The Sexual Reformation

Restoring the Dignity and Personhood of Man and Woman

Aimee Byrd

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780310125655
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

What does it mean to be a woman or a man created in the image of God?

Many Christians don't have a good grasp of what their sexuality means. Many women in the church don't feel like their contributions matter.

Why is this?

The church is sadly still confused about what it means to be a man or a woman. While secular society talks about sexuality in terms of liberation, many in the church define manhood and womanhood in terms of reductive roles that rob us of the dignity of personhood, created in the image of God.

In her poetic, theologically contemplative style, Aimee Byrd invites you to enter the rich treasure trove of the Song of Songs as its lyrics reveal how our very bodies are visible signs that tell us something about our God. This often-ignored biblical book has much to teach us about Christ, his church, man, and woman. And what it teaches us is not a list of roles and hierarchy. It is a love song.

As it unfolds throughout the canon of Scripture, the meaning of our sexuality extends beyond biology, nature, and culture to give us a glimpse of what is to come. This meaningfulness reinforces our discipleship as we participate in the eschatological song.

In The Sexual Reformation, you will discover the beautiful message that our bodies—and our whole selves—are part of the greater story in which Christ received the gift of his bride, the church. Within the context of that story, you'll rediscover your sexuality as a gift.

Chapter One

DO WE REALLY NEED A REFORMATION?

Let’s just admit it. Even the church is still confused about what it means to be a man or a woman. Sure, a plethora of Christian books instructing Christians on this matter are available—more than ever. There’s even a parachurch organization that has been thriving for more than thirty years with its own confessional statements on “biblical manhood and womanhood,” providing articles, journals, books, teaching resources, and conferences.¹ While secular society is talking about sexuality in terms of liberation, this movement in the church defines manhood and womanhood in terms of roles. And so this is what many in the evangelical church, through the resources of this parachurch organization, have been teaching about our sexual distinction:

At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.

At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.²

According to these definitions, what it means to be a man is potency in benevolent action toward women—they lead, provide, and protect women. And what it means to be a woman is, well, affirming this male potency—they affirm, receive, and nurture worthy men. What is woman’s contribution? Where is any reciprocal enrichment in this? How do these definitions account for the personhood of men and women as “unique and unrepeatable” human beings?³ Moreover, where is Christ in these definitions? They are merely horizontal.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), which provided these definitions, also composed an official statement to affirm the distinction between manhood and womanhood. It is called the Danvers Statement.⁴ This came at a pivotal time when Christians wanted to respond to the messages of sexual promiscuity and gender fluidity in our surrounding secular culture. Notice how the affirmations in the Danvers Statement center male/female distinction in roles:

1. Both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood (Gen. 1:26–27; 2:18).

2. Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order, and should find an echo in every human heart (Gen. 2:18, 21–24; 1 Cor. 11:7–9; 1 Tim. 2:12–14).⁵

As it turns out from the following affirmations in the Danvers Statement, these roles are defined as male headship—which is synonymous with male authority—and female submission.⁶ Our “roles,” specifically what we have agency to do or not do, encapsulate our God-given sexual distinction. And somehow the word role, which is not even found in most English translations of Scripture and which arose from the theater, meaning “to play a part,” is now being used as an ontological, fixed marker of our sexuality.⁷ I use the word ontological because now CBMW is speaking to the nature of who we are. This subtle shift of the meaning of role speaks to the very essence of what it means to be a man or a woman. As their president put it, “CBMW exists to promote the Danvers vision.”⁸ And so its promotion leads to teaching that men both initiate and have the final say.⁹ The woman is warned not to do “typically masculine things” like strength training, or else her feminine needs may not be met.¹⁰ The man takes charge in cultural settings, such as ordering at a restaurant, driving the car, and being the first to extend his hand in greeting. He also needs to be careful how he holds a woman’s purse.¹¹ According to what we’ve seen in these definitions, affirmations, and applications, the woman’s “role” boils down to puffing up the man. Following his decisions. Sitting in the passenger seat. There’s nothing unique or unrepeatable about her. Ironically, she cannot freely give of her self, as this teaching robs her of any personhood. And that is the echo of every human heart.¹² These governing principles in much of the writing that comes from CBMW about men and women do not coincide with their other statements regarding the value of women.

