Petr
09-13-2004, 07:48 AM
R.D. Rushdoony of Christian marriage and enlightenment misogyny
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out this perceptive excerpt from Rousas Rushdoony's classic,"The Institutes of Biblical Law "(1973, The Craig Press) pages 346-353:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...4860954-2701557
- see how "The Age of Reason" gave birth to the stereotype about religion as "women's business," and lauched the unnatural "war of the sexes"
- notice how Rushdoony manages to slip in a nice Biblical argument against interracial -and cultural marriages!
Petr
…
3. Marriage and Woman
The definition of woman given by God in creating Eve and establishing the first marriage is “help meet” (Gen. 2:18). This is literally “as agreeing to him,” or “his counterpart.”(1) Robert Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible renders it “an helper – as his counterpart.” R. Payne Smith pointed out that the Hebrew is literally “a help as his front, his reflected image.”(2) The implication is of a mirrored image, a God’s image, and woman in the reflected image of God in man. In this passage, as Hodge noted, the principle is affirmed “that order and subordination pervade the whole universe, and is essential to its being.“(3) The covered head is a sign of being under authority of another person; hence, the man, who is directly under Christ, worships with uncovered head, the woman with covered head. A man therefore who worships with covered head dishonors himself (I Cor. 11:1-4). The uncovered woman might as well be shorn or shaven (I Cor. 11:5-7). As Leon Morris notes with reference to vss. 8,9, “Neither in her origin, nor in the purpose which which she was created can the woman claim priority, or even equality.”(4)
Accordingly, St. Paul continued, “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels” (I Cor. 11:10). James Moffatt rendered “power of her head” as “a symbol of subjection,” following thereby popular opinion rather than the Greek text. “Power on her head” means rather, As Morris and others have pointed out, “a sign of her authority.”(5) Because angels are witnesses, a godly witness must be rendered. To many, a serious contradiction seems to be involved here: first, St. Paul insists on subordination, and then, second, speaks of what seems to be a sign of subordination as a sign of authority. This seeming contradiction arises from the anarchic concept of authority which is so deeply imbedded in man’s sinful nature. All true authority in under authority, since God alone transcends all things and is the source of all power and authority. A colonel has authority because he is under a general, and his own authority of those above him grow, and his unity with them in mind and purpose is assured. So too with the woman: Her subordination is also a symbol of authority. Very frequently, in various societies, prostitutes have been forbidden to dress themselves in the same manner as wives and daughters, for to do so would be to claim an authority, protection, and power they had forfeited. Thus, in Assyria an unmarried prostitute who covered her head was severely punished for her presumption.(6) Similar laws existed in Rome. On the American frontier, the woman who was a wife or daughter carried an obvious authority and normally commanded the respect and protection of all men.
…
The Biblical doctrine of woman thus reveals her as the one crowned with authority in her “subjection” or subordination, and clearly a helper of the closest possible rank to God’s appointed viceregent over creation. This is no small responsibility, nor it is a picture of a patient Griselda. Theologians have all too often pointed to Eve as the one who led Adam into sin while forgetting to note that her God-given position was such that counsel was her normal duty, although in this case it was clearly evil counsel. Men as sinners often dream of a patient Griselda who never speaks unless is spoken to, but no other wife would please them less or bore them more. Martin Luther, who dearly loved his Katie, on one occasion vowed, “If I were to marry again, I would hew a meek wife out of stone: for I doubt whether any other kind would be meek.” His biographer, Edith Simon, properly asks, “How would he have fared with a meek wife?”(10) The answer clearly is, not too well.
It is a common illusion that in man’s primitive, evolutionary past, women were the merest slaves, used at will by primitive brutes. Not only is this evolutionary myth without foundation, but in every known society, the position of women, as measured in terms of the men and the society, has been a notable one. The idea that women have ever submitted to being mere slaves is itself an absurd notion. Women have been women in every age. In a study of an exceedingly backward society, the natives of Australia, Phyllis Kaberry has shown the importance and status of women to be a considerable one.(11)
Few things have depressed women more than did the Enlightenment, which turned women into an ornament and a helpless creature. Unless of the lower class, where work was mandatory, the “privileged” woman was a useless ornamental person, with almost no rights. This had not been previously true. In 17th-century England, women were often in business, were highly competent managers, and were involved in the shipping trade, as insurance brokers, manufactures, and the like.
