Unmanning the Bible

S. M. Hutchens

S. M. Hutchens soundly reproves any attempts to conform the language of scripture to feminist ideology.

Padgett's Christ, the Christ of a rather large and influential new crop of Evangelical egalitarians, assumed a generic humanity that is equally a quality of men and women. This is found neither in Scripture nor in nature nor in Creed, but is the product of egalitarian re-imagination, read back into all three. Padgett is right to point to the word anthropos as the token of the controversy, but very wrong in his Greek. The word as used in Scripture means "man" as English apart from egalitarian adjustment means man, as the Church has known man from its beginning, man as the proper title of the male as primary, comprehensive, and representative of the human race, something that can be seen even by readers of Bibles that have undergone egalitarian adjustment, whether or not they know the original languages. It pervades the narrative. One cannot rid the Bible of it by grammatical tinkering. It inheres as a fundamental structural element of the whole, there for rediscovery even if the egalitarians were wholly successful in their attempt to neuter biblical grammar. As we have observed many times, this is a commonplace of feminist theology, which, with unassailable reason, finds it necessary either to radically revise or to reject both Judaism and Christianity as hopelessly sexist from the creation narratives forward.

Read the entire article on the Touchstone Magazine website.