Male headship before the fall: God’s message, or human perversion of Scripture? Part 2

<<Continued from Part 1

4. …God named the human race “Man,” not “Woman.”… (Gen. 5:1-2):

 

In the Hebrew text, the word … ’ådåm… is by no means a gender-neutral term… (Genesis 2:5,7, 8, 15, 16, 18, 19 (twice), 20 (twice, 22, 23, 25; 3:8, 9, 12, 17, 20, 21; 4:1, 25; 5:1)…

It does give a hint of male leadership, which God suggested in choosing this name….

Reading the same text with pink glasses

(To understand this argument, we have to know that people give meanings to words,things they understand when they hear it. An aggressive atheist, when hearing the word ‘God’, may hear: “That fictional character who is blamed for a lot of Old Testament deaths and the Crusades.” Another person, from a religious home, may think: “The One who is angry with all my sin and wants to punish me.” The problem is not the word “God”, but how people understand it.)

God named the human race “Man.” Then, the male sinfully appropriated the name for himself, calling the woman by other names. By the time Genesis was written, this sinful way of thinking about the term ’ådåm was established to such a degree that, writing in Hebrew, God used the word ’ådåm in two ways: The way God intended (for the whole race) and the meaning that sinful men gave the word: As a word for males.

On the other hand, the female was named “life causer”. (The meaning of Eve.) This gives a hint of female leadership: We die in Adam, but get life in Eve.

Stripping away the biases

Advertisements

Grudem 10 reasons: Have patience, I will post the counter-articles

At the start of March, I started a planned 3-piece series on the justifications Grudem uses for male headship before the fall. By now, everyone expected me to post parts 2 and 3 too.

Sadly, I am having serious computer problems, which make it impossible for me to get things done on the Internet. I got a new laptop and the thing gobbles up Internet data. I got a limited amount of data per month. (South  Nowadays, whenever I get on the Internet, my computer eats all my data while I hardly use any of it surfing. So far, no solutions worked yet.

The Grudem articles are written, offline. But even formatting them in WordPress take time on the Internet.

I am sitting in a coffee shop with free wifi to post this.

Is the significance complementarians attach to men being here first compatible with creationism?

Is the significance complementarians attach to men being here first compatible with creationism?

Note: I know, I said I am working on a three-part refutation of Grudem’s 10 reasons for seeing hierarchy before the fall. I will, DV, get back to that soon.

——————————–

The belief in a literal, 6 x 24 hours, creation is common among conservative believers: first the earth, then division between light and dark, then plants, then the sun and moon, then birds and fish, and after that land animals and people.

Some of those same people also believe that it is very significant that the male was made first: From this, they conclude that men are supposed to have authority over women.

On face value, those two ideas seem very compatible: The first affirm that the order in which things were made in Genesis 1 is not only literally true, but significant. The second affirm that the order in which things were made in Genesis 2 is not only literally true, but significant. Sounds good and Bible-respecting, doesn’t it?

But there is at least two problems with that.

Male headship before the fall: God’s message, or human perversion of Scripture? Part 1

According to Wayne Grudem, male headship have been part of God’s plan from creation.

In ‘Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood’, he claims that there are 10 reasons to believe in male headship before the fall. But are those reasons really there? Or, does he read them into the text because he wants to see it? Is leadership in the Bible blue, or is he wearing blue glasses which make it look that way? Over the next three blog entries, I will discuss his 10 reasons for believing in male leadership before the fall.

I will use blue and a quotation paragraph for Grudem’s words, and pink and a quotation paragraph for words which I wrote to show a different way of (mis)using the same Bible facts. The reason for quotation marks around the pink words is to show they are not my opinion – I use them to show that the same things Grudem uses to allege male lead, or similar things, could be used in a completely opposite manner too. Hierarchy is in the eye of the beholder, not the true meaning of the text.

1. The order:

Ten Reasons Showing Male Headship in Marriage Before the Fall

1. The order: Adam was created first, then Eve (…Gen. 2:7 and Gen. 2:18-23)… Paul … bases his argument for different roles in the assembled New Testament church on the fact that Adam was created prior to Eve. (1 Tim. 2:12-13). According to Scripture itself, then, the fact that Adam was created first and then Eve has implications not just for Adam and Eve themselves, but for the relationships between men and women generally throughout time, including the church age.

Reading the same text with pink glasses

First God made non-living things like the sun and moon, then things that at least resemble God in the fact of being alive, like plants. Then fish and birds, which start to have some degree of consciousness, then higher animals, then man, then women, the crown of creation. Scripture itself shows that God often prefer younger siblings over older ones – Abel over Cain, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over Judah, David over his brothers. Jesus Himself- the last Adam – is bigger than the first Adam. Scripture even testifies that the last shall be first. (Mat. 20:16) The fact that Eve was created after Adam has implications not just for Adam and Eve themselves, but for the relationships between men and women generally throughout time, including the church age.

Stripping away the biases

Adam was made first, but that does not necessarily make him the leader. Plenty of Bible material turns first-last hierarchies on its head, These include many Old Testament stories in which the oldest brother is almost habitually not the one God chose, and the repeated message of Jesus that many of the last shall be first (Mat. 19:30; 20:16; Mark 9:35; 10:31; Luke. 13:30).

1 Tim 2:12-13’s message, in the context of the letter to Timothy, is:
“Do not worry about endless genealogies (1:4 – To permanently ban a certain group from teaching because the first member of the group was born after the first member of the other group is endlessly worrying about genealogies)… I, Paul, could be a preacher now (1:12) because I sinned while misled (1:13), and am not misled any more… I, Paul, do not currently allow a (particular?) woman to teach, or to dominate/ do violence against a (particular) man, because Adam was made first, and Eve was misled.”

Man as Christ, woman as the church: Master post

This blog has several articles refuting or exploring the implications of the complementarian idea that husbands represent Jesus and wives the church, and for that reason women should unilaterally submit. If you want to explore the idea, here are the links.

Putting the (church) cart before the (wedding) horse

“The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. That is, it exists to display God. Now we see how: Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. (25).” – John Piper

If said so before, but I will say it again: Marriage cannot be “patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people.” Look at that second little word: “after.” To be “after” something, the other thing needs to be “before.”

When was the first marriage? In the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve. When did Christ’s covenant relationship with his redeemed people, the church, start to exist?

Feminism for dummies: We do not ask women to act like men!

There is a statement that makes feminists of all stripes cringe. Call it false testimony, call it the straw man fallacy, call it begging the question, the point still remain: This is not an accurate representation of feminism. Whether we talk of first wave, second wave or third wave, whether we talk of Christian egalitarianism, radical feminism or liberal feminism, this pervasive lie never becomes the truth. Sadly, many of those who propagate this lie are Christians: