Category: E2 – Family

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #038 posted March 27, 2017, edited March 9, 2021.

I wrote this essay many years ago. Its first draft was produced for myself, because I wanted a summary, but still comprehensive expression of the biblical view of this topic. In it I relied heavily on Meredith Kline’s view of the covenant and Ray Sutton’s Second Chance,[1] which is simply the best book on the topic which I have found. Its second draft was produced as my contribution to a discussion of the topic by a ministry committee which had been given the task of formulating a policy on the topic. The latter appears below with minor amendments.

COVENANT

A Biblical covenant has five parts: (1) Transcendence. God is the Sovereign Creator, and so He is the originator of all covenants. (2) Hierarchy. God establishes authorities over us in our covenants with him. (3) Ethics. God demands faithfulness, teaching a cause and effect relationship between a person’s obedience to Him and what happens in this person’s life. (4) Sanctions. The covenant is entered by receiving and making promises under the penalty of death for breaking these promises. (5) Continuity. Faithfulness to the covenant is rewarded with bequeathal and inheritance – i.e. the passing of property from one generation to the next.

The nature of a covenant can be seen in the first covenant – sometimes called the Edenic covenant. As God spoke each aspect of the world into existence, he called it good. God created light or energy and then called it good (Genesis 1:4).  God created the dry land and then called it good (Genesis 1:10).  God created the flora and then called it good (Genesis 1:12).  God created the sun, moon, and stars and then called them good (Genesis 1:18).  God created the fish and the fowl and then called them good (Genesis 1:21).  God created the animals and then called them good (Genesis 1:25). Finally God created Adam and Eve, gave them responsibility for having children and for subduing and cultivating the earth, and then called everything he had made very good (Genesis 1:31).  In each case, there is a creative act and then a judgment by God giving that act a status.  God also issued a prohibition against eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and established the sanction for doing so – death (Genesis 2:17). When Adam ate the fruit, he broke the Edenic covenant. According to God’s judgment, which he had expressed prior to Adam’s disobedience, Adam was now covenantally dead – not physically dead, for the corruption that entered the world at that moment took years to kill him. Note that God communicated the prohibition and the sanction to Adam, and Adam’s disobedience, not  Eve’s, constituted the fall – “…by one man’s offence death reigned….by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation….by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners…” (KJV Romans 5:17-19).

A covenant is terminated or killed by any offense for which the biblical penalty is death. These offenses can be grouped according to the commandments they break:  Idolatry (Deuteronomy 13:10) and blasphemy (Leviticus 24:11-23) break the first and second commandments.  Witchcraft (Deuteronomy 18:10,11) and false prophesy (Deuteronomy 18:20-22) break the third commandment. Sabbath-breaking (Exodus 31:13-17), including preventing a spouse from worshipping God, breaks the fourth commandment.  Incorrigibility toward parents (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) breaks the fifth commandment. Murder (Genesis 9:6), including abortion or infant sacrifice (Leviticus 20:2), physical abuse, physical or sexual desertion, and the stubborn failure of a father to provide for his family, breaks the sixth commandment.  The sexual sins of adultery (Leviticus 20:10), incest (Leviticus 18:11), rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22, 29), and bestiality (Leviticus 18:23) break the seventh commandment.  Kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) breaks the eighth commandment.  Life-threatening perjury (Leviticus 19:19-20) and contempt of court (Deuteronomy 17:8-12) break the ninth commandment.  The breaking of the tenth commandment, of course, can lead to all of the above offenses.

Covenantal death may involve physical death, but not necessarily. The nature of covenantal death can be seen in what happened in the Garden. God said to Adam,  “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (KJV Genesis 2:16-17). Adam and Eve ate of the tree. On that day, they died covenantally – “…as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (KJV Romans 5:12).

MARRIAGE

The covenant is the key to understanding marriage.  Paul describes marriage in terms of the New Covenant between God and His church..  Paul says, “…Christ is the head of the church…..as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it..” (KJV Ephesians 5:22-25).

God even identifies marriage as a covenant.  “…the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth,…she [is] thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant” (KJV Malachi 2:14).

God created the first marital covenant, and it is the model for all subsequent marital covenants.  After creating Adam, the first man, “…the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him….And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;  And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh ‘ (KJV Gen 2:18-24).  Note the following: God declared that Adam’s being alone was not good. This statement established several things: Adam needed a “help meet,” Adam’s having a “help meet” would be good, and God intended Eve to be a “help meet” to Adam. God then created Eve for Adam – this order and purpose of Eve’s creation was later stressed by Paul, who wrote, “…the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1 Corinthians 11:8-9). At this point, the family consisted of God-the-Father, Adam the first-born son, and Eve the daughter. Adam and Eve were brother and sister.  Then the Father gave his daughter to his son to be his son’s wife. Adam, in accepting Eve as his wife, spoke to her Father, not to Eve. He declared his familial independence from his Father, and he acknowledged his responsibility for treating Eve as his own body (loving her, providing for her, and protecting her) and keeping the union together.  Eve said nothing.  Thus there are three key players in the marital covenant: God the creator, the bride’s father, and the groom.

God creates each individual marriage. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6).

God presents the relationship between himself and his people as the model for the proper relationship between husband and wife.  Paul wrote, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.  Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.  So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.  For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church” (KJV Ephesians 5:22-29). Likewise Peter wrote, “…ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing”  (KJV 1 Peter 3:1-9).  Thus husbands are admonished to treat their wives as the Lord treats His church, as their own bodies, loving them, providing for them, and protecting them, and wives are admonished to honor and submit to their husbands as unto the Lord.

God expects the husband to be a covering for his wife.  God gives a husband/father both authority over the women in his household and responsible for their protection. The operation of this principle can be seen in God’s view of vows. God views a man’s vow in the following terms: “If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth” (KJV Numbers 30:2).  God views a woman’s vows very differently, however. When she is young and unmarried, she lives under the covering of her father. “If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father’s house in her youth; And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand. But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the LORD shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her” (KJV Numbers 30:3-5).  When she is older and married, however, she lives under the covering of her husband.  “And if she had at all an husband, when she vowed, or uttered ought out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul; And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the day that he heard it: then her vows shall stand, and her bonds wherewith she bound her soul shall stand. But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none effect: and the LORD shall forgive her” (KJV Numbers 30:6-8).  Thus a man has a duty, not only to fulfill his own vows, but also to protect his wife and daughters from foolish vows or commitments that they make on their own.  So that there can be no misunderstanding regarding the source of these determinations, Numbers 30 ends with this verse: “These are the statutes, which the LORD commanded Moses, between a man and his wife, between the father and his daughter, being yet in her youth in her father’s house” (KJV Numbers 30:16).

God commands believers to marry other believers. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?  And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (KJV 2 Corinthians 6:14-16).

DIVORCE

The covenant is the key to understanding divorce. When the God-to-man covenant is violated, God begins a process called a covenantal lawsuit. He sends His messengers or witnesses of the covenant to prosecute the offending party. If the guilty party does not repent, then He divorces the offender. As in the case of the Laodicean church, Jesus says to them that He is the witness bringing a lawsuit and He will dissolve His covenant with them if they do not repent: “And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (KJV Revelation 3:14-16).  The Laodicean church must not have repented, for it died.

