Birthdays, euphemism, and dismantling patriarchy: links to the outside world

Happy birthday to Eugene Cho, and happy day of birth to One Day’s Wages — a grassroots movement started by Eugene and his wife, Minhee, focused on eradicating poverty. I think this is the sort of project we can all rally around and contribute to.

 

Tony Jones has some good thoughts about euphemism in Christian circles. In the past I’ve made light of those who say mine is a “low” view of Scripture, so I got a kick out of this.

 

Bob Hyatt has brought back a series of extremely helpful posts from the archive of his blog. The posts are focused on questions of submission in marriage. There are five parts to the series — here they are: one, two, three, four, and five.

Really, Zondervan? Really?

I can’t believe I’m so riled up about translations of Scripture, but Zondervan’s recent decision to discontinue the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) has me in a bit of a mini-fit.

The 2005 translation received attention and scrutiny mostly focused around its transition to gender-inclusive language. The gender language was broadened in cases in which the meaning is “all people” or “humankind.” Gender changes made up only roughly 30% of the edits made to its predecessor, the NIV (1984). Other improvements within the TNIV include specification between “Jews” and “Jewish leaders” when encountering the phrase hai Ioudaioi, which is invaluable in bringing education to the majority of the Evangelical community who still suffers from Luther’s misunderstanding of Judaism and its Law, and clarification of the word hagios when it is intended to mean all true Christ-followers (and not a select canonized few).

While all of these changes are obvious improvements — more faithful to the text’s meaning and combatting potential misunderstandings of Scripture for readers new and old — Zondervan seems to be catering to Evangelicalism’s patriarchal members and dismissing the TNIV as a mistake.

According to the Christianity Today article, the publishing company is discontinuing the translation in part because of how it “divided the Christian [E]vangelical community.” I understand that they need to sell a product, but does Zondervan abide by any standards higher than consumer reviews? Where does faithfulness to the text and meaning of Scripture fit into this decision?

Zondervan reps insist that a lot of the decisions behind the 2011 NIV translation have yet to be made. Still, I remain skeptical that many of the TNIV’s strengths will carry over to the new translation. The English Standard Version (ESV) has sold well within more deterministic and patriarchal circles (which says less about the accuracy of that translations and its readers’ theology and more about a militant sect rallying around a product that supports its agenda). I have to believe that Zondervan, with partners Biblica and the Committee on Bible Translation, is ultimately going to cater to the masses and make decisions that cut into the ESV’s market — even at the expense of faithfulness to Scripture.

Which then leads me to wonder, where is the Bible for the rest of us, those of us who aren’t caught up in patriarchy, replacement theology, antinomianism, hyper-monergy, and determinism? What are our options if we want to read a translation that is faithful to vintage Christianity? Two possibilities are the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the Contemporary English Version (CEV). The NRSV adopts gender-inclusive language in appropriate instances and is generally the standard within academic biblical studies. The CEV has much more conversational language, is gender-inclusive, and rightly steers hai Ioudaioi away from grave misinterpretation.

Or, if you’re interested, you can voice your concern about the new NIV translation at NIVBible2011.com, asking them not to drop the ball more than they already have. Feel free to make your voice heard, but I have to admit that I think the decision has already been made, and the new NIV will leave much to be desired.

Jimmy Carter raises the bar against chauvinism

I don’t always agree with Jimmy Carter, but today I can do nothing but applaud his recent decision to take a stand against male chauvinism and leave the Southern Baptist Convention over their mishandling of Scripture in regard to the role of women within families and the Church.

Carter pretty much hits the issue in the teeth:

“The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met. . .

“The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.”

Here’s the deal: if you are an individual that is part of a congregation, or a congregation that is part of a denomination or network, and that larger entity is pushing back on the trajectory of Scripture and placing invisible ceilings over the heads of women and young girls, and doing so by means of faulty exegesis. . . the blood is on your hands for being an indifferent sap. You are just as at fault as the group to which you belong as the Bible is perverted into a polemic against women. Your silence is an endorsement to maintain injustice.