And this message not only robs woman of her personhood and dignity—it robs man as well. His meaningfulness is found in his ability to exercise unilateral authority over women and in upholding cultural stereotypes of so-called masculinity. While man gets to have a more robust agency, he is one dimensional. He is defined by strength over, and provision and protection of the woman. This doesn’t challenge him to grow through fruitful communion and reciprocity. And it gives him no telos—that ultimate hope spoken of in my introduction. This reduces manhood to dominance and calls it benevolent responsibility. One wonders, with this teaching on “masculinity,” where there is room for Christ’s beatitudes of the poor in spirit, the mourners, the humble, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. Man’s value is in his virility. Sadly, this isn’t a new teaching in the church but merely an evolved, softer version of Aristotelian metaphysics of sex polarity that has permeated the teachings of those before us. That is a bit of a mouthful. What am I speaking of here? Metaphysics speak to the reality of who we are. It is a philosophical study of the nature of reality, how things are, and how they relate. Aristotle taught that man and woman are by nature opposites and that man is superior to woman. This is a sex polarity that concludes that by nature women are inferior to men in our bodies, virtue, and wisdom.¹³ Woman is opposite, other—“the female is as it were a deformed male.”¹⁴ Therefore, this is a permanent inequality in which “the male is by nature fitter for command than the female.”¹⁵

Here is a small sampling of teachings from the church fathers, Reformers, and Puritans, which fall under the Aristotelian, sex-polarity mindset that man is superior to woman in generation. This mindset extends to the areas of intelligence and virtue; therefore, man must rule over woman:

Chrysostom: “God maintained the order of each sex by dividing the business of life into two parts, and assigned the more necessary and beneficial aspects to the man and the less important, inferior matter to the woman.”¹⁶

Augustine: “Woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by superior reason. Is this why the apostle Paul does not attribute the image of God to her?” And “I cannot think of any reason for woman being made as man’s helper, if we dismiss the reason of procreation.”¹⁷

Thomas Aquinas: “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.”¹⁸

John Calvin: “On this account [‘God’s eternal law, which has made the female sex subject to the authority of men’], all women are born that they may acknowledge themselves as inferior in consequence to the superiority of the male sex.”¹⁹

John Knox: “Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man. . . . That the weak, the sick, and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the whole and strong, and finally, that the foolish, mad and frantic shall govern the discrete, and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women, compared unto man in bearing of authority. For their sight in civil regiment, is but blindness: their strength, weakness: their counsel, foolishness: and judgement, frenzy, if it be rightly considered.”²⁰

William Gouge: “This metaphor shows that to his wife he is as the head of a natural body, both more eminent in place, and also more excellent in dignity: by virtue of both which, he is ruler and governor of his wife.”²¹

This teaching and language of male superiority and female inferiority has become offensive to our contemporary ears. Even in the ancient world, as Jacob Prahlow describes, it was more complex than these quotes about women signify, “with prescriptive and lived realities rarely standing in unison. Women in Christianity held particularly ‘tense’ positions, as ongoing development of church order, practice, and scriptural interpretation often stood at odds with the lived experiences and practices of Christian women.”²² As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, “perhaps the ‘published,’ proscriptive texts do not give us a real-life, on-the-ground description of women. We can observe contrast between prescribed orthodoxy of gender relations and functional orthopraxy even in our own contemporary debates about men and women.”²³ These harsh teachings regarding women’s nature might even be polemical measures refuting the agency that they do see some women have in society and in religion. Historians looking at evidence from everyday living, such as receipts, personal letters, invitations, legal documents, or even architectural or burial inscriptions, reveal a more complete and complex picture of women’s contributions and interactions, indicating that additional factors like status, location, and needs of the community factor into a woman’s opportunities for education, commerce, and religious service.²⁴ Although, even as we present a more nuanced and well-rounded picture, “a woman’s agency was typically circumscribed by men, be it her father, husband, guardian, or tutor.”²⁵

And what about now? Even as contemporary women are upgraded to being made in the image of God, the meaningfulness of our sexes—our ontology even—hasn’t really been examined and reformed to the metanarrative in Scripture. Rather, the same old ontology got polished and updated with this new language of “roles.” Does male and female distinction center on roles that turn out to be fixed power structures, to which “the degree that a woman’s influence over a man is personal and directive it will generally offend a man’s good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God’s created order”?²⁶ Or is there something richer and more dynamic in the meaningfulness of our sexed bodies?

We are told in Genesis that both man and woman are created in the image of God (1:27). We both hold this dignity in creation as human beings. Male and female together are icons representing the triune God. Additionally, the human body and soul exist in hylomorphic unity. This is a metaphysical understanding that has been developed throughout history that recognizes “the human being as a soul/body composite identity.”²⁷ As Prudence Allen puts it, we ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Intro: Reformation Looks Forward
• 1. Do We Really Need a Reformation?
• 2. We Are Singing the Wrong Song
• 3. Our Bodies Speak
• 4. The Woman’s Desire and the Desirous Woman
• 5. Sexuality As Gift
• 6. Sometimes the Last Man Standing Is a Woman
• 7. Male and Female Voice
• Outro: Eschatological Imagination