 God specifies the only basis for dissolving a marriage: uncleanness or fornication by husband or wife. Moses said, “When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house” (KJV Deuteronomy 24:1). Here, the wife’s uncleanness broke the covenant., and the husband may proceed to divorce her. Jesus said, “…I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery” (KJV Matthew 5:32). Here, in the absence of the wife’s fornication, the covenant remains unbroken, and any attempt by the husband to divorce her is invalid.

Uncleanness and fornication are general terms that refer to capital offenses – i.e. offenses for which the penalty is death. Although uncleanness and fornication connate sexual licentiousness of various sorts, they are also used to cover abhorrent behavior in general, such as murmuring against God (Numbers 14:33), arrogance (Jeremiah 2:20), idolatry (Jeremiah 3:9; Hosea 5:4, 9:1), and witchcraft (2 Kings 9:22). Thus they must be understood in Deuteronomy 24:1 and Matthew 5:32 to refer to the capital offenses of the Bible.

 Capital offenses kill the marriage covenant.  Any offense for which the biblical penalty is death terminates the marriage covenant, whether or not the death-penalty is actually applied. Where the death-penalty is properly applied, physical death results, and divorce is unnecessary. Where the death-penalty is not properly applied, however, divorce is permissible as a means of freeing the innocent party from being yoked to wickedness.

If a person becomes a believer after marrying an unbelieving spouse, he may not divorce his spouse if the spouse chooses to stay in the marriage. If the spouse chooses to depart, however, then the believer is free to divorce the first spouse and marry another.  “…to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife? But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk…” (KJV 1 Corinthians 7:12-17).

RESTORATION

If a believer’s spouse commits a capital offense, he is probably obliged to try to restore the spouse before resorting to divorce.  God has restored believers through the work of his son. “…if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation…” (KJV 2 Corinthians 5:17-18). Believers must be restorers too. “…he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (KJV James 5:20).

REMARRIAGE

General

If a believer was divorced from a first spouse, and neither spouse married another, he may remarry the first spouse.

If a believer was divorced from a first spouse, and one of the two married another and then was freed from the other by death or divorce, he may not remarry the first spouse.  “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, when she has departed from his house, and goes and becomes another man’s wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD,…” (NKJ Deuteronomy 24:1-4).

Remarriage for the Innocent

If a believer was divorced from a first spouse over a capital offense committed by the spouse, the divorce was valid, and he may marry another.  The marriage covenant was killed by the capital offense committed by the guilty spouse.  In God sight, the guilty spouse is now dead, and the innocent spouse is now a widow or a widower.  Widows and widowers are free to remarry. Indeed, Paul encouraged at least the young widows to remarry. “…I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully” (NKJ 1 Tim 5:14).

If a believer was divorced from a first spouse over anything other than a capital offense, however, the divorce was invalid, and he may not marry another unless the first spouse died or married another.  The marriage covenant has not been killed. The spouses may be separated, but they are still married in God’s sight.

Remarriage for the Guilty

 If a person was divorced from a first spouse over a capital offense committed by him before becoming a believer, he may marry another after becoming a believer.  At conversion, a person dies in his or her old, sinful nature and is born in a new nature, wholly forgiven of all previous transgressions.  “…if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (KJV 2 Corinthians 5:17).

If a person was divorced from a first spouse over a capital offense committed by him after becoming a believer, however, he may marry another only if he repents of his offense, makes restitution to his former spouse, and there are no lasting consequences that would be destructive to the second spouse.  Such lasting consequences would be his carrying a fatal, incurable, sexually transmitted disease or alimony payments to his first wife that would prevent him from supporting a new family.

© 2016 John Holbrook Jr.

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[1] Sutton, Ray, Second Chance – Biblical Principles of Divorce and Remarriage, Dominion Press, Fort Worth, TX, 1988.

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #037 posted March 20, 2017, edited March 9, 2021.

Since femininity is a somewhat ephemeral term, I should start by defining what I mean by it. It is a blend of ingredients like comeliness, compassion, delicacy, dignity, generosity, gentleness, girlishness, grace, humility, modesty, mystery, poise, reticence, sensitivity, and strength of character. I know it when I see it. I know when I don’t see it. I didn’t see much of it on January 21, 2017.

Like many Americans on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the U.S.A., I turned on the TV to observe millions of women marching in cities and towns across the country to preserve women’s rights, which they felt were somehow imperiled by the failure of Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election.[1] As I watched, I noted that the crowds in these demonstrations consisted mostly of middle and upper class women – certainly the most privileged group of women in the history of planet Earth. Wearing hats, coats, slacks, and boots to protect themselves from inclement weather and standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, they watched, listened to, and applauded prominent women in the movement accusing, blathering, complaining, cursing, defaming, insulting, and screaming,[2] all the while gesticulating to drive home their points. I was appalled by the incivility and ugliness on display and I realized that I was witnessing the death throes of femininity in America.

I suddenly remembered a  rather wonderful, contrasting event that occurred over 80 years earlier – in an era in which femininity still flourished (although disturbing signs had already appeared on the horizon). The person involved was Miss Catherine Wood (1914-1983), a twenty year old young woman in her junior year at Agnes Scott College. The occasion was a prohibition rally in a little town near Atlanta, Georgia.  The rally featured three speakers: Miss Wood, a young man from Emory College, and the Rev. Dr. Peter Marshall (1902-1949), a local minister of Scottish descent who was becoming known for the quality of his preaching, whom Catherine would marry in 1936, not long after her graduation from college, and who would eventually become the famous Pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. and Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. The audience at the rally consisted mostly of local farming families, but also included some young men and women in their late teens and early twenties.

In her 1951 book, A Man Called Peter,[3] Mrs. Catherine Wood Marshall referred to the rally, but she omitted the text of the speech which she delivered that day. She probably gave it extemporaneously and never wrote it down. In the 1955 movie, “A Man Called Peter,” however, which starred Richard Todd as the Rev. Dr. Marshall and Jean Peters as Miss Wood, the prohibition rally is portrayed in some detail. What follows is the text of the speech which Miss Peters delivered at the rally. Since Mrs. Marshall was a consultant to the producers and director of the movie, it probably gives a reasonably accurate indication of the tenor of her remarks. Here is what she said.

<As she climbed onto the back of a truck, clothed in a modest, but pretty dress, she was greeted with whistles and cat-calls from the boys>

 If that’s because I’m a girl, thank you boys.

 And now, if you’ll let me, I’d like to talk, as a girl, to the girls here this afternoon. I know, if you boys will listen, they’ll listen too. And I’m just as sure that the only reason they’ve been just as rude and silly as you’ve been is because they have the mistaken idea that you wanted them to be.

 I never thought much about being a girl until two years ago, when I learned from a man [4] what a wonderful thing it is to be a woman. Until that Sunday morning, I considered myself lucky to be living in the twentieth century, the century of progress and emancipation, the century when supposedly we women came into our own. But I’d forgotten that the emancipation of woman really began with Christianity, when a girl, a very young girl, received the greatest honor in history. She was chosen to be the mother of the Savior of the world. And when her son grew up and began to teach His way of life, He ushered woman into a new place in human relations. He accorded her a dignity she’d never known before and crowned her with such glory that down through the ages she was revered, protected, and loved. Men wanted to think of her as different from themselves – better, made of finer, more delicate clay.

