Adding Woman to the Narrative

One of my favorite icons depicts the Ancient of Days bringing Adam to life in the upper right portion, while Adam is naming the animals with God by his side in the lower, major portion of the work. The former work preceded the latter; God’s single work of breathing life into the clay that would become Adam is prior to Adam’s given work of naming the animals. Adam’s features are evocative of those of Christ’s own in other icons. This is to signify that Adam is God’s own son as Luke names him in Chapter 3 of his Gospel. 1Cor 15:45 makes the connection between Adam and the Last Adam. Christ took on Adam’s image for our sakes, as this icon makes clear for us to see. This is an icon of Adam before the fall, of Adam in his purest state. It is not a depiction of Adam when God declared that all was “Very good.”

For that a woman was required. And for that Adam was put into a deep sleep. This icon demonstrates Christ as the Agent of Creation, taking the woman from Adam’s side as he sleeps. After this was accomplished, God would say that His created world was “Very good,” and rest.



Now, feminists are not happy with this tale and even accuse Christianity of “not touching” the woman’s side of the story in this. In the first, Adam not only names the animals, he also, after the fall, names his wife. In their eyes, this reduces the woman to the same status as the animals because she isn’t allowed to choose her own name—ignoring the fact that Adam didn’t choose his own name either. That name was given him by God. The headship progression is already established: God names Adam, husband names wife. It’s Trinitarian. Jesus’ Head is His Father (as is demonstrated abundantly by the Gospel John; the husband’s head is Christ; the wife’s head is her husband. Paul lays this out for us in Ephesians 5:

23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Even Peter, speaking to the baptized, gives witness to this when he writes of Sarah.

1 Peter 3:5 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

However, 1 Corinthians 11:4 makes the case the clearest, “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”

When we speak of the work of God’s creating and of either man’s or woman’s part in it, we are also speaking of the work of the Trinity behind them. Therefore, when we speak of Creation prior to the fall, we may also look at God’s work as a view of paradise. There is no reason to call anything God does in His act of creation either on His own or through His agent, the man Adam, as evil, inappropriate or improper. What God calls “Good” and “Very good” is beyond our standards of those labels.

Far from never examining the role of the woman in this narrative (as Aileen Kraditor claims), the church went forward from the time of the fall and built herself around the story of Eve. It was the woman who was deceived in the fall (Ge 3:13). Yet, it was upon Adam, as head of the race, that the burden for the sin fell. This did not relieve the woman of her sin. Adam, as the first of all mankind, pointed to Christ, who would bear his image to rescue all of mankind in by taking on all mankind's sin in His flesh. He would not be deceived as the woman was. He would protect His wife, as Adam ought to have done (Mt 4; Mk 1).

Having been found in sin, Adam blamed God for “the woman whom you gave to be with me” (Ge 3:12). As for the woman, the serpent was to blame. She was deceived into not being able to keep to God’s word. Now, an easy solution would have been to place each in a hemisphere and let them go their separate ways. The world was large enough. Adam was essentially asking for separation from the woman anyway. It was her fault, and none of his own. He wanted out. The woman might have agreed.

God would have none of it. Married they were, married they’d remain. Their lives would be hard, but He gave them hope. He gave them a promise. One day His own Son would be born, and that One would crush the head of the serpent, their enemy (Ge 3:15). It is at that time Adam names his wife Eve, Mother of all living. This is a play on words. Sin has not taken everything from them. They will still have the blessing of children. Not only that, one of those children will save them from their sins. Eve is the prototype of the Church, even taken from her husband’s side while he slept.

That Adam and Eve trusted in God’s Promise is indicated by the fact that they came together as husband and wife. Eve rejoiced in the birth of her firstborn, even thinking he was the Promised One, exclaiming (as the Hebrew makes clearer), “I have gotten a man, the Lord!” (Ge 4:1). It wouldn’t take long before Adam and Eve knew that Cain was not the Promised One. One of the remarkable things of Ge 5 is the constant refrain “and he died,” reinforcing the fact Paul makes clear in Ro 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.”

Eve, the Mother of all Living, is the mother of Mary, who bore the Second Adam, the Son of God. The Second Adam is the sinless Son of God, just as Adam, the created son of God was sinless before he fell in the Garden. However, the Son Mary bore was not created, but existed from eternity, conceived of the Holy Spirit, not by any human father. The God of Creation becomes our Father also when the Second Person of the Trinity takes on human flesh and becomes a Son whose sole purpose is to take on our sins and lead us back to His Father as sons (Jo 14:6). This is the Son of Mary’s womb, the one before whom John leapt inside his own mother’s womb.



Eve is the prototype, the foreshadow, of the church. Mary, as the Theotokos, is the Christbearer, the type. In Mary we see Christ within her, just as Christ is within the church. It is in the womb of the church that Christians are born by water and Word, and sustained by Christ's own Body and Blood in the bread and wine and the Word He serves us through His agents through preaching and Absolution. We can speak of Mary in a way that is healthy, without it becoming Mariolatry, and we should. Tying the threads of scripture unites the One Voice by which it was written. Eve leads to Mary, and there are a lot of women along the path that serve as a part of the story, too.

Far from women being the neglected or untouchable as feminists are wont to claim, God knew that Man needed a helper. His creation was incomplete without a woman. God built one for Adam in the Garden while he slept. While Christ, the WOrd of God, slept a tomb in another garden, the Church was being built from the blood and water that flowed from His side. The Christbearer, as the one who bore the Last Adam into the world, makes that proclamation of “Very good” ring even more joyfully now. The angels sang it so when Jesus was born, “Peace on earth, good will to men!” It is so even now when the chosen agents of Christ speak His word of Peace to us in the liturgy from the womb that is the church where Christ is present in His Word and Sacraments.

Honesty in Choices

Many thanks to my good friend the Rev. Mark Schlamann for alerting me to this blog posting. My position has long been “return to the source,” and here is a prime example of why this should always be done in the case of feminism.

In his blog article Albert Mohler identifies the problem as this, according to Antonia Senior:

If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too." That statement, published for all the world to see, perfectly distills the inescapable logic of the abortion rights argument. It is based on a willingness to kill - and on the horrifying audacity to call this killing "the lesser evil."

Feminists for Life make a brave front in their contention for both feminism and pro-life issues. They will even boast Elizabeth Cady Stanton as their hero, claiming she was staunchly against abortion. That she was against abortion and for feminism may be true. But there is a greater dichotomy undergirding Stanton’s position that eventually leads to where Antonia Senor goes, that of sacrificing the Greater Good for the lesser good.

I am not saying that those who are of the FFL would all (or any) agree with Antonia Senior. What I am saying is that feminism shares a common root with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and that root bears both a vine and branches which are connected. That there could be similar ideas from both is not beyond the bounds of coincidence. Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked to destroy the very foundation of motherhood in women's lives. With what has it been replaced? What does the world now catechize its women with regard to the sanctity of life and choices?

In other words, one evil is accommodated by another, so one must choose which evil should be in support of the other. It's application is seen in all walks of our life, whether one is pro-choice or against abortion. However, there is truly only one way to walk in this life, truly, and that is catechetically. But we will get to that later.

Senior, even though she admits the contents of the womb is a child from the point of conception, is willing to kill for her cause, feminism. She is a mother, and still supports abortion rights. Mohler contends,

In this essay, published in one of the world's most venerable newspapers, Antonia Senior goes public with the argument that feminists should just admit that abortion is the killing of a human life, and then they should go on to assert that the right to kill an unborn human life is just the price that must be paid if feminism is to be defended.

