into being on earth. Who is bringing it into being? The Body of Christ. The men, representative of Christ, are to be freeing women to live in the Kingdom, reigning as kings. The women are to be guiding the men into living in the Kingdom fully. Both men and women are fully needed.
Christ has all authority. As our King of kings, He distributes that authority to the kings in His kingdom. This, I fully believe, is why the male language is used so predominantly in the Bible. If the women were called "queens," we would have declared "queens" less than "kings." But, no, all Christians are kings who reign with Christ's full authority.
So, what's up with submission? If I submit a proposal to you, it is for your input. Eve did not wait for Adam's input. She approached the serpent alone. I have often seen women going it alone and often pushing husbands away because they did not change a diaper correctly. We don't push men away but draw them in. The drawing in, again, is that gravitas, that weightiness that men need to be reminded of.
And he needs to be reminded of what he is--the lightness, the weightlessness, the rest, to lift the woman's burdens and not to add to them. And I agree that the male should have both the "type" of earth and the "type" of heaven. The woman should also. (We become rest for others; we pull them into the work of maintaining the Garden.)
I think much of the Christian world wants to put too much emphasis on the sinfulness of "Man" (as human) in general. God sees us with love, and I think that's how Boaz saw Ruth. He saw her beauty. I'm sorry to be so wordy but also wanted to add that we see this in the Cinderella story. The prince was captivated with Cinderella's beauty. When he searched for her, it was not to "rescue" her from a bad environment. It was because she was beautiful and desirable to him in her own being. I doubt the prince was even aware of her home situation because he was too intent on finding the woman of his dreams that nothing else mattered. (Again, probably Cinderella had to alert him to what was right before his nose. Yeah, anyone who knows a man can relate.)
Again, I apologize for the length of my comment. I think you are doing a wonderful job of digging deeper. Keep digging.
Hi Sheila, I too wonder about the fixedness of the man/earth woman/heaven typology. I have attempted to use Anna’s typological formulation with respect to a study of gender in the Gospel of John, which you might be interested in: https://www.aaronjhann.com/p/god-is-a-wedding-part-4. I agree with Anna’s development of Genesis 1-2 and how that allows her to read with the grain of that typology through the OT and NT, but I also find a compelling dynamic in John that suggests a mirrored reversal or inversion of what man and woman represent. This is just suggestive for now, but it helps to be able to think these things through in community!
Absolutely in community! I have not found too many who wish to speak of the masculine/feminine aspects of God. We fail to understand that "gender" is not biological sex. The feminine aspect of God is found in the wisdom, mercy, grace, beauty, life, and creational characteristics. The masculine in the righteousness, justice, strength, and power. This is not biological sex. Unfortunately, humans have equated gender with biological sex. The feminine gender interacts with the world and others through social relationships--through feeling, acting, and connecting--through bodily actions (sharing meals, for example). The masculine gender interacts with the world through speaking, exhorting, coaching, and leading--through engaging the mind. For us to be balanced, we must use both the masculine and feminine in the world. This is epitomized in Jesus.
I have been studying the male and female, the first man and woman, probably for thirty years or so, and realized that as the one flesh they make up the first Man, the first Adam. I think this is where it becomes confusing because this is the earthly one-flesh Adam contrasted with the Second Adam, the Son of Man. This makes so many things clear, if indeed it is correct. This makes it understandable what Paul meant when he said Adam was formed first (the one flesh--man with woman within) and then Eve (when she was removed).
So, I'm afraid I'm rather nerdy on the subject. I am still learning and will go read your blog now. Thank you and I look forward to learning from both you and Anna.
Anna, you have captured exactly the dilemma of women in the church as well as the inability of men to perceive our dilemma. "It is not good for man to be alone." And that aloneness was not problematic simply in terms of human companionship, but also in terms of "correspondence." God made woman of the same "stock" (imago Dei) as man so she would be able to communicate with him. He also made her different enough (taking away something of him to create her) to enable her to counter him, to show him a different point of view. Male scholars and leaders seem unable to translate "different" in any other way than hierarchical and in so doing deprive themselves of the remedy God provided for their primary deficiency. In fact, they are acting out that deficiency. It is a huge loss to that pastor and his congregation that he would not listen to you. And very frustrating.
You see it for what it is, Donna. Thank you. Underneath our lack of esteem for our neighbor is a superficial view of gender that continues to reign among us, driven by our pride and fear, that distances the very ones that can help us forward.
