Women and Men: Karl, Quotes, and Commentary

For those who don’t see the apologetic/theological importance of the gender debate, refer to my last post, especially the quotations from Vanhoozer on the significance of gender and the ministry conflicts transgendered/transsexuality is creating.

Karl Barth was one of the few theologians who dove deeply into the subject of gender and tried to make original assertions about what it means to be a man or a woman. Unlike today’s egalitarians and evangelical feminists, Barth denies both gender and sexual relativism. However, he provides no alternative, and in fact condemns the very attempt to make transcultural definitions of masculinity and femininity.

So while it initially appears as progress, and while Barth should be fully commended for addressing the subject as plainly and deeply as he does, Barth actually accomplishes very little in regards to the gender debate. One cannot criticize all positions or agree with all positions and expect something meaningful to emerge.  But as with many in the Neo-Orthodox camp, the lust for originality takes precedent over both logical and biblical consistency.

Below are my quotes and brief notes from his section “VII Man and Woman” from the monumental Church Dogmatics (selections version). Enjoy!

VII Man and Woman

“The first and typical sphere of fellow-humanity, the first and typical differentiation and relationship between man and man, is that between male and female.”

-          Excellent.

“Only that [not Father-Son] between man and woman rests upon a structural and functional difference.” 194

“For in everything that is commonly human he will always be in fact either the human male or the human female. Nor can he wish to liberation himself from the relationship and be man without woman or woman apart from man.” 195

-          Barth is rightly suspicious/critical towards the transgender movement (which I doubt was as popular in Barth’s time as it is today).

Regarding roles, Barth says most men are “not capable of expressing them in happy and systematic form. These all point to the fact that here, more than anywhere else, man seems at least to stand on the threshold of a kind of natural mysticism…” 195

-          Indeed.

The crazy experience of man encountering woman is due to “the truly breath-taking dialectic of difference and affinity, of real dualism and equal real unity.” 196

“What else can stir him so much, bringing him as he thinks – whether he be a crude or a highly cultivated person – into such ecstasy, such rapture, such enthusiasm, into what seems to be the depths and essence of all being, into the vision of the Godhead and participation in it, supposedly exalting him into the vicinity at least of another God and Creator – what else can do this like the primal experience of encounter between male and female? Perhaps it is this experience itself in any one of its possible forms and varying degrees, perhaps it is a sublimation, transposition and spiritualization of it – but always it is the experience of this encounter! Why this experience precisely?…It is obviously on account of the truly breathtaking dialectic which arises in this encounter – the dialectic of difference and affinity, of real dualism and equally real unity, of utter self-recollection and utter transport beyond the bounds of self into union with another, of creation and redemption, of this world and the next. If humanity spells fell-humanity is primarily experienced in this dialectic, how tempting it is to understand and experience this fellow-humanity as the bold and blessed intoxification of the deepest abasement and the supreme exaltation of human essence, as its deification!”

-          Fair description.

But god is still sovereign over this mysterious  sphere. 197

“We cannot really characterize man and woman in the form of…”

Barth says it is not good/right to write about doing such, composing a ‘scheme’ which are essentially definitions of gender and gender roles: “It is not right for us to write the text at all. For the texts which we write, the definitions and descriptions of male and female being which we might derive from others or attempt ourselves, do not attain what is meant by the command when it requires of man, that here, too, he should accept his being as man, as male or female, as it is seen by God.”

-          That begs the question: what is “seen by God?” Are we to try and see things as God sees them through his Word, or just give up?

Barth argues such attempts are always based on “personal experiences…what we have here are simply opinions which may be very interesting and stimulating…but which cannot be known without doubt to be valid and necessary.” 200

-          That’s kind of a cop-out; one can say that about any topic in systematic theology (ie “don’t attempt to formulate a doctrine of justification, because such doctrines are only going to be based on personal experiences”). If the Bible talks about it and dedicates texts to the subject of gender and sexuality (i.e. Gen. 2, I Tim. 2, I Cor 11-15, etc.), it would be foolish to leave them alone just as it would be to leave alone texts on justification and anything else directly addressed in special revelation.

If there is to be any “knowledge of man and woman…it will most certainly have to be a form of knowledge which rests upon secure foundations.” 200

-          Of course.

“What God’s command wills for man and woman is that they should be faithful to their human nature and to the special gift and duty indicated in and by it.”

-          And how do you know when a woman is being faithful as a woman and when a man is being faithful as a man? This is beating around the bush .

“Although we recognize their achievements we definitely reject every phenomenology or typology of the sexes.”

-          What about a systematic theology of gender and sexuality?

Barth then rejects specific examples about men being the leader, etc.

