Books I Read So You Don't Have To | Part 2
Part 2: Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, by Aimee Byrd
Introduction
Out of the 3 books I plan to review, this one is clearly the most serious. What do I mean by “most serious”? This book is not shrill or whiny, but actually attempts to make a real Scriptural argument. Byrd (at least at the time of her writing) would place herself within the general vein of “Big Eva” and, more precisely, in the "Reformed" camp of that world. To me, this is what makes her book the most serious in its danger.
I understood this book to have a similar effect that Betty Friedan’s "The Feminine Mystique" had in America during the 60s. Depressed, anxious, and aimless housewives—made that way by the incredible technological advances that produced dishwashers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, etc—read that book and could identify with everything the author was saying. Friedan tapped into the pervasive dissatisfaction among women in America in the post-WWII era, which then led to a culture of "empowerment.”
I could see this book having the same effect on a normal, godly, stay-at-home mom who feels overwhelmed by life and little kids, feeling undervalued and underappreciated. She loves her husband, her family, her church, and the Bible, but something feels off. Given those assumptions, I could see this doing real damage to unsuspecting women.
The Yellow Wallpaper
At the very beginning of the book—in her "Introduction That You May Not Skip!" chapter—Byrd introduces a metaphor that she will lean on for the rest of the book. She references a short story written by a woman at the turn of the 20th century who had experienced "rest therapy" for her social anxiety. This therapy called for women who felt overwhelmed by life to sit in a room by themselves and "rest.” Having experienced this “therapy” firsthand, the author took the opportunity to exaggerate the prescription in her short-story.
In the hyperbolic short story, a husband takes the doctor's prescription of rest therapy to the extreme by renting a remote cabin in the woods for his wife to receive the treatment. Essentially, she is locked in a room for a summer. The room she is locked in has peeling yellow wallpaper in it, and as the protagonist slowly loses her mind, she begins to imagine that behind that wallpaper, there is a real, empowered woman that is fighting to get out. If only she would peel back the wallpaper to see the true woman she could become released from this patriarchal prison, manufactured by men who seek to control her.
Throughout the rest of the book, Byrd will use this metaphor to show how the church—traditionally controlled by men—has repressed and almost gaslighted women, denied their full humanity (which must include doing everything men can), and hampered their sanctification.
For Byrd, one of the chief wallpaper installers is the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem (The Big Blue Book hereafter), as well as The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). From the title of this book you can see that it is this complementarian perspective that she has in her sights.
With that introduction, let us turn to two key themes that Byrd weaves throughout her book. While her argument is chaotic at times and ultimately unconvincing, Byrd is thorough in her research, dealing with key people and key arguments. She seeks to engage honestly and directly from the Bible—a commendable and appreciated approach.
The Impossibility of Androgynous Discipleship
Byrd begins where all discussions of life and theology must begin—Scripture. Part 1 of the book is entitled “Recovering the Way We Read Scripture”. She affirms that men and women read the same Bible, but she laments that men and women are taught to read the Bible differently, according to their sex. Instead, she wants men and women to read the Bible equally as humans. She seems to desire an androgynous discipleship where we can all approach the Bible from a neutral, unisex way.
The difficulty with that is that it is not possible to read the Bible detached from our sex. I can not read the Bible without being a man. My wife can not read the Bible without being a woman. In his introduction to The Big Blue Book, John Piper quotes Paul Jewett saying:
Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is always aware of itself as an ‘I,’ so this ‘I’ is always aware of itself as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being. At the human level there is no ‘I and thou’ per se, but only the ‘I’ who is male or female confronting the ‘thou,’ the ‘other,’ who is also male or female.
—Paul Jewett
That is a foundational reality of how God made us. Yes, we are all commanded to obey every word of Scripture, but we can not obey them in some androgynous or unisex way. We obey them as men and as women.
Ironically, Byrd is also critical of how people have missed the gynocentric (female-centric) voice in the Bible through stories like Ruth, Deborah, and Mary and Martha. For her to call for equal representation and highlight female voices is confusing given her demands that we all read the Bible androgynously. She would consider this female-centric neglect part of the yellow wallpaper that needs to be torn down and replaced by the “true woman” revealed in the Bible.
