Is God sexist? A paper by Ricardo Diègue

IS GOD SEXIT?

A Research Paper Submitted to Dr. Robert B. Stewart of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the M.Div. Course PHIL 5301 – Christian Apologetics in the Divisions of Theological Studies

Ricardo Diègue B.A., Leavell College, 2013 May 8, 2015

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1

ACCUSATIONS AGAINST GOD BEING SEXIST......................................................................2 The ―He-God‖ ......................................................................................................................2 Biblical Arguments .............................................................................................................3 COUNTER-ARGUMENTS ...........................................................................................................4

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................12

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................................13

IS GOD SEXIST

I.

INTRODUCTION Christians agree that their holy book called ―Word of God‖ consists of the whole conception,

expression and identity of God himself. In fact, we (I am a Christian too) all would support that the Word is God himself. Therefore, knowing the Word is indubitably knows God himself. The Word speaks about God. God speaks through the Word. The Word is God1. It has been more than two thousand years that all the major civilizations have been influenced by the ―Word of God‖. One may be right to say that the product of today’s societies is somewhat an impact of God’s imprint. Among the influences of God on nowadays’ global communities, one of them may be angled from the gender factor. The world is masculine. National leaders have mostly been men. They are deciders and guide of families. They may occupy any position; whereas it is not the case for women. Even at birth – in some societies – having a male is seen mostly as a blessing than the opposite sex. In sum, it is irrefutable that in every civilization, the dominant factor has always been men. Many atheist thinkers and secular feminists accuse God directly for such condition. Watkins wrote in his ―The God Delusion‖, many attributes to portrait God. Among them, he clearly labels God as against women. ―The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal,

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John 1: 1. ―In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God‖. 1

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filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, and capriciously malevolent bully.‖2 David T. Lamb mentions many authors that also tags God as ―sexist‖ and therefore is responsible for the loathing of women for the past two thousand years.3 He reports declarations of Watkins and others stating: ―From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-religions have evolved – Judaism, Christianity and Islam… They are literally, patriarchal – God is Omnipotent Father – hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years‖ … ―Any honest, thinking person reading through the bible cannot ignore the blatant misogyny and barbarity toward women‖ … ―The place where God’s absurdity becomes completely clear is when you look at God’s sexism.‖4 Arguments to prove God’s partiality about the gender factor are formulated based on Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, exegetes and technicians of the Word of God have found different perspectives to counter-arguments the anti-God thinkers. The aim of this paper is to explore the two antagonistic sides and essentially scrutinize the arguments that may prove the unsexism of God.

II.

ACCUSATIONS AGAINST GOD BEING SEXIST A. The ―He-God‖ One argument about God being sexist is ―his‖ maleness. Mary Daly is one of the zealous

defenders against such approach. She suggests that if God is male, then male the male is God. 5 She refers to God as an authority, and as such; she believes that this is the result of what men have managed to do to women consciousness. She agrees with notable religious leaders such as 2

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (New York: Mariner, 2008), 51. David T. Lamd, God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 47. 4 Ibidem. 5 Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1973), 19. 3

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Mary Baker Eddy and Ann Lee who choose to use the pronoun ―she‖ when referring to God and calls for a transsexual God. Since God is seen as the ruler, a masculine God makes of the ―male‖ the ruler over the female. She argues that the roles and structures of patriarchy have been developed and sustained in accordance with an artificial polarization of human qualities into the traditional sexual stereotypes. She says that implies hyper-emotionalism, passivity and self-abnegation.6 Therefore, she supports women to ―generate a counterforce to the stereotype of the leader, challenging the artificial polarization of human characteristics into sex-role identification. Other feminists – Ann O. Graff, Mary Ann Hynsdale, and Mary Ann Zimmer – share the same conceptions and make the same accusation.

