Masculinity: A Theological Anthropology

The Definition:

We are not questioning our creation as male and female, but rather examining whether biologically male and female individuals are aligning with the biblical and theological definition of created man and woman. Are we fully embracing our new creation to be masculine and feminine in the order that God intends?

The Attack:

Improper Critical Theories of Feminism and Queer Theory

In 1969 I attended consciousness-raising sessions in New York City with my sister, Kate, where a group of 10-15 women sat around a long oval table and plotted the New Feminist Movement and the founding of NOW. Their template was Mao’s China and the group confessionals conducted in each village in order to “cleanse the people’s thinking.” The burning objective of Kate’s “consciousness-raising” was “the destruction of the American family,” as she deemed it “a patriarchal institution devoted to the oppression and enslavement of women and children.”

They went on to form NOW and, with that organization, achieve their stated goal of taking down the Patriarchy through a massive coordinated promotion of promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, abortion and homosexuality. Their proposed method was to infiltrate every institution in the nation: the universities, the media, primary and secondary schools, PTAs, Teachers Unions, city and state governments, the library system, the executive branches of government as well as the judiciaries and legislatures.

One of their most desired results was the smashing of every taboo in Western culture. Imagine that! Think of that alone! The normalizing of every taboo: polygamy, bestiality, Satanism, pornography, promiscuity, witchcraft, pedophilia – all activities which rot the human soul and city. Nothing burns down a society with such dispatch and totality as the unleashing of taboos. My sister Kate decided her contribution would be to establish Women’s Studies courses at every U.S. college and university, which she efficiently executed. On examination, these courses emerge as nothing more than Marxism 101. Kate taught that the family is literally a slave unit with the man as the bourgeoisie and the women and children the proletariat. Two of her own books were required reading. In these classes young girls are conditioned into murderers who will dispense with their own precious unborn child as readily as a dirty Kleenex without a twinge because “it’s my body.” I can’t hear of the 70 million Americans killed before birth without a catch in my heart over Kate’s role in this. She taught girls to “be an outlaw; be a damned outlaw, cuz all the laws were made by evil white men. Be a slut and be proud of it!” Now we have girls parading about with the word “SLUT” emblazoned across their tee-shirts. Orgies? “Absolutely! Try everything. There are no rules.” So the woman whose job it is to construct the basic rules threw them all to the wind. Then she ran away from home and from any babies she didn’t kill in order to run the world. – Mallory Millett

Toxic Masculinity

Toxic masculinity refers to a collection of offensive, harmful beliefs, tendencies, and behaviors rooted in traditional male roles but taken to an extreme. This dangerous idea of “manliness” perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression and can be harmful to the mental health of all genders. - verywell mind

The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions to refer to those aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially destructive, such as misogyny, homophobia, and violent domination. - Wikipedia

Patriarchy

Defining patriarchy, renowned American sociologist Allan Johnson wrote: " ... A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women." - CNN

The Reality:

Women outnumber men 60% to 40% of college admission

“Women Earned the Majority of Doctoral Degrees in 2020 for the 12th Straight Year and Outnumber Men in Grad School 148 to 100,” American Enterprise Institute, October 14, 2021. Mary Harrington, “The New Female Ascendency,” The Critic, December/January 2022. See Gurian, Saving Our Sons, 14; Sommers, War Against Boys, 19; Mark Perry,

The disparity is even greater among African Americans. “Black women earn about two thirds of all African-American bachelor’s degree awards, 70 percent of all master’s degrees, and more than 60 percent of all doctorates. Black women also hold a majority of all African-American enrollments in law, medical, and dental schools.” “Black Women Students Far Outnumber Black Men at the Nation’s Highest-Ranked Universities,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 5, Spring 2006.

4x as many scholarships for women compared to men, and most are only for women

Men are more likely than women to be homeless, to suffer mental illness, to wind up in prison, to commit suicide, to be murdered, to be addicted to drugs or alcohol

Pearcey, Nancy R. 2023. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group.

Surprisingly, research has found that nominal Christian men have the highest rates of divorce and domestic violence—even higher than secular men.

