In today’s brief newsletter, I’m sharing an excerpt from a presentation I’ll be giving later today as part of the Commission for Theological Integrity’s annual Convention seminar. If you’re in Birmingham, hope to see you there at 2:00pm!
Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in Today’s Context: An Urgent and Relevant Imperative
“What is a woman?” Senator Marsha Blackburn-TN posed this question to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson this past March. Judge Jackson was under consideration for a seat on the court to which she has since been sworn in to fill. Blackburn’s question elicited a range of reactions. Given how judicial hearings have become more like theatre in recent years than legal hearings, both political parties have had less-than-admirable moments. But the levels of outrage toward Blackburn perhaps missed the larger point: we’ve come to a moment in American history and Western civilization where defining womanhood is controversial. Would any contemporary observer of any ideological stripe deny that just 10 or 15 years ago such a question might have been unusual, but certainly not outrageous?
Contrast the outrage in that context with the outrage following the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Pro-choice advocates protested, marched, and publicly lamented the decision. Elected officials and business leaders joined in, decrying the way these Justices had taken away a woman’s fundamental right, failing to see the irony in talking about a distinctly woman’s right in a moment when many secularists refuse to discuss definitions of womanhood.
This is just one of the glaring, contemporary contradictions in American society. It’s frustrating, illogical, and difficult. However, this situation illustrates both the urgency and relevance of the church’s voice on manhood and womanhood. To paraphrase the late Richard John Neuhaus, the public square will not remain naked when it comes to metaphysical and moral claims about sexuality, gender, gender relations, marriage, and family. Someone’s ideas will fill the void.
In the time I’ve been allotted, I want to assert that nature and logic, as expressions of reality itself, are a way God and His people can speak to unbelievers. As David French says, “Reality gets a vote, and reality always wins.” [1] People who suppress the truth in unrighteousness collide with the shape of God’s world as it really is. When they do, it provides the church an opening to provoke and persuade. Amid society’s confusion, we issue a call that’s part confrontation, part invitation. We confront the world by heralding the Gospel (kerusso) and we invite the world to a different perspective through our defense (apologia), our reasons for the hope within. We might call this, “cultural apologetics.”
Follow fwbtheology.com over the next few weeks for more from this year’s seminar!
Currently Reading:
Comment Magazine (Fall 2021 Edition)
Quote of the Week:
The biggest problem facing most young Americans isn’t student debt; it’s that our society has lost sight of the shared goal of offering them a meaningful, opportunity-filled future with or without college. We’ve lost the confidence that a nation this big and broad can offer different kinds of institutional arrangements, suited to different needs. What we say we want for Americans entering adulthood and what we actually offer them are disastrously mismatched. Debt forgiveness would not just be regressive; it would be recalcitrant. A massive bailout would increase the cost of education and stifle the kind of renaissance higher ed desperately needs.
[1] David French, “Culture Wars End with Consequences.” The Dispatch. Accessed 20 July 2022.