 It remained for the twentieth century, the century of progress, to pull her down from her throne. She wanted equality. For nineteen hundred years, she had not been equal. She had been superior. To stand equal with men, naturally she had to step down. Now, being equal with men, she has won all their rights and privileges: the right to get drunk; the right to swear; the right to smoke; the right to work like a man, to think like a man, to act like a man. We won all this, but how can we feel so triumphant when men no longer feel as romantic about us as they did about our grandmothers, when we’ve lost something sweet and mysterious, something as hard to describe as the haunting, wistful fragrance of violets.

 Of course, these aren’t my original thoughts. They’re the thoughts I heard that Sunday morning, but from them some thoughts of my own were born, and the conclusion [I] reached [is] that somewhere along the line we women got off the track.

Poets have become immortal by remembering on paper a girl’s smile, but I’ve never read a poem rhapsodizing over a girl’s giggles at a smutty joke, or I’ve never heard a man brag that his sweetheart or his wife could drink just as much as he and become just as intoxicated. I’ve never heard a man say that a girl’s mouth was prettier with a cigarette hanging out of it, or that her hair smelled divinely of stale tobacco.

<Here she was interrupted by applause and cheers>

I’m afraid that’s all I have to say. I’ve never made a speech before.

<As she stepped off the back of the truck, she was saluted by more applause and cheers>

Now back to January 21, 2017. I pray that the women who either participated in the marches or wish they had done so will pause and (a) think carefully about the cause that they are espousing, (b) look carefully at the champions of that cause, and (c) consider whether the success of the current women’s movement will enhance or degrade the quality of life for themselves, their families, and American society.

The cause

Exactly what are the rights for which so many women are now clamoring? The “right to dress as I please” sounds innocuous enough. Does it or should it include the right to dress immodestly without being blamed for the unwelcome response which such attire invites and inevitably produces? The “right to choose” also sounds innocuous. Does it or should it include the right to engage in sexual behavior with any man, woman, or child whom you choose? Does it or should it include the right to kill the child in your womb [5] without the interference of your parents or the child’s father – let alone the state – all of whom bear responsibility for protecting you and your progeny? The “right to child care” may sound reasonable. Does it or should it include the right to receive government (read taxpayer) subsidies with which to pay other women to perform maternal tasks for you while you pursue a career? The “right to equal employment and pay” sounds reasonable. Does it or should it include equal pay and promotion even if your family responsibilities prevent you from expending as much time and effort on your work as your peers. Does it or should it include the right to obtain any job that a man can do, even if your lack of fitness for it puts the men around you at risk? [6]

The champions

Exactly who are the champions of the current women’s movement? They strike me as a group of very unhappy women who want other women to share their misery and negative outlook on life. I feel sorry for them, but I want to ask the women in their audience, “Are they really the kind of women you want to follow?” I am struck by the contrast between them and Mrs. Catherine Wood Marshall. They have abandoned their femininity and speak about masculine men as their enemy. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Marshall devoted the remainder of her life to urging other women to revel in their gender and enjoy its prerogatives, to cultivate femininity in themselves and their daughters, and to encourage masculinity in their husbands and sons. She did so while exhibiting genuine femininity.

Success

Exactly what would the success of the so-called women’s movement look like? Might it be a world of manly women and womanly men? Might it be a world in which men and women compete in every arena of life – i.e. in the home, in the church, in government, in the military, in the work place, on the athletic field, etc. That is a far cry from the relationship between men and women which their Creator intended for them.  He designed them to complement one another in body, mind, and spirit and also to delight in one another. As the French say, “Vive la difference!” Calling for the opposite is not only destructive, but also an extreme form of rebellion against God and his design for Universe.

Relevant here is the biblical view of success. The word “success” appears only once in the Bible, where the Lord admonishes Joshua: “This Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” [7] True success has absolutely nothing to do with making a lot of money, giving a lot of money away, exercising a lot of power and influence, accumulating a lot of friends or  possessions, achieving a lot in some field of the arts and sciences, or receiving a lot of public recognition for the foregoing. It has everything to do with living a quiet life that honors God and his commandments, utilizes the unique gifts which God has given to one, pours out one’s love and assistance to others less fortunate than oneself, and spreads the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has made the sole mediator between himself and mankind.[8]

In conclusion, I pray that American Femininity’s tombstone does not bear the message “Died on January 21, 2017. May she R.I.P.” Rather I hope that she rises to flourish again – and for as long as America endures.

© 2017 John Holbrook Jr.

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[1] Lest the reader believes that, by winning the popular vote, Mrs. Clinton was owed the election, I urge him or her to do some research. The founders of the U.S.A. despised pure democracy (rightly, I think) and established a constitutional republic. They wanted to ensure that a few populous states would not have the ability to elect the president on their own, thereby essentially disenfranchising the less populous states. Hence the founders created the electoral college, in which the electoral power of the most populous states is significantly reduced.

[2] Much of this haranguing easily fell in the category of hate-speech.

[3] Marshall, Catherine Wood, A Man Called Peter – The Story of Peter Marshall, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York NY, 1951.

[4] The man, of course, was the Rev. Dr. Marshall, who throughout his life gave many eloquent sermons on the profound differences between men and women and the nature of a healthy, God-centered marriage.

[5] God’s Word identifies children as blessings and as his gifts – e.g. “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward” (Psalm 127:3). Imagine his distress and anger over their intentional destruction.

[6] I use plain language here to reveal the reality that is concealed by euphemisms like the “right to dress as I please,” the “right to choose,” the “right to use my body as I like,” the “right to equal employment and pay,” the “right to child care,” etc.

[7] KJ21 Joshua 1:8.

[8] 1 Timothy 2:5.

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #023 posted December 19, 2016, edited March 9, 2021.

 Last week, I wrote about what happened to Ana Rosa Rodriquez in 1991 and wondered what had happened to her since then. This week I wonder how many people know the social consequences for a nation which touts contraception and abortion, where women put their careers before their family, practice contraception, and abort their babies when they regard the latter as inconvenient. These consequences are worth thinking about.

God’s Plan

God has designed mankind in such a way that producing a child requires both a man and a woman. Moreover God has endowed each man and each woman with a strong sexual interest in members of the opposite sex to ensure that men and women will reproduce and thereby populate the earth. Because sexual desire is a bit like fire, however, it needs to be controlled. God has established two institutions to contain it: first, marriage, with its public rite, to bind a man and a woman together in a covenantal relationship for life and second, the family, with its different and complementary roles, to ensure a loving, harmonious, and secure social unit. The husband protects and provides for his wife and children. The wife helps her husband and nurtures their children. The children inherit many of their parents’ traits, learn from their parents, support their parents in their old age, and inherit their parents’ estates after they die. In addition, if each individual family contains several children, over three or four generations the size and extent of the common family grows into a multigenerational network of great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, great-uncles and great-aunts, uncles and aunts, first and second cousins, etc. who know, love, and care for one another in a myriad of ways.

What disrupts God’s Plan?

What disrupts the above plan? Among others are the following:

First, sexual relations outside marriage.

Second, using contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. Doing so severely limits the number of children per family.

Third, pregnancies outside marriage. In a previous era, a pregnancy would propel a couple into marriage. Today, however, the father often ducks his duties and responsibilities and abandons the mother to face three choices: abortion, single motherhood, or adoption.

Fourth, abortion. It has killed almost 60 million babies in the US since 1973 and more than 1.4 billion babies worldwide since 1980 – statistics hardly pleasing to God, who is the giver of life.

