Biblical Womanhood: What Is a Woman?

What a woman is.

She is an image-bearer. It was the first day of a class I was teaching on the role of women in the home, church, and society. Driving in to the seminary where I teach, I thought through the material I planned to cover, and honestly I feared that some of what I’d prepared to say was too elementary for graduate-level students. Many of them were raised in church and have heard messages all their lives. Did they really need to hear again that Genesis 1:26–27 teaches that both male and female were made in the image of God? Nevertheless, I determined I’d better make sure.

So I repeated what I assumed they all knew. And sure enough, a woman present was thrilled when she heard my words! She was made in the image of God? And not only that—she did not have to marry to fully image God? Or have children to ultimately image God!? In the days that followed, she changed her focus to concentrate not on finding a husband but on equipping herself for ministry. Her church had warned her of the dangers of radical feminism but had never told her who she was.I have my students in a sexual ethics class look at curricula that churches have created to explore what it means to be a man or woman of God. And these astute students consistently observe that what most ascribe to manhood and womanhood should actually be ascribed to husbands and wives. The curriculum writers wrongly go to the marriage verses to define what it means to be a man or a woman, and in doing so, they send the erroneous message that humans do not become fully mature until or unless we marry.But Jesus was a mature person, right? As was John the Baptist. And Paul the apostle. And as were Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany. If marriage were a requirement to reach full maturity as a male or female, why would Paul ever counsel anyone to remain single (see 1 Cor. 7)?She is an ezer-warrior. In the next chapter of Genesis, we see something else about woman’s identity. The word God used to describe her is “helper,” but—sadly—people read that word and think of a Hamburger Helper or “mother’s little helper”—or some other person who is capable only of accomplishing menial tasks. And here’s the problem with that. The word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to nations to whom Israel turns for military assistance when under attack. And even more significantly, it is used in reference to God sixteen times. When we pray, “God, help me!” surely we don’t have a junior assistant in mind.In every use of “ezer” in the Old Testament, there is military language involved. God is his people’s helper, sword and shield, and deliverer. The ever-present rescuer from trouble. He is better than chariots and horses. He keeps watch like a guard over his people and with His strong arm he overthrows their enemies. That’s the kind of help Genesis describes. So based on the consistent use of this term in the Hebrew Bible, it only makes sense to conclude that God created the woman to be a strong ally—a warrior. Battle is not just for boys; women are called to put on our armor, too (see Ephesians 6). The description of Lady Wisdom personified as a woman in Proverbs 31 is full of battle words—like valor, strength, and prey. Woman is a co-regent and co-heir. Woman is a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield of life.

What Woman is Not

Sometimes we’ve misunderstood some scriptural references that refer to woman. So maybe it would also help if we clarified what woman is not.Woman is not made to be a baby factory. The original command to be fruitful and multiply was given to woman and man. And the purpose of multiplying was to fill the earth with worshipers. Children are important—sometimes the world diminishes the important job of parenting. But the danger is not only that we will devalue mothering and the home. There is also a danger that we will (1) assume all women must marry and (2) miss what women bring to the church and society. Consider these realities:

• Motherhood is not a woman’s highest calling—being conformed to Christ is.

• Every Christian woman, even one with kids, has a spiritual gift given to her to exercise for the benefit of the entire body of Christ, not just the nuclear family.

• Every woman is part of the call to glorify God in all she does, whether at home or at work, at church or at play. The woman in Proverbs 31 sold belts and bought real estate. She was operating in the marketplace.

• The woman in Proverbs 31 not only contributes to economics of her home, but she teaches kindness, stretches forth her hand to the needy.

