Men and women: what’s the difference?
I have found that egalitarians, and those leaning towards that position, tend to agree that ‘of course, men and women are not identical in every way’, yet seem reluctant to spell out what they think the real differences might be.
Andrew Bartlett (who, though reluctant to be considered either a complementarian or an egalitarian inclines towards the latter position) has in his nearly 400-page Men and Women in Christ less than one page dealing with the question ‘What it means to be male or female’.
Some attempt to identify those differences is made by Cynthia Neal Kimball, in her chapter (‘Nature, Culture and Gender Complementarity’) in Discovering Biblical Equality (2nd edition, 2005, eds Pierce & Groothuis).
Kimball states:
‘We cannot deny that there are hormonal and biochemical effects that have differential consequences in male and female behavior…It is clear from the crosscultural and genetic gender studies that God has fashioned men and women with certain differences.’
But I cannot see that Kimball does much with this, apart from to suggest that:
‘The quest for the church is to better appreciate these differences and use them to build the church. If, as research seems to indicate, females use language earlier and use more affective language, how does that predispose them to greater self-regulatory behavior? How can such abilities in a woman be used to support and encourage her husband or the men with whom she works? How can the more direct conflict style of men be used to encourage women in more direct methods? In other words, how can we learn from the differences?’
The prescription here seems to be for the females to become more manly and the males to become more womanly.
The lack of attention to the real differences between men and women is a problem even with such thoughtful and even-handed writers as Ian Paul and Andrew Bartlett. In their review of Andrew Wilson’s article ‘The Beautiful Difference‘, they comment:
‘We do not need to discuss the extent to which men are “hard-wired” differently from women in order to understand Christian ministry. Beyond doubt, men tend to have greater muscle strength than women. But physical qualities such as muscle strength are not qualifications for church leadership. To be an elder requires spiritual qualities of character and giftedness in order to promote, nurture and protect new life in Christ.’
But the ‘hard-wired’ differences between men and women cannot be reduced to differences in muscle mass and strength. Ian Paul and Andrew Bartlett should know that, even if Wilson’s article was the only thing they had to go on.
As Wilson states:
‘The bell curves for men and women are centred in different places, and not just for obvious physical traits (height, strength, hair, and so on), but also for hormonal, psychological and interpersonal ones.’
Among the various train patterns, we find that:
‘Men are typically more aggressive, competitive, fearless, likely to take risks, promiscuous and prone to violence than women, and testosterone is aligned with higher levels of confidence, sex drive and status assertion. Women are, on average, more prone to neuroticism and agreeableness than men. Consequently, men are generally clustered at the upper and lower extremes of society: men are not just more likely to be very rich or very powerful (which prompts all sorts of public debate), but also far more likely to be criminals, killers, homeless, excluded or imprisoned (which doesn’t).’
Wilson continues:
‘Male groups are more characterised by sparring, fighting, power structures and banter, while female groups are typically smaller, more indirect in confrontation, egalitarian in structure, verbally dextrous, and oriented around people rather than things. Gendered trends can be noticed before children are particularly aware of which sex they are (to take a tragic example, 40 of 43 serious shootings by toddlers in 2015 were by boys), and even in our closest animal relatives (the male preference for trucks over dolls extends to rhesus and vervet monkeys).’
It doesn’t help the discussion to wave these data away with a dismissive: ‘We do not need to discuss this’.
Of course, to recognise that these are results of hard-wired differences (along with other, socio-cultural, factors) does not validate them all. A robust doctrine of depravity will acknowledge that there is no part of our nature which is untainted by the effects of the Fall. But it is quite another matter to argue that all sex differences result from the Fall, and that they become irrelevant within the scheme of redemption, and obliterated in the new creation.
But is it fair to deny that sex differences are obliterated in the new creation? To be sure, Scripture does not say very much about this. But consider:
Jesus was raised in his body. Although transformed, his body was still recognisably his own. It still bears the physical marks of his crucifixion. It is reasonable to assumed that his body retains its primary sexual characteristics.
It would be a mistake to infer from 1 Corinthians 15, that by ‘spiritual’ body Paul means ‘non-physical’.
