The Creation-Evolution Debate and the Genres of Genesis 1 & 2-3

A lot of people have been talking this week about the Bill Nye/Ken Ham Debate on Creationism vs. Evolution.  So I decided to weigh in with where I stand on this issue.

When I converted to Christianity at the age of 15, I was taught that one of the things I had to embrace if I was going to follow Jesus was young-earth creationism.  The Bible "clearly" taught that God had made the earth in six 24-hour days and that the earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old. So I read several books that supported creationism, and as far as I could tell with my not-particularly-scientific mind, it made sense.  I left what my parents and my teachers had taught me and became a creationist.

Something happened when I was nearly through my college years, though, that shook me up a little.

A public debate was scheduled on my college campus between a local biology professor and Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research, who had flown in specially for the event.  Since most of my fellow church members were attending, I went along.  As I listened, I couldn't help but think Dr. Gish was winning the debate.  After all, he was a gifted debater and public speaker, while the biology professor was-- well, a scientist who taught classes now and then.  And the audience was clearly on Gish's side.  Whenever Gish spoke, he was applauded.  When the local professor spoke, he was booed and hissed at.  And most of my friends were gleefully joining in.  This clearly bothered and rattled the poor guy-- and that was where my cognitive dissonance started.  My sympathies have always lain with the underdog, and I simply couldn't understand why good Christian people who were supposed to be following Jesus' teachings on loving your neighbor, would treat this poor man with this abysmal rudeness.

I left the debate wondering how, if we were in fact so very right, we could be so totally wrong about it.  I knew that what really mattered, what Christ really cared about, wasn't whether we believed single-celled organisms could slowly become human beings.  It was how we treated actual human beings.

I walked away from that debate feeling ashamed. I couldn't bring myself to join in with my fellow church members as they rejoiced in how thoroughly the biology professor had been humiliated.  As far as I could see, the main thing he was going to take away from that debate was not the reasonableness of creationism.  It was how little Christians actually practiced what they preached.

Years later, when I began the process I've mentioned before of laying all my beliefs on the table and finding what held true for me, creationism was one of the things that I took another look at.  I bought a book called A New Look at an Old Earth by Don Stoner.  He discussed how early Christians had considered God to have "written" another "book" in addition to the Bible-- the "book of nature," and how the created universe itself was meant to testify alongside the Bible, just as Psalm 19:1 and Romans 10:18 said.

He also talked about how very un-Christian it was to mock and ridicule evolutionists in public debates.

I thought he made a lot of sense.

So for a while I became an old-earth creationist and stopped believing that the "days" in Genesis 1 referred to actual 24-hour periods.  But I had learned in the process of re-examining my faith to hold my view lightly.  What I believed about human origins wasn't essential to my faith in Christ, and I knew I wasn't a science expert.

I kept on reading, and I kept on examining.  And some of the books and articles I read actually made even more sense than Don Stoner's book.  One of them was The Language of God by Francis Collins. Dr. Collins is the founder of the Biologos Foundation, and his view is called "evolutionary creation" or "theistic evolution."  Collins believes in the same foundational Christian doctrines that I do: in the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Christ as the Son of God, in the authority of Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit.  And the genetic evidence for theistic evolution presented in his book is hard to deny.

So the one obvious thing I have come to see is that it's quite possible for sincere Christians to believe any one of these positions.  So who is right?

I think the most compelling scientific view definitely lies with theistic evolution.  But I am an English graduate from the University of Oregon, and the best way for me to approach the topic is to look at it in terms of one thing I do really feel I have learned well-- how to read and understand a text.

So here's the thing.  Both young-earth and old-earth creationism approach the first two chapters of Genesis as if they are historical/scientific prose about the origins of the universe and of humanity. Young-earth creationism says that each detail should be read according to its most obvious, plain-sense reading, including the "days" as literal 24-hour periods.  Old-earth creationism says that the "days" actually represent periods of time lasting thousands and thousands of years. It says that the passage that says that God made the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day should be understood as God revealing the functions of the sun, moon and stars as they would exist for humankind.  It says the current Cenozoic period is the extended "seventh day" of the creation.  But it still approaches the text as a scientific, historical narrative.

And that is exactly what I can't, as an English graduate, view as the actual genre of these first chapters of Genesis.

I find, in fact, that I agree with Old Testament Theologian Bruce K. Waltke in his article The Literary Genre of Genesis Chapter 1, when in response to the identification of Genesis 1 as a "straightforward historical narrative"  he says, "The text, however, is begging us not to read it that way."

When I look at other portions of Genesis, this is the type of thing I read:

After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. (Genesis 16:3)

That's it.  Straightforward prose, recounting events more or less in chronological order.

When I read Chapter 1 of Genesis, however, here's what I see:

Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed in them, on the earth; and it was so.  And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with seed in them, after their kind, and God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

The italicized parts mark phrases that repeat themselves over and over throughout the text. The two phrases picked out in green mark text that repeats itself within the same section.  The entire chapter works this way.  Each section has a "Then God said," a statement what He is making, then a phrase "and it was so" noting what God has made, followed by a repetitive detail of what was made. Then, each time, God sees that what He has made is good, and we get a repetition of "there was evening and there was morning," denoting a day.

This is not quite poetry, but it is, as Dr. Waltke says, highly stylized, didactic prose, intended not to give a straightforward recounting of events so much as to show the power of God and the order and beauty of His work:

[W]e argue that [this text] cannot give a satisfying scientific account of origins, for it is not scientific literature. . . The Bible is concerned with Ultimate origins ("Where did it all come from?") not scientific questions of proximate origins ("How did A arise out of B, if it did?").  [Also] its language is non-scientific. The account reports the origins of the cosmos phenomenologically, not mathematically or theoretically. . . We come back to [this] genre identification: it is a literary-artistic representation of the creation. To this we add the purpose, namely, to ground the covenant people's worship and life in the Creator, who transformed chaos into cosmos, and their ethics in His created order. [Emphasis added.]  

