Feminism has, no doubt, brought positive change and necessary correctives in the area of how we view and treat women as equals. However, it has morphed well beyond its helpful contributions to the human rights of women and has ushered in a post-modern culture of death by elevating abortion to the sacrament of choice and the lie of self-definition as the ultimate good. Furthermore, by promoting the dissolution of gender binaries, it is well on its way to rendering itself obsolete. What is feminism, if, after all, there is no agreed-upon, objective form of womanhood left to herald? Yet feminism has also left its mark on the church. Limp and tentative, she is second-guessing her calling to proclaim binary truth to a dying world. Without real distinctions between good and evil, male and female, God and creature, the Christian message is no longer Christian. There have been many attempts to reconcile the Bible with feminist thought. But an evangelical feminist view of gender is untenable for a Christian serious about the biblical theological progression of revelation found in the Scriptures. Unlike proponents of trajectory hermeneutics who suggest that the Bible, though not clear on certain topics, nevertheless points us in the right hermeneutical direction toward liberation, the Bible contains its own self-contained revelatory trajectory that does not nullify or fudge on gender roles and creational structures. One simply has to follow the arc of its trajectory to the end to see what we find there.
Looking at the end to
understand the beginning
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Revelation 1:1-3)
Womanhood was not God’s afterthought. In fact, the book of
Revelation describes the glorious climax and fulfillment of the womanhood
paradigm in the new heavens and the new earth. It is breathtaking! This is the
picture of the Bride glorified, her task on earth accomplished, and united with
her groom in pure ecstatic joy. The tears that flowed from painful labor and
that sum up the pain of fallen creation are forgotten and replaced with tears of joy. Herein we see that womanhood
fulfilled is as much as a paradigm for describing the redeemed state as sonship
is, for example. Womanhood in the biblical conceptual framework is a signpost
pointing to the greater reality of the redeemed bride of Christ, the new
Jerusalem of God, which will encompass people from every tribe, nation and
tongue. If this is the fulfillment, then surely in seed form, womanhood should
bear some resemblance.
Chavvah
Eve, named “chavvah” by Adam, is the life-giver. She is the
help God gave to Adam to fulfill the creation mandate to spread God’s glory
throughout the world by ruling over it and creating glory image bearers to fill
it. This Hebrew word is also metaphorically used for a place of dwelling, a tent
village or town. Womanhood is the paradigm for the life-giving task made possible
by her unique ability to be inhabited,
indwelt, to be filled with the presence of another. This is not insignificant
to Adam, when he realizes the mandate he and Eve have been given to fulfill and
very surprising to Eve herself as she asserts she has brought forth a man! He
cannot do it without her. The help the woman represents is ultimately necessary
for the survival of man as a species. But she is also more than just a receptacle,
a walking womb. She is perfectly fitted for Adam in every way, as one puzzle
piece fits into another. She is ezer
kenegdo, the equal but opposite and necessary helping counterpart to Adam. This, God sees as great necessity to him. But the
creation order is clear! There is no possible interchangeability because
genetics and design were integral to both identity and task. The unique task
assigned to womanhood is at the very center of God’s redemptive plan. The
tragedy of fallen womanhood is, of course, that she precipitated the entrance
of death into the world instead of being faithful to the meaning of her name, life-giver,
which was clearly meant to be more than just physical.
Post-fall, God ubiquitously reveals himself as Husband in
pursuit of his Bride. Fallen womanhood for the people of Israel was, on the one
hand a prophetic paradigm of her own failure to be faithful to her husband, Maker
and Lord. She, as a people, failed to be the habitation fit for holiness she
was set apart to be. Barrenness was a curse, symbolic of her fruitlessness in
her task and lifelessness in her ethics. On the other hand, and paradoxically, womanhood also stood at the
center of the promise throughout the old covenant: the Seed of the woman who
would crush the serpent’s head brought a counter-intuitive hope for redemption.
The Messiah would redeem the impossible curse of barrenness by being born of a
woman, humbling himself to inhabit a womb. And so was born the Second Adam,
dependent on a woman and dwelling in her. He did not despise the virgin’s womb!
Mary was a real dwelling place for the very presence of God! The physical
indwelling of the woman by the Son of God was the fulfillment of the messianic
expectation of the Old Covenant as well as the inauguration of a new covenant reality:
Jesus came to live in and among his people and usher in the indwelling of each
believer by the Spirit in the fullness of Pentecost.
Ezer
Christ the second Adam institutes a new creation mandate in
the Great Commission and gives this task to the Church, his bride. The picture
is clear. The Church fulfills the ezer
role given to Eve. It is the indispensable work of the Holy Spirit, the heavenly
Ezer, who indwells, gifts and enables
the Church to fulfill her role as ezer-bride.