Fifth, single-motherhood. It condemns children to a fatherless childhood in a home where the mother usually struggles to survive.

Sixth, homosexuality. It is a barren activity, removing people from the possibility of becoming parents. Various attempts are made to circumvent this problem. Both male and female couples adopt children or use surrogates to produce children for them. Both methods condemn children to either a fatherless or a motherless childhood without experiencing a normal family.

In addition to thwarting God’s intentions for them, all of the above disruptions encourage men and women to focus on satisfying their own ambitions and desires, not on fulfilling their God-given roles in the scheme of creation.

The Results

What then are the consequences of these departures from God’s plan? Among others are the following:

 Men without manhood – Before the era of contraception and abortion, nothing propelled a young man from boyhood to manhood quicker than marriage, in which he had to undertake the duties and responsibilities of protecting and providing for his wife and the children who started arriving soon thereafter. Now, absent the incentive to marry in order to obtain ready access to sexual relations, young men remain boys for years. They lead self-centered and frivolous lives, focused on attending sporting events, watching them at sports bars, going on canoeing and fishing trips with their buddies, and often living at home, where their indulgent mothers provide them with meals, laundry service, etc.[1]

Women without womanhood – Before the era of contraception and abortion, young women looked forward to marrying, home-making, and child-rearing. With the help of their mothers, they prepared for it. Now, absent young men’s interest in marriage and the drumbeat of feminism, they lead self-centered, competitive, and often barren lives in the workplace, which accustoms them to putting the demands of their careers before the needs of their current or future families.

Children born well after their mothers’ prime child-bearing years. In previous years, women bore most of their children before they reached age 30. Now they bear most of their children after the age of 30. That people, including children, today are beset by a bewildering array of previously rare illnesses is becoming increasingly obvious – e.g. allergic reactions to dust, eggs, hay, milk, nuts, pets, pollen, wheat, etc.; autoimmune diseases like coeliac disease, diabetes type 1, lupus, multiple sclerosis (MS), myositis, etc.; digestive troubles like Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, etc.; mental health problems like attention deficit disorder (ADD), autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, (OCD), Tourette’s syndrome, etc.; obesity; etc. These conditions are being called “21^st century illnesses” and are ascribed to many causes. I have yet, however, to see the lateness of their mother’s age at birth identified as possibly one of them. Is not that lateness worth considering? (Another factor here may be what years on “the pill” do to a woman and later to her children.)

Children without homes – Before the era of contraception and abortion, children grew up in houses filled with the almost full-time presence of their mothers, brothers, and sisters. These houses were called “homes” and they were the crucibles of development and socialization, where young people learned how to live, play, and work in a rough and tumble environment, among others with different ages, different genders, and different personalities, each with his or her own abilities, aspirations, desires, needs, strengths, and weaknesses. Now such family life is impoverished in many ways. With wives/mothers working, husbands assume household duties that distract them from their main job – protecting and providing for their families. Working wives/mothers are torn between the conflicting demands of career and family. They try to ameliorate the situation by having few children – usually two, often one, sometimes none. Children often return from school to empty houses, in which TV sets and electronic devices are the only sources of companionship and entertainment. Soon bored, they seek out their peers on the streets, where they often get into trouble.

Families without both parents – Before the era of contraception and abortion, single parent households were relatively rare – usually due to workplace disasters in the case of men, birthing complications in the case of women, and lethal diseases. Now single parent households are ubiquitous, and the percentage of them is growing at an alarming rate.

A missing husband/father – Without a husband, a woman often falls into a series of temporary relationships which lack commitment on the part of both parties – a poor example for any children in the house. More often than not, single-motherhood results in both poverty and troubled children. Without fathers to discipline and mentor them, boys seek out the company of their peers and follow the downward trajectory of rebellion, hooliganism, crime, prison, and often death. Without fathers to love and protect them, girls grow up unable to discern between immature, unreliable boys and mature, reliable men and follow the downward trajectory of careless liaisons, pregnancies, and abortions or single-motherhood. The life of a family without a husband/father is usually somewhat desperate.

A missing wife/mother – Wife/mothers’ abandoning their families is on the rise. Many young women are unprepared for the sacrifices necessary to help a husband, make a home, and rear children. They bolt, leaving the husband to figure out how to protect and provide for his family, maintain a home, and rear his children without a woman’s touch. Without a mother, boys grow up unable to discern what kind of a wife and mother a potential mate might make. Without a mother, girls grow up without models or mentors – let alone the mother-daughter intimacies that best come from their own flesh and blood.

Families without relatives – Before the era of contraception and abortion, large families and even clans were common. Each member knew dozens of people to whom he was tied by blood and on whom he could rely for companionship, mentorship, support, etc. Now, with each relative having only one or two children, the extended family has shrunk markedly. How many people now attend family gatherings on Thanksgiving or Christmas where 20-30 family members show up?

Nations without people – Before the era of contraception and abortion, nations could count on their populations growing – of course absent wars, epidemics, or natural catastrophes. Now, with couples deciding on two, one, or no children (an average of 2.2 children per couple is required to maintain a stable population), many nations find themselves in an abrupt decline in population.

Nations without workers – The first consequence of a decline in population is a reduction in the number of workers. Fewer people are entering the workforce, but more people are leaving the workforce as the population ages and the oldest retire. This hits the more socialistic nations the hardest. Basing their projections on a ratio of 7-8 worker to 1-2 pensioners, they granted generous social security benefits to their citizens in the expectation of rising productivity and tax revenues. Now, with that ratio dropping inexorably toward 1 to 1, many nations find themselves on the road to bankruptcy. The problem is particularly acute in nations which provide other social benefits like small business loans, free health care, low-income subsidies, unemployment compensation, retraining scholarships, single-mother support, disability pensions, old age homes, etc. For such nations, bankruptcy is approaching at the rate of a speeding express train.

Nations without a future – The ultimate consequence of a decline in population is such a severe loss in numbers that those who remain lose the ability and even the inclination to protect themselves from foreign invasion and occupation. As nations, they lose the will to live.

What is the lesson in all of the above? For me, it is, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (KJ21 Galatians 6:7). If we refuse to do things God’s way and insist on doing things our own way, we will pay a heavy price.

Not wanting to end on a negative note, I refer to what God said to ancient Israel when it had strayed from honoring him and obeying his commandments: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (KJV 2 Chronicles 7:14). God intended Israel to be a light and an example to the Gentile nations. I believe that he will treat the USA today in the same way that he treated ancient Israel. Christians, let us hurry to repent of our individual and collective sins and call upon the Holy One to show us mercy.

© 2016 John Holbrook Jr.

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[1] I am grateful to my mother for not indulging me. A week following my graduation from college, she informed me that I had three months to get out of the house and start making my own way in the world. I used those months to prepare myself for the rigors of boot camp in the US Marine Corps.

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #022 posted December 12, 2016, edited March 9, 2021.

In late August, my wife and I were eating lunch at an outdoor café on 91^st Street, just west of Madison Avenue in NYC. A car pulled up to the curb in front of us, and two children clambered out of it: a young girl and a slightly younger boy. They started horsing around and laughing as brother and sister do. The girl was missing her left arm, and I immediately thought of Ana Rosa Rodriguez. I pray for her occasionally and wonder what happened to her.