Anna, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your work - and the fact that you are sharing it here. I haven't commented before, but eagerly read each of your posts as they hit my inbox. I was raised Baptist, but am currently a member of the OPC. TBH this very topic of male and female in church and in theology is my John 6 "hard saying" issue. The theology as it is understood and taught, and the church culture that is built up around it hurts people. But I am compelled with Peter to coness, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life."
When I read what you have to say, it's as if you are examining and answering the scattered questions, accusations, and protests that have littered my ruminations on the topic for most of my life. I have T-charts written down during my angsty teens and twenties that catalog the elements of the male/good and female/not good dichotomy you discuss in this particular post. My husband gently cautions me not to let abuses of God's design cause me to reject the design itself. But, it's not just behaviors that are clearly abuses that bother me. It's that on an existential level, what I have experienced as a female believer is that I am the "not-good" foil to the male "good" reflection of God. My unwillingness to just let go of the issue and trust that God has His reasons is that my soul - my humanity - screams that there has to be more to it. Either we are missing a vital aspect of the design in our teaching, the restoration of which will restore and broaden our understanding of female dignity, or the design for male and female that we have been taught is itself wrong.
Thank you for your deep, Biblical thinking on the topic and your willingness to follow the evidence even when it takes you into "novel" territory. We the church need you (whether some of us realize it or not!)
Beth, your reply is a deep well encouragement to me, even as I fight back tears as I read it --- for the circles you are in and what you are seeing and how helpless you feel to even survive there. As I recently wrote a friend, an OPC pastor, "I can't live in their heads (their thoughts about their sisters) or in their spaces." You have put words so well to my own experience, " . . . my humanity - screams that there has to be more to it."
I was not looking to find female dignity. I rarely consciously thought about it until about six years ago after a perplexing conversation with a professor. That's where it began for me. I wondered, "How does he see me?" And then, "Is he right? Is that how God sees me?" I made it a matter of prayer --- "Lord, who am I as a woman?"
In seminary, I got a new lens to understand the Bible, big picture Genesis to Revelation unfolding, and I imagined that the key to who I was as a woman would be there. Shortly after that, a very close friend went through spiritual abuse in her OPC church. I saw her inner world caving in and her well-being spiral. Walking with her through those years (!) opened my eyes. I didn't want to see it, and yet there it was. I couldn't help but see it. Once you see it, you can't help but keep noticing it. So, for example, all the other women in the church heard the same sermon I did, and yet they didn't hear what I did. I could wish to be unaware of what many of my brothers think of me, especially as a woman presuming to work on these things alongside of them hoping to help them, but I can't. (Actually, very few of them are working on sexuality and gender because they think the paradigm they have is tried and true. Most can't see or understand the pain it causes.)
In my story, we had to leave our former circles and find a better place. My husband saw that it was too much for me to be fighting poor thinking about women all week as I did research for my degree, only to battle on Sundays as well. He saw that there was no rest for me. By God's grace, we are in a place now where I take deep breaths of belonging from my brothers and sisters in Christ. What a blessing from God to find love and respect in the air, where gender is not front and center because women are seen as just, well, people (!), and where our pastor is able to mirror the meek and lowly Shepherd of my soul as he beckons us to follow in the Shepherd's tracks.
Please know that your comment has deeply encouraged me, and that I will pray for you. Thank you.
Yes, we are all doing typology! Thank you for your continued work and showing how this affects our reading of Scripture, our sitting in the pews, and the value assigned to our sex. And mostly, for pointing us to Christ!
Anna, I agree with the use of typology. However, I don't agree that the woman represents heaven and man the earth. I believe that the "Man," the hu-man represents the earth. What we often forget is that God made the earth the perfect place for Man. Man and earth were linked. The earth was not inherently evil, but the exact opposite--the good. When the woman was drawn from man, she became more associated with the earth and the man from whom she came becomes associated with heaven. Woman, as representative of the earth, is (in this typology) inherently good.
Woman is the glory of man. Glory, as I am sure you know, means weight. Weightiness describes the being of the feminine. How? Just as the feminine Holy Spirit brought the masculine Father to Mary to give birth to the Human God, the Messiah, women bring the masculine into reality by giving birth to them. Giving weight is a feminine trait.
A comment I made on another blog is pertinent here: "The woman gives man his reality by pulling him...I was going to say out of the clouds but let me change that to out of his mom's basement. In turn, he frees her from the endless demands made upon her by the world--giving her the support, encouragement, and space needed to grow. If I go back to the word ‘clouds,’ we can see that they serve in complementary ways (not that I consider myself a complementarian Christian). She pulls him down from the clouds; he pulls her up from the ashes (think Cinderella--the drudgery of the work often imposed upon women). Sadly, we seldom see this in action."