You have a responsibility to call for justice, making it known that you expect women to be treated as fully human, and for responsibilities and leadership to be distributed on the basis of calling and readiness, not genitalia. If you don’t raise your voice, who’s going to be the prophetic voice calling for the change God desires?

What happens if you call for change, exercise discerning patience (these things don’t change overnight, but weeks turn into months and months to years), and transformation doesn’t take place? Then maybe it’s time to walk away. Is that course of action divisive? Well, let me ask you, was it divisive when individuals, churches, and groups of churches in the U.S. took a stand against slavery — going as far as to break off from those who were turning a blind eye to injustice?

If you keep your mouth shut and stay put, don’t pretend that you’re doing so for the sake of “unity.” There’s nothing unifying about passively allowing discrimination. Is that the type of “unity” God is wanting to see from you?

Here’s to Jimmy Carter for stepping beyond empty threats and promises, and deciding that he wasn’t going to endorse prejudice within the Church or use Scripture as the wrong kind of sword.

Julie addresses the link between complementarianism and Calvinism

Calvinism and complementarianism are the focus of Julie’s latest blog post. She writes from the experience of someone who has emerged from the portrait of determinism’s god, into a relationship of true interaction with a God of pathos. You should take a moment to reflect on her perspective.

Observations on The New Calvinism

TIME Magazine published its annual “What’s Next” installment for 2009 – 10 ideas that TIME claims will change the world this year – and on it they listed “The New Calvinism.” Here’s a snippet:

Calvinism is back… John Calvin’s 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism’s buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism’s latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination’s logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time’s dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

I read through the TIME piece last night, collected some thoughts and slept on them last night in hopes that I can make some observations that are true to my beliefs while not setting off a wildfire of offense. (I’m even listening to the most chilled out music I can find while I write this so as to dilute my pathos, and spent an extra long time this morning staring at the snowcapped mountains around Seattle, also a source of calm.)

For what it’s worth, my negative observations are about ideas, not people (I’d love to see the people with these ideas find new ideas…) and my last observation is very positive, I think. So here it goes, a few observations on The New Calvinism.

Not all responses to postmodernity are innovative

There are different ways of reacting to modernity in our postmodern climate. I think we’ve all been down this road before, but the prefix post does not infer that something is anti; it could very well be hyper; truly, post should be read as “beyond.” We are certainly living in a postmodern shift, and each of us responds to our situation in unique (and sometimes polar opposite) ways. 

It should come as no real surprise that some people’s reaction to a radically changing world would be to stand behind “Absolute Truth,” a propositional epistemology, and a faith this is “historic.” We crave answers to the big questions, needs, and theodicies of our existence. So when a pastor with a commanding personality can rise up and assure us that TULIP – and make no mistake, The New Calvinism is just as much about TULIP as Calvinism past (I would argue they’re more ready to die on that hill than their predecessors) – explains the complexities of existence, that pastor is bound to find some people who crave clear, crisp answers to detailed, complex questions.

All that to say I don’t know that The New Calvinism is an innovation so much as a regurgitation. In fifty years we might look back on this as TULIP’s final punches (at least for awhile; there may always be a tendency within some to return to that type of thinking). There’s a difference between a new guard and an old guard that is fighting like hell to still be the guard.

I don’t know that TIME is necessarily saying The New Calvinism is positive change so much as something shaking our world today. (How many Christians spend too much of their time doing damage control on a few New Calvinists’ handling of the gospel? Some of this is relating with people outside the faith, but a lot of it is on a discipleship level – healing people of a view of the God who gives us cancer and stirs up Holocausts as part of his deterministic blueprint.) This is not innovation; it’s anything but. It’s the old guard, often dressed in hipster garb, drinking a few beers and hanging out in urban centers – and still preaching individual election and limited atonement, making some people out to be predestined for hell and claiming that the blood of Jesus is not intended for all people. If that’s innovation…

The selling points are unflattering at best

The New Calvinism seems to believe that antinomianism is a selling point. I don’t think it’s something you’d necessarily hear from a New Calvinist pastor so much as a parishioner who has drunk the Kool-Aid and is wearing the t-shirt. Let’s all live like hell cause we’re going to heaven, right? We can play the once-saved-always-saved card (at least until someone pulls a Ted Haggard and we’re suddenly offended by his sin, in which case we distance ourselves from that guy, who wasn’t really part of the Elect anyway). 

