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.

Creation or evolution?

Creation versus evolution has been much in the mainstream news lately, along with gotcha questions for political candidates. One mother is overheard telling her son to ask Governor Rick Perry “why he doesn’t believe in science.” A New York Times columnist says flatly that Republicans are “against science.” Frankly, I’m fed up! I’m tired of being called anti-science and anti-intellectual—just because I believe the Bible over evolutionary theory.

First of all, I am not against science, but I do recognize that scientific knowledge has limits and it is often wrong, even about this afternoon’s weather. One day, science finds that eggs (or salt or coffee or chocolate or whatever) are bad for us; but on the next, new studies declare them good. So enjoy that second cup. Scientists once believed that criminal behavior was genetically determined and that one could tell a person’s intelligence and character by measuring his skull. What would we call someone who believed that today but ignorant and racist? Yet it was cutting edge in the nineteenth century. Scientific “knowledge” changes over time. By contrast, God’s Word stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).

Evolutionary theory is not a workable scientific theory but a philosophical commitment: it cannot be recreated and so proven through testing, and the vital missing links between species are in fact still missing. Evolution, Ann Coulter says, is a “mystery religion from the Victorian era.” It is not more “intellectual” than believing the Bible. In fact, it is less so, for “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ ” (Psalm 53:1). When scientists omit God from the equation because of philosophical bias, they will never find true wisdom and understanding about the origins of the world (Proverbs 2:6; 9:10).

So my philosophical commitment is to God. I figure he knows more than even the most rigorous scientists. After all, he was actually there and they were not, something God pointed out to Job (chapters 38–41).

Was Eve a real woman?

The book of Genesis and especially its story of creation in six days has long been under siege by liberal critics, but now increasingly it is also under attack by those who call themselves evangelicals.

Well-known theologian, author, and teacher John Schneider resigned from the faculty of Calvin College because he has begun to question whether we can, in the face of evolutionary science, continue to believe that Adam and Eve were real, that Eden existed, and that a fall happened (see this article in HigherEd). He is not alone in his doubt, neither at Calvin College nor beyond.

Schneider’s skepticism comes from science, particularly genetic mapping. Genome science is proclaiming that we couldn’t all have come from just two human beings or even from a human original. So, rather than question whether this new science in fact knows everything, Schneider has chosen to throw Adam and Eve overboard—and along with them he is also jettisoning centuries of church teaching about the Scriptures, sin, the work of Christ, and God himself. (Don’t take my word for it; read the first few pages of his article.)

How, you ask, could questioning whether Eve is really “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20) affect all these doctrines?

Well, first of all, the Scriptures say that Eve did become the mother of all the living. The Scriptures say that Adam and Eve are not evolved animals, though Adam and the animals share some characteristics: both were made from the ground as “living, breathing creatures” (the Hebrew is nephesh chayyah; Genesis 1:24, of animals; 2:7, of man—to learn more about this see Into the Weeds: What we have in common with animals--and what we don't). The Scriptures say that man and woman are the only beings made in the image of God, each created by God’s own distinct acts, not by evolution from apes. In fact, the Scriptures say, Adam was formed before the animals (see Genesis 2:4-20).

The Scriptures say Eve did take the fruit, eat, and give it to her husband and that he ate. They say that God came down in judgment and laid out for Adam and Eve the consequences of their disobedience. They say this first sin was imputed to all who are born in the line of Adam and those consequences affect every human being, because we are descended from Adam. They say that the Savior has come as the fulfillment of the promise God made to Eve that her seed would crush the serpent.

What Schneider and others are doing is no different from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics who decided Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead—because that was unscientific. They too would make all such Scripture merely literary devices and man-made stories about the general human condition, not actual history. But Christianity, it has often been said, is a historical religion. If Adam were never Adam, and Eve were never Eve, then we are most to be pitied (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-19), because our salvation is not sure in Christ.

Paul tells us that Christ is the second Adam. This means, Paul says, that as sin came into the world through one man (Adam) so “the free gift of righteousness” comes through one man (Jesus Christ) (see Romans 5:12-21). It means that in Adam we all died, but in Christ all shall be made alive (see 1 Corinthians 15:20-23). And it means that “just as we have born the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [Jesus Christ]” (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-57). Christ as second Adam guarantees our whole salvation: justification, sanctification, glorification.

