S-U-B-M-I-T, find out what it means to her

In public, Michele Bachmann, candidate for the Chief Executive of the world's largest superpower, says that she will continue to submit to her husband.  However, this submission, she says, is respect.  And this submission, she explains, is mutual.   Here's exactly how she put it last night answering why she did something her husband told her she must do even though she hated doing it:

“Marcus and I will be married for 33 years this September 10. I’m in love with him. I’m so proud of him. What submission means to us, it means respect. I respect my husband. He’s a wonderful godly man and great father.

“He respects me as his wife; that’s how we operate our marriage,” she continued. “We respect each other; we love each other. I’ve been so grateful we’ve been able to build a home together. We have wonderful children and 20 foster children. We’ve built a business and life together, and I’m very proud of him.”

If Ms. Bachmann becomes President, then her relationship together with Marcus should not change.  He may tell her to do some things that she hates, and she will obey; she must do it.  This also came up last evening:

During last night's Fox News debate, moderator Byron York questioned Rep. Michele Bachmann about her 2006 remark that her "husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained, 'But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.'" York asked Bachmann, "As president, would you be submissive to your husband?" The question received loud boos from the audience, and was the subject of attention in write-ups of the debate.

York, after hearing Bachmann's answer, was pleased.  He said:  "I personally thought she handled it very well. She handled it much more human -- it was like a very human moment for her."   So what does York mean by "human"?  Not mousey and wifey and womanly?  Rather mutual and sharing and two-way respectful?

We get the idea, then, that a President Michele Bachmann would have her cabinet submit to her.  In a human sense, therefore, they would love her and would work together to build with her and would mutually respect her.  The question remains where that would leave First Gentleman (not First Lady) Marcus Bachmann.  If he told his wife to do something she hated, then would he get obedience?  And what would be the chain of command for the Commander in Chief?

Now Wayne Leman at BBB blogged on this.  He says "we at BBB" (meaning the all-men team of bloggers at BBB) want to know:

Does the Greek word ὑποτασσω in Ephesians 5:21–and assumed by almost all Bible translators to be implied in the next verse–mean ‘respect’ or something else?

 Yesterday, I linked to an essay, a post, by Wayne Grudem in which he says that "submission is a respectful affirmation" but that submission must only go one way in a marriage.  Submission, he explains, is not "mutual."  Marcus Bachmann is not to submit to his wife Michele Bachmann.  As the husband, he is not to give her "respectful affirmation" in the sense that he is under her.  Rather, she is under him because she is a woman, because she is his wife.  She must respectfully follow his leadership even if he tells her to do something that she hates.

The BBB all-male blogger team want to know what this means.  If you are a woman, then do know that there is a special practice by this team for moderating the comments of females.  The way blogger Theophrastus has tracked this is as follows:

The situation over that the BBB is that all male-blogging team has decided on a secret rule that issues of gender cannot be discussed in blog posts.  However, this rule is inconsistently enforced – it is particularly enforced on women who try to comment on that blog.

If you'd like to comment freely, whether you are a woman or a man, then always feel free to do so at this blog.  Or, if you really want to reply to the BBB questions but find yourself moderated in any particular way by the all-male BBB team, then feel free to do so at the BBBB.  The BBB all-male no-woman team has promised that everybody gets automatically moderated in reply to Wayne Leman's recent post.  The BBBB, however, will allow you to make your comments openly on this same topic or on any topic you somehow want to bring up there.

Now, before we leave the topic of ὑποτασσω as Paul wrote it to Greek readers in Ephesus, I thought we might listen to how his first Greek readers, those Ephesians, may have heard this word.  There's no reason to believe that these Ephesians in Ephesus were uncultured.  There's no reason to think that the husbands and wives to whom Paul addressed his letter would not have attended the local plays.  There's no reason to suggest that they might not have gone to watch the plays by Euripides or even his play that we know today as The Bacchae.

As we all know, the Bacchae were women, not men.  

They were also called maenads, those females who followed and nursed and submitted to the god Dionysus.  The Bacchae or Maenads were "Raving Women."

If you've watched the play by Euripides or have read it, then you know how these raving women murdered a human king for banning their worship of the god.  If it's significant, this particular god, Dionysus, had a human mother.  At any rate, we all know how the Bacchae or Maenads or Raving Females broke the law of the king and killed him.  They did not submit.  They did not like this chain of command, this male hierarchy from the king.  In fact, the mother of this king usurped the male authority and led the raving women.

Here's a memorable moment from the play in which this king, before he gets assasinated, is getting a report on these women and on his own mother (as translated from the Greek of Euripides into English, by George Theodoridis):

But just then she [your mother] shouted, “Hey, my speedy bitches, there are some men here who are hunting us.  They want our submission. Come, run with me.  Arm yourselves with your thyrsus and come with me! Let’s get them”

We just managed to run away and escape the slaughter but they threw themselves, with no spear nor sword, at the calves that were quietly grazing nearby.  One of those women tore a poor, tiny calf away from its mother’s udder and others ripped calves to bloody pieces with their bare hands and then they began eating them raw.