I also note that as far as the specific things being made, there are three pairings, occurring in two groups.  On the first and fourth days God creates light and the orbs that convey the light. On the second and fifth days God sets apart the "expanses" of the sea and the air, and then makes creatures (birds and fish) that will live in them.  On the third and sixth days God makes the dry land and its vegetation, and then the animals (and finally humans) that will live there.  The whole pattern up to the seventh day goes as follows:

Creation of an element (light)
Creation of an element (air, separated from water)
Creation of an element (land) 

Creation of things for the light (sun, moon, stars)
Creation of things for the air and water
Creation of things for the land

I find this reminds me of the kind of stylized, didactic order shown in parts of the Proverbs, such as in Chapter 2, where the pattern is:

My son, receive my wisdom
Here are the results of my wisdom 

For the Lord gives wisdom
Here are the results of the Lord's wisdom 

They will keep you from the ways of evil
Here are the results of the ways of evil 

So you will walk in the way of the good
Here are the results of doing good
And here are the result of doing evil.

In short, I think the first chapter of Genesis is a kind of didactic prose, similar to but not identical to the opening chapters of Proverbs.  I think it was written for the purpose of revealing the nature of God as Creator, not for the purpose of detailing scientific facts about the processes of our origins.  Dr. Waltke says that "Genre identification depends on a text's contents and function."  By the context and function of Genesis 1, it simply is not in the genre of historical/scientific prose.

Similarly, when I read the second and third chapters of Genesis, here is what I see:

A garden at the source of four great rivers
Two highly symbolic trees: the "tree of life" and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"
A serpent that talks
God walking in the garden
A prophetic speech of God (the curse) spoken in the prose style of the Books of the Prophets

I don't actually know of any Christian group that takes all of this literally-- particularly not the talking snake. Based on other biblical texts such as Revelation 20:2, Christians identify the serpent with Satan-- that Satan appeared in the form of a serpent, not that Satan actually is a literal serpent. Similarly, when the text says God "walked" in the garden, most Christians don't take this to mean that God literally has legs like a man.  Christians believe, on the basis of texts like John 4:24, that God is a Spirit, not a big manlike being like the Greek god Zeus.  The walking of God in the cool of the day may mean that God appeared in the form of a man, or it simply may be a metaphor for the Presence and Voice of God moving through the garden.

Since no one knows what kind of fruit a "life" fruit is, or a "knowledge of good and evil" fruit is (it's only tradition that calls it an apple), these trees are meant to be symbols.  Were they also literal trees, somehow bearing these abstract concepts as actual fruit?  I'm not at all sure that we're meant to understand the text that way.

In fact, Genesis 2 and 3 are no more straightforward historical prose than Genesis 1 is.  This second part of the creation text is not stylized didactic prose, but bears more in common with the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, or with the metaphorical language of some of Jesus' teachings ("the tree is known by its fruit" in Matt. 12:33 is not a reference to actual trees) than it does with the straight prose of the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob narratives.

Does this mean there was no actual, real Adam and Eve?  I don't know.  Since both Paul and Jesus speak of Adam and Eve, they may actually have been real people.  They may have been the first humanoid creatures that God chose to bear His image.  Or this may be a true story of the universal human condition, told metaphorically/symbolically (that from the beginning, when free to choose to believe God or believe the serpent, humanity, as one, has ended up choosing the serpent).  In this case Paul and Jesus, understanding that their audiences also understood it symbolically, may have felt free to speak of Adam and Eve according to the truths their story conveyed without needing to mention a shared understanding of the story as non-literal-- in the same way we might speak of Dorothy and the lure of "over the rainbow" today.

You may have a strong conviction one way or the other.  But this is not a primary, foundational doctrine of the faith, so I'm simply going to allow it to remain a mystery in my mind.  Either way, there is certainly a heavy metaphorical/symbolic emphasis in the Adam-and-Eve story. And the intent of the story is manifestly not to give a scientific account of how humanity came to exist on the earth.

I don't think the original audiences, either of the oral or written traditions, thought according to our post-Enlightenment emphasis on fact and procedure.  I think God accommodated His revelation to their mindset, not to ours.  In fact, to insist on reading these stories as scientific explanations of origins is, in a way, enslaving our minds to Enlightenment ways of thought.  Rather than examining the biblical texts according to what they themselves seem to be saying they are, we impose upon them what we believe they ought to be-- and what we think they ought to be is directly determined by the Enlightenment's emphasis on fact and historicity.

According to Dr. Waltke in the article above, "Natural theology and exegetical theology are both hindered by a continued adherence to the epistemic principle that valid scientific theories must be consistent with a woodenly literal reading of Genesis."  In other words, whether our theology focuses on understanding God through the "book of nature" or the "book of scripture," when we make it a rule that the only way we can know either book is according to a strict literal reading of these texts, we keep our thinking inside a very small box and try to drag the limitless God to fit in there with us. And it doesn't really work.

What it all comes down to is that I have come to embrace evolutionary creation, also known as theistic evolution, on the basis of the biblical texts themselves. I think young-earth creationism and old-earth creationism both show too much dependence on Enlightenment mentality to be true to the pre-Enlightenment revelation of God to the pre-Enlightenment original audiences.  The point of these texts is that God created, not how God created-- and this is also the main point of theistic evolution.