I don’t believe that most Calvinists are antinomian, which is why I’m so amused when they posture to be, and so concerned when parishioners join Calvinist churches in order that they might continue to be. 

You know what debunks antinomianism? An awareness of corporate – not individual – election and an awareness of our freedom of will to participate in that corporate entity. That’s Kingdom theology. Sobering up to Scripture’s use of election language prevents us from going off the deep end of antinomianism, while understanding the type of holiness this Kingdom loves will steer us away from rigid legalism.

I think it’s odd that a Christian contingent would advertise its limitation of women in roles of ministry as a selling point, explicitly or implicitly. While Calvinists of previous generations have sheepishly downplayed their approach to women in ministry, The New Calvinism wants you to know they’re all about getting women into the kitchen and away from the pulpit. I am not nearly as offended by the hyper-conservative approach to women in leadership (though I think it finds opposition in the trajectory of the New Testament) as I am with a religious group that, I perceive, prides itself on limiting women and celebrating a view of masculinity that is at odds with Jesus, the Apostle Paul, the better days of Israel’s history, and early Christianity.

Again, I’m not feeling the innovation. 

While the Gladiator mentality on masculinity is not my largest reservation about The New Calvinism, it is such an obvious stray from the biblical narrative that I question whether The New Calvinism can continue to be inextricably linked to the Gladiator mentality and remain located within orthodox Christianity. Maybe this is an area in which the old Calvinists need to drop the hammer on The New Calvinism.

Does The New Calvinism have the keys to the old Calvinism’s castle?

One of the reasons why Calvinism has lasted, I think, is the amount of resources tied up in its institutions. Reformed colleges, seminaries, and parachurch organizations dominate the landscape of American Christendom. There’s old money to keep new generations of future pastors passing through the schools, planting churches, and sniffing the TULIP. (This dynamic is becoming more stronger as Baptists in America become more and more connected to Calvin’s theology. Maybe this new marriage is founded on Calvinists and Baptists responding to the postmodern shift in similar ways?)

While Al Mohler, John Piper, and other Baptists are beginning to passionately endorse Calvinism, I think it would be helpful to orthodox Christianity if America’s “Princeton Reformed” (those who better connect with Karl Barth and NT Wright than with John Piper and Al Mohler) held the “young, restless, Reformed” to greater accountability. It’s one thing for a “Wesleymergentcostal” like myself to critique The New Calvinism, but it really needs to come from within the “Reformed” umbrella (however ambiguous) so that young people who grow up in traditionally Reformed denominations are never convinced that their options are TULIP or hell (which might be where things are heading within Calvinist sects).

I believe that moderate Reformed types who themselves do not hold to TULIP should distance themselves and their resources from teachers of TULIP and especially those sects who create their identity on a backwoods treatment of women. Mature Reformed Christians should take seriously their claim to be always reforming, and should find the courage to reject as false particular teachings that contemporary biblical and theological studies are prepared to dismiss (even if those teachings were delivered by Luther and Calvin and once held by the “historic” Reformed Church). Postmodernism demands of us a robust and nuanced epistemology that The New Calvinism isn’t prepared to offer.

I wonder if the schools and organizations historically connected with the Reformed stream of Christianity will be handed over to The New Calvinists, more widely opened to the whole of orthodox Christianity, or maintain their present position (which is to not really be too Reformed theologically but maintain the name for old time’s sake).