My Lord, you could see bits of flesh strewn all around the place. Whole sides of animals, legs, other chunks of animal flesh hanging from the fir trees, dripping blood.  Huge bulls, my Lord which only a few minutes earlier stood tall and proud, the sort that if one got them angry they’d tear everything apart with their massive horns, well, now they dropped their bodies to the ground and straightaway countless girls dragged them about with their bare hands and… and by the time you blinked your royal eye, my Lord, they’d have the skin torn off those massive carcasses of them bulls.

And then they went flying about like the wild birds that ruin the proud wheat stalks of Thebes, the ones that fly low next to the rushing waters of Asopos river.  Then off them women rushed to the villages of Erythres, near Ysies, at the foot of Mount Kitheron and just like an invading army they turned everything upside down, ripping children out of their houses and taking all sorts of goods from there, which they just threw carelessly over their shoulder without tying anything together; still nothing fell to the dark soil, not even bronze or iron, my Lord!

And, o, my Lord Pentheus [the king], around their hair there was this brilliant fire that had no effect on them. Didn’t burn them one bit.

Then all the men came out fuming with anger and fully armed, wanting to bring these Bacchants into submission [ὑποτάσεις], but then, my Lord, if only you could have seen this most awesome thing!  Most terrible thing to see.

So the Ephesians would get that submission was not mutual in some contexts, that the king was to be obeyed, that women especially raving females should be under male gods and male leaders.  This was a gendered thing.  A one-way sexist thing.  Or was Paul suggesting mutual submission of all one to another also?

Wayne Grudem issues an apology

In an almost unpredented move, Wayne Grudem followed the lead of Don Miller.  Grudem has deleted a post and issued an apology for what he wrote about men and women.  And now, I am impressed. Today Grudem wrote,

If anything I said personally offended you, will you accept my deepest and most sincere apology?

The post was deleted from both the website of the Gospel Coalition and the website of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  But it remains on the bible.org website at http://bible.org/seriespage/wives-sarah-and-husbands-who-honor-them-1-peter-31-7.  Therefore, Grudem contacted J. K. Gayle of Aristotle's Feminist Subject, asking Gayle to post his apology there.  Grudem also wanted to add a few comments of recantation given that bible.org wouldn't let him take the post down there.  Gayle is calling it a guest post.

Grudem added this, the guest post:

Please know that I'm not some emergent church uncredentialed writer like the pop Christian author Donald Miller.  And please don't let anyone think I'm going soft on the Bible, on biblical doctrine, or on systematic theology, or anything like that.  I'm not.  I'm still the manliest of men God ever made.  I still believe in the femininity of women too.

Here's the thing.  I've been thinking hard about what Suzanne McCarthy wrote:  "If we feel that the scriptures are turning hierarchy upside down, let us follow suit."  Now, mind you, I'm not backing down on logic or on reason.  However, I've been out of touch with my real feelings lately, as if emotions are only for women.  They are not.  I can feel as a man.  Jesus wept.  And Jesus said again and again, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, .... But I say to you that everyone ...."  He said that in accurate ESV Bible English.  Yes, and I know that everyone now notices that he's included women in his "everyone."  So I started thinking (I mean) feeling that words really do matter and that all of the sudden what Jesus was saying is part of the scriptures. No scratch that too. What Jesus said really must be now called the scriptures, the very scriptures which are turning hierarchy upside down.

Yes, I know the objections.  Paul wrote AFTER Jesus spoke.  So Paul trumps Jesus, at least chronologically.  And Peter validates that too, even if he complains that Paul is too hard to read; Paul wrote the scriptures too.  Paul surely trumps Jesus, and so does Peter who validates Paul.  Are you following my logic here?   Any reconciliation of Jesus's words with the epistles of Peter and of Paul must be a fitting of the Paradox of how Jesus may have contradicted the Law and may even SEEM to have contradicted both Peter and Paul, who trump Moses too.  Are you tracking with my thinking, my reasoning, my ivory tower proofs?  Yes, I know these objections very well.


Let's follow Peter and Paul very closely at little more.  With logic.  And then I feel I need to recant some things.  To turn some things upside down.  To meta-noia.  To re-think.  To really feel.  To weep.


Peter and Paul were hard on the evangelical feminists.  And please don't mistake me for one of them.  I mean don't ever call me a "feminist."  In that post I deleted, I had to show how "evangelical feminists must take two steps in the interpretation of Scripture that are simply incorrect and that show their position to be contrary to Scripture.said how the evangelical feminists."  Talking of Peter and Paul, I wrote this first:  "In fact, it is very significant that the New Testament authors never explicitly tell husbands to submit to their wives."  And then I referenced the most authoritative scriptures written Peter and Paul (and Luke a little too) to show that "evangelical feminists take another illegitimate step in Bible interpretation when they change the meaning of the word hupotasso ('submit to,' 'be subject to'), giving it a meaning that it nowhere requires, something like 'be thoughtful and considerate; act in love' (toward another), without any sense of obedience to an authority."  Peter and Paul win.  Evangelical feminists lose.  And I really like to win.  So I was on what I knew what the winning team:  Peter's and Paul's.  I like to be on the winning team today.  So I do remember using the English word "today" some 15 times in that blogpost I regret writing today; that blogpost I deleted today.  The whole point was to have Peter and Paul make sense for women today, to get them to submit today.  To take away any notion of feminist or egalitarian "mutuality" of the sexes today.  Submission was to go one way today.  But my "today" is now yesterday.  Jesus Christ, I remember the scriptures saying, is the same yesterday and today and forever.  This may even be something Paul wrote after Jesus if he wrote Hebrews.  Even if he didn't, whoever did wrote it after Jesus.  But now somehow my logic fails.  Jesus comes back, from yesterday, past Moses and the Torah and the Law and Peter and even Paul, to today.  He's forever.  Which means if he overturns the hierarchy, then any contradictions get overturned too.  Or at the very least we sweep them under the logic preserving rug we call paradox.  Did you see how my friend Raymond Ortlund, Jr. and my other friend Denny Burk and I did that with the seeming contradiction between woman's equality with man (ontologically) and woman's inferiority to man (functionally, in roles in the home and in the church)?  Paradox is a cool tool.  And it works both ways.  I'd just never thought, um, felt it could be used to overturn Paul, who comes after Jesus.

