Tag: creation

A Rereading of Woman in the Garden: With Fretheim

I’ve been reading a collection of Terence Fretheim’s essays over the last month that have been fantastic in offering his many insights into theology and Scripture. Fretheim is one of those OT scholars who can write in a way that is both accessible and constructively provocative. One of the essays, “Creator, Creature, and Co-Creation in Genesis 1-2” offers the following four points regarding a reading of Genesis 1-2 and certain “androcentric” (man centered) readings:

  1. For the woman to be created from the rib of the ‘adam entails no subordination, any more that the ‘adam‘s being created from the ground implies his subordination.

  2. For the woman to be called helper (‘ezer) carries no implications regarding the status of the one who helps; indeed, God is more often called the helper of human beings (Psalm 121). The suggestion that Eve’s helping in this text as to do with motherhood is insufficient. Helping for Eve cannot be collapsed into procreation, not least because the immediate outcome specified in vv. 24-25 does not focus on this concern.

  3. For the woman to be named by the ‘adam does not entail the authority of man over woman, any more than Hagar’s naming of God entails such authority in [Genesis] 16:13. Naming has to do with an act of discernment regarding the nature of relationships, as in the naming of the animals by ‘adam. Moreover, if the ‘adam is already ruler over the woman in chapter 2, then the sentence of 3:16 represents no judgment.

  4. Finally, contrary to some recent opinion, one ought not consider ‘adam as an “earth creature” without sexual identity before the creation of woman, so that the creation of man and woman is simultaneous. Without an explicit linguistic marker that the meaning of the word ‘adam changes from “earth creature” to “the man,” it will be read the same throughout this section…. In any case, being created first or last has nothing to do with priority or subordination. (Chan, Michael J. and Brent A. Strawn, eds., What Kind of God?: Collected Essays of Terence E. Fretheim [Siphrut 14; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015], p.202)

Here Freitheim reminds readers that male centered readings of the creation account/s in Genesis 1-2 do not in fact support the subordination of women as part of the “creational order,” but that any subordinating which occurs is the result of fallen-ness.

Women in Ministry: The Spirit, Creation and Eschaton (with Podcast)

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson
Sister Aimee Semple McPherson of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel

This post is borne out of a need to briefly share my view of women serving in ministry. I am an unabashed Egalitarian. I believe women (and men) can and must serve the Church (global and local) in any capacity that they are called to as ministers of the good news of Jesus in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. This in no way sets aside, ignores, or rejects the teachings of the Scripture on the subject. I take the Scriptures with all seriousness. However, what are the markers by which we interpret Scripture are paramount for me (and what interpretive methodologies we use matter). This is not a post that discusses (or exegetes) specific texts (I’ve done some of that elsewhere), but one that is orienting for my approach to the subject in light of the over-arching orientation of Scripture.
I find three basic orienting testimonies in Scripture address this issue for myself:

  1. The Spirit testifies. This testimony is the most basic to my understanding that whatever the Spirit testifies to must be affirmed. This functions in the way that the Spirit testified for the early church concerning full Gentile inclusion in every way (Acts 15). The same Spirit that is poured out on men is poured out on women. The same Spirit that empowers for witness, the same Spirit that calls to ministry, the same Spirit that sanctifies, anoints, secures and gifts towards the full maturation of the Church until we all come into the fullness of Christ. [Just such a trajectory is proposed in J. C. Thomas, ‘Women, Pentecostals, and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994), pp. 41-56].
  2. The creation testifies. While complementarians say they appeal to creation order, they actually appeal to the order of the Fall in Genesis 3. However, Genesis one and two address women as co-equals in the call to care for the earth and accomplish the purposes of God in the earth. This is the account pre-Fall and should take precedence as the “order” in which God made things precedes the “order” into which things descended in sinfulness. Redemption, thus, is oriented by creation toward new creation in the midst of fallen-ness, but does not take its first cue from fallen-ness.
  3. The eschaton testifies. While many seem to order their lives by the “now” this disregards the “then” of what God is doing to set all things to rights in the cosmos. The eschaton (or “end”) of all things points to the end of relationship structures as conceived between husband and wife (according to Jesus being “neither married nor given in marriage” Matthew 22:30). It points to the end for which we were created. This end is that for which the Church is oriented in Christ Jesus. Yet we do not simply await that end, but we begin even now to live in light of that end even as we still marry and are given in marriage. Our continuing in marriage is under the banner of Christ’s soon coming kingdom when such structures must be conformed to his intent in everything–that is, in mutual submission, and in living in wholeness towards God and world in redemption.