A woman does not innately lean toward deceiving—or being deceived. All humans are sinners, but that does not mean that the ways in which our first parents transgressed serves as a prototype illustrating gendered actions for all men and women for all time. So all men are not bald-faced rebellers, and all women are not easily deceived. Genesis emphasized how crafty the serpent was precisely because he had a tough job deceiving the woman whom God made. What is significant about the man and woman in the story is that they both rebelled, not that each demonstrated precisely the approach all men or all women have to sin. Some women seduce, and so do some men. Being seduced by evil is a human thing, not a woman thing—as Paul mentions when warning the Corinthians (2 Cor 11:3). The Bible does not teach that because Eve was deceived, all women are more easily deceived than men. Nor does the Scripture teach that all women excel at seducing and deceiving (these ideas are contradictions, anyway—one cannot be a master of deception while also being easily duped).“Woman” is not synonymous with “submit.” All humans are made to live in submission to our creator God, as Christ submitted himself to the Father’s will. So in that sense, submission is a human word.Some people teach that because wives are told to submit to their husbands, ergo at a female’s core she is made for submission to a man—in a way that a man is not made to serve a woman. Where do they get this stuff? Why don’t the same people teach that at a man’s core he is made for sacrificial love in a way that a woman is not—since “love” (actually, not lead) is the corresponding verb given to husbands? Nor do such teachers read Paul’s observation that men in Ephesus needed to stop being angry (1 Tim. 2:8) and assume therefore that all men are innately angry while women are not.When Paul tells wives to submit, he makes clear that he wants them to do so with their ownhusbands, not all men, precisely because he is speaking in the context of a role she may take on (wife) and not something innate (woman). The Taliban teaches that all females must submit to all males, but the Old and New Testaments teach nothing of the sort. Submission is always choosing to serve another in the context of a relationship, not a quality that's innate in woman. Once again, as has happened with Genesis 1, we have tended to “extrapolate.” So we’ve taken Paul’s admonition to wives to submit and made that mean women were made for submission. That’s what we call a logical fallacy.Every women is not created ideally to have a quiet personality. We read in 1 Peter 3 about wives married to disobedient husbands in a world in which these wives cannot go to a woman’s shelter if they are abused. Peter advises such women to refrain from preaching the gospel using words, and instead he counsels them to lean into their silent witness. He speaks of having a gentle, quiet spirit that is so precious to God. But a quiet spirit is precious to God not because it is a female quality, but because it is a character quality—evidence that the soul is at rest. And Paul is certainly not idealizing a quiet personality. Rather, he is talking about a Spirit-directed character trait demonstrated in the face of injustice. To be an outgoing, extraverted woman is not to be un-womanly in God’s eyes; it is un-womanly only in the eyes of the misinformed.All these truths about what a woman is and is not have ramifications for how we talk about women, treat women, and create partnerships of men and women in the church, home, at work, in society:

• We must treat every person, male and female, with dignity because they bear God’s image and are precious to him.

• We must treat others as we would want to be treated—the second Great Commandment. In fact, we are told to treat them as if they were Christ: “I was hungry and you fed me…naked and you clothed me….”

• We must treat people with respect for their God-given dignity at every stage of life. The imago Dei is why so many Christians are pro-life—because every life, even unborn life, is made in the image of God. But sometimes we fail to see the ramifications of the imago Dei at other stages of life…how we handle domestic violence, homelessness, poverty, bullying, human trafficking, sexual abuse, euthanasia, and so much more.

• We must stop teaching stereotypes as if they are based in scripture. Jacob cooked stew. Jesus cooked fish. The male deacons—not the women’s ministry—served food to the Greek widows. Paul let himself be beat up in Philippi, and Jesus allowed himself to be stripped and spit on—great insults to manhood. Mary of Bethany sat in the traditional pose of a male seminary student as she studied Torah at Jesus’s feet—and Jesus told the woman who expected her to stay in the kitchen to back off. All these and more suggest that we must always rank following Christ and spiritual priorities higher that conforming to cultural gender norms—even if that culture is the Christian bubble.

• We must seek to create male/female partnerships instead of segregating everything. Some see involvement of women as a man-fail, but male-and-female partnerships are essential to “subduing the earth” and imago-Dei-ing together. Does your women’s ministry seek male input on the studies you choose? Do all the committees at your church have both men and women providing input? When you invite people to come to the front of the sanctuary for prayer, do you make sure you have both men and women ready to welcome them? (Imagine if a sexually abused woman fears men. Seeing a female to whom she can talk knocks down an unnecessary barrier.)In a world in which #MeToo and #ChurchToo remind us that brokenness has infiltrated every part of society including the church, the Bible’s truths are absolutely relevant. When God brought ishah (woman) to ish (man), he called their partnership “very good.” Let us show by our words and actions that we believe his words to be true.

