I’ve just finished reading Dan Kimball’s latest, and good, book How (Not) to Read the Bible:Making sense of the anti-women, anti-science, pro-violence, pro-slavery and other crazy sounding parts of Scripture¹. Part 3 is called ‘Boys Club Christianity: Is the Bible anti-women and does it promote misogyny?` All good questions.

The three chapters (7-9) in that section are called ‘The Boys Club Bible’, ‘Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down’ and ‘Making Sense of Inequality in the Bible’ which gives you a reasonable indicator of the problem he sees and how he tries to answer it. Kimball doesn’t address the whole complementarian/egalitarian debate but it’s very clearly (to me) a mutualist (as they like to call it) reading and response. There’s a lot in there that I have no problem with, and would probably answer many of the questions in a similar way.

But.

There was a small section in the opening page of the ‘Making sense of inequality in the Bible’ chapter that raised, some questions. Questions that I think the egalitarian position, has, as far as I’m aware, not yet given very good answers to. Here’s the bit that stuck out to me.

We just walked through the Bible storyline to understand the origins of gender inequality and misogyny and how they developed over time. We saw how one day God will restore the harmony that was lost in the fall and return us to a state like the garden of Eden. What we see in that full Bible storyline is that God didn’t create or endorse misogyny and female oppression. Human beings chose to go against God’s original design, where man and woman were created equal. Human beings twisted God’s original design, and men used their power to establish an unequal hierarchy over women. However, God sought to steer things back to his original design, away from the patriarchal cultures human beings had created. (Bold added)

p.131 How (Not) to read the Bible

I think there are many tellings of the story, egalitarian or otherwise, that would sound very similar to that. But I think it highlights some really key questions. Here are mine:

1. Do you agree with the summary above and if not, why?
2. Is it reasonable to assume that men had this ‘power’ before the fall? In other words they had this power in Genesis 1 which was part of God’s original design but then they began to misuse it from Genesis 3 onward. If so then this power is part of God’s good original design, no?
3. Is it reasonable to assume that this ‘power’ is at the very minimum, their greater physical strength? Are there any other ‘qualities’ that make up this power?
4. If so, for what purpose did God create men to have a ‘power’ that He chose not to give to women in the same way?
5. If men had this power in what way were they to use it in pre-fall conditions? How would this power have been used in a way that honoured God and his ‘original design’?
6. Is it possible for men to use that power today in such a way as to reflect God’s original design? What does that look like? What would you call that?

I’m sure there are more questions to be asked but I think that gets to the heart of it for me. If you know of places where these questions are addressed and written about especially from an egalitarian perspective, please leave me a comment or send me a link, I’d love to read more or revisit how these questions are addressed.

Dr Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford, so it is her academic job to study the development of humanity. Talking about her most recent book, Why we love: the science behind our closest relationships she says,

A lot of women, in particular, find it hard to accept that they are still looking for a protector and a provider. I try to explain that even though they are now capable of being independent, financially independent, they’re still looking for that in the man. These mate-choice rules are evolutionarily incredibly ancient. Whenever we see mate choice in any species, this is what we see. One reason why some women are in a position where they’re financially comfortable, and don’t need a man for that, is because they live in a culture where there’s a certain amount of gender equality. That has come about partly from feminism. But feminism hasn’t touched evolution, partly because it’s very recent. Women have only been able to control their contraception, for example, for about the last 70 years. That’s nothing in evolutionary time. Something as deep-seated as mate choice only changes in human behavior when it’s pretty much universal among the species, and there is not equality in a vast number of countries in the world, so it’s not going to touch it.

https://nautil.us/love-is-biological-bribery-14058/

The uncomfortable truth seems to be that both evolutionary anthropology & Jewish/Christian tellings of human origins come to similar conclusions and that this still has various implications today.

I think God made men and women different and therefore that’s a good thing. This is not something to be struggled against or erased, even if that was possible, which it isn’t. In the end I think the differences are significant and carry significance. So much of who we are, how we are made, how we relate to one another is supposed to reflect and image the relationship of God to his people. We have different roles in this drama, but I believe that Christ and his church is the most beautiful relationship, and that’s the one I want my marriage relationship to reflect and point to. But I also think our differences, good as they are work themselves out in wider community and beyond the family and that when we figure that out in healthy ways it really is a good place for everyone.

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