The common spiritual nature and final destiny of men and women created in the image of God
With a few thoughts on feminist history (Part 2, continued)
Some necessary clarifications
Before continuing our brief history of Feminism, part 2, I thought it advisable to make some explanatory comments on the topic indicated in the main title. This is because some of my ideas expressed in my previous two articles on feminism can easily be misinterpreted – particularly by hostile readers. So, it is necessary to begin with some clarification.
In the first part of my history of feminism published two weeks ago, I gave a brief overview of the role and status of women in ancient Greece and Rome, and in the Old and New Testament eras. In that overview I argued that, in those harder times, women in general occupied their traditional roles as child-bearers, child-nurturers and homemakers not because of some non-existent patriarchy, but because it was a natural, normal, practical, sensible and healthy division of labor, beneficial both to men and to women.
This was, I maintain, not because of some artificial process driven by a male desire for domination. It was because of God’s design in creating us as males and females.
I did not discuss this in the two previous essays on Feminism, but it is worth noting here that God could have designed women much differently. Along with all of the internal plumbing necessary for conception, gestation, birth and feeding, God could have designed women to be much more masculine. He could have created them with deeper voices, facial hair, heavier musculature, larger skeletal frames and thicker waists. He could have made them more combative and aggressive as well, meaning there would naturally be more women CEOs and more women in prison for violent crimes – but he did not.
With the same wisdom that invented all of the laws of science and physics – which laws God can bypass any time he chooses; with the same wisdom that designed the earth, positioned it relative to the sun, and appointed all of its motions; with the same wisdom by which God designed all of the living creatures on earth and all of the vast expanses of space - with that wisdom God designed the male and female bodies.
God determined that women would have smaller statures, softer skin, higher voices, and narrower waists. These differences, as well as differences of temperament and intellect, serve to stimulate mutual interest, love and affection between the genders. They add great variety and interest to life. They intensify the mutual attractions that men and women have for each other, and enrich the male-female relationships of husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents and friends.
Think how much poorer and less interesting our lives would be without the myriads of personal interactions on all levels between males and females. Those who are opposed to this beautiful design and seek to obliterate it are in rebellion against God – and, as always, this rebellion against God leads to sin, misery, to lack of real fulfilment, and in the end to social chaos, suffering and death.
However, while there are deep, significant and innate differences between men and women – and this is where clarification becomes necessary – it is important to not lose sight of the fact that there is a deep spiritual commonality, a shared humanity, without which real relationships between the two genders (and only two genders, biologically determined) would not be possible at all.
What men and women share are the spiritual functions of the human soul. This includes both the capacity and the need for love, meaning, purpose, understanding, authentic communication, challenge, self-expression, peace of mind, hope, forgiveness, self-acceptance, meaningful work, beauty, happiness, creativity – in short, the whole range of spiritual, mental and emotional activities that make us truly human.
For this reason, scriptural Christianity does not teach that a woman’s highest purpose in life is to get married, raise children and be a homemaker – though that calling performs services essential to society and is not much appreciated as it ought to be.
Neither does Christianity teach that a man’s purpose in life is to get married, raise children, and protect and provide for his family. In fact, in I Corinthians chapter 7, Paul teaches that it is better for Christians, both for women and for men, not to be married at all. He does not despise marriage, and in fact praises it as a good thing – but he argues that, for those Christians who want to live more devotedly to God, the single life is better.
Since Paul is speaking to Christians here, to people who want to base their lives on the teaching of Christ, he is not offering advice indiscriminately to the whole of humanity. But, even for those who are truly devoted to the truth of God manifest in Christ, crucified for our sins and risen from the dead – even for them marriage is the common, normal preference.
This is not Paul’s main emphasis, and is in fact a secondary issue. For those who are married or single, male or female, rich or poor, Jew or Greek, slave or free, the main meaning of life is to find Christ; to have the Spirit and the mind of Christ; and to live in obedience to Christ’s individual calling which he has for every believer.
