"Man And Woman In Christ": 40 Years Later -- By: David Talcott
Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 01:1 (Spring 2019)
Article: "Man And Woman In Christ": 40 Years Later
Author: David Talcott
Eikon 1:1 (Spring 2019) p. 48
Man And Woman In Christ: 40 Years Later
David Talcott is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The King’s College.
Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences, Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, MI, 1980.
In the mid 1980s a young Southern Seminary student named Albert Mohler was walking across the campus quad with the esteemed professor Dr. Carl F. H. Henry. At one point, the professor asked the student about his views on men’s and women’s roles, and the young student replied with his view, which was then fashionable among Southern Baptists, that all roles and offices in the church should be open to both men and women. The older Dr. Henry looked over to Mohler and told him that some day he would be embarrassed to believe such a thing. Dr. Mohler once told the next part of the story this way: “My friends, the day that Dr. Carl F. Henry tells you that you’ll be embarrassed for believing something is that very day.”1 That night Mohler went to the campus library and searched through the collection, trying to figure out what Dr. Henry meant. After staying up all night reading and studying, Mohler emerged the next morning transformed. He had found a book which powerfully explained and defended, from Scripture itself, the traditional view on the roles of men and women. He had been convinced of the scriptural teaching.
Eikon 1:1 (Spring 2019) p. 49
Dr. Mohler had found a large tome published in 1980 by a small Ann Arbor, MI publishing house, written by the Charismatic Roman Catholic author Stephen B. Clark, and titled Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences. Thirty-nine years since its publication this book remains incredibly relevant, filled with unexpected insights and raising questions of application that we still have not resolved today. Though labored in places, Clark’s writing often has a freshness and vitality that is difficult to describe, as well as a deep connection with real life the way people actually live it.
Clark’s book is divided into four sections which 1) exegete the scriptural teaching on the sexes, 2) show how this scriptural teaching was applied in the culture of the first century AD, 3) consider the challenges and prospects for applying the scriptural teaching to modern society, and 4) make practical recommendations. Clark’s exegetical work feels at once familiar and foreign. Familiar, since pieces of it have become the standard complementarian reading, but foreign because it is embedded in a larger so...
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