Just another form of monergy and fatalism

Last year, this same “What’s Next” series (the same author, David Van Biema, actually) highlighted “Re-Judaizing Jesus” as an idea that would (and it did) transform the world in 2008. Make no mistake, though – you can’t re-Judaize Jesus and preach Calvin’s gospel. Not with any integrity. Because what happens when you study the context of Jesus’ first-century message is you find Jesus preaching against religious sects that believed they had all of that election business figured out and didn’t have to work out their salvation and bring about the Kingdom of God. 

As a matter of fact, Jesus says we can make all of the right confessions about him, but if we don’t do what his Father wants, then we aren’t connected to him (Matthew 7 if you’re curious). (Hmm, maybe we’re not justified in our belief in the proposition of justification by faith. Hmm.)

We are hard pressed to find Jesus preaching to people about their depravity; rather he invites them to partner with God to bring about the Kingdom; he heals them but asks them to go and sin no more (holiness matters to this Jesus guy). As a matter of fact, with all of this love and holiness business, and all of his crazy esteeming of women, and the whole non-violence, dying-naked-on-a-cross business, I have a feeling Jesus wouldn’t fare well in The New Calvinism.

Come to think of it, I bet The New Calvinism would see the historic Jesus as a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ… neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy.” I bet the historic Jesus would come into a church of The New Calvinism, raise some difficult questions, and be asked to hush up or leave. (Maybe I’m wrong. Do you think I’m wrong?)

Not only would Jesus struggle within The New Calvinism, but so would Paul, James, and most of the Early Church Fathers (at least until Augustine). Many of them would get the same bad rap for not having the right kind of masculinity (maybe Peter could get sucked into The New Calvinism because this time he could get away with cutting off Malchus’ ear without some “limp-wristed Sky Fairy” telling him not to).

“Why are we turning plowshares back into swords?!” the Early Church leaders would exclaim.

Not only that, but they’d balk at a fatalist view of predestination, and a monergism eerily similar to their polytheistic pagan neighbors’ view of the Greek gods.

“Since when did we become fatalists and quasi-gnostics?” they would ask.

“Talk to Augustine,” I would reply. Then we would all give Augustine a disappointed stare. But I don’t think he’d notice. He’d be sharing a flask with the inked up New Calvinists, trying not to notice the systematic monster he helped create.

One of the reasons people respond to the postmodern shift by clinging to Calvinism is that they trust its historicity. They see the preservation of Calvinism as necessarily correlating with the preservation of Christ’s message. If biblical scholars and church leaders spent more time studying and explaining the roots of Augustinian predestination, I wonder if New Calvinists would be forced to back off from some of their theological positions. I think all of us would learn important, compelling things by studying the roots of Augustinian fatalism.

I imagine that New Calvinists, like me, don’t want a faith that is established ex nihilo in the fourth or sixteenth centuries, or rooted in systems of thought that are at odds with Christ and his first followers. Each of us wants to participate in something that is truly connected to the first-century message of Christ (and even before Christ, when we rightly locate him in relation to Judaism). I hope we all find exactly that.

There’s plenty of hope in a God who is willing to shape us

As far off as we might be from the advanced Kingdom of God, I think we have much to be excited about. First off, the patience and grace that God shows each of us as we try to understand and live out our identity in light of who He is and what He desires.

Additionally, I’m excited that one of the things that marks The New Calvinism is its tendency to pursue God in music and prayer during their corporate worship in a fashion that is maybe more sincere and less stagnant than previous generations of Calvinists. We would all do well to pursue God in that way, to be transformed by our Helper, the Spirit, into the people (and Church) God desires. 

I’m always going to be optimistic about a group of people who are spending time in pursuit of God. My hope for The New Calvinism is that such pursuit of God, and not doctrines of limited atonement and their treatment of women, would typify their ecclesial behavior and their identity going forward.

Reflections on faith and gender

Yesterday I promised to post some of my thoughts pertaining to the Faith and Gender learning conference that Quest Church hosted last weekend. Julie and I had a good time there, hearing from guest Lauren Winner as well as Eugene Cho, who moderated the Q&A portions of the conference. Props to Quest Church for taking an interesting topic like gender and putting it into a format that was both academic and participatory – and for keeping the costs down (only $15 bucks, less for students). On top of all that, Quest is seven blocks from our house, so it was a really convenient weekend for us.