So I must confess.  When Paula (not Paul) wrote something (albeit neither purely scriptural nor academical), I think the Holy Spirit began to deal in my heart.  She said, "It was always about privilege."  What I'm beginning to see -- and it's still kind of foggy -- sort of like Paul's scales coming off his eyes just at first -- is this.  I'm starting to get the fact that we men who use the scriptures, whether Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in harmonized paradox or Ephesians 5 or the household codes of Peter, will insist that they privilege them.  We won't let Jesus take it back to Genesis in a different way, saying, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."  We have to say, yes, but Paul adds the other side of the Paradox.  And so does Peter.  The no longer two but one must become two again:  the male over the female.  The female sub-missive to the male.  And if God's image is male and female, then in God his female side must submit functionally to his male side.  And the one side then must obey the authority of the other side.  Paul and Peter never say any different.  But look.  This is exactly what Paula is saying.  It was always about privilege, this argument of us men.  And I now don't for the life of me feel that God has privilege in half of himself.   So I'm recanting.  I'm letting Paul and Peter's silence on the husband needing to hupotasso his wife just be first century silence.  Jesus, forever, yesterday and still today, didn't seem to assert this one-sided-ness, that one-up-man-ship.  So I'll just follow the scriptures.  I'm following Jesus.

If anything I said personally offended you, will you accept my deepest and most sincere apology?

Jesus: "The Help" and the "Helpmeet"

INTRO

In this post, I'm just going to follow the logic of the "biblically" sexist doctrine of men such as Denny Burk, Wayne Grudem, and Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr. to conclude that Jesus is functionally equal with an African American maid for whites and that Jesus is, likewise, functionally equal with a wife who must help her husband while following her husband's leadership.

HOMEWORK

Here's a little homework you may want to do first, before you read my blogpost.  Read Kathryn Stockett's The Help (or go see the film based on her book); and read Suzanne McCarthy's brilliant and important post, "The Help"; and read Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3 in the Hebrew; and read the book of Hebrews in the Greek.  If you really want to go crazy with preliminary research, then also read Autumn Sandeen's essay that might have you asking what sign Jesus surely had to follow before drinking water in public or when entering the public bathrooms.

Maybe read how Jesus spoke about sex (but do know that you may have to read the Bible some here then).

All done?  Okay.  Here we go.

REVIEW

Let's review the logic of the "biblically" sexist doctrine:

Helping speaks to difference. The text says that God created her to be a “helper”–a role that involves aiding and supporting the leadership of her husband. God did not assign this role to the man. He assigned it only to the woman. Thus before there is any sin in the world, God creates man and woman to be equal with respect to their humanity (being created in the image of God) but to be different with respect to their roles. The woman is to be the helper.
-- Denny Burk, in a blogpost

Whenever someone helps someone else the person who is helping is occupying a subordinate or inferior position with regard to the person being helped.
-- Wayne Grudem, in a book of systematic theology introducing "biblical" doctrine

The paradox is this: God created male and female in His image equally, but He also made the male the head and the female the helper....

What will now emerge clearly from Genesis 2 is that male-female equality does not constitute an undifferentiated sameness. Male and female are equal as God’s image-bearers. They are spiritually equal, which is quite sufficient a basis for mutual respect between the sexes. But the very fact that God created human beings in the dual modality of male and female cautions us against an unqualified equation of the two sexes. This profound and beautiful distinction, which some belittle “as a matter of mere anatomy,” is not a biological triviality or accident. It is God who wants men to be men and women to be women; and He can teach us the meaning of each, if we want to be taught. We ourselves can feel intuitively the importance of distinct sexual identity when we see, for example, a transvestite. A man trying to be a woman repulses us, and rightly so. We know that this is perverse. Sexual confusion is a significant, not a slight, personal problem, because our distinct sexual identity defines who we are and why we are here and how God calls us to serve Him....

On the other side of the paradox, the woman is the man’s helper. The man was not created to help the woman, but the reverse. Doesn’t this striking fact suggest that manhood and womanhood are distinct and non-reversible? Doesn’t this make sense if we allow that, while the man and the woman are to love each other as equals, they are not to love each other in the same way? The man is to love his wife by accepting the primary responsibility for making their partnership a platform displaying God’s glory, and the woman is to love her husband by supporting him in that godly undertaking.

