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Discipleship Over Definitions: Why Character Trumps Personality · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

0:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
0:32
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian on Doctor James Spencer and I'm
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Speaker 1: joined again by doctor Asheesh Pharma, and we're going to
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Speaker 1: continue our discussion about Biblical manhood and womanhood and masculinity,
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Speaker 1: effeminity and what it really means to be a male
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Speaker 1: disciple of Jesus Christ. And today we're going to be
0:45
Speaker 1: looking at John Piper's Essay in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,
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Speaker 1: which is a book that was written some time ago.
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Speaker 1: A couple things before we dive into the argument. Number one,
0:56
Speaker 1: the book has a lot of exegetical chapters. They actually
0:59
Speaker 1: have full sections on the exegetical chapters of these various texts,
1:03
Speaker 1: and so I'd encourage you if you want to see
1:06
Speaker 1: an in depth look at each one of those these
1:09
Speaker 1: texts that are covered in the book, Great pick it
1:11
Speaker 1: up that written by strong scholars. Da Carson Wright's one
1:14
Speaker 1: of them. Tom Shiner, I believe is in there. And
1:17
Speaker 1: so they're dealing with these different texts. Piper does not
1:21
Speaker 1: in his essay deal with all of these texts. He's
1:24
Speaker 1: making some assumptions about these texts. The texts in question
1:28
Speaker 1: really are as he lists them. One Corinthians eleven three
1:32
Speaker 1: through sixteen, which is a passage about women and men
1:36
Speaker 1: and head coverings, and there are a lot of interpretive
1:38
Speaker 1: issues there about what's going on in that passage. Ephesians
1:42
Speaker 1: five twenty one through thirty three, which largely deals with
1:45
Speaker 1: husbands and wives. One Timothy two eleven through fourteen, is
1:50
Speaker 1: also one of those that is heavily disputed. It's a
1:57
Speaker 1: difficult passage to interpret.
1:59
Speaker 2: There's this.
2:01
Speaker 1: To women being saved through childbearing that no one seems
2:03
Speaker 1: to know what to do with. But I would say
2:06
Speaker 1: there's a lot of really good scholarship going on around
2:08
Speaker 1: that passage. Now, a couple of the issues that I
2:12
Speaker 1: have with these texts in relation to what they're trying
2:15
Speaker 1: to do, which is construct a notion of Biblical masculinity
2:19
Speaker 1: or Biblical manhood. The ones that are specific to husbands
2:23
Speaker 1: and wives, I would say those are role based and
2:26
Speaker 1: they don't really necessarily speak to men. They speak to husbands,
2:30
Speaker 1: they speak to wives, and so whether that can be
2:33
Speaker 1: generalized to women and men is a different question. Now,
2:36
Speaker 1: there is an essay in the book I believe that
2:38
Speaker 1: you Know talks about you know, if men are the
2:41
Speaker 1: head of the family, they need to be the head
2:43
Speaker 1: of the church, and so there is an argument for that.
2:45
Speaker 1: But I would just say that in general, I have
2:48
Speaker 1: trouble translating from husband, wife, or particular roles into a
2:54
Speaker 1: notion of masculinity. And here's part of the reason why
2:57
Speaker 1: I have that. It's because of the Master and bond
3:01
Speaker 1: servant passages. I think when we look at the master
3:04
Speaker 1: bond servant passages, if we were to start there and say,
3:07
Speaker 1: can we extrapolate to an understanding of Biblical manhood from
3:10
Speaker 1: the Master and bond servant passages, We're going to come
3:13
Speaker 1: to very different conclusions than when we start at the
3:15
Speaker 1: male female passages. And these are men in relationship to
3:19
Speaker 1: each other. Many times. It's not that there wouldn't have
3:23
Speaker 1: been female masters or female bond servants necessarily, but there's
3:26
Speaker 1: obviously also men in these relationships, and so.
3:30
Speaker 2: What do you do with that?
3:31
Speaker 1: These are two very different sorts of relationships, and if
3:35
Speaker 1: we were to construct an understanding of manhood based on
3:38
Speaker 1: these two texts, you're coming to very different conclusions because
3:42
Speaker 1: a man is subserving it to another man presumably, and
3:45
Speaker 1: is told to act in different ways, and so to me,
3:49
Speaker 1: just some of these texts don't really relate when we're
3:52
Speaker 1: trying to jump between men and women and husbands and wives.
3:55
Speaker 1: I find that particularly difficult if are looking to build
4:01
Speaker 1: an understanding of Biblical manhood. So I'll leave it there.
4:07
Speaker 1: We'll we'll basically the structure of this episode. We're going
4:09
Speaker 1: to go through and read a few of these different
4:11
Speaker 1: passages and kind of talk through them a little bit
4:13
Speaker 1: of what Piper says. We're going to try to give
4:15
Speaker 1: the context and appropriate reading without you know, skewing him.
4:20
Speaker 1: We don't want to set up a straw man with Piper,
4:22
Speaker 1: and obviously he's written other things. This is a thirty
4:24
Speaker 1: minute podcast, so we're gonna do what we can. Uh
4:27
Speaker 1: ah I'll let you, I'll let you share your thoughts
4:31
Speaker 1: before we jump in here.
4:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks James, thanks for that intro to sort of
4:37
Speaker 3: the issues at play and what we're going to go
4:39
Speaker 3: through era. I think it's important to note too that
4:41
Speaker 3: we are not We just can't, as you said, go
4:45
Speaker 3: through everything Piper says. And our goal is not to
4:48
Speaker 3: say it's a it's either on or it's off, it's
4:53
Speaker 3: yes or it's no. Everything Piper says it's either great
4:56
Speaker 3: or everything he says it's awful. I think what you'll
4:59
Speaker 3: find that we're being fairly critical the goals and to
5:03
Speaker 3: say that everything's awful. There's a spectrum, as with most things,
5:08
Speaker 3: that there are things that he says. He said, that's
5:10
Speaker 3: a fair point. Many of them are observations, observations of
5:15
Speaker 3: difference that are worth noting. Our goals aren't here to
5:20
Speaker 3: completely collapse the difference between men and women. Our goals
5:25
Speaker 3: are more what we tend to think of as social
5:30
Speaker 3: understandings of gender male and female, to kind of question
5:34
Speaker 3: the assumptions at play. There are the things that he
5:37
Speaker 3: says that maybe we don't agree with, or maybe one
5:39
Speaker 3: of us doesn't agree with and the other one maybe
5:41
Speaker 3: does other Does you know, we haven't worked through every
5:44
Speaker 3: single detail. That's not the issue either. There's some things
5:48
Speaker 3: he says that we find pretty bad. Again, we can't
5:52
Speaker 3: go through them all. But the goal here is really
5:54
Speaker 3: ultimately to get to sort of the heart of what
6:00
Speaker 3: is animating Piper to say the things that he's trying
6:02
Speaker 3: to say. Where are his conclusions coming from. How do
6:06
Speaker 3: those track vis the biblical text? Are things always as
6:13
Speaker 3: simply biblical, straightforwardly biblical, as he might want them to seem.
6:20
Speaker 3: I think you and I, James both think that probably not.
6:24
Speaker 3: And those are the sorts of things we want to
6:25
Speaker 3: get into. So what's at the core of what Piper's
6:28
Speaker 3: doing rather than let's examine every single tree in this forest?
6:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, exactly.
6:36
Speaker 1: Because I think I do probably agree with him on
6:38
Speaker 1: the interpretation of specific passages, though I don't agree with
6:42
Speaker 1: him in the implications of those passages. He tends to
6:46
Speaker 1: draw more out of them than I would, and he
6:50
Speaker 1: does that an awful lot. And because he tends to
6:53
Speaker 1: root those in biblical interpretation, they seem to have an
6:56
Speaker 1: authority that I don't really think they should carry. Are
7:00
Speaker 1: interpretations that go beyond the text everybody does that. That's
7:04
Speaker 1: not the that's not the problem. Everybody does this. The
7:08
Speaker 1: question is how sure are you about these specific interpretations
7:13
Speaker 1: that go beyond the text?
7:15
Speaker 2: You know.
7:15
Speaker 1: So the one that I usually like to use is
7:18
Speaker 1: the Trinity. Right We don't find the trinity that language
7:21
Speaker 1: in scripture, and yet we talk about the Trinity. We
7:23
Speaker 1: don't talk about the humanity and deity of Christ in
7:25
Speaker 1: scripture or the you know, homusia or whatever, right, Like,
7:28
Speaker 1: there are certain things that we have developed into doctrines
7:32
Speaker 1: that are that are aligned with the scriptures, but aren't
7:35
Speaker 1: actually there in the text. They're not spelled out for us.
7:39
Speaker 1: So the interpretive community does this all the time. We
7:42
Speaker 1: pull things out of the text and try to understand
7:44
Speaker 1: it and synthesize something out of the text that is
7:48
Speaker 1: appropriate to the text, that emerges from the text. And
7:51
Speaker 1: so I think that's the attempt that Piper's doing here.
7:54
Speaker 1: It's just that part of the time what he's pulling
7:57
Speaker 1: out is I think a little bit too sure of itself.
8:01
Speaker 1: It seems like it's sort of if you don't believe this,
8:04
Speaker 1: you're obviously wrong about biblical manhood and womanhood. So I
8:08
Speaker 1: would sort of press back on the surety of his interpretations.
8:12
Speaker 1: But then I would also question some of the things
8:16
Speaker 1: that he tries to tease out of these texts and
8:19
Speaker 1: out of a broader understanding of biblical manhood and womanhood,
8:22
Speaker 1: because I don't think they would actually work, nor do
8:25
Speaker 1: I think that this is what God's word is telling us.
8:28
Speaker 2: So with that said, why don't we.
8:30
Speaker 1: Jump into one and we can kind of give a
8:32
Speaker 1: concrete illustration. So I want to start with one that
8:35
Speaker 1: Ashishu actually brought up. It's his sixth comment on mature masculinity,
8:41
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to read the sixth statement and
8:45
Speaker 1: then a section of his work. Here he says, mature
8:49
Speaker 1: masculinity expresses it's leadership in romantic sexual relations by communicating
8:54
Speaker 1: an aura of strong and tender pursuit. And then he
8:59
Speaker 1: goes down and he says, it will not do to
9:03
Speaker 1: say that since the woman can rightly initiate, therefore there's
9:07
Speaker 1: no special leadership that the man should fulfill. When a
9:10
Speaker 1: wife wants sexual relations with her husband, she wants him
9:13
Speaker 1: to seek her and take her and bring her into
9:16
Speaker 1: his arms and up to the pleasures that his initiatives
9:19
Speaker 1: give her. He goes on to say, consider what is
9:23
Speaker 1: lost when a woman when women attempt to assume a
9:26
Speaker 1: more masculine role by appearing physically muscular and aggressive. It's
9:31
Speaker 1: true that there is something sexually stimulating about a muscular,
9:34
Speaker 1: scantily clad young woman pumping iron in a health club,
9:38
Speaker 1: but no woman should be encouraged by this fact, for
9:42
Speaker 1: it probably means the sexual encounter that such an image
9:44
Speaker 1: would lead to is something very hasty and volatile and
9:48
Speaker 1: a long run unsatisfying. The image of a masculine musculature
9:53
Speaker 1: may beget arousal in a man, but it does not
9:56
Speaker 1: beget several hours of moonlit walking with significant caring conversation.
10:02
Speaker 1: The more women can arouse men by doing typically masculine things,
10:06
Speaker 1: the less they can count on receiving from men. A
10:08
Speaker 1: sensitivity to typical feminine needs. Mature masculinity will not be
10:13
Speaker 1: reduced to raw desire and sexual relations. It remains alert
10:17
Speaker 1: to the deeper personal needsable woman and mingle strength and
10:21
Speaker 1: tenderness to make her joy complete.
10:24
Speaker 2: End quote.
