Annotated Bibliography for Gender-Related Books in 2006

In this issue of the journal we profile some of the most significant gender-re­lated books from 2006. Here is a brief reminder about the categories we are using and our intent in using them. Complementarian designates an au­thor who recognizes the full personal equality of the sexes, coupled with an acknowledgment of role distinctions in the home and church. Egalitarian clas­sifies evangelicals who see undifferenti­ated equality (i.e., they see no scriptural warrant for affirming male headship in the home or the church). Under the Non-Evangelical heading, we have classified important secular works and books that address the subject of bibli­cal gender issues from a religious, albeit, non-evangelical point of view. This cat­egory also serves as our classification for liberal scholars wanting to retain some sort of Christian identity. Finally, under the Undeclared heading, we have listed those books that do not give sufficient indication of their fundamental stance for us to classify them more specifically.

Complementarian

DeYoung, Kevin. Freedom and Boundar­ies: A Pastoral Primer on the Role of Women in the Church. Enumclaw, WA: Pleasant Word, 2006.

DeYoung writes a summary of the role of women in the church geared to­ward congregations and pastors think­ing through the biblical teaching on gender and leadership. DeYoung traces the Bible's teaching through Genesis, the Gospels, and Epistles, observing the underlying complementarian fabric of Scripture. After answering common objections raised concerning gender, he offers helpful suggestions for applying a biblical understanding of gender to the life of a local congregation, extolling the goodness of women serving the church in a God-honoring manner.

Duncan, J. Ligon, and Susan Hunt. Women's Ministry in the Local Church. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006.

Duncan and Hunt offer an in­valuable resource for women and pas­tors who want to strengthen Christ's church through an effective women's ministry that is rooted in a rich bibli­cal and theological framework. The book answers five fundamental ques­tions: Why should a church have a women's ministry-what is the biblical apologetic? Who is responsible for the women's ministry in the church? How does a women's ministry relate to the other ministries in a church? What are the tasks of a women's ministry? How does a church implement a biblical ap­proach to women's ministry? Through sound exposition of passages in the Pastoral Epistles and Titus, Duncan and Hunt derive biblical principles and make practical applications that address the themes of submission, compassion, community, discipleship, and Scrip­ture-themes that should characterize women's ministry in the local church.

Grudem, Wayne. Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism: Biblical Responses to the Key Questions. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006.

This book is a condensation of Grudem's comprehensive work, Evan­gelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions (Multnomah, 2004), and is intended for anyone who wants a con­cise overview of the main issues in the debate over men's and women's roles in the home and the church. But this book also adds some specific interaction with the comprehensive egalitarian work, Discovering Biblical Equality: Comple­mentarity without Hierarchy, edited by Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Groot­huis (InterVarsity, 2004). Grudem be­gins by setting forth a biblical vision of manhood and womanhood with respect to creation, marriage, and the church. The remainder of the book presents and interacts with challenges and objections that egalitarians have brought against the complementarian vision. This book is invaluable for pastors, seminary stu­dents, and concerned laity, who are looking for faithful teaching on bibli­cal manhood and womanhood, as well as for how to respond appropriately to egalitarian arguments with biblical an­swers.

Grudem, Wayne. Evangelical Femi­nism: A New Path to Liberalism? Wheaton: Crossway, 2006.

The argument of this book first found expression in a brief chapter in Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (pp. 500-517) and was later adapted and extended in an article entitled "Is Evangelical Feminism the New Path to Liberalism? Some Disturbing Warn­ing Signs," Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 9, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 35-84. Grudem argues that the inter­pretive methods and claims of egalitar­ians ultimately undermine the author­ity of Scripture, thus leading down a "slippery slope" toward theological lib­eralism. After drawing the historical connection between liberalism and the endorsement of women's ordination in the church, Grudem presents fifteen ways that evangelical feminist views ei­ther deny the complete truthfulness of Scripture or deny the full authority of Scripture. In addition to these fifteen ways, Grudem then gives ten additional ways that evangelical feminists undercut the authority of Scripture by promoting untruthful or unsubstantiated claims. Finally, Grudem concludes by charting where these harmful claims are taking the egalitarian movement and identify­ing ways in which complementarians can lovingly and truthfully respond in order to honor God and his Word.

