Humans are the way they are because of how God created them, however he did it is secondary to the fact that he did it.
And there are certain things about God, his communicable and incommunicable attributes, that are not accomodations. The relationship between the Father and Son is one where I believe a definite line can be drawn.
Thank you all so much who have participated in this thread. I really appreciate all the replies. @Vinnie you definitely hit the nail with the hammer as far as what I’m really curious about. Since Jesus said that God made them male and female, what do we make of Jesus’ words in light of evolutionary theory? Since according to evolution God did not directly make humans, let alone male and female, let alone Adam and Even, why would Jesus say that He did?
I’d love any insights you all might provide on this specifically.
Thanks again.
(Maybe he is an evolutionary providentialist? ; - )
First thing that we need to do is do away with evolution/God-guided dualism. God guides evolution, but since evolution is a natural process, not everything that it produces is God intended. God guided is not the same as God controlled. For instance the flu that makes many people sick every year and kills some, is an evolving virus that jumps from birds to humans. Evolution is good because it enables humans to adapt to our environment, but I do not think that God intended it to make us sick, but at times we must accept the good with the bad. God enables us to make vaccines to fight the flu and 0other diseases.
Our gender is created through evolution by God, and it is an important part of us, but that does not mean that it cannot be changed. Hair color is created through evolution by God and is also a part of us, but many change their hair color with no problem.
.
God’s Name is not Father. God’s Name is YHWH, I AM, which is not gender related.
I would say that all evolutionary theory adds to that is that God didn’t plunk anything like what we would call a “fully developed” human physical form - or couple of forms into a garden in a single literal week. Maybe one could observe we are more of a ‘crockpot’ creation than a microwaved meal. But no matter what the literal time span it was that God used to assemble the ‘dust of the earth’, it was still no less a result created by God.
@Mervin_Bitikofer This is super helpful and gives me something to chew on and think about. So, do you think Jesus understood it this way? Or did Jesus think God made them male and female fully developed? What was the understanding among the Jews of the creation of humans at that time that Jesus walked the earth? Did they believe God created humanity gradually, or was that idea not even on the table before Darwin?
I am sure this is a loaded question to ask, but I thought I’d put it out there.
These are great questions - don’t hesitate to ask away. As long as you don’t mind occasionally getting “loaded” answers back, as tends to happen on public forums! 
The answer anybody accepts for that really depends on their view of the incarnation, and just what it means that “God became flesh” and emptied himself to take the form of a servant.
If your view of the incarnation is that yes, we’ll recite the words that “Jesus is fully human” because we know that’s proper doctrine, but … wink, wink, … we know that he was really God with all the omniscience and omnipotence fully in hand to use if he wanted; If that’s your view of how incarnation is to be accepted, then one would have to insist that the man, Jesus, always knew everything about the world and all its workings including what the rest of culture would only start to pick up on in later centuries as empirical science began to flourish.
If your view of incarnation is comfortable with some of the less simplistic understandings (and you can probably tell, I include myself in this camp), and you are comfortable accepting that when Christ became human, he got the full package deal including starting out in complete ignorance and having to grow and learn from everything and everyone around him, and that such learning would have continued throughout his (still fully human) adult life just like it does for all the rest of us, then in that case you probably can easily accept that Jesus would have had no reason to take issue with the cultural assumptions of his day about those sorts of things. Apparently searching out answers (or corrections) to such material questions as excite scientists and thinkers today wasn’t what most interested him. He was more Heaven-bent on answering questions of the human heart and our relationships with each other and God. Apparently that was and remained his first and only order of business.
So that was all a long way of saying that it doesn’t bother me much if Jesus in the flesh a couple thousand years ago would have known little more about the mechanics of the world’s workings or evolutionary development, or heliocentric cosmology than any other learned minds of his day would have known. He knew what he needed to know about the truly important things that God is doing, and that was/is enough.
Perhaps this miracle has something to add to these questions:
2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.
