The CBE Scroll

Just wondering why the Bible says that “a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife” rather than “a woman leaves her father and mother…..”

In most cultures it has always been the woman who leaves (or is ‘given away’) and cleaves to the man, which I would suggest is more consistent with the idea of male leadership. With the man leaving and being joined to his wife, this suggests her being an individual entity who welcomes the man’s attachment, which is quite opposite of what the heirarchical arrangement suggests.

I have my own ideas on this but would be interested in various comments.

In a Wall Street Journal article today, “He, Once a She, Offers Own View On Science Spat” [July 13, 2006; p. B1], Sharon Begley reports that Dr. Ben Barres has a specially unique viewpoint on the issue of whether women make good scientists. Barres, in today’s issue of Nature, strongly disagrees with the “Larry Summers Hypothesis,” named for the former Harvard president who attributed the paucity of top women scientists to “lack of intrinsic aptitude” since he’s been able to view the situation from both sides of the gender fence.

Begley:

Ben Barres had just finished giving a seminar at the prestigious Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 10 years ago, describing to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and other top institutions his discoveries about nerve cells called glia. As the applause died down, a friend later told him, one scientist turned to another and remarked what a great seminar it had been, adding, “Ben Barres’s work is much better than his sister’s.”

There was only one problem. Prof. Barres, then as now a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, doesn’t have a sister in science. The Barbara Barres the man remembered was Ben.

In high school, Barbara was steered away from MIT despite being the top math and science student, and at MIT was told that her boyfriend must have solved a particularly difficult math problem when she was the only student that could solve it. Neither could she get hardly any of the lab heads to work with her on her thesis, while her equally adept male friends had their pick of labs.

Begley again:

There is little evidence that lack of testosterone or anything unique to male biology is the main factor keeping women from the top ranks of science and math, says Prof. Barres, a view that is widely held among scientists who study the issue. Although more men than women in the U.S. score in the stratosphere on math tests, there is no such difference in Japan, and in Iceland the situation is flipped, with more women than men scoring at the very top.

All this makes a lot of sense to my wife who is also a scientist (MD) and who also was the top science student at her university. When all the stereotypes just don’t apply to you, you have to discount the purveyors of the lies and look around for other explanations. Let alone working hard to follow up on the options that seem to work best for you.

Let’s try to concentrate for a moment on the complementarian viewpoint as the more recent theologians have framed it and not on the more fringe (and mostly earlier) elements that are anti-education for women. I think that these more recent formulations of the hierarchical position still have in mind some golden picture of the “holy wife” or “holy female church worker” who submits to her husband and (male) pastor while they defer (never submit) to her (out of love for the weaker vessel, an equal heir in Christ, whether wife or congregrant) and love her as Christ loved the Church. [I know, I'm making a leap here that pastors are supposed to love the Church as Christ loved the Church, but then, although I've never actually seen it, I do think that some of them actually try.]

The question I’ve never been able to understand is, “What do women get out of a faithful following of the complementarian position?” I understand what men get out of it — the power to have the final word and the power to say that God says this and not that. The practical outcome for women is not so rosy, and those results, to me, always seem to have the adjectival qualifyer “diminutive” coloring them. Can she say with authority, “The Holy Spirit is telling me this, even though it contradicts what you (the male) are saying the Holy Spirit is telling you”? If not, then she is not an equal heir in Christ, able to act on the freedom in Christ that Paul is so fond of teaching about. She is someone who needs “special care,” like a child or mentally defective adult. How is it that this picture of women is “golden?” I’m sorry, but I really don’t get it.

In the first century, women lacked the education available to men. This was true for both Jews and Gentiles. No matter where one presently lands in the discussion about women in the ministry; this fact, everyone agrees upon. Craig Keener stated this in Discovering Biblical Equality, “Learning in the Assemblies” [p. 169]. He writes, “More reasonably, women on average were less educated than men, an assertion that no one genuinely conversant with ancient literature would doubt.” Complementarians have used this as a reason to further their arguments forbidding women to preach, teach and exercise authority over men. In the first century, less education equaled less fitness for the ministry. On July 9, 2006, Tamar Lewin wrote an article in the New York Times titled, “At Colleges, Women are leaving Men in the Dust.” Lewin states that women make up 58 per cent of students in both 2 year and 4 year colleges and universities. The most striking statement in the article reads, “Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.” The word “disproportionate” is the important one here. So, in the United States, at least, women are better educated than men. For complementarians, women remain less qualified [or unqualified altogether] for the ministry. Lack of learning is given as a complementarian reason for disqualification from ministry among women in the first century. Oddly for complementarians now, learning has nothing to do with 21st century ministry in the United States. If women are better educated than men, should they be labelled as unqualified for full leadership positions in the church?

The truism of my title relates to previous comments on another post re taking more notice of authority figures than “ordinary” folks. This is another area where the church looks and acts too much like the world where power and prestige rule. That is why Jesus said such radical things as “the last shall be first,” “the person who wants to be great must be the servant of all,” “save your life and you’ll lose it – lose your life for my sake and the gospel and you’ll find it.” Certainly the opposite of how things have been going since Adam and Eve first disobeyed God. One of our Australian Bible college lecturers led a seminar once entitled “Eliminating Elitism” which dealt with the issue of churches being run by power which has traditionally been in the hands of men. We’re not asking for more power for women or even equal power but equal servanthood – each looking to the needs of the other. Authority is not the issue really but pride, status and all the other “worldly” attitudes which persist in our own hearts and affect how we relate to each other.