Up to the eighteenth century women were usually figured in business as partners with husbands, and not in inferior capacities. They often took full charge during prolonged absences of their mates. In some instances, where they were the brighter of the pair, they ran the show.(12)
A legal “revolution” brought about the diminished status of women; “the all too familiar view of women suddenly emerging in the nineteenth century from a long historical night or to a sunlit plain is completely wrong.”(13) A knowledge of early American history makes clear the high responsibilities of the woman: New England sailing men could travel on two and three years voyages knowing that all business at home could be ably discharges by their wives.
The Age of Reason saw man as reason incarnate, and woman as emotion and will, and therefore inferior. The thesis of the Age of Reason has been that the government of all things should be committed to reason. The Age of Reason opposed the Age of Faith self-consciously. Religion was deemed to be a woman’s business, and, the more the Enlightenment spread, the more church life came to be a domain of women and children. The more pronounced therefore the triumph of the Age of Reason in any culture, the more reduced the role of women became. Just as religion came to be regarded as a useless but sometimes charming ornament, so too women were similarly regarded.
These ideas moved into the United States through the influence of Sir William Blackstone on law, who in turn was influenced by England’s Chief Justice Edward Coke, a calculating opportunist.
…
Thus, the Age of Reason brought in an irrational supremacy for men and has led to a war of the sexes. As a result, the laws today work, not to establish godly order, but to favor one sex or another. The laws of Texas (written in 1973 - Petr) reflect the older discrimination against women; the laws of some states (such as California) show a discrimination in favor of women.
To return to the Biblical doctrine, a wife is her husband’s help-meet. Since Eve was created from Adam and is Adam’s reflected image of God, she was of Adam and an image of Adam as well, his “counter-part.” The meaning of this is that a true help-meet is man’s counterpart, that a cultural, racial, and especially religious similarity is needed so that the woman can truly mirror the man and be his image. A man who is a Christian and a businessman cannot find a helper in a Buddhist woman who believes that nothingness is ultimate and that her husband’s way of life a is a lower way. Cross-cultural marriages are thus normally a failure. Where we do find such marriages, they prove often on examination to be the union of two humanists whose backgrounds vary but whose faith unites them. Even then, such marriages have a high mortality. A man can identify character within his culture, but he cannot do more than identify the general character of another culture. Thus, a German reared in a Lutheran atmosphere can discern the subtle differences among women in his society, but if he marries a Moslem girl, he sees in her the general forms of Moslem feminine conduct rather than the fine shades of character, until too late to withdraw easily.
The Biblical doctrine shows us the wife as the competent manager who is able to take over all business affairs if needed, so that her husband can assume public office as a civil magistrate; in the words of Proverbs 31:23, he can sit “in the gates,” that is, preside as a ruler or judge. Let us examine the women in Proverbs 31:10-31, whose “price is above rubies.” Several things are clearly in evidence:
1. Her husband can trust her moral, commercial, and religious integrity and competence, (vss. 11, 12, 29-31).
2. She not only manages her household completely, but she can also manage a business with ability (vss 13-19, 24-25). She can buy and sell like a good merchant and mange a vineyard like n experienced farmer.
3. She is good to her family, and good to the poor and the needy (vss. 20-22).
4. Very important, “She openeth her mouth with wisdom: and in her tongue is the law of kindness”(vs. 26). The useless woman of the Age of Reason, and the useless socialite or jet set woman of today who is a show-piece and a luxury, can and does speak lightly, and as a trifler, because she is a trifle. The godly woman, however, has “in her tongue the law of kindness.” People, men and women, who are not triflers avoid trifling and cheap, malicious talk. Loose talk is the luxury of irresponsibility.
5. She does not eat “the bread of idleness”(vs. 27); i.e., the godly woman is not a mere luxury and a pretty decoration. She more than earns her keep.
6. “Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her” (vs. 28).
Obviously, such a woman is very different from the pretty doll of the Age of Reason, and the highly competitive masculinized woman of the 20th century who is out to prove that she is as good as any man, if not better.
…
Important thus as the role of a woman is as mother, Scripture presents her essentially as a wife, i.e., a help-meet. The reference is therefore not primarily to children but to the Kingdom of God and man’s calling therein. Man and wife together are in the covenant called to subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it.
…
references to these excerpts:
1. H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, (Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1942), p. 129 f.
2. R. Payne Smith, “Genesis,” in Ellicott, I, 21.
3. Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), p. 206.
4. Leon Morris, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), p. 153.
5. Ibid., p. 153 f.
6. J.M. Powis Smith, The Origin and History of Hebrew Law (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1931, 1960), p. 231 f.
10. Edith Simon, Luther Alive (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 336.
11. Phyllis M. Kaberry, Aboriginal Woman, Scared and Profane (London,: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939).
12. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, M.D., Modern Woman, The Lost Sex (New York: Harper, 1947), p. 130.