Well, how did we get to this point, and so casually that the world didn’t explode with such news?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw her life’s work as the removal of scripture from women’s hands and the dependence of religion from their lives. She wrote in “The Degraded State of Women, 1896:”

I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church. I saw the first step to this was to convince them that the Bible was neither written nor inspired by the Creator of the Universe, the Infinite intelligence, the soul and center of Life, Love and Light; but that the Bible emanated, in common with all church literature, from the brain of man. Seeing in just proportion as women are devout believers in the dogmas of the church their lives arte shadowed with fears of the unknown, the less women believe, the better for their own happiness and development. . .

The honor and worship accorded the ideal mother, if the ideal man, has done naught to elevate the real mother of the real man. So far from woman owing what liberty she does enjoy, to the Bible and the church, they have been a greater blocking the way of her development. The vantage ground woman holds today is due to all the forces of civilization, to science, discovery, invention, rationalism, the religion of humanity chanted in the golden rule round the globe centuries before the Christian religion was known. It is not to Bibles, prayer books catechisms, liturgies, the canon law and church creeds and organizations, that woman owes one step in her progress, for all these alike have been hostile, and still are, to her freedom and development. . .

In her own efforts to teach, Stanton stepped up to the dinner plate.

I often saw weary little women coming to the table after most exhausting labors, and large bumptious husbands spreading out their hands and thanking the Lord for the meals that the dear women had prepared, as if the whole came down like manna from heaven. So I preached a sermon in the blessing I gave. You will not notice that it has three heresies in it: ‘Heavenly Father and Mother, make us thankful for all the blessings of this life, and make us ever mindful of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread our tables and prepare our daily food For humanity’s sake. Amen.” (Lutz, Created Equal, 201)

Such words are not unfamiliar to our ears, for they are the very words of feminist or inclusive prayers heard in many churches in our communities.

The language of choice rings well in our ears and throughout the land. We can’t get away from it. It is in our nature. Stanton was calling us back to it. Feminism thrives from that nature, clings to it. It is why Antionia Senior can hold on to two opposing dichotomies and yet be satisfied. She has her choices; her primal nature is being fed.

Scripture-less catechesis, as Stanton has already informed us, is one of those things of which we must rid our lives. The irony, of course, is that she set in motion her own form of catechesis. Consider this insight by Ravi Zacharias, “The establishment of new orthodoxies by the intellectual elite and the dismantling of others is not as formidable a task when the desired change propelled by scholars appeals to the common person’s autonomy while enthroning the elite at the same time.” (Deliver Us From Evil, 45). Granted, Stanton was no elite scholar. However, by systematically undermining the authority of scripture in the view of women, Stanton catechized women with a whole new set of ethics by which to live. There are no absolutes.

The “Woman’s Bible” comes to the ordinary reader like a real benediction. It tells her the Lord did not write the Book; that the garden scene is a fable; that she is in no way responsible for the laws of the Universe. The Christian scholars and scientists will not tell her this, for they see she is the key to the situation. Take the snake, the fruit tree and the woman from the tableau, and we have no fall, no frowning Judge, no inferno, no everlasting punishment, —hence no need of a Savior. Thus the bottom falls out of the whole Christian theology. Here is the reason why in all the Biblical researches and higher criticism, the scholars never touch the position of the women. (Aileen S. Kraditor, Up From the Pedestal, 119)

In fact, it is the absolutes of the Scriptures that give us the foundation of Christianity, of which the woman plays a major role. Feminism recognizes this, and yet, in her demand for choice, rejects what her Savior gives. Choice was the offer of the serpent, see Ge 3.

Of course, The Women’s Bible is not alone in catechizing women in choice. Choice is the airwaves we breathe. We are inundated with information overload that rips us away from the sacred and into the profane. There is hardly a TV show, radio station, commercial, movie, magazine, or internet site that doesn’t have an overtly feminist theme to it. And by feminist, I mean overtly sexual, choice-oriented, OMG-driven, sexually-oriented. Our lives are constantly driven to choose between the Greater Good and the lesser things, and in fact justify our choices and entitlement to the lesser things over and against the Greater Gifts from God.



At how many tables would it be clearly understood that even through much fuss and bluster, even though the pizza was delivered or the chicken brought home, God is the Giver of the meal? Only through catechesis can these things come to light to our children and ourselves.

The July, 2010, issue of For the Life of the World featured articles by Rev. John Pless, What does This Mean? Pastoral Forman: Thoughts About the Future), and Re. Brian Mosemann, (Forming Servants into the Future). Both articles were directed toward the formation of pastors. However, much insight can be gathered for a much younger set, and another sex.

This age seems to have adopted the Simone de Beauvoir ideology of childrearing: bear the child, and then outsource the raising. Underlying this system is the fact that the child will necessarily adopt the core values of his or her caregivers. If he or she goes through multiple caregivers, then he or she will have a multiplicity of catechetical choices already formed by the time he or she is ready for school (usually public), another major catechetical factory. It is rare today to find a child of seven who knows his Catechism as well as his ABCs, and yet, as the Jesuits would say, “Give me a child for seven years and I will show you the man.” Sounds an awful lot like Pr 22: 6.

Luther would have had it so.

These are the most necessary parts of Christian instruction. We should learn to repeat them word for word. Our children should be taught the habit of reciting them daily when they rise in the morning, when they go to their meals, and they go to bed at night; until they repeat them they should not be given anything to eat or drink. (LC, Short Preface)

That is where Luther would have us start. Here is where he suggests one stops learning the Catechism:

But this I say for myself: I am also a doctor and a preacher, just as learned and experienced as all of them who are so high and mighty. Nevertheless, each morning, and whenever else I have time, I do as a child who is being taught the catechism and I read and recite word for word the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Psalms, etc. I must still read and study the catechism daily, and yet I cannot master it as I wish, but must remain a child and pupil of the catechism—and I also do so gladly. These fussy, fastidious fellows would like quickly, with one reading, to be doctors above all doctors, to know it all and to need nothing more. Well this, too, is a sure sign that they despise both their office and the people’s souls, yes, even God and his Word. They do not need to fall, for they have already fallen all too horribly. What they need, however, is to become children and begin to learn the ABCs, which they think they have long since outgrown. (LC, P. 6)

The liturgical life of a seminarian can help to inform us how our own liturgical lives are meant to be. This is the liturgical life Stanton strove so hard to and, with others, in many ways successfully ripped away from both women and men who are also now caught the feminism that rules our age. Mosemann writes:

From the chapel. . . out into their daily lives where they die to self and serve the Lord by loving their neighbor. This rhythm of being filled with the Lord’s grace and living in that grace toward others forms servants in Jesus Christ who

• are strengthened in the Lord’s forgiveness and daily prayer,
• daily meditate on Scripture,
• grow in charitable ways in character and behavior,
• learn to live by the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s prayer, which will sustain them in their service an
• develop a healthy balance among all aspects of life: prayer4, worship, study, service, family and relaxation. (FTLOTW, July, 2010, 13)

The life of the Christian ebbs and flows from the liturgy of the Divine Service itself. This is where Mother Church feeds her young, and men and women alike first learn what God's design for motherhood is.