 

Gender and Trinity

Winner’s Friday night talk honed in on what we can learn about an egalitarian community by studying the Trinity. She lamented that the Reformation resulted in a dumbing down (at a church level) of what had been robust Trinitarian theology in church before then, but was relieved to see a resurgence in Trinitarian interest (she noted Karl Barth as an example). (I think the reason why people shy away from talking about the Trinity is because if they demonstrate any flexibility in understanding – be it an Eastern Orthodox view or Paul Young’s view – “orthodox” Christians can blacklist that person by labeling them with any one of their 947 Trinity-related “heresies.” People are very dogmatic about their post-cannonical Trinitarian theology.)

 

By looking at God as community, we deduce some things that are true of us, man and woman, Imago Dei, Winner explained. She pointed to the late Stanley Grenz as a theologian who really invested in this connection between the Trinity and the Imago Dei. Her encouragement was for church communities to practice mutualism as the Trinity is mutualism perfected.

 

The capitalist church

We’ve taken the rules and rhythms of capitalism and applied them to the church, Winner said. We’ve Christianized a secular story when we think of men as “breadwinners,” those who go out to work at the proverbial factory to bring home the bacon, while women are told to be “domestic” and get their Martha Stewart on at home.

 

Before the Industrial Revolution, it was common for husband and wife to both work at home, partnering for some form of business and productive labor (much of which was agricultural). That’s not to say that there weren’t some tasks that were most often handled by the man or by the woman, but both partners were domestic and both partners were earners. Hence partners – in all things. The impact of capitalism changed all of that, and both genders were worse off for it. Women now dealt with a sense of confinement, feeling validated only through perceived success as a “homemaker” while men were confronted with the need to perform all of the family’s earning, validated when their work life was in order – through their career’s income and prestige. Both husband and wife were faced with lengthy separation for most of the week.

 

It’s not difficult to see how the Industrial Revolution has shaped family life today. Whereas economic class standing was once the result of the entire family’s line of work, this distinction is now often associated with the husband alone. It’s all about how many hours a husband can work, how many corners he can cut, how much conniving he can do, in order to not shame the family name into a less than desirable economic status. 

 

A man is no longer measured on his abilities as a husband or father. The only time a man is judged on those familial relationships, it’s related to what he “provides” for them, which has come to always connote financial provision. How can we be shocked to live in a world of money-making dead-beat dads? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this dynamic contributes to everything from extra-marital affairs to abortion to AIDS to single-parent families.

 

It’s no wonder why this capitalist framing story leaves both men and women feeling helpless, confined, and restricted. Today’s church needs to right injustice in this area. Part of bringing about justice will require rebuking those well-known Christian leaders who knowingly and purposely perpetuate a capitalist framing story over and against the story of Christ’s resurrection. As arrogant as they might be, if they truly understood how their message of men as factory slaves and women as subordinates only goes to support so much brokenness in the world, I believe they would respond to correction and turn from their ways.

 

Good quote

In looking at what we should read into Jesus being a man, Winner said (this is a paraphrase, but it’s close if not perfect), “Let’s sit with the fact that Jesus was Jewish for about one hundred years before we sit with the fact that Jesus was male.” I applauded in my head. 

 

I also think that one reason for Jesus being male is the connection to Adam. Paul goes to great lengths to establish Christ as Second Adam. Jesus was reversing the curse (think: Boston Red Sox, or not) set forth by a man (to say that Adam was created first is no threat to mutualism – anything but). 

 

Some additional thoughts of mine

The conference really got the wheels turning for me. It wasn’t so much that anything said at the conference changed my views about gender and faith, but it did stir some thoughts from the back of my mind toward the front.

 

As someone who is very, very much in favor of women being granted access to all that is good and bad about ministry leadership, I don’t necessarily envision a Church where fifty percent of leaders and men and the other fifty percent are women. Being egalitarian does not mean I vouch for genderlessness. I am comfortable with the notion that God might lead more men into vocational ministry and might direct more women than men to be the parent who is home most often (not saying that’s the case – just saying I’m cool with it). 

