Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Friday, June 8, 2012

Discussing Christian Mutuality, Adam and Eve, and the Biblical Role Model for Men and Women




Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

by Rachel Held Evans
June 4, 2012


This is the first post in our series, One In Christ: A Week of Mutuality, dedicated to discussing an egalitarian view of gender—including relevant biblical texts and practical applications. The goal is to show how scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all support a posture of equality toward women, one that favors mutuality rather than hierarchy, in the home, Church, and society.

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Perhaps no text has been as revered, debated, discussed, and misunderstood as the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 Regardless of how you interpret these stories, their effect on our culture and our psyche, particularly as they relate to our views of gender, cannot be overstated.

The tradition of appealing to the creation narrative to make universal statements about the nature of man and woman is a longstanding one. Genesis 1 and 2 have been mined and manipulated and used as ammunition in debates about everything from science to gender roles to Christology to epidurals. So while we have to be careful of reading too much into the text, we simply cannot talk about God and gender without addressing the famous story of Adam and Eve.

Male and female, created in the image of God...

“So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”
– Genesis 1:27

In the first creation account—Genesis 1—the author makes a point of noting that, in the beginning, both male and female are created in the image of God. Here we often make the connection that both masculine and feminine aspects of God’s creation must therefore be reflections of God’s character, a point that is echoed throughout Scripture as God is poetically depicted as both Father and Mother, seamstress and warrior, compassionate (from the feminine rehem, for womb) and just.

But to be “created in the image of God” carries significant leadership implications as well. In the ancient Near Eastern world, kings were considered divine image-bearers, appointed representatives of God on earth. Kings would often place images of themselves, usually statues, in distant parts of their kingdoms to remind their subjects of their sovereignty over the land. So for man and woman to be God’s image-bearers in this context, means that God has entrusted both men and women with ruling the world on God’s behalf. “Let us make humankind in our image,” God says, “according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish,...birds, cattle,...all the wild animals...every creeping thing.”

As Daniel Kirk has noted, “The kind of rule God has in mind is not a ‘masculine’ rule, but a masculine plus feminine, male plus female, rule. Only this kind of shared participation in representing God’s reign to the world is capable of doing justice to the God whose image we bear.”

(Additional Resources: “Genesis 1-3” by Allison Young, The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns, Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy edited by Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothius, “Biblical Proofs for the Feminine Face of God in Scripture” by Mike Morrell, “Gender Blind” by Mimi Haddad)

What “helpmeet” really means...

“It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him.”
– Genesis 2:18

In the second Creation account of Genesis, after God formed man from the dust of the earth and placed him in the garden of Eden, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (2:18).

The phrase “helper suitable,” rendered “help meet” in the King James Version, comes from a combination of the words ezer and kenegdo. Far from connoting subjugation, the Hebrew term ezer, or “helper,” is employed elsewhere in Scripture to describe God, the consummate intervener—the helper of the fatherless (Psalm 10:14), King David’s helper and deliverer (Psalm 70:5), Israel’s shield and helper (Deuteronomy 33:29). Ezer appears twenty-one times in the Old Testament—twice in reference to the first woman, three times in reference to nations to whom Israel appealed for military support, and sixteen times in reference to God as the helper of Israel. The word evokes both benevolence and strength, and is a popular name for Jewish boys, both in the Bible and in modern times.

In Genesis 2, ezer is combined with the word kenegdo to mean something like “a helper of the same nature,” or a corresponding character. Kenegdo literally means “as in front of him,” suggesting that the ezer of Genesis 2 is Adam’s perfect match, the yin to his yang, the water to his fire—you get the idea. Everything about this descriptor implies mutuality and harmony, and it provides us with a lovely glimpse of what a sinless relationship between a man and a woman might look like, the picture of a true partnership. This reality is reflected in Adam’s reaction to God’s creation of woman. He responds with “ishshah!” a play on words, which basically means, “Wow, this one is like me!” (Interesting note: The woman of the creation narrative is not called Eve until after the Fall.)

Unfortunately, all the color of its original meaning is lost in many translations of ezer kenegdo. After the King James Version rendered the two words “help meet,” poet John Dryden came along and hyphenated them, describing his wife as his tireless “help-meet.” Over time, the expression bled into “helpmeet,” an independent term applied exclusively to the role of wives to their husbands, and to this day, the myth that Genesis 2 relegates wives to the status of subordinate assistants persists, as is painfully evidenced by (complementarian) Debi Pearl’s book, Created to Be His Help Meet, which has sold more than 200,000 copies since its publication in 2004...(and which I threw across the living room a total of seven times while reading it for research.)