5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes,
7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
The imperfections and difficulties we see may be there to reveal God’s work. If everything were perfect, we would be less likely to see God’s work.
And here from Luke 13:
10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.
11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.
12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”
13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.”
15 But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?
16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"
17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
In this miracle God’s power is also revealed, and in this case Jesus mentions Satan.
So perhaps these passages support the views that sin is a cause of problems and problems are an opportunity for God to be revealed.
Do not exclude the Biblical description in your study. Evolution has its weaknesses and admitedly the Biblical explanation on creation does not match scince perfectly, but it does match. Re Gender the Bible is specific. I think we run a hugh risk of not arriving at truth if we exclude either the bible or science. Keep both in the picture as your research.
Lee
Many would find signifiant difficulty in just dismissing a lot of the Bible as gendered imagery or wiping it away by pointing out God does not have genitalia. If you subscribe to a redemptive trajectory hermeneutic that works for some things but a lot of Christians and theology is more focused on what’s actually written on the page instead of being a literary critic and getting behind the Biblical text to determine what we think God actually intended to teach us–which usually conveniently lines up with our modern beliefs–and again, what is not actually written on the page.
The OT treats women as the property of men listed along livestock in one of the ten commandments of all places! In addition, someone writing in Paul’s name (it is in the canon) clearly thinks women are inferior to men and will be saved through childbearing. Pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen much?
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. 1 Timothy 2:12–15 (NT)
This passage is tying misogyny into the created order (Adam first) and blaming women for the garden. I don’t think the garden or Adam is historical but most Christians do. Even many Christians who accept evolution stop the buck short of rejecting Adam/Eve/Garden. Paul also tells us to be strong and to be strong and masculine:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral (pornoi), nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate (malakoi), nor the ones who exploit others [alternative possible meaning: the ones who penetrate other men sexually],nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God … Be watchful, stand firm in faithfulness, and be masculine, be strong. Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 and 16:13 (NT)
Women are the weaker vessel:
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel… 1 Peter 3:7 (New Testament [“NT” from now on])
Not all women are classified as equally weak here but weak and passionate women being fooled is a concern:
Weak women who are weighted down with sins and led by many passions… 2 Tim 3:6 (NT)
What is the context of these Biblical verses? Stephen Young gives them as a handout along with other ancient Mediterranean ideas about women:
Why did the serpent accost the woman, and not the man? …But the woman was more accustomed to be deceived than the man. For his counsels as well as his body are of a masculine sort, and competent to disentangle the notions of seduction; but the mind of the woman is more effeminate, so that through her softness she easily yields and is easily caught by persuasions of falsehood, which imitate the resemblance of truth… Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis
- …because a male is more complete, more dominant than the female, closer akin to causal activity, for the female is incomplete and in subjection and belongs to the category of the passive rather than the active. So too with the two ingredients which constitute our life principle, the rational and the irrational; the rational which belongs to the mind and reason is of the masculine gender, the irrational, the province of sense, is of the feminine. Mind belongs to a genus wholly superior to sense as man is to woman; unblemished and purged, as perfect virtue purge…Philo Special Laws
- [on womankind] “…is inclined to be secretive and crafty, because of its weakness…You see, leaving women to do what they like is not just to lose half the battle (as it may seem); a woman’s natural potential for virtue is inferior to a man’s, so she’s proportionately a greater danger, perhaps even twice as great…” Plato, Laws (Greek Philosopher)
“How can one reach agreement with a woman?” “By recognizing,” he replied, “that the female sex is bold, positively active for something which it desires, easily liable to change its mind because of poor reasoning powers, and of naturally weak constitution. It is necessary to have dealings with them in a sound way, avoiding provocation which may lead to a quarrel. Life prospers when the helmsman knows the goal to which he must make the passage…” Letter of Aristeas (Jewish Writer)
…females are weaker and colder in nature, and we must look upon the female character as being a sort of natural deficiency. Aristotle, Generation of Animals (Greek Philosopher)
The Bible is fully immersed in the culture of its time and it plainly and unequivocally treats women as inferior to men in numerous places and ties this into the very created order. It is not easy for many Christians to wokishly claim “gender is just a human construct” when they are torn between knowing misogyny is wrong and affirming the truth of the Bible. Countless Christians who read the garden story and who believe in love and marriage have long believed in God given gender differences and roles-- that men and women were also designed differently to complete one another. Of course, in our patriarchal past, the male piece was certainly viewed as the superior one…
We might not like these ideas but the Bible was written to be orally read to mostly illiterate and uneducated people. Not literary critics with fancy words and hermeneutics capable of digging behind the scenes to figure out the babble that God thinks he means. This is a problem of people approaching scripture from different directions or people not realizing they are approaching from another direction or pretending to be approaching it from the same direction when they are not.