Biblical Womanhood: Part 2

Several weeks ago, I wrote about biblical womanhood. Afterward a theologian posed some good questions for clarification. So I’m using that conversation as a Q/A here to help further explain what it means to be a woman as God designed her. His statements are bold; my explanations follow: 

You say of woman that, “She is an image-bearer,” but then argue that because “she” is an image-bearer the female bears that image completely in and of herself. The underlying assumption is that an individual human being, whether male or female, carries the whole divine image.  

Woman is indeed an image bearer, completely in and of herself. But that does not mean she expresses the full range of image-bearing. Our humanity is a good parallel example. Are women human? Fully and completely in and of themselves? Absolutely. But do they bear the full range of humanity? No. We need man and woman together to demonstrate the full range of humanity. Nevertheless, women are fully human without the presence of men. In the same way, women fully bear the image of God. They don’t need the presence of men in order to bear that image. Yet the full range of image-bearing requires men and women together. 

The two image-bearers complete the divine image together only in their mutuality, by animating their natures in a complementary way, which is most fully actualized in and through procreation (Gen. 1:26–27).  This interpretation is borne out in the blessing and mandate of verse 28, “God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it…” It is literally by their extensive reach into the created world through procreation that this first couple subdues and has dominion over it. 

I agree about the first couple.

Yet later, when Noah emerged from his voyage with the animals, God does repeat the original imperative to be “fruitful and multiply” (9:1). In both the Garden and after the Flood, God give people instructions to fill the earth. It is worth noting, however, that both pronouncements come at critical junctures when those hearing God’s words are earth’s only human inhabitants. Back in the Garden, ish and issah had been charged with increasing from two to many. Following the flood, Noah, his wife, and six family members, face a similar task. If either our first parents or Noah and his family had failed to procreate, the entire human race could have vanished.     

Yet after the Flood, the commands to “multiply and rule” are never repeated. And while some consider “be fruitful and multiply” a timeless command to reproduce biologically, Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul—to name a few—were unmarried. And as mentioned, the New Testament writers never repeat the mandate to biologically multiply. In fact, the New Testament “seems to turn from a Jewish perspective of marriage to valuing celibacy for the kingdom of God.” All talk of multiplying at the time of the earliest Christians turns to focus on multiplying disciples—reproducing spiritually to fill the earth with worshipers.  

It would be simplistic, though, to conclude that the Old Testament emphasizes physical reproduction, while the New Testament emphasizes spiritual reproduction. While biological families do receive emphasis in the Old Testament, the Hebrew portion of the Bible still provides hints that human flourishing goes beyond having children. Isaiah mentions that leaving an eternal legacy will be even better than children for believing eunuchs (56:4–5). So while the Old Testament speaks primarily about biological reproduction and family units, readers still find in its pages subtle references to a different kind of reproduction. Nevertheless, such references are infrequent before Jesus appears.    

With the coming of Christ, however, the emphasis overtly shifts from physical to spiritual reproduction. “Family” is introduced as a metaphor for the spiritual community. Calling non-relatives “brother” and “sister” develops as a new habit, as Jesus says that those who do his will are his mother and sister and brothers. Additionally, single people are more often included among those depicted as righteous in New Testament times. John the Baptist never marries. Nor does Jesus. Anna is a godly woman who never has children (Luke 2:36). And Jesus teaches about a subset of the unmarried saying, “For there are some . . . who became eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12). Later, the Lord paints a picture of the future in which there will be no marriage nor being given in marriage (Matt. 22:30). This suggests celibacy foreshadows the eternal state in which there is no need to multiply (because there is no death?). 

If Paul was married—and many scholars believe he was widowed—he never mentions it. And his married co-workers, Aquila and Priscilla don’t appear to have had children. In the elder John’s writings, he uses family relationships—spiritual children, youth, and fathers—as metaphors for spiritual maturity (1 John 2). And as mentioned, in Ephesians 5, Paul reveals that an essential purpose in God’s joining of bride and groom is to provide an earthly picture of the heavenly union of Christ and the church. Whether married or single, then, fruitfulness in God’s people is bringing him glory on the earth—working to fill the earth with worshipers. 

