Book Sale

Thursday 29 July 2021

Satanic Feminism Part 3: Was Feminism A Christian Idea? (Part C)

 

…Continued from Part B, how the New Testament era is consistent with this Old Testament teaching and the conclusion…

We read in Revelation 2:18-21 –

“18 And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 “‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.  

The similarities between this Jezebel here, and the Jezebel of Old Testament fame, have led some to believe that this not a similar woman called Jezebel, but a Jezebel-like woman, that is a woman with a Jezebel spirit. She is teaching pagan cultic rituals, not dissimilar to the practices of Baal or Ashtaroth, and leading these people into deep and horrible sin.

But notice Jesus’ rebuke. He is angry that they “tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing” his servants. Some might skip right to the third element of this rebuke, the “seduction to sexual immorality” for the crux of this rebuke. But there are three elements of the rebuke: 1) That she calls herself a prophetess, 2) that she is teaching, 3) and that she is seducing them to practice sexual immorality and eat in pagan food rituals.

This is important to note, because the first two things Jesus has against this woman, are that she is “assuming authority and teaching”. This should sound familiar, because Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 – “11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” Paul does not permit a woman to teach or “assume”/“exercise” authority over a man. Jezebel is presuming to do exactly what Paul had said that women should not do.

I need to pause here and acknowledge that there are female prophets in the Bible, from Deborah, to Anna, to Phillip’s daughters, we see women exercising this empowered gift of the Holy Spirit in different parts of the Scripture. Prophecy and teaching can overlap in Scripture, but they are not the same gift. Just because someone prophesies does not mean they are a teacher and vice versa. Prophecy is often an ecstatic gift, where the Holy Spirit overcomes a person and speaks through them in a foretelling or forthtelling way. And no one, man or woman, has the right to say God is limited in who he can speak through in this way. It is clear in scripture he will speak through men, women, children, angels, donkeys and more, at his discretion. It is also clear from Genesis 2 onwards that he expects men to exercise authority and teach, not women.

Jezebel had at least doubly broken the prohibition Paul made in this passage. It is interesting when you hear preachers seek to explain away 1 Timothy 2:11-12, I cannot remember ever hearing one of them connect their explanation to this passage in Revelation 2. Paul wrote the letter of 1 Timothy to Timothy who was in Ephesus, which is one of the brother churches of Thyatira, where Jezebel had entrenched herself as the pagan priestess of this church. The culture here would not have been very different to the culture in Ephesus. The kinds of gods worshipped, the religious practices and the way people lived would have been roughly the same. And there is no doubt that they would have known about this letter from Paul. He founded the Ephesian church and it likely had a patriarchate role in these seven churches. So, the relevance of this Revelation passage to the Timothy passage is striking, and more so for the deliberate avoidance you see among scholars and teachers of this passage.

It is especially striking when you notice that Jezebel has not just doubly broken this proscription, but triply. She presumed authority where she should not have. She is teaching when she should not be as well. But what is the third transgression? She was being sexually immoral and idolatrous in precisely the way Paul said women should not, and in the way that ancient sex cults like Asherah, or Aphrodite encouraged them to be.  

Note, 1 Timothy 2:13-15 – “13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” How was the woman deceived? She partook of the fruit to gain access to the divine mysteries that were offered to her by the serpent: the forbidden knowledge. Some in Church history saw this as talking about sexual sin[1],[2] though it is not taken this way so often anymore. But it is idolatry, Eve looked to the devil over God, and to herself over God as well. This is idolatry, which is spiritual adultery. But note that Paul says a woman will be saved via “childbearing - if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.”

This can only be taken one of two ways. Either Paul is saying that women will be saved by their works of having children, added to by faith, love, holiness and self-control. In this reading the apostle of saved-by-faith-not-works would be saying women are saved by their works. This does not fit with what we know about Paul. Or, the better reading is really very simple; a faith filled Christian woman is one who is focused on motherhood, and they are the kind of mother whose faith, love, holiness and self-control are evident. In other words, he is saying that a Christian woman looks like a woman who does not seek to rule over men, but who learns submissively, and is faithfully focused on motherhood. Radical right? Only in the last 170 years. But note, this is the exact opposite of Jezebel.

