See this index.

After I wrote “Sharkly on Women“, I was most pleased to get a lengthy comment in response. Then I continued the discussion at Spawny’s Space for many days. I’ve decided to respond to the first comment and a few others entirely in one post. This is going to be a very long article, so if you are not interested, feel free to skip this one.

On Gendered Language

Subject-Verb Agreement

Sharkly writes:

There is a reason why English translators who clearly didn’t want to show only Adam as being made in the image of God were still forced to write, “in the image of God created he him” using a singular male pronoun, and not “them”.

The word ‘adam is a singular grammatically masculine collective noun. Regardless of the number of men and/or women it refers to, it is always singular and grammatically masculine gendered. Because it is grammatically masculine gendered, the pronouns used with it are also grammatically masculine, regardless of who is being referred to as ‘adam (male or female; one or more than one). ‘Adam is also not a proper name, so the use of masculine pronouns does not have any special significance.

This is roughly analogous to subject-verb agreement in English, although since English does not have grammatical gender, this is imprecise. Nonetheless, it is a helpful comparison as long as you don’t go crazy with it.

Translators used the word “man” in place of ‘adam because one of the definitions of man in English is a singular collective noun that means “humans” or “humanity”, as in Psalm 8:4 (KJV):

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Grammatical Anatomical

Skarkly’s entire premise relies on the conflation of grammatical gender with anatomical sex. He states:

The King James Bible almost always gets the gender of gendered words correct

This is a nonsensical statement. Words in English do not have grammatical gender. It is impossible for an English translation to get the ‘gender’ of grammatically gendered Hebrew words either correct or incorrect. What Sharkly is trying to say, of course, is that grammatical gender indicates anatomical sex (or, sometimes, gender), but it does nothing of the sort. This is an instance of the equivocation fallacy.

You seemingly draw no distinction between unavoidable ‘grammatical gendering’ and the ‘natural gender’, which is often made specific in the text.

Sharkly’s comment is indecipherable. I’ve done nothing but make a bright-line distinction between grammatical gender and “natural” or anatomical sex:

“In Hebrew and Greek words have a gender: masculine, feminine, and neuter [Greek only]. But this “gender” is distinct from sex. While many times the anatomical sex—of what is signified by the noun—and the grammatical gender—of the word—coincide, this is not a rule. There is no one-to-one correspondence between grammatical gender and physical, anatomical gender.” — comment by myself @ “Sharkly on Women”

I also noted that the anatomical sex can be made specifically in the text to nominally match the grammatical gender, but that it is not the case here:

“26. a human. The term ‘adam, afterward consistently with a definite article, which is used both here and in the second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human beings, not a proper noun. It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially not without the prefix ben, “son of,” and so the traditional rendering “man” is misleading, and an exclusively male ‘adam would make nonsense of the last clause of verse 27.”
— Robert Alter, “The Hebrew Bible: The Five Books of Moses”, p. 12.

Sharkly’s whole argument relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of how gendered language works and is indicative of the problems with his hermeneutical method as I previously stated.

The classic example of how grammatical gender does not imply natural or anatomical sex is is illustrated in the John 1:14:

“The Word became flesh and made [his] dwelling among us.”

As I pointed out previously, flesh is a feminine gender, as in:

The Word became flesh and made her dwelling among us.

If one were to conflate grammatical gender and anatomical sex, one would thus conclude that the male Word became a female woman. This is absurd in the extreme, and of course nobody does this. Nobody, that is, except Sharkly, who sounds completely crazy when he conflates grammatical gender and anatomical sex.

Gender Swapped

“26. a human. The term ‘adam, afterward consistently with a definite article, which is used both here and in the second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human beings, not a proper noun. It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially not without the prefix ben, “son of,” and so the traditional rendering “man” is misleading, and an exclusively male ‘adam would make nonsense of the last clause of verse 27.”
— Robert Alter, “The Hebrew Bible: The Five Books of Moses”, p. 12.

