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Originally Posted by a mere housewife  Davidius I'm certainly not arguing that women are dumb or don't have rational faculties. But what I experience is that the women I know are indeed more emotional than the men I know, and that most of them would consider for instance, the discussion that goes on on this board rather irrelevant. (Indeed several have told me so.) They are more interested in a practical than a 'theoretical' subject. They generally use their intellect to solve different problems and are generally more interested in what is more immediately relevant to those problems.
This isn't to say that most women I know can't explain imputed righteousness. They can. They just care more about it as an applied doctrine, applied in practical and emotional ways to daily circumstances, than 'intellectually' or in the abstract. I understood the point you were making to be that women were equally as interested in purely intellectual pursuits as men. As a generalization I would have to disagree: there are quite enough exceptions that to say 'women are necessarily less intellectual than men' is silly; but that women are usually as interested in intellectual pursuits as men isn't something I experience, or that I think many peoples' experience would bear out through life. As a defense of anyone's value I object to speaking in terms of being equally as intellectual because I don't think biblically, human value is based on intellectuality. But you might not have been saying that? (There should be a distinction made between being a rational creature -- that is possessing a rational faculty -- and being an 'intellectual'.)
Would you say that men as a whole have been given the position of rule and women that of nurture without regard to their created suitability? I believe not only the role of submission doesn't imply inferiority to men, but the general focus I have seen on more practical things, and in a more emotional way doesn't, either. |
What do the women you know find irrelevant about the PB? Discussions about the nature and meaning of the sacraments? Worship? Christology? Ecclesiology? Why should women not know these things? Why should they not be interested in them? Women shouldn't think that theology is irrelevant, and they shouldn't be taught that it's okay for them to find theology irrelevant because it just ain't their ballgame. Do men want their wives, who will be training the children for the majority of the day, to be theologically destitute? If not, how are we to expect our wives to teach our children if they themselves do not know? or worse, if they do not know and have no interest, even finding (some?) theology irrelevant?
Also, from what I've read on the PB, a dichotomy between men and women positing opposed approaches to application is false. As I've seen in many threads here, all of theology is to be applied. No one is supposed to sit around gathering theological knowledge for the sake of having a larger vocabulary and library. Women and men may apply their knowledge in different ways, but we have the same bible, the same Confession (in many cases), and therefore the same knowledge.
I want to emphasize the difference in our approaches. You are saying that women must be more emotional and less interested in intellectual matters because the women you see around you are like that, but this conclusion does not follow. Even if most people's experiences in life would bear this out, that's still not enough to give us a normalization. We must go to the bible to discover what is beneficial for our souls, and the bible says indiscriminately that seeking wisdom and knowledge is part and parcel to the Christian life.
I definitely don't believe that value is based on intelligence, but I do not see a distinction made in scripture which calls for men and women to differ in their pursuit of understanding. One good example is Paul's chastisement that a certain group should have moved on to spiritual meat, but is still on the milk. He was surely addressing men and women. There are many other examples, too, dealing with things such as "growing in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."