Then, at the resurrection of the dead, when the trumpet shall sound, and we shall be raised, and all of the dead, both small and great will stand before God; when we shall be judged for our words and our works, but also for the secret intentions and thoughts of the heart – then the falsehoods of all the world’s glittering deceptions will be evident. Fame, power, wealth, popularity, status, ego, pleasure, self-gratification, all of the delights that life has to offer outside of Christ, will be found to have been empty, pointless and vain.
Christ told a parable of a rich man who lived luxuriously, but then died and went to hell, where he was tormented by fire. This shows that, compared to eternity, our earthly success, status and prosperity are not the most important things. As Christ said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” And what does it profit a woman if she does her own thing, and runs her own life, and achieves status and success, but dies and loses her soul and is sent to a place of eternal torment, “where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched”? Parenthetically, the worm might refer to individual guilt and remorse, which of course will vary from person to person – but that is my speculation only.
The Bible teaches that women have immortal souls, that they are partners in the salvation from the world, sin, death and self that is offered to us by Christ. This is a woman’s highest and real destiny, as it is for men. This destiny easily transcends all of the worst that life can throw at us – but it means that women, too have to die to self, just as men do. Women also have to take up the cross of Christ and walk in the straight and narrow way. They have to mortify the flesh (Romans 8:13) and strive diligently to make their calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10-11). They need to add virtue, knowledge, temperance and patience to their faith (2 Peter 1:5-9), to show the fruits of the Spirit, and to give their minds to things that are pure, and true, and good (Philippians 4:8).
Here is the highest calling and the deepest flourishing that we on earth are capable of – but it requires following Christ in whatever paths he leads us in. This may not bring us spectacular and dramatic lives. We may be called – both men and women – to plain and ordinary lives. We may be called to marriage or to the single state – but it is in God’s specific and personal will for us that our happiness and our safety lies.
The same parable that told about the rich man also told about a poor man, Lazarus. He lay at the rich man’s gate, sick, poorly clothed, badly fed – but when he died he was carried up to heaven - to “Abraham’s bosom,” the Good Book says. And what might Abraham’s bosom be? It seems to be something less than the full glory of heaven. Can it be that there is a place that serves as a sort of waiting or resting place until the last and final day of judgment? I don’t know. Whatever it means, Lazarus went to heaven, and all of his tears were wiped away (Revelation 21:4).
Do we who call ourselves Christians really believe this parable? Do we really believe and know and understand that lowly and ordinary people, common people, suffering people who go to heaven are better off than more fortunate people who later die and go to hell?
If God does call someone to be a plumber or a bricklayer or an ordinary homemaker, and they serve Christ faithfully there with no recognition from the world – they are the ones who are truly blessed.
Countless people, not only men but also women, are deceived by the false values of our false society. They think that happiness lies in a self-directed life and in the gratification of their selfish ambitions and desires – but there is a greater happiness from rejecting false and harmful desires. There is a greater happiness in dying to self, because often what we want is wrong, and what we choose for ourselves is not the best.
Regrettably, so much of this is obscured by contemporary Western versions of Christianity. We are offered the forgiveness of Christ so lightly and so easily, with little or no conception of the life of sacrifice and seeking after righteousness that is inseparable from Christianity. We think we can claim the blessings of Christ and then run off and manage our own lives.
Feminist history (Part 2)
(For Part 1 see A brief history of Feminism, April 23rd, https://joekeysor.substack.com/p/a-brief-history-of-feminism-continued)
Many people these days are making the mistake of thinking that Feminism is now a natural and ordinary fact of life, like the law of gravity, or the revolution of earth around the sun. It is necessary to be aware, however, that many of our currently fashionable ideas about the roles and status of women in society are very recent.
Modern ideas of role reversal and unisex are not innate and essential aspects of the human experience. For many centuries in many cultures it has been accepted as natural that men and women were profoundly similar in some ways, yet profoundly different in others.