So, was Eve Adam’s equal? Yes and no. She was his spiritual equal and, unlike the animals, “suitable for him.” But she was not his equal in that she was his helper. God did not create man and woman in an undifferentiated way, and their mere maleness and femaleness identify their respective roles. A man, just by virtue of his manhood, is called to lead for God. A woman, just by virtue of her womanhood, is called to help for God.
-- Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., in a chapter in a book written to recover "biblical" manhood and womanhood

Do we need a summary?  The "biblical" sexist logic of Burk, Grudem, and Orlund is this:

Women may well be created equal with men ontologically, 
But women are designed functionally even biologically to help men;
Therefore: men are over women functionally and biologically.

This is exactly the separationist sort of logic that Aristotle used in his Politics and in his biological treatises to separate the sexes naturally.  It's the differentiating logic that Nancy Mairs calls the binary or the fundamental structure of the patriarchy.  It's the logic not only of sexists but also of racists:  of the European and American owners of African people as their slaves; of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis rounding up and mass murdering Jewish people; of the defenders of apartheid in South Africa and of the apologists for the Jim Crow laws in the southern states of the United States of America.  It's the logic that appeals to marked bodily difference in order to order society in such a way that the marked ones are lower than the default ones.  "Separate but equal" - is that phrase, that old mantra, which orders the separateness of bodies first, but then "equality."  And now the words of power, the wedge of separation of the "equals", are purportedly "biblical."  Notice, if you can, how the sexist, separational logic of Burk, Grudem, and Orlund drives their interpretation of the Bible and its words.  It drove the interpretation of Warren Jeffs, who said:

“I can see more clearly why John Taylor went into hiding as the government and the courts would demand he betray the Lord’s trust and also to take his life as they did Joseph Smith, as the world did against Joseph Smith, and the Lord has shown me this, that my enemies don’t just want me to be taken prisoner, but they want me dead. But the Lord has directed that I go into deeper hiding, and continue to gather the faithful, develop the lands of refuge and keep the redemption of Zion mission progressing. I have been instructed of the Lord to have my scribe and helpmate Naomie, get better disguise clothes. And we are working on whatever the Lord directs.” (Priesthood Record, July 30, 2004)

 and

"A good wife is trained for her husband and follows the spirit of peace,"

JESUS: "THE HELP"

In the Intro of this post, I said we'd follow the logic of the "biblically" sexist doctrine of men such as Burk, Grudem, and Ortlund to conclude that Jesus is an African American maid for whites and that Jesus is a wife who must help her husband while following his leadership.  Let's do this.

For homework, I suggested you read Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in the Hebrew.  I probably should have suggested you read all of the Hebrew references to God as "the help," references made by just a single word, עזר `ezer.  There are the two references to the first woman as "the help" of the first man.  There are sixteen references to God as "the help" of his people.  By Wayne Grudem's system of theology, by his doctrine, "Whenever someone helps someone else the person who is helping is occupying a subordinate or inferior position with regard to the person being helped."  This is certainly true logic in the USA during the Jim Crow era, when women who were of African descent were "the help" of white families.  My own family, for example, "hired" Nancy in Corsicana, Texas as "the help"; my siblings and I were young children and just babies, and Nancy took care us of when my white father and mother needed her help.  She was not paid what a white nanny and cook and janitor was paid.  And she occupied a subordinate and an inferior position in our household.  But does the "position" of helper necessarily mean that that person must submit to the one being helped?  If you read all of the Hebrew "help" references in the Bible, then just two apply to the woman and sixteen apply to God.

So now we can follow on to the book of Hebrews and then to Jesus.  As you noticed in doing your homework, the writer of the book of Hebrews (in chapter 13, verse 6) quotes Psalms 118:6, which has a phrase, now in Greek translation, that goes like this:

Κύριος ἐμοὶ βοηθός

In the most accurate English translation available to Burk, Grudem, and Orlund, that goes like this:

"The Lord is my helper" (ESV)

Well, this isn't exactly referring to Jesus.  "The Lord" or Κύριος refers to the unspoken name of God, or as the psalmist writes it, to יהוה.  But what we should notice is that Greek word for "helper"; it's βοηθος.  When other Jewish writers were using Greek to translate the Hebrew of the Bible, then they frequently used βοηθός to mean "the help."  For example, Genesis 2:18 and Genesis 2:20, the references to the woman as "the help" are both translated with βοηθος.  And Psalms 33:20, which uses the same Hebrew word for "the help" as do the Genesis verses for the woman, is also translated with βοηθος.  Of course, for Psalms 33:20, "the help" refers to God again in that position of helping humans, the psalmist and his people.  In the most accurate English translation Burk, Grudem, and Orlund can find, that Psalm goes like this:

"Our soul waits for the LORD;
   he is our help and our shield."(ESV)

So what?  Well, as you noticed when you did your homework, the writer of the book of Hebrews uses the same Greek word for "the help" for Jesus as was used.  Hebrews 4:16, as you recall, goes something like this:

"¹⁴Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."  (ESV)

In Greek, that last bit goes like this:

Προσερχώμεθα οὖν μετὰ παρρησίας τῷ θρόνῳ τῆς χάριτος, ἵνα λάβωμεν  ἔλεον [or ἔλεος], καὶ χάριν εὕρωμεν εἰς εὔκαιρον βοήθειαν.