The Hebrew word ‘adam in the grammatical masculine that denotes a human or humanity. It does not denote the anatomical masculine. It is analogous to the English word mankind, which has the word “man” in it, but refers to both men and women.

Genesis 1:27 says:

So God created man in his own image
in the image of God he created him
male and female he created them

The plural pronoun “them” refers to both “male and female” and “man.” But when Sharkly reads Genesis 1:27, he conflates or equivocates the English meaning of ‘man’ (meaning a male or males) with ‘mankind’ (meaning males or females). If we eliminate this conflation, we will immediately see that his preferred meaning of the passage is entirely based on that conflation.

We can see this by swapping the gender. Let’s make a thought experiment where we substitute out the various parts of speech and see how we would interpret the same thing if instead of using the masculine gender it used the feminine gender:

So Jesus selected woman as his bride
as the bride of Christ he selected her
male and female he selected them

Here “woman” and “church” are used as singular collective nouns, just as “man” was previously. Similar language exists in Ephesians 5, where Christ speaks of the church—made up of men and women—as a woman, a ‘her’. I replaced the verb “created” with “selected” which does not alter the force of the sentence, but makes it a comprehensible example sentence. Rather than saying “in his own image”, I said “as his bride”, to emphasize the point, but this is not strictly required (as we will see below).

Reading the sentence, it becomes immediately and obviously clear that the woman—the church—is the bride of Jesus Christ made up of both men and women. It would be clearly absurd to say “While both males and females are selected by Christ, only the females are his Church. After all, men cannot be brides because they are male. The gendered language of the original Greek clearly calls the church female.” It is, of course, just as absurd to do it here as in Genesis 1:27. But this is precisely the absurdity of Sharkly’s approach, and he is quite emphatic on the point.

We have no difficulty understanding that the church in Ephesians 5 applies to both men and women, even though the church is feminine. We know that just because the word church is grammatically feminine, the church is not anatomically exclusively feminine. The same is true of ‘adam.

Let’s do the same thing we did above, except this time only switch out “man” (a singular masculine collective noun) with “the church” (a singular feminine collective noun).

So Jesus created the church in his own image,
in the image of Jesus he created her;
male and female he created them.”

Again the clear reading of this sentence is that the church—created in the image of Jesus^[1]—is both male and female.

Interpreting the grammatically masculine gendered Hebrew as being anatomically masculine because it has been translated from grammatically masculine gendered Hebrew into anatomically masculine English is circular reasoning. If that is confusing, it’s because circular reasoning is dizzying.

What both of these examples do is remove the grammatical gendering of the Hebrew and Greek—which has no translation into non-gendered English—leaving only the denotation of the word “man”, which is ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity’. This makes circular reasoning like this impossible:

The King James Bible almost always gets the gender of gendered words correct

This is circular reasoning because you can’t use the KJV to determine the sex of words just because it translated the grammatical gender of the words into anatomical sex when it was first translated, assuming the conclusion you are trying to prove.

Women are God’s Image

I sent that link to my uncle, the Biblical languages professor [..] I believe it was after he had read it and had a chance to respond to it that he had admitted that, “there is no specific verse that states that ‘women are made in God’s image’”.

As Robert Alter attested, the verse that says “So God created humans in his own image”, which is what Genesis 1:27 says, is a specific verse that states that women are made in God’s image. Dominic Bnonn Tennant makes this clear:

When the passage switches to the plural form, the referent remains the same: adam. Both male and female are explicitly called adam here—“man”—and are said to be in the likeness of God.

The Bible also clearly states in Genesis 5:1-2 that both male and female are ‘adam. I can’t speak for why Sharkly’s uncle said what he said, but he’s clearly wrong. The text is quite explicit.

The Flood Only Killed Men and Animals

When we look at Genesis 6:7, we find:

Yahweh said, “I will blot out humankind that I have created from the face of the earth; humans, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the heavens, for I regret that I have made them.”

If the flood only killed male humans and animals, why did women have to board the ark?

