Wednesday, March 30, 2011

John Chrysostom and Two Tales of Creation

There are currently two explanations as to the meaning of the woman's creation from the man. The first says the woman was created as the man's equal, the second that the woman was created the man's subject. Which would the fourth-century theologian John Chrysostom have agreed with? The first one.

John Chrysostom, the eloquent bishop of Constantinople, is not popular with complementarians for not only did he explicitly mention that Junia was an apostle, Phoebe a deacon and Deborah a judge, his theology casts a long shadow of doubt on the claim that modern complementarian theology faithfully replicates the ancient apostolic tradition: when compared to Chrysostom's theology, modern complementarism appears to be a recent novelty, a complete reversal of John's fourth century beliefs.

Modern complementarism finds the woman's subjection in the creation account, and claim the woman is barred from teaching due to the man's prior creation. The fall account is said to represent the consequence of sin, not the beginning of the man's rule. Both 1 Tim 2 and 1 Cor 11 are said to enforce female subjection as a created order. Chrysostom, on the other hand, believed that the woman was subjected because “she made an ill use of her privilege and she who had been made a helper was found to be an ensnarer and ruined all then she is justly told for the future, “thy turning shall be to thy husband” (Gen 3.16).” Neither God or the man said anything about subjection to the woman at creation, instead the man said she was “bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh,” which signified her equality with the man. (Homilies on 1 Corinthians 11, Homily XXVI) Neither did Chrysostom find subjection in 1 Cor 11:

But the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” Here the heretics rush upon us with a certain declaration of inferiority, which out of these words they contrive against the Son. But they stumble against themselves. For if “the man be the head of the woman,” and the head be of the same substance with the body, and “the head of Christ is God,” the Son is of the same substance with the Father. “Nay,” say they, “it is not His being of another substance which we intend to show from hence, but that He is under subjection.” What then are we to say to this? In the first place, when any thing lowly is said of him conjoined as He is with the Flesh, there is no disparagement of the Godhead in what is said, the Economy admitting the expression. However, tell me how thou intendest to prove this from the passage? “Why, as the man governs the wife, saith he, “so also the Father, Christ.” Therefore also as Christ governs the man, so likewise the Father, the Son. “For the head of every man,” we read, “is Christ.” And who could ever admit this? (Homilies on First Corinthians, XXVI)
According to Chrysostom, the woman was barred from teaching because of the fall, not creation.

If it be asked, what has this to do with women of the present day? it shows that the male sex enjoyed the higher honor. Man was first formed; and elsewhere he shows their superiority. “Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.” (1 Cor. xi. 9) Why then does he say this? He wishes the man to have the preeminence in every way; both for the reason given above, he means, let him have precedence, and on account of what occurred afterwards. For the woman taught the man once, and made him guilty of disobedience, and wrought our ruin. Therefore because she made a bad use of her power over the man, or rather her equality with him, God made her subject to her husband. “Thy desire shall be to thy husband?” (Gen. iii. 16) This had not been said to her before… The woman taught once, and ruined all. On this account therefore he saith, let her not teach. But what is it to other women, that she suffered this? It certainly concerns them; for the sex is weak and fickle, and he is speaking of the sex collectively. For he says not Eve, but “the woman,” which is the common name of the whole sex, not her proper name. Was then the whole sex included in the transgression for her fault? As he said of Adam, “After the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of Him that was to come” (Rom. v. 14); so here the female sex transgressed, and not the male. Shall not women then be saved? Yes, by means of children. For it is not of Eve that he says, “If they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.” What faith? what charity? what holiness with sobriety? It is as if he had said, “Ye women, be not cast down, because your sex has incurred blame. God has granted you another opportunity of salvation, by the bringing up of children, so that you are saved, not only by yourselves, but by others.” (Homilies on First Timothy, Homily IX)
Because it seemed irrational that women should earn their salvation through works, and because virginity was so highly valued in the fifth century church, Chrysostom felt compelled to explain the inconsistency, but he could only conclude that “this is the amount of what [Paul] says.”
Although Chrysostom remained remarkably faithful to the original beliefs handed down by the apostles, he was nevertheless influenced by the teachings of Aristotle, the fourth century BCE Greek philosopher, which is seen in his rather condescending remarks of the woman's ability to think for herself ("the woman is weakminded"), his insistence that equality is always hurtful (although he wrote that Abraham and Sarah obeyed each other), and his remark that women are inferior to men. His attempts to incorporate these into his theology accounts for the occasional inconsistency in his otherwise faithful transmission of the apostolic tradition and is clearly seen in his treatment of Genesis 3.16: he believed, alongside all fourth century theologians, that God punished Eve with subjection to Adam, who was deemed innocent (although he was somewhat inconsistently also charged with being the reason for original sin). If we change this one aspect in Chrysostom's theology and affirm with the first century and the modern church that Gen 3.16 is not God's mandate but a consequence of sin, Chrysostom's theology is faithfully replicated in the theology of modern egalitarianism.