So what does FFL offer us in response to the pro-choice movement? Motherhood, yes, but what sort? Motherhood shared with fatherhood? Or that which is also considered smashingly wonderful between two mommies? And what of the Motherhood that can be received only from the womb that is the Church through the waters of Baptism? Absent the very foundation of which motherhood is in God's eyes, the FFL sacrifices the Greater Good for the lesser, for it springs from the same root as does all feminism.

The lesser of two evils is still an evil. Luther says to “sin boldly,” but he does not by that invite us to sin. We therefore do not rejoice in sin as the support for one’s chosen cause! The Fifth Commandment in Senior’s hands is a mere plaything. The lesser evil, killing one’s own child, as she would call it, is permissible for the sake of the Greater Good, feminism. However, abortion strikes at the heart of the Incarnation, for every child conceived is yet a reminder of the Babe born of Mary. Satan’s head is still bruised by the heel of that One’s foot! Still, if all sin is removed, as it is for women in feminism, then of what need is there for a Savior? No sin, no Savior. Yet Jesus only came for sinners (Mt 9:13). What then of mercy? Mercy is known only by what God gives through Christ. Oh, dear. What a Catch-22 we have here.

What a lost race we are when we decide what is we are to be or not to be.

Tebow and Elbows and Jane

I don’t follow football, so I don’t know a Tebow from an elbow. I’m told he has a great one, and that football is better by far because of it. So Tebow and I don’t have much in common except elbows. More precisely, Pam Tebow and I have not a lot in common except a couple: we’re both mothers of children with great elbows who’s doctors recommended they brought into the world.

I don't know why Gloria Allred should feel it fit to have such a hyssie fit over this sort of information, that a woman would be told to have an abortion and she then raises an amazing child. I’m suspecting it happens more frequently than is told. In my case, should I have chosen it, in 1971, abortions were not readily available in “Mormon Country,” were still considered therapeutic, but not a “woman’s right.” Therapeutic to whom?

Within days, maybe hours after being told I was pregnant with Jane I became ill with a virus. The doctor was perplexed by its tenacity and intensity. What should have been a simple localized thing, took over my body, ravaged it, and didn’t let go. It wasn’t life-threatening to me, but my OB was concerned for my child. The virus repeated over the course of my pregnancy. In fact, I still take drugs (once they were developed years later) to prevent its recurrence.



The doctor recommended abortion. Was it self-preservation because she feared post-delivery litigation? Or was it real concern for me, that she didn’t want me tethered to a “damaged” child? Was it concern for the child based on this new term being batted about, quality of life? Who knows. She told me that in her opinion the pregnancy would not end well. Throughout my pregnancy she would say things like, “Well, at least it has a good heartbeat.” She was clearly in disagreement with my decision. I didn’t have a choice. Jane was born in perfect health, to the entire surprise of the doctor. But that is entirely God’s gift to this tale. No matter the circumstances of her birth and condition, Jane is and ever will be the joy and delight of her father and me. She was my child from the moment of her conception. I was her mother even before she was conceived.

Vocation is what God puts into your hand to do. That includes many choices, all of them for the sake of the neighbor. My child, my neighbor, does not require murdering for the sake of my comfort. No child born after 1971 lives free from the shadow of abortion. Feminism likes to think abortion is the premier jewel in her tiara of rights. Strip that away and she whines she has nothing left: “My body, my choice.” That’s because she even denies the God by whom she receives her body, and the Body and Blood by which her body is redeemed and sanctified. Early feminists, even while working for the cessation of abortions and better conditions for women, nevertheless ushered in this present era when they “killed” God and His authority in women’s lives with their anti-religion stance.

Feminism’s (Allred’s hyssie fit) position is not so much anti-abortion as it is the same as Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s: anti-religion. Strip it all away and get to the heart of it abortion is about the right of a woman to control the influence of 1. man’s influence upon her body; and, 2. God’s control of her life. Kill the sperm and it’s product and God is contained; kill God and His word and men are controllable.

Pam Tebow followed her God-given vocation of motherhood after doctors told her not to. Is that so hard to believe? We don’t find it incredulous. However, Christianity and the claims of Christians will become increasingly under attack. Perhaps more of us who faced similar circumstances, even though we gave birth to children with less notable elbows, should speak up and let the Allreds realize that it isn’t such a rare feat after all. should feel it fit to have such a hyssie fit over this sort of information, that a woman would be told to have an abortion and she doesn’t then raises an amazing child. I’m suspecting it happens more frequently than is told. In my case, should I have chosen it, in 1971 abortions were not readily available in Utah. In “Mormon Country” they were still considered therapeutic, but not a “woman’s right.”

We follow the trail fairly easily: Eve is the icon of the Church, Christ's Body. We know this because Jesus said the "Scriptures everywhere testify of Me" (Jn 5:39). Can we not also follow the trail backwards and conclude that anything that attempts to destroy Christ's Body and otherwise deny Him thereby is an icon of sin, death, and the devil? Motherhood is sacred. Jesus' life from womb to tomb is guarantee of that. Women's lives are identified by the life of Christ: His in theirs, theirs in His through Baptism. Yet until feminism can abandon all other reasons than this one as an opposition to abortion, it is still advancing the agenda of all that is destructive to to women and to the Woman who is Christ's Body, the Church.

Christianity and the claims of Christians will become increasingly under attack. Perhaps more of us who faced similar circumstances, even though we gave birth to children with less notable elbows, should speak up and let the Allreds realize that it isn’t such a rare feat after all.

Reading Wisely

We’re going to do this one more time. Folks, it’s been a week which God has called me to repentance in more ways than one, and I’m a bit tired tonight. And it is also a week in which it takes me much time to sift things through. Bear with me. So let’s get this straight finally.

Does it matter at all whether the New American is the voice of JBS as long as it publishes the facts correctly and without bias? As for the friend I mentioned who reads the New American, she did know it was from the JBS, contrary to what I presumed. But did it really matter whether the story came from a JBS source or the AP as long as the facts were reported correctly?

I don’t think so. In fact, while that’s important to this particular issue, it’s not so important in all issues. Another dear friend of mine cautioned me years ago, “Learn to argue their case as well as your own.” That simple Aristotelian logic. That can’t be accomplished without reading widely, and from the other person’s own perspective. But beware! It might get you called out as something you aren’t. Don’t take offence, though. It’s simply a misunderstanding on the other person’s part.

I have a whole section on my bookshelves dedicated to feminist literature. When my husband is looking for something to read he knows not to search there. He questions why I purchase “that stuff.” He knows it often makes me angry when I read it. Still, it constantly leads me back to the Gospel because the errors are so glaring. To read those femmies doesn’t make me one, even though folks coming into the house would certainly have cause to suspect it of me by looking at the bookshelves.

I have Gnostic literature, and I’ve read Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. I have another section of my library filled with Eastern Orthodox materials. I read the Ancient Fathers, preferring them over more recent offerings. Still, I’m not turning East (despite my icons!), nor am I an atheist.

I found agreement in my position on temporary restraining orders from a feminist author. She had a different presupposition, of course.

Why should we limit ourselves by what we read? Rather, should we not remain “un-parochial” in our minds by reading as wide a variety of materials as we can? I say this within certain limits, of course. I don’t mean to fill my mind with overtly pornographic or vile materials. But what I do mean to say is that just because a magazine is associated with a certain (politically objectionable) organization does not mean it should not be read. And reading the materials doesn’t mean one will necessarily be tainted with the philosophy of that organization. The ministerial use of one’s reason says that the Holy Spirit first informs what is received according to God’s Word. Therefore, what is read even from secular sources is filtered through the lens of Christ.