The phrase translated correctly as “humankind” and “humans” (as contrasted with animals) is the exact same word ‘adam used in Genesis 1:27. Either you assume that ‘adam includes females—which it obviously does—or that females are mere animals—which they obviously are not (see: Genesis 2:20).

Ironically, it turns out that of all of the things God created after the Flood, he didn’t regret creating plants, fish, or women. Those were his successes. Clearly God only regretted making men, land animals, and birds.

The Patristics

Created in the Image of God

Sharkly asserts that…

The men who wrote in unanimous agreement that only men are the image of our Father & Son Godhead, were all the apostolic and patristic fathers of the church. [..] Presently I’ll spare you my citing many of the clear quotes from the early church fathers that convey this unquestioned belief.

Let me stop right there. These are both unlikely claims. He also said of Adam blaming Eve in Genesis 1:27:

There is nothing factually incorrect in Adam’s reply to his Father, God. Nor do you need to join the herd of church pastors in presuming and claiming that the father of all men spoke from a bad motive, intending to stoke God’s anger against the woman.

But, the interpretation of Adam blaming Eve is not a modern invention of modern pastors. I readily found two ancient Patristic writers—Didymus the Blind and John Chrysostom—who agreed with my stance. Given this track record, I seriously doubt that the church was unanimous that only men were made in the image of God, nor that this belief was unquestioned. Indeed, I suspect that if John Chrysostom disagreed with him on Genesis 3:13, he probably also disagrees with him on Genesis 1:27.

It turns out I am correct:

He then goes on to explain these words: “God made man in his own image,” and after briefly recalling what he had already said, he explains the meaning of these: “He created them male and female.  — John Chrysostom, “Homily 10 on Genesis”

Chrysostom says “God made man in his own image” (the first clause) is briefly recalled (in the second clause) and has its meaning explained by “He created them male and female” (the third clause). Chrysostom continued:

So I stopped at this passage, without touching the one immediately following. This is why it is necessary to read it again, so that you can better understand its development. Now the Scripture adds: And God created man; he created it in the image of God, and he created it male and female. [..] After saying that God created them male and female, Moses records in these terms the common blessing that God gave them. [..] it has been said that the man and the woman command and dominate. Admire, then, the goodness of the Lord! The woman does not yet exist, and it makes her enter into the participation of the authority of the man, and the privileges of the divine blessing. Dominate, he said to them”

This is unambiguous. Not only were women created in the image of God, but they share in his authority to dominate. This should not surprise us, as this is what the Bible teaches.

Now, Sharkly did not specify how early the patristic writers had to be. I asked him to pinpoint when the heresy began, but he declined to do so. If the early writers were truly unanimous, and this evidence was sufficiently large, it should be easy to point to the point where it was no longer unanimous. It is absurd that he claims that the early church writers were unanimous, but be unable to determine where the goalposts are. Presumably he wants to be able to freely move the goalposts as evidence contrary to his view is presented.

In any case, so far he has only cited two writers before the latter half of 4th century—Tertullian and Ambrosiaster—who are alleged to back up his claim (we will see about that). After that point, it isn’t difficult to find counter-examples. Sharkly may choose to cite more, but to date he has not done so. That’s a weak pool of evidence.

But we don’t have to stop there. In this post, which is still up, Sharkly says:

All surviving evidence shows that the early church unanimously believed that only men are in the image of God.  Origen, Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, and others all wrote of men alone being the image of God.

So we know, definitively, that Sharkly views the “early” church as including the late 4th century while also asserting the contradictory claim that:

Jerome modified the “not he alone” statement to make it seem to signify both Adam and Eve, instead of Adam and his sons.

Sharkly also cites the “Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus”, but in doing so he makes the standard mistake of interpreting any reference to “man” as “only men and definitely not any women.” Without making that sweeping assumption, there is no evidence from his citation that Mathetes believed that women were not made in the image of God. I suspect that the same will be found of the other “unanimous” patristic writers.

When the Heresy Began

After I wrote the above, I pressed Sharkly again for an answer and he said this:

The doctrinal shift seems to have possibly begun around the mid fourth century AD as best I can tell, and it seems to have been promoted in Rome near the latter end of the fourth century AD.