10:27
Speaker 1: What stands out to me in this association, then I'll
10:30
Speaker 1: hand it over to you, is that there are a
10:33
Speaker 1: couple things that bother me about this. Number one, the
10:36
Speaker 1: typically masculine activities. Those words mean nothing. I mean, I've
10:46
Speaker 1: been in the gym for years, Like I've spent countless
10:51
Speaker 1: hours in a gym lifting weights. There are always women there, always, always, always.
10:58
Speaker 1: This was not a typically masculine activity, right, Yes, she
11:02
Speaker 1: might catch the men doing more like powerlifting and stuff
11:05
Speaker 1: like that, but the women were always at the gym.
11:08
Speaker 1: This is not something that like, women don't lift weights,
11:10
Speaker 1: and so this masculine activity at a health club is
11:15
Speaker 1: crazy talk. There are women powerlifters, there are women wrestlers.
11:18
Speaker 1: There are women. I mean, my daughter's a gymnast. She's like,
11:22
Speaker 1: she can do more pill ups than me, she can
11:23
Speaker 1: do more push ups than me. She like she's good
11:28
Speaker 1: at that because she practices it. She's in the gym
11:30
Speaker 1: sixteen hours a week. Like this idea that this sort
11:36
Speaker 1: of physique is somehow makes a woman more masculine.
11:40
Speaker 2: Is crazy town to me.
11:43
Speaker 1: But I would also say that, if I'm going to
11:44
Speaker 1: be fair to him, what I think he may be
11:47
Speaker 1: referring to is sort of a flaunting of that physique.
11:51
Speaker 2: Maybe, but that's not at all what he says.
11:55
Speaker 1: Right, I've also been in the gym when you do
11:57
Speaker 1: tend to see the flaunters, right, they're not really working out,
12:00
Speaker 1: they're just sort of hanging out, right, that's men and women.
12:05
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, it drives me crazy because it's like, get
12:07
Speaker 1: away from my machine. But ultimately that's not what he describes.
12:11
Speaker 1: He describes a woman who is scantily clad. Sure, which
12:15
Speaker 1: that could mean many things to many people.
12:18
Speaker 2: Right.
12:20
Speaker 1: You know, tights are pretty common in the gym nowadays.
12:22
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever gotten aroused by a
12:24
Speaker 1: woman in tights. It's just it is what it is, right,
12:28
Speaker 1: It's Jim Garb, you know what I'm saying. So I
12:32
Speaker 1: think overall this is a really deeply mischaracterizing narrative that
12:39
Speaker 1: is just problematic on a number of levels.
12:42
Speaker 2: So the idea of.
12:43
Speaker 1: A typically masculine thing is problematic to me, and I
12:48
Speaker 1: think ultimately just the overall context of what he's arguing
12:52
Speaker 1: doesn't really bother me to say that a man should
12:54
Speaker 1: attend to a woman's needs and a sexual encounter. Right,
12:58
Speaker 1: that okay, But I don't see how any of that
13:02
Speaker 1: really has to do with biblical manhood.
13:05
Speaker 2: I'll leave it there.
13:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, my initial reaction is what what is going on here?
13:15
Speaker 3: That's my technical reaction. So I think you're being kind
13:23
Speaker 3: to Piper in the way that you respond. I think
13:27
Speaker 3: he says a little bit more, then you're kindly attributing
13:31
Speaker 3: to him. Right, he's not talking. He's not talking about
13:35
Speaker 3: the person who's there to say look at me, but
13:39
Speaker 3: is not actually working out. He talks about the ripped
13:43
Speaker 3: or toned muscles. I can't remember his exact wording. Yeah,
13:46
Speaker 3: but he's talking about someone in such a way as
13:49
Speaker 3: this woman is actually working out. And the implication is
13:56
Speaker 3: because she's working out in this way that in some
13:59
Speaker 3: way in his social imaginary makes her masculine. Okay, it's
14:09
Speaker 3: therefore going to arouse some sort of sexual desire in
14:15
Speaker 3: the mail, and in that process it's going to create
14:18
Speaker 3: an environment that is purely charged sexually but does not
14:25
Speaker 3: allow for a long walk with caring understanding of the other.
14:31
Speaker 3: I just don't there's so many steps there that I
14:33
Speaker 3: don't know where to even begin, to be honest with you,
14:38
Speaker 3: you know, fallacy of false cause, as philosophers might say.
14:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like it's a scenario that if you
14:46
Speaker 1: don't think about it too hard, you could go okay,
14:50
Speaker 1: but once you dig into it, you're going No, none
14:53
Speaker 1: of that makes any sense, none of it.
14:56
Speaker 3: How does one lead you to the next, How is
14:59
Speaker 3: it skill in for a woman to be working out
15:03
Speaker 3: in a gym. There can be a lot of reasons
15:07
Speaker 3: to work out in a gym. It could be it
15:14
Speaker 3: could be the simple reason of this person plays basketball
15:19
Speaker 3: and she goes into the lane and a bigger person
15:23
Speaker 3: is able to knock her off her shot. The refs
15:25
Speaker 3: aren't going to change or they're not going to call everything,
15:28
Speaker 3: and so she knows that she's not going to be
15:30
Speaker 3: able to finish her shot consistently when the defense is
15:34
Speaker 3: taking their hedging their bets on the refs not calling everything,
15:37
Speaker 3: so she goes to the gym. In fact, this was
15:40
Speaker 3: my motivation in high school to start lifting weights. It
15:43
Speaker 3: was entirely basketball related, right. It was I need to
15:46
Speaker 3: put on muscle so that when I'm in the lane,
15:49
Speaker 3: bigger guys can't knock me off my shot. I would
15:52
Speaker 3: venture to guess that if you go to the average
15:57
Speaker 3: women's basketball player, she'd say this same thing, especially those
16:01
Speaker 3: who are on the smaller end.
16:03
Speaker 2: Right.
16:06
Speaker 3: But okay, the next implication from that, so if she's
16:09
Speaker 3: in the gym and she's working out and a guy
16:15
Speaker 3: notices her and goes up to her and talks to her.