He then asks questions like “on what authority are we told that these traits are masculine and these feminine?” 202

-          Good question…but on what authority does Barth object to those definitions? If there isn’t any standard, then there is no standard by which to object. If the traits are created by social constructs or environmental/psychological forces, then why is not Barth’s evaluation the product of social constructs and environmental/psychological forces?

“The specific differentiation particularly of male and female which is at issue in the divine command and its requirement of fidelity lies somewhere above and beyond the sphere in which such typologies are relatively possible and practicable…it is the command of God itself which tells them what here and now is their male and female nature, and what they have to guard faithfully as such. As the divine command is itself free from the systematization by which man and woman seek to order and clarify their thoughts about their differentiation.” 203

Yet, somehow, “Just because the command of God is not bound to any standard it makes this distinction all the more sharply and clearly. The command of God will always point man to his position and woman to hers.”

-          And how do you know “the command of God” in this context? What is the means of knowing? How could one know?

“In every situation, in face of every task and in every conversation, their functions and possibilities, when they are obedient to the command, will be distinctive and diverse, and will never be interchangeable.” 203

-          So, no sexual and no gender relativism? Agreed.

-          But what makes it “distinctive”?

A “violation” of roles “arise where the one sex or the other forgets, or for any reason refuses to acknowledge, that it has its right and dignity only in relation to the opposite sex and therefore in distinction from it.”

-          Uhh, so Adam didn’t have dignity until Eve was created? Was Adam fully masculine before Eve was created? That, is the question.

Barth skims I Cor 11 and 14 and concludes:

“The essential point is that woman must always, and in all circumstances, be woman; that she must feel and conduct herself as such and not as a man; that the command of the Lord, which is for all eternity, directs both man and woman to their own proper sacred place and forbids all attempts to violate this order.” 204

1. Woman must always be “woman,” which is what? Defined by who? Woman according to “then and now”? And if so, what happened to not binding the gender/sexes to a particular “scheme”?
2. And “not as man” and presumably a man “not as a woman.” But was not Adam fully man before Eve was made? If so, then there is an creation order of masculinity that is based upon God’s work and not the phenomenon of “differentiation.”
3. What is this “order”? Is the “woman” of the first sentence/assertion defined by what society says she is or by what God says she is? And if by God, how can it be objectively known, so as not to violate that objective order?
4. Furthermore, in this picture, Barth would have to say it is fine for men to dress like women, if (and only if) all the women were dressed like men. As long as there is differentiation and one is not like the other, then everything is fine. Of course, if this is true in any other situation or role etc. since there is no actually defined “order” that we should not even attempt, then Barth has no basis for objecting to a total and complete reversal of genders – because in that case differentiation (which is the basis for Barth’s thesis) is intact….so if the feminine of today is the masculine of tomorrow, that’s perfectly fine, as long as biological women are not doing things and looking like and taking on roles like biological men, and vice versa…Barth is really leaving God out of the picture here.

“The command may be given a different interpretation from that of Paul.” 205

-          So, Paul is incorrect in his application of Genesis in I Cor 11/14 (and most likely I Tim. 2)? And is this alternative “interpretation” any less a “scheme” than what has been previously condemned by Barth? In short, on what grounds does Barth offer something contrary to Paul? Was Paul indeed a chauvinist?

Barth condemns the “movement in which man and woman aspire to overcome their sexual and separate mode of existence and to transcend it by a humanity which is neither distinctively male nor female but both at once, or neither.” 206

-          Again, a condemnation of gender relativism and sexual relativism…but no objective or knowable grounds is given. Barth seemingly has good intentions but poor arguments.

Neutralizing the sexes = “dehumanization” for Barth. This is absolutely true and something evangelical feminists who are pro-sex changes in the case of transgenderedness need to hear. 207

Barth denies “such a thing as an abstract masculinity and corresponding femininity which is our task and aim to exalt, cherish and preserve as such.” 210

-          But in what context is there a concrete masculinity and femininity? This gets back to Doriani and Vanhoozer’s objection to Walter Kaiser’s principalizing model; there needs to be both – the principle and the concrete application of it. As Doriani said: “We must admit that our group of broad principles would be intolerably vague if not for the particular commands that help define the broad principle.” And as Vanhoozer said: “What is of transcultural significance not some principle that we must distill from the biblical text but the text itself, precisely as a form of culturally concrete sapientia (wisdom)…principalizing risks dedramatizing the Bible: going for the moral without the fable, the content without the form, the soul without the body of the text.” In short, we need both, and Scripture usually provides both.

-          Thus, Barth can try and deny one particular form of a doctrine of gender and sexuality, however, he cannot do so without replacing it with something of his own; that is, if Barth believes in any form of masculinity and femininity, relative or not, how can it be known/applied?