So I plan to read widely, and read wisely. And I’ll reference whomever I doggone well want to as long as they have something worthwhile to say, something ridiculous to comment on, or. . . well, you get the point.

Restraining Original Sin

An article from the New American barely gave me pause. It should have, but it didn’t. In various and sundry ways I was prepared for it.

Along the pathway here and there I was told, “If a woman comes to you and says she has been abused, take it as the truth.” The first time I heard it I took a deep breath, pondered it for a moment, considered my station in life, and let the situation stew for the while. (Don’t let the floor hurt some of you on the way down in your laughter.)

It would be twice more that the same phrase would hit my ears before I was in a position I could respond. “Excuse me. Are we saying that original sin has been suspended in women?”

Ah, the fury that was unleashed by that! Women receive abuse, and that’s the truth. Th-th-th-that’s all folks!

Now, it is a fact that when a woman is abused and finally cries out for help she is in a dire predicament. If she is not believed, more abuse is heaped upon her. Those who would be her helpers now join her abuser as being an offender against her. This is especially painful for women who have suffered familial sexual abuse. Family members who do not believe her instead become her accusers—of tearing apart the family needlessly.

It is also a fact that when a wife has suffered the abuses of her husband she too often requires much courage to escape from him. The circumstances may not be dramatic. They may not always involve children. Yet they always require the courage to confront one’s abuser and demand to be treated better.

So when a woman come forward and says she has been abused, she must be treated as if she is telling the truth. All care and caution must be exercised for her safety, and that of her children. Listen to her, counsel her, provide for her. However, the ear must be an open one, not a closed one.

There is always another person involved, the one she has accused. According to the Eighth Commandment, he deserves a hearing also. I didn’t ask if original sin had been suspended in women just to be a thorn in some folks’ side. The answer I received didn’t settle me. There was an insistence on listening to the women, because “In this case [abuse] no, women never lie.”

I beg to differ, and did. I cited precedence, and the discussion ended. Potiphar’s wife made use of the same deceit (Gen 39:7-15) the New American article warns us against. One of the lies of liberalism is that those who have been abused cannot themselves be abusers. It is also one of the great lies of feminism: Women cannot be abusers, or sexual harassers; they’ve suffered too much of the same from men. In fact, they are the arbiters of the abuse and sexual harassment through its definition, "whenever you feel threatened by another person's authority." I reckon a TV signal is enough of a threat to effect a restraining order.

So the question is still asked: Has original sin been suspended? If so, then Jesus is not needed, for He only came for sinners (Mt 9:13).

Mama Mia!

Yesterday we went out to see Mama Mia! and have dinner out. We’d already seen the latest Batman release—if you’ve not seen it, it’s a good one!

In a word, Mama Mia! was fun. A friend of mine had warned that it was “estrogen-based” and “overflowing with feminist sensibilities.” That wasn’t a surprise. The commercials pretty much gave that one away.

What was a surprise is, given that estrogen-feminist foundation, that Mama Mia! is a classic fairy tale with a bit of a twist. The Grimm Brothers liked to convey truth in their stories. So be cautious when the sisterhood spins a tale for you. It has the classic elements:

Girl is oppressed by evils

Girl is rescued by rich prince who returns to her side

Then a twist:

When the springs poke through the mattress, anything goes.

So let me get this straight… (Oops, gotta watch the use of dot, dot, dot. No double entendres intended here.) The message of feminism now this: The Autonomous Wonder Woman icon (career, babies, big house, husband and all the candy that supports this lifestyle) of feminism is by and large a failure. Does it break apart by middle age, or is it not achieved at all? Sophie rejects not only her mother’s choice of single motherhood, but also reveals the emptiness of one of her “father’s” own marriage because he didn’t enter into it with one to whom he was whole-heartedly committed. Sophie’s (Amanda Seyfried) own capitulation to feminist ideology is revealed later, of course, but that was increasingly expected.

Granted there is an ironic inconsistency in the title “Autonomous Wonder Woman” for someone who has both a husband and children. But if we grant that even among those who consider marriage to be a 50%-50% proposition rather than a 100%-100% vocation, then from the get-go neither is either giving nor receiving the best from the other. Something is always held back, much like Cain with his sacrifice rather than Abel’s with his. Feminism advocates the former, Christianity teaches the latter.

The point that nearly slid by in Mama Mia! was the undercurrent running like a riptide. Donna (Meryl Streep) wants rescue. A proper one is suggested by her friends—from a wealthy male which would put Donna back into the position of every classic attribute of male dominance that traditional feminism openly abhorred (although insidously appreciated). The fact that Donna’s rescuer shares her dream, and has from its beginning, enhances his willingness to rescue her. But that doesn’t answer the essential feminist dilemma. Is autonomy worth sacrificing for the sake of security? Is autonomy only for the young woman?

Apparently when her back is against a mattress with springs poking through it, feminism has two answers. What’s up with that? Same old, same old.

Anonymous Fatherhood

A friend sent me the above photo. It was titled “Terror Strikes Harlem.” While there are a variety of socio-political facts that led to this obviously photo-shopped social commentary (the rise in absentee father hood among African-American males in the last decades), there was also a deeper theological commentary hidden within. While perhaps not immediately noticeable in the size of the icon on this blog site, the sign on church in the background identifies it as Lutheran. An alternate title might be, “Terror Strikes Lutheran Catechesis.”

My own children are giggling behind their hands right about now. Their father worked shift work in order to put clothes on their backs, bread in their mouths, and keep a roof over their heads. He was often at work when they came home from school, asleep when they awoke in preparation for an evening shift, and worked days on Sundays. So where was he when it came time to their catechesis? In fact, he often argued that he liked the Navajo way: Children, particularly the males, were best kept under the care of the mother for seven years, and then were sent to their fathers. He changed their diapers and fed them bottles, but right now they can’t remember it. Ain’t that the way of it?

There is a certain wisdom in that Navajo way. For, it perceives that moms stayed near the home and hearth, teaching the littlest ones from the very cradle the ways of the faith while men defended the home and put meat on the table. This is not to say the fathers are absent from or are free to absent themselves from the responsibility of the catechesis of the home. When mothers catechize their children, they are speaking in the stead of their husband and the father of the home—and at his behest and with his blessing. This assumes that father and mother are of one mind with regards to matters of the Faith, and in truth whenever possible, it is the father who leads the catechesis in the home no matter how old the children. Luther gets it right when he heads each Chief Part, “As the head of the family should teach them to his household…” By that he didn’t mean that 1Cor 11:4 is undone as a matter of “quaint Pauline tradition.” Timothy was taught by his mother and grandmother, and Paul commends this (2Ti 1:5). That doesn’t mean that God’s order for households is undone. The Fourth and Sixth Commandments still hold for Christians.