“God didn’t create Adam and Eve at the same time and then tell them to work out some compromise on how they would each achieve their personal goals in a cooperative endeavor,” writes Pearl. “God gave [Eve] to Adam to be his helper, not his partner.” According to Pearl, God set up a “chain of command,” that places women under the direct authority of their husbands. “You are not on the board of directors with an equal vote,” she says. “You have no authority to set the agenda. . . . Start thinking and acting as though your husband is the head of the company and you are his secretary.”

This popular complementarian interpretation of Genesis 2 is based on a poor translation of ezer kenegdo, one that fails massively to capture the spirit of the Hebrew text.

(Additional resources: Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James, Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, editors Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis.)

Hierarchy happens after the Fall...

“Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you. ”
– Genesis 3:16

It is unclear how long our heroic pair revels in this state of divine symmetry, naked and unashamed, before everything falls apart. But at some point a villain appears, promising a better life should they defy the Creator’s single stipulation and eat from the mysterious tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They eat, and immediately feel shame. The man blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent, but God holds all three accountable for the act. As punishment, the serpent must slink through life on its belly in the dirt, and man must toil against stubborn, inhospitable land until his death. To woman belongs pain in childbirth and the grief of being dominated by men.

“Your desire will be for your husband,” God tells the woman “[but] he will rule over you” (v. 16).

With ezer kenegdo properly translated, we see that there are no explicit statements revealing a hierarchal relationship between man and woman until after the event that Christians have come to call “The Fall.” While mankind is clearly assigned dominion over plants and animals, no similar dominion had existed between man and woman. William Webb notes that in ancient Near Eastern literature, including Scripture, “when the blessing/curse formulas assign status, they generally initiate a change in status different from what the person formally held. Applying this finding to Genesis 3:16 would suggest that the woman’s former status was not one of the man ruling over the woman. Before the Fall, they were equals; after the Fall, he rules over her.” So it is within the context of judgment, not creation, that hierarchy and subjugation enter the Bible’s story of man and woman. Where there was once mutuality, there is subjugation. Where there was once harmony, there is a power-struggle.

Regardless of whether one interprets the Genesis account historically or metaphorically, it is clear that the world indeed suffers from the consequences of men dominating women. Worldwide, women ages fifteen to forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined. At least 3 million women and girls are enslaved in the sex trade, and a woman dies in childbirth every minute. This has been going on for a long time, and the writer of the Genesis account calls it for what it is: a tragedy, an example of our collective brokenness and our desperate need for redemption.

The question that Christians have to answer, then, is this: Do we want to be people who perpetuate this brokenness by insisting on the continued subjugation of women, or do we want to be people who, however imperfectly, attempt to model the harmony of Eden and our hope of paradise restored?
I think the answer is pretty clear.


A quick note about Paul and Genesis...

We will be discussing the Apostle Paul’s words about women later in the series, but it’s worth noting here that when first-century rabbis like Jesus and Paul allude to the stories of the Torah, including the creation accounts, they are not participating in “straight exegesis” as we would understand it today. Rather, their creative interpretations of the text are influenced by the hermeneutical conventions of Second Temple Judaism, which allow for quite a bit of “play” with the narrative texts. (Anyone who has spent time studying midrash will know exactly what I’m talking about.)

Thus, in the epistles, we encounter some rather confusing connections between the creation narrative and, for example, why the women of Corinth must cover their heads (1Corinthians 11) and why the women at Ephesus must remain silent in church (1 Timothy 2:9-15).

Much more could be said about this, but it’s important to simply note here that, in the words of Peter Enns, “Paul does not feel bound by the original meaning of the Old Testament passage he is citing, especially as he seeks to make a vital theological point about the gospel.” Paul often uses Adam and Eve as a way of “appropriating an ancient story to address pressing concerns of the moment.” So, in other words, when Paul refers to the creation narratives, he isn’t proof texting. Rather, he is calling upon ancient, inspired, and familiar images to make a connection between the everyday and the holy. This can make interpreting Paul a real challenge for modern readers, (1 Corinthians 11 is a real doozy), but his approach fits right in with the interpretive methods of his day.

(Additional resources: The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns)

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So, what do you think? How have you seen the creation accounts misinterpreted and misapplied when it comes to gender?

What additional observations would you add regarding Genesis 1-3? What questions linger?


 

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