Now that we have examined the theology of John Chrysostom, we must decide:
Keep it or Toss it?
Keep It!

Monday, March 28, 2011

 The Weird World of Mr. Ware

Bruce A. Ware is the author of a lengthy article on the compatibility of our equality as humans created in the Image of God and hierarchical theology in which the man has authority over the woman because of his prior creation. To read the article, visit the below link
http://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-7-No-1/Male-and-Female-Complementarity-and-the-Image-of-God

In the weird world of Mr. Ware, all things are not as they seem. What looks right at first becomes quickly left, as he guides us through a maze of incoherent thoughts. 

The first part of the introduction explores what being created in the Image of God actually means. Mr. Ware concludes this exploration with the noble thought that both men and women are created in the image of God and are therefore equal as human beings. But because equality and inequality are like oil and water, and Mr. Ware wants to prove the existence of the latter instead of the former, he has decided to convince us that the woman derives the Image of God from the man.

Man is a human being made in the image of God first; woman becomes a human being bearing the image of God only through the man. While both are fully and equally the image of God, there is a built-in priority given to the male that reflects God's design of male-headship in the created order.

What then about the rest of us? How do we become the Image of God since we are born of women, and not perpetually created from a man’s side?  Mr. Ware seems to be of the opinion that both parents contribute, “So, it appears that those born become the image of God because they are born through those who are the image of God.” But because it would create a contradiction in his theology to affirm that only Eve derived the Image from a man, he adds his opinion that Genesis 5 teaches that only the father transfers the Image of God to the child. 
What is true in both texts, of Seth's and the woman's formation respectively, is that they derive their human natures, as Scripture specifically indicates, through the man. Another parallel is clear and is significant: both Seth and Eve are fully and equally the image of God when compared to Adam, who is image of God. So, the present discussion reaffirms and reinforces our earlier declaration that all human beings, women as well as men, children as well as parents, are fully and equally the image of God. But having said this, Scripture indicates in addition to this important point another: God's design regarding how the woman and how a child become the image of God seems to involve inextricably and intentionally the role of the man's prior existence as the image of God.
But if both Seth and Eve derived the Image of God from Adam, how was it possible for Seth, but not for Eve, to transfer the Image to his own children? Could it be that Eve is not mentioned in Genesis 5 because the chapter is “the written account of Adam's line” and the whole point is to show which father goes with which son, the mother being well known to all? In other words, maybe Eve had a bit more to do with Seth being in the Image of God than Mr. Ware would have us acknowledge.