This, then, is the Way the man is the "rest" for the woman. How? As Boaz did for Ruth--making her life easier. This is the Way the husband is to emulate Christ. He serves her to pull her up, to exalt her, so that she can stand beside him, so that she does not have to face the serpent alone. The wife pulls her husband into the reality of the world--"This is your home. I am your family. You must become alert, not only to outside dangers, but to the dangers I face by overworking in maintaining family life."
There's nothing inherently "bad" in the woman but she has had to bear the brunt of being the cause of man's sin when it's his alone to carry. Why? The first man stood back and let his wife approach the serpent alone. That was his great sin. (Of course, he probably should have kept the serpent out of the garden completely.)
The point is that for the man to represent heaven is to do for his wife what Jesus did for us--to bring heaven (goodness) to earth. I agree with NT Wright that the Kingdom is being brought into being on earth. Who is bringing it into being? The Body of Christ. The men, representative of Christ, are to be freeing women to live in the Kingdom, reigning as kings. The women are to be guiding the men into living in the Kingdom fully. Both men and women are fully needed.
Christ has all authority. As our King of kings, He distributes that authority to the kings in His kingdom. This, I fully believe, is why the male language is used so predominantly in the Bible. If the women were called "queens," we would have declared "queens" less than "kings." But, no, all Christians are kings who reign with Christ's full authority.
So, what's up with submission? If I submit a proposal to you, it is for your input. Eve did not wait for Adam's input. She approached the serpent alone. I have often seen women going it alone and often pushing husbands away because they did not change a diaper correctly. We don't push men away but draw them in. The drawing in, again, is that gravitas, that weightiness that men need to be reminded of.
And he needs to be reminded of what he is--the lightness, the weightlessness, the rest, to lift the woman's burdens and not to add to them. And I agree that the male should have both the "type" of earth and the "type" of heaven. The woman should also. (We become rest for others; we pull them into the work of maintaining the Garden.)
I think much of the Christian world wants to put too much emphasis on the sinfulness of "Man" (as human) in general. God sees us with love, and I think that's how Boaz saw Ruth. He saw her beauty. I'm sorry to be so wordy but also wanted to add that we see this in the Cinderella story. The prince was captivated with Cinderella's beauty. When he searched for her, it was not to "rescue" her from a bad environment. It was because she was beautiful and desirable to him in her own being. I doubt the prince was even aware of her home situation because he was too intent on finding the woman of his dreams that nothing else mattered. (Again, probably Cinderella had to alert him to what was right before his nose. Yeah, anyone who knows a man can relate.)
Again, I apologize for the length of my comment. I think you are doing a wonderful job of digging deeper. Keep digging.
Hi Sheila, I too wonder about the fixedness of the man/earth woman/heaven typology. I have attempted to use Anna’s typological formulation with respect to a study of gender in the Gospel of John, which you might be interested in: https://www.aaronjhann.com/p/god-is-a-wedding-part-4. I agree with Anna’s development of Genesis 1-2 and how that allows her to read with the grain of that typology through the OT and NT, but I also find a compelling dynamic in John that suggests a mirrored reversal or inversion of what man and woman represent. This is just suggestive for now, but it helps to be able to think these things through in community!
Absolutely in community! I have not found too many who wish to speak of the masculine/feminine aspects of God. We fail to understand that "gender" is not biological sex. The feminine aspect of God is found in the wisdom, mercy, grace, beauty, life, and creational characteristics. The masculine in the righteousness, justice, strength, and power. This is not biological sex. Unfortunately, humans have equated gender with biological sex. The feminine gender interacts with the world and others through social relationships--through feeling, acting, and connecting--through bodily actions (sharing meals, for example). The masculine gender interacts with the world through speaking, exhorting, coaching, and leading--through engaging the mind. For us to be balanced, we must use both the masculine and feminine in the world. This is epitomized in Jesus.
I have been studying the male and female, the first man and woman, probably for thirty years or so, and realized that as the one flesh they make up the first Man, the first Adam. I think this is where it becomes confusing because this is the earthly one-flesh Adam contrasted with the Second Adam, the Son of Man. This makes so many things clear, if indeed it is correct. This makes it understandable what Paul meant when he said Adam was formed first (the one flesh--man with woman within) and then Eve (when she was removed).
So, I'm afraid I'm rather nerdy on the subject. I am still learning and will go read your blog now. Thank you and I look forward to learning from both you and Anna.