I want to take a few minutes to react to Beth Allison Barr’s 2021 book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.”
The author’s first seven words of main text are “I never meant to be an activist.”(1) Scholar’s testimonials on the cover make the volume out to be “an absolute game changer,”(2) but if the book is unusual, it is so in offering the reader a poorer than average outing.
Many Christians believe that men and women were created in God’s image, equal in value before Him but different, harmoniously designed each to complement the other. Barr is pushing back against the position described in John Piper and Wayne Grudem’s remarkable 1991 volume, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.(3) For those who are interested, I include in the endnotes the actual descriptions of masculinity and femininity presented in that tome.(4)
Barr’s mission is to untell the complementarian viewpoint. Barr sees “biblical womanhood” as the idea that “women were made to desire their husbands and let them rule”(5) and that “God designed women primarily to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers”(6)--a proposal she finds objectionable.
Barr insists we have misinterpreted the Bible. Those who embrace a complementarian understanding do so, she alleges, because Christian history has been misrepresented and rewritten(7). Her attempt to ‘re-educate’ Christians is not a new idea. She sees it as necessary because,
…women’s leadership has been forgotten, because women’s stories throughout history have been covered up, neglected, or retold to recast women as less significant than they really were. (8)
If that sounds like boilerplate feminist theology, it is because it is. Barr wants us to stop neglecting the “history” of female Christian leadership. How? For example, by our embracing the idea that at least one woman was ordained a bishop.(9) Barr tells of Margaret, “a woman who defied marriage, defied male authority, fought and killed a dragon, and was anointed by God in the same way Jesus was anointed.”(10) (But anointings usually occur at the head, not the feet!) On the basis of these and other stories, Barr says “The women remembered by medieval Christianity undermined modern biblical womanhood.”(11)
Instead of the clear teaching of Bible passages, Barr prefers us to make maybes and tall tales our measure of truth. But are we truly surprised? She did warn she was an activist. She admits to desiring to “flip the Christian narrative about patriarchy.”(12) The medieval period being her area of expertise, the author actually had an opportunity to help us with an improved understanding of the activity of women in the church during that period. Her book misses the opportunity to make a substantive contribution.
Why The Review?
I’m looking at Barr’s book because some members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have been attempting to introduce the practice of women’s ordination (WO) to the gospel ministry. In spite of long and loud pro-WO advocacy by some, thousands of delegates from hundreds of countries have refused to approve ordination for women.(13) We know that other groups have committed denominational suicide when theologians and administrators became enamored of ideas that led them to adopt women’s ordination. Recently, pro-WO Adventists have welcomed Barr’s book.
Barr’s readers will be harangued about oppression(14); her concerns about hierarchy are repeated dozens of times.(15) “Patriarchy” receives more than 150 mentions. The author asserts the existence of intricate systems of racism and oppression, and that “the roots of biblical womanhood extend from white supremacy.”(16) Barr is convinced: “Complementarianism is patriarchy, and patriarchy is about power. Neither has ever been about Jesus.”(17) According to Barr, complementarians are engaged in what she claims is a “blind pursuit to maintain control over women.”(18) But it is difficult to know how her mind-reading helps readers come to added clarity about Bible facts.
Hermeneutics
A word is in order concerning Barr’s hermeneutical approach. Hermeneutics are, in effect, the rules of biblical interpretation. The reason people hold the complementarian position, says Barr, is that their view is “based on a handful of verses read apart from their historical context.”(19) “Cultural assumptions and practices regarding womanhood are read into the biblical text.”(20) Rather than defending a “plain and natural” reading of the Bible, says Barr, complementarians are “really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression.”(21)
Barr says,
Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions.(22)
She cautions against “literalist” and “hierarchicalist” hermeneutics.(23) “Patriarchy certainly exists in the biblical narrative” and is on “parade throughout the New Testament—from the exclusive leadership of male Jews to the harsh adultery laws applied to women and even to the writings of Paul.”(24) Barr claims that “Echoes of Livy ended up in the New Testament… Paul’s words are drawing from his Roman context.”(25) (“Livy” is how many refer to noted Roman historian Titus Livius, who died about A.D. 12.)
None deny Paul existed in a particular cultural place and time, but as Seventh-day Adventists, we believe that “The Bible transcends its cultural backgrounds to serve as God’s Word for all cultural, racial, and situational contexts in all ages.”(26) Most Adventists look at the Bible very differently than either Barr or most pro-women’s ordination advocates in the church do.
Barr is not an Adventist, and her writing indicates a much different approach to the authority of the text. Let’s face it, when she quotes scholars like Ben Witherington, Phyllis Trible, Bart Ehrman, Ed Stetzer, and similar stripe scholars, she is not placing herself in the “plain reading” interpreter category.
Some will be interested in Barr’s view of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation, says Barr, meant the arrival of a renewed patriarchalism.(27) “Biblical womanhood,” she complains, “is rooted in human patriarchal structures that keep seeping back into the church.”(28) Protestant reformers, says she, mapped “Scripture onto a preceding secular structure.”(29) For Barr, the Reformation was hijacked to teach error.