Jesus is telling us that Jezebel is presuming authority, is seeking to teach men, and is seducing his “servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.” Eve was the first woman to eat in honour of a false idol. She was the first Satanic Feminist in this sense. And this is why Per Faxneld is showing us in his book Satanic Feminism that the inherent foundation of feminism is to seek to make what Eve did in the garden an act of liberation - she can have authority, she can teach, she is a sexually promiscuous agent – when really it is an act of enslavement to a false deity.

The passages in Timothy and Revelation we have just looked at are very clear, and very simple to understand, as are all the others on this topic. But in a post Satanic Feminist inversion of the world’s order they appear to many to be much harder to understand. Not because they are not clear, but because they rub up against our modern and post-modern beliefs about how things should be on the gender front. There is no end to the propaganda about the equality of men and women, and that men and women are interchangeable, and can do all of the same things. How many movies do we see with a 140 pound wringing wet woman dominating in combat five or six special forces trained soldiers in a few deft moves? It is absurd. The propaganda is strong with our modern society on this issue, and it clouds how many modern people think about these issues and can cause people to just assume the Bible is presenting an outdated view.

But the Bible is showing us that women teaching in a religious context is not a modern idea, it is an ancient idea, the most ancient false religious idea really. It finds its basis in the Serpent approaching the woman, whom he deceived, and not the man. Why? Because good generals always attack at the most vulnerable point in the lines, and the Devil is a superb general. It is simply ahistorical, and unbiblical to say that the scriptures just said women could not teach because of the culture of their day. The culture of their day, and many before and many after are rich with examples of female priesthoods. Indeed, one of the ancient symbols of Asherah was a woman standing or sitting near a tree with a serpent[3], sound familiar? This idea is ancient.

Let’s look at another example which relates directly to our passages so far. The letters in Revelation 2 to 3 were given to seven churches, including the one we have looked at, Thyatira, and the first one addressed, probably the oldest and most influential of the churches in that region, Ephesus. This is important, because we read in Acts 19 that Paul’s ministry in Ephesus was having an incredible effect on the Cult of Artemis:

“23 About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. 24 For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. 25 These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, ‘Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. 26 And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. 27 And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship’” 28 When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:23-28).

Paul’s ministry was so successful that he was drawing Greeks in Asia Minor away from worship of idols like Artemis. The reason this is relevant to our discussion is because Paul wrote his letter to Timothy in Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:3). As mentioned above, the Church of Thyatira would have been influenced by this letter, and others written by Paul, and the background of these letters is being written in a culture which had no problem with women being involved in cultic religious practices. For example, we read this about the cult of Artemis:   

“The Arkteia festival was celebrated every four years and involved a procession from the shrine of Artemis Brauronia on the acropolis of Athens, 24.5 km WNW of the sanctuary. At the isolated sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, young Athenian girls approaching marriageable age formed groups consecrated for a time to Artemis as arktoi, she-bears, and spent their time in sacred dances, wearing honey-colored saffron robes, running races and making sacrifice…The goddess Artemis was a danger to be propitiated by women during child-birth and of the newborn: to her were dedicated the clothes of women who had successfully borne a child;. The garments of women who died in childbirth were dedicated to Iphigeneia at Brauron.”[4]

A female deity, attended to by priestesses, not priests, and propitiated by women seeking her in the moment of giving birth? You cannot get more matriarchal than this. And in some ritual practices of the worship of Artemis, we can see how far this matriarchy went: Artemis,

“recalls the Cretan ‘Lady of the Wild Things’, apparently the supreme Nymph-goddess of archaic totem societies; and the ritual bath in which Actaeon surprised her, like the horned hinds of her chariot…and the quails of Ortygia…, seems more appropriate to the nymph than the maiden. Actaeon was, it seems, a sacred king of the pre-Hellenic stag cult, torn to pieces at the end of his reign of fifty months, namely half a Great Year; his co-king, or tanist, reigning for the remainder. The nymph properly took her bath after, not before, the murder. There are numerous parallels to this ritual custom in Irish and Welsh myth, and as late as the first century AD a man dressed in a stag’s skin was periodically chased and killed on the Acadian Mount Lycaeum (Plutarch: Greek Questions 39).”[5]

To say, as many do, that Paul was simply encouraging women to stay silent, so that the Church would not appear scandalous before the culture of the day in Ephesus is ridiculous on many levels.