                                              JOHN HOLBROOK JR.                                               [Address & Telephone]

November 27, 1991

The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY

Dear Sir:

Few recent events have illuminated the corruption of our moral sense more clearly than the attempted murder of Ana Rosa Rodriguez.

The facts: Ana’s mother, Rosa Rodriguez, went to Dr. Abu Hayat for an abortion. Dr. Hayat proved to be incompetent. He amputated Ana’s arm, not her head, and thus Ana was born the next day – maimed, but otherwise healthy.

The response: The State Office of Professional Medical Conduct (New York Times) suspended Dr. Hayat’s license, saying: “[His practice] constitutes an imminent danger to the health of the people of this state” (New York Post). Ms. Rodriguez commented: “I’m happy they removed his license and he’ll no longer be able to practice and won’t be able to do damage to any more women” (New York Post); “If it was left in my hands, I’d rather he go to jail for the rest of his life” (New York Newsday).

The above responses focus on Dr. Hayat’s incompetence. If he had been competent and killed Ana properly, this matter would never have arisen. Both to the state and to Ms. Rodriguez (Dr. Hayat’s accomplice), Dr. Hayat’s sin was incompetence, not attempted murder. They are upset that he failed to maintain the standards of the abortion industry, which successfully dispatches over 4,000 babies each day in the United States – scalding them with saline solution, ripping them apart with suction tubes, crushing them with forceps, and slicing them up with scalpels. Dr. Hayat has become a pariah because he failed to kill, not because he is a killer.

We have slid so far down the slippery slope that now we license and reward the successful killers and penalize the unsuccessful ones.

Since Roe vs. Wade, approximately 30 million children have been put to death in the United States. For how long do we think God will allow this carnage to continue? Do we think that this slaughter of the innocents will not be paid for? Do we really?

Sincerely yours,
/s/ John Holbrook Jr.

The New York Times did not publish my letter.

 © 2016 John Holbrook Jr.

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #013 posted October 10, 2016, edited March 9, 2021.

Although the Bible indicates that a man is responsible to God for providing for, protecting, and leading his family, he cannot do so without the cooperation and help of his wife. Here the dynamics in a military unit can help elucidate the problem.

In the US Army and the US Marines, there often arises the situation in which a second lieutenant fresh out of officer training school is assigned to be the commander of an infantry platoon of roughly 45 men. One of them is the platoon sergeant – usually a staff sergeant or possibly a gunnery sergeant – his second in command, who possesses years of experience. For at least a while, the subordinate is the more capable leader, but his job is not to lead the platoon, but to help the lieutenant learn his job and lead the platoon capably. If the sergeant does try to lead the platoon, three things will happen: the platoon will function poorly, he will lose the respect of his subordinates (he is providing them with a lesson in insubordination), and the lieutenant will never learn to lead the platoon. If the platoon sergeant does his job properly, however, he will receive the respect of both his men and his boss – any lieutenant who does not recognize and value the critical contribution of a sergeant who does his job properly will not last very long.

The role which God has assigned to the wife in a marriage is similar to the role which the Army or Marines assigns to the platoon sergeant. Her job is not to lead the family, but to help her husband learn his job and lead the family capably. If she does try to lead the family, three things will happen: the family will function poorly, her husband will lose the respect of his children (she is providing them with a lesson in insubordination), and the husband will never learn to lead the family. If the wife does her job properly, however, she will receive the love and respect of both her children and her husband – any husband who does not recognize and value the critical role of a wife who does her job properly will not stay married very long.

Unlike the military situation, in which officers receive more status, pay, perks, and recognition, the wife in a godly household will be treated as her husband’s equal and will be highly honored by him, their children, and others who recognize her contributions.

See the appendix below for a very interesting and insightful discussion of this issue by Sheldon Vanauken.

© 2016 John Holbrook Jr.
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APPENDIX

EXCERPTS FROM UNDER THE MERCY^[1]
by Sheldon Vanauken

Pages 178-179.

I do not, I must hasten to say, reject all of feminism. Women should certainly receive equal pay for equal work – and equal commitment. Moreover, I distinguish between women who merely want fair play and the feminist organizations and leaders who are far more extreme. The essential feminist argument that I reject is that equality means identicalness, like two ten-penny nails. The essential position I maintain is that equality means equal in value, equal in importance. Not like two identical nails but like a nut and a bolt that are of absolutely equal importance in holding something together but are different and complementary.

Those who deny the deep and innate difference of men and women (apart from the trifling differences important only in the bedroom) are the “Neuterists’ of the title – the Unisexists. They go against the deep wisdom of all races and all history. They also go against the Bible.

One of their arguments is that the people of past ages, including Jesus and St. Paul, were conditioned by the culture of their times. Leaving apart the fact that Jesus, Son of God, did perfectly the will of the Father in eternity (not culture-conditioned), the feminists neglect one point: that they themselves are totally surrendered  to late twentieth-century ‘culture’, as culture-conditioned as the young Nazis in the ’30s or the Victorians of the 1880s. Every age has its characteristic illusions (Nordic supremacy or witchcraft). The feminist vision of woman – of equality as sameness – may be the great illusion of our age….

I have sometimes dared to wonder whether the neuterists might possibly be suffering from arrested development: an inability to accept fully their own womanhood.

The feminism of the 1920s was too early for Davy and me to be aware of. It had perished in the rigours of the Great Depression, just as it will perish again if there’s another rock-bottom depression or a devastating defeat in war, and we again go back to basics. At all events, when Davy and I were married, feminism was simply not on. Women, despite some doctors and editors, were mostly housewives, but they seemed happy as well as a good deal freer than men. Nevertheless, as I have told in A Severe Mercy, I was determined to renounce husbandly authority: we should discuss everything, and we should not act until we both agreed; and we should share housework and cooking. Davy did not demand this in the name of women’s rights: it was my initiative, though she was pleased as well as astonished. In that day it was astonishing. But it was done in the name of love. Not ‘rights’.

But there is a certain irony here, not apparent to us then. The male headship that St. Paul lays down means, not bossing, but leading or initiating. That is why God the Father, while He created and certainly comprehends both genders, is masculine: He initiates. And it is why Jesus, one with the Father, had to be born a man: He is head of the Church: it is the Church that is she: the Bride of Christ. And the irony in what Davy and I did was that I initiated our feminist arrangements, though I didn’t appreciate that irony until after her death. And I concluded then that male leadership was inbuilt in the Creation and could only be denied at heavy cost to love. But we didn’t suspect it during her life – unless she did.

For in the last year of our years together, reading deeply in St. Paul, she began to desire to be, not a ‘comrade-lover’ but a wife.

 Pages 181-185

 Since God Doesn’t Make Mistakes:

 WOMEN’S ‘ORDINATION’ DENIES THE INCARNATION

The case for the ‘ordination’ of women to the sacramental priesthood is very appealing. It appeals to our sense of fair play, of simple justice. Women have, in fact, suffered grave injustice: why is their being denied the priesthood not an aspect of that injustice? But the case rests not only upon justice but upon the equally appealing proposition that Our Lord the Holy Spirit is leading the Church of Christ into a new understanding of the roles of women – and who are we to argue with the Holy Spirit? It is perfectly clear that women have the brains to be priestesses or even learned theologians; and no less clear that they have the qualities of sympathy and understanding that would enhance their ministry. And, after all, neither Christ nor even the alleged misogynist, St. Paul, ever laid it down that women cannot be priestesses, and St. Paul, indeed, can be held to have implied that they could be in his great statement that there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus. The fact that Jesus, so sympathetic to women, still did not, in that patriarchal Jewish world, make some women, say Mary Magdalen, an apostle was perfectly appropriate to His time and place. He also did not make a Gentile an apostle. Therefore, just as the Church made Titus and other Gentiles bishops (or apostles) when the time was right, so now we should not be restrained by Jesus’s not appointing a woman nor by the resulting tradition from following the leading of Our Lord the Spirit into new truth.

