Sons—but still women!

Galatians is probably biblical feminists’ favorite book in the Bible. That’s where they find their theme verse, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28), and its corollary, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (3:26). (All Bible quotations in this post are from the ESV.)

Biblical feminists read Galatians 3 to mean that, just as there is now no more distinction between Jew and Gentile because of Christ, so also there should be no distinctions of any kind between male and female. All church offices should be open to women, and there should be no such thing as headship or submission in marriage.

Biblical feminists ignore at least a couple of things here: (1) that the context of Galatians 3 is how we all come to Christ on an equal footing by faith; and (2) that the same Paul who wrote Galatians 3 also wrote “Wives, submit to your own husbands …” (Ephesians 5), “… the head of a wife is her husband …” (1 Corinthians 11), and “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man …” (1 Timothy 2), to cite a few. (We’ll return to these “inconvenient” verses in a moment.)

Now, while Galatians 2:26 (and 2:28) might on the surface seem like the perfect proof text for egalitarianism, that conclusion is really a misunderstanding of what Paul means by “sons of God.” Paul isn’t saying here that gender is no longer important in any context, but that women too (just like Greeks) fit within the category of “sons of God” by faith in Christ. Paul wasn’t opening radical new “feminist” ground here (as some claim), but rather following footprints in the Old Testament that lead back to Eve.

To understand this, we need a little Hebrew lesson. “Daughter” in Hebrew is “son” with a feminine ending. A daughter is a female son, just as Eve is a female man (Hebrew: adam). “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in his own image …male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26, 28). “Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (Genesis 5:2). Adam is not only the name of the first man, but also the generic name God gave to Eve (and to the whole human race).

Adam is God’s son (see Luke 3:38); by implication, Eve is God’s daughter. In fact, the rabbis thought of God as Eve’s father, preparing her for marriage to his son, Adam (Leila Leah Bronner, From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women). In the Old Testament, daughter is a sub-category of son. And perhaps this is why Paul felt free to adapt the promise of 2 Samuel 7:14 (“I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son”) to read “and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:18). 

Whether male or female, we are all “sons of God” by creation, God’s “offspring,” as Paul told the Athenians (Acts 17: 28–29). Paul’s point in Galatians 3 is that those who believe in Christ are also “sons of God” by adoption, whether male or female.

But the mistake of the feminists is to assume that this gospel makes us a sort of new unisex race, where male and female have become irrelevant. Yet it’s quite the opposite. God created adam male and female in order to be husband and wife, because he always had the gospel in mind. That’s why Paul returned again and again to creation as the ground of his teaching about marriage and church office. Paul championed our new freedom in Christ, but with all that freedom, he wanted the church to also hold onto marriage as a picture of Christ and the church (see Ephesians 5:32). From the beginning, marriage had a gospel purpose.

And that’s why egalitarianism ultimately undermines the gospel. 

Where is God’s temple today?

(This is the third in a series of critiques of Rachel Held Evans’s “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.” If you missed earlier posts, click on the links below.)

1. A year of biblical womanhood—or not

2. What did Jesus do for women?

For one year, Rachel Held Evans is trying to follow “as literally as possible” all Old Testament and New Testament laws about women. For example, she stayed in a tent, sat on a stadium cushion, and did not attend church while she was having her menstrual period (see here). She calls this “biblical womanhood.” She is seriously confused.

This post looks at another element in her confusion: God’s temple today.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that Evans is acting as if there is still a temple building open for business in Jerusalem. By not going to church during her menstrual period, she is acting as if the Mosaic rules and regulations are in force today. As if God’s special presence in the Holy of Holies is off limits behind temple walls and courts, up many flights of steps, and behind curtains. Moreover, Evans is treating her particular church building as if that were the bygone Jerusalem temple.

Hasn’t Evans ever read that her very body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19)? Doesn’t that fact make her whole exercise in piety, um, ridiculous?

Yes.

In A.D. 70 the Romans destroyed the building in Jerusalem, but God still has a temple here on earth. His temple is us. Everyone who believes in Christ is a living stone in God’s spiritual temple (1 Peter 2:5), “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:20–22 ESV).

Not only has Jesus “broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances” (Ephesians 2: 14-15 ESV). But also we carry the special presence of God with us everywhere we go. As Abraham Kuyper said, “… there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

So what good does it do Evans to stay away from church?

Well, she hopes it will make us think all gender distinctives in the Bible are just as ridiculous and passé as the menstrual laws of the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In my next posts I’ll start to deal with her real agenda—egalitarianism.

What did Jesus do for women?

 (This is the second in a series on Rachel Held Evans’s “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.” To read the first post, click here.)

Rachel Held Evans is trying to follow “as literally as possible” what she calls “a year of biblical womanhood.” To her this means obeying Old Testament as well as New Testament commands for women. For example, she stayed in a tent, sat on a stadium cushion, and did not attend church while she was having her menstrual period (see here). Her actions (and her definition of “biblical womanhood”) raise critical questions: What did Jesus do for women? And what are the implications for women today?

We find one illustration of what Jesus did for women in Mark 5:21–34 and Luke 8:40–48. A synagogue ruler has come and pleaded for Jesus to go to his house and heal his daughter, who is dying. As Jesus goes, a crowd presses around him. Among them is a desperate woman. She has had a continuous discharge of blood for twelve years, and all the doctors have been able to do is take her all money and make her worse. But her bleeding is not just a chronic medical problem. It is a chronic religious problem. She is unclean. As long as she has a discharge of blood she cannot come before her God at the temple.

She should not even be here, in this pressing crowd. She is making everyone who even brushes against her unclean. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, calls the days of a woman’s menstrual bleeding “days of separation,” days when she must sit apart from everyone, lest she contaminate them.