Firstly, the Greeks of Asian Minor, really in any era, had no problem with women playing a leading role in religious rites and practice, as long as the particular cult and god/goddess called for it. There was a diversity of gods, with a diversity of religious rites, and a new cult which allowed women to teach would not have cause many Greeks to even think twice about it, especially worshippers of Artemis, who were willing to submit to rights performed by young female priestesses. Secondly, Paul did not limit the Church to only doing things which would not offend the Greeks, or Jews. His encouragement for masters to treat their slaves like brothers in Christ would have been jarring for the Roman and Greek culture of the era. This was an era where slaves’ bodies were the repository for anything their masters wished them to be. Thirdly, Paul tells us directly that his reason is theological, not cultural.

Paul tells us,

“11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Timothy 2:11-14).

His reasons track back to Genesis 2 and 3, and consider the order of creation and the fact that the woman was deceived, not the man. I think this is a big point for Paul. Because he makes a similar case elsewhere:

“11 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. 5 Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. 6 Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things…

…12 And what I do I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. 13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds” (2 Cor. 11:1-6, 12-15). 

Eve’s deception is an important aspect of Paul’s Christian worldview, which he applies to his theology of what a biblical teacher is, who can teach, and what a false teacher is. His teaching in 1 Timothy about who can teach, and his teaching in 2 Corinthians about how to spot a false teacher are intrinsically dependent on how Satan deceived Eve. These are not incidental or cultural teachings on Paul’s account. They are applications of biblical truth anchored in the proper order taught in the pre-fall and early fall world and reinforced all the way through the Bible.

Nowhere does Paul blame the fall on Eve, rather he blames it on Adam (cf. Romans 5). Yet he acknowledges that Eve was the one who was deceived first, so why is she not to blame? Because the man was created first and should have protected the proper order by rebuking the serpent and his wife. Instead, he allowed both the serpent and his wife to dominate him, which caused the fall,

“12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (Romans 5:12-14).

The origin of the sinfulness of mankind is traced back to the first man, even though he was not the first to sin. Why? Because the Bible teaches a patriarchal order: God the father – God the son - man – woman – children. This is not my summation, it is Paul’s: 1 Corinthians 11:2-3 – “2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” We have already addressed this patriarchal order in previous articles, but it needs repeating: this is the Christian perspective. Egalitarianism is an extra-biblical interpolation that denies the correct biblical order.

This is not a minor point, it is not a cultural contextual point. What Paul is doing is very deliberate and important: he is teaching us how to structure our churches, families, and indeed society, in such a way that it limits the damage the evil one can do. No, he is not, and I am not, saying that the devil cannot work very wickedly through men. Of course he can, and he has. But attacking through women who subvert or dominate their men is a particularly successful strategy that the Devil uses. This cannot be denied. It is not a coincidence that the West has become more godless, more pagan, and less honouring of traditional marriage and morals, since it has officially overturned the biblical patriarchal order.

You can accuse me of being hopelessly outdated in my views, but again see what Paul said, “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you” and then he proceeds to remind them of the correct order he has taught them to maintain in their churches and homes. This order is supported by 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2, Ephesians 5 to 6, Colossians 3, and other passages. And it is reiterated often in scripture how much damage can be done if this order is ignored. Paul’s position is clear, and simple to understand.    

However, if you accept that the Bible teaches equality, then you have to say it supports feminism, and you have to find a way to circumnavigate all these texts. Which is precisely what much of the modern Church does, to its own chagrin. There is however a better way to understand them.

