Gelded discourse

Here is another argument against my post pointing out Denny Burk is wrong and the Atlantic got it right in their reporting that the Christian Standard Bible is gender-neutered in hundreds of places.

A reader writes:

[The translators] are simply trying to communicate the Scriptures in a clear way. Adelphoi does often mean brothers and sisters, so it's not wrong... There is an example in Euripides, Electra, line 536, where adelphos refers to both brother and sister...

...lexicography and semantics can be tricky... When Paul refers to the churches by adelphoi, he clearly has the whole congregation in mind. ...This is common in the ancient languages, where the masculine is the so-called "standard" linguistic gender.

...we are wrong when we assume that grammatical gender and biological gender are always the same thing

The one thing obvious is this man hasn't read the very post he is criticizing...

The current president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is indignant over an Atlantic Monthly piece pointing out that his denomination's Christian Standard Bible has gone "gender-neutral."1

Denny Burk says it's not true.

Sadly, it is. 2

We could get lost in a discussion of a host of Hebrew and Greek words in the Old and New Testaments, but two words will suffice: one is the Hebrew word...

Remember, the goal of my writing on sexuality is not to demean women and promote male privilege. Every brash woman and effeminate man who hates Baylyblog never stops repeating these accusations, but they couldn't be further from the truth. Manhood is not privilege, but its opposite: responsibility. As Christ died for His Bride the Church, so man takes up his own cross and dies for the mother of his children, his lover, his bride.

The story of marriage is man dying so woman may give life and nurture it. Where that story is not told, marriage doesn't exist. It's not a private story for Christians. It's the timeless, transcultural story of sex written by God in the very DNA of His universe. To preach and live this story is to preach and live the Gospel.

Among the perishing, this Gospel witness is the stench of death. This is why worldlings outside and inside the church never stop scorning, mocking, hissing, and shaming those who try to be faithful witnesses to God's holy heterosexuality.

There can be no middle ground on sexuality, although many of us are frantic...

A couple days ago, I posted the headline "Amanda Nunes beats the shit out of Ronda Rousey...". The headline introduced a post in which I unequivocally condemned the 48-second rout of Ronda Rousey by Amanda Nunes in their Las Vegas mixed martial arts fight last week. And being the son of a prophet, I wrote "Undoubtedly you were more offended by the headline of this post than the pic accompanying it, and that's the point."

The accompanying pic was obscene, but no one objected to it. Beyond the pic though, no one thought to say what's wrong with women beating the shit out of each other. Instead, Godly men had a hissy-fit over the use of the word "shit."

The gnat was strained, the camel escaped.

Since no one else bothered to say it, let me do the dirty work...

Just listened to Bill Hybels talk about his dream that one day people will no longer be judged on the basis of the...

Is there someone who is willing to transcribe his dream, starting around 19" and ending around 32"? I'd like to write about Bill's rhetoric, showing why everyone, including the most conservative among us, will listen to what he says about the LGBT community in his church and will consider it faithful to Scripture. But I need a transcript and am about to board the plane where I'll sit for half a day (Incheon to O'Hare).

If you're willing, would you please say so in a comment? I'd be very grateful.

When a friend was on a Fulbright in Switzerland, he and his wife were assigned a church by their address. Those who live in the parish go to the parish church and that's that.

Nothing so simple in other places. We choose our church, and choice is a burden older and wiser men find burdensome and seek to avoid if the avoidance is not abdication of responsibility.

"Honey, you want to go out to eat?"

"Sure, I'd be happy not to have to cook."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know. Where do YOU want to go?"

"Wherever YOU want to go. Pick a place."

Aarrghhh!

Choosing a church is much worse...

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a Mother and didn't love her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.

Read the wish-list Peter Leithart put together for all his fellow Christians in the Roman Catholic Church. He was asked to write a short piece on the subject, "What I Want from Catholics," and he utterly failed.