The problem, of course, is that Sharkly has hardly any evidence before the second half of the 4th century that anyone thought that only men were made in the image of God. Two men—Tertullian and Ambrosiaster—across three centuries is not a strong case, especially since the Bible speaks so plainly on the subject.

But scholars have no quotes for women possibly being in the image of God from the first three centuries of the church that I am aware of

Every quotation of Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 5:6 by early church writers is a quote that says women are—not possibly—made in the image of God. Each instance of these verses without the subsequent need to clarify their meaning is evidence enough that few people considered the distinction worth mentioning. Only the rare early writer who thought it worth disagreeing with said anything about it. This is an instance of survivorship bias:

What is lacking from Sharkly’s selection process are all of the writers who did not espouse the view that only men were made in the image of God, those who failed to pass his selection process. The incomplete data has led Sharkly to a false—indeed opposite—conclusion. This is why unanimity cannot be inferred from silence.^[4]

Being Dismissive

It is obvious that Sharkly has misrepresented the supposed unanimous and unquestioned testimony of the patristic writers. It took me less than five minutes and examining only one possible source to disprove his assertion. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. This should not be possible for someone who claims:

Overall your post seems mainly to raise doubts about my interpretations and my understanding of the nuances of the text in its original languages. And if that stuff was my only reason for believing my assertions, I of all people who fear God greatly, would fear to publish sketchy religious assertions. But I have much more foundational bearing that you made no mention of.

These are sketchy religious assertions and clearly lack such a dominate foundational bearing. Even Sharkly’s statement shows that Chrysostom’s contemporary, Jerome, said believed women were made in the image of God. For such bold claims, if you can’t pin down when the heresy began, then your proof is lacking, and certainly not unanimous.

Overall your post seems mainly to raise doubts about my interpretations and my understanding of the nuances of the text in its original languages.

I ran a Google search to try to find anyone who believes that women are not created in the image of God. In dozens of results, I found person after person asserting that women were included. But I managed to find one search result from someone who espoused Sharkly’s viewpoint. It was Sharkly himself.

I sent that link to my uncle, the Biblical languages professor, and if I recall correctly, his response was to call it “innovative” which I believe, like your post hints at, is a way to dismiss ideas as heterodox which don’t fit with “the experts” current narrative.

It’s not a hint at all! I am quite dismissive of these claims, and justified in doing so! Like Professor Uncle, I rightfully dismissed these ideas as, charitably speaking, “innovative.” The only reason I’m giving this my time is because I like Sharkly and respect his arguments (even if it doesn’t seem that way). He’s no crazy conspiracy theorist whose ideas are firm like Jello. He has spent significant amounts of time thinking this stuff out and it has taken effort to find the cracks in his viewpoints.

From a Bayesian probability standpoint, I would have been rationally justified in not even bothering to consider these issues. It is why I took so long to even touch the topic at all. For years, I’ve simply dismissed the topic as worthless to consider. My dismissal is not rudeness, it’s just that I see no reason to treat it as having any worth or validity at all. But unlike others, I’m willing to engage with it anyway.

Feminist scholars actually collect and cite those quotes to prove that Christianity is a patriarchal religion and did not consider women to be equal to men right from its very beginning.

In my study of Roman Catholicism, I found that the Roman religion does a lot of quote mining from the oldest patristic writers, spinning what they currently believe right now onto the writers then. This was quite evident in my discussion with Kentucky Gent. So while I believe quotes exist and I am personally fond of extensive quotations, but I’m not just going to accept them uncritically, especially because feminists like them. I will dismiss claims that don’t “show me the money.”

“I’m not the only person to claim that. I believe I first saw that fact being cited as a talking point of Feminist “scholars”.”