Since I also find the evidence for evolution more compelling than the evidence for either young-earth or old-earth creationism, the cognitive dissonance of my college years is resolved.  But my position is based more on how I understand the Bible than on how I understand science.

So to Ken Ham and Bill Nye, I would say this.  This science-faith schism is unfortunate and completely unnecessary.  I hope that in the future we can find the openness-- and the humility-- to move past it.

Sanctified Sexism

When asked whether reading a Bible commentary written by a woman would be placing a man under the teaching authority of a woman, the well-known evangelical preacher John Piper responded as follows:

It might be. Uh. He may feel it that way. And if he does, he probably’s not gonna read it. He shouldn’t read it. . . [But] It doesn’t have to be experienced that way I don’t think. And here, here’s my reasoning. 

The point of Paul in I Timothy 2:12 where he says. . . I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men. That’s a key text. I Timothy 2:12. I don’t permit her to teach or have authority. And those two things together, I think, constitute the eldership office. Teaching and authority. . .

What is the dynamic between how men flourish and women flourish as God designed them to flourish when an act of authority is being exerted on a man from a woman.

And so I distinguish between personal, direct exercises of authority that involve manhood and womanhood.

Because it’s personal. She’s right there. She’s woman. I’m man. And I’m being directly, uh, pressed on by this woman in an authoritative way. Should she be doing that? Should I be experiencing that? And my answer’s, No; I think that’s contrary to the way God made us.  So that the, the personal directness of it is removed. And the man doesn’t feel himself, and she wouldn’t feel herself, in any way compromised by his reading that book and learning from that book. Because I’m not having a direct, authoritative confrontation. She’s not lookin’ at me, and, and confronting me, and authoritatively directing me, as woman. There’s this, there’s this interposition of this phenomenon called “book” and “writing” that puts her out of my sight, and, in a sense, takes away the dimension of her female personhood.

Whereas if she were standing right in front of me, and teaching me, as my shepherd, week in and week out, I couldn’t make that separation. She’s woman. And I am man. (Transcript of portion of John Piper podcast provided by Bible Literature Translation.)

Notice that though John Piper uses the text of 1 Timothy 2:12 to support his view that a man can learn from a woman through a book, his actual point is that he would "feel" himself "compromised" if she came into his office and spoke to him in person-- presumably even if she quoted exactly, in person, the same words he just read in the commentary.  The fact is that as far as I can see, the text of 1 Timothy 2:12 really doesn't distinguish between a woman being physically present, or just reading what she wrote in a book.  The traditional reading is more about (as he himself admits above) whether she's an  "elder."  But that really doesn't seem to be what Rev. Piper is talking about.

As long as he doesn't have to notice she's a woman, Piper says, he has no problem receiving teaching from a woman who would be considered enough of an authority on the Bible to have her commentary published.  Apparently it isn't authoritative teaching by a woman that's the problem.  It's authoritative teaching by a woman in front of him, in the same room.  And this is a problem even, it seems, if she holds no "eldership office" anywhere in any church, but is instead a doctor of theology. 

So is this really about Dr. Piper's interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12?  Or is it more about Dr. Piper's feelings about how women should act towards men? 

John Piper considers himself a "complementarian." Theopedia.com gives us this definition of "complementarianism":

Complementarianism is the theological view that although men and women are created equal in their being and personhood, they are created to complement each other via different roles and responsibilities as manifested in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere. . .Complementarianism holds that God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood, but different and complementary in function with male headship in the home and in the Church.  

Complementarianism, holding that women are equal to men in their ontological being, thus sets itself apart from the more traditional view held both by Christians and the whole of society from the beginning of recorded history until at least the beginning of the 20th century-- the view that women were simply inferior to men.  As the Encyclopedia of Women and Gender, Vol. 1 states: 

"Early philosophical speculation emphasized the inequality of the sexes on all dimensions of social importance. . . [I]n later centuries female inferiority was viewed as a function of divine fiat, physiological instability, or defects in the brain.  Though the rationale for this belief changed over time, its substance remained the same: females in every respect, were viewed as lesser beings."

This belief was certainly not confined to the church, as Charles Darwin and his fellow evolutionists unabashedly declared that women were evolutionarily inferior to men.  But it is this traditional attitude that women are inferior that forms the basis of what is called "sexism," just as the belief that certain races are inferior is the basis of "racism."  

Here is one of Dictionary.com's definitions of sexism:

"discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; especially, such discrimination directed against women." [Emphasis added]

The online Social Science Dictionary simply says:

Beliefs which hold one sex superior to the other thereby justifying sexual inequalities. [Emphasis added]

A complementarian, therefore, should eschew sexism by principle.  Since complementarianism purports to base itself on Scripture alone for its view of the essential equality but functional differences between men and women, it seems reasonable to expect that those church leaders who publicly define and defend complementarianism in and for the church in general, would reject sexism, insisting that nothing but Scripture should define how men think of and act towards women.

Unfortunately, it's not always that simple.  

Human nature being what it is, most of us hold attitudes and ways of thinking which we have imbibed since we were children: attitudes that come from existing in our bodies in the societies and among the cultural mores in which we live.  Complementarians sometimes say that egalitarians, in rejecting "biblical" male-female roles and "male headship," are capitulating to "modern, feminist culture."  But the roots of sexism in American life lie far deeper and more entrenched than we may realize, and feminism (which has only existed for about 100 years) is really still the new kid on the block.  And complementarianism, of course, is itself informed by feminism when it re-examines the traditional Christian view and disagrees that the Bible supports the notion that women were created inferior.

So when the most public faces of complementarian Christianity in America today speak of men, women and male-female relations, Christians (complementarian and egalitarian alike) should be willing to confront them when the things they say, and the attitudes they reveal, show not so much a complementarian viewpoint as a sort of sanctified sexism-- a reflection of a deeply entrenched societal devaluation of women, a culturally imbibed societal expectation of favoritism towards men as the superior sex.