These numbers are staggering: They tell us that men who claim the Christian label often exhibit worse behavior than men who are outright secular. Nominal men skew the statistics, creating the false impression that evangelical men as a group are abusive and domineering

Nancy R. Pearcey, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2023), 15.

The Solution:

A family of 4 that intends to invest every moment it has together to become a better unit of creativity, love, sacrifice, and encouragement…Bluey!

The beauty and purity of God's creation are undeniable, but the impact of sin has led to a distortion that is evident in the world today. It's essential to recognize that the issue lies not with masculinity itself but with the influence of secularization in American society, which has deviated from the biblical perspective of manhood. There is hope for addressing harmful behavior in men, and it begins with acknowledging that Christianity offers a solution within the framework of the church. The Bible places a significant responsibility on men, encouraging them to embody a balance of strength and sensitivity, courage and compassion. By understanding their reflection of God's character, men can strive to become whole individuals, embracing all the diverse aspects of God's nature.

The religiously devout, defined as those who attend church at least three times a month. These men shatter the negative stereotypes. They are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce, and they have the lowest levels of domestic abuse and violence.

Nancy R. Pearcey, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2023), 36.

Biblical Study of Genesis 2:18-25

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 2:18–25.

Biblical Studies: What is a man in the Hebrew/Greek text of Genesis 2:18-25?

Yahwist Text

It is not good that man should be alone

Man is “alone”: this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God himself. The anthropological definition contained in the Yahwist text in its own way approaches the theological definition of man that we find in the first creation account (“Let us make man in our image and our likeness,” Gen 1:26).

No man is an island - John Donne

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Our bodies are even more important in that they are fundamental to so much that we participate in in this life. Our bodies are a fundamental part of our narrative identity.

Narrative identity is the identity that is contingent on the relationships we enter into. Narrative identity is fundamentally second-personal …in that our narrative depends on the relationships we have with other people and our environment.

Adam

Turns from general “human” to a named man, “Adam”

Adama is ground and Adam is human. 2:7 Adam is made from Adama and will return to it but in the change of Iss and Issa woman is from man and man goes toward Issa.

Humility of Help

I will make him a helper fit for him.

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

In this way, then, these two expressions, that is, the adjective “alone” and the noun “help,” seem truly to be the key for understanding the essence of the gift on the level of man, as the existential content inscribed in the truth of the “image of God.” In fact, the gift reveals, so to speak, a particular characteristic of personal existence, or even of the very essence of the person. When God-Yahweh says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen 2:18), he affirms that, “alone,” the man does not completely realize this essence. He realizes it only by existing “with someone”—and, put even more deeply and completely, by existing “for someone.”

Love of oneness

“...[I]f man wants to respond to the call [of marriage], he must learn with perseverance and consistency what the meaning of the body is, the meaning of femininity and masculinity. He must learn it not only through an objectifying abstraction (though this is needed as well), but above all in the sphere of the interior reactions of his own “heart.”

Woman - ‘issah

Man - ‘iss’

The body in its masculinity and femininity has been called “from the beginning” to become the manifestation of the spirit.

Pope John Paul II

Father

Not Ashamed

One cannot express the vastness of intent for masculinity merely through materialism. God created man, male and female, and through Genesis 2, the fullness of man is the uniting of male and female, yes, in marriage for sexual relations of reproduction, but imminently superior in coming together and seeing that the work of male and female is the great expression of masculinity. Being able to build and edify the female because you know who you are in the imagery that God breathed into. You are masculine in expression, not by kilt, gun, truck, tweed suit, or muscular build. You are the expression of masculine imagery of Yahweh, one that is hard working to the direction of God’s commands, one that is creative in the task set before you, one that is longing for the reliance on Yahweh, one that is found in complete joy and satisfaction of accepting that no man is an island but has the need of help, particularly not from more masculine expression but the need of female expression in all her fullness. Honoring her as what she is, woman, the flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone, first a sister in unity and then a wife gifted by God in oneness for the fullness of man to glorify Yahweh God.

So he became the head of the family, not as a bully with a big club to beat women with, but rather as a respectable person trying to be a responsible person. Now all that might be perfectly true, and might even have been the first family act, and it would still be true that man then for the first time acted like a man, and therefore for the first time became fully a man.