Sharkly saw the claims made by feminists—that the early church believed that only men were made in the image of God—and rather than dismiss them, he believed them over the testimony of the church and, most importantly, the Bible. Now he lectures others about being deceived by feminists. Moreover, we who disagree with those same feminists—that Sharkly agrees with—are somehow universally hoodwinked by the feminist agenda? This makes no logical sense. More-or-less every single Christian, but Sharkly, disagrees with those feminists. Sharkly should take his own warning to heart, as cult thinking^[3] seems to run in his family.

On Intent

You rebel against the truth. You prefer the new lie. If I claimed that king Saul had six toes, you wouldn’t argue with me for days, because that doesn’t matter. But you don’t want me returning the image of God to men alone, because you know that it does matter, and it is foundational to men’s patriarchal authority.

Of course this has nothing to do with rebelling against truth or preferring a lie. If one thing is clear it is that I believe the evidence is overwhelming. If Sharkly claimed that King Saul had six toes, I would dismiss him completely. Arguably, I should have completely dismissed him on this issue as well. That is what I did for years. He’s 100% right that I had no need to engage with his ideas and I still don’t. But, as I said above, I found reason to do so this time.

But let’s be honest with ourselves: if Sharkly genuinely thought King Saul had six toes, there is not insignificant probability that I would make a post about it because that’s the kind of thing I do. I mean, have you met me?

Covering

1 Corinthians 11:7(GNT) A man has no need to cover his head, because he reflects the image and glory of God. But woman reflects the glory of man;

 

Ambrosiaster writes: Paul says that the honor and dignity of a man makes it wrong for him to cover his head, because the image of God should not be hidden. Indeed, it ought not to be hidden, for the glory of God is seen in the man. … A woman therefore ought to cover her head, because she is not the likeness of God but is under subjection.

The previous analysis has already shown that in Genesis 1:27 unambiguously shows that woman were created in the image of God, but let’s set that aside and consider these other viewpoints.

The most obvious retort is that by being a woman in the image of man, who is in the image of God, that she too must also be in the image of God. Women might be a reflection of a reflection, but are nonetheless still a reflection of the original source. I don’t see how you can simply discount this explanation. The John Gill commentary summarizes this view:

“. . . man was first originally and immediately the image and glory of God, the woman only secondarily and mediately through man. The man is more perfectly and conspicuously the image and glory of God, on account of his more extensive dominion and authority.”

If one presumes that Sharkly’s view is correct, this shows that his viewpoint was not recently discarded by the church, that is, rejecting his viewpoint isn’t a product of modern feminism.

Next, Ambrosiaster’s logic is strained. If a woman isn’t in the image of God because she is under subjection (to her husband), then the man isn’t in the image of God because he is under subjection (to God). What Ambrosiaster says…

“because she is not the likeness of God but is under subjection”

…is notably not what Paul says. It doesn’t logically follow that being under subjection prevents one from being in the image of God. Paul never said that the woman was not created in the image of God. Augustine makes the same error (see Sharkly’s first comment and its retort here), which Sharkly also makes explicitly:

1 Corinthians 11:7 Says that it is wrong for a man (anér) to cover his head because he is the image and glory of God. But women are the glory of men. And therefore women are told to do the opposite and cover their heads when they pray. Because they are not the image of God like a man.(anér)

Paul never said that women are not in the image of God like a man. He said that men were in the image of God and that women were the glory of their husbands, but never states this as a mutually exclusive proposition. Sharkly’s conclusion cannot be sustained on the verses themselves. He has to have come with that preconception to leave with that view, which begs-the-question.

Paul wrote only a few chapters later in 1 Corinthians 15:49—which is based on the Hebrew pun found in Genesis—explicitly describing how all members of the church—men and women—will bear the image of the divine. The variant reading of the verse makes this even more explicit. Were this to be speaking only of men, it would imply that women do not inherit the Kingdom of God or eternal life. But the comparison with Adam is clear: as we bear the image of Adam, so too we now bear the image of God through Jesus.

Paul also wrote in Colossians that Christ is the image of God and describes how we are all reconciled to him (Colossians 1:15ff) and that our new self is in the Image of Christ, irrespective of who were were before, whether man or woman, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, etc. (Colossians 3:9-11; Galatians 3:28).

