Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 26:2 (Summer 2022)
Article: An Extended Review Of Abigail Favale, The Genesis Of Gender: A Christian Theory
Author: Denny R. Burk

SBJT 26:2 (Summer 2022) p. 128

An Extended Review Of Abigail Favale, The Genesis Of Gender: A Christian Theory1

Denny Burk

Denny Burk is Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Director of the Center for Gospel and Culture. He earned his ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas, and his PhD in New Testament from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Burk is the author of numerous articles that have been published in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Tyndale Bulletin, Bulletin for Biblical Research, and the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is the author of What is the Meaning of Sex? (Crossway, 2013), co-author of Transforming Homosexuality (P&R, 2015), and the author of 1–2 Timothy and Titus in the ESV Expository Commentary (Crossway, 2018). Dr. Burk also serves as the Associate Pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky.

The work under review is one of the most riveting and timely books that I have ever read. The author is George Fox University professor Abigail Favale, and the book is The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory. Even though I differ with the author on several important points (more on that below), her overall thesis is unassailable in my view. On some of the biggest and most contested issues of our day, this book is a breath of fresh air—indeed, of fresh, clean, Christian air blowing from the ancient past.

In the Genesis of Gender, Favale exposes the philosophical and spiritual bankruptcy of what she calls the “gender paradigm” (p. 30). The gender paradigm is a worldview that says gender is a state of mind rather than a bodily reality. The gender paradigm says that there is no givenness to human nature. Rather, we are all existentialists now—forging and determining our

SBJT 26:2 (Summer 2022) p. 129

own identities in ways that may or may not correspond to our bodily reality. If a woman thinks she is a man, then she is one no matter what her body says. Indeed, her shifting and subjective self-understanding as male, female, or otherwise is more determinative of who she really is than her body. If the body doesn’t correspond to her self-understanding, then her body has to change to match the mind rather than the mind changing to match the body. That is the gender paradigm in a nutshell.

Favale argues that the Genesis paradigm of Scripture is fundamentally at odds with the gender paradigm. The book of Genesis reveals that God created male and female equally in the image of God and...