And from whom do the readers find this "grace to help"?  Jesus.  Jesus is "the help" here.

Just like God, equally "the help," ontologically and functionally and biblically.

JESUS: "THE HELPMEET"

Again we look at Hebrews, and again we read about Jesus there.  Again, the original biblical language for this man is functionally equal to the original biblical language used functionally for Eve, for the wife of Adam, for woman, to separate her from man.  Just as the woman is designed to be the helpmeet of the man, so Jesus is naturally born according to the writer of Hebrews to be the helpmeet of the offspring of Abraham, the people, those who are tempted.  Here it is:

¹⁶For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. ¹⁷Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. ¹⁸For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help [βοηθῆσαι] those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2, ESV)

THE TWIST

The twist on all this sexist, masculinist logic is not that there's a slippery slope where nobody can distinguish any body else's body.  It's not that bathroom labels are going to be ever so more confusing or that wives cannot help their husbands from time to time.  It's not that Jesus really is a black woman or a submissive wife.  Rather, it's just that the language that's actually biblical makes Jesus functionally what Denny Burk, Wayne Grudem, and Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr.say he, as a man, cannot be.  Jesus functionally and ontologically is a human being like any woman.  According to the Bible and its language, he is the help and is a helpmeet.

Wayne Grudem's Evangelical Feminism

Wayne Grudem is the world's leading expert on evangelical feminism. And, to be sure, he doesn't like this club.  (Caryn Rivadeneira suggests the club needs some new ground rules, but more on that in a moment.)

So, what is the club of evangelical feminism? What is an evangelical feminist? And who are the evangelical feminists?

Well, let's see how Wayne expertly answers these questions.  First, let's see how he first came to answer the questions.  Finally, let's scroll to the final three paragraphs of this post to see his actual answers.

In 1991, Wayne joined John Piper to target the club of evangelical feminists.  Wayne and John got together to assemble and to edit a book they entitled, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. The editors of Christianity Today read it, and named it the 1992 "Book of the Year."  Wayne's public resume makes perfectly clear that this response to so-called evangelical feminism was named "as the book that had the most significant impact on the evangelical community in 1991."

In this book, Wayne and John wrote a chapter they entitled, "Can Our Differences Be Settled? A Detailed Response to the Evangelical Feminist Position Statement of Christians for Biblical Equality." (The next year, this chapter was made into the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood booklet, Can Our Differences Be Settled? A Detailed Response to the Evangelical Feminist Position. Fifteen years later, the big book was revised, and this concluding chapter was updated by Wayne's and John's chapter, "The Controvery [i.e., caused by Evangelical Feminism] and the Cause of Christ] (including a respose to the statement by Christians for Biblical Equality.") The two co-editors, Wayne and John, also outlined, as an early chapter, "An Overview of Central Concerns [about Evangelical Feminism]: Questions and Answers. As an additional appendix to the big book, Wayne also contributed his 1990 essay, ""The Meaning of kephal ("Head"): A Response to Recent Studies"; from this, as the second appendix, he added from the CBMW "The Danvers Statement." As an additional chapter of the big book to respond so expertly to evangelical feminism, Wayne also added his own essay, "1 Peter 3:1-7: Wives like Sarah and Husbands Who Honor Them."

For this big book to respond expertly to evangelical feminism, Wayne and John asked several men to contribute chapters. Each of these men is presumably an expert respondent to evangelical feminism. Every one of these men ostensibly could help readers recover from evangelical feminism.

The "evangelical feminist" expert men, in the order in which their essays appear are John and Wayne; Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr.; James A. Borland; Thomas R. Schreiner; D. A. Carson; S. Lewis Johnson, Jr.; George W. Knight III; Douglas Moo; John M. Frame; Vern Sheridan Poythress; Paige Patterson; William Weinrich; Gregg Johnson; George Alan Rekers; David J. Ayers; Donald A. Balasa; H. Wayne House; and Weldon Hardenbrook. For the 2006, new edition of the big book, Wayne and John asked J. Ligon Duncan and Randy Stinson to write the new preface.

In addition to these 21 "evangelical feminism" experts, 21 men, Wayne and John asked 3 women to contribute essays. "The High Calling of Wife and Mother in Biblical Perspective" was Dorothy Patterson's contribution. "Women in Society: The Challenge and the Call" was Dee Jepsen's contribution. "The Essence of Femininity: A Personal Perspective" was Elisabeth Elliot's contribution.

In 2004, Wayne wrote Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions.

In 2006, his big book with John was republished.

That same year Wayne also wrote Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?.

And that same year Wayne also wrote, Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism: Biblical Responses to the Key Questions. His preferred subtitle, which didn't make it to press, was the enumerating, "Over 40 Biblical Responses."

In 2008, Wayne became the general editor for the ESV Study Bible. Although this Bible was not a direct response to evangelical feminism, Wayne the expert on evangelical feminism made sure that none of the 95 contributors he worked with on the project are, were, or would become evangelical feminists. The English Standard Bible, likewise, did not include even 1 woman in its team of all-male translators.