And then she touches the fringe of Jesus’ robe.

Now, according to ceremonial law, this should make Jesus unclean, or at least the garment she touched. But instead Jesus makes the woman clean—she is immediately healed from her bleeding. Jesus is the Holy One, and where he is, is holy ground. No unclean woman can make him unclean. Indeed, it is the other way around, because she has come into contact with the One who redeems us from the curse of the law and makes us holy.

This is what Jesus does for women. We are no longer under curse, because Jesus became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). More than that, he has made us clean. Our sins are like pig filth (Luke 15:15), excrement (Isaiah 4:4), leprosy (Leviticus 14), and menstrual blood (Isaiah 64:6). But when we touch Jesus, we become holy. Paul puts it this way: Jesus “gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27 ESV).

By living in a tent, by sitting on a stadium cushion, by staying home from church, Evans is acting as if Jesus is not present, making her and every place he stands holy. She is acting as if she herself has not yet touched even the hem of his garment. And actions sometimes speak louder than words.

Again, I don’t think Evans is trying to say that Jesus has not touched and saved her and made her holy. In fact, I think she just doesn’t realize at all what she is saying. She is confused: about the Old Testament, the place of the ceremonial law, the transformation Jesus brought about, and many other things.

More on this to follow....

A year of biblical womanhood—or not

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Take, for example, Rachel Held Evans, an “evangelical” blogger finishing up what she calls “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.” Here’s her own description of her intent:

I will commit one year of my life to following all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, from Genesis to Revelation, from the Levitical code to the letters of Paul, there’s no picking and choosing. (Well, except for polygamy…and a few other things that I’ll tell you about later.)

This means, among other things, rising before dawn each day (Proverbs 31:15), submitting to my husband (Colossians 3:18), growing out my hair (1 Corinthians 11:15), making my own clothes, (Proverbs 31:22), learning how to cook (Titus 2:3-5), covering my head when in prayer (1 Corinthians 11:5), calling Dan “master” (1 Peter 3:5-6), caring for the poor (Proverbs 31:25), nurturing a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:4), and camping out in the backyard for the duration of my monthly period (Leviticus 15:19-33).

At the end of her year-long exercise stands a book contract with Thomas Nelson. (See her book outline here.) But let’s leave the filthy lucre aside for the moment (as well as the fact that her idea is a rip-off of the 2007 best-seller The Year of Living Biblically by humorist A. J. Jacobs). Let’s look at the merits of her endeavor. Is this how a Christian woman should live biblically?

No!

Actually, I’m astounded that a self-identified evangelical who says she knows the Bible would even propose such a project. She claims to have studied the issue of biblical womanhood from multiple angles, sources, and commentaries and to have read the whole Bible carefully looking for what it says about women. (Read her comment here.) But obviously she hasn’t learned much, from the Bible or from church history.

The earliest church council (around A.D. 50, recorded in Acts 15) was held in Jerusalem after Paul’s first missionary journey brought many Gentile believers into the church and created a dispute over whether the Mosaic law bound these non-Jewish believers. The apostles ruled that Gentiles did not have to become Jews to believe in Christ—in other words, Christians did not have to obey the Mosaic ceremonial laws. Paul expounded and defended this ruling against the Judaizers in the book of Galatians. And so the Christian church has always understood that Christians are not under the Mosaic ceremonial laws.

Women today no more need to carry around a stadium cushion to sit on during menstruation, as Evans did, than we need to bring two turtledoves to a priest after the menses end, one bird as a sin offering and the other as a burnt (or ascension) offering (see Leviticus 15:28–30). In fact, Evans cannot literally fulfill the law she claims to be following literally—not even close. She needs a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and a reconstituted levitical priesthood.

Happily for us, Jesus fulfilled every ceremonial law once and for all when he became a curse for us and so redeemed us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13). As he healed the "daughter of Abraham" bent over in back pain and set her free, so too he has set us free from the law's strictures to drink our fill from the Living Water (see Luke 13:10–17). To return to the rituals of Moses is to deny Jesus’ saving work (see the book of Hebrews).

Evans’s entire premise of “biblical womanhood” is wrongheaded. But it is not just harmless silliness. Underneath her misguided piety is serious theological error. Stunts such as not attending church during her menstrual period (see here) say by actions that Jesus is not the Savior, that Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension have not gained us access to the very throne-room of God. They say that the temple curtain still stands, not ripped from top to bottom but still whole, and still a barrier separating us from the Holy of Holies. One of the purposes of the Mosaic law was to put up barriers until Christ had accomplished his work and won our acceptance with the Father (see Galatians 3:19–29; Ephesians 2:13–22; Hebrews 4:14–10:39). To go back to the ceremonial laws about cleanness and uncleanness and temple access is to deny the efficacy of Christ. Hebrews 10:19–24 is especially pertinent to Evans:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (ESV)

Now, I don’t think Evans really intends to bring into question Jesus’ ability to save. Neither is she seriously advocating her year-long method of "biblical womanhood" as a model for women. In fact, just the opposite. She has another agenda, egalitarianism, that is, getting rid of any distinctions between men and women in church office (pastor, elder) and in marriage (submission and headship). In her own words: “It’s unlikely that I will change my overall egalitarian position,” and “I strongly support women at all levels of leadership in the church.”

So Evans’s Year of Biblical Womanhood is really a “straw woman.” She is using that old rhetorical trick, reductio ad absurdum. If the gender laws she has chosen for her year of "biblical womanhood" can only be followed today by living absurdly, then no gender distinctions should be followed today. But she is not just living absurdly for a year, she is promoting unbiblical womanhood and undermining the gospel.

More on this later. There is so much absurdity here that I can’t cover it all in one post.