16:19
Speaker 3: This is going to then potentially begin a relationship based
16:23
Speaker 3: entirely on the physical How does he know that? Why
16:31
Speaker 3: is that necessarily true? Could? Could I offer as well
16:36
Speaker 3: that I've watched enough of these David Attenborough BBC Nature
16:42
Speaker 3: documentaries to realize that God has in fact made these
16:47
Speaker 3: sorts of physical attractive attractions too, to be the impetus
16:53
Speaker 3: for what ends up resulting in reproduction of a species. Right,
16:58
Speaker 3: this isn't this isn't to human problem. In other words,
17:01
Speaker 3: this is entirely present throughout the rest of creation. Where
17:06
Speaker 3: you know, a flower looks better ostensibly so that it
17:10
Speaker 3: can draw the bee to it. The bird pulls out
17:14
Speaker 3: its special it's special colors that's hidden underneath its wings
17:18
Speaker 3: and does a little dance quite literally, in order to
17:22
Speaker 3: entice the female bird to say, yes, I want to
17:25
Speaker 3: reproduce with you. Now, I think it's important to note
17:29
Speaker 3: that we humans were made I think, quite clearly for
17:34
Speaker 3: something more than just the physical. But that's sort of
17:38
Speaker 3: denouncing of the physical attraction as an as as the
17:42
Speaker 3: impetus for a relationship strikes me as very gnostic. You know,
17:47
Speaker 3: this sort of ancient philosophy of away with the physical,
17:51
Speaker 3: away with the material, everything's purely intellectual, which I think
17:57
Speaker 3: has its own problems. To just say everything's purely that
18:01
Speaker 3: could be a topic for another time. But then finally
18:04
Speaker 3: to say that none of that can then lead into
18:07
Speaker 3: meaningful conversation.
18:08
Speaker 2: I think.
18:10
Speaker 3: I think anyone who's been in a relationship long enough
18:12
Speaker 3: realizes that whatever physical markers instigate the beginning of a relationship,
18:20
Speaker 3: those physical markers never sustain a relationship.
18:23
Speaker 2: Right.
18:25
Speaker 3: A relationship that does not grow in some sort of
18:28
Speaker 3: let's call it a spiritual intimacy for lack of a
18:31
Speaker 3: better term, is a relationship that's doomed to failure. Right,
18:36
Speaker 3: But one needs to look no further than the massive
18:40
Speaker 3: relationships that we see coming out of Hollywood.
18:43
Speaker 2: Right.
18:43
Speaker 3: These are beautiful people, men and women both, and it's
18:46
Speaker 3: quite apparent that the beautifulness of these couples in and
18:52
Speaker 3: of itself never sustains a single one of those relationships.
18:55
Speaker 3: The relationships that survive, you get a sense, oh, there's
18:59
Speaker 3: an actual kind there beyond whatever the physical was gave
19:02
Speaker 3: away to something else. So I just think that the
19:05
Speaker 3: moves Piper is making just on a basic sociological level
19:08
Speaker 3: to make it don't make sense. Never mind that it's
19:12
Speaker 3: not clear to me at all, and what respect any
19:14
Speaker 3: of that came from biblical exegetical work, right, we have
19:19
Speaker 3: we haven't even reached that spot.
19:21
Speaker 1: And I think we haven't reached that spot because it's
19:24
Speaker 1: not really there like he created. He doesn't argue it anywhere.
19:28
Speaker 1: There's no sense in which I can't think of biblical
19:31
Speaker 1: texts that really do relate to this, right like, they're
19:36
Speaker 1: just not there. And so yeah, that is a big
19:39
Speaker 1: part of this problem is that once we get and
19:42
Speaker 1: I'll just be transparent. Like Ephesians five talks about the
19:45
Speaker 1: man being the head of the woman, so does First
19:48
Speaker 1: Corinthians eleven, and there's a lot tied up with that
19:51
Speaker 1: conversation about the head. But in my research, I don't
19:55
Speaker 1: think that head can really mean source necessarily. I don't
19:59
Speaker 1: find that that's the way it's used there. And so
20:01
Speaker 1: my tendency is to say, no, it means head is
20:04
Speaker 1: in authority. When we're saying that, you know, Christ is
20:10
Speaker 1: the head of the man, Christ is the head of
20:12
Speaker 1: the church. There is a positional authority that's occupied there. Now,
20:17
Speaker 1: how do you tease out that authority. In other words,
20:19
Speaker 1: what are the implications of that authority. We don't really
20:22
Speaker 1: know other than what we see in places like in
20:27
Speaker 1: Ephesians five, where we're told that the husband is to
20:30
Speaker 1: love his wife. And this emerges from that sort of
20:34
Speaker 1: very patriarchal culture where I think some of the best
20:38
Speaker 1: research that's been done on this deals with cafale, which
20:42
Speaker 1: is Greek for head, and from a medical point of view,
20:47
Speaker 1: so in other words, the cafale was something you know,
20:50
Speaker 1: there's a reason we wear helmets when we play football, right,
20:53
Speaker 1: it's because our heads are vulnerable, and so you want
20:56
Speaker 1: to protect your mush, right, like you need that protection
21:00
Speaker 1: on your head. Well, that physical understanding of head was
21:05
Speaker 1: then pulled over metaphorically into families, and the head of
21:09
Speaker 1: the household becomes like the head of the body, and
21:12
Speaker 1: the whole household now sort of is oriented to protecting
21:17
Speaker 1: the head, protecting the reputation of the head, protecting the
21:21
Speaker 1: lifestyle of the head, doing what the head needs, right,
21:24
Speaker 1: And so you've got this whole sort of structure that's
21:27
Speaker 1: oriented to the man, the head of the household that
21:31
Speaker 1: Paul is saying, no, okay, man's the head but that
21:33
Speaker 1: doesn't mean what you think it means. Right, Christ is
21:37
Speaker 1: the head of the church. Look what he did. He
21:39
Speaker 1: sacrificed himself. He wasn't leading from behind. He was right
21:42
Speaker 1: out in front, willing to sacrifice himself, willing to die
21:47
Speaker 1: to follow God's will, but also to care for his church,
21:52
Speaker 1: care for his people. And that's the way this headship
21:55
Speaker 1: is supposed to be exercised. I say all that to
21:58
Speaker 1: say I think Viper would generally agree with that understanding
22:02
Speaker 1: of that text. Right, That head in that context doesn't
22:06
Speaker 1: mean source, it means something of authority. My problem isn't
22:12
Speaker 1: with that sort of reading of the text. My problem
22:15
Speaker 1: is with everything that's drawn out of that. And so
22:19
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know, I have this text
22:21
Speaker 1: about the sexual encounter. There's another one I'll read here
22:25
Speaker 1: that deals with breadwinning, which is just to me sort
22:29
Speaker 1: of off base as an entailment of what headship is.