 

We live in a funny culture that thinks of control in two sharp categories – the first being full-out control by one party, the other being 50/50, “halfsies,” a direct down-the-middle split. Both are mechanisms of control and regulation. There’s nothing flexible about either one; both mentalities can be guilty of exalting the importance of control over the people themselves. To me, an egalitarian church might mean that 79.88% of pastors are men. (I’m not going to be making many friends with this one, am I? Losing extremists on both sides.)

 

I’ve met some women in recent years (I’m married to one of them), who either are currently in, or are interested in, vocational ministry and are completely cut-out for it. I’ve met other women who are considering church leadership, and I wouldn’t sit under their leadership if they were men, women, or kangaroos. (This is a point that Winner and Cho touched on at the conference.) For this reason, I’m not a fan of organized initiatives to place women in ministry. My fear is that they’ll become a church-related gender-based version of Affirmative Action, and congregations will be worse off for it.

 

I do think it’s important for every church to get a woman on to their leadership team as soon as there is both need and the right woman for the need. Many of the women I’ve known in church leadership have brought things to the table that none of the guys were offering. Again, egalitarian does not equate with genderlessness. While not all women are the same, and not all men are the same, the average woman is different than the average man – which is the very reason why we need women on our leadership teams. Come on, people. This is really obvious.

 

I believe the change in leadership dynamic needs to be pioneered by men. It’s a whole lot easier to contend for power than it is to share what you could hoard. I worry that too many of the women raising their voices over this issue are the ones who shouldn’t be in leadership regardless of gender; it’s not fair to women who are viable pastors.

 

I also think the conversation about faith and gender needs to become much more robust than its current propensity to hone in on the subject of ministry leadership. The topic of gender also has to become about more than just women. Pastors need to minister to men and women alike who are struggling because they sense the Spirit leading them in one direction and the voice of Christian culture sending them the opposite way. In these cases, it’s great when pastors join the Spirit rather than grieve the Spirit. 

 

We need to promote genderedness in our churches (lest we find ourselves in a situation where many people regret or rebel against their particular genderedness, or genderedness altogether). There are tons of different ways for women of God to be women of God, and for men of God to be men of God. The way that previous generations of Christians have dealt with gender, it’s left those who disagree with the narrow definition overcompensating into an agendered, asexual lifestyle, or one that is “anti-” to their gender and sexuality.

 

We can be much less narrow about our gender roles, and at the same time be esteeming gender as an intentional creation of God, an intentional manifestation of a God who is in community, who calls us Imago Dei.

On ridiculousness

Why say it myself when Bob already said it better (and in less divisive language than I could’ve managed).

This topic came up briefly during the Faith and Gender conversation at Quest Church last weekend. Maybe tomorrow I can post a few words on how Lauren Winner and Eugene Cho responded to the latest Driscollincident (that should totally be a word), and about the event in general.

Southern Baptists stiff-arm publication over gender issue

Good article from Jonathan Merritt on the Neue website today. “Behind the Counters” is a quick look into LifeWay Christian Resources, a Southern Baptist bookstore, banning GospelToday because the publication was featuring too many female pastors. 

The story made enough waves to get picked up by CNN.com. Merritt’s piece is basically news journalism – not a lot of conjecture – but the story is interesting because it’s another example of this “small” issue in Christian life/theology coming to the forefront again and again. I’m left wondering how small or trivial the matter really is. It sure seems like telling a person that she can’t respond to God’s call on her life on the basis of genitals is not a small issue so much as the type of thing that would have the Apostle Paul turning red.

The funniest serious thing I’ve read all week

This morning I was reading through a January 2008 article by Sally Morgenthaler, titled “RetroWomen: The Rise of Gender Fundamentalism.” While the entire article is worth reading (she has a lot of good thoughts), the portion of the article that blew my mind had to do with Mark Driscoll and his clones up in Seattle, and their views on gender roles. One person quoted in Morgenthaler’s article compares it to the view of women held in Islamic Fundamentalism, which makes me wonder: if one of things that the US Army boasts of when talking about progress in the Middle East is the liberation of oppressed women, when is the Army going to storm Seattle?