Jones, Peter. The God of Sex: How Spir­ituality Defines Your Sexuality. Colorado Springs: Victor Cook Communications Ministries, 2006.

Jones insightfully makes the con­nection between theology and sexual­ity as he sketches out the implications of two belief systems-paganism and biblical theism-in order to show their implications for sexual practice. He un­derstands and argues that the battle of beliefs today regarding sexuality and sexual choices reflects an underlying worldview, or organizing structure that allows people to make sense of real­ity. One either operates from a pagan worldview, which inevitably produces a culture of death and a deconstruc­tion of heterosexual norms, or a biblical worldview, which inevitably produces a culture of life and emphasizes the cre­ated distinctions of heterosexuality. At this cultural crossroads, Jones contends that Christians must deal with sexual­ity in the context of a biblical worldview and the gospel.

Maken, Debbie. Getting Serious About Getting Married: Rethinking the Gift of Singleness. Wheaton: Cross­way, 2006.

Maken argues that marriage is the fundamental and normative design for men and women and that the church has succumbed to the culture in the past few decades by deemphasizing the gift of marriage and accepting prolonged singleness. Part One examines the bibli­cal teaching on marriage and singleness. She also notes that church tradition consistently regarded protracted single­ness as unbiblical; however, our day has radically changed. This, Maken says, is largely due to the lack of male leader­ship in the home and in the church. Part Two looks at conflicting messages, emo­tions, and beliefs about singleness and how Christians can respond biblically to challenge the false messages which celebrate singleness rather than mar­riage. Part Three concludes with how singles, particularly women, can order their lives around biblical principles in order to pursue marriage, and how men must reclaim biblical manhood and the leadership roles to which God has called them.

Ricucci, Gary and Betsy. Love that Lasts: When Marriage Meets Grace. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006.

The Ricuccis have provided a re­source filled with biblical principles and practical insights aimed to help Chris­tian couples live God-glorifying mar­riages. They understand that God's best is a marriage that reflects the marvelous union between Christ and the church, and that it is God and his glorious pow­er revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ that are the beginning, the means, and the goal of marriage. Together, they dis­cuss the distinct roles of husband and wife, communication, conflict restora­tion, romance, and sexual intimacy. At the end they provide questions for dis­cussion, evaluation, and application.

Egalitarian

Anderson, David W., Paul G. Hill, and Roland D. Martinson. Com­ing of Age: Exploring the Identity and Spirituality of Younger Men. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006.

This volume is a qualitative study that explores masculine spirituality and the dynamics of feminized religion. The authors look at family, nature and sports, stress, service, work, and other factors that impact the spiritual lives of men. While complementarians can share the authors' lament of the lack of male pres­ence in churches, they will not resonate with their call for an egalitarian model of leadership in the church. Furthermore, the authors present Christ's relationship to men as primarily helping turn around the "crises and calamities" in their lives, without mention of sin and repentance.

Balswick, Jack O., and Judith K. A Model for Marriage. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006.

The Balswicks appeal to the peri­choretic relationships of the Trinity to model marriage shaped both by person­al distinctness and interdependence and characterized by the principles of cov­enant, grace, empowerment, and inti­macy. The authors present two marriage paradigms that compete in modern views of marriage: traditional and post­modern. Showing the extreme errors of both, the Balswicks offer their "biblical" model as a balance between blind tradi­tionalism and self-centered postmoder­nity. Unfortunately, the authors carica­ture the "traditional" understanding of role differentiation in marriage as being authoritarian, rigid, and coercive. They create a false dichotomy by stressing the traditional view being one of obligation to the institution of marriage rather than being an affectionate, grace-filled covenant. The model presented in this work rejects the basic biblical frame­work for the marriage relationship in favor of "mutual submission" and "role adaptability."

Bilezikian, Gilbert. Beyond Sex Roles: What the Bible Says About a Wom­an's Place in Church and Family, 3d ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.