Furthermore, regarding the glory that Paul speaks of, Isaiah 43:6-7, 1 Corinthians 10:31, and 2 Corinthians 4:14-15 all ascribe God’s glory to both men and women. Hebrews 1:3 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 link the glory of God with the image of God, which all Christians reflect.

There is no compelling reason to put words into Paul’s mouth and have him say that which he didn’t say.

Sharkly made this claim:

The man must not, dishonor his head with a covering during prayer, because he is in the image of God. The woman however must cover her head during prayer, because she is ___ in the image of God. The word “not” goes in the blank logically.

But this is faulty logic because Sharkly has made a logically invalid loaded argument. It should be stated as such:

“The man must not, dishonor his head with a covering during prayer, because he is in the image of God. The woman however must cover her head during prayer, because _____.”

But neither the word “not” nor the phrase “she is not in the image of God” are logically required and Paul did not use either. In fact, the real reason is quite obvious from both the passage itself and the cultural context: “because she is a married woman.” As I pointed out in “Hair, Veils, and Authority” (to which Sharkly also esponded in a comment) and more explicitly in “Paul Addressed Wives“, Paul is speaking to married women, for only married women can have have husbands as their head, and only married women must veil. This is also why Ephesians 5—with its talk of submission—is only written to married women. It certainly does not and cannot include widows, who are not under the authority of any man. Such women would not need to be veiled before God for the same reason a man must be unveiled.

Hermeneutical Methods

In part 1, I had an entire section dedicated to hermeneutical methods, showing that Sharkly’s method is flawed and that if one rejects his method, one must logically reject his entire argument. Dominic Bnonn Tennant made the same point:

I’m not going to respond further at this point, because there’s a fundamental disconnect between us in our hermeneutical method. I take it as given that we need to be guided in our exegesis by systematic and biblical theology, whereas you guys by your own admission are so untaught that you don’t even really know what these are. Since this isn’t the place for a defense of basic Reformed hermeneutics, I have no more to say.

While I don’t mind belaboring the point, I can understand why others would stand down.^[2] But Sharkly asked me nicely to look at his links for more information, and so that’s what I did.

Searching for a Mention

After Sharkly read Genesis 1:26-27, he did this:

It became apparent to me after reading this that God clearly mentioned man/him(Adam in Hebrew) being made/created in God’s image or likeness, four times right in a row, while then contrastingly telling us that male & Female(them) were only just created by God, with conspicuously no mention of it being done in God’s image.  God clearly went out of His way to solidify that Adam was made in His image, but never is Eve or womankind said to be in God’s image.  So I searched the scriptures for the image of God, and every single place it is mentioned it is assigned to the masculine Adam/men/Jesus.(in non-neutered Bibles).  The Apostle Paul made it quite clear that men alone are the image of God in 1 Corinthians 11:7

In “Sharkly on Women, Part 2“, I did the same thing, except instead of looking for an explicit reference in the Bible where it says women are made in the image of God, I looked for an explicit reference where the Bible says that an post-Fall unbeliever was made in the image of God, and I found nothing. Were I to use Sharkley’s hermenutical method, I would conclude that Adam and Eve lost the image of God when they sinned and that only with Christ was the image restored.

It seems to me that Sharkly’s hermeneutical method is self-refuting.

Masculinity and Femininity

No part of God Himself needs to be exhibited through the feminine, because all of God is masculine in Himself and in His representation.

The topic of the divine feminine was recently addressed by Bruce G. Charlton here. You might find this alternative philosophical take interesting. In any case, Sharkly’s view is nonsensical as the church of Christ—his bride—is feminine in precisely the same way than mankind is masculine. As the church is the grammatically feminine representation of Christ, Sharkly’s statement is plainly a contradiction.

Feminist Exploitation

If God had wanted to make clear that Eve was in the image of God, he could have said that Eve, or the woman, was in the image of God but he clearly didn’t.

