Carolyn Custis James versus Jeremy Taylor and Brother Lawrence...

(Note: Here is a comment left by a Mrs. Keebler under the post, "Carolyn Custis James: 'And my people love it so....'" Because of the nature of the questions Mrs. Keebler raises and the length of my response, both will be posted not only as comments, but also here on the main page.)

I had the extreme privelege of being under Carolyn Custis' Bible study for high school girls when she was in Dallas in the late 70's. It was so nice to be able to attend a serious doctrinal study for girls - our church had something for boys, but until then, nothing equivalent for girls. Over the period of two years in this girls-only study, I was able to be grounded in doctrine and thinking so that I was prepared for college. Is Carolyn guilty of making me a theologian? Now, I am not able to get into knock-down, drag out, Greek and Hebrew word discussions, but I am able to read and understand a lot, and doing so, am able to converse and discuss theological issues with my husband. We enjoy the pleasure of sharpening one another's understanding of God and His workings. Is being able to comprehend and discuss doctrine with one's husband being unsubmissive? Or must I take the attitude of an ignorant female who takes the crumbs that my husband throws to me?

Carolyn was also very strong on "relationship" advice for the girls in the study. She tried to steer us clear of the typical high school "I'm in love" periods and to think in terms of a forever relationship. It was during this time that she became engaged to Frank - as an older single. That is when I heard the best relationship advice I ever had. She said very clearly that she had made a decision to love Frank and that commitment would carry her through when there were things about him that she didn't like. I have remembered that advice many times in my marriage and pass it on to others freely.

As to not being a kitchen wife - what would you say about the previous ages when the wealthy had help in the kitchen and did not cook or clean or sew for themselves, but had servants to do the work for them? Seems to me that Abraham's wife Sarah had help and servants. Many of the O.T. heroes had servants. Were the women in these households being Mrs. Clintons, too? I think it unfair for you to equate the two women when you clearly do not know Carolyn personally. I suppose, though, that it is easier to disparage Carolyn when you can imply that she is just as unsubmissive and grasping as Mrs. Clinton.

Signed,
(Mrs.) Keebler

Dear Mrs. Keebler,

No, Mrs. James is not "guilty of making you a theologian." Every believer is a student of God and His Truth, or should be.

As I type at this desk, in a bookcase an arm's length to my right are a number of volumes by Amy Carmichael. And downstairs is the dining room where we discussed Roman Catholicism with Dave Howard and his brother-in-law and sister, Lars and Elisabeth Elliot Gren. In the living room each week a group of women meet who are wending their way through a rather large work of systematic theology. And last night I listened as Jon Crum led our youngest, Taylor, through a recitation of the first twenty or so questions of the Children's Catechism, which our daughters learned, also...

Our eldest daughter, Heather, studied theology under Ted Dorman at Taylor University, and I dare say she has been the greatest theological influence on her husband, Doug, even though he grew up in a PCA church in Nashville. With her husband, our second daughter, Michal, is working her way through to a Christian theodicy as they seek to understand two miscarriages in the past year. And here's an excerpt from a private E-mail she just sent to us from the orphanage in South Africa where she and her husband, Ben, are spending the Fall:

I hope that the time I spend here is not in vain spiritually, though. I hope that God is working in my heart to conform me to the image of His Son, but I don't see how. It seems like such a hopeless cause. I know we are accomplishing some stuff here, but I hope that God is changing me. I don't want this to be for nothing. In short, I want to get something out of it, other than just the experience. I want to be the wise man who learns from experience, not the fool who doesn't.

Our third daughter, Hannah, just spent a month with Operation Mobilization missionaries at the home office in Carlisle, England, and now has moved on to work for the next two and a half months with Ben and Michal at the same orphanage out in the boonies of South Africa. She graduated from high school a year early and chose to spend the next year doing mission work. She has a forehead like flint and a will of steel, both beautifully complemented by the gift of mercy and a heart tender to the Lord. Our daughter-in-law, Heidi, is the secretary of our church and there's almost nothing I wouldn't entrust to her care. She's also a part of the systematic theology reading group. But more importantly, she took her B.A. at Wheaton and describes it as a hothouse of feminist ideology.