The attempts to first eliminate distinctions between men and women, and now to eliminate gender altogether, are the products of a sheltered and pampered society that, through all of the conveniences of the modern technological age, has become increasingly separated from the harsh realities of life.
That so many women should make imitating men their ideal, even to the point of scorning motherhood and viewing children as only burdens and nuisances, and unborn children as obstacles to be casually disposed of in pursuit of more important goals such as a career or personal convenience; that so many people, both men and women, should be so consumed with self-loathing as to think that if only they could mutilate their bodies and change genders, then they would really be happy – these are false, ugly and destructive philosophies.
To my mind, the transgender movement is intellectually and morally on the same plane as the belief that the blond, blue-eyed Aryans are the master race – and just as people now look back on Germany and wonder how such ridiculous ideas could have come to power in an advanced, modern society, so in the future people will look on our bizarre society with its twisted ideas.
No, the modern feminist movement is not a natural truth. It is very much a recent cultural phenomenon, and a Western one at that. We can detect its first modern emergence in the French Revolution, in The Rights of Women and the Citizen (1791) by Olympe de Gouges, and in other writings by Etta van Aelder and the Marquis de Condorcet, but those writers did not have a significant impact. The French revolutionaries had other items on their agenda and the “emancipation” of women was not one of them.
An early manifestation of women’s liberation in 18th-century England is Mary Wollstonecraft’s book A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). It was very conservative by today’s standards, but even so did not meet with a wide reception.
It was not until the vastly increased industrialization of women in the Victorian era (1837-1901) that the question of women’s role and status in society became a significant public issue. The reasons for this are not hard to grasp.
(1) The increasing urbanization of England and the concomitant breakdown of traditional lifestyles made it more necessary for women to find means of supporting themselves, or at least adding more money to the family income.
(2) The vastly expanded number of job opportunities made the possibility of work outside the home much greater. These were predominantly lower level jobs, but as the century progressed increasing jobs in clerical work, health care, and education opened the doors for female participation yet wider.
(3) The rising prosperity of England’s rising middle and upper classes left increasing numbers of women with the ability to hire servants – and what were they supposed to do with their leisure time? This was an important question for many people.
(4) Finally, the breakdown of the traditional religious worldview due to the progress of secularism and the scientific revolution also raised many new questions about the meaning and purpose of life as a whole. Traditional religion was still a powerful force in those days, but new forces were at work and biblical commands came to seem increasingly irrelevant to many.
(5) The idea of granting women more rights and more opportunities seemed fair and reasonable to many men, and all of the legal reforms granted to women were given them by a male dominated Parliament (the first woman elected to the British Parliament took her seat in 1919). Queen Victoria herself was not an ardent feminist, and held many traditional views.
As women became more active in working for greater rights and opportunities, the women’s rights movement quickly bifurcated into two main streams: the liberal and the radical.
The liberal feminists accepted the then-existing political and economic arrangements as basically sound, and sought greater rights for women within the system.
The radical wing, which was intimately connected with socialist and Marxist revolutionary groups, thought that traditional women’s roles were oppressive, and the result of an oppressive system. Thus the revolutionary feminists, of whom Marx, Engels, and Bakunin were prime examples, believed that the traditional roles of women were the result of capitalism. They argued that once capitalism was destroyed and socialism or communism was achieved, women would be emancipated also, and no longer restricted by the demands of home and family.
It is not so well known that Lenin was an ardent feminist, at least rhetorically, and promised the liberation of women from their traditional roles in the New Soviet paradise. Of course, like all of Lenin’s other promises, that was nothing but a lie and women’s lives in the new Soviet Union became grimmer and harder than they had been before (the same is true of men).
This basic divide between more conservative and more radical versions of feminism has persisted to the present day, with radical mutations that would have been inconceivable in the 19th century.