It is all most appealing and compelling. It was all so appealing and compelling to me in the late sixties – I being a strong advocate of women’s liberation from the first – that, brooding upon injustice to my sisters and engaging in what I was pleased to call thinking upon theology, I was moved to write a spirited article urging the instant ‘ordination’ of women. One uncomfortable question that I did not ask was: How do we know that men and women are, apart from the plumbing, the same, spiritually the same? We do not, in fact, know that. Another question, even more uncomfortable, is assumed by the proponents of women’s ‘ordination’ to be raised only by die-hard, male supremacist opponents; but it is a real question all the same: How do we know that it is Our Lord the Spirit that is compelling us and not the Spirit of the Age? Those who find that question meaningless have perhaps answered it, at least for themselves.

Being myself unable to answer either question with assurance, I finally raised the question: What, if anything, is the bearing of the Incarnation upon the priesting of women?

The Incarnation is surely the central doctrine of our faith. If we are of those who speak contemptuously of “creedal literalism” (which appears to be shorthand for the assertion that we can say the creeds without believing them and still, somehow, not be liars) we perhaps brush aside “He came down from heaven and was made man” and “very God of very God.” But there are many in the Church – who may be called Christians – who do not brush these statements aside, who do believe the Creeds, and who hold the Incarnation to be the essence of the Christian faith. I for one. And I speak to others of like belief.

Still, what bearing does the believed-in Incarnation have upon the priesting of women?

I am a writer, not a trained theologian. Let me, therefore, begin with an analogy that may make a certain amount of sense to those who write or read stories. Suppose, then, I write a novel and put myself in it (perhaps under a different name), as writers often do. I am the author, not the Author of All Things but the inventor (creator) of this particular story. For my novel I invent (create) an imagined city in an imagined time and place full of imagined characters. But I, too – not imagined or created – am in the (invented) city, talking to and interacting with the invented characters. I-the-character, wearing my familiar tweeds, smoking my pipe, speak to the invented characters, but I-the-character speak the words that I-the-writer give me to speak – the words that I-the-writer would speak in those circumstances. I-the-character do the will of “my father in the study,” that is, the writer. I am, in short, incarnate in my book. All man and all God, that is the doctrine. And in the analogy, all character and all author. The analogy is not perfect. For one thing the characters don’t have free will. And yet, as many novelists have said, sometimes the characters do “run away” with the story. The logic of the situation in my novel might compel me-the-writer to allow me-the-character to be shot or, if it were set in Roman times, crucified.

One more point about the analogy: I-the-writer know how the novel will end. The characters move in their invented time, and if they were truly sentient, the future to them would be veiled. I-the-writer am not in the book’s invented time but in what to the characters would be eternity, even as God the Father is in eternity, though Jesus, God the Son become man, was in created time.

Argument by analogy is always dangerous, and any argument based on an analogy with the Trinitarian God would be incredibly dangerous. But I have not based an argument upon my analogy and do not propose to. I suggested the analogy only as a possible illumination in our thinking about the relation of the Incarnation to the priesting of women.

Still, the analogy does roughly express what the Church has maintained for some two thousand years of (created) time to be the relationship between God the Father and God the Son when the latter was made man in this (created) world. Jesus, the Church says, was all God and all man – the body of a man, the mind of a man, the limitations perhaps of a man, yet God in the world. He and the Father were one, He said. And He did the will of the Father, He said. Therefore He knew what the will of the Father was. But, then, to return to the analogy for the moment, I-the- character do the will of the writer as it is given to me to do. I-the-character can do no other. Jesus, one with the Father, with perfect obedience, chose to do no other than the will of His Father.

The proponents of the priesting of women point out that Christ, even if He were the incarnation of God, was necessarily of finite mind. He had, they say, the limitations and even the prejudices of the particular (created) time and place of His manhood. Therefore, in choosing apostles, He, a Jew, would of course have chosen only men, even as those apostles, in their turn choosing first a new Twelfth and later others, would choose only men. Thus the tradition, unquestioned at the time, became fixed and has endured down the centuries. But we are not first-century Jews, and we should cast aside the tradition that was based upon no more than first-century Jewish prejudice. But this argument neglects one point.

Jesus, indeed, was a Jewish man of His time. But Jesus did the will of the Father which He knew, even as (in my analogy) I-the-character do the will of the writer which I know. Jesus did perfectly the will of the Father.

Jesus, with the limitations of a first-century Jewish man, did not ever, we may suppose, think of appointing a woman to the apostolate. He did not, we may presume, have the least notion that His not appointing a woman would prevent any woman from being priestess or apostle for nearly two millennia.

            But God the Father knew. And Jesus did perfectly the will of the Father.

Just this is central. Before all worlds, God the Father in eternity knew that on this (created) world sixty generations of women would be denied any aspiration to the priesthood because Jesus did not appoint a woman as apostle. Even if we now fling open the barred gates to the priesthood and the episcopate, the wronged generations of women stream back through the centuries.

It may be objected that Jesus did not appoint any Gentiles as apostles either. Perhaps it never occurred to Jesus that either women or Gentiles would be seeking the priesthood. But there were Gentile bishops and priests – Titus, for instance, or Timothy – as soon as the need arose with the expansion of the Church into the Gentile world. Why were there not female priests and bishops? Because of male prejudice in the Gentile world also? That will hardly do. Women were freer in the Greco-Roman world than they have ever been since until this century. They owned property; they were admitted to philosophical schools in Athens; they were often in positions of great influence; and, above all, there were innumerable priestesses of other religions. Christianity itself may have raised some eyebrows but a Christian priestess would not have caused them to be raised a bit higher. Why then, the difference? Why were Gentiles brought into the apostolate even in New Testament times but not women?

The Gospels are very brief; and we know nothing of many things Jesus must have said to the Twelve, except as a surmise from what happened. Thus we may surmise that He must have said that the apostolate was to continue since, after the defection of Judas, the remaining Eleven so quickly chose a new Twelfth. Of course we cannot base an argument upon what Jesus may have said about women. More important perhaps for our purposes is what He did not say. Quite certainly He did not tell them that no Gentile could ever be an apostle. The apostles were imbued with His teaching, and the election of the early Gentile bishops must have been in harmony with that teaching. We simply do not know whether He said anything about women as apostles or bishops. We know only that in the Greco-Roman church there were none. Therefore, there is no reap parallel between His choosing no Gentiles and His choosing no women.

We come back then to what an incarnational Christian, if I may use what ought to be a redundant modifier, who favors the priesting of women must find his way round. Jesus, who did perfectly the will of the Father, did not appoint a woman. Therefore, it was not the will of the Father that He should. But, as a matter of historical fact, His not appointing a woman doomed sixty generations of women to be denied the priesthood. This denial, known to the Father in eternity, must, then, have been with will of the Father.

