Books I Read So You Don't Have To | Part 3

Part 3: The Making of Biblical Womanhood, by Beth Allison Barr

Introduction

Moving from Aimee Byrd’s book to the more recent The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr was not only a shift in time (2021) but in tone. Right from the introductory chapter, it is clear that what is about to follow is personal for Barr.

She opens with a story of her husband losing his job as a youth pastor at a conservative Southern Baptist church. The reason Barr gives us is that he had dared to challenge the beliefs of the Elders—particularly their refusal to allow women to preach and hold leadership positions in their church. The predictable narrative of the betrayal of leadership, abandonment by friends, and relational bifurcation follows as is typical in those who leave churches for such grievances.

But, as will become a theme, Barr’s hurt was multiplied because she knew better. “And the hardest truth of all was that I bore greater responsibility than most in our church because I had known that complementarian theology was wrong (p. 6).” She had stayed silent while the church leaders propagated a theology that she knew was wrong—but now, she will stay silent no longer.

This tone pervades the entirety of Barr’s book, which is part historical argument and part personal narrative. This is clear as chapter after chapter contains stories of her experiences in the classroom or in her (very former) church, being frustrated by her suppressed gifts at church, and her historically ignorant students in her college classroom who don’t know all that she knows.

For Barr, “biblical womanhood”—a confusing term because she uses “biblical” in a sarcastic sense against her opponents—is her catch-all word for complementarianism and patriarchy. And her relationship with those terms is inseparably personal. As she says clearly, “[My] experience, along with my husband’s firing, frames how I think about complementarianism today (p. 204).” At least she knows she’s not objective—at least all of her cards are on the table.

With that in mind, here are a couple weaknesses I perceived throughout her entire project.

History As Revelation

Dr. Beth Allison Barr is the James Vardaman Endowed Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Her speciality is Women History, particularly in the Medieval period. It’s clear that she is a historian—a fact that she will not let you forget with the repeated expression throughout, “As a historian, I know…” (I stopped counting at 15 examples). This expertise governs the lens by which she considers all of this, but that leads to a few problems.

History is a necessary and helpful form of revelation. However, it is vital we understand what history does and what it does not do. History is helpful inasmuch we understand it to be documentation of man’s interaction with God and his world. It tells us what was. But history, on its own, can not tell us what should have been. We need a different tool for that.

As C.S. Lewis says, you cannot get an ought from an is. Barr spends page after page telling us story after story of Medieval women who rose in the ranks of Church leadership, who preached boldly, and who so followed God’s calling that they threw aside their duties as wives and mothers to preach like men. But underneath all of this is a begging question that continues throughout—is that good? Is it bad? How do we know? History reveals what was—theology and ethics seek what ought to be.

As Christians, we have an answer to this epistemological problem. We thank God that he has not left us blind, but has revealed to us his divine will in his inspired word (1 Tim 3:16–17). So I was both pleased and disappointed when Barr did go to the Scripture in her chapter entitled “What If Biblical Womanhood Doesn’t Come from Paul?”

Understanding Paul

Dr. Barr is a historian (again). How she reads and understands Paul is intrinsically bound to the ways she understands that Paul’s words have been abused. That colors her lens so much that after stating a straightforward and Biblical position—that Paul’s household codes and his understanding of manhood and womanhood are grounded in Genesis 2 and creational realities, not fallen social constructs—she simply states, “Men lead, women follow. Paul tells us so. Is it any wonder my students hate Paul (p. 41)?”

Yikes. A good teacher would ask the question, “should they hate Paul? Or do they need to change their views?” In other words, whatever your final authority is will determine how you view Paul. If the Bible is your final authority, you will seek with all your might to understand what it is he is saying in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 and 1 Timothy 2 and obey. If your final authority is something else, you will use that other framework to make Paul say something he isn’t.

Because Barr is operating out of such an historical framework, she argues that Paul was simply a man of his time, operating in a Roman patriarchal system, and that if you read his words in Ephesians with the right emphasis, it becomes obvious that Paul was actually resisting Roman hierarchical structures. Somehow, Paul is actually saying the exact opposite of what he is saying. And isn’t it possible that he is doing that everywhere that he mentions the household codes? Thus Barr is able to declare that we have read Paul wrong (p. 66).

Exegesis matters. And our method matters. We believe that Paul’s letters were actual letters Paul wrote that had a real historical audience, occasion, and intent. And before we can apply the truth of God’s word to ourselves (hermeneutics), we must labor to know what was Paul’s original intended intent for his letters—and of course, that will include historical context. But we also believe that these letters are not just historical documents, but that Paul (and all the Biblical writers) were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21) and thus produced a divinely inspired text (2 Tim 3:16–17). We must labor to take God at his word, but Barr’s historical presuppositions wreak havoc on her hermeneutic.

Framing Opponents Fairly

It’s important to note that none of the objections raised by Barr in her book are new to the complementarian position. There are Biblically satisfying answers to her exegetical and historical questions. The purpose of this review is not to answer those objections point by point (for a short and faithful primer, see here). But there is a pervasive weakness in Barr’s argument, and it is in how she frames her opponents.

As a historian, she is able to tell us what has happened. But she often then takes the next step to tell you why it is happening. For example, during the Reformation, domesticity and being a wife were elevated to a place of honor. However, rather than the motivation for that being the Reformers’ recommitment to go to the Scriptures and to the sources (ad fontes), the clear reason for this, according to Barr, is the desire to subjugate the women who had gotten out of control during the Middle Ages.

Another example described the debate that was ignited in the 1990s with the release of the new edition of the New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible, specifically its introduction of “gender-neutral” language. In response, Wayne Grudem led the team of translators that would produce a new, more faithful translation—the English Standard Version (ESV). In her discussion, rather than disagree with the ESV committee’s translations of the original Greek, she is somehow able to omnisciently decree that their sole motivation for the ESV was to secure male headship and keep women in their place (p. 132). Later, she conflates this same motivation to the battle in the 1900s for inerrancy. Again, rather than disagree with her opponents on an exegetical level, she simply declares that inerrancy was important because it provided an opportunity to push women out of the pulpit (p. 191).

The sad result of this type of argumentation is that it removes any ability to have an actual discussion that works toward agreement. It creates an environment where there is no choice but to talk past one another. If even my commitment to the Bible’s inerrancy is tainted with motivations to subjugate women, there is no way to avoid that. If there is no objective truth for us to seek, then there is no way to bridge our divide. This is lamentable.

Conclusion

With the popularity of Barr’s book, there have been many reactions and reviews. For a gracious and chapter-by-chapter review, I recommend Dr. Brad Green’s—a former professor of mine at the Pastors College—review (found here). For a longer and more “in the weeds” review, I recommend Kevin DeYoung’s review on The Gospel Coalition (found here).

Unfortunately, Dr. Barr’s attempt to thread the needle between historical argument, theological exposition, and personal narrative fails.