Journey Back to Eden : Restoring the Creator's Design for Women and Men

by Glen G. Scorgie

• ISBN13: 9780310259909
• ISBN10: 0310259908
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-30
• Publisher: Harpercollins Christian Pub

Summary

It can be difficult raising Christian daughters today in an environment that can be socially and spiritually toxic. Even the evangelical church can sometimes send negative messages not giving women an equal voice, not inviting them into decision-making circles, and not having many visible leadership roles. As a consequence, some Christian women, especially younger ones, have felt somewhat demeaned and diminished. Yet we don't want them to turn their backs on Christianity or set up unnecessary roadblocks to faith.How can we remain faithful to the truthfulness of Scripture and at the same time affirm the equality of women? This book shows how the real issue between those who hold a complementarian view and an egalitarian view is not with biblical infallibility. The real issue is biblical interpretation. The canon of Scripture is complete but our understanding continues to develop. Therefore this book sets out to accomplish three tasks.1. A clarifying task: Correct misunderstandings of normative biblical statements on gender. 2. A restrictive task: Demonstrate that certain texts which have traditionally been regarded as normative for all time were in fact applicable only to the unique situations originally addressed. 3. A discerning task: Discern the overall direction the Holy Spirit is taking the church as he unfolds God's will in a progressive way. Just as the biblical teaching on slavery contained seeds pointing to the eventual liberation of slaves, so the biblical teaching on women points us toward the ideal of gender mutuality in every sense, freedom for women to pursue their calling before God.The author graciously acknowledges there may be parts of the world not ready to embrace thetruth of women's complete liberation in Christ. So there's room for temporary compromises. Likewise the author acknowledges it is acceptable for a husband and wife to decide to maintain their home and marriage according to

Table of Contents

List of Diagrams	9	(2)
Acknowledgments	11	(2)
Introduction: How I came to Write this Book	13	(6)
Tracing the Trajectory of the Spirit: a Discerning approach to Scripture	19	(18)
God Before All Things: a trinitarian fellowship of Divine Love	37	(20)
Created to Be Like God: male and female in Relationship	57	(20)
What Went Wrong: Sin and the Roots of Gender oppression	77	(16)
An Age of Patriarchy: gender privilege in the Old testament	93	(18)
Jesus Christ and Women: the Launch of the gender Revolution	111	(18)
Gender in the Early Church: Substantial progress toward gospel Ideals	129	(20)
Old Habits Die Hard: the persistence of patriarchy	149	(20)
The Long Journey Back to Eden: women in Christian History	169	(18)
Understanding the Times: a pivotal moment in History?	187	(10)
Resources for Further Study	197	(2)
Notes	199	(6)
Scripture Index	205	(6)
Subject Index	211

Excerpts

The Journey Back to Eden
Copyright © 2005 by Glen G. Scorgie
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scorgie, Glen G.
The journey back to Eden : restoring the Creator’s design for women and men /
Glen G. Scorgie.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-10: 0-310-25990-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25990-9
1. Sex role—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Women—Religious aspects—
Christianity. 3. Men (Christian theology). I. Title.
BT708.S36 2005
270'.082—dc22 2005015667
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New
International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked TNIV are taken from the Holy Bible: Today’s New International
Version®. TNIV® Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. Used by permission
of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations marked JB are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, Copyright © 1966 by
Darton, Longman and Todd, Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing
Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you.
These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan,
nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording,
or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission
of the publisher.
Interior design by Tracey Walker
Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 /?DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Chapter 1
Tracing the Trajectory
of the Spirit
A Discerning Approach to Scripture
The ball is snapped. The quarterback backpedals into the pocket
forming around him. There he sets up and waits, amid Richter
scale–level collisions all around. Powerful opponents violently
encroach. At the last possible second, he steps forward and forcefully
launches a long bomb. The football soars into the sky on a magnificent
arching trajectory, moving fast and spinning smoothly.
Downfield, the pass receiver has been zoned in on the ball from
the moment it cleared the scrimmage line. Running hard, he instinctively
calibrates its velocity, the angle of its rise, and even its spin. His
“read” on the ball is everything. It determines whether he will catch up
to it or watch it fall incomplete. With a quick head-fake he shakes the
defender, adjusts his route, and strains for a spot in the far corner of
the field. The ball is still nowhere near there, but from a quick shoulder
glance he’s confident that’s where it’s coming down. Seconds later
he leaps high, draws the football to his chest, and tumbles gloriously
into the end zone. Touchdown!
A large part of the art of pass receiving is being able to recognize
where the ball is going before it gets there. A great receiver can predict
a football’s trajectory from near the point of release. This book is also
about tracing a trajectory—another kind, the trajectory of the Holy
Spirit. And it is not about football either, but something quite different
and much more important: how men and women ought to stand
in relationship to one another. Nevertheless the same principle applies.
We need to “read” the Spirit’s trajectory, and recognize where God’s
Spirit is headed on the subject of gender relations.
All things considered, Christianity has been good for women. It
has not been the mighty agent of gender oppression that it is sometimes
made out to be. Still, contemporary Christians can hardly feel
smug about the track record of our religious tradition. We live with
the uncomfortable awareness that our faith has not been as affirming
as it should have been, or as empowering for women as it certainly
needs to be from now on.
This book is a call for a paradigm shift in the way many Christians
still view men and women. In particular it is addressed to the emerging
generation of Christians who wish the church could do more for
women, but who until now have reluctantly assumed that loyalty to
Scripture compels them to perpetuate a hierarchical view of gender
relations. It invites such readers to see the biblical landscape through
new eyes. To assist in such reappraisal, it traces the trajectory of the
Spirit across the pages of Scripture and the annals of history. It explores
the directional impulse of the Spirit, who is slowly but surely bringing
us back to the personal wholeness and harmonious relationships that
have largely eluded us as men and women since the fall.
A Vision of Equality, Freedom, and Mutuality
The thesis of this book is that the Holy Spirit is nudging the people of
God today toward a fuller embrace of the gospel vision of gender
equality, freedom, and mutuality. What do these three cornerstones of
the gospel vision involve? Concerning the first, the church is slowly
grasping the truth that women and men, though obviously not identical,
are equal in every sense. There must no longer be an asterisk
placed beside this affirmation of gender equality, no qualification whatsoever
of this foundational truth. Neither men nor women are more
or less inclined to sinfulness; we are perfectly equal in our sinning.
Likewise, neither women nor men are more like God; we are peers in
our God-likeness, dignity, and potential.
Freedom, the second ideal, means that every woman and man should
be able to pursue their calling before God, with careful discernment of
gifts and ability, of course, but without any restrictions on what their
gender allows them to do. Exactly where such freedom might take men
and women cannot be perfectly anticipated in advance; the adventurous
experiment still has not reached its conclusion. The point is to wait and
see what will happen in an atmosphere of complete Spirit-superintended
freedom. It is possible that gender tendencies may emerge (perhaps even
ones not totally dissimilar to the status quo). But when freedom is honored,
such tendencies will be regarded as observed trends rather than
imposed templates, and it will never be considered unnatural or abnormal
for a woman or man to deviate from such statistical patterns. Anything
less is gender profiling.
The church should be in the vanguard of this Spirit movement, not
reluctantly bringing up the cultural rear. Recently Hans Küng insightfully
observed:
Everything that indisputably manifests itself as un-freedom in the
church is not a revelation of the good, clear essence of the church
but a revelation of its dark, evil perversion. In the light of the message
on which it bases itself, the church in its inner being should be

---

Excerpted from The Journey Back to Eden: Restoring the Creator's Design for Women and Men by Glen G. Scorgie
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.