Some might be interested in what Seventh-day Adventist Ellen White writes concerning the patriarchal system in her book Patriarchs and Prophets:
In early times the father was the ruler and priest of his own family, and he exercised authority over his children, even after they had families of their own. His descendants were taught to look up to him as their head, in both religious and secular matters. This patriarchal system of government Abraham endeavored to perpetuate, as it tended to preserve the knowledge of God. It was necessary to bind the members of the household together, in order to build up a barrier against the idolatry that had become so widespread and so deep-seated.(30)
Barr includes some Bible arguments. For example, she claims that in Genesis 2:22-24 English Bible translators read their history into the Hebrew text, because in 2:22-23 the rib is made into a “woman” and in verse 24 the same word translated woman is translated "wife." But, complains Barr, "neither the word 'marriage' nor the word 'wife' appear in the Hebrew text."(31)
Barr fails to see that the word is the same because there is no different word for woman/wife In the Hebrew Lexicon. This word relies on context for more specificity, and that is exactly what the reader is given in v. 24, where Eve is said to be “his” woman [Adam’s] particularly. It is clear from context that a change in status for woman and man both occurs at verse 24 when he “leaves” his father and mother, and they are “joined” to each other and become “one flesh.” But Barr still quotes Naomi Tadmor’s complaint that "The polygamous social universe of the Hebrew Bible was rendered in terms of a monogamous English marital discourse.’”(32) Barr concludes that “early English Bible translations did not accurately reflect Hebrew words or relationship but instead reflected modern English sensibilities.”(33) This conclusion is simply wrong; the translation of “woman” then “wife” is accurate, and from its very first description of male/female relations, the Bible is telling us that God’s plan for marriage transcends all cultural bubbles–-including the one Beth Barr is in!
The author’s arguments culminate in her charge that complementarians teach heretical theology. She charges that when complementarians teach the Son is subordinate to His Father, that they teach Arianism. Barr presents Aimee Byrd who claims to read from a 2001 Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood document which she claims stated that Jesus is “subordinate to the father, not only in economy, but in essence.”(34) She may be accurately representing some document which I couldn’t locate, but I did discover another 2001 document on the CBMW website (Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) which states unambiguously that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same essence(35), which exactly contradicts this claim. The Father and Son are certainly of the same essence for eternity, but the Son chooses to voluntarily submit to the Father. There is nothing heretical in that but that it runs counter to Barr’s underlying idea that all hierarchy somehow equals oppression. And so, Barr and others soldier on, no matter how unhinged and hair’s-on-fire sounding their arguments. Sadly, it seems that the author is an example of someone who has been ideologically captured.
I can at least agree with Beth Barr’s statement that,
“Many people in order to make room for an egalitarian position have to do something with the way we read Scripture. It loosens our understanding of Scripture.”(36)
We agree that all men and women possess the same natural rights to life, to property and to pursue right living so long as not at the expense of others. But when “egalitarianism” means equal authority, equal roles, sameness, and total interchangeability, suddenly an arbiter is needed to decide what is equal. Then Christians also become entangled in energy-sapping power conflicts, just as Satan would have it.
Barr’s book is underwhelming, but it has a 2021 publish date and this has led to chatter about it. But women’s ordination is old news in most denominations. Virtually all which have accepted WO have continued down the same theological track and long since entered upon even less biblical positions concerning maleness and femaleness that contradict God’s teaching. Barr’s book, although surely well intended by its author, by the paucity of evidence it provides in favor of its positions, reaffirms the sad lack of Bible and historical evidence favoring its thesis.
How long will arguments like Barr’s continue to be made? I expect about as long as there are readers wanting to find velvet off-ramps from the Bible teaching and Christian approach to manhood and womanhood.
Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.
Notes
1. Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: how the subjugation of women became gospel truth (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2021, 245 pp.), p. 1.
2. Back cover copy.
3. John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1991), 566 pp.
4. Ibid., It would carry me beyond my reaction to Barr’s book to further describe Piper and Grudem’s monumental volume. But for those interested in more than the negative superficial descriptions presented by Barr, see their definitions for masculinity: “ 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” p. 35, and femininity: “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” p. 36. See pp. 35-59 for elaboration.
5. Ibid., p. 2.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 98.
8. Ibid., p. 84.
9. Ibid., p. 76; see also hagiographical speculations and stretched stories at pp. 88-90.
10. Ibid., p. 80.
11. Ibid., p. 84.
12. Ibid., p. 26.
13. General Conference Session votes (gatherings of delegates from throughout the global Seventh-day Adventist Church occurring every five years) in 1990, 1995, and 2015 sessions yielded the results No, No, and No respectively.
14. Barr, pp. 6-8, 26, 42, 158, 198, 203, 208.
15. Ibid., pp. pp. 2, 7, 9, 20, 28-29, 33, 35, 42-43, 46, 55, 106, 112, 123, 125, 166, 173, 193, 194, 195, 203, 207.
16. Ibid., 208.
17. Ibid., p. 218.
18. Ibid., p. 194.
19. Ibid., p. 6.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 7.
22. Ibid., p. 36.
23. Ibid., pp. 33-34.
24. Ibid, p. 35.
25. Ibid. p. 60.
26. Methods of Bible Study, section 2.a.4, p. 330, in Understanding Scripture: An Adventist Approach, (General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Biblical Research Institute, 2005).
27. Barr, p. 105.
28. Ibid., p. 106.
29. Ibid., p. 123.
30. Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 141-142.
31. Barr, pp. 148-150.
32. Ibid., p. 149.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., op. cit. Aimee Byrd, p. 193.
35. https://cbmw.org/2001/09/01/god-and-the-genesis-of-gender/
36. Barr, p. 199.