And yet, it is said, the Holy Spirit is now leading the Church into the new truth that women can, after all, be priestesses and bishops. But if a woman now who is properly ordained by a bishop becomes a real priestess, then a woman properly ordained a thousand years ago would have become a real priestess. And, indeed, if women had been priestesses and bishops all along, it can scarcely be supposed that women would have sunk so low in the scheme of things as they did sink after the fall of Rome.Thus women have been gravely deprived and greatly wronged by being excluded from the orders. How do we get around the sixty wronged generations streaming back through the centuries? Did Jesus make an error? But Jesus did perfectly the will of the Father. Well, then, did God the Father make an error? Shall we imagine God the Father saying: “By Jove! that was careless. I certainly blew that one! How could I have forgotten those sixty wronged generations? Well, I’ll make it all right for the next generation, anyhow.”

One of two things must be true if women can actually become priestesses: Either God the Father made a mistake and has now changed His mind. Or Jesus who was God incarnate did not do the will of the Father. The first is nonsense. The second amounts to a denial that Jesus was the incarnate God.

Any argument for the priesting of women that is based on the Holy Spirit leading the Church into new truth must also account for old error – the sixty wronged generations of women.

I submit that it cannot be done without denying the Incarnation.

 Pages 192-196

…A unisexist is one who denies the deep and innate differences between men and women. Thus no male headship or initiating, no female receptivity or nurturing or intuitive power. Thus the unisexists would neuter the race: hence, ‘neuterists’.

…modern feminism was born in the Angry Years of the ’60s, born out of a false analogy with the blacks. There really isn’t any notable difference between a black man and a white, except the skin-deep difference of colour. But the difference between a man and a woman has always been held to be soul-deep. It’s up to the feminists to prove that it isn’t; but they do not do it; they assume it – assume the truth of what is to be proved, which is begging the question. Until it is proved, which I think cannot be done, the analogy is false.

Christianity has always held that the difference is, in fact, soul-deep, that the souls and resurrected bodies of men and women are masculine and feminine through all eternity. Can one imagine meeting the Blessed Virgin Mary (or one’s own mother) in Heaven and finding her other than womanly? Or St. Peter other than manly? And my own Davy – she wouldn’t be Davy if she weren’t feminine.

Many feminists would reply, “Yes, indeed. But what has that got to do with women being soldiers, radio announcers, or policemen, or with men being nurses or baby-tenders?” The answer is that those jobs were allotted to one sex or the other on the realistic basis of perceived physical and psychological differences of men and women. “But,” the feminist would rejoin, “there are some women, perhaps only one in a thousand, who would be valuable policemen; should they be denied?” Yes, I think so; for if women are accepted at all, there inevitably follows quotas and sexual-discrimination suits or the fear of them; and far more than the rare ‘perfect’ coppess would have to be admitted. And protected by the real policemen.

It is unisexism – the idea not the name – that is being proclaimed by the Spirit of the Age….

It is not Christianity only that affirms the deep difference of the sexes. The affirmation is the common judgement of the human race in all time and all places. Even the middle-class feminists of the big cities are, despite the loudness of their demands, a tiny minority of the living women upon this earth. And throughout the ages the philosophers and ordinary people have affirmed the deep difference of the masculine and the feminine – the Yang and the Yin of China, the Perushka and Prakity of India, the sky god and earth goddesses of the Greeks and Romans, the animus and anima of Jung. To Aristotle it was the difference of form and matter, act and potency (intelligibility and potentiality). The masculine has been above all seen as the rational as well as the active and the initiating; and the feminine as receptive, passive, with deep intuitive wisdom.

Dom Bede Griffiths OSB in The Marriage of East and West say that the West, especially since the enlightenment, has been sickened with unbalanced masculine rationality – and that the West is doomed unless it rediscovers the feminine intuitive wisdom of the East (the India he knows so well). But to the West rationality and the knowledge that results from it are dry and arid without intuition and feeling, just as intuition and feeling without rationality become wet and chaotic and ‘sticky’, even nightmarish.

If indeed the West, as Dom Bede says, is sick with unbalanced masculine rationality, then at first glance the feminist revolution might seem a good thing. But a long, hard look at the unisexist feminists (and many more women are unisexists than know it) discloses the truth that, far from representing feminine intuitive wisdom, they are bent on equalling or outdoing men in rationality and toughness, abandoning the clear springs of their own power in aping something we don’t need more of. The more that women forsake womanliness the sicker the West becomes. Feminist is not feminine.

The androgyny that some unisexists urge would bring about the neutered death of both the masculine and the feminine principles.

What we need is a feminine movement, not a feminist or unisexist one.

A beginning point might be found in the wisdom of Confucius whose ethical master principle was for everyone to strive to live up to the Names of their Relationships – the highest connotation of those Names. Thus a woman might do her best to live up to the fullest, deepest meaning of Daughter, Sister, Wife, Maidservant or Mistress, Mother, Friend, and more.

I must at this point tell a story from real life, vouched for by a woman I know. She, an extremely able writer, is a friend of the people concerned, and she told me the story in great detail. Four women, close friends of hers and all in their thirties, had been meeting weekly to study the Bible. One evening they came to St. Paul’s statement in I Corinthians 11 about the headship of the husband. The leader for that evening read it aloud, paused, and read it again. Silence round the table except for a mutter from one of the women: “Jim just couldn’t do it.” Every one of those women – they all knew it – was the head in her marriage. They regarded their husbands as amiable and no doubt lovable blunderers who couldn’t be trusted to think of things and run things competently. Someone said weakly, “Does St. Paul say anything else about it?” An index was consulted, and the other Pauline statements (Col 3:18; Eph 5:22f; I Tim 2:11f) were read out. There was some discussion. Finally the leader said, “Well, girls – what do we do?” Someone else said, “We’ve got to do it.” Another said, “They‘ve got to – the men.” Resolved, they got their husbands together, and explained. The men took it quietly.

Then came the miracle. In less than a year the four women, with amazement and delight, were telling each other and every other woman they knew what had happened. The husbands, all four, had quietly taken over. Every one of them had, so to speak, grown taller in his wife’s eyes: bigger, stronger, wiser, more humorous. It was unbelievable, almost a miracle. And, with no exceptions, every one of the women felt that her marriage had come to a new depth of happiness – a joy – that it had never had before. A rightness.

Seeing this astonishing thing that not one of them had thought possible – not with their husbands – the four wives one day realised an astonishing further truth: they realised that their husbands had never demanded and would never have demanded headship: it could only be a free gift from wife to husband. We are all familiar with the words and concept of a woman’s giving herself to a man. So familiar that we never ask what it really means. The foregoing story illuminates it. This is what it means.

And this is what Davy first intuitively understood and then came in the last years of her life to understand more deeply through her beloved St. Paul.

As I said earlier, slavery is involuntary servitude.

My thinking, along with that hard look at what feminism really was – and was on the way to – had now led me to the rejection of the unisexist, neuterist Spirit of the Age. Was this a change or development? No matter. I had been a feminist; I had listened to and indeed applauded all their cause. And now I had come to reject it. The deeper I looked, the more I realised that the heart of feminism was unisexist, and that the liberation they desired was liberation from being a woman. Their unanimous demand for the right of abortion was proof of that. It is often said that Naziism was corrupted at the heart by the death chambers, killing not only the Jews but the old and infirm. If it was so corrupted at the heart, what then of the heart of feminism, poisoned by the death of millions of unborn babies, painfully killed in the name of women’s rights. The womb, the chamber of life, become a death chamber.