Women’s Lib undid all that, donchaknow. The Pill and abortion and we can control our own bodies because they are ours and not anyone else’s and that entire socio-political machination to sustain it. Set women free to be as depraved as men could be in their lowest instead of being the ones who lifted men up civilizing them. (What an icon of the Church that is! Whoever does not have the Church as his Mother cannot have God as his Father. With the feminization of society and the church, daddies are mommies, mommies are daddies, and God has breasts! That’s not a new Christianity; that’s idolatry.) Now men can wear high heels as well as women and women can show off their bare fannies on the streets as well as men—and their bare breasts—and still cry and weep because the streets are simply NOT SAFE any longer for man, woman, child, nor beast. Modesty is as quaint as that antiquarian Pauline tradition, and as practical as that Germanic monk’s Catechism.

Unless we use it, that is. Daily and much, for we sin daily and much. I cannot encourage it enough. The beauty of it can only be known through its continued use. We break it down into simple “chunks” every day:

M Commandments & Apostles’ Creed

T Commandments & Lord’s Prayer

W Commandments & Baptism

Tr Commandments & Confession

F Commandments & Lord’s Supper

I don’t know the circumstances of the original photograph before it was photo-shopped. I don’t know why those folks were running as they were on the lawn of that Lutheran Church. Perhaps the Ablaze! ™ promoter was coming ‘round? Who knows? Photo-shopped as it is, it’s an icon for us to learn from.

Feminism That Leads to Christ

Mary writes a beautiful post at the Concordian Sisters of Perpetual Parturition titled Why pregnancy is good for me. It is a gripping confession of a young Christian woman rejoicing in her pregnancy.

 

Æons ago when my own babies were very young, I picked up C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Apart from whatever else it is, it is the finest treatise on feminism that I’ve read—especially That Hideous Strength. I’d not suggest reading this last volume without having read the first two, but it is in this final work that the previous two come together.

 

In That Hideous Strength, Jane considers herself locked in the opposite of what she regards marriage to be. Marriage ought to be a source of mutual comfort, but she finds hers to Mark to be a source of solitude. They have mutually consented not to have children. They are a mutual source of small unspoken irritations to each other. The silence between them is the greatest of solitudes.

 

Jane is confronted, at last, by her decision not to have children. The Director, a sort of Father-figure, reminds her that she is not a Christian wife. And since she chooses not to have children from this married union, she is living as though she were a virgin. She is a neither-nor.

 

“You mean,” said Jane slowly, “I’ve been repressing something?”

 

The Director laughed; just that loud assured bachelor laughter which had infuriated her on other lips.

 

“Yes,” but don’t think I’m talking of Freudian repressions. He knew only half the facts. It isn’t a question of inhibitions—inculcated shame—against natural desire. I’m afraid there’s no place in the world for people who won’t be either Pagan or Christian. Just imagine a man who was too dainty to eat with his fingers and yet wouldn’t use forks!”

 

Reading this Trilogy was when I began to really understand the insidious grip of feminism on myself. Ask me truly and I will tell you sincerely: the greatest feminist alive today is me. I do not say that for bragging rights. I tell you this because in all my years of trying to combat the feminism within me, I am unable to do so.

 

There is a simple reason for this that is not so very simple. Although feminism and original sin are not the same, because feminism mocks original sin, it is nearly impossible for anyone now living today to escape the influences of this all-pervasive worldview. First, feminism is a deception. It deceives the hearer to thinking that is an authoritative voice for woman and her needs, as well as society in general.  Second, because feminism considers itself to be authoritative, it presents itself as a movement for empowerment. The individual is her own authority. This is the key to the wrongful use of individualism. This is the same thing that the serpent promised our First Mother when he said she would be “like God.”

 

Eve was deceived into thinking she had to do something in order to be like God, when she was already made in His image. We spend much energy trying to do anything but our vocation—that which God has placed in our hands to do—and trying to take credit for it as if that is what will grant us salvation. This is the core of feminism, and its root is original sin. Mary speaks eloquently of how God has reclaimed her through the repentance of pregnancy.  

 

I can no more free myself of my feminism than I can free myself of my sin. Still my pastor frees me of it, often and much with his word of Absolution in my ear and his hand upon my head. And daily and much my Baptism keeps me free of it, daily and much. In this there is much to rejoice about feminism, as Mary has found—for it brings women back to Christ.

  

Bondage in Liberty

Without question, the greatest advance for women in society was not the right to vote. It wasn’t even the right to own property, which attended the right to vote. Nor was it, as some would argue, the ready availability of higher education. No, the greatest advance for women in the twentieth century was The Pill.

The Pill granted sexual freedom without threat of consequences (pregnancy), but it was not fail-safe. Eventually with the right to abortion-on-demand, women could finally have what men had: the freedom to act with sexual irresponsibility. Feminism is not about protecting women; feminism destroys what is most feminine in women. Feminism gender-neutralizes humanity.

Now chemistry (Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends!) lends a hand to complete the picture. The FDA has just approved production of a new version of The Pill, called Lybrel. Lybrel prevents not only pregnancies, but also menstruation.

There is a scene in G. I. Jane where the character Demi Moore plays is with the doctor admitting she has not had her menstrual cycle for the months she has been in rigorous training to become a Navy Seal. The doctor explains that this is normal for a woman who undergoes such experiences. Act like a man and a woman’s body reacts like a man’s. The cycle of female hormone production shuts down and her cycle is interrupted.

With Lybrel any woman can experience far greater freedom than just that. No need to suffer the physical abuses of G. I. Jane in order to achieve near-manhood. Just pop a pill and let chemistry have its way. Science is doing all it can to aid the feminist ideology that sex is what is determined by birth, but gender is culturally defined. As one hip young woman says,

"Womanhood is the appreciation of the ability to give life and to nurture. Women are the primary caretakers because society has made it OK for us. That's sociological, not biological."

Hmmmm... and all along I thought women made good mommies because they were the mothers, a theo-biological thing. One line in Look Whose Talking says it all: "Lunch!"

This is not to say that every use of The Pill is wrong. It has been responsibly prescribed for hormone therapy, from which women have benefited and whose lives have been enriched. Christians live in greater freedom than to say “If it’s not in scripture, we can’t use it.” Moreover, the abuse of a thing does not negate it proper use.

The underlying issue is the Sixth Commandment. Nothing is to supplant what God instituted, yet that is what it happened with the advent of The Pill and the Sexual Revolution. If by science, the constitution, and culture women were freed from the obligations and produce of their bodies, then they were finally the equal of men. The Pill was the first step, allowing women greater sexual freedom without the threat of pregnancy than they had ever known. Legalized abortion was the next step, for then if women became pregnant, they could abandon their responsibilities to the child with finality. Men had done so for years; now women could. A Pill that ceases the menstrual cycle is the final step. Now women can live in ultimate liberty, totally free from the “negative” trappings of womanhood. Any wonder that its name so closely resembles the Latin for free, liber?

There is much to appreciate in the Levitical codes with their constant reminder of uncleanness, which is sin. God reminds both partners in the marriage that both the contents of the womb and semen are for his purposes. This is not to say marital sex is only for the sake of pregnancy. However, menstruation is unclean because of what has not happened, pregnancy leading to birth. Whatever is spilled or flows out that does not lead to pregnancy is treated as a dead thing. Things die because sin has entered the world. Dying people need a savior from sin, death, and the devil. While every pregnancy points toward the Promised One, menstruation also serves as a reminder to waiting-Israel of him, for in that woman he has not yet been conceived and salvation is still not near. Whoever is born of the womb belongs to God, to be included in his kingdom of grace through his Gifts given to that one.