All the elements of the story the Scriptures tell from Genesis to Revelation fit together because they have one Author who inspired and oversaw the writing of each piece throughout. Throwing out one element (in this case in favor of unproven science) undermines the integrity of the whole. The historical life of Adam and Eve is just as important to our salvation as is the resurrection of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15).

Systematic theologian Robert Peterson, in Salvation Accomplished by the Son: The Work of Christ (forthcoming from Crossway), argues that there are prerequisites, things that had to happen, for Christ to save us by his obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension. If you deny that the prerequisites ever happened, how long is it before the logical next step is that you must also deny the work of Christ? Schneider seems to be on that path, one already taken and well-traveled by nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century critics. Schneider too wants the church to reconcile science and Scripture in a way that puts Scripture in the back of the bus.

So let’s take the road less traveled: Christ is the seed of the very same woman who picked the fruit in the garden, ate it, and handed to her husband; the very woman about whom God himself said, “… her seed will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel” (see Genesis 3:15); the woman Adam named Eve, because she became the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20).

Into the weeds: What we have in common with animals—and what we don’t

Genesis 1 and 2 teach us that there is a certain amount of commonality between animals and people. Both are nephesh chayyah made from the ground. (All Scripture quotations are from the ESV.)

“God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth …’ ”

“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth [i.e. wild animals] according to their kinds.’ ” (Genesis 1:24).

“—then the LORD God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)

“So the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” (Genesis 2:19)

The Hebrew phrase translated “living creature(s)” is nephesh chayyah. Chayyah means living, alive. L’chaim, the Jewish toast (“To life!”), comes from the same root. But nephesh can mean many things: breath; anything that breathes, i.e. an animal; person; soul; life; self; spirit, feelings; inclination, desire. Some translations call Adam a living soul, though never the animals. Both Adam and the animals are living, breathing creatures.

Both Adam and the animals are made from the ground, and God “forms” both. Thus Genesis calls our attention to something scientists know: human being and animals are alike. That’s why medical researchers can test new drugs on rats and new surgical procedures on dogs. That’s why we find the sorts of physical similarities that fuel the theory that man evolved from the apes. God made man and animals from the same raw material and both sets of creatures became nephesh chayyah.

But that’s not enough—and that’s the big joke in Genesis 2. Notice that in Genesis 1, we read that God makes the animals, then man and woman in his own image. But in Genesis 2, God makes the man, and says, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Readers of Genesis 1 expect Eve to come next, but that is not what God does. Instead God makes every kind of animal—the cows, the sheep, the lions, the elephants, and so on and so on—as well as every kind of bird and brings them to Adam.

And none of them is suitable for Adam. (See Genesis 2:19-20). Only after Adam has seen all of the animals and named them does God put him into deep sleep and make Eve. None of the animals is suitable to Adam, because out of all God created, only Adam and Eve are made in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27). Humans and animals are alike, but not alike enough.

So perhaps the bigger joke is the one that evolutionary scientists have pulled on many Bible scholars, convincing them that scientific discoveries nullify the word of God. Except this one is not funny. It’s harmful.

Into the Weeds: Understanding the Hebrew of Genesis 3:16a

How should we translate the first two lines of Genesis 3:16?

The KJV, ILB, NKJV, and RSV read something like this:

line 1: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
line 2: in sorrow you will bring forth children.

Other (generally newer) translations (NIV, ESV, JPS, NASB) read something like this:

line 1: I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth;
line 2: in pain you will bring forth children.

The question for translators is really how to interpret the Hebrew conjunction ve- ("and") in the phrase itsbonek veheronek (line 1: "thy sorrow and thy conception" KJV). Perhaps the translators of newer versions have been influenced by Keil and Delitzsch, who in their commentary on the Hebrew of this verse say:

As the increase of conceptions, regarded as the fulfillment of the blessing to
'be fruitful and multiply' (1:28) could be no punishment, [heronek] must be
understood as in apposition to ... thy sorrow (i.e., the sorrows peculiar to a
woman's life), and indeed (or more especially) thy pregnancy (i.e., the
sorrows attendant upon that condition).

In other words, ignore the ve-! Many translators think the two nouns in our phrase are a hendiadys (two coordinate terms joined by a conjunction to express what in English would be expressed by a adjective and a noun). Carol Meyers discusses at length whether this phrase is a hendiadys in Discovering Eve, pages 100-109, and concludes that it is not. Nor, she points out, did the translators of the Septuagint.