To do him justice, John Piper says this in the same podcast:

So, I think the point of that text is not to say that you can never learn anything from a woman. That’s just not true. It’s not true biblically, and it’s not true experientially, because the reason for saying that I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men here is not because she’s incompetent. It’s not because she can’t have thoughts. In fact, the women in your church, and the woman in, the woman you are married to, have many thoughts that you would do well to know. [laughs] And to know, and learn, and to learn from. And so the issue there is not that she doesn’t have thoughts that you wouldn’t benefit from. Or that she can’t, uh, teach you anything.

The, the issue is one of how does manhood and womanhood work. 

Piper obviously believes that he believes men and women are equal.  He doesn't think he can't learn from a woman, or that women are incompetent to teach men.  But he can't seem to get past his discomfort in having a certain kind of experience of women-- an experience that gives him a feeling of being "directly pressed upon by a woman in an authoritative way."  Remembering that according to the complementarian injunction that a woman is excluded only from being a church elder, and not from being a theologian who comments on the Bible-- this is not about what she's teaching or where she's teaching or how she's teaching.  It's whether he has to directly experience a woman being an authority on a subject in his presence. 

It looks like sexism to me.  Sexism that's sanctified by its ostensible complementarianism, so that it slips under the radar as just part of complementarian doctrine.  But what Piper's words are really communicating, whether he intends it or not, is that he doesn't want women to get uppity in his face.  He doesn't want to feel, in the presence of a woman, that she might have more knowledge than him on a particular Bible text.  It makes him feel uncomfortable about his manhood.  

Is this, at its heart, about what Scripture says?  Or is it about how a man (raised in the 1950s and 60s when men expected to be deferred to by women) feels when a woman is not deferring to him? 

The same sort of thing happens in the most recent Pat Robertson controversy being picked up in the media:  the one where Pat Robinson (who became a married adult during the Father-Knows-Best 1950s) counsels a woman whose husband has been cheating on her that "men will be men":

"Here's the secret," the famous evangelical said. "Stop talking the cheating. He cheated on you, well, he's a man."

The wife needs to focus on the reasons she married her spouse, he continued.

"Does he provide a home for you to live in," Robertson said. 'Does he provide food for you to eat? Does he provide clothes for you to wear? Is he nice to the children... Is he handsome?". . .

"Recognize also, like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit," Robertson said. "What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn't want to wander. . . ."

In another appearance back in January of this year, Robertson told a woman,

We need to cultivate romance, darling! ... You always have to keep that spark of love alive. It just isn't something to just lie there, 'Well, I'm married to him so he's got to take me slatternly looking.' You've got to fix yourself up, look pretty.

This certainly has a lot in common with traditional social attitudes towards male adultery, as illustrated in a Los Angeles Times article from 1987:

In a Parliamentary debate in 1857, the Lord Chancellor said that "A wife might without any loss of caste condone an act of adultery . . . but a husband could not condone a similar act on the part of the wife . . . as the adultery might be the means of palming spurious offspring on her husband." Englishmen could get a divorce for any evidence of adultery, while Englishwomen had to prove that the adultery was incestuous or otherwise unnatural.

Unflattering as it is towards men to say they shouldn't be required (or expected) to control their sexual urges, this mindset is part of traditional permissiveness towards male sexual behavior, while female behavior has traditionally been tightly controlled.  Though it may seem on its face to treat men as the inferior sex, what this attitude is actually rooted in is a devaluing of the woman to her sexual/reproductive functions as primary to her nature, while men are treated more as whole persons.  Not being expected to control himself is part of historically male autonomy, while being kept under rigid social control is part of historically female subordination.  So also is being told, in essence, to just be grateful for a roof over your head (which frankly, in this era when women usually contribute almost equally to the household rent, mortgage, grocery bills and clothing purchases, simply sounds ludicrous).

But what does this have to do with the Bible?  Where does the Bible say a man shouldn't be expected to control himself, or that it's a wife's job to stay pretty so that her husband won't stray?  On the contrary-- throughout the Book of Proverbs it's the man who is warned to not to be enticed by adulterous women, not the wife told to keep him from getting enticed! In fact, Proverbs tells men to choose to see the woman they married as beautiful, no matter how old the couple has become: 

May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?

Prov. 5:18-20, emphasis added.

There is no onus laid upon women anywhere in the Bible to stay forever youthful in appearance, or to take responsibility for keeping their husbands from adultery.  Women are instead told not to focus on beauty, but on "the hidden person of the heart."  (1 Peter 3:4).  And far from being expected to just be grateful for being provided for by a man, Proverbs 31 shows that Old Testament women (wealthy ones, at least) had their own incomes, businesses and land ownership!

So-- are Robertson's words complementarian (focused on Scripture as teaching male-female equality along with difference in role)?  Or are they just sanctified sexism? 

It looks like the latter to me. 

So here's my respectful request and challenge to complementarians:  Please, no more sanctifying of sexism.  If an attitude that one of your public spokesmen (however well-intentioned) is perpetuating about women has nothing to do with what you believe the Bible teaches, then please, speak up about it!  Egalitarians and complementarians might be able to find some common ground here-- an area where we can work together for the uplifting and honoring of all our sisters in Christ. 

Just because a preacher is well-known doesn't mean he can't make mistakes, or that his mistakes shouldn't be addressed-- or that he shouldn't be encouraged to retract them just as publicly as the mistake itself was public.

Perpetuating the notion that the heart of Christianity is sexist-- devaluing to women and treating them as inferior-- isn't doing any of us any good.  