So, what is evangelical feminism? What is an evangelical feminist? And who are the evangelical feminists?

Caryn Rivadeneira would have done well to ask this in her Her.meneutics blogpost, "Bachmann, Palin, and the Trouble with 'Evangelical Feminism'" It's the "Christianity Today blog for women." (Recall that Christianity Today named Wayne and company's Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism the 1992 "Book of the Year" as Christianity Today considered this "the book that had the most significant impact on the evangelical community in 1991.") 

Caryn only assumes her readers will understand what "evangelical feminism" is.  She ignores the fact that Michele Bachmann doesn't want to be called a feminist of any sort.  Bachmann listens to her husband because he's her head; so maybe it's that he doesn't want her to be called a feminist or an evangelical feminist.  But Caryn says that "Feminists say Bachmann and other conservative women can't join their club. I say the club needs some new ground rules."  But Caryn doesn't say whether these "feminists" are "evangelical feminists" or not.  Caryn doesn't say who these "feminists" of the club are.  Caryn mentions "Feminists of the Jesus-loving persuasion,"  and names a few of those, but won't include Phyllis Schlafly in that particular club.  Caryn asks her Christianity Today blog editor to remove Phyllis from this club.  Caryn is making new ground rules for the "evangelical feminist" club or for the feminist club in general, but her rules won't let Phyllis join.  (See Caryn's blogpost and her club-exclusionary comments.)  Oh, the ironies.

So, what is evangelical feminism? What is an evangelical feminist? And who are the evangelical feminists?

Let's go to the experts, Wayne and John.  These men have coined the phrase "evangelical feminism" (or at least have used it for certain individuals or for that particular club), and these experts have answered all of our questions:

A controversy of major proportions has spread through the church.  It began over 20 years ago in society at large.  Since then an avalanche of feminist literature has argued that there need be no difference between men's and women's roles -- indeed, that to support gender-based role differences is unjust discrimination.  Within evangelical Christianity, the counterpart to this movement has been the increasing tendency to oppose any unique leadership role for men in the family and in the church.  "Manhood" and "womanhood" as such are now often seen as irrelevant factors in determining fitness for leadership.

Many evangelical Christians have defended this position in writing.  They include Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty (1974),  Paul Jewett of Fuller Seminary (1975), Richard and Joyce Boldrey of North Park College (1976), Patricia Gundry (1977), Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen of Bethel College and Seminary (1979), Catherine Clark Kroeger (1979), E. Margaret Howe of Western Kentucky University (1982), Gilbert Bilezikian of Wheaton College (1985), Aida Spencer of Gordon-Conwell Seminiary (1985), Gretchen Gaebelein Hull (1987) and many others, in articles, lectures, and classroom teaching.  Although they have disagreed on details, their common theme has been the rejection of a unique leadership role for men in marriage and in the church.

Yet these authors differ from secular feminists because they do not reject the Bible's authority or truthfulness, but rather give new interpretations of the Bible to support their claims.  We may call them "evangelical feminists" because by personal commitment to Jesus Christ and by profession of belief in the total truthfulness of Scripture they still identify themselves very clearly with evangelicalism.  Their arguments have been detailed, earnest, and persuasive to many Christians. 

(-- The above are the first three paragraphs of Wayne's and John's Preface to their expert and award-winning and profoundly-influencing book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism)

If Wayne Grudem needed a feminist,

then he might find one in Michele Bachmann:

"Bachmann is seldom described in those terms; the conservative Minnesota congresswoman and Tea Party darling might cringe at the feminist label.... [S]he exemplifies an evangelical feminism that is producing more female leaders in ... politics, even as more traditional gender roles prevail in evangelical homes and churches. 'It’s not that evangelical feminism is entirely new,' says R. Marie Griffith, ... 'But this lack of fear going into top positions of power is new and astonishing and exciting for this segment of the population.' ... Even as more evangelical women pursue top jobs in politics, there is little sign that they will be invited into similar roles in evangelical churches, which continue to be led by men, with some exceptions. Some evangelical denominations, including Southern Baptists, have recently moved to put more restrictions on women serving as pastors."

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"While evangelical feminism has taken a number of different directions since then, it typically leans moderately left on most political issues, which is one reason why it has captured the wrath of hardline complementarians like Wayne Grudem and John Piper. ('Complementarianism' is the view that God designed men and women not to be equal but to be complementary, with men as the leaders and women as helpmeets.)

[Sarah] Palin and Bachmann decidedly do not lean left. What is 'feminist' about them, for those who want to use that descriptive, is their belief that God calls women no less than men to fight His battles against Satan on earth. Women hold awesome power as spiritual warriors, in this worldview; they're not doormats, nor should their godly duties be confined to the domestic sphere. This is its own sort of egalitarianism, to be sure, but it is one far more compatible with the complementarian theology of arch-conservative Protestantism than with the feminism of liberal religion. After all, Bachmann and Palin have both made much of their roles as wives, mothers and churchgoers in a way meant to show that their political leadership will not upend the gender hierarchy so crucial in the conservative evangelical home and church sanctuary."

