Saturday, November 10, 2012

The maleness of Christianity

I recently read a blog post that argued Christianity is not supposed to be a "masculine" faith.  To make his point, the blogger said the following:
"I would argue that God did not appoint all priests in the OT to be men; society appointed all priests to be men. The Son of God was a man yes, but he came in the world to be human (there is a significant difference). He did have 12 disciples who were all men, just like other rabbis took men as disciples – another example of society at work, not divinity. Finally, what does it matter who the apostles appointed as overseers of the Church? That is again society, not divinity."
I have no current opinion on the masculinity of the Christian faith (other than that it makes for interesting discussion), but I did take issue with the comment above.  Here is my reply to this comment:
"Please be careful not to undermine the reason why God gave the priesthood to Aaron and his sons (all male) (Numbers 3). The priests were to be male because God was sending his Son (who was male) to be the everlasting high priest and all other priests were simply types pointing to Christ (Heb 4:14). Similarly, when God told Moses in Exodus 12:5, “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old” He was also creating a pointer to Christ. Christ would be a male without blemish.
As much as people want to make this a male vs female thing, this “male requirement” has absolutely nothing to do with how much God values males or females. It has everything to do with pointing us to Christ. The maleness of the priests and the lambs was important, not trivial, God-dictated, not society-dictated. To say otherwise misses the point in it all."

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