Are you with me? 

Forgotten Women in Church History: Katherine Zell

The Protestant Reformation is known for repudiating the Roman Catholic medieval idea that virginity was spiritually superior to marriage and family. This was good for women in that the basic roles to which they were largely confined were no longer considered base and unspiritual.  However, the Reformation's strong stance against monastic living, and their shutting down of convents, cut off for Protestant women what had been the main avenue for women's ministry.  A woman of exceptional spirituality and intelligence could no longer distinguish herself through the monastic system, as had St. Lioba or Hildegard of Bingen .  However, Protestant women still found ways to circumvent the restrictions placed upon them by Protestant teachings.   One way was to marry a Protestant leader, and this was how Katherine Zell (1497-1562) found a place for her ministry.

I was unable to find any information about Katherine Zell's early life: where she was born, who her parents were, or any other detail.  In this the Reformation bias against women in ministry may play a part, for while Roman Catholic research and documentation of the complete lives of their saints seems equally zealous for both  males and females, an early Reformation woman like Zell seems to have become of interest to Protestant historians only upon her marriage to Lutheran preacher (and former Catholic priest) Matthew Zell.  The only information I could find about Katherine Zell's early life comes from her own lips:

"Ever since I was 10 years old I have been a student and sort of church mother, much given to attending sermons.  I loved and frequented the company of learned men, and I conversed much with them, not about dancing, masquerades, and worldly pleasures, but about the Kingdom of God."

Matthew Zell was eventually excommunicated from the Catholic church for getting married, but Katherine defended her marriage by pointing out that Catholic priests of the time were notorious for their mistresses and their seductions, and that marriage to a priest was a woman's ministry that "uplifted the moral degradation of the clergy."  Matthew Zell certainly appeared to consider his wife his partner and companion in ministry: as Katherine put it, "My husband and I have never had an unpleasant 15 minutes.  We could have no greater honor than to die rejected of men and from two crosses to speak to each other words of comfort."

Katherine's primary ministry was the sheltering of Protestant refugees and traveling ministers.  According to church historian Philip Shaff in his History of the Christian Church, Reformation ministers reported that "she conversed with them on theology so intelligently that they ranked her above many doctors."  To opponents who insisted that she should keep silent, she said:

"You remind me that the Apostle Paul told women to be silent in the church.  I would remind you of the word of this same apostle that in Christ there is no longer male and female, and of the prophecy of Joel: 'I will pour forth My Spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy."   

She added, with a touch of sarcasm,

I do not pretend to be John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees.  I do not claim to be Nathan upbraiding David.  I aspire only to be Balaam's ass, castigating his master."

Katherine was also deeply involved in ministry to the poor, and she wrote many hymns, which she published in pamphlet form specifically for the common people of Germany.  But perhaps her most startling contribution was her kindness and inclusiveness towards those Christians who differed from her own group in non-essential doctrines-- a position that was not only ahead of its time, but received castigation from Protestants and Catholics alike.  To her greatest critic, Lutheran minister Ludwig Rabus, she wrote,

"Consider the poor Anabaptists, who are so furiously and ferociously persecuted. Must the authorities everywhere be incited against them, as the hunter drives his dog against wild animals? Against those who acknowledge Christ the Lord in very much the same way we do and over which we broke with the papacy? Just because they cannot agree with us on lesser things, is this any reason to persecute them and in them Christ, in whom they fervently believe and have often pro fessed in misery, in prison, and under the torments of fire and water?

Governments may punish criminals, but they should not force and govern belief which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities."

Katherine also stated emphatically that

"Anyone who acknowledges Christ as the true Son of God and the sole Savior of mankind is welcome at my board."

At the end of her life Katherine showed her commitment to this position by conducting a secret funeral service for a woman disciple of the "radical" sect of the followers of Kaspar Scwenkenfeld, even though she was old and gravely ill.  The city council of the town announced that they would publicly reprimand her for this as soon as she recovered from her illness.  She did not recover, however, and died at the age of 65.

Amanda at Cheese-Wearing Theology pointed out not long ago that the opposition to women such as Zell was largely because of their gender, not their teachings, and that if a male clergy member presented a similar teaching based on the same texts, his teaching would be accepted while hers was rejected.   I cannot help but wonder how the history of the Reformation might have been different if male Reforming leaders had been willing to give Katherine Zell's ideas about tolerance and freedom of conscience, the weight they might have given them if she were a man.  Perhaps the bloody persecutions of the Anabaptists and other sects could have been curtailed or even stopped.  Perhaps the sentiment "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity," which was coined by Lutheran Protestant Rupertus Meldenius more than 100 years after Katherine's death, might much sooner have become a Protestant ideal.

It seems clear to me that when Christ's church as a whole, or groups within His church, refuse to listen to the voices of their women, wisdom from God can be lost-- wisdom that could have spared much sorrow and harm.  Let Katherine Zell's life and teachings speak to us even now, and remind us of the voices that need to be heard.


Sources:

http://www.rpmministries.org/2010/09/women-of-the-reformation-part-2-katherine-zell%E2%80%94speaking-truth-to-power/

http://dev.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/app/BW_TEST/Western_History/documents/Catherine_Zell_Letter_to_Ludwig_Rabus_1556-1558.htm

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/quote.html

Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, Zondervan Publishing House (1987), pp. 182-184.