This reminder of death midst life—specifically of the fact that now, post-fall, death co-exists with life in what God created to be an only life-producing situation (Ge 1:28), marriage. It is a picture of the Baptismal life of repentance. We are unclean because of what comes from within us. We are as dead things who can only produce dead things. We cannot do what God commands us to do. But in Baptism the old is drowned and resurrected in Christ. We are made alive again, walking in New Life (Ro 6:3-4). In Christ all things are made new (Rv 21:5). Even after his coming among us, every pregnancy is a reminder of Christ's incarnation in Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit. Abortion is therefore all the more precious to Satan because of this. God created the distinctions of male and female for his purposes. When God entered Mary's womb, he sanctified it and made it his home. In Christ, not just motherhood, but all that is of woman is made holy again.

With Lybrel, woman is given a different perspective on her creation entirely. What woman needs God’s view of her when science, government, and culture can define who she is and what she can be? Periods too gross to put up with for the hip woman? Let science do away with them so women can be as free as men (Ex 14:11).

Response to Weekend Fisher

Weekend Fisher commented at length. I couldn't help but respond.

Valuing every human being as fully human and each one equally created in the sight of God is definitely a prized asset. Feminism did fight for this in its first movement when its goals were centered on protecting women and children from the legal and political abuses they were suffering at the time. As I indicated previously, even under the harshest and most tyrannous of rules, bread was buttered and clocks were wound on time. That doesn’t mean feminism offered the best answer to the problems; it merely means feminism “corrected” problems in its own way.

However, in valuing every human as fully human, feminism disregards what God himself says of his creation of humans. Under feminism, humanity assumes a nebulous identity. For feminism, there is a general humanity which is identified as neither male nor female. Distinctions of sexuality are obliterated or deemed non-essential. For God, to be human includes sexual differntiation.

“God created the man (adam) in his own image, in the image of God he created him, that is, male and female” (Ge 1:27). In the Hebrew text there is an athnach at the word “him.” It is like an id est, a pause dividing the sentence into two parts. The athnach makes clear the inner logic of the sentence. It clarifies what God considers humanity. Humanity is man that is male and female. There is no humanity of male or female to the exclusion of the other. There is no generic humanity apart from the concretions of male and female.

God sealed this created design of male and female in marriage, which is the icon of Christ and His Bride the Church (2Co 11:2; Ep 5:22-33). Christ is God’s Son from eternity. God is therefore a Father from before creation. The Lamb, which was slain from the creation of the world, died for his Bride (Rv 13:8). She is created from those things which flow from his side (Jo 19:34; 1Jo 5:6;8).

When Stanton attacked the authority of scripture (its inerracy, infallibility, and efficacy), she did not merely launch a war on the power of words; rather her conflict was with God the Father himself—and by that not merely every male authority figure, but authority itself. The fact that lesbian relationships were tolerated within the feminist movement from the beginning demonstrates how feminism eradicates the differentiation between male and female and neuters humanity. Marriage became the first casualty in feminism. Androgyny was its final destination.

Peter calls women the weaker vessel (1Pe 3:7). This has nothing to do with the amount of faith a woman can have. Of course Eve was deceived. She admitted that (Ge 3:13). And Paul says that’s why women are not to usurp authority over men (1Tim 2:14). Still, that’s not what makes her the weaker vessel, as if women simply can’t believe as well as men because of an inherent flaw. Or, worse yet, according to one feminist lie, as if Jesus hadn’t assumed female flesh when he was incarnated and therefore didn’t die for her sin, also. No, no, no! See my answer here. Women are the weaker vessel because of a simple fact of nature. They are the only ones who can become preciously pregnant with the future, and no others of humanity are able to bear and nurture future generations. Women ought to be protected.

F. Carolyn Graglia, in Domestic Tranquility, writes of women as “precious.” Why? Women bear and nurture future generations. For generations women have been the protected ones of our society for this reason. They are, in truth, the “weaker vessel.” Yet the idea of women as precious in the minds of men and women alike has been nearly destroyed through the feminist cause and worldview. When women began to see themselves as less than precious, as beings who were strong and invincible not desirous of or needing the protection of men, men assumed a more feminized role in society. Women who kill, especially their own growing children inside of them, are hardly seen by men as those needing to be protected. Feminism has confused sexual distinction and differentiation and catechized society into a dogma of androgynous generic humanity.

If women’s weakness referred to their faith, to their believing enough, then what can we say? That Jesus didn’t die for all of their sins, so now more must be added (believing)? That more Jesus, that is more faith, is given to men than to women? Paul says it quite clearly in Galatians: “You are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Ga 3:26-29).

The Greek text orders the pairs in Christ this way: ouvde… ouvde… ouk… kai.. That is “neither… nor… not... and.” We can ask ourselves an SAT question. Why does Paul order these pairs like this? Does it make a difference? The answer lies in the context of the letter to the Galatians. Paul has not concerned himself with male and female issues at all; rather, he has addressed Jew/Greek and slave/free matters. These are artificial barriers God imposed on mankind in order to bring about his plan of salvation. Now that salvation has come to mankind, Paul is preaching the Gospel of freedom to all people. “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Ga 3:7-8). Sons of Abraham are all nations who come to Jesus Christ by faith, male and female alike.

So when considering what Paul writes of those who are in Christ as the sons of Abraham, he must be put in context to what he has said previously. His primary concern is Gentile issues, not male and female matters. It is as if he tossed male and female in as an afterthought, although that can hardly be the case as he was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Still what is of importance is that all who are baptized into Christ are one in him, for he is one Person.

Paul says those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. They are in him. They are one Person in him. Therefore, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. There is only Christ. One Lord, one Faith, One Baptism—one Church. By Baptism we are made Abraham’s offspring, that is, inheritors of the Kingdom of God. As inheritors in Christ’s image, male and female alike—regardless of sexual differentiation in Christ—are clothed in Christ and are therefore sons of God (Ga 4:6; Ro 8:14).

Paul does not say sexual differentiations are of no importance in the same way political and social distinctions are of no consequence to Christ. He is not here saying that the concretions of male humanity and female humanity have been overcome in Christ. In another place he speaks clearly of how sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and the gift of life by the one man Jesus Christ (Ro 5:12-21). Now in the same way Paul is again speaking of Christ. All humanity came from Adam and from him came Eve and through them their offspring. They were created in the image of God as man that is male and female, not to be independent of each other, but together and in union. Their marriage is an icon of Christ and his Bride. Adam was created in the form that the Son of God would one day incarnate as Husband of that Bride. Marriage brings together in one flesh what once was one in Adam—although Adam was “not good” alone (Ge 2:18).

Some consider God’s statement “he shall rule over you” (Ge 3:16) to be a curse put onto woman. Let’s consider it another way. The Hebrew word in question is mashal. The next time we see it God is speaking to Cain, telling him to control his anger against Abel (Ge 4:7). Sin desires him, but he must master it. If Cain does not control his anger, he will do even greater harm than only to himself. Living within the Law is living in Christ, for he kept the Law perfectly for us. So even after Christ’s death and resurrection the Law applies to us, even though it does not condemn us (Ro 6-7).

The woman had admitted that she was deceived, and sin had ruled her (Ge 3:13). We must read the text in context. Adam, instead of admitting his guilt, blamed God for his sin. “The woman whom you gave to me…” (Ge 3:12). He was not merely asking for a divorce from his wife, but for God’s death. The penalty for eating of the Tree was death. If it was another’s fault and not his own, then Adam would live. Someone had to die. Adam did not want it to be himself. He blamed God for the woman he gave him, so he expected God to take the blame for his sin.