B. Biblical Arguments Many verses in the Bible are interpreted as means that God is sexist: 1. In the Old Testament The first three chapters of Genesis are always used as arguments to prove the sexism of the Bible. Many are against God’s decision to punish women very severely while man was the one to whom the commandment of not eating ―the fruit‖ was assigned. ―I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. (Gen. 3:16)‖ In Deuteronomy 22:28-29, it is written: ―If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.‖ And many interpret this as leeway for men to rape women. 6

Ibidem, page 15.

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2. The New Testament In Ephesians 5:22-24 we find this: ―Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.‖ In 1 Peter 3:7 we find: ―Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.‖ 1 Timothy 2: 9-15: ―I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

III.

COUNTER-ARGUMENTS A. One cannot argue that the biblical God is essentially responsible for sexism because Christianity is seen as a sexist religion. The Oxford Dictionary defines sexism as ―Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination,

typically against women, on the basis of sex. The Christian God cannot be accused of responsible for sexism or being sexist because:

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1. One should agree that sexism can be seen as traditional as religious While considering the possibility of having a historical tradition for feminist theology, Rosemary Ruether agrees that many others traditions are sexist. He draws what he calls ―usable tradition‖ from five areas of cultural traditions: 1) Scriptures, both Hebrew and Christian (Old and New Testaments), 2) marginalized or ―heretical‖ Christian traditions, such as Gnosticism, Montanism, Quakerism, Shakerism, 3) the primary theological theme of the dominant stream of classical Christian theology – Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, 4) non-Christian Near Eastern and Greco-Roman religion and philosophy; and 5) critical post-Christian world views such as liberalism, romanticism, and Marxism.7 He suggests that they all provide intimations of alternative: equivalence and mutuality between men and women. However, this not an agreement with Ruether that Christianity is one of the sexist religion; this is rather to say that the Christian God should not be just the only one responsible of sexism. In order words, sexism is not just because of the Christian God. Sexism is a reality of even atheist family. Feminism does not convey sexism as a result of religion (if it does, that is clearly wrong).

2. Yes other gods are sexist; therefore, God could have been sexist too Jonalyn Grace Fincher compares Jesus and others prophets or prominent figures in other religions and conclude that ―Jesus wanted women to live as fully feminine, fully human, and fully free.‖8

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Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology: with a New Introduction, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993), 22. 8 Jonalyn Grace Fincher, ―Defending Femininity: Why Jesus is Good News for Women.‖ In Apologetics for a New Generation: A Biblically and Culturally Relevant Approach to Talking about God, ed. Sean McDowell. (Eugene: Harvest House, 2009), 221.

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About Muhammad, she reports that the prophet of Islam, after the death of his wife Khadija, married a woman each year, ―woman of different faiths, often widows, some for family status, others for political statements, and most for beauty‖.9 Muhammad would even consume a marriage with a nine year old child, Aisha, whom he already married since her age of seven. Despite the tendency of thinking the prophet promulgated women freedom, Fincher relates may principles from the Qur’an that are not consistent with women rights and that instead discriminate on them: ―Those whose obedience you suspect, admonish them and send them to separate beds and beat them… Wives are fields to seed as you please… Wives are prisoners with you (husbands), having no control of their person… Prayers are annulled is a dog, a donkey or a woman pass in front… Hell is full of wives who were ungrateful to their husbands, whose menstruation interferes with their religious duties and whose intelligent is deficient… Women are the snares of the devil, put women in an inferior position since God has done so.‖ In regards of the founder of Jehovah witness, she writes: ―Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916) married Maria Frances Ackley with an agreement that their union was a marriage of celibacy for the sake of partnering in their ministry. But within a decade, Maria did not find this situation agreeable. In their divorce proceedings, Maria testified to witnessing a sexual relationship between her husband and their foster child, Rose Ball, a teenager at the time who worked as Russell’s correspondence secretary. According to Maria’s testimony, Russel regularly molested Rose in 1894.‖10 About other well-known religious figures, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, secretly married twelve women, from whom two were already married. Siddhartha Guatama, the founder of Buddhism, married a twelve year old child then abandoned her with a son because his spiritual quest could not stand his wife’s lack of beauty anymore.

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Ibidem, 223. Ibidem, 225.