Its hard for me to deny the Bible “intends to teach” women are inferior and the Pauline forger absolutely dumps any redemptive trajectory hermeneutics on their head. These works are the last ones to be written and contradict any possible progress made on gender equality. I just flat out disagree with the author. God allowed a lot of latitude when He moved over people to write and put thoughts and ideas into their head.
Vinnie
As for God the father, i presume it just falls under the typical approach of accommodation. As mentioned by others the point of “ the father “ was not gender but to meet the very patriarchal Jewish nation at a place where they could come to terms with whatever message the spirit was conveying.
The scriptures were not written last year in New York or LA. They were written to a people who lived in the Ancient Near East (ANE) several thousand years ago. That may sound trite, but it has huge implication in exegesis. God wrote in terms the folks of the ANE would understand. Since they would have had no comprehension of an expanding universe, God said nothing about that to them. I’m not saying the universe is not expanding, just that God had no reason whatsoever to explain that to them. The expanding universe was simply not germane to the message God communicated to them, so He left it out of the book altogether.
God said absolutely nothing to them about, quarks, the expanding universe, quasars, or, more to your point, evolution. We may like to read our modern science into the Bible, but it’s an exercise in futility. Doing so will cause us to miss much of what God revealed in the Bible. The Bible is a religious book, not a science book. The people of the ANE were more interested in pleasing the gods than understanding the structure of the cosmos and God saw no reason to explain that to them. The main purpose of the Bible, and Genesis in particular, is God setting Himself apart from all the other ANE gods.
Now it is certainly true that all true science originates with God, but science is not the subject of the Bible. The ANE people wouldn’t even know what the word “science” meant.
In short, we need to get into the mind of the ANE people as they read the scriptures. What did they think of the word “kind” in Genesis? It’s not what we think about it, it’s what they thought about it. We are so fortunate to live in this day and time. It’s only been maybe the last 100 years that we have discovered thousands of ANE written material from which we can glean how they looked at the world. Suffice it to say, it was about 180 degrees opposite to how we view it. You may want to investigate the field of comparative studies as it relates to the Bible. It will open up a whole new vista as you learn how they, Yahweh’s actual audience, understood things.
BTW, the folks of the ANE would have undoubtedly understood that God created gender. Genesis 1:27 is as simple as grammatical construction gets and it says God created them male and female. I can’t imagine any ANE person reading that verse and come away saying, “God did not directly create humans.” They would have read it and taken it for the simplicity of what it said, “So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” It takes some might fine word twisting to say that, “God did not directly create humans.”
Identifying gendered imagery is not remotely the same thing as “dismissing” it, what are you even talking about?
And how does saying God doesn’t have genitallia in any way “wipe away” God being father. That is peak intentional misrepresentation of what other people intend to communicate.
This passage is most likely a polemic against false teaching about origin stories in a cultural context dominated by Artemis worship, Artemis being the goddess of childbearing. Earlier false teaching entering the church was named as an issue in the letter.
No he doesn’t. That’s a translation of ἀνδρίζεσθε you are referring to in 1 Cor 13:16 and just because it is etymologically related to the word for man doesn’t mean it means “be masculine” and it’s directed at men and women. It means be bold or courageous. Similar to how we might tell a woman today “be ballsy.”