22:35
Speaker 1: So let me just read this and we can have
22:37
Speaker 1: a little bit of discussion on this one too. The
22:41
Speaker 1: basic idea he's arguing in this section is that the
22:44
Speaker 1: man is to have this this general sense that it's
22:48
Speaker 1: his job to care for the home, to protect the home, right,
22:55
Speaker 1: and he says, let's say this man has a disabling disease.
23:00
Speaker 1: I'll start from there, and it says, this is quote.
23:03
Speaker 1: His wife may be the main breadwinner in such a circumstance,
23:06
Speaker 1: and she may be the one who must get up
23:09
Speaker 1: at night to investigate a frightening noise in the house.
23:12
Speaker 2: This is not easy for the man.
23:14
Speaker 1: But if he still has the sense of his own
23:17
Speaker 1: benevolent responsibility under God, he will not lose his masculinity.
23:23
Speaker 1: His sense of responsibility will find expression in the ways
23:26
Speaker 1: he conquers self pity and gives moral and spiritual leadership
23:29
Speaker 1: for his family, and takes the initiative to provide them
23:35
Speaker 1: with the bread of life and protect them from the
23:37
Speaker 1: greatest enemies of all, Satan and sin.
23:40
Speaker 2: So there's this sort of.
23:43
Speaker 1: Narrowing of what it means to provide and protect away
23:46
Speaker 1: from the physical and just toward the spiritual. When a
23:51
Speaker 1: man is disabled physically, and then he asks this, someone
23:56
Speaker 1: might ask, so is a woman masculine if she is
23:59
Speaker 1: a single parent and provides these same things for her children.
24:03
Speaker 1: Are these only for men to do? I would answer,
24:06
Speaker 1: A woman is not unduly masculine in performing these duties
24:10
Speaker 1: for her children, if she has the sense that this
24:13
Speaker 1: would be properly done by her husband if she had one,
24:16
Speaker 1: and if she performs them with a uniquely feminine demeanor.
24:21
Speaker 2: End quote.
24:24
Speaker 3: I want to start with this last two words, go
24:27
Speaker 3: for it. What in the world is a feminine demeanor?
24:29
Speaker 3: Right that it's taking for granted the very thing he's
24:34
Speaker 3: trying to argue for here, right, Yeah, it's begging the question.
24:39
Speaker 2: It's very circular.
24:40
Speaker 1: And so you get to this, like I find it interesting,
24:45
Speaker 1: you know, And Okay, let's say from within this sort
24:47
Speaker 1: of perspective where the man is supposed to protect and provide, Okay,
24:54
Speaker 1: you probably do have to make provision for people who
24:56
Speaker 1: can't physically work, can't physically provide protection. But then doesn't
25:02
Speaker 1: that automatically make them less masculine. It would almost have to,
25:09
Speaker 1: like it's not even a it's not even a question.
25:13
Speaker 1: It would almost have to make them less masculine from
25:16
Speaker 1: within this perspective, if that's what they're supposed to be doing,
25:19
Speaker 1: not just providing and protecting spiritually, which by the way,
25:23
Speaker 1: any man could do whether his wife made.
25:26
Speaker 2: More money than him less money than him, Like.
25:28
Speaker 1: If if the woman was the breadwinner, you could still
25:31
Speaker 1: have this exact same dynamic, right, And so the question
25:36
Speaker 1: is if the man has to be the breadwinner, if
25:38
Speaker 1: he's the one who's supposed to protect and provide for
25:40
Speaker 1: the family, and that is his primary responsibility, like once
25:47
Speaker 1: he can't do that anymore, how could he not become
25:51
Speaker 1: less masculine? There's a negative there that I don't think
25:55
Speaker 1: he's really dealing with. Now he does deal with the
25:58
Speaker 1: absence of a man, right, and I agree with you.
26:01
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be have a feminine demeanor
26:04
Speaker 1: or to be unduly masculine?
26:08
Speaker 2: Neither of those terms mean anything.
26:10
Speaker 3: Right, it's taken for granted to content. You get the
26:14
Speaker 3: sense at the beginning of the chapter he's very intentional
26:18
Speaker 3: to make a point that he's he's rejecting cultural understandings
26:27
Speaker 3: of masculinity and femininity.
26:30
Speaker 2: Yes, and he's.
26:30
Speaker 3: Appealing to the Biblical text to try to understand as
26:33
Speaker 3: best as he can what the text says, and that
26:36
Speaker 3: it's important for him to point out that the text
26:39
Speaker 3: that he's appealing to aren't making cultural appeals, but rather
26:44
Speaker 3: appealing to the pattern of creation. Right, at least in
26:49
Speaker 3: this chapter, he doesn't really do the work to show
26:53
Speaker 3: what's going on in those passages. No, but I think
26:57
Speaker 3: it begs another question here. So he's thinking of places
27:01
Speaker 3: like in Firse Corinthians where Paul speaks to the pattern
27:06
Speaker 3: of creation in order to then to make his appeal
27:10
Speaker 3: about husbands and wives. Right right, here's one of the
27:18
Speaker 3: troubles to me. When you look at creation. We have this,
27:24
Speaker 3: I think, very beautiful rendering in chapter two Genesis, Chapter
27:28
Speaker 3: two of the man who is made from the dust
27:34
Speaker 3: of the ground, the very breath of God, the spirit
27:37
Speaker 3: of God has breathed into him in order to make
27:40
Speaker 3: him a living soul, and then he's given to the ground.