This is the task and calling of male and female alike. 

9 Qualities of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

It's my week to post on the Engage (bible.org) women's leadership blog. Here's my entry for yesterday:More than 35 years ago when I started dating a guy named Gary Glahn, he liked to grow bonsai trees and cacti. For my high school graduation, he sewed us matching down vests—that we still wear—from a kit. During my freshman year of college, he drew me a rose and shaded it perfectly with colored pencils. I hung it on the wall in my dorm. His plant growing, his sewing skills, and his drawing all got him labeled as a sissy.One of my introverted male students told of a time when he visited a church for the first time. He wanted to sit back, observe, and get a feel for whether this place might be a good fit for his gifts. During the adult Bible fellowship, the larger group divided up into smaller groups, and he ended up as the lone male with a few women who were regular attenders. These women handed him the teaching guide and expected him to lead the discussion. He was mortified that they deemed adhering to strict gender roles more important than making him feel welcome and comfortable as a guest–not to mention checking out his theology.A former fellow employee is a single guy who’s an artist. An introvert, he dislikes sports and prefers to create. People ask him if he’s gay. He’s not.When my husband goes to Kenya, he sees women thatching the roofs of huts. In parts of Africa, thatching rooftops is “women’s work.” But in America, people often describe a female roofer as “doing a man’s job.”Among American married couples, the husband may drive the car because he’s the guy taking the lead. In some countries, the wife drives because she’s taking on the servant’s role.Some years back, a deacon at a church we attended filed for bankruptcy. This man had a nice pool in his yard. The leaders told him they didn’t want him to file. Instead, they wanted to take up an offering, organize garage sales, and come up with all manner of creative ways to help him pay his debts so that the name of Christ would not be slandered. He refused. So the church asked him to step down until he could get a grip on his finances. He argued, “If a guy can’t lead, there’s nowhere for him to serve.” So he left.I sit on the fence between introvert and extravert. One of my spiritual gifts is teaching. But my husband is definitely an introvert, and his gifts lie in administration. I usually find myself in front of a crowd; he heads for the accounting office. In the first years of our marriage, people assumed we suffered from role reversal…that I “wore the pants in the family.” After all, they reasoned, he was supposed to be visible, and I was supposed to be invisible.Each of these anecdotes reflects a distorted view of gender. What people (especially middle-class, American evangelicals) have failed to take into account in each case is that when we put men and women in boxes according to narrowly defined definitions of masculinity and femininity, we deny the full and dynamic range of the personhood God created. Yes, men and women are different. But the moment we insist on how our sex differences must work themselves out socially—saying things like “women are more emotional,” “men are more detached,” “women need love,” and “men need respect”—we stuff people into boxes. Our theology should be broad enough to consider normal the relatively unemotional woman and the man who desires affection more than respect —or any cultural variation of gender role outside the USA. If it’s biblical, it’s global.The way to become our most fully flourishing male and female selves is not for women to wear frilly clothes and men to fart, grill steaks, rescue damsels, kill Bambi, and retreat to their man-caves—despite what Christian books on gender might suggest.Interestingly, the Bible never outlines what feminine and masculine behavior looks like. Jesus cooks; Jael wields a tent peg; Paul weeps; Miriam prophesies. Indeed, the Bible includes no exhortations to pursue manhood and womanhood. Rather, the apostles and prophets focus on something else: the fruit of the Spirit 1– love; 2–joy; 3–peace; 4–patience; 5–goodness; 6–kindness; 7–gentleness; 8–faithfulness; and 9–self-control. And experience tells me that the more someone pursues Christlikeness, the more fully he or she flourishes as a man or as a woman.Our fully actualized masculine and feminine selves develop as by-products of our spiritually developing selves. If we make it our goal to be masculine or feminine, we miss Christlikeness. If we set our focus on being like Christ, we discover to our delight that we become the men and women God created us to be.

Act Like Men: What Does Paul Mean?