The better way to understand them is very simply that they are anti-feminist. This is very different to anti-women. The Bible is pro-women and very uplifting of women. Indeed, early Christianity did not explode in massive numbers among women in Rome for no reason. It created a whole new way for them to see themselves, and for society to see them as well. It lifted their bodies to being more than sex objects, or being objectified in slavery, or in ritualistic sex worship, and ancient pornographic art, it honoured their rights to learn directly from their Lord, something which Judaism did not do to the same degree, and it highlighted just how honourable and necessary motherhood is. So, the Bible’s view is not anti-women, but rather anti-everything that feminism is. Because at its heart, feminism is a destabilizing force. All movements of equality are; whether feminism, or socialism, or Marxism (which is just socialism in its most radical form). Whereas the Bible is inherently supportive of order and hierarchy.

Indeed, let’s do a quick thought experiment: what would a completely egalitarian society look like, one where every single individual had the exact same power, the exact same rights, the exact same command, the exact same prestige and influence? It might sound glorious, but then add to this society the known characteristics of human nature. What would you get? Anarchy. Absolute anarchy. Even heaven has a king, and high angels and rulers. An absolutely anarchist state would be hell, as Chaucer says,

“For well you know that men call "honour" the reverence that man gives to man; but in Hell is no honour or reverence. For indeed no more reverence shall be done there to a king than to a knave. As to which God says, by the Prophet Jeremiah: "They that scorn me shall be scorned." "Honour" is also called great lordship; but there no man shall serve another, save to his harm and torment.”[6]

And later again he says,

“And Job, also, says: "Death, without any order." And though it be that God has created all things in right order, and nothing at all without order, but all things are ordered and numbered; yet, nevertheless, they that are damned have no order, nor hold to any order.[7]

There is such thing as the wrong kind of order, tyranny of the authoritarian. But it is not so much about getting a balance, as having the right order, the right patriarchy, the right kind of leadership of both quality and structure.

This is why feminists themselves, honest feminists who are just following their ideology, and not seeking to infuse the Christian religion with its teachings, recognize “the term "Christian feminist" is an oxymoron.”[8]

This is why saying that the Bible is just reflecting the culture of its day, when it comes to gender roles, is inherently dishonest. The Bible presents a consistent vision of gender, with men as leaders, providers and warriors and women as supporters, nurturers, child-bearers, that, in the very least possible timeframe, covers several thousand years of human history, across vastly different cultures, and several different regions of the ancient Near East, and parts of Europe and Africa. If you say it reflects the culture of the day, I say, which culture? There are hundreds to choose from, and thousands of years to choose from as well. Indeed, this consistent perspective on gender roles remained remarkably consistent right across the Christian world, up until about the middle of the nineteenth century.

What a remarkable coincidence, then, that Christians just started to realize that the Bible had been feminist all along, just in time for the feminist movement to take off. It would be dishonest of me to say that there were not real Christian women who were engaged in the suffragette movement. Indeed, there were some who even considered fighting for the right to vote and advocating for feminism to be different goals. But it is equally dishonest to say that feminism came out of a fresh understanding of the correct teachings of the Bible, because it didn’t. It was initiated by an external force that sought to tame the Bible and usurp Western civilisation to its agenda. And credit where credit is due, it worked, sadly.  

So, with all that has now been said, we can say unequivocally that feminism was not inspired by Christianity. It is rather the antithesis of Christianity, a competitor, that would see the Church bow to it, as the mythical El once did to Asherah.

List of References - 


[1] "And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married." - St Jerome (c. 320-420) source: http://www.godrules.net/articles/earlychurch-on-sex.htm

[2] Justin Glenn, “Pandora and Eve: Sex as the Root of All Evil.” The Classical World, Nov., 1977, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Nov., 1977), pp. 179-185, Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States; p180.

[3] Wilson, Andrew, “The Sexual Interpretation of the Human Fall”. Reprinted from: Unification Theology in Comparative Perspectives, edited by Anthony J. Guerra  - (New York: Unification Theological Seminary, 1988), 51-70; p5.

[5] McLeish, Kenneth 2003, The Greek Myths, Folio Society, Barcelona; pp.87-88.  

[6] Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales: FREE Hamlet By William Shakespeare (JKL Classics - Active TOC, Active Footnotes ,Illustrated) (p. 478). JKL Classics. Kindle Edition.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Elliot, Cath 2008, “I’m not praying”, The Guardian, accessed 8/07/2021,  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/aug/19/gender.religion.  

No comments:

Post a Comment