This post is written by my friend and fellow seminary classmate, Hallie Charbogian. She’s from Wisconsin and is a graduate from Taylor University. She’s a gifted writer of songs, spoken word, poetry, and theology. Hallie hopes to be in ministry in the future.
In her article entitled, “God is merciful, but only if you’re a man,” Ophelia Benson writes: “[T]he truth is that the God many people believe in—whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish—hates women.” And the consequences are various, including women being “confined to narrower, more monotonous lives,” being seen as inferior, treated with disdain, forced to give up their rights to make their own choices, and being dismissed and silenced in cases of abuse (Benson). If this is how God wants women treated, He is, according to Benson, “vindictive, punitive and sometimes just plain cruel.” And so, the connection contemporary believers draw between “God and love, theism and compassion,” she claims, “is largely a modern invention” (Benson).
The Problem
While I reject many of the statements Benson makes to build her case, and consequently her conclusion, the sad truth is that Benson has a point. Saint Clement of Alexandria, a Christian theologian, wrote, “[For women] the very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame” (33, 2). Tertullian, known as the father of Latin Christianity, wrote, “You [women] are the devil’s gateway” (1.1, 2). Saint Augustine of Hippo, wrote, “The woman herself alone…is not the image of God; but…the man alone, he is the image of God” (10). Similar quotes may be found in a few contemporary commentaries.
A great wrong has been committed, and it has all too often been committed in the name of God. On account of this, it is building a plausibility structure within which many people operate. According to Peter Berger, “A plausibility structure is the social context in which any cognitive or normative definition of reality is plausible” (31). Therefore, the perception that God hates women is becoming a foundation upon which worldviews are built and a filter through which people perceive truth. If this is how they treat women, they must think, Christianity is not plausible. I want nothing to do with it.
The Key Question
Having said this, there is a key question to be asked: Is God only as good as His spokespeople? In Benson’s article, she made no distinction between human behavior and God’s behavior, human character and God’s character, so much so that a lack of distinction is almost taken for-granted. The lines have been blurred.
Is God only as good as His spokespeople?
The Christian Bible answers this question with a resolute, uncompromising, “No.” God is distinct, other, from His spokespeople. And if we look at the text, we can see this plainly. Isaiah 55:8 affirms that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor our ways His ways. But the text takes it a step further, saying that God is also above, better than, His spokespeople. For His ways and thoughts are higher than our own (v. 9). The lines are drawn clearly.
If this is the case, then the only true, reliable measure by which we may deem Christianity plausible is not God’s spokespeople, but must be God Himself. The reality is that the Christian Bible paints a very different picture about God than the information pertaining to Benson’s article paints.
Jesus Christ: The Reliable Measure
Phyllis and James Alsdurf summarize this picture: “Jesus Christ clearly elevated women to a position of equality with men that astounded His audiences.” Crossing cultural boundaries and defying Jewish customs, Jesus spoke to women publicly and directly (Luke 7:12-13, 8:45, 13:10-16; Alsdurf). He first revealed His Messiahship to a Samaritan woman, disclosing the “deep truths about His role in human history and His divine mission” (John 4:26, Alsdurf). Whether this strikes us or not, within the text we can catch a glimpse of just how ground breaking Jesus’ actions were because His disciples “marveled that He was talking with a woman” (John 4:27, emphasis added). Jesus treated women with dignity and respect, speaking to them as valued participants in His mission.
Then, the passage in Luke 10:38-42 gives an account of a woman named Mary who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to His teaching. Professor and minister Aida Spencer’s comments on this passage help us to see what modern Western eyes might miss. She writes, “To sit at someone’s feet for a first-century Jew…would be an act to symbolize higher level formal education” (50, 52). Jesus welcomed women to learn from Him, as He did any man.
Women were the first people that Jesus revealed Himself to after His resurrection, and He had those same women announce His resurrection to men (John 20:11-18, Matthew 28:8-10). Given the low standing of women in that cultural context, it would have been unparalleled that Jesus would want to have women be the first to encounter Him as the risen Lord—let alone for Jesus to have women be the first to testify to His resurrection!
Therefore, if in Jesus we see the very face of God, then we see God’s tear-streaked face as He was greatly moved and troubled to see His friend Mary weep (John 11:33). If in Jesus we see the very face of God, we see God in a jostling crowd turn toward a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, who would have been labeled as “unclean” and “untouchable” by her community, but Jesus called her, “Daughter” (Mark 5:34, Luke 8:48, emphasis added). If in Jesus we see the very face of God, then we see God’s blood-stained face as He dies in agony but still thinks to make sure His mother would be taken care of after He was gone (John 19:26-27). If in Jesus we see the very face of God, then we know God’s thoughts toward women: The words “hate,” “disdain,” “vindictive,” “punitive,” and “cruel,” do not apply. Although Benson argues that the connection contemporary believers draw between “God and love…is largely a modern invention,” the Christian Bible says quite the opposite. The words “God is love” were penned some 2,000 years ago (1 John 4:8).