My mother suffered through the death of three sons who had not yet reached adulthood. A few years ago, she lost one more. With my father, many times she responded to those inquiring concerning how they'd survived the deaths, "We were never as sure of the love of God as when we turned away from the fresh grave of one of our children." And that statement is just the beginning of the theological wisdom and instruction I've received from my mother.

These are only the women I am closest to--I haven't yet started in on the other godly women of my wife's family, of our church, or of my brother's church. Yet not one of these godly women has ever had the impiety to diss cooking and cleaning and and baking cookies and pregnancy and childrearing and submission, nor would one of them blink an eye at calling her husband "Lord."

It's nothing but a silly charade to prance about talking excitedly about women now finally being free to be theologians; and the men who sit in the circle applauding this dance discredit their sex and betray their office.

Moving on to Hebrew and Greek: Changing the translation of the Hebrew word ''ezer' from "helper" to "warrior" is not a "knock-down, drag out... Hebrew word discussion," but an extremely simple matter. Mrs. James is misleading her disciples concerning the meaning of ''ezer' and there's a reason. Trust me.

To discover that reason, I suggest you ask yourself why a seminary president's wife is traveling the country to promote among twenty-first century Christian women the lie that God did not make them to be their husbands' helpers, but rather their warriors? That would be a good place to focus your theological work.

Concerning the women who have gone before us, their domestic ability and commitments are obvious. At her husband's command, Sarah fed the angels of the Lord (Genesis 18). She didn't respond to him saying, "I'm not a kitchen wife. Call the domestic help."

Certainly the temptation has always been there for wives and mothers of means to hire out their domestic and maternal responsibilities. One of the wisest divines of the seventeenth century, Jeremy Taylor, looked at the habits of rich Christian women giving over their children to wet nurses and responded by writing an essay on the Christian mother's duty to nurse her own children. Here's a rather lengthy excerpt, but note how applicable his arguments are to our own day. We didn't invent day care, did we?

Upon these propositions I shall infer, by way of instance, that it is a duty, that women should nurse their own children. For, first, it is taught to women by that instinct which nature hath implanted in them. For, as Phavorinus the philosopher discoursed, it is but to be half a mother to bring forth children, and not to nourish them; and it is some kind of abortion, or an exposing of the infant, which, in the reputation of all wise nations, is infamous and uncharitable. And if the name of mother be an appellative of affection and endearments, why should the mother be willing to divide it with a stranger? The earth is the mother of us all, not only because we were made of her red clay, but chiefly that she daily gives us food from her bowels and breasts; and plants and beasts give nourishment to their offsprings, after their production, with greater tenderness than they bare them in their wombs: and yet women give nourishment to the embryo, which, whether it be deformed or perfect, they know not, and cannot love what they never saw; and yet when they do see it, when they have rejoiced that a child is born, and forgotten the sorrows of production, they, who then can first begin to love it, if they begin to divorce the infant from the mother, the object from the affection, cut off the opportunities and occasions of their charity or piety.

For why hath nature given to women two exuberant fontinels, which, "like two roes that are twins, feed among the lilies," and drop milk like dew from Hermon, and hath invited that nourishment from the secret recesses, where the infant dwelt at first, up to the breast where naturally now the child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal embraces: but that nature, having removed the babe, and carried its meat after it, intends that it should be preserved by the matter and ingredients of its constitution, and have the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportionable digestion? If nature intended them not for nourishment, I am sure it less intended them for pride and wantonness; they are needless excrescences and vices of nature, unless employed in nature's work and proper intendment. And if it be a matter of consideration, of what blood children are derived, we may also consider that the derivation continues after the birth; and therefore, abating the sensuality, the nurse is as much the mother as she that brought it forth; and so much the more, as there is a longer communication of constituent nourishment (for so are the first emanations) in this, than in the other. So that here is first the instinct, or prime intendment, of nature.