13. Ibid., p. 421.
Petr
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out this perceptive excerpt from Rousas Rushdoony's classic,"The Institutes of Biblical Law "(1973, The Craig Press) pages 346-353:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...4860954-2701557
- see how "The Age of Reason" gave birth to the stereotype about religion as "women's business," and lauched the unnatural "war of the sexes"
- notice how Rushdoony manages to slip in a nice Biblical argument against interracial -and cultural marriages!
Petr
…
3. Marriage and Woman
The definition of woman given by God in creating Eve and establishing the first marriage is “help meet” (Gen. 2:18). This is literally “as agreeing to him,” or “his counterpart.”(1) Robert Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible renders it “an helper – as his counterpart.” R. Payne Smith pointed out that the Hebrew is literally “a help as his front, his reflected image.”(2) The implication is of a mirrored image, a God’s image, and woman in the reflected image of God in man. In this passage, as Hodge noted, the principle is affirmed “that order and subordination pervade the whole universe, and is essential to its being.“(3) The covered head is a sign of being under authority of another person; hence, the man, who is directly under Christ, worships with uncovered head, the woman with covered head. A man therefore who worships with covered head dishonors himself (I Cor. 11:1-4). The uncovered woman might as well be shorn or shaven (I Cor. 11:5-7). As Leon Morris notes with reference to vss. 8,9, “Neither in her origin, nor in the purpose which which she was created can the woman claim priority, or even equality.”(4)
Accordingly, St. Paul continued, “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels” (I Cor. 11:10). James Moffatt rendered “power of her head” as “a symbol of subjection,” following thereby popular opinion rather than the Greek text. “Power on her head” means rather, As Morris and others have pointed out, “a sign of her authority.”(5) Because angels are witnesses, a godly witness must be rendered. To many, a serious contradiction seems to be involved here: first, St. Paul insists on subordination, and then, second, speaks of what seems to be a sign of subordination as a sign of authority. This seeming contradiction arises from the anarchic concept of authority which is so deeply imbedded in man’s sinful nature. All true authority in under authority, since God alone transcends all things and is the source of all power and authority. A colonel has authority because he is under a general, and his own authority of those above him grow, and his unity with them in mind and purpose is assured. So too with the woman: Her subordination is also a symbol of authority. Very frequently, in various societies, prostitutes have been forbidden to dress themselves in the same manner as wives and daughters, for to do so would be to claim an authority, protection, and power they had forfeited. Thus, in Assyria an unmarried prostitute who covered her head was severely punished for her presumption.(6) Similar laws existed in Rome. On the American frontier, the woman who was a wife or daughter carried an obvious authority and normally commanded the respect and protection of all men.
…
The Biblical doctrine of woman thus reveals her as the one crowned with authority in her “subjection” or subordination, and clearly a helper of the closest possible rank to God’s appointed viceregent over creation. This is no small responsibility, nor it is a picture of a patient Griselda. Theologians have all too often pointed to Eve as the one who led Adam into sin while forgetting to note that her God-given position was such that counsel was her normal duty, although in this case it was clearly evil counsel. Men as sinners often dream of a patient Griselda who never speaks unless is spoken to, but no other wife would please them less or bore them more. Martin Luther, who dearly loved his Katie, on one occasion vowed, “If I were to marry again, I would hew a meek wife out of stone: for I doubt whether any other kind would be meek.” His biographer, Edith Simon, properly asks, “How would he have fared with a meek wife?”(10) The answer clearly is, not too well.
It is a common illusion that in man’s primitive, evolutionary past, women were the merest slaves, used at will by primitive brutes. Not only is this evolutionary myth without foundation, but in every known society, the position of women, as measured in terms of the men and the society, has been a notable one. The idea that women have ever submitted to being mere slaves is itself an absurd notion. Women have been women in every age. In a study of an exceedingly backward society, the natives of Australia, Phyllis Kaberry has shown the importance and status of women to be a considerable one.(11)
Few things have depressed women more than did the Enlightenment, which turned women into an ornament and a helpless creature. Unless of the lower class, where work was mandatory, the “privileged” woman was a useless ornamental person, with almost no rights. This had not been previously true. In 17th-century England, women were often in business, were highly competent managers, and were involved in the shipping trade, as insurance brokers, manufactures, and the like.
Up to the eighteenth century women were usually figured in business as partners with husbands, and not in inferior capacities. They often took full charge during prolonged absences of their mates. In some instances, where they were the brighter of the pair, they ran the show.(12)
A legal “revolution” brought about the diminished status of women; “the all too familiar view of women suddenly emerging in the nineteenth century from a long historical night or to a sunlit plain is completely wrong.”(13) A knowledge of early American history makes clear the high responsibilities of the woman: New England sailing men could travel on two and three years voyages knowing that all business at home could be ably discharges by their wives.