“This mutual orientation constitutes the being of each. It is always in relationship for their opposite that man and woman are what they are in themselves…It doesn’t mean a denial of one’s own sex or an open or secret exchange with the opposite. On the contrary it means a firm adherence to this polarity and therefore to one’s own sex…Relationship to woman in this sense makes man a man and her relationship to man in this sense makes the woman the woman.” 210

-          “mutual orientation constitutes the being of each.” Uhmm, Ok, so Adam didn’t exist or didn’t have being or identity until Eve was created? Barth is really missing this one…

-          So, in other words, Barth is saying we should not try to dumb down whatever distinctions exist. Ok, good. But what if sin affected woman? Man should just correspond to those corrupt changes since he is defined by his opposite? And vice versa. If man and his sex/gender is affected by sin, on what grounds does woman resist corresponding her own role and sex if her only basis for being woman is differentiation? The implications of Barth’s ideology are scary.

-          Again, Adam was a man and was fully masculine before Eve was created. If anyone is truly defined (in terms of gender/sex) by their opposite, it is woman, not man.

-          Moreover, is it not within the capacity of the Godhead to express his original intention for transcultural masculinity and femininity? Or was all of Adam and Eve’s roles and distinctions and non-biological differences simply the product of their environment and culture, so outside Eden and Genesis 1-2 we may correctly say “this is absolutely nothing like the original creation, but it’s just as legitimate,”? Perhaps Barth’s hermeneutics resembles William Webb or Craig Keener, (where the Apostle Paul really couldn’t say what he wanted to say about gender and sexuality because of the political/social fallout, so he said things he didn’t mean to say, or he didn’t say things he meant to say)

“To become sexually awake, ripe, and active, to be true to one’s own sex, means for both man and woman to be awake to this polar relationship, ripe for it and active in it, to remain true to it.” This, Barth says, “replaces the many typologies which have been attempted, and makes them completely superfluous.” 211

-          So, if this polar-opposite thesis breaks down, everything else falls down. But, again, Adam did not need Eve to be fully human or fully man. In fact, according to Barth, if Adam wasn’t fully man, he wasn’t fully human. So he shoots himself in the foot.

-          Again, why on earth does the principle of polarity supersede God’s purpose? Polarity in general is a true concept, but only because of God’s creative act for human beings in Genesis 1-2. Barth needs to ground man and woman in God, for that is where they came from. To isolate God from the picture and talk about principles of polarity and differentiation is going to create the kind of superfluous conclusions Barth is trying to avoid.

“Every right of man and woman stands with the observance and maintenance of this rule.” 212

I think it’s a lame rule Karl because the principle of polarity in no way ensures that men are being masculine and women are being feminine. “As long as you stay different and don’t try to blend ways” is Barth’s core thesis. But this thesis actually undermines the entire purpose for gender and sexuality; the differences innate in God’s images are for a purpose. And that purpose is not to be different. Adam doesn’t have the differences he has and the features he has to be different from Eve! Likewise, Eve does not have features and abilities that man does not have, for the purpose of being different from Adam. Eve doesn’t have a womb to be different from Adam – so there can be differentiation, Eve has a womb to bear children. In short, the differences of the sexes are oriented around a purpose – a way of bearing God’s image (masculinity or femininity), but Barth is ignoring this most fundamental truth.

Discussion on homosexuality 214-215

“It is the great human puzzle which as man and woman they put to one another in their mutual confrontation…Man is unsettled by woman and woman by man.” 216

-          The struggle, he says, is both try to prove their humanity to the other. 217

The statement for man “not to be alone” “applies to woman as well as man.” 217

The fact that Adam was made first = subordination but not inequality, 220, see 229.

Mentions “strong man” (225-226) vaguely, along with “submissive woman” 226-227.

Pulls some really lame stuff out of the sky p224

The “mature woman…will endorse the strength of a strong man which is the strength of his sense of responsibility and service.” 228

“the mature woman is as such the woman who knows and takes her proper place, not in relation to man but in relation to the order.”

Now Barth is confusing everyone. His entire argument – which upon his entire theology of gender and sexuality – was always that the differences/roles/sexes are determined by our opposites – and now that apparently isn’t the case. He has actually begun to define masculinity (above, 228), and again…wth is this “order”? he couldn’t be any more vague.

But wait…it looks like he wants to define the order:  “the position and function assigned to her.” 228

Sigh.

“As a strong man he confirms the order, the order in which woman in her place is not simply subordinate to him, but stands at his side.” 229

Wow. Uhh…talk about begging the question.  What is the “position and function assigned to her”? who defines it? Who says when its wrong and on what basis? If culture says its subordination, than she must maintain that order because the order is the position and function assigned to her….it just…doesn’t make sense.

Summary thoughts: Bravo for trying to address the real issues and diving a little deeper than the typical systematic theologian and normal anecdotal assertions. But a serious thumbs down for the arguments.