While I in no way anticipate that this is persuasive for those who hold alternative views, it is at least a look inside my own approach (for whatever that is worth). Related to this (and briefly discussing such things), here is a 13 minute podcast I did three years ago tackling the idea of women in ministry (along with a few other things). It never aired, so I requested permissions to post it myself here.
For a helpful exegetical reading of Paul’s writings on the subject, see Craig Keener, Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Baker Academic, 1992).

What Is In a Day? Genesis One

clocksI just realized I have never posted anything (other than my thesis) dealing with the range of meaning for the Hebrew  יוֹם (yom) which is often translated as something like “day”. With all of the kerfuffles (that is a specific theological term 😉 ) over the word “day” in Genesis 1, I thought I’d do a brief post on my own work on this on what has been taught to my students (and will be tomorrow morning as well).
So here is the semantic range (the range of meanings based upon usage of the Hebrew term) as I have worked it out from my reading of the text of Genesis 1 (which is a distinct literary unit from verse 1 to either chapter 2, verse 3 or possibly verse 4):

  1. Period of light (v.5)
  2. Period of alternating darkness/light (vv.5, 8, 13)
  3. Cultic festivals (v.14)
  4. A twenty-four hour period (v.14, 18, 19, 23, 31)
  5. The “day” of God’s resting (2.2-3)
  6. The week of creation (2.4)

This first usage is what God “calls” the period of “light” which he had just created.
The second is (to be precise) an alteration between darkness and light. While this could be (and arguably is) the same as #4 there are many who see the lack of the sun, moon and stars (interestingly enough remaining unnamed by this text) on days 1-3 as indicative that these “days” are in fact not to be precisely equated with those following the creation of sun, moon and stars. This is argued on the basis of our own calculations of time as we experience it presently. I simply offer this variant because it is a possible (though I think unlikely) usage different from #4.
The third is best translated by the context provided in the New Jerusalem Bible of Gen.1.14: ‘God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of heaven to divide day from night, and let them indicate festivals, days and years’. Many of the translations miss the sense of the festivals as unique “days” in the unfolding revelation of God’s plan for creation. The (second) usage in this passage is not so much simply referring to the passage of days and years, but of the sacred days and years (ie, the Day of Atonement, Sabbath Years, etc.). It is a sacred (the scholarly term being “cultic”) day.
The fourth is typically where folks get rankled with one another and debate as if heaven and hell were in the balance. This is a usage of “day” that refers to twenty four hour periods of time passing (clarified by “evening and morning”) after the sun, moon and stars are in their courses. Now whether one should understand this literalistically (with fullest historical intent) or as a theological construct (without historical intent beyond God’s creating) is another issue. Both can regard it as a “twenty-four hour period”. One never moves beyond that sense. The other understands it as something like metaphor or construct.
The fifth might also simply fall into the category of the fourth, but is differentiated in the text by no ascription of “evening and morning” and technically no movement beyond the “day” of God’s resting (sabbathing). Some (even from the second Temple period in Judaism) regarded this as a reference to the ongoing “day” of God’s “rest”.
The sixth usage of yom is obscured in many translations by the use of “When” or “In the time of”. It is literalistically translated “In the day of…”. And this usage is pointing to the week of creation just laid out. It is not saying it took only one “day”, but points simply to the time of creation.
So what do you make of this semantic range? Is it possible we are missing the forest for the trees?