Forgotten Women in Church History: Teresa of Avila (1515-82)

Teresa of Avila shares with Catherine of Siena the honor of being the first women named Doctors of the Church by the Catholic Church in 1970. This is a title given by the Catholic Church to persons whose writings are deemed in accordance with Catholic doctrine and appropriate for teaching. Teresa was born in Spain two years before the Protestant Reformation began. She was a Carmelite nun who dedicated herself to reforming that Order, and she founded many Carmelite convents throughout Spain. Thus she is considered a figure of the Catholic Reformation, which was a movement for spiritual renewal and against corruption within the Roman Church, by those who did not wish to abandon it as the Protestants were doing. She was canonized shortly after her death, and thus joins St. Lioba and St. Catherine as women the Catholic Church remembers, but who are still forgotten by many modern Protestants.

It is interesting that a papal official investigating St. Teresa’s activities once described her as “a restless gadabout, disobedient, contumacious woman who. . . is ambitious and teaches theology as if she were a doctor of the Church in spite of St. Paul’s prohibition.”

Teresa, however, summarized her own work as follows:

Since I was only a woman, and a base one at that. . . I resolved to do the little that was in me: namely, to follow the evangelical precepts as fully as I could, and endeavor that those nuns who were with me should do likewise, dedicating ourselves to prayer for the preachers and learned men who are defending the church.

Most of Teresa’s writings, which are now viewed as good for teaching by the Church, she wrote not because she was "ambitious," but because she was directed to by her superiors, in order to prove that she was not a heretic. But St. Teresa really is now a Doctor of the Church, a fact which might now cause her to smile at the papal official's words, which certainly would have wounded her at the time— for she was a loyal and devoted Catholic despite the suspicion and opposition she received.  The endurance of her words, when the words against her have long since faded away, I believe shows the hand of divine Providence in lifting up His daughters in spite of what humans have thought Paul was prohibiting.

Teresa was a warm and outgoing person who made friends easily. She was also deeply religious even as a young child, and felt a conflict within herself between the two in her teen years, as she considered whether to marry or take the veil. She endured periods of serious illness and pain, including a bout with malaria that left her paralyzed in the legs for three years (the healing of which was considered a miracle). But she found consolation in prayer, and after a heartfelt experience of the grace and forgiveness of God while reading Augustine's Confessions, she began to experience the presence of God in visions and what she called “raptures." Her famous written work Interior Castle is a spiritual guide to union with God through seven stages of prayer. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has called this work “a spiritually challenging book” containing “much literary merit as a piece of Spanish Renaissance literature. . . on a par with other great works of [its] time.”

Her other writings, including her autobiography, focus  primarily on prayer and contemplation. However, she also insisted on practical service, writing:

Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we usually long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul and humility.

But St. Teresa is perhaps best known for the establishment of Carmelite houses: sixteen or seventeen in all. She wrote The Way of Perfection to teach the nuns in her houses to live in greater holiness and devotion to Christ. Many church authorities were threatened by her efforts at reform-- and she had the misfortune of ministering during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. When her close associate, St. John of the Cross, was imprisoned, Teresa went into hiding. But in the end the pope ruled in her favor by permitting her reformed convents to continue functioning.

Teresa of Avila was a wise, personable and very influential leader and reformer. As Biographies Online puts it:

She had an endearing, natural quality; her life energy attracted and inspired many who were close. They admired her for both her outer charm and inner serenity. . . She guided the nuns not just through strict disciplines, but also through the power of love, and common sense. Her way was not the way of rigid asceticism and self denial. Although she underwent many tribulations herself, to others she stressed the importance of experiencing God’s love.

St. Teresa’s feast day is October 15. She was canonized in 1622.

Sources:

About.com Women's History

Biography Online

The Teresian Carmel

Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, Zondervan Publishing House (1987), pp. 202-204.

Forgotten Women in Church History: Julian of Norwich

The Christian hermit is a well-known medieval image: a person who sought solitude and prayerful contemplation beyond even what the monastic life could offer. In the early centuries of the church, hermits, both male and female, often lived in complete seclusion in the desert, near other hermits for protection but entirely away from civilization. In fact, female ascetics who lived this way outnumbered males by a ratio of two to one.

Desert asceticism declined as Christianity pushed northwards. While male hermits often chose caves or huts in the forest, female hermits, for their own safety, inclined more towards solitary rooms attached to cathedrals or churches, where the ascetic could have complete privacy but also the protection of the religious community. Women who lived in this way were called “anchoresses.”

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) was an anchoress who lived in a small cell built into the wall of St. Julian’s church at Norwich, England. She took the name of the church as her own; her real name is unknown. Very little is known about her life. When she was thirty she became ill to the point of death-- the last rites were even said over her. But on her deathbed she began experiencing a series of visions focused on the Passion of the Christ and the love of God for humanity. She recovered and wrote a book about her visions, her experiences in prayer, and her theology. Revelations of Divine Love is considered to be the first book in English written by a woman.

Julian became well-known as a counselor, and many came to hear her wisdom and receive her advice. Though she called herself “a simple, unlettered creature,” she was actually familiar with the writings of theologians and was more learned than she was prepared to admit. Like many women of her time, she found it was not acceptable for a woman to claim learning for herself or any basis from which to teach-- but she countered those who criticized her writings, because as a woman she was not allowed to preach, by saying that she was not preaching, but only being a witness to the light she had received.