Here a portion of the article:

At MarsHill Church in Seattle (a congregation of mostly twenty and thirty-somethings), women are regularly encouraged to leave education and professional careers behind, embrace homemaking, and do their part to repopulate their godless city with Christians. In a recent Salonmagazine article, one attendee, Judy, reflects on her choice:

“Judy no longer reads secular books or speaks to her old friends. She is now a deacon at Mars Hill and is responsible for planning the weddings held there, which always include a biblical explanation of marriage and gender roles; each year Mars Hill averages about one hundred marriages between couples within the congregation, all of whom must agree with (the doctrine of wifely submission). Between her marriage ministry, the women’s Bible study she runs, her two small children, and taking care of her husband and her home, Judy says she doesn’t have time for many relationships anyway, and when she starts to home-school her kids soon, her time will be even tighter. ‘It’s not what I ever imagined…or even what I ever wanted, but it’s my duty now, and I have to learn to live with that.’”

Evidently, Seattle isn’t the only city Mars Hill Church is targeting for its fundamentalist message about women’s roles. According to the article, Senior Pastor Mark Driscoll wants to take this message of extreme role-ism to the rest of the nation, and is using a large, influential church planting group to do it.

I guess it’s time for Americans to duck-and-cover. You can read the entirety Morgenthaler’s article, here.

Pronouns and lower-case divinity

I realize that most people do not care about this. I understand that I am up-tight in matters of theology and grammar, operating in extreme strong-mindedness while most of my contemporaries reside on the opposite extreme, that of lackadaisical passivity. So regardless of whether I’m right in caring, most people are not as passionate. A disconnect is formed.

So this post might only be for me.

I need to think about the letter h. I need to ponder its upper- and lower-case usage as it concerns theology – specifically in pronouns referring to members of the Trinity. 

Yes, I’m seriously writing about pronouns. Actually, I’m mostly writing about one letter in the masculine pronoun. More specifically yet, I’m wrapping my mind around the one small line between h and H.

I’m doing so because I believe that one line can impact the way we view the Creator and the Savior.

I was raised on capital-h. ‘In His name we pray.’ ‘Jesus took our sin on His cross.’ ‘Thank God, for He is good.’  When it came to the h, it was go big or go home. Being reared in such capitalization was meant to conjure up strong reverence in me.

And reverent I was. But I might have also been a wee-bit Platonic and a tid-bit Gnostic in my earliest thoughts of God. Which leads me to ask if my reverence developed at accuracy’s expense. Was the benefit worth the cost?

First, I want to look at the capital-h. Most translations of the Bible refer to God with masculine pronouns, generally capitalized. No one is calling God an it, which is good (though some theologians depict God as the non-personal, immovable It).

God is given a personal pronoun. Yet God is not gendered. So why is God a He? The male pronoun attributed toward God reflects a limit in language and a reflection of the creation account. 

Female is a type of male; she is a type of he. Why did one gender get the rights to the base word? Some might say that it’s because males have been the language-makers or because of patriarchal dominance in the time of linguistic development. I’d say that it reflects our Genesis account of creation, that Eve came from Adam’s rib – that she is a type of he. Not a subordinate. A s/human.

In biblical times (and well after), “man” was often used as we use “human” today – connoting males and females, alike. Bible translations such as the TNIV have done us the favor of clearing up our misconceptions and fitting our present contextualization by employing “human” in parts of Scripture that refer to all human beings.

That said, the male pronoun attributed toward God is best seen as the base word for humanity – we choose to refer to God in personable terms and, because God is not male or female, we go with the base word, with what is easiest. Could we call God a She? Sure, but that only corrects our misconceptions of the male pronoun, our ideas that God is particularly gendered. 

We’re confusing both and neither, aren’t we?