Part of Byrd's failure is her deficient exegesis and chaotic hermeneutic. For instance, as she walks through various female voices in the Bible, she greatly confuses description and prescription. Often, she will look at descriptive narrative (stories) in the Bible—which is equally as inspired as the rest of the Bible—and take it as universal for all people. "Hey, look, a woman leading! Any attempt to repress that is wallpaper and needs to be peeled off!" However, she will take clear commands in the NT (Eph 5, Col 3, 1 Cor 6, etc) and read all sorts of nuance into them to where they no longer mean what they clearly mean. But how we read the Bible matters; and this pervades throughout her book. I find this most dangerous because to the layman, this will look like good "Bible work". But it is deceptive.
From the beginning, it was clear that there are clearly presuppositions that separate Byrd and myself that just aren't bridgeable. My exegetical and hermeneutical framework is what she would call "biblicist", which is just a scary way of saying I read the Bible on its own terms. But those frameworks, those lenses, effect our reading of the Bible.
Creational, not Cultural
Byrd rejects the idea of "roles" for men and women, and views them purely as cultural constructs. For Byrd, any attempt to argue for ontological "roles" or differences between men and women is due to a faulty, even heterodox, view of the Trinity. I would simply disagree. So it makes sense why we end in disagreement. However, she makes the bold statement that to disagree with her is to be in sin. I appreciate the clarity.
Like their brothers in the faith, they too are encouraged to seek the greater gifts and to mature in their knowledge of the faith so they can teach others. There's no qualifier in these verses, saying that men are not to learn from women or that women are only to teach their own sex and children. Any divinely ordained differences that men and women have do not prohibit women from teaching. It would be disobedient to Scripture to withhold women from teaching (174).
I appreciate that she deals directly with Genesis 1–2, and not only the “household codes” listed in the NT. It is in the Garden that we see God’s intended design for manhood and womanhood. Genesis 2:24 is the bedrock of all marriages and the way men and women relate to one another.
However, instead of laboring to understand what Moses meant in the opening chapters of the Bible, Byrd launches into a strange, mystical, almost New Age anthropology. Leaning heavily on catholic literature, Byrd takes some weird leaps in Genesis 1–2 to describe a Biblical understanding of men and women. What motivates her demand for equal representation in teaching and leading for men and women in the church is tied to her belief that in order for women to express their humanity, they must express it just like men.
Her conclusion—siblingship. For Byrd, what is needed to peel back the yellow wallpaper is a rediscovery of siblingship between brothers and sisters in Christ. For this, she uses Romans 16 and Paul's references to various women, creating a framework where men and women are totally the same, and should be able to do all things the other can do (lead, teach, etc).
You can see where Byrd got the framework to write a book like "Why Can't We Be Friends"—a book calling for more platonic (intimate yet not erotic) relationships between Christian men and women who are not married. This can and has led to all sorts of tomfoolery, but underneath this is the call for men and women to be disciplined androgynously—which I just don't think is possible. As discussed above, we are always sexual beings and that can not be avoided. So women will grow into Christ AS WOMEN, and men will grow into Christ AS MEN. That's just unavoidable. And because of God's creative work, men and women are different—therefore, our discipleship is different. And that does not negate our humanity.
Conclusion
I appreciate the clarity that Byrd sought to bring to her argument in this book. She is careful in her articulation and her argument attempts to be derived from exegesis rather than emotion. Byrd—at least at the time of writing—would share many of the same core convictions I hold regarding the Bible and its inerrant authority.
But exegetical method—how we determine what the original author meant—is vital. And if we get that wrong, we necessarily will get our hermeneutic—how we apply the original intended meaning to us today—very wrong. Sadly, this is where Byrd fails. And to say that is not to wallpaper over the way women have been mistreated in the past, but rather to point all of us back to the Scriptures, which is the only place we can actually find life.