God took the blame for Adam’s sin, and laid it all on his Son so that through him all men were set free (Ro 5:15). Likewise, in Adam all mankind fell (Ro 5:12). Still, as her husband, Adam was the woman’s head (1Co 11:3), just as Christ is the head of the church (Ep 5:23). When God places the woman under her husband’s rule, he is putting her back into his care. He is not to be free of her, but is her protector; she is not free from him, but submits to him as her lord, just as Sarah later would serve as an example (1Pe 3:6). God said that it would be through a woman his Seed would come, the one who would crush the serpent’s head. Adam recognized God’s grace in this. He changed the name of his wife to Eve, which means “Mother of all living” (Ge 3:20).

This recognition of the concrete distinctions of male and female and their unique created roles and functions as male and female is lost in feminism. Feminism recognizes a generic humanity without distinction of maleness or femaleness—a blurring of sexual roles. This neutering of humanity began first with the neutering of the authority of scripture. It extends to the manner in which it regards all authority, especially in the family.

Enough sitting for now.

Stealing and Feeding

PETA is asking the AP to stop referring to animals as “it” and “which.” Instead, the suggestion is to amend the style and refer to animals with respect due persons. Animals, says PETA, should be known as “he,” “she,” and “who.”

Does it matter? Of course it does. Animals aren’t people, they are animals. But try arguing that with the folks from PETA—or any other wigged out feminist-influenced cause.

Sure, I’ll lump this in with feminism. Why? Because it’s a part of the package that begins first with denying God’s Word as his word. That’s why feminism is actually rehashed liberalism in the first place. The fact that feminism has a widespread appeal in the secular arena only intensifies its venom as it seers its way throughout the church, turning that which is sacred into the profane.

Feminist theology rejects the veracity of the Mosaic text. Rosemary Radford Ruether contended:

Any principle of religion or society that marginalizes one group of persons as less than fully human diminishes us all. In rejecting androcentrism (males as norms of humanity), women must also criticize all other forms of chauvinism:... making Christians the norm of humanity... They must also criticize humanocentrism: making humans the norm and ‘crown’ of creation in a way that diminishes other beings in the community of creation. This is not a question of ‘sameness’, but a recognition of value which, at the same time, affirms genuine variety and particularity.

How interesting… humans must not be held above animals, lest animals be diminished in any way. Yet did not God tell the man he created that he was to “subdue” and have “dominion” over the earth and all the living creatures upon it (Ge 1:28)?

Feminism has already demanded the Scriptures be feminized to accommodate a gender-neutral reading to suit their own agenda. Suppose now PETA requires the same. How would that go down? Will the Judeo-Christian world eventually be accused of practicing person sacrifices to a blood-thirsty God who demanded the same sort of offerings the pagans practiced? Kill a lamb for God… kill a child for Moloch… what’s the difference? If the language doesn’t sort it all out, and zeitgeist insists that animals are people, too, then Christianity is a barbaric religion.

And thank God it is according to some. God did demand a sacrifice of a Child. Certainly PETA has it all wrong, as do the feminists. And surely if ever there is a move to PETA-ize the Scriptures (I’ve only been imagining that there might be one), Christians ought to fight against it. Animals are not people, and we ought to keep the distinction clear for many reasons. Still, God did require that his own Son sacrifice his life so that the whole world might live eternally and not die. It is not animal, but human flesh Christ assumed in his incarnation. It is not animal, but human flesh Christ resurrected to the glory of the Father, and is now ascended to the right hand of the Father. It is not animal, but human flesh Christ feeds to us in, with and under the Bread along with his human Blood in, with and under the wine. From the Father’s right hand, the Son’s mouth feeds and sustains the whole church on earth. Apart from him nothing is done.

Welcome, Babylon!

Reports of persecution against Finnish pastors who confessed the Apostolic faith and orthodox practice by not celebrating the Mass with female pastors may seem both at once foreign and alarming. Let the news sink in and become comfortable with it. Such persecution can and most likely will happen in this country one day.

First and foremost, women’s ordination has nothing to do with equal rights. Women’s ordination is a question of scripture’s veracity, reliability, and authority dressed up as an equal rights issue. In 1958 Krister Stendahl, then Bishop of Stockholm, argued that there was a direct connection between women’s ordination and their political and social emancipation. “The question about the ordination of women cannot be separated from the total problem of emancipation of women in our society. In the United States where we have learned to detect the dangerous flaws in the slogan ‘separate but equal,’ that insight gives urgency to our concern for the right place and role of women in our churches and in our ministry.” ( The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics ed. John Reumann, trans. Emilie T. Sander (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966. Preface). He argued that women’s ordination was not “a pragmatic question but a question of principle, and a matter of deep religious conviction.” Stendahl contended there was a “basic agreement between the exegetes... with regard to the interpretation of the Pauline attitude: for Paul the question of the position of women was of fundamental significance.” Nevertheless, “The problem is not exegetical in the strict sense of the word, but lies at the opposite, or in any case different, principles of application and interpretation. In other words, it is the view of Scripture that is at the issue” (Stendahl, 9).

One’s view of scripture is one or the other: Either the biblical text is God’s revealed, inspired by him, and therefore inerrant, infallible, sufficient and authoritative word—or it isn’t. In this world there are two religions. That’s all. There is the religion God gives of and from himself through his Son by his grace and mercy. And then there is the religion the world gives from itself as it tries to find, define, and describe its god, and then consecrate itself to that one. Satan offered Eve the latter when he told her there was one more thing she needed to do in order to be like God—when in fact she had already been created in his likeness and image. The religion of God’s unaltered word leads to the truth, and where there is truth, there is Christ. With him is the Father, and where the two are together there the Holy Spirit resides with and proceeds from them. There is no path to God save through Christ and his truth. (Jn 14:6).

Stendahl is correct on one point: one’s view of scripture is at the heart of women’s ordination. The quest for equal rights, mistakenly believed to have not already been given through God the Father in his Son already, drive the agenda for women's ordination. The crumbs to the witch’s house have already been tossed upon the trail with little tidbits like these, written by Mary Todd on page 2 of Authority Vested:

Adherence to verbal scriptural inerrancy guarantees that the pastoral office will remain filled by men alone because the authoritative texts the church uses to support its position insist that women keep silent in the church and exercise no authority over men. Taking the words of scripture literally where the service of women is concerned provides the surest case for the synod’s dogged but also relatively recent adherence to a doctrine of verbal scriptural inerrancy and infallibility... (Authority Vested: A Story of Identity and Change in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans. 2000.)

According to Todd, vested authority in the LC-MS means the synod continues to keep women locked in virtual prisons of inequality simply because it won’t give up on the doctrine of inerrancy and infallibility.

The true issue, as has been proven by the facts in Finland, is one of social and political equality. This is vested authority of another kind. It’s the authority of the Law. The ordination of women has not been given by God, but it sure as hellfire will be enforced by the state.