The story of the four Christian women – in total opposition to the feminist insistence upon men’s oppression of women – taught me that men didn’t conquer women but accepted women’s voluntary gift of themselves, just as men now draw back from headship as women refuse to give themselves.

[1] Vanauken, Sheldon, Under the Mercy (1985), Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988. I highly recommend this book.

 

 

by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #012 posted October 3, 2016, edited March 9, 2021.

The Bible indicates that mankind’s troubles began in the Garden of Eden when Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which God had told him not to eat. When Adam learned that Eve had eaten the fruit, he could not undo what she had done. The question is, what should have been his response to the situation. The Bible gives the answer

When God created the Garden, he placed two special trees at its center: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Life symbolizes life which is lived dependent upon the Word of God. In the description of New Jerusalem in Revelation 22, the Tree of Life stands adjacent to the river which flows out of the Throne of God and of the Lamb at the center of the City. The tree’s roots are nourished continually by the living waters of the Word of God.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil symbolizes life which is lived independent of the Word of God – at least in part. That part is the determination of what is good and what is evil. That this determination belongs to God, the serpent later makes explicit when he suggests to Eve that, when she eats of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, “…your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 5). As gods? No. As God!

When God placed Adam in the garden, he said:

Of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat freely: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2: 16-17)

This sentence contains three elements: a permission, a prohibition, and a sanction. The permission is extraordinarily unrestrictive; Adam may eat anything in the garden which he wants with only one exception. Considering the variety of flora which must have been there – all past and present species, the permission amounts to almost total freedom. Conversely, the prohibition is very specific; Adam must eschew only the fruit of one tree. But the sanction for disregarding this prohibition is terrible; if Adam eats of the forbidden fruit, he shall die.

God freely gave Adam access to the Tree of Life, just as God freely gave Adam life. God withheld only one thing from Adam; the right to determine what is good and what is evil. God reserved that to himself. God would determine what is good and what is evil – not Adam.

Note that God uttered the permission, the prohibition, and the sanction to Adam before he created Eve. Adam, the man, was responsible.

Furthermore, Adam, the first man, was the representative of all men. It is a biblical principle that one person represents the group of people over whom he exercises leadership or authority: the husband represents the family; the priest represents the congregation; the king represents the nation. In each case the representative’s righteousness or unrighteousness affects the group. The representative’s faithfulness or unfaithfulness, obedience or disobedience, determines the blessings or the curses which God will visit upon the group – sometimes “unto the third and fourth generation,” sometimes to a thousand generations.

A related principle is the covering. God gives a man authority over the women in his household, and God holds a man responsible for protecting and providing for them. The operation of this principle can be seen in God’s view of vows. God views a man’s vow in the following terms:

If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth. (Numbers 30:2)

God views a woman’s vows very differently, however. In the case of a daughter:

If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father’s house in her youth;  And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand. But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the LORD shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her. (Numbers 30: 3-5)

Or, in the case of a wife,

And if she had at all an husband, when she vowed, or uttered ought out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul;  And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the day that he heard it: then her vows shall stand, and her bonds wherewith she bound her soul shall stand.  But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard it; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none effect: and the LORD shall forgive her. (Numbers 30: 6-8)

Thus, a man has a duty, not only to fulfill his own vows, but also to protect his wife and daughters from foolish vows or commitments which they make on their own. So that there be no misunderstanding regarding the source of these determinations, Deuteronomy 30 ends with this verse:

These are the statutes, which the LORD commanded Moses, between a man and his wife, between the father and his daughter, being yet in her youth in her father’s house. (Numbers 30: 16)

The operation of this principle can also be seen in another statute regarding the relationship between a man and his wife or daughter.

When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:  Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her. (Deuteronomy 25: 11-12)

A man’s manhood is so important to God that he requires that a woman be maimed for touching another man’s genitals – even if that man is threatening the life of her husband.

Thus, Adam was set as protector and provider over Eve, and Eve was required to honor Adam’s authority over her.

Now Adam and Eve were living in the garden in harmony with God when the serpent set out to foster rebellion against God. His target, of course, was Adam, the first man and the head of the family (1 Corinthians 11: 3-7, Ephesians 5: 23). Because the serpent is very subtle, however, he approached Eve.

Eve engaged in conversation with the Serpent without Adam being present. In doing so, she rejected both his authority and his protection. In her pride, she believed that she did not need her husband, that she could handle the Serpent on her own. That was the first step in mankind’s rebellion against God.

Now, rebellion always involves tinkering with the Word of God. First, the serpent misquoted God:

Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden? (Genesis 3:1)

That is not what God said. He said that Adam could eat of every tree in the Garden but one. The serpent changed the Word of God. Eve responded by saying:

We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. (Genesis 3: 2-3)

Then, Eve also misquoted God. She subtracted the words “freely” and “every.” She did not differentiate between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; she even confused them. Lastly she added to the Word of God by saying “neither shall ye touch it.”

Finally the Serpent contradicted the Word of God: “Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3: 4), and then uttered the Great Lie: “Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3: 5).

Thus tempted, Eve looked at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and saw that it was “good for food,…pleasant to the eyes, and…to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3: 6), the three attributes of this world of which John wrote:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. (I John 2: 15-16)

Eve ate of the forbidden fruit.

What is clear from the Scriptures, however, is that Eve’s transgression did not constitute the Fall. Adam had not yet sinned, and he had the opportunity to repudiate what Eve had done. Indeed, it was his duty to do so. Instead, he allowed Eve to persuade him to eat also (Genesis 3: 6). That constituted the Fall.

 …death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come….For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. (Romans 5: 14, 19)

Immediately both Adam and Eve felt naked, and they tried to cloth themselves with aprons of fig-leaves and hide from God. Of course Adam and Eve felt the shame of physical nakedness, but this shame was only a part of their sense of nakedness. Moreover, they had succeeded in clothing themselves in aprons, and thus their physical nakedness was not the real issue. The key to what transpired here is contained in Adam’s explanation to God of why they hid:

I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid. (Genesis 3: 10)

Previously they had no reason to fear God and in fact had enjoyed God’s companionship; now they knew that they were exposed to God’s wrath. They were uncovered (the concept of the covering again), and the aprons did not remedy this situation.

When God questioned Adam concerning whether or not they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Adam admitted that they had, but then blamed Eve:

She gave me of the tree, and I did eat. (Genesis 3: 12)

Eve then blamed the serpent:

The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. (Genesis 3: 13)

God passed judgment upon all concerned. Because it instigated man’s rebellion, God condemned the serpent to crawl upon its belly in the dust forever and to be bruised in the head by the seed of the woman (the Lord Jesus Christ). Because she rejected her husband’s covering and persuaded him to rebel, God condemned Eve to bear children in pain and to desire and be ruled over by her husband. Finally, because he ate of the forbidden fruit – for he is the one to whom God gave dominion over the Garden and thus whom God held ultimately responsible, God condemned Adam to toil for food and to die physically – he had already died spiritually. In order to force Adam to toil, God cursed the earth: henceforth it would bring forth thorns and thistles and resist Adam’s efforts to cultivate it.

So what should Adam have done? He should have repudiated what Eve did and plead with God to be merciful to her. If he had, the history of mankind would have been very different.

© 2016 John Holbrook Jr.
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