Start with his claim that the wish list is "terribly old-fashioned," then that it's "terribly assertive." Read on, though, and you'll recognize it's neither. Peter is the master of misdirection. [NOTE: Thinking about this later, it came to me that Peter was likely speaking to Roman Catholics in acknowledging their perceptions of his piece, not Reformed Protestants. To Roman Catholics his piece might well appear "old-fashioned" and "assertive," although any Roman Catholics with even a smattering of knowledge of the Reformation would have been gobsmacked that this "Reformed theologian" failed to be old-fashioned or assertive enough to remind them of the chasm between their false teaching concerning how a man is saved, is declared righteous before God.]

Dr. Leithart is also a master of flattery. Reading his stuff makes men feel...

A mother in our congregation passed on an article titled, "Reflections on Pro-Life Protest Rhetoric" by doctoral candidate John F. Brick published yesterday on the website of the Roman Catholic publication, Crisis Magazine. She explained, "...I would be interested in thoughts on this Catholic's article advocating a newer rhetoric in the pro-life movement that doesn't include shock and outrage signs. We had a discussion yesterday at PP about being effective as protestors and I think it's an issue that we need to continue to discuss." For what it's worth, here are my thoughts.

I teach first-year rhetoric and composition to freshmen at a fairly large university squarely in the center of the American Midwest. In September, as part of the introductory unit, we cover some basic rhetorical concepts, including the famous “triangle” of rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos, I explain, is the appeal to reason: does the argument make sound logical sense? Ethos sounds like ethic and it’s a short jump from there to credibility: do the elements of composition suggest a levelheaded, trustworthy arguer? Pathos, the emotional appeal, is the easiest for my students to remember and deploy in their own writing. But, I caution them, it’s also the weakest of the three. Without the other two appeals, emotional rhetoric will do an argument more harm than good.

Thing about ethos is that perceived level-headedness and trustworthiness shift according to the wickedness and spiritual bondage of the audience. According to how jaded or "given over" they are. Who would have sounded trustworthy to the people of the Third Reich after they had invaded their neighbors and butchered millions of minorities, lives-not-worth-living, and Jews from among their own countrymen?

Precious few, and likely only those who tried the fool's errand of arguing against the slaughter by appealing to the glory of the Aryan race and the fatherland.

Try out perfectly logical analogies between abortion and Roe v. Wade and slavery and Dred Scott. People will look at you as if you’ve grown a third eye and turn away from you. In our decadent day, about the only thing that “works,” as the author defines it—particularly in the logos and ethos spheres—are appeals to self-love and comfort, and maybe choice. So yes, you can, for instance, speak of the absence of “choice” in China, and how none of the feminists in our country seem to be upset about it. But even among Christians, the argument falls to the ground with a thud. Pat Robertson famously said that if we lived in a country with a population of a billion, we might not be so quick to judge...

Behold, your people are women in your midst! The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies; Fire consumes your gate bars.  - Nahum 3:13

I knew a pastor whose main method of the sort of self-abnegation that characterizes hipster-pastors who prefer "brokenness" to "sin" was telling the congregation how he was a jerk of a husband. He'd say this all the time during his sermons, but he'd never really 'fess up to anything major. It was stuff like he wasn't sensitive enough. He was selfish. He didn't give her enough backrubs and sometimes he didn't get up at night to bring the baby to her to be nursed. This was how he publicly processed his own brokenness, especially during his sermons. He'd try to get us to see and join him in admitting we were all broken, just as he was; and therefore, we all needed Jesus, just like he did. For stuff like being insensitive to our wives and not going and getting the baby so she can stay in bed to nurse him.

When I stand before the judgment seat of God, serious as it surely is, I suspect I will have much more to answer for and to plead my Lord's righteousness as a covering for than not giving my wife backrubs. Too, I don't think the female sex—women and wives—are the only people we sin against. This man, though, only ever talked about sinning against his wife. My take was that she was a master at her critical work of building up her own self-esteem. She did a good job of keeping her husband impressed with her excellence and did so by continuously pointing out his insensitivity, selfishness, all-round brutishness and churlishness. Of course, this man wasn't particularly insensitive, really. And he was anything but a brute or churlish. He simply knew what his wife wanted him to cop to during morning worship and he did it over and over again.

This pastor is an example of the way brash women manipulate men into passivity and weakness...