Despite the obvious flaw in his thinking, Mr. Ware continues undeterred. To provide further evidence for his theology, and to remove the possibility that the man’s prior creation could be “nothing more than a sort of tossing of a divine coin,” Mr. Ware informs us that God formed the woman from the man in order to make her dependent of the man.
But God wanted to convey two theological truths (not just one) in the formation of the woman from the rib of Adam: since the woman was taken out of the man, 1) she is fully and equally human since she has come from his bones and his flesh, and 2) her very human nature is constituted, not in parallel fashion to his with both formed from the same earth, but as derived from his own nature so showing a God-chosen dependence upon him for her origination.
In other words, the woman must be the man’s subject and dependent of him or Genesis 2 speaks only of equality.
In an effort to find his “derivation” theology already in Genesis 1, Mr. Ware points out that the Hebrew word ‘adam, found in Genesis 1.26, is a masculine word and therefore it teaches us “that woman possesses her common human nature only through the prior nature of the man.”  Mr. Ware seems strangely unaware of the fact that the gender of a word is an artificial linguistic tool, not a theological statement; for example, spirit is a feminine word in Hebrew but neuter in Greek. Mr. Ware adds to the confusion when he writes, “Since this is so, we should resist the movement today in Bible translation that would customarily render instances of áa„d£a„m with the fully non-gender specific term ‘human being'. This misses the God-intended implication conveyed by the masculine generic ‘man,' viz., that woman possesses her common human nature only through the prior nature of the man.” How strange then that the creators of the Greek Septuagint (250 BCE) translated ‘adam with anthropos, a non-gender specific Greek term for “human being.”  Perhaps the dictionary is right and ‘adam is a non-gender specific word for “human being” in Hebrew.

As long as Mr. Ware’s focus was on the first humans, his theology was able to survive, albeit full of holes. But when he begins to apply it to singles, the boat sinks before it even has had a change to float.  Mr. Ware writes that a marriage is only a shadow of the union between Christ and the church, wherefore “no believing single will miss out on the reality of marriage even if God calls him or her to live without the shadow.” So far so good. But when the question of the man’s authority is brought up, Mr. Ware is suddenly of the opinion that the man's prior creation “does not entail the authority of all men over all women,” for the man’s authority should be extended only to Christian husbands and the elders of the church. All single people should therefore be members of a church “where they may be involved in the authority structure of that church,” for “qualified male elders are responsible for the spiritual welfare of their membership, and so single women, in particular, may find a source of spiritual counsel and guidance from these male elders in the absence of a husband who might otherwise offer such help.” If only married women are subject to their husbands, why does Mr. Ware nevertheless insist that Christian single women offer deference to Christian single men?
Second, the temporal priority of the male in the image of God means that in general, within male-female relationships among singles, there should be a deference offered to the men by the women of the group, which acknowledges the woman's reception of her human nature in the image of God through the man, but which also stops short of a full and general submission of women to men. Deference, respect, and honor should be showed to men, but never should there be an expectation that all the women must submit to the men's wishes. And for single men, there should be a gentle and respectful leadership exerted within a mixed group, while this also falls short of the special authority that husbands and fathers have in their homes, or that elders have in the assembly. Because all are in the image of God, and because women generally are image of God through the man, some expression of this male-headship principle ought to be exhibited generally among women and men, while reserving the particular full relationships of authority to those specified in Scripture, viz. in the home and the believing community.
Although Mr. Ware has an explanation to the subjection of women and children, he doesn’t provide an explanation as to what the foundation is for one man’s authority over another. Since all men are directly in the image of God and therefore equal, Mr. Ware lacks the means to make one man subject to another.


 To conclude, Mr. Ware's "derivation" theology has several serious flaws:

1. Why do men not derive the Image of God from women although they are born of women?
2. How do men transfer the Image of God to their children if also Seth derived the Image of God from Adam in the likeness of his mother Eve?
3. If husbands have authority over their wives because Eve was created from Adam, what is the foundation of a man's authority over another man?
4. If all men do not have authority over all women, why must single Christian women offer deference to single Christian men?


Now that we have examined the theology of Mr.Ware, we must decide: 
Keep it or Toss it? 
Toss it.