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"Michele Bachmann explained her decision to pursue tax law. It wasn't her choice, exactly. God had already told her to go to law school; God had also told her to marry a fellow named Marcus Bachmann. Now Marcus told her 'to go and get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.' This was not a particular desire of Michele's ('Tax law? I hate taxes!'), but she was certain God was speaking through her husband.

'Why should I go and do something like that?' she recalled thinking. 'But the Lord says, "Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands"'....

This apparent contradiction—how you can be leader of the free world and yet subordinate to some guy —has proved no less confusing to the nation's conservative evangelicals. For them, the justification for a Bachmann presidential run lies in a very careful, some would say tortured, theological interpretation that emerged during Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy in 2008.

The solution to the 'Palin Predicament,' as it's been called, is laid out on the website of the influential Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The council, which was established in 1987 to fight 'the growing movement of feminist egalitarianism,' espouses something called complementarianism—the idea that while men and women are equal they nevertheless must play different (read: unequal) parts. Men are destined to occupy leadership roles at home and at church, while women are obliged to 'grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands' leadership.' But the civic sphere is distinct from home and church and governed by different rules, these evangelicals reasoned, and if the Bible didn't explicitly 'prohibit [women] from exercising leadership in secular political fields,' neither would they."

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"She is clearly a trailblazer for women, throwing her hat into the highest ring in politics. But while Michele Bachmann became the first female presidential candidate of the 2012 campaign this week, she does not, interestingly enough, view herself as a feminist.

Unlike Sarah Palin, who has brandished the feminist moniker and spoken of an 'emerging conservative feminist identity,' Bachmann told me in an interview Tuesday that she wouldn’t call herself a feminist....

Bachmann seemed loath to engage in the kind of girl-power rhetoric utilized by Palin and Hillary Clinton, who both invoked the perennial—and so far unbreakable—presidential glass ceiling."

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"From the perspective of her religion, Republican candidate-to-be Michele Bachmann is something of a conundrum. Although she draws much of her strength from her evangelical Christian roots, the strict gender roles that accompany these same roots would seem to preclude her serving as the United States’ commander-in-chief."

Jesus Identified with Women around Wayne Grudem

"The way [Wayne] Grudem has always understood that text ... so clearly excludes me [a woman] from being one of those [mortal humans that] Jesus came to identify with."

     --Kristen

"We can look at some examples of these changes from the 1984 NIV to the 2002 TNIV.

NIV Hebrews 2:6 What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
TNIV Hebrews 2:6 What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

What's wrong? The TNIV removes the possibility of connecting this verse with Jesus, who called himself 'the Son of Man.' It mistranslates the singular Greek words huios ('son') and anthropos ('man'). It no longer refers to the human race as a unity named 'man' (the name given by God in Gen. 5:2), but 'mere mortals.' This adds the idea of mortality that is not in the Greek text. (Note that man as created by God was not mortal, and this passage has creation language in it.) But the TNIV's goal has been achieved: The male-oriented details are erased."
     -- Wayne

Kristen reads what Wayne wrote.  She gets us all wondering whether the text of the Bible has Jesus identified with women as much as with men, whether Jesus is identified in the Bible as a mortal, a mere human being.

Wayne is dead set against the TNIV, saying it "mistranslates" Hebrews 2:6.  Is his "understanding" justified?  Where does he leave women around him in relation to his Jesus, a Jesus whom he understands does not have any "idea of mortality" and, more importantly, does have each and every one of his "male-oriented details" intact and emphasized?

Let's look first at a couple of really good translations by a couple of really good translators on this verse.  Then, second, let's look at the original languages again.  Then, third, let's come back to the NIV 1984 translation and the TNIV; finally, we'll come to the NIV 2011.

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First, here is how Richmond Lattimore and Ann Nyland translate Hebrews 2:6.  Both of these translators know their Greek very well.

Richmond has this (and I'm using bold font the way Wayne does to mark certain words):

What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you consider him?

Ann has this (and I'm still using the bold font):

What is humanity that you remember it, or the Human Being that you visit him?

The translations are quite different.  Has one mistranslated?  No.  Has Ann just liberally added "the idea of mortality that is not in the Greek text"?  Has she erased the "male-oriented details"?  No and no.

Richmond is sticking with a more traditional English for his translation of the Bible.  He's following the English of the KJV.  But please notice that he uses other, different English for his translation of Homer's Iliad.  He uses "mortal men" and "mortals" and "humanity" and "human people" for the plural of anthropos; this is not a mistranslation.  Likewise, Richmond uses of "child" and "children" for huios; this also is also not a mistranslation.  Richmond's English is not adding "the idea of mortality that is not in the Greek text."  That idea of mortals and of mortality really is already in the Greek text of Homer.   Similarly, Richmond is not erasing the "male-oriented details" of the children in the Greek text.  Let's look:

In his time two generations of mortal men had perished, (1.250)

But the gods give to mortals not everything at the same time; (4.320)

his heart out, skulking aside from the trodden track of humanity.  (6.202)

as is natural for human people, between men and women. (9.134)

Askalaphos led these, and Ialmenos, children of Ares, (2.512)

children of Euenos, king, and son of Selepios. (2.693)


child of Iphikles, who in turn was son to Phylakos (2.705)

Next he killed two children of Dardanian Priam (5.159)

So Richmond is free to translate the Greek text without adding and without erasing anything.  For Hebrews 2:6, he's decided to stick with the old traditional English he finds in the King James Version.  However, he could have translated that this way, the way he correctly translates Homer's Iliad again and again.  (If anyone wants, I'll also show more examples from his translation of Homer's Odyssey.)