Bilezikian's aim is for the nonspe­cialized reader to be able to follow the discussion step by step, to evaluate ar­guments, to consider alternative views, and to arrive at independent conclu­sions. Although there are many works that oppose his viewpoint, he primar­ily interacts with and critiques James B. Hurley's Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective. Bilezikian follows a pro­gressive hermeneutic seen in the order of creation, fall, and redemption, and argues that God's pattern and purpose for humanity should be taken from cre­ation and redemption, not from the fall. Thus, male headship is a result of the fall and Adam's rule over Eve is satanic in origin. But Christ has brought about reversal through redemption, and by the empowerment of the Spirit, Christians can live out Jesus' teaching by consider­ing gender differences irrelevant in the processes of the kingdom of God. He argues that although the NT does not give many examples of women func­tioning equally with men in the church, it nevertheless provides a trajectory by which the new community could in­creasingly follow Jesus' teaching con­cerning the equal integration of women in ministry alongside men.

Although Bilezikian should be commended for dealing with the bibli­cal texts, his presuppositions concerning the equal roles of men and women are read into whatever text he is studying. For example, he argues that the word "kephale," or "head," never means "au­thority." Yet in Eph 1:22 the context clearly emphasizes the authority and reign of Christ over creation and the church. Also, he assumes that role dif­ferences necessarily imply inferiority of some kind. Yet complementarians clear­ly maintain that men and women are simultaneously equal in value and worth as image-bearers of God yet different with respect to roles. For more detailed interaction with Bilezikian's earlier edi­tion, see Thomas R. Schreiner's review "Beyond Sex Roles: A Guide for the Study of Female Roles in the Bible" at http://www.cbmw.org/Resources/Book-Reviews/Beyond-Sex-Roles-by-Gil­bert-Bilezikian, which originally ap­peared in JETS 30 (1987): 99-100.

Davis, Janet. The Feminine Soul: Sur­prising Ways the Bible Speaks to Women. Colorado Springs: Nav­Press, 2006.

The author contends that the church has largely missed out on devel­oping the spiritual identity of women. Instead, a male clergy has presented a "unisex" spirituality to men and women alike. Davis's alternative feminine spiri­tuality, however, falls short of the biblical categories of femininity. Although men and women certainly differ in numerous ways, Davis suggests that-unlike the personal rebukes that Jesus reserves for men-God relates to women by positive affirmation and moving them toward "a greater sense of self." She argues that feminine spiritual growth is less like the "linear" sanctification process of "teach­ing, rebuking, correcting, and training" in 2 Tim 3:16 and more akin to "a natu­ral birthing process." What Davis at­tributes to the differences in men and women is actually at odds with the es­sential nature of sin and redemption in all of fallen humanity. Moreover, the book's focus on woundedness as a fun­damental aspect of femininity accords more with psychotherapy than with the Bible's teaching on womanhood.

Gerali, Steve. Teenage Guys: Exploring Issues Adolescent Guys Face and Strategies to Help Them. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

Gerali provides a guide for youth workers to help understand the cog­nitive, social, emotional, sexual, and spiritual development of teenage guys. Gerali's work, however, suffers from fundamental misunderstandings about masculinity. In urging youth workers to cultivate rather than repress teenage masculine sexuality, the author argues that "healthy sexual development re­quires sexual rehearsal and imagination." He does not view sexual fantasy as lust, and, furthermore, does not think one can even define lust. Gerali also rejects the notion of an effeminized church, ar­guing that God is changing both mas­culinity and femininity while spiritual­ity remains constant.