This is why capital-h is so important when referring to God: it is meant to emphasize the “neitherness” of the personal-yet-ungendered God. The capitalization is not to reference God as the Man of all men – some sort of alpha-male – as so many Christians have come to understand it.

We can conclude that He is above gender, that we cannot box Him into our corners of he and she.

Before you get too excited about capital-h (and I know this is exactly what gets you fired up), don’t give up on its lower-case counterpart just yet.

Lower-case h is the flesh and blood h. It’s the down and dirty, I’m-in-the-trenches-with-the-rest-of-them h. This is the sweaty armpits h. The sometimes-I-laugh-hard-enough-to-wet-myself h. The awkwardly-but-beautifully human h.

It is the me h, the you h, and the Jesus h.

I mentioned that I grew up in the realm of capital-h reverence that slipped too easily into quasi-Platonic and Gnostic thoughts of who Jesus is and who I am. I was told that Jesus was fully human, yet all that was ever really emphasized – really preached – about Jesus was His divinity. Jesus was a He in a he world (which always left me wondering when we’d find an actual he to show the Way as it concerned a he like me).

The capitalization meant to imply Jesus’ divinity had stripped him of his humanity. Or, at the least, implied that his divinity and his humanity were mutually exclusive.

It is the widely-held belief among Christians that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. Jesus, in the extent of his humanity, was 100 percent male. Not a trace of female being in him, he was completely and utterly a gendered being. Body hair and “boy parts,” he was as male as they get. 

It’s important that we see just how male Jesus was, and it’s not for the sake of placing him as the figurehead of a patriarchal religion or for celebrating one gender as being more closely connected with divinity.

Jesus showed humans what being human is all about. As a man he taught other men what their relationship with women should look like. He was one who esteemed, validated, and liberated women. Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in John 4 is a fine depiction of his willingness to break down barriers and social conventions to point out the value of women in the Kingdom of God – the idea that she and he are equal reflections of He, and equal partitioners in the furthering of the Kingdom. Jesus was willing to go to uncharted ground to combat the message of male dominance that pervaded his culture. It is important to understand the lower-case nature of Jesus because his life exampled how the lower-case rest of us are supposed to treat one another.

This is just one reason why I value a Jesus with a lowercase h. This ever-male Jesus shows other men that the way to be a Godly man is to liberate, honor and validate God’s daughters – asking them to unclench their fists from seductive rope of power and prestige that so many hands lunge toward.

Gender aside, I see Jesus validating the lower-case h as a whole (in the sense of what “man” used to mean, as we use “human” today). I mentioned before that we use a capital-h for God because He is without our embodiment and gender. He is also divine. His lack of embodiment is not synonymous with His divinity – it is not what makes Him divine.

Jesus is the glorious evidence of that point. Because Jesus brings divinity to the lower-case world.

This is the miracle of the incarnation. It is the sacrifice of the crucifixion. It is the hope of the resurrection. What’s amazing about Jesus is that he is ours. He is heaven’s gift to earth. Jesus cannot be hoarded by the Trinity; he must be shared with us. Jesus is the Son of God and the son of man. Our Second Adam, our reconciliation. We’re keeping him.

You can look at that one of two ways: you can say that the “transaction” of Jesus somehow taints a righteous God, or that humanity is pulled into the righteousness of God. The book of Romans sides with the latter, explaining how God’s righteousness is “imputed” on humanity because of Jesus. In other words, God’s holiness is so strong that it can not only brush up against all that was tarnished and broken in humanity, it is strong enough to overtake the brokenness, cover it all up, and call it all “righteousness.”

That’s flat-out good news.

So now we can speak of a capital-h God as a way of specifying His difference from us without that being a point of shame for us lower-case people. In other words, the difference reflects a shape or type and not a proximity. It’s not a relational difference, or a statement on purity. So, while acknowledging that Jesus is divine, we can call him our own in the lower-case world.

There’s no embarrassment in having a lower-case Jesus. With a new kind reverence and a stronger accuracy than before, I can admit that he saved my lower-case world.