This week's Tapestry post: 

A few weeks ago I received an announcement that an organization committed to teaching what the Bible says about being masculine and feminine had published an updated guide available for free.

Because the history of ideas about gender, especially within Christendom, is one of my fields of academic study, I eagerly downloaded and began reading. But only a few pages into chapter one, “Being a Man and Acting Like It,” an alarm went off. Here’s what I read:

“Paul writes to the leaders in the church at Corinth, ‘Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love’ (1 Corinthians 16:13–14).” His was using the ESV.

But the addressees in the apostle’s letter were not the leaders of the church. Paul addressed the entire congregation, establishing this in chapter 1, verse 2: “To the church of God that is in Corinth to those who are sanctified in Christ who are called to be saints.”

In the context of the actual verse quoted, which falls in 1 Corinthians 16, Paul has just finished his wonderful description of the hope for us all in the resurrection. And he is still speaking to the entire church, not a sub-group among them. Never does he narrow his audience.  

So what does he mean when he writes to everyone, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (emphasis mine)? It is worth noting that the NIV renders the phrase I italicized as “be courageous”; the NET goes with “show courage.” And indeed the emphasis is not about gender, but maturity—about being a grown-up. Paul made a similar contrast between “adult man” and “child” when he wrote three chapters earlier, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (13:11). So in summary, he contrasts being a man with being a child, not with being a woman. And he is not criticizing children. Children act like children! But adults are not supposed to do so.

Paul is consistent in his concern for maturity, not in pursing masculinity and femininity. In his letter to the Ephesians, he describes the ultimate end of discipleship: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, KJV). Again, later translators have clarified that Paul is not suggesting some sort of transgender goal for women—that all women become perfect men. Rather, he has in mind full human maturity. Paul uses the idea of “man” to be fully mature, as opposed to being immature. He is not insulting women. Nor is he insulting children, whom we expect to act like children.

The writer in question, in explaining “act like men” (16:13), concedes that Paul includes a contrast with being children, but he goes on to say, “When Paul says to ‘act like men,’ he means something different from ‘act like women.’” The author says, “To ‘act like men’—or ‘be courageous,’ as the NIV puts it—is to act in a way that is somehow different from a boy, in terms of maturity, and is somehow different from a woman, in terms of gender.” Do you see the insult in this interpretation? It reminds me of how we disparage girls and boys when we say, “You run like a girl” or “You throw like a girl.” Have you seen this video? 

What, then, does Paul mean? The Greek word translated “act like men” or “be courageous”—andrizomai—occurs only once in the New Testament. But other uses of it outside of the Bible suggest it has to do with bravery and courage, which explains why the NIV and NET rendered the word the way they did.

This is how many church fathers have understood it. Consider this from Didymus the Blind, writing in the fourth century: “Paul tells them to be courageous and strong, like an athlete or soldier of Christ, doing everything with love toward God and each other “ (Pauline Commentary from the Greek Church).

Writing in that same century, Ambrosiaster said of this verse, “They were to stand firm, being bold in confessing what they had been taught. They were to be strong in both word and deed, because it is the right combination of these which enables people to mature” (Commentary on Paul’s Epistles).

Paul’s point in the exhortation: Men and women alike are to be mature and courageous. He is not telling the women to act masculine, nor is he telling the men to avoid acting feminine. He exhorts both men and women to have courage. (As I have written elsewhere, courage is for women, too. Think of Esther, or of Peter’s exhortation to wives that they not be “frightened by any fear” [see 1 Peter 3].)

So through the apostle Paul in his word to the entire church at Corinth, God is not calling his people to act according to social norms of what is “masculine.” Rather, he wants all of his children to demonstrate the bravery and courage lacking in the immature in the faith.

Indeed, Paul’s vision was not for women to find some cultural ideal that is womanly. Nor did he envision men making as their goal ultimate masculinity, whatever that is. His vision was for all of us, male and female, to become mature adults in Christ. Our task, then, is not to pursue some nebulous change-with-the-times, stereotypical gender norms. Rather, our goal is to follow hard after him, to grow in maturity, and thus to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit—whether we are embodied as males or as females. 

Wives Are Parents, Husbands Are Babysitters?