27:44
Speaker 3: Right the languages. There aren't certain kinds of plants because
27:46
Speaker 3: there was no people to work the ground. Now he's
27:49
Speaker 3: meant to work the ground. There are these animals, and
27:52
Speaker 3: he's meant to name them, and among other things, to
27:55
Speaker 3: learn in the process that they're not like him. Right
27:58
Speaker 3: beyond mere superficial sorts of things. Of who striped horse
28:02
Speaker 3: over there looks different than me. I'm not striped and
28:04
Speaker 3: I'm not horse like like. There seems to be an
28:06
Speaker 3: intimate understanding of knowledge, and God says it's not good
28:10
Speaker 3: for this man to be alone puts him to sleep,
28:14
Speaker 3: draws the woman from him, and then in that moment
28:17
Speaker 3: we get the one moment of him naming, or at
28:20
Speaker 3: least ostensibly quasi naming, right, bone of my bones, flesh
28:24
Speaker 3: and my flesh. Yep, I shall call her ish in Hebrew,
28:30
Speaker 3: I shall call her eshah. That's right, very very similar
28:33
Speaker 3: to the English man woman. Right. But at no point
28:39
Speaker 3: in any of that narrative does it say, then, and
28:42
Speaker 3: here's what the role of the man is in the garden,
28:44
Speaker 3: and here's what the role of the woman knows in
28:46
Speaker 3: the garden.
28:47
Speaker 2: Right.
28:48
Speaker 3: In fact, it seems so insignificant to the point of
28:50
Speaker 3: that passage as to not even be hinted at.
28:54
Speaker 2: Right.
28:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, we move straight from there to ostensibly we finally
29:02
Speaker 3: have the situation where things are full and complete and
29:06
Speaker 3: rightly ordered, because we now have a man and a
29:08
Speaker 3: woman together.
29:09
Speaker 2: Right.
29:10
Speaker 3: I don't mean complementarianism, but there's a complimentarity that's implied
29:14
Speaker 3: between them, correct, Right, But where does one set make
29:19
Speaker 3: way for the other set of complimentarity? No comment whatsoever. So,
29:24
Speaker 3: now when Paul's picking up these sorts of things, and
29:26
Speaker 3: this will get me to number two. So if one
29:29
Speaker 3: was that the Genesis text doesn't actually say anything. When
29:34
Speaker 3: Paul then makes us appeal, what is he trying to
29:37
Speaker 3: get at? And I would argue that this is sort
29:40
Speaker 3: of an issue of what some would call a social imaginary.
29:48
Speaker 3: What I mean by that is the way that we
29:50
Speaker 3: inhabit the world is shaped by a reality that pre
29:56
Speaker 3: exists us that we then enter into. We've talked about
29:59
Speaker 3: this before, but our kids speak the languages they do
30:03
Speaker 3: with the idioms that they do for the reasons that
30:06
Speaker 3: they do because of where they're born and where they
30:09
Speaker 3: grow up, and that's the saturation around them that helps
30:13
Speaker 3: them see the world that they do.
30:14
Speaker 2: Right.
30:15
Speaker 3: I grew up to immigrant parents, and at times in
30:19
Speaker 3: a very immigrant community, and it was very important to
30:23
Speaker 3: my father, who didn't speak English terribly well initially, that
30:27
Speaker 3: I speak English well. He said, you will always have
30:30
Speaker 3: troubles if you don't, and it was important to him
30:35
Speaker 3: to put me in the settings where I could learn
30:36
Speaker 3: to speak very well. But the thing he could not
30:39
Speaker 3: give to me, and this speaks to the social imaginary,
30:43
Speaker 3: was idiomatic expressions. And to this day, right several decades
30:48
Speaker 3: into my life, I struggle with American idioms and I've
30:54
Speaker 3: been in front of a class and I say it,
30:55
Speaker 3: and the the kids in the class, kids that the
30:58
Speaker 3: people in the class, they'll chuckle at me, and then
31:02
Speaker 3: I realize, oh, I got that one wrong, or I
31:04
Speaker 3: combined one idiom with.
31:05
Speaker 2: Another, right.
31:08
Speaker 3: I remember a friend of both of ours, who I
31:11
Speaker 3: used to be a roommate with. He would he would
31:15
Speaker 3: say an idiom or pronounce a word in a certain
31:18
Speaker 3: kind of way, and like, I don't know what that is,
31:20
Speaker 3: and there was a little chuckling session.
31:22
Speaker 2: Right.
31:24
Speaker 3: My daughter, one of my daughters, she did a unit
31:27
Speaker 3: on idioms in school, and she came home and she
31:30
Speaker 3: was so excited about them, and I was, frankly, I
31:32
Speaker 3: was learning idioms from my grade school daughter. And the
31:37
Speaker 3: idea of social imaginary play here is that I could
31:40
Speaker 3: speak English technically masterfully, I could write it masterfully. But
31:47
Speaker 3: something that couldn't be taught to me in this sort
31:49
Speaker 3: of overt way was the idiomatic usage. And the reason
31:52
Speaker 3: for that is because it comes from embodying a social imaginary.
31:56
Speaker 3: And while I did have part of my social imaginery
31:58
Speaker 3: in American schools, I also had a very large component
32:03
Speaker 3: in my life embodied in a world that didn't know
32:05
Speaker 3: American idioms. And so they weren't commonplace to me, and
32:10
Speaker 3: I didn't know them, right. I say all that to
32:13
Speaker 3: say that that idea of a social imaginary, yes, I
32:17
Speaker 3: think is inescapable, and that's not a bad thing, so
32:22
Speaker 3: provided we understand that that's a thing. And this is
32:25
Speaker 3: where I see some struggle entering into Piper, where Piper
32:30
Speaker 3: is embodying a sort sort of social imaginary that has
32:33
Speaker 3: ideas of masculinity and has ideas of femininity that might
32:36
Speaker 3: have been produced, as we've said in the previous episode,
32:39
Speaker 3: might have been produced for good reason in a certain
32:42
Speaker 3: time and place. But the problem is is that when
32:45
Speaker 3: we take that for granted as itself some sort of
32:48
Speaker 3: universal fact of masculinity and a universal fact of femininity
32:53
Speaker 3: such that it historically is even created issues of violence.