On average, women are physically weaker than men. This is true in every human culture and especially relevant in cultures where it is normative for men to smack their women around, which is many of them. (Vessel often means body in the NT)
In context that is very clearly a description of the kind of woman that was being targeted by the false teachers Timothy was told to have nothing to do with in 3:5. Also weak here means easily persuaded, not physically weak. Gullible would be a better translation. No one with reading comprehension skills thinks Paul was asserting women are universally weak-minded and gullible.
Your Stephen Young handout is spouting patriarchal nonsense and men who see what they already believe in the biblical account, something we have seen all throughout the history of patriarchy, I’m afraid.
Au contraire. You can affirm the truth of the Bible just fine without affirming patriarchal interpretations of what it was trying to teach. In its context the Bible consistently elevates women above standards set by the cultural norms of the day.
The Bible is not an entity with agency. The very diverse set of texts that form the Bible were produced and read/heard in patriarchal contexts by humans shaped by patriarchal worldviews. But even so, God in the OT and Jesus in the NT and the teachers of early church consistently model interactions with women that value and dignify women far above the social norms of the time and place. So part of the interpretive task is analyzing where the audience was at in terms of their conceptual frames and how did what Jesus and his followers do or command or teach serve as a challenge, invert, or reverse the patriarchy and oppression inherent in the cultural context. Because they did that, over and over. The gospel was especially good news for women. So much so that people mocked the newly formed church for being a bunch of pathetic women and slaves.
Probably because you are reading it as a man situated in patriarchy who has been repeatedly told what a sexist lens sees in them. I don’t get “women are inferior” as the lesson of the texts, properly contextualized, at all.
It should also be pointed out that women are also typically weaker as well because most places don’t push for a bulky, muscular development of women. But you can get the average woman, have her train for 2 years doing power lifting and she will be stronger than most men. Sure, I agree that on average, just leaving out weight training and so on, men are still a bit stronger because of our testosterone levels. But a woman can train and quickly bypass that. Most men are also fairly weak and not that strong or fast. So it’s not like they are setting up this Olympian standard.
Sure and it all depends on how you measure strength. On average, women have much higher pain tolerances. This has caused major issues in high school sports because many male coaches coach both boys and girls teams and encourage girls to play injured because they aren’t complaining about pain that much, and they end up tearing ACL or doing other irreparable damage to their joints and still growing bodies.
In this discussion, I’m using strength for power and speed. Normally when people say men are faster than women, they are referring to how much weight someone can lift, how fast they can go and etc…. Which means less and less everyday. Most American men can’t even run 2 minutes straight. I’m guessing if we picked 2,000 random men from today off the streets in America and sent them back in time a few thousand years ago, most of the woman would be able to out compete them. So it usually does not matter that top male athletes typically out lift and our run top female athletes since most men, and woman, are not anywhere near athletic. It’s why I always find men talking about being stronger as amusing.
There was a guy in the factory I work talking about this few weeks ago. He was talking about why women can’t work in there because it’s a man’s job. Then this guy had a heart attack and blamed it on having to get in and out of the forklift to many times. He survived. He’s not been back to work. I think maybe they let him go. I’m not sure. But he’s not been back. It’s not funny he was hurt, it’s just funny that they themselves would be considered very weak and out of shape by the typical man even a hundred years ago.
Just so you know I was agreeing with you by highlighting the silliness of “ men are stronger or superior “ to women. It’s just an argument that holds no weight. Whatever Paul was thinking about with stronger and weaker vessel, I can’t imagine is about physical attributes and it’s probably just something stupid he thought anyways.
I always took first Peter whatever verse it is to probably be something about men were probably more likely the ones to be able to read and write back then or something.
Yes, that was how I was using it too. I just think it’s interesting to think about other ways in which women aren’t necessarily weaker than men.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.