Here's today's Tapestry post:

Years ago, an author of a book on men and women in ministry with a PhD from a evangelical seminary spoke at a bring-your-own lunch workshop at another such school. Her opinions included the option that a woman might have biblical grounds for contributing economically to the household—a concept she pulled right out of Proverbs 31. Finally, one of the people in attendance raised a hand and asked, “But wouldn’t you concede that the ideal is for the woman to be home full-time raising the kids while the man is out working?"

She seemed ashamed. "Yes. That is the ideal."

At that time, my brother-in-law, Mark, and my sister, Mary, lived six blocks away. And Mark walked one of my nieces to school every morning while my sister left to teach school. A seminary student with a flexible work schedule, Mark was known in the neighborhood as the dad every kid wanted. Some afternoons my nieces came straight to our house until their parents arrived home. And none of us viewed this as unideal. In fact, we all loved it! The girls had the deep involvement of both parents, as well as the support of the extended family unit. And we enjoyed their presence.

So I think neither the speaker nor the questioner at that lunchtime talk went far enough. If we're going to speak in the realm of ideals, isn't the ideal for both parents to be around?

"She's at home, he's away at work" is a post-Industrial Revolution perspective. And while we might say it's a luxury to have a dad around during the day, it's also a luxury to have a mom around during the day. Having either set-up is a choice almost exclusively limited to two-parent, middle- and upper-class households.  

But here's the good news. Despite technology’s many consequences, one benefit is that flexible work hours are increasingly available to both men and women. A couple can contribute to the economics of their household, be available to the kids, and never have to pay a dime for daycare or leave a child without at least one parent at all times (unless they're on a date). 

Consider what life was like in an agrarian society without modern conveniences. Both parents worked at home. Mama never got down on the floor to play “Candyland” with her little ones—she was too busy canning peaches, ironing, and feeding the rabbits. And Papa was out in the field or perhaps in the shop doing blacksmith work, engaged in the tasks that required more physical strength. But he was around. And the kids spent a portion of the day helping him. Sometimes Grandma would take the kids and give both parents a break.

But industrialization yanked both fathers and mothers from the home. And until we had child labor laws, it pulled the kids out too. Only middle- and upper-class families could afford to have one parent at home. And the divorce rate skyrocketed, as the family unit no longer worked together for the common good. They hardly saw or knew each other. Even in middle-class homes where the father was the sole breadwinner and they could afford to have one parent at home full-time, the family experienced consequences. In the words of one of my students, “Our American mindset always makes it about money, and it simply isn't always about money. A man provides leadership, companionship, discipline, stability, and whatever else his gifting and abilities contribute. Having been raised in a traditional home that was bereft of a male role model because of my dad's long hours at work, I feel the void and don't believe that is God's design either."

So, the so-called biblical ideal of Mom at home with kids and Dad at the office or in the factory is really only a Westernized application of “provide for one’s own” and “be workers at home.” (Re. the latter, Paul was doubtless writing to women who were, for the most part, already contributing economically from home, and the emphasis was not on the location but on hard work.) 

One of the most devastating effects of this division of labor was and is a creeping sense that God did not “make” men to handle being around kids. Our language expresses this concept when we refer to mothers as “parents,” but dads as “babysitters.” I observe this phenomenon especially when the women go away on a retreat.

In the words of one Christian social historian, “When did we make it socially acceptable for men to be incompetent as parents?” Case in point...

A male economist/theology student with whom I discussed these ideas this week, upon viewing this clip wrote with grace: 

"It is such a denial of so many giftings that he already has and could develop. It's not so black and white. it's not "man go" "woman stay" and anything inbetween is not ideal or unbiblical. This echoes what I [feel] about wanting to engage more with my kids someday (hopefully!). Maybe being at home with my kids during the day some wouldn't be a bad thing?"  

God did not create women for childrearing and men for work. God gave both man and woman two tasks: Have dominion over the earth and be fruitful and multiply. And both male and female are needed, fully, to accomplish both tasks. How that looks today can vary. So let us show some grace and flexibility in considering how best to work out our Christianity when it comes to economics, the household, and childrearing.