Giles, Kevin. Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

Giles writes that "one of the basic arguments of this book is that to speak of the eternal subordination of the Son in function and authority by necessity implies ontological subordinationism" (30). His central thesis is that "the con­temporary evangelical case for the eter­nal subordination of the Son is a clear breach with historical orthodoxy" (32). He argues that Athanasius, the Cappa­docians, Augustine, Calvin, Barth, and the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds un­ambiguously and emphatically opposed hierarchical ordering in the Godhead. Thus, he asserts that those who af­firm the eternal functional subordina­tion of the Son (e.g., Wayne Grudem, George Knight, Robert Letham, Bruce Ware, and the Sydney Anglican Doc­trine Commission) have left orthodoxy and are Arian heretics. Although more extensive reviews have been written interacting with Giles's works, draw­ing attention to just a few key issues will have to suffice. First, Giles argues that eternal functional or role subordi­nation necessarily involves ontological subordination. However, in systemati­cally formulating the biblical teaching, both historical tradition and contem­porary theologians who hold to the eternal functional subordination of the Son clearly distinguish between eternal functional subordination in person and eternal subordination in being/essence/nature/substance, i.e., subordination­ism. Secondly, Giles argues that inferior and subordinate mean "much the same thing." Although this may be true in ev­eryday usage and in dictionaries, which serve as the basis for his conclusion, this is not the case when speaking of the Trinity in systematic theology. The Son can be subordinate in role while simul­taneously being ontologically equal to the Father, just as an employee can be subordinate in role while simultaneous­ly equal in personhood to his/her boss. This has always been how orthodox theologians have spoken of the simulta­neous ontological equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the personal distinctions in roles. Thirdly, he equates omnipotence, power, and authority based upon everyday usage. However, an important distinction in the debate has been and must be made between the equal omniscience and power of each person in the Godhead and the order, or taxis, of authority. For example, John repeatedly makes clear in his Gospel that Jesus was sent by his Father to do his will (which is an eternal, pre-existent relationship and ordering, not merely an incarnational one). Fourthly, Giles does not clearly spell out the distinction be­tween nature and person, and as a result he concludes that what Jesus does func­tionally applies to who he is ontologi­cally. In the end, the confusion of these terms and concepts color his conclu­sions, thus rendering his thesis invalid. For more detailed interactions with Giles's work see Jason Hall's "A Re­view of Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity by Kevin Giles," JBMW 12, no. 1 (2007): 32-39 (http://www.cbmw.org/cimages/jbmw_pdf/12.1/review_je­sus_father.pdf).

Olson, Ginny. Teenage Girls: Exploring Issues Adolescent Girls Face and Strategies to Help Them. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

Olson's book explores the various issues-physical, emotional, and spiritu­al-faced by teenage girls and the youth workers who minister to them. So­ciological phenomena and psychologi­cal theory seem to shape Olson's view of youth ministry more than a biblical model of mentoring young women. She advocates the use of "open dialogue" as opposed to "rigid dogmatism" concern­ing homosexuality and sexual experi­mentation.

Non-Evangelical Books

Mansfield, Harvey C. Manliness. New Haven and London:Yale Univer­sity Press, 2006.

Mansfield explores the whole of manliness in disciplines ranging from philosophy, literature, and science, and provocatively argues that it should have a place in an increasingly non-gendered society. From manliness in the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries to the rise of feminism in the twentieth cen­tury, manliness ascends from merely manly aggression to manly assertion. He argues that sex differences between male and female cannot be transcended by repressing or ignoring them; rather, they must be respected because it is in most accord with our natures. He con­cludes by stating that the problem is not that manliness does not exist, but that it is unemployed. Although Mansfield makes a compelling argument for the necessity of manliness as a virtue, with which complementarians would agree, the problem is that he is arguing from an essentially secular worldview. The rea­son manliness, as well as womanliness, needs to be recovered is because God's glory is displayed in the differences be­tween man and woman since both are created in the image of God and both are the focus of God's redeeming work in Christ.

Undeclared Books

Eldredge, John. The Way of the Wild Heart. Nashville: Thomas Nel­son, 2006.

In this sequel to the best-selling Wild at Heart, Eldredge further devel­ops the process of masculinity and the various roles and life stages of men. In laying out the progression of the "mas­culine journey," Eldredge succeeds at a number of levels, as he recognizes the importance of purposeful training for masculinity. He communicates the Fa­therhood of God as the basis for mean­ingful father-son relationships and also provides a mentoring model that is born of time and authentic, real-life experi­ences rather than a list of "accountabili­ty" questions. Eldredge bemoans passiv­ity and helps the reader understand the danger of emasculating men. Similar flaws, however, plague this volume as in Eldredge's previous works. He continues to define the gospel in largely therapeu­tic terms and, at times, Scripture seems to serve as another illustration among Eldredge's mélange of movie references as opposed to authoritative revelation. Furthermore, Eldredge's false dichoto­my between mind/heart and theology/emotion is exacerbated by a highly mys­tical spirituality that speaks of God's love in sensual, romanticized language. Although Eldredge communicates something of the realities of training and instilling manhood in boys, these fatal shortcomings distort the volume's faithfulness to biblical masculinity.