Secondly: And that this instinct may also become humane and reasonable, we see it by experience in many places, that foster-children are dearer to the nurse than to the mother, as receiving and ministering respectively perpetual prettinesses of love, and fondness, and trouble, and need, and invitations, and all the instruments of endearment; besides a vicinity of dispositions and relative tempers by the communication of blood and spirits from the nurse to the suckling, which makes use the more natural, and nature more accustomed. And, therefore, the affections, which these exposed or derelict children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or assiduity, but civility and opinion; and that little of love, which is abated from the foster-parents, upon public report that they are not natural, that little is transferred to mothers upon the same opinion, and no more. Hence come those unnatural aversions, those unrelenting dispositions, those carelessnesses and incurious deportments towards their children, which are such ill-sown seeds, from whence may arise up a bitterness of disposition and mutual provocation. This affection which children bear to their nurses, was highly remarked in the instance of Scipio Asiaticus, who rejected the importunity of his brother Africanus in behalf of the ten captains, who were condemned for offering violence to the vestals, but pardoned them at the request of his foster-sister and being asked, why he did more for his nurse's daughter than for his own mother's son? gave this answer: "I esteem her rather to be my mother, that brought me up, than her that bare me and forsook me." And I have read the observation, that many tyrants have killed their mothers, but never any did violence to his nurse; as if they were desirous to suck the blood of their mother raw, which she refused to give to them digested into milk. And the bastard-brother of the Gracchi, returning from his victories in Asia to Rome, presented his mother with a jewel of silver, and his nurse with a girdle of gold, upon the same account. Sometimes children are exchanged, and artificial bastardies introduced into a family, and the right heir supplanted. It happened so to Artabanus, king of Epirus. His child was changed at nurse, and the son of a mean knight succeeded in the kingdom; the event of which was this: The nurse too late discovered the treason; a bloody war was commenced; both the pretenders slain in battle; and the kingdom itself was usurped by Alexander, the brother to Olympias, the wife of Philip the Macedonian. At the best, though there happen no such extravagant and rare accidents, yet it is not likely a stranger should have the child better than the mother; and if the mother's care could suffer it to be exposed, a stranger's care may suffer it to be neglected. For how shall a hireling endure the inconveniences, the tediousnesses, and unhandsomenesses of a nursery, when she, whose natural affection might have made it pleasant, out of wantonness or softness hath declined the burden? But the sad accidents which, by too frequent observation, are daily seen happening to nurse-children, give great probation, that this intendment of nature, designing mothers to be the nurses, that their affection might secure and increase their care, and the care best provide for their babes, is most reasonable and proportionable to the discourses of humanity.

But the woman who hires out her childcare or housework is a far cry from the woman who writes her own bio in such a way as to say to the world that she is a woman who is too busy doing the important Mary work of theology to do the less important Martha work of the kitchen. Has it occurred to no one that someone is doing kitchen work so that Mrs. James can do her theology work? It may be the cooks at McDonalds or (more likely) Macaroni Grill. It may be her husband. But someone is doing the menial tasks that allow Mrs. James to spend her time on theology. Either that, or she and her husband aren't eating.

And what about those "someones"? Is it more important for Mrs. James to study theology than the poor man stuck behind the food steamer at McDonald's? Excuse me for saying so, but so often I think that the PCA is more a social class than a church. Have we been so blinded by our wealth that, as upper middle class whites with Oxford or Stanford Ph.D.s, we are no longer able to see the hosts of nameless souls upon whose backs our theological lifestyle is built?

As for my point of comparison between Mrs. James and Mrs. Clinton, it was not their being, as you put it, "unsubmissive and grasping," but their both uttering public statements dismissive of the very domestic duties that God and Brother Lawrence honor.

As Brother Lawrence had found such an advantage in walking in the presence of GOD, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others; but his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose. His very countenance was edifying; such a sweet and calm devotion appearing in it, as could not but affect the beholders. And it was observed, that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even uninterrupted composure and tranquillity of spirit. "The time of business," said he, "does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess GOD in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament." (Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God)

Warmly in Christ,

Tim Bayly