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Do I agree now that God can be (or is) sexist too? Absolutely not! The accusations against the Christian God being the cause of sexism are not coherent because in even if God could be sexist, it does not imply that He is just the responsible of sexism. My approach is not stated that ―the Christian God is not sexist because it is the other supreme Beings that are sexist‖, they both could have been. My point is based on others facts that prove he is not sexist as conceived by detractors.

B. Women was also created image of God All Christian apologists and philosophers agree on the creation of woman in the image of God. In fact, it is biblical. In Genesis 1:27 it is said: ―So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.‖ James Hamilton calls that an ―ontological equality‖. ―Both men and women are in the image of God. The woman is not less than the man as a human being. It is not the man alone who bears God’s image and likeness‖, he says. Both man and woman are made in the image and likeness of God. 11 Furthermore, Hamilton recognizes what people might see like inequality as a functional subordination: ―We see the functional subordination of the woman to the man when we read that God made the man to work and keep the garden (Gen 2:15), the woman to help the man (2:18). The woman was not made to do what the man was made to do but to help him do what God made him to do. This indicates that within the ontological equality between the man and the woman, they are given different roles.‖12

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James Hamilton, In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture, ed. By Steven B. Cowan and Terry L. Wilder, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishing Group, 2013), 337. 12 Ibidem.

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The second aspect covered by Hamilton is the way both were created: the man was formed from the dust (2:7), while the woman was fashioned from the man’s rib (2:22).

C. Jesus himself treated women in a fair (unlike in other religions) [and Apostle Paul has followed the same path] The Scriptures prove Jesus’ positives attitudes toward women despite de realty of the Jew society of his time. In fact, very often, he would even expose his life by opposing to traditions – which actions were always gotten into account by the Pharisees as act of blasphemy that made him deserve the death penalty. For instance, Jesus would have women following Him (Luke 8:1-3). Such behavior was an affront to the Jews because culturally that was an act of augmenting women value. Reporting Gerard Rossé, Calduch Benages says that ―in the milieu of Judaism, seeing Jesus accompanied by men and women was a surprising fact, unbearable for the religious elite, and must have made the itinerant prophet from Nazareth appear like an eccentric.‖13 As Benages reminds that in Jesus’ time, women were excluded from social and public life, he also remarks that this group of women was although close to Jesus in his itinerant mission. Beside this group, he considers in his book other encounters Jesus had with specific women: the hemorrhaging woman in Mark 5:2534, the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30). Jesus also taught women (Luke 10:38-42). Benages writes that at Jesus’ time, religious instruction, which was very valued in the Israel, was reserved for the sons, not the daughters. Daughters basically had to know what to observe based on two kinds of concepts: what they must not do (the negative concepts), and what must be done (the positive concepts that was 13

Calduch Benages, The Perfume of the Gospel: Jesus' Encounters with Women, (Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2012), 74.

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reserved exclusively to men). Luke 10:38-42 clearly presents the home of Martha and Mary a classroom: Jesus teaching women.

Tractate Sotah, part of the Babylonian Talmud, it is written ―it is better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman.‖14 John 8:1-11 is another scandalous scene where released a woman from discrimination and judgment of men who had the Law Moses commanded that would allow them to stone such women. Jesus had public conversation with women in John 4:1-45. It was just a scandal that this woman in Luke 7:36-50 anointed His feet. In the Parables of the persistent widow, Jesus valued the faith of women and even accepted financial support from her (Luke 18:1-8).

The case of Paul Even though anti-Christians may emphasize on the ―silence‖ of women, they cannot deny that in 1Timothy 2:11, a women was subject to education ―A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.‖ (The terms ―in quietness and full submission‖ may always be discussed in other matter). In Romans 16:1-2, Paul recommended a woman to the Church of Rome ―I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me. This is a fact that woman was allowed to have positions of ministry in the church.

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Sotah 19a. (Cited by Calduch Benages)

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Ephesians 5:25-29 teaches submission to one another and advocate for women to have love, affection and service in marriage. ―He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. (Acts 18:26)‖ This is an obvious case where women could even teach to men the faith of God.