32:57
Speaker 3: Right when the English first came to what we think
33:00
Speaker 3: of as North America today, one of their justifications for
33:05
Speaker 3: their treatment of the First Nation's peoples was, we see
33:10
Speaker 3: these men and women in these First Nations communities not
33:13
Speaker 3: operating the proper social boundaries of masculinity and femininity, right,
33:20
Speaker 3: and as a result, that means that they're barbaric, they're
33:23
Speaker 3: not truly civilized. They don't have They don't even have
33:26
Speaker 3: the right starting place for nature, never mind the ability
33:29
Speaker 3: to perfect that nature. And if they can't have the
33:31
Speaker 3: perfection of that nature because they're starting in a barbaric state,
33:35
Speaker 3: then they can't receive the grace of God in Christ.
33:39
Speaker 3: Now Piper does not say all of that, but it's
33:41
Speaker 3: the same sort of mentality and logic that's at play here.
33:44
Speaker 3: Whatever it was, right, He even starts his chapter again
33:48
Speaker 3: with here's who my dad was, and here's who my
33:51
Speaker 3: mom was. And this was a wonderful and beautiful thing.
33:54
Speaker 3: But it's not hard stop there, it's and this is
33:57
Speaker 3: the way it ought to look for all men in ways. Yeah,
34:01
Speaker 3: And the fact what flows out of that is the
34:03
Speaker 3: rest of the chapter, the fact that it doesn't look
34:04
Speaker 3: that way for all men and women creates and he
34:06
Speaker 3: starts to name social problems that Honestly, I read it
34:11
Speaker 3: and I think, how could you possibly know that those
34:14
Speaker 3: social problems didn't previously exist? How do you know that
34:16
Speaker 3: those social problems are a result of not living into
34:21
Speaker 3: these ideals, these social imaginary ideals of masculinity and femininity
34:25
Speaker 3: that you've brought to the plate. Yeah, you know, I
34:28
Speaker 3: know that idiom baseball brought to the plate, right, And
34:32
Speaker 3: and there's where the struggle comes in for me, kind
34:35
Speaker 3: of at that core level. Yea, That it's not it's
34:40
Speaker 3: not him just simply saying, here's one rendering of the
34:45
Speaker 3: world for one group of people that is attempted to
34:50
Speaker 3: embody in a particular place and time, this complementarity of
34:55
Speaker 3: male and female. It's him saying, this way of doing
34:59
Speaker 3: things is the perfect way of doing things, or as
35:03
Speaker 3: close to perfect as we can get, and any deviation
35:06
Speaker 3: from this creates all manners of evil.
35:09
Speaker 2: Yea.
35:09
Speaker 1: And I will say the portion that you are referencing
35:13
Speaker 1: where he and I'm having trouble finding it here, but
35:15
Speaker 1: where he talks a little bit about the genesis narrative,
35:21
Speaker 1: he draws from the post fall genesis narrative to make
35:26
Speaker 1: these normative statements.
35:29
Speaker 3: So even as he says he's not doing that, by
35:31
Speaker 3: the way.
35:32
Speaker 2: That's right, but he is. I mean, the woman is
35:34
Speaker 2: going to be the one that gives birth.
35:36
Speaker 1: And you're kind of sitting there and scratching your head like, well, duh,
35:39
Speaker 1: that makes perfect Like who else is going to do it?
35:43
Speaker 2: And then you know, because the man is.
35:45
Speaker 3: Donald Schwarzenegger and the movie Junior.
35:47
Speaker 1: That's right, But because the man is punished with you
35:52
Speaker 1: know this idea, because you ate from the tree, now
35:55
Speaker 1: the ground will not yield it's fruit for you.
35:57
Speaker 2: Without this toil and labor.
35:59
Speaker 1: Obviously, now the man is supposed to be the one
36:01
Speaker 1: who goes out and does toil on labor. Well, you
36:03
Speaker 1: could make that assertion, you could assume that the man
36:06
Speaker 1: is going to do toil on labor, but I'm not
36:09
Speaker 1: sure you can jump to say that. Look, the woman's
36:12
Speaker 1: going to bear the children and then raise them, which
36:15
Speaker 1: the text doesn't say, right, right, the one's going to
36:19
Speaker 1: bear the children sure makes good sense. And she's also
36:24
Speaker 1: going to have enmity.
36:25
Speaker 2: Of a serpent.
36:26
Speaker 1: So I guess if you're a man and you're scared
36:28
Speaker 1: of snakes, that's a problem, you know somehow. But well,
36:33
Speaker 1: it's actually not her, it's her seed. So my snark,
36:36
Speaker 1: my sark has have gotten away, and my good thegreating there.
36:39
Speaker 1: But the idea is that when you get down to
36:42
Speaker 1: the man and there's this toil that he's going to experience,
36:45
Speaker 1: it's not exclusive to the man. Necessarily, there has to
36:51
Speaker 1: be a symmetry within the narrative, right and so if
36:53
Speaker 1: you look at the way the narrative is structured, you
36:56
Speaker 1: do tend to see this.
36:58
Speaker 2: The serpent is the first one, can then the woman
37:01
Speaker 2: than the man.
37:02
Speaker 1: Right as you've made We are doing lectures on on
37:06
Speaker 1: Old Testament theology too. You should check those out and
37:08
Speaker 1: we release them. But one of the points you made
37:10
Speaker 1: at one point was it reverses the order of creation, right,
37:15
Speaker 1: so the man, woman, beast. Now you're a beast woman man.
37:19
Speaker 1: But it also mirrors what you just saw in three
37:21
Speaker 1: to one. The serpent was the first actor that we
37:24
Speaker 1: see in that narrative, the woman was the second, the
37:26
Speaker 1: man is the third, And so there's a symmetry to
37:30
Speaker 1: the narrative that I think he misses and then overreads
37:34
Speaker 1: and extends well beyond what's actually there. It's similar to
37:38
Speaker 1: a point that I had Krista mccurlan on for an episode.
37:42
Speaker 1: She was talking about biblical authority, and one of the
37:44
Speaker 1: points she made in talking through One Timothy two is
37:47
Speaker 1: that in saying that when Paul says I do not
37:50
Speaker 1: allow a woman to have authority over a man, for one,
37:53
Speaker 1: that's a very rare use of that term authority.