Julian is remarkable in that she was possibly the first Roman Catholic writer to conceive of God as both Father and Mother. She wrote:

“As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother. . . I understood three ways of looking at motherhood in God: the first is the creating of our human nature; the second is His taking of our human nature (and there commences the motherhood of grace); the third is motherhood of action (and in that is a great reaching outward, by the same grace, of length and breadth and of height and of depth without end) and all is one love. (Ch. 59)

The mother can give her child such from her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with Himself; and He does it most graciously and most tenderly with the Blessed Sacrament which is the Precious Food of true life. And with all the sweet Sacraments He supports us most mercifully and graciously. . . This fair lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself, that it can not truly be said of anyone nor to anyone except of Him and to Him who is true Mother of life and of all. To the quality of motherhood belongs natural love, wisdom, and knowledge — and this is God….The kind, loving mother who is aware and knows the need of her child protects the child most tenderly as the nature and state of motherhood wills. (Ch. 60)”

Julian was not saying that God was female, but like Hildegard of Bingen, whom I wrote about here, Julian elevated womanhood by showing how the nature of God can be seen to include both male and female attributes, supporting the understanding that both male and female are made in God’s image. Jennifer A. Hudson summarizes:

“If women potentially share in the awesome creative and life-sustaining power of the Godhead and, likewise, the Godhead shares in the creative and life-sustaining power of women, then Christ as Mother reflects a gender-balanced nature within the Godhead, as He became a man through His incarnation. Moreover, Julian distinctly refers to Christ as ‘God our Mother,’ yet at the same time employs the use of the pronoun ‘He.’ [Julian’s understanding of] God fully encompasses masculine and feminine qualities.”
Jennifer A. Hudson, Medieval Forum.

Julian was never formally canonized but is commemorated in the Catholic Church on May 13 each year. Six centuries after her death, she was proclaimed “the greatest theologian for our time” by respected writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton. If you have ever heard the quote: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” you have heard the words of Julian of Norwich as she entrusted her fears for the world she lived in, to the God of love.

Sources:

Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present, Tucker and Liefeld, Zondervan Publishing House (1987), p. 152-153.

Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature

Lectionary: Resources of the Episcopal Church

Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Biography by James Kiefer

New World Encyclopedia

Julian’s writings on the “Motherhood of God.”

Medieval Forum

About Julian of Norwich

Forgotten Women in Church History: Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was one of the most powerful abbesses of medieval times. She ruled a Benedictine convent on the Rhine in what is now Germany. Hildegard is best known for her “waking visions,” in which she beheld a brilliant light and received revelations from God. Corresponding with kings, bishops and popes long before the Reformation, Hildegard pleaded for reform within the clergy, and her writings begged readers to look to the Scriptures as their authority and to Christ for salvation, rather than to priests. In addition to her visionary writings, theological treatises, plays and music, Hildegard also wrote books on medicine and nature. Her book on what is now called gynecology, from a female perspective, was possibly the first of its kind.

The tenth child of a well-to-do family, Hildegard was committed at birth to the newly-formed women’s wing of a Benedictine monastery. In time she became the abbess herself. She was probably subject to migraines, which accounted for the sensation of brilliant light she had during her visions, but not for the wisdom and beauty that she was able to impart to others.

Hildegard’s visions included a vision of the Trinity as “living light” in which “fire and light” surround a “human figure.” She often used the Latin feminine form “sapienta Dei” (“Wisdom of God”) to describe Christ, equating Christ with the female figure of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs. In a time when women were regarded as being by nature inferior to men, Hildegard suffered from self-doubt and a sense of inferiority-- but she never doubted the truth of her visions, which did not take part in the binary masculine-vs.-feminine of the theology of the times. Instead, she saw the nature of God as containing both masculine and feminine aspects in balance, and the female form as a source of creative power in its own right, rather than as simply a receptacle for male procreation. Hildegard’s views raised women above the limitations imposed on them through male-centric theology.

For 13 years, beginning in 1158, Hildegard traveled from monastery to convent to city cathedral, preaching to monks, nuns and clergymen alike, imparting her visions and wisdom. She claimed to carry messages directly from God, warning against a “supposed sanctity” that sought reputation and a good name rather than true service and good works. Though she herself embraced her monastic calling, she was against children being committed to it against their will, as she had been.

Hildegard was one of many women of her age who found that though the church officially limited her teaching authority to other women only, her visions, considered to be a direct impartation from God, carried her over those limitations and gave her a vehicle to impart not only her visions, but all of her creativity, knowledge and ideas, to the church as a whole.

Towards the end of her life, Hildegard opposed her ecclesiastical superiors by allowing a nobleman who had been excommunicated to be buried on holy ground, saying that God had revealed to her in a vision that the burial was to be allowed. When the church ordered the body exhumed, Hildegard, fully convinced that the man was forgiven by God, hid the grave so that they could not locate the site and remove the body. For this she and her convent were forbidden communion and the singing of hymns. Hildegard appealed the ruling to higher church authorities and was eventually exonerated.

But Hildegard was no mere rebel. Throughout her life, she did what she believed was right, regardless of cost to herself-- and yet she upheld church leadership and order, and opposed those sects considered heretical in her day. She was, in every sense that we use the words today, a church leader-- and one full of integrity and worthy of respect.

Sources:

About.com Women’s History

Fordham University: The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen

Other Women’s Voices

Medieval Forum

Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church: Woman and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present, Zondervan Publishing House, 1987, pages 149-151.

Forgotten Women in Church History, Part 2: St. Lioba of Germany, 710-782 A.D.

Since Lioba was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, she isn’t exactly a “forgotten” woman in church history. However, when Benedict and Boniface, the great founders of holy orders in Europe, are spoken of, Lioba really ought to be mentioned along with them. Protestants in general, though most of us know of Benedict and Boniface, have rarely heard Lioba’s name.

Lioba was the cousin of Boniface. Boniface is best known for evangelizing Germany and establishing Benedictine monasteries there. Boniface also desired to establish Benedictine convents in Germany, and for that, he realized, he needed women missionaries. Lioba was the leader of five other holy women who went with Boniface to Germany.

Lioba’s given name was Thrutgeba; Lioba, which means “beloved,” was her surname. She was raised in Winborne Abbey under Abbess Tetta, and known from her youth for her love of study and her devotion to God. She went courageously as one of the only female missionaries of her time, knowing that some of the German rulers had become known for their “seduction” (ie., rape) of nuns.