Paul bases his instructions regarding whether women are to be ordained on two things: God created Adam first, and he was not deceived (1Ti 2:13-14) into the first sin. (See Ste. Em Revisits St. Gregory). However, if the church doesn’t necessarily need to believe that God was actually speaking to us in the Bible, or if those words can be determined to be “good for then, changeable for us now,” then we don’t need to be concerned those details of the Christian faith. In fact, it doesn’t even really matter if we are “Christian,” at all.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton recognized that if she was to advance her cause for the emancipation of women, she would need to nullify the effect of the Bible and religion in women’s lives. That was her purpose in writing The Woman’s Bible. She held to the rejection of religion and the miraculous, the acceptance of Darwinism, a strong belief in individualism, and a conviction that human reason will triumph. To this Stanton added her own unique twist: She believed that ultimately woman was the savior of mankind, as if the woman’s movement was the next step in Evolution. This is actually finalized a loop. For, she taught that if there had actually been a fall in an actual Garden of Eden, then “when Eve took her destiny in her own hand and set minds spinning down through all the spheres of time, she declared humanity omnipotent...” (Women Without Superstition: “No Gods-No Masters”. Madison, Wisconsin, Freedom From Religion Foundation. A. L. Gaylor 1997, 134). Reason and knowledge always trumped religion for Stanton. There were no moral absolutes, save that of individual choice.

Stanton was convinced that the Bible only degraded women, especially with regard to maternity and their role as wife and mother. “Her sex was made a crime, marriage a condition of slavery, owing obedience; maternity a curse; and the true position of all womankind one of inferiority and subjection to all men...” (Gaylor 1997, 113). Stanton recognized that her most formidable enemy was the Bible itself. Not only were Pauline proscriptions being used by men against her quest for woman suffrage, women themselves would not join the fight with her because they were still too adhered to their religious upbringing. In order to overcome her enemy, the Bible, she decided to revise it. She said in an interview, “In the early days of woman-suffrage agitation, I saw that the greatest obstacle we had to overcome was the bible. It was hurled at us on every side” (Gaylor 1997, 172). She wrote, “It is one of the mysteries that woman, who has suffered so intensely from the rule of the church, still worships her destroyer and ‘licks the hand that is raised to shed her blood.’” (“An Honored Place for the Bible In English Literature,” New York American and (?), Sunday, October 5, 1902) (Gaylor 1997, 175). Stanton wrote a commentary to a Nebraska newspaper lauding a court decision barring bible-reading from public schools as both religious and sectarian exercise. “Inasmuch as the Bible degrades woman in innumerable passages and teaches her absolute subjection to man in all relations in the State, the Church, the home and the whole world of work, it is to her interest that the Bible in its present form, should be taken from the schools and from the rising generation of boys, as it teaches lessons of disrespect for the mothers of the race” (Gaylor 1997, 157).

Honored place in literature! How deluded the critics of the biblical text are! When God says we shall have no other gods before him, he literally says, "Before his face." Where is his face? Where is it not? He says he is everywhaere, even in sheol. The First Commandment is not one of serial gods, and no god shall come in line ahead of him; rather, no god shall ever be placed by us where God is. Since God is everywhere we are, no other god shall be there also.

How true is that of his word, also. How can his word have an honored place in literature if it is God's word, and therefore separate from literature, which is man's work? To put the Bible in literature, as if it were an equal among others, is to dishonor it. Yet this is precisely what Stanton and feminism has achieved by making the Bible merely a text which can not only be retrofitted at whim to suit the felt needs of each individual. Stanton used the scriptures as a political tool in order to rip religion from women. Instead, she drove women to the Bible in order to revise the text to justify and rationalize their political agendas. Stanton instigated the use of the Bible as a political tool under the guise as religion for and by women.

While Stanton’s efforts were rejected in her lifetime, they have been well received in our own. Current readers find her a blessing. Modern feminism in all its forms finds its foundation in what Stanton began. It is Stanton who gave the political character of the feminist theological pursuit when she formulated the necessity of biblical revision for the sake of women and their emancipation. If scripture needs to be revised in order to achieve the equal status of some members of the human race, then the text which declares itself to be God-breathed and profitable for all teaching is itself not inerrant, infallible and authoritative.

What does this mean?

It means that when Christ said, “It is finished,” it wasn’t. There was more yet for us to do in order to assure the reclamation of some. His redemption of them and Baptism’s delivery of that doesn’t guarantee their oneness in Christ, only the state can assure equality.

It means that that when Christ says no one comes to the Father but by him, he doesn’t mean that literally. He will kindly welcome all religions, even those who don’t believe in him. One of the persistent themes in feminist theology, (which was legitimated by women’s ordination and could not have been so unless women had been ordained!), is ecumenism. Ecumenism allows not merely variances in ceremony, but in confession of Christ. Ann E. Carr admits that “Feminist theology values this diversity of approaches” and was “ecumenical from its origins, as the discussion has included Christians of many denominations, Jewish feminists, and feminists of other traditions or of no tradition at all” (“The New Vision of Feminist Theology,” in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in FeministPerspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (San Francisco: Harper, 1993), 11).

It means that that if you don’t want the savior you’ve been given, then re-imagine and revise until you finally name the one you want.

It means that saying that Christ is the only way to heaven may one day wind you in the lap of the Law for practicing racism. Feminists have already made such threats known. Just as androcentrism is an anathema, so, too, is proclaiming Christianity as the one true religion.

Now, then… how innocuous is Open Communion? How distantly related are doctrine and practice?

Where do we ever hear Jesus say he spoke differently than his own Father’s words, or that he objected to his Father’s authority over him? Instead, where the Father has already spoken and made his will known, Christ takes up those same words and makes them his own. He used Moses and the Prophets to explain more fully the events of his own death and resurrection (Lk 24:27). The Gospel of John records Jesus making clear that he is the Apostle (sent one) of the Father, speaking only on the Father’s behalf (Jn 5:30, 36, 37; 6:39, 44; 8:18, 29, 42; 12:49; 14:10; 17:21). Jesus is definitely culturally and exegetically bound to his presuppositions because he speaks of one mind with the Father’s (Jn 10:30). His Father’s will is his own, even though he did not wish to suffer death (Lk 22:42). Not even the sinless Son of God corrected his Father’s prophets. His apostles follows Christ’s example, being of one mind with him (Ph 2:2-3). Paul is careful to clarify his credentials as the apostle of the Apostle – the sent one of the Sent One of the Father. Paul does not speak on his own behalf, but in the stead of Christ (Ro 1:1; 1Cor 1:1; 2Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1; Eph 1:1; Col 1:1; 1Ti 1:1). Perhaps we ought to do as [the sainted] Marquart wisely advised,” [S]imply see how the Lord and His apostles treated and regarded the sacred text, and then ... obediently do likewise” (Anatomy of an Explosion. Vol. 3 Concordia Seminary Monograph Series, ed. David P. Scaer and Douglas Judisch. Ft. Wayne: Concordia Seminary Theological Seminary Press, 1977. 133). (Paragraph taken from author’s own unpublished essay, Feminism and the Church.)

Contrary to the assumptions of some—who continue to maintain that our doctrine is sound even though our practice needs some fixin’—if our practice is unsound, then our doctrine will follow suit. Women’s ordination is a result of a particular presupposition of scripture—that it is not inerrant or infallible, so it may be revised because it is not authoritative for the church today. That is, it is not God who is speaking to us through his Son, but another voice now tells the church how it should live and what it should be. If the text is no longer authoritative today, then who, or what, is in authority? In Finland it’s the state. The Law runs the church. Now isn’t that special?