37:57
Speaker 2: There. Usually authority is ex Usia that one author tain.
38:02
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know why I'm saying that right exactly,
38:05
Speaker 1: but it's a different word than next you see you.
38:08
Speaker 1: But then she said something that I really hadn't thought
38:10
Speaker 1: that much about was in precluding women from having authority
38:15
Speaker 1: and teaching over men, we automatically assume that the men
38:18
Speaker 1: have the authority, which the.
38:20
Speaker 2: Text doesn't say.
38:22
Speaker 1: Right, Paul could easily be addressing a situation where they're
38:26
Speaker 1: domineering women in the congregation and he's saying, no, you,
38:29
Speaker 1: nobody gets the domineer.
38:32
Speaker 2: Nobody gets this authority. This is not the way it works.
38:35
Speaker 1: But we don't tend into account and so it's like,
38:38
Speaker 1: there's all these little pieces that I think he's going
38:41
Speaker 1: beyond texts with that aren't really rooted in biblical text,
38:46
Speaker 1: but he's making it seem like they're rooting in biblical texts,
38:49
Speaker 1: and really where they're rooted is back where you're talking
38:52
Speaker 1: in this sort of social expectations that have been developed
38:55
Speaker 1: within a particular sect and field. And I just don't
38:59
Speaker 1: see that this way of arguing biblical manhood and womanhood
39:05
Speaker 1: is particularly biblical, right, It's not bad sociology. Let's say
39:14
Speaker 1: from a phenomenological perspective. I think he probably gets a
39:18
Speaker 1: certain segment of the population right, and the way they
39:21
Speaker 1: view manhood and womanhood. That's what I mean by its
39:25
Speaker 1: decent enough sociology, but it's not biblical. And I think
39:30
Speaker 1: part of the reason it's not biblical is we'll kind
39:32
Speaker 1: of discuss in another episode, is that I'm not sure
39:36
Speaker 1: you can construct a notion of biblical manhood out of scripture.
39:43
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure you can actually get there. I
39:45
Speaker 1: think there are too many I don't think the Bible
39:49
Speaker 1: is doing that, and I don't think there's a sufficient
39:52
Speaker 1: degree of passages or theologies that will allow us to
39:58
Speaker 1: sort of extract it in the same way that we
40:00
Speaker 1: do with certain other doctrines. So I'll leave it there.
40:07
Speaker 1: We probably should wrap this one up. Maybe I'll give
40:10
Speaker 1: you the last word if you have any.
40:12
Speaker 3: Well, I'd like to clarify unless in case someone misunderstands
40:17
Speaker 3: what you're trying to say that when you say manhood,
40:22
Speaker 3: you're talking about a social expectation or construct, right, And
40:28
Speaker 3: I would agree with you. I don't think the Bible
40:29
Speaker 3: gives you a social construct of this thing called masculinity.
40:34
Speaker 3: A male will act like this will bench this many pounds.
40:38
Speaker 3: Will we'll type this many words per minute, right, and
40:43
Speaker 3: a woman will that the feminine will have this proportionality
40:48
Speaker 3: and type this many like that doesn't exist. Of course,
40:53
Speaker 3: the Bible, on some sort of biological level, speaks of
40:57
Speaker 3: the reality of male and the reality of female and
41:00
Speaker 3: identifies them in ways as different. Yes, but I don't
41:03
Speaker 3: think that that's really truly in doubt in any serious space,
41:08
Speaker 3: even where it might seem like it. I think that
41:10
Speaker 3: the biological reality is not ultimately what's truly in doubt
41:16
Speaker 3: in any space. It's that social formation that you're talking about.
41:20
Speaker 2: That's right.
41:21
Speaker 1: George Will has this great quote, and I'm going to
41:23
Speaker 1: butcher it, but he wrote in the preface to his
41:26
Speaker 1: book The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts, which
41:29
Speaker 1: I love that title. He writes, male and female are
41:34
Speaker 1: biological facts.
41:36
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen are social constructs.
41:40
Speaker 1: They are they embody the wise laws of the civilization
41:44
Speaker 1: that they're in. And then he goes on to say,
41:46
Speaker 1: and that is why statecraft will always be soul craft.
41:50
Speaker 1: And I think it's just a really good distinction. Male
41:53
Speaker 1: and female are biological facts. There's no like, we're not
41:56
Speaker 1: trying to collapse that. But there's this other thread. Ladies
42:02
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, right, those carry a social weight that I'm
42:07
Speaker 1: arguing you wouldn't really find in the Bible, and that
42:11
Speaker 1: I think Piper is having difficulties showing how they would
42:14
Speaker 1: arise from the Bible in this chapter.
42:18
Speaker 2: We're always going to have those.
42:20
Speaker 1: The question is whether we should embrace them as Christians
42:24
Speaker 1: or try to push against them. The question is whether
42:28
Speaker 1: they set up a standard other than Christ that we're
42:30
Speaker 1: called to live up to, or whether we could coincidentally
42:35
Speaker 1: sort of live into some of those as we pursue
42:38
Speaker 1: and formula with Christ. And to me, I think that's
42:41
Speaker 1: a really important distinction for Christians to make. So I
42:47
Speaker 1: don't know whether you agree with that, but yeah, the
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Speaker 1: last word.
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Speaker 3: Oh I gave the last word. I thought, yeah, I know,
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Speaker 3: I'm good. I appreciate the clarity that you're bringing in there.
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Speaker 2: All right, everybody, we'll wrap it up.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna deal with one more scholar who's written on
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Speaker 1: these issues in the next episode, so come on back.
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Speaker 1: We'll take a look at what he has to say
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Speaker 1: and address some of the issues that we're seeing in
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Speaker 1: his text.
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Speaker 2: As well.
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Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed this and hopefully it's helpful and join
43:18
Speaker 1: us next time on Thinking Christian Take Care. I just
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Speaker 1: want to take a second to thank the team at
43:23
Speaker 1: Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking
43:25
Speaker 1: Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll
43:28
Speaker 1: find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network.
43:32
Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.