The word heron also more properly refers to conception than to childbearing or childbirth. It means "to become pregnant," that is, "to conceive." As Carol Meyers says, it is "more associated with the initiation of pregnancy than with the duration or conclusion.... It does not refer to the sexual act itself but indicates the physiological condition that was the desired result of intercourse in Israelite society" (Discovering Eve, 102). We associate pain with labor, but not with conception. Maybe that also influenced translators!

All translators are also interpreters. Here, I think we miss connections if we ignore the ve- (pun intended!). Genesis 3:16-19 is full of parallels evident in the Hebrew that we miss in English translation. (We'll get into those weeds another time.) The curse on the woman of increased conception connects to the curse on the ground of bringing forth weeds and thorns. But modern translations don't let us see that both the woman and the ground will experience changed fertility as a result of the fall.

The blessing of birth control

When pastor Kevin DeYoung asks Christians to give each other the benefit of the doubt and love one another regardless of the size of our families, he appeals to 1 Corinthians 13 love. Let’s be sensitive to one another’s feelings, he says, and admit that we don’t know the situations of other families well enough to judge their choices.

Good advice—not followed by some of his blog readers. Not too far down in the comments to his post the flame throwing starts. One side calls the other side pagans and the other side responds by calling them Pharisees. So much for practicing love and humility!

When Christians debate birth control, they usually only talk about Genesis 1:28 and how we should fill the earth. But this is only half the story. Yes, when God commanded Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28 ESV), he certainly meant for them to have children. And they did: Cain, Abel, Seth, and “other sons and daughters” (Genesis 5:4)—a large family. Children are a blessing from the Lord (Psalms 127:3-5; 128:3-6)—but so is birth control. Birth control is a blessing in a world Christ is redeeming from death and curse.

After the fall, the first consequence God tells the woman is “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conceptions; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16 KJV). Modern translations have chosen to drop this idea of increased conception and make this curse all about pain in childbirth: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbirth; in pain you shall bring forth children” (ESV). (More on this here: Into the Weeds: Understanding the Hebrew in Genesis 3:16a.) And that’s a shame, because we miss the connection that the fall resulted in changed fertility, for both man and woman and for the ground (Genesis 3:17-18).

Increased conception is one consequence of the fall. Sin’s consequences on our bodies also mean some women are infertile or some husbands sterile. Some women experience debilitating, even life-threatening, illnesses during pregnancy. Some babies are born with birth defects, genetic and otherwise, and some infants die. Sin’s consequences also mean some families can’t make the ends of their budget meet, even though they work hard (see Genesis 3:17-19). These are just some of the new realities after the fall.

But God is gracious. Increased conception was also a blessing for Adam and Eve. Before the fall, they would have had all the time in the world, literally, to be fruitful and fill the earth. Now they were dying. The earliest patriarchs lived almost a thousand years, and according to Genesis 5, they had their first sons at the age of 100 or later. By Genesis 11, men and women are living fewer years and having children at younger ages. By the time we read of Sarah and Abraham, 70 years is past the age of childbearing, and by age 90 Sarah can only laugh at the absolutely impossible notion of ever having a child from her own body (see Genesis 16, 18).

Keil and Delitzsch, in their commentary on this verse, say increased conception “could be no punishment.” In a pre-Industrial agrarian society, where infant mortality was high and family farms needed laborers, that was largely true. (However, I would also point out that this was said by men, who never had to go through the “discomforts” of morning sickness, labor, etc.!) But in a postindustrial world, smaller families are “no punishment” either. In fact, birth control is a blessing.

Birth control is a blessing because it is the gift of God, like other medical knowledge that helps solve the problems of infertility, painful childbirth, infant mortality, and much more. God’s command to be fruitful and multiply was never a command to have as many children as a couple possibly can, nor was having children the only thing God had in mind when he said, “Be fruitful …” Genesis 1:28 is a call to be fruitful in all aspects of life, so that the world is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9) and God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Within this kingdom-building task, God has given women many callings alongside that of motherhood. (See the woman of Proverbs 31!)

In a world still awaiting Christ’s final removal of every curse and sorrow and pain (see Revelation 21:4), birth control is a good thing!