In Hebrews 10, there is no hint that the men of women of faith, now with the Lord, have lost their sexual identity.
In Mt 22:28-30, Jesus teaches that in the resurrection people neither marry or are given in marriage. Now, it is men who ‘marry’ and women who are ‘given in marriage’. The assumption, then, is that there are men and women in the life to come, but they do not marry or have sexual relations. The description that they are ‘like the angels in heaven’ confirms this (that they do not marry or have sexual relations) but does not have any bearing on the presence or absence of distinction between the two sexes in heaven. Angels are consistently described in Scripture as male, and this comes across particularly clearly in Gen 6.
Commentators (Ben Witherington, for example) sometimes say that, in the passage just referred to, Jesus is only saying that there will be no ‘new’ marriages in heaven, but that existing marriages will remain. But this is, according to Ian Paul, to ignore the whole point of the dispute between Jesus and the Sadducees (which concerned marriages that had taken place in this life).
According to Ian Paul, various patristic writers contemplated this question. Having a high regard for chastity (and virginity), they appealed to the singleness of Jesus and Paul to affirm that virginity anticipates the resurrection life. Cyprian of Carthage appealed to this very passage in Matthew’s Gospel:
‘What we shall be, already you have begun to be. The glory of the resurrection you already have in this world; you pass through the world without the pollution of the world; while you remain chaste and virgins, you are equal to the angels of God.’
But such writers did not deny the presence of sexual differentiatian in the life to come. They faced up to the question: If we do not have sexual relations in life to come, what would be the point of remaining sexually differentiated? They noted that if possession of sexual organs does not inevitably lead to sexual relations in the present life, it will certainly not in the life to come.
Jerome stated:
‘If the woman shall not rise again as a woman nor the man as a man, there will be no resurrection of the body for the body is made up of sex and members.’
Aquinas was of the same opinion:
‘Although risen men will not occupy themselves with such activities ( as nutrition and reproduction), they will not lack the organs requisite for such functions. Without these organs the risen body would not be complete. But it is fitting that nature should be completely restored at the renovation of risen man, for such renovation will be accomplished directly by God, whose works are perfect. Therefore all the members of the body will have their place I the risen, for the preservation of nature in its entirely rather than for the exercise of their normal functions.’
Ian Paul concludes that:
‘In the biblical accounts, sex differentiation is not imagined to be absent in the resurrection, and indeed its absence would be unimaginable and implausible if the resurrection life is indeed bodily—as it is vigorously claimed to be in all NT texts that explore the question. To be human and bodily means to be male or female, both in this age and in the age to come.’
Quite so. But what now needs to be recognised is that sexual differentiation means more than an orientation to procreation, just as it means much more that the bald fact that ‘men have more muscle bulk and tend to be physically stronger than women’. The characteristics that distinguish men from women are many and varied. And they persist in the life to come. I infer from this that they are to be taken account as we discern God’s good plan for his church in these days.
Given the far-reaching consequences of the hard-wiring of sex differences, it becomes much harder to argue that men and women are intended by God to fulfil exactly the same roles in exactly the same kinds of ways in the church.
Bibliography
Clark, Stephen B, ‘Men’s and Women’s Differences’, in Man and Woman in Christ. Chapter 16. Available here.
Kimball, Cynthia Neal, ‘Nature, Culture and Gender Complementarity’ in Discovering Biblical Equality (2nd edition, 2005, eds Pierce & Groothuis).
Johnson, Gregg, ‘The Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Behavior’ in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womahood (2nd ed.)
Rhoads, Stephen, Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Encounter Books, 2005.
Smothers, Colin, ‘The Fallacy of Interchangeability’. Available here.
Wilson, Andrew, ‘Beautiful Difference: The Complementarity of Male and Female’. Available here.
The following Wikipedia articles:
Sex Differences in Human Physiology
James P. Byrnes, David C. Miller, and William D. Schafer, ‘Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis’. Psychological Bulletin 1999, Vol. 125, No. 3, 367-383.
Exogenous testosterone increases men’s perceptions of their own physical dominance
Hormones Explain Why Girls Like Dolls & Boys Like Trucks