Richmond would have had no problem correctly rendering Hebrews 2:6 like this:

What is humanity, that you are mindful of it, or the child of a mortal, that you consider him or her?

Now let's go back to Ann's English for the Greek.  But let's go first to how she correctly goes back to the Psalms.  She's noticing in her translation of Hebrews 2:6 how the writer is quoting the Psalms, either Psalms 8:4-5 or Psalms 144:3 or both.  When Ann translates this, that is, when she translates Psalms 8:4-5 and Psalms 144:3, she looks at both the Greek and also the Hebrew.  The Psalms are also in Greek because of a very early translation of them from Hebrew into this Hebraic Hellene.  The Greek writer of Hebrews is quoting from this Greek translation of the Hebrew Psalms.  So let's look at how Ann translates these Psalms from the Hebrew and from the Greek into English:

what is the humankind, that you should notice them, human beings, that you should pay attention to them? and make them a little less than the elohim?  You crown mankind with honor and significance.

Yahweh, what is the human race, that you should notice them, humankind, that you should be concerned about them?

Notice how Ann is not mistranslating.  She is not adding mortality, not erasing male-oriented details.  She is letting the psalmist sing as in the Hebrew and as in its Greek translation.  The idea of humanity, of humankind, of human beings, of the human race, is already in the text before translation.  And the gender neutrality is already there in the original languages.  And so, in Hebrews 2:6, Ann is letting the writer of Hebrews quote the Psalms this gender inclusive way.  She's letting the Bible speak of Jesus in a gender neutral way, in a way that includes women and men, females and males, girls and boys.  The Psalmist and the writer of Hebrews, like Homer too, are all making distinctions between God and humans, between immortal divinity and mortal humanity.  Richmond Lattimore and Ann Nyland do well to let the original language writers be inclusive for the human beings.

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Second, now, let's look at the original languages again.

Here's the original in Hebrews:

Τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος [anthrōpos, mortal human, gender neutral man]
ὅτι μιμνῄσκη αὐτοῦ,
ἢ υἱὸς [huios child, son]
ἀνθρώπου [anthrōpou, mortal human's]
ὅτι ἐπισκέπτῃ αὐτόν;

Here's the original Greek translation of the Hebrew [and the Hebrew] of the two Psalms quoted by the writer of Hebrews:

τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος [anthrōpos, mortal human, gender neutral man] [אנוש, 'ĕnôsh, properly a mortal, man, person, mankind]
ὅτι μιμνῄσκῃ αὐτοῦ 

ἢ υἱὸς [huios child, son] [בן, ben, son, grandson, child, member of a group, children (pl. - male and female)]

ἀνθρώπου [anthrōpou, mortal human's] [אדם 'adam, person, human, man, Adam]
ὅτι ἐπισκέπτῃ αὐτόν; 

κύριε τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος [anthrōpos, mortal human] [אדם 'adam, person, human, man, Adam]
ὅτι ἐγνώσθης αὐτῷ 

ἢ υἱὸς [huios child, son] [בן, ben, son, grandson, child, member of a group, children (pl. - male and female)]

ἀνθρώπου [anthrōpou, mortal human's] [אנוש, ''ĕnôsh, properly a mortal, man, person, mankind]
ὅτι λογίζῃ αὐτόν

Notice how the Hebrew words for mortals, for humans, in Psalm 8:4 are reversed in Psalm 144:3.  But notice how the Greek translation of both words is always the same word for human beings in the two Psalms.  But really notice how both the Hebrew and its Greek translation, and its Greek quotation by the writer of Hebrews, all have the sense of mortality, of humanity, and the inclusion of males-and-females without the male-only detail.

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Third, now, let's look at the NIV translations again.  They do what the Greek and the Hebrew do.  When you read the original languages of the Bible, then you can see how, in many ways, in fact, the TNIV and the NIV 2011 are improvements over the NIV 1984.

NIV 1984 Hebrews 2:6 What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 

TNIV Hebrews 2:6 What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

NIV 2011 Hebrews 2:6  What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him?

NIV 1984 Psalm 8:4  what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

TNIV Psalm 8:4  what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

NIV 2011 Psalm 8:4  what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?  [footnote: Or what is a human being that you are mindful of him, / a son of man that you care for him?]

NIV 1984 Psalm 144:3  O LORD, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him?

TNIV Psalm 144:3  LORD, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them?

NIV 2011 Psalm 144:3  LORD, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them?

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Could it be that Wayne Grudem and the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood are relying only on Bible translations that are only gender accurate when they exclude women and when they only include "male-oriented details'?

Could it be that the writer of Hebrews has identified the really biblical Jesus with mortal human beings, both men and women, in ways that really go around what Wayne prefers?

Yes, it could be.