Equal Status
In the early church, women were part of the new community of believers, and they too received the Holy Spirit as bearers of the image of God (Acts 1:14, Alsdurf). They were deacons (Romans 16:1-2), evangelists (Romans 16:3, Philippians 4:2, 3), prophets (Acts 21:9), apostles (Romans 16:7), leaders of house churches (Acts 16:13-15, 1 Corinthians 1:11), and even co-workers with and affirmed in their ministry by the apostle Paul (Romans 16:3-4). And so even though early Christianity was an “outsider movement,” women nonetheless “flocked to the early Christian movement” (Kruger). Why? Because of the equal status offered them as heirs of Jesus Christ. Christianity was far from having a discriminatory attitude toward women. Rather, “early Christianity was routinely mocked for being so popular with women,” because it “didn’t meet the Roman masculine ideal” (Kruger). Celsus, Pliny the Younger, and Lucian attested to this (Kruger).
Concluding Thoughts
Christianity seemed implausible to the Greco-Roman world partly because it valued women too much. Now, some 2,000 years later, Christianity seems implausible to some partly because it values women too little? How did “Daughter” (Mark 5:34, Luke 8:48) turn into “the devil’s gateway” (Tertullian 1.1, 2)? The short answer is, “She didn’t.”
Benson wonders why women would stay in a place that demeans them. Her answer to her own question is that, “God consoles people for the very harshness that God creates” (Benson). But if what we see in Jesus Christ as well as the distinction between God and His spokespeople is true, then it would be more accurate to say that, “God consoles people for the very harshness that people create.” There is a reason women have flocked to the God of Christianity for 2,000 years. It is with Him alone they have been the receivers of a very warm embrace and the dignity which is of the essence of all humans.
A great wrong has been committed in the name of God. “Rather than proclaiming women’s equal standing with men as heirs of Christ, [the church] has perpetuated their victimization through misapplication of Scripture…when in fact the ‘warp and woof of Scripture are imbued with a high sense of the dignity of women’” (Alsdurf, Allen 163). We grieve over this. But God grieves over it too. The wrong has been committed, but neither by Him nor sanctioned by Him. He is the one who has told us what is good: “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [Him]” (Micah 6:8). May we as His spokespeople seek to do better, seek to acknowledge and respond to bad plausibility structures, and hold each other accountable as witnesses to His steadfast love, justice, and righteousness (Jeremiah 9:24). In the words of Michael Kruger, “If early Christianity was a bad place for women, then it seems all the women who joined the movement never got the memo.” It appears as if us modern Christian women have not received this memo still.
God is merciful to all, binding up our wounds (Psalm 147:3).
It is we who do the damage.
Works Cited
Allen, Beverly and Ronald Allen. Liberated Traditionalism: Men & Women in Balance. Wipf and Stock: Portland, 1985.
Alsdurf, Phyllis and James Alsdurf. “The Church and the Abuse of Women.” Christians for Biblical Equality International. Minneapolis, N/A. Date Accessed: 23 October 2020. https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/article/priscilla-papers-academic-journal/church-and-abuse-women
Benson, Ophelia. “God is merciful, but only if you’re a man.” The Guardian. The Guardian News & Media Limited, 30 May 2009. Date Accessed: 23 October 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/may/31/women-religion-equality
Berger, Peter L. The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion In a Pluralist Age. Boston: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 2014.
English Standard Version. Biblica, 2011. BibleGateway.com.
Kruger, Michael J. “Early Christianity Was Mocked for Welcoming Women.” The Gospel Coalition. The Gospel Coalition, Inc., 27 August 2020. Date Accessed 23 October 2020. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/early-christianity-welcoming-women/
Saint Augustine. On the Holy Trinity.
Saint Clement. PaedagogusII.
Spencer, Aida Besancon. Beyond the Curse: Women Called to Ministry. Baker Academic: N/A, 1989.
Tertullian. De Cultu Feminarum.
This is a very thoughtful response! So much truth and wisdom. I love your passion for God, others, study, as well as your willingness to speak against the ethos that is so prevalent in many churches [and ashamedly even in my own “tribe”].
To devalue women (or anyone for that matter) is completely anti-scripture. Equality in worth and value for all God’s Image-bearers is fundamental to biblical maturity. Augustine was wrong. We bear God’s image… together.
As a pastor who is complementarian, I fully recognize we disagree on some applicable out-workings here. But when it comes to the value and worth of one another, we must recapture a posture of dignity that Christ himself demonstrated to those in a culturally marginalized position (women, poor, gentiles, etc).
Hi David! Thank you! This one is written by my friend Hallie, and she would really appreciate your kind words. I like how you put it–“recapture a posture of dignity”–I definitely agree. I’m grateful for your ministry and your heart to truly listen and value others even in instances we differ on secondary convictions. I hope you’re doing well!