As we saw above, God made it perfectly clear in Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 5:2 that women are made in the image of God. This should end all discussion. But what Sharkly wants is an explicit declaration that either men or women are individually made in the image of God, which is completely unnecessary. God not only never did this, but took pains to say that both male and female were created in the image of God. Or to the point, God never explicitly stated that men are made in the image of God: he stated that all humans are. As Robert Alter pointed out, translating ‘adam as man is misleading in precisely this way.

Now any Feminist is going to try to exploit the fact that in Genesis 5:2 all people, male and female are called or named after “Adam” the man, the father of mankind.  Adam, in Hebrew, can mean: man or mankind, the first man, or ruddy(like clay). So also in English, the word “man” can refer to an individual male, all males, or even all humans. But “Adam”/”man” never refers to Eve individually, any individual woman, or womankind. “Adam”/”Man” only refers to women when they are lumped in with all men.

Here is Genesis 5:2:

Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

The “them” that God called Adam in the day that they were created are male and female. These are the same Adam mentioned throughout Genesis 1:26-27. There is nothing to exploit here. God created men and women in the image of God. It is straightforward and obvious. Notice that all of Sharkly’s words do absolutely nothing to refute the sense of the passage. It doesn’t matter that “Adam” doesn’t refer only to Eve, or only to any other individual women, or only to all of womankind (although it could, he’s wrong about that). This is an irrelevant distraction from the fact that Adam in Genesis 5:2 is the same Adam in Genesis 1:26-27.

“That is a patriarchal colloquialism that God started, whereby we are called after our father, just like how my wife and kids all share my family name.”

Adam is not a family name any more than “mankind” and “humanity” is a family name. This is not a valid analogy. In any case, even “Son of Adam”, that is “Son of Man,” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.

The Son of Man

Derek, you seem to have neglected addressing my citation of Psalm 8:3-8 wherein a (singular) “son of man” is recorded as having been given that exact same dominion spoken of in Genesis 1:26. My uncle didn’t answer that either. LOL

I never answered this citation because it is absurd and I hadn’t thought it necessary to respond to it. But it might not be clear to others why this is so, so I’ll explain it now. But first, let’s read the passage:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

Wherever you read “human beings” or “mankind” there, just replace it with “men only” to get Sharkly’s preferred interpretation, as in the KJV:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Except, of course, not even the KJV says “men only!” In part 1, I showed how the literary structure and context of a sentence is just as, if not more, important than the meanings of the words themselves. What is shown above is an extremely common literary device known as a “poetic parallelism.”  This is an example of a synonymous parallelism where two equal things are said in different ways.

The phrase “Son of Man” is a common Semitic idiom referring to a human being of any sex. The phrase “Son of Man” is used many times in both the Hebrew and Aramaic portions of the Old Testament. Specifically, there are thirteen different times in the Old Testament that the Man/Son of Man poetic parallelism is made: Numbers 23:19, Job 16:21, 25:7, 35:8, Psalm 8:4, 80:17, 126:3, Isaiah 51:12, 56:2, Jeremiah 49:18,33, 50:40, and 51:43. In each case it refers to the humanity of persons, each time starting with “man” and ending in “son of man.” These passages are not speaking only of men. The sex of the human is not relevant to the point being made, not even in Job 25 where the fate of a specific man—Job—is being discussed.

Helper

I don’t disagree with you that a wife should come to the aid of her embattled husband, even as a son might also naturally fight to aid his father. I’ve never implied families shouldn’t be united by God’s holy institution of patriarchy and family. Just because a person is of lower rank does not mean they should instead choose to take up bitterness and disloyalty. That is the flaw of the Feminists.

Sharkly didn’t read and understand what I wrote about women being the helper of man. I’ll reiterate what I said before. The word for helper does not imply that the helper is weaker or stronger than the person being helped. The only implication is that the person being helped—the man—is inadequate to the task. At no point does scripture imply that a woman—being man’s helper—is of lower rank. The word is usually used in a militaristic sense: a wife is her husband’s ally in the war of life. She is not auxiliary support, she is his rescuer who stands beside him, without concern for relative position.

