The Path to Understanding

Lessons learned the hard way

As I wrote in my first Substack, my interest in the theology of sexuality and gender began when a seminary professor told me that he believes women cannot teach seminary courses, not even church history or the biblical languages.  In his mind, when it comes to male and female, theology formally taught flows from the man to the woman, not the woman to the man. What his wife said next left just as much of an impression on me. She said, “A woman goes to seminary with her husband so that she is not deadweight on him as he serves the church.” My seminary professor did not correct her, though he laughed and added, “She said it, not me.” I believe that she was expressing something Douglas Wilson often says, “The man was made for the garden, and the woman for the gardener.”  I have come to see the first statement as just as shocking as the second statement. In fact, I have observed that the first misunderstanding inevitably leads to the second. The reason why women are called to what, in effect, amounts to idolatry, whether wives by their husbands or congregations by their pastors, is because the man himself has become entangled with something other than the unseen kingdom of God. He has come to associate the kingdom primarily with this world and its understanding of power dynamics.  He is after something that is seen and which does not ordinarily belong to the poor and persecuted of Matthew 5.

When Wilson says man was made for the garden, he means an expanding place where there is structure, hierarchy, and laws which maintain order and discipline.  He means a Christian nation where certain men rule the earth on behalf of Christ, “discipling the nations'' into obedience to Christ. It is expected that from this imposition of Christian culture, this temporary violence to the will of the nations, faith will rise in the hearts of the nations. (At this point I smile, imagining a bus with Moscow, Idaho tags pulling into our village in Central Asia and announcing the arrival of the kingdom. I doubt the discipling of our village will go any better for the new Moscow [Idaho] than it did for the old Moscow [Russian], although the Central Asians no doubt will politely offer them tea. I also imagine the believers from our village in Central Asia arriving at Doug Wilson’s church in Idaho, announcing they are here to bring order and disciple them unto obedience to Christ. I imagine the response of their church would be similar, but maybe without the invitation to drink tea.)

For my seminary professor and his wife, I would guess that they are less concerned about the global picture than the faithful denomination and local church.  I would also guess that they have not bought into the expansion of a visible garden, but all the same they have bought into a smaller garden, the expression of the visible church, their denomination within their tradition. There certain men rule on behalf of Christ, “discipling their local congregations” unto obedience to Christ. It is expected that from their impositions, and in some cases a temporary violence to the will of those they serve, that increasing faith will rise in the hearts of their people. I think they are missing something.

We left the PCA nine months ago after a conversation with the new pastor and his wife. For background, I had offered to come to speak to our session (the ruling body in the local church) about women using their teaching gifts in adult Sunday School. I was expecting charitable dialogue about a practice that has some degree of diversity within the PCA. Session asked me instead to write a paper first and submit that to them before I came to speak to session. I took a few days and put down my reasons in a paper and waited for a response. Instead, there was no acknowledgement that they had even received it, no expression of thanks for my time, and no invitation to come to speak to session.  When I became discouraged with the situation several weeks later, my husband, who was on session, noticed and sent a letter to them and said that I could use some encouragement. No real response to his letter.  Several weeks after that, the pastor wanted to meet and sat down with us. He said that he didn’t agree with parts of my paper, that he would be encouraging the session not to deal with this issue in the near future, and that I should wait. Fair enough, yet it wasn’t, because his demeanor toward me was becoming increasingly cool and at times seemed to go beyond coolness.

Over a month later, the pastor, his wife, my husband, and I sat down at our house over lunch to talk.  I had never had a lengthy conversation with the pastor’s wife before, so I was looking forward to getting to know her and also expecting that she might be able to help her husband express his thoughts and concerns. That was far from what happened. She did most of the talking. For the next three hours, she expressed tremendous anxiety and consternation over my voice in the church.  Her husband offered only a few, minor corrections. Her message: “You are an elder’s wife. When you walk through the doors of the church, you are (to be) quiet.” As I sought clarification, she told me that my identity was not Anna, not a living member, not a living stone, not a person brought by the Holy Spirit to this church for service according to gifts he had given me in his love toward me in Jesus, but an “elder’s wife.”  She was giving me a new identity. That was the import of the conversation to me.  My specific identity as Anna was gone and I was reduced to a role within the organization that had clear rules. Her husband was made for the garden (the local PCA church), and I was made to support the gardeners (session). For me, she said that meant silence, staying in the background, and asserting nothing that might lead to the building up of God's people unless I was asked. She kept returning to the same sentence: “You are an elder’s wife.”

As I have wrestled with that conversation over the last months, I can say now that I reject her assertion that I do not know my place. First of all, according to Genesis 1, I was not made for any earthly garden, whether big globe or little globe.  I was made for the divine Gardener. I was made for the immortal, invisible, immutable, only wise Father, Son, and Spirit, and I was made for the Second Adam, the Shepherd-king of the Song of Songs. That knowledge has not come from feminism but from my daily fellowship with him. On him I set my sight. He has turned in desire to his body and bride, both collectively and individually, and he is ruling over us to bring us to the end he has purposed for us, union and communion with himself beyond the fleeting shadows, types, and the visible institutions of this world. And so is she, the pastor’s wife. Above all, she is made for the Divine Gardener, though it seems to me that on that day the cares of this world blinded her to his rule and love. 

In my next substack, in case it might help anyone, I hope to lay out the main points of my master’s thesis: “Gender as Trinitarian and Eschatological Representation.” I want to share where I have come thus far in my thinking, a journey that began with a prayer after my conversation with my professor and his wife, “God, who is woman? Who are my sisters as women? Who am I as a woman?”