The Age of Reason saw man as reason incarnate, and woman as emotion and will, and therefore inferior. The thesis of the Age of Reason has been that the government of all things should be committed to reason. The Age of Reason opposed the Age of Faith self-consciously. Religion was deemed to be a woman’s business, and, the more the Enlightenment spread, the more church life came to be a domain of women and children. The more pronounced therefore the triumph of the Age of Reason in any culture, the more reduced the role of women became. Just as religion came to be regarded as a useless but sometimes charming ornament, so too women were similarly regarded.
These ideas moved into the United States through the influence of Sir William Blackstone on law, who in turn was influenced by England’s Chief Justice Edward Coke, a calculating opportunist.
…
Thus, the Age of Reason brought in an irrational supremacy for men and has led to a war of the sexes. As a result, the laws today work, not to establish godly order, but to favor one sex or another. The laws of Texas (written in 1973 - Petr) reflect the older discrimination against women; the laws of some states (such as California) show a discrimination in favor of women.
To return to the Biblical doctrine, a wife is her husband’s help-meet. Since Eve was created from Adam and is Adam’s reflected image of God, she was of Adam and an image of Adam as well, his “counter-part.” The meaning of this is that a true help-meet is man’s counterpart, that a cultural, racial, and especially religious similarity is needed so that the woman can truly mirror the man and be his image. A man who is a Christian and a businessman cannot find a helper in a Buddhist woman who believes that nothingness is ultimate and that her husband’s way of life a is a lower way. Cross-cultural marriages are thus normally a failure. Where we do find such marriages, they prove often on examination to be the union of two humanists whose backgrounds vary but whose faith unites them. Even then, such marriages have a high mortality. A man can identify character within his culture, but he cannot do more than identify the general character of another culture. Thus, a German reared in a Lutheran atmosphere can discern the subtle differences among women in his society, but if he marries a Moslem girl, he sees in her the general forms of Moslem feminine conduct rather than the fine shades of character, until too late to withdraw easily.
The Biblical doctrine shows us the wife as the competent manager who is able to take over all business affairs if needed, so that her husband can assume public office as a civil magistrate; in the words of Proverbs 31:23, he can sit “in the gates,” that is, preside as a ruler or judge. Let us examine the women in Proverbs 31:10-31, whose “price is above rubies.” Several things are clearly in evidence:
1. Her husband can trust her moral, commercial, and religious integrity and competence, (vss. 11, 12, 29-31).
2. She not only manages her household completely, but she can also manage a business with ability (vss 13-19, 24-25). She can buy and sell like a good merchant and mange a vineyard like n experienced farmer.
3. She is good to her family, and good to the poor and the needy (vss. 20-22).
4. Very important, “She openeth her mouth with wisdom: and in her tongue is the law of kindness”(vs. 26). The useless woman of the Age of Reason, and the useless socialite or jet set woman of today who is a show-piece and a luxury, can and does speak lightly, and as a trifler, because she is a trifle. The godly woman, however, has “in her tongue the law of kindness.” People, men and women, who are not triflers avoid trifling and cheap, malicious talk. Loose talk is the luxury of irresponsibility.
5. She does not eat “the bread of idleness”(vs. 27); i.e., the godly woman is not a mere luxury and a pretty decoration. She more than earns her keep.
6. “Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her” (vs. 28).
Obviously, such a woman is very different from the pretty doll of the Age of Reason, and the highly competitive masculinized woman of the 20th century who is out to prove that she is as good as any man, if not better.
…
Important thus as the role of a woman is as mother, Scripture presents her essentially as a wife, i.e., a help-meet. The reference is therefore not primarily to children but to the Kingdom of God and man’s calling therein. Man and wife together are in the covenant called to subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it.
…
references to these excerpts:
1. H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, (Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1942), p. 129 f.
2. R. Payne Smith, “Genesis,” in Ellicott, I, 21.
3. Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), p. 206.
4. Leon Morris, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), p. 153.
5. Ibid., p. 153 f.
6. J.M. Powis Smith, The Origin and History of Hebrew Law (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1931, 1960), p. 231 f.
10. Edith Simon, Luther Alive (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 336.
11. Phyllis M. Kaberry, Aboriginal Woman, Scared and Profane (London,: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939).
12. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, M.D., Modern Woman, The Lost Sex (New York: Harper, 1947), p. 130.
13. Ibid., p. 421.
Petr