Lioba was appointed abbess of Bischofsheim in Germany. Her position as abbess, according to Edith Deen, was “not merely that of a ruler, but of a teacher and expositor, and she became so learned in the Scriptures and so wise in counsel that bishops often discussed church matters with her.” Highly competent as a spiritual and practical leader, she was often visited by church leaders wishing for advice. Theologika.net mentions that she was the only woman allowed to enter male monasteries, in order to participate in consultations with church leaders on issues related to the rule of monasteries.

She loved to perform acts of service, hospitality and care for the poor. Her nuns loved her for her accessibility, patience, kindness and humility. Under her guidance, many of them also became leaders of convents of their own, their spread being called “one of the most powerful factors in the conversion of Germany.”

But Lioba was also a Christian mystic, known for her special connection with God and for the power of her prayers. Her prayers are credited with causing the cessation of a violent storm, after she was awakened by frightened villagers asking for her intercession. Tucker and Liefeld state, “It was this sense of charismatic authority-- a feeling of being personally chosen by God to carry out a special mission, that propelled Lioba on. Her success . . . was viewed as a direct result of her holiness and evidence of her ability to make direct contact with God in prayer.”

Kings and rulers, including Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne and Pippin III, often desired Lioba to visit at their courts and sought her counsel. She was the only woman ever allowed to pray at Boniface’s monastery at Fulda, and she is buried there near his tomb.

Lioba’s spirituality and natural success as a leader, teacher and advisor, speak for themselves in answer to the question of supposed limitations placed by God on His female children. As far as men have been willing to permit, women like her, gifted in leadership, have served their Lord to the full extent of their powers.

Sources:

Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, Zondervan Publishing House (1987), pp. 135-137.

Deen, Great Women of the Christian Faith, Harper & Row (1959), p. 307.

Theologika.net

Mombu the Religion Forum: Devotion for September 28, St. Lioba’s Day

The Bible and "Plain Sense" Reading

Over the last few years, as I have written about Bible interpretation on the Internet, I have focused on the historical-cultural approach: that we can’t understand what the Bible means to us, until we understand what it meant to the original audience, as the message was intended by the original writer. And I frequently get this question, in one form or another:

But shouldn’t the Bible be accessible to everyone? Shouldn’t everyone be able to read the “plain sense” of the words and get God’s message from them? How can the Bible, if it’s God’s word, be the sort of book that you need help to understand?

As part of my first few posts, giving the background and foundational understandings under which I operate, I’d like to offer this:

Part of the Protestant viewpoint is that the layperson can and should read the Bible for herself-- but that is not really the same as saying teachers aren't necessary. The original Protestant doctrine is called “the doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture.” “Perspicuity” is an old word meaning “able to be perceived and understood.”

Here’s the doctrine as conceived by the early Protestant reformers:


All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.
Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)

The original doctrine states that the Bible is clear enough regarding matters of eternal salvation, that anyone can, by reading diligently, understand how to be saved. However, this understanding of perspicuity has changed in the last hundred years or so, such that nowadays people think there’s something wrong with the idea that we might need scholarly research to help us understand the Bible. This is particularly true in the individualistic cultures of the Western world. But Jesus and Paul and Peter taught from an understanding of individual and community in balance-- individual faith lived out within the church community. I don’t think any of the New Testament authors would have agreed with, or even understood, a mentality that any individual should be able to read and understand everything in the Bible alone, through the eyes of only his or her own experience and knowledge. The New Testament talks a lot about sitting under teachers to gain from their education and scholarship.

In any event, the idea that the Bible is supposed to be so timeless that anyone in any age or culture can read what seems to them like the plain sense of it, without misunderstanding and without needing any teaching or explanation, goes against even what the Bible says about itself. Just about every book in the Bible emphasizes right at the beginning, that it is a message by a certain person, to a certain group of people, at a certain time in history. For instance: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ. . . To all who are in Rome.” Romans 1:1-7. Or “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah. . . And in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.” Hosea 1:1. I believe those "street signs" are there for a reason-- to tell us that the message was never meant to be understood a-historically or a-culturally. And the further removed we are from the time of the actual writing, the more scholarship we need to help us understand.

Does it necessarily follow that for the Scriptures to be inspired by God, they cannot have been messages to certain people in certain times and places, or that we shouldn't need scholarship and research, shared through community, to understand their full sense? Or is it perhaps that God values human experience through all of history, and doesn't want each age to feel no need of the wisdom that came before it?

Traditional church interpretations, based on the writings of early church scholars, do help-- but after the fall of Jerusalem, when the church lost contact with its Jewish roots, it increasingly interpreted the Scriptures through Greco-Roman viewpoints. These tended at times to obscure more than they illuminated. But today’s resources for understanding of the original history and cultures of the Scriptures are shedding more light than ever on authorial intent. We need to make use of the resources given us today, just as the man in Jesus’ parable of the ten talents (Matt. 25:14-30) expected his servants to make use of the resources he gave them.

If you believe the Scriptures are inspired, then it makes the most sense to say that it is each original message, as understood by the original audience, that is inspired-- not what it may seem to be to us, thousands of years and half the globe away. Salvation is one matter: it has to do with the relationship of humans to the eternal God, and is therefore timeless and understandable in any age. But much of the Bible has to do with the way humans relate to one another, and this is inextricably bound up with human history and culture.

It’s important to find out what the original, inspired message was. Otherwise we risk turning the cultures of the Bible into sacred cultures-- and dragging Christians unnecessarily and unfairly, back to the first century in the way they must relate to one another.