Reading Like an Egalitarian

Owen Strachan wrote: “The curse bore down upon Eve’s primary activity, childbearing, showing that her intended sphere of labor and dominion-taking was the home (Genesis 3:16).”

Rachel Held Evans responded: “Classic. Root feminine identity in the curse rather than the redemptive work of Christ... .”

I'd call Evans' response unfair, if I thought she was smart enough to figure out what Strachan actually meant.

Strachan's point was simple: each was being cursed in his respective sphere. The curse identifies the spheres, it doesn't define them. Women were made for childbearing before the curse, but the curse made that a burden to them. And keeping in mind Christ's redemptive work, the Apostle writes: "she shall be saved in childbearing" (1 Timothy 2:15). Female identity is rooted in creation not merely the curse.

The Teacher tells us: "he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (1 Corinthians 11:7-9)

Furthermore, in that state of innocence in the garden, the woman - not the man - was deceived. The Apostle again, now in fuller context:

1 Timothy 2:11-15
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

The curse is not what led to women being responsible for childbearing. The curse is what made childbearing laborious and painful. And redemption doesn't free women from maternal responsibility, it urges them on to it!

Titus 2:1-6
But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.

What Rachel Held Evans has a problem with is God the Father's creation ordinance of human patriarchy. I'm not sure whether she has the ability to read clearly, so I'm loathe to say that she intentionally misrepresents the Bible. Nevertheless, her unwelcome and illogical teachings do not conform to Scripture.

-TurretinFan