See, Sharkly had stated the opposite of this:

“God intended and foresaw all men as being delegated God’s natural dominion over God’s own earth, and all women were created for men to be their helpers and like the rest of the creatures, which Adam also named, women fall under men’s dominion. “

But Eve being created to help Adam does not in any way imply that she is like the rest of nature and falls under his domain. Indeed, it would be strange to think of a militaristic ally as being subservient. In a military setting, one’s troops are subservient to you and one’s allies are not. Sharkly has chosen to interpret “helper” in a subservient way that is not justified by the word being used, and so he falsely presumes that women are like animals with respect to mankind’s domain.

On Agency

You either fear God and so you obey His commands, or you put your wife first and you let her break them.

Sharkly views a woman’s agency as lesser than a man. In particular, he thinks women’s agency is predicated on men’s authority—enforcement power—over them: without submitting to a man’s authority, a woman has no legitimate agency. Consequently, he believes that men are inherently superior to women, and that in every happy married the wife explicitly or implicitly believes herself to be inferior to her husband.

This is why he can’t view a wife as a military ally to his wife because he views all women as being subservient to one or more men and lesser in agency—and ability—than any man. So even though the wife a helper who stands beside her husband, Sharkly believes women exist only to serve men in a subservient role.

If you view women as having independent agency, Sharkly says you do not fear God or obey his commands.

The reality is that minimizing female agency is a hallmark of feminism. Sharkly thinks that enforcement and punishment is the key to good behavior, but Paul teaches that following the law has never resulted in righteousness.

On Strong and Weak Patriarchy

In this thread, Sharkly made the point that he had no authority because his wife and government took that power away from him. He defined authority as the power of enforcement. I responded that his view of authority is too limited, because it sheds agency, responsibility, and consequence whenever it isn’t convenient. Sharkly took issue with me blaming him for the failure of his marriage, but I said that it would disrespect his authority as a man for me to blame anyone other than him.

Weak patriarchy relies on permission and compliance from women and governments. Strong patriarchy derives its authority from God, who grants and delegates regardless of—and over—any human power. If one rejects strong patriarchy as nonviable, going instead for weak patriarchy, then one might as well reject the whole thing. Such is an argument against patriarchy and for something to replace it.

Let’s assume that authority is enforcement power. If so, then it all comes down to this. If “headship=authority”, as Sharkly believes, then the one who gives or takes your authority—whether your wife or your government—is your master. But if “headship=status”, then even if one’s authority is taken away from you completely, it has no bearing on who your master is.

God says your wife should wear a head covering when she prays. Does she? Who is ruling there, God or your wife?

This is an example of Sharkly’s weak patriarchy. Paul said that ultimately husbands should choose for themselves what is proper:

Judge among yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God uncovered? Doesn’t even nature itself teach you that if a husband has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? But if a wife has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering. But if any husband seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.

I have—along with many of my brothers and sisters—judged among ourselves what is proper. As there is no custom in the churches of God to override the husband’s contention on this matter, it is frankly none of Sharkly’s business what another man does with his wife.

I have family that wears coverings and no jewelry. I have other family that wears no coverings, but the wife wears a symbol of her husband on her ring finger instead of her head. I do not condemn any man for what he believes is proper, and we have no such custom in the church to demand such a thing. “Christian Discernment” dictates that whether a woman should cover or not is the choice of the husband. This includes whether long hair, a cloth covering, or a veil counts as a covering. A husband can and should decide for himself what brings him glory and what brings him shame, especially if doing so does not cause conflict or shame in the church.

Footnotes

^[1] The Bible teaches that Jesus is created in the Image of God and the church is created in the Image of the Son. See the discussion in “Sharkly on Women, Part 2.”

^[2] As an aside, Bnonn censors comments that he feels do not push the discussion forward. I oppose such censorship.

^[3] Over the last week or so, Sharkly has demonstrated a number of the aspects of cult thinking: cognitive dissonance, projection, simplistic thinking, and binary thinking.

^[4] The axiom of sola scriptura avoids this problem with respect to scripture.