To the Galatians Paul writes, ―So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise‖ (3:26-29). This can be a controversial text. For the purpose of this paper, let me only mentions that the immediate context of the text can explain exactly what Paul meant and reject the theory that intends to confuse with the authority of man (egalitarian theory). Hove explains that from verse 26 four important points is made to the readers15. ―First, they all have the same status before God. Second, their status is identified as sons of God. It is indeed a blessing from God to be adopted by God. Third, the basis of this new relationship (new status) is the object of their faith, Christ Jesus. It is only possible because God sent forth his Son in the fullness of time. Fourth, the means for this new relationship is faith in Christ Jesus. In sum, this verse explains the new status of believers as sons of God and the means by which every believer attains that status, through faith in Christ.‖ 16

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Richard Hove, Equality in Christ: Galatians 3:28 and the Gender Dispute (Wheaton: Crossway, 1999), 57-58. 16 Ibidem.

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John MacArthur understands the reality of difference established between men and women. He agrees that the Bible ―teaches divinely ordained role distinctions between men and women.‖17 Yet, he says, women are by no means marginalized or relegated to any second-class status. Galatians 3:28 do not only support the equality between men and women but women are even set apart for special honor (1 Peter 3:7). ―Husbands are commanded to love their wives sacrificially, as Christ loves the church – even, if necessary, at the cost of their own lives (Ephesians 5:2531).‖18 Many thinkers agree that in practical life the more submission is a woman the more obligations a husband has toward her.

D. Women are valued throughout the Bible One cannot deny the significant role played by Esther in the salvation of the Hebrew people at the time of captivation in Persia. Remark how an entire book of the Bible is written about her. Remember also Hannah, mother of one of the greatest prophets who ever lived in Israel. Miriam was a prophetess used by God to save Moses (Exodus 2:1-10). Rahad was a prostitute used by God to save the spies of his army. We read about Deborah, ―a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time (Judges 4:4). One cannot forget high values expressed in the Bible in regards of Mary, mother of Jesus. One may look for Huldah, Dorcas, or Priscilla. Proverbs 12:4 describes ―A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown‖. 31:10 goes one further ―A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.‖

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http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/A265/the-biblical-portrait-of-women-setting-therecord-straight (accessed on May 7, 2015) 18 Ibidem.

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IV.

CONCLUSION No matter how many arguments with proofs of worthy and highly valued women provided

from the Bible, a skeptic can still stay skeptical and detractors may still detract. However, the proofs do not lie! They may take verses out of context (which is a violation of one of the crucial principles of hermeneutics) and put meaning into them in order to distort God’s rightness. Men and women were created both equal with different roles. Many women were regarded with high values from the Bible. Jesus, the Son of God, God himself, pragmatically fought against discrimination of women. How sexist it is with these facts!19 How sexist is a God who values a woman so much to let her be mother of the Savior. How sexist it is to have women prophetess, queen, leaders and more. How sexist it is to read from the Bible ―For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth (Ruth 4:15).‖ How sexist to let this verse in the Bible?

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Isn’t that ironic to dare labeling God sexist anyway?

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Bibliography Benages, Calduch. The Perfume of the Gospel: Jesus' Encounters with Women. Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2012. Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1973. Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Mariner, 2008. Fincher, Jonalyn Grace. ―Defending Femininity: Why Jesus is Good News for Women.‖ In Apologetics for a New Generation: A Biblically and Culturally Relevant Approach to Talking about God, Edited by Sean McDowell. Eugene: Harvest House, 2009. Hamilton, James. In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture. Edited by Steven B. Cowan and Terry L. Wilder. Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishing Group, 2013. Hove, Richard. Equality in Christ: Galatians 3:28 and the Gender Dispute. Wheaton: Crossway, 1999. Lamb, David T. God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology: with a New Introduction. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993.

Online resources http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/A265/the-biblical-portrait-of-women-setting-the-recordstraight (accessed on May 7, 2015)