Through the Paraclete’s empowering, she becomes the Ezer of God, the one Christ has entrusted to help with his great
task of bringing life to this lost world. This earth-shattering truth might
sound almost blasphemous were it not propounded by the Apostle Paul and his
teaching on the church’s union with Christ through the Spirit! The new Israel
is no longer the faithless harlot, she is the Bride commissioned by the Husband
to act on his behalf. Though Christ certainly doesn’t need the Church, as Adam
needed Eve, he chooses to be united to her and use her to fulfill the new
creation mandate! He is the Head, she is the Body. He is the capstone, she is
the edifice of the new temple built to be inhabited by the very presence of
God. The task of the church resembles greatly that of the Proverbs 31 woman: to
open her hand to the needy, to teach with words of faithful instruction, to
care for the needs of her covenant family, to bring honor to her husband, to work
hard in word and deed for the good of her household as well as being strategic
in making gains and advances in the land for the sake of her husband’s name and
influence. Womanhood is the paradigm for the age of the Spirit inaugurated at
Pentecost and descriptive of the already-not yet state of engagement. The
church though already bride, still awaits the great Consummation to come. Early
church fathers recognized that one could not have God as Father without having
the church as Mother, confirming her complimentary “feminine” role: she is
home, she is teacher, she is life-giver, she is compassion, she is tender, she
is discipline, she is nourisher, she is presence in the world. How humbling to
think that God trusts his Bride to such an extent and entrusts her with
representing Him to the world!
Fulfilled, not
reversed
Human marriage is the vignette for the great love story
between God and his people, between the Lamb and his wife. It is a mystery, not
because it is completely incomprehensible and hidden, but because the
trajectory of its revelation points us to a reality far greater than human
marriage. It is within this context that the great well-known Pauline passage of
Ephesians 5 comes alive. Having made sure to express that being filled with the
Spirit is the precondition to what follows, Paul writes:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Eph. 5:22-27)Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Eph. 5:31-33)
The mystery revealed in full in the eschatological glory will
pale in comparison. Paul describes marriage as a beautiful and yet very accurate
picture of a present reality and the glory yet to come. Because of that coming
reality, the relationship between man and wife can no less be reversed that the
greater relationship of Christ and his Bride, the Church. It can only be
fulfilled. Egalitarians tend to take this passage in the light of the “submit
to one another” imperative, affirming interchangeable mutual submission. But
given this picture, it would be aberrant to say that the Lamb will submit to
his wife. The Lamb was slain for his Bride and the bride glorifies her husband
in all eternity. Christ submitted himself to the Father unto death for the sake of his Bride. Paul picks up
on this theme when he implores husbands to lay their lives down for their wives
out of love and wives to submit to and respect their husbands. These roles
cannot be reversed without bearing false testimony to the clear revelation
about the new heavens and the new earth. This is why gender is not a peripheral
issue to Christians. It is usually an overzealous and over-realized eschatology
that leads to the blurring of creational distinctions in the here and now.
Verses like Galatians 3:28 are taken to mean that in the Kingdom, the
differences in functions and identity are eradicated for this already-not-yet
period. However, we live in an age of overlap between the fulfilling of the
cultural mandate and the Great Commission. This means both co-exist. We live in
the “already” relationships of the first creation while anticipating the “not-yet”
relationships in the new. But when we look at the fulfillment of both in glory,
we see that the Bride continues to be bride and Christ continues to be Head.
She is not emancipated to a better independent state, rather, she is glorified
in and through her relationship with her Husband! What falls away is the lesser picture of human
marriage because, though its fulfillment, it is no longer needed. There will be
no marriage and giving in marriage then because the collective Bride will be
married to her Husband. She will glorify her Husband perfectly. But notice that
she is also a city. She is perfected in her beauty as a holy habitation. She is
the beautiful, eternal Chavvah. What is at the core of womanhood, namely the
ability to give life and to be inhabited, will be fulfilled in new perfect heavenly
dimensions that are incomprehensible to us right now.
Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God,having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. (Rev. 21:10-11)
The beauty of our common future reality far surpasses any worldly
promises to women. Feminism is a
woman-centered worldview that does not honor God because it champions woman’s
autonomous self-definition. Eve tried that. It failed miserably. The
grace-filled biblical story of redemption not only provides forgiveness for
every woman who places her faith in Christ, it also puts womanhood at its
center as the paradigm for what it means for the Church to fulfill her calling.
This should give every Christian woman an awe-filled sense of great worth,
honor and position as she realizes her unique, life-giving contribution to the Kingdom of
God.
