Get Hold Of Recovering From Biblical Manhood And Womanhood: How The Church Needs To Rediscover Her Purpose Scripted By Aimee Byrd Released As Readable Copy

should be the goal of Christian discipleship for the lay believer What is the context and the content of that discipleship

In this book, Aimee Byrd makes that case that the goal of discipleship is "complete, glorified resurrection to live eternally with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
" This goal is for all believers and should be cultivated in the context of the local church by the ordinary means of grace, Unfortunately somewhere along the way, the goal of discipleship has morphed into culturally specific ideals for men and women, This has resulted in the introduction of aberrant teaching about the Trinity e, g. the eternal subordination of the Son and hindered the growth of lay believers and their contributing to the building up of the body of Christ,

To be very clear, this book does not promote female ordination, Neither does it seek to undermine a husband's servant leadership in the home, Rather the author is encouraging church leaders and members to examine if our current discipleship is driven by the culture wars and/or parachurch organizations,

I believe this examination is long overdue, and I am thankful that Aimee Byrd has written this book, knowing full well what the negative reactions would be.
Upon completing "Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood," I came away with a greater appreciation for my pastor and his commitment to foster the spiritual growth of the entire congregation, men and women.
I also came away with a greater desire to commit to my church as the primary means whereby I am discipled to Christ rather than pursuing one of many options that are available, some which are outside the confessional statement of my church.


I strongly recommend this book, If the goal of discipleship is "eternal communion with the Triune God," we shouldn't settle for anything less,

I listened to an audio version to see if I missed any of the concerns raised by other readers about covert feminism or egalitarianism, I found none. Unless the equal value of men and women in the church and their ability to mutually encourage one another in the faith counts as a feminism, Then you'd have to label the Apostle Paul as a feminist, Recovering from BMampW is difficult to read at times, but very important, Complementarians should listen. We may not agree with all of her points, All of her concerns may not be true of any one church, We might wish that she had looked at other texts, We might find some of her applications to be unhelpful, Nevertheless, she deserves an audience and it would be arrogant and harmful to ourselves to dismiss her, Again, we should listen and then do some soulsearching and critical evaluation of our own practices, Is it possible that our church practices are more cultural than biblical Personally, I found the book helpful and thoughtprovoking, I did not agree with many of her arguments, I felt that she often fell into the common trap of being more generous to those to the left of her than to the right of her, Nevertheless, I would encourage complementarians to read her book before you read the reviews, There are a number of good critical reviews to choose from, And by all means, read her book before you comment on it, That should be standard practice and go without saying,

A word about reaction to her book: I am troubled by the nasty responses to her book by some, Yes I followed my advice and purposefully did not read actual reviews until I finished the book, Now disagreement and critical engagement is not nasty per se, Aimee Byrd is a strong, intelligent human being, and she no doubt knew that when she wrote this book, there would be pushback, That is the nature of academic writing, I suspect she would be disappointed if her book were not critically engaged, But to merely dismiss her, and to do so because she is a woman, only makes her point for her, Resorting to ad hominem is not critical engagement, It is intellectually lazy and subChristian, Aimee Byrd described Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as frustrating because of what it gets right, I feel the same way about Byrd's book, She makes a lot of points that I agree with, but in many places I think her analysis is off and as a result, her solutions may cause more harm than good.

She is observing real problems that exist in a lot of churches and that deserve recognition and response from her critics, Many women have received infantilizing treatment from churches that have applied hard and fast lines without giving careful answers on what they believe about men and women or why.

At the same time, I found her assessment ofCorinthianswomen were told to be silent in churches and ask questions at home because their cultural context was such that they missed important points and didn't understand what was being taught to be rather infantilizing in itself, and I find it troubling that a book critiquing the church for not always thinking carefully about where women fit in the life of the church never interacts withTimothy:, gives little treatment to Titus, and doesn't have a lot to say on what male headship ought to look like in the church or in the home.
Her failure to do so is especially frustrating because it moves much of the interaction with her book among her critics to the points that she neglected, rather than interaction with her points on problematic orthorpaxy and attitudes.
I found this book interesting and helpfully thoughtprovoking, but also disappointing and lacking in core areas,

The writing itself was well expressed, though sometimes needlessly complex, the vocabulary did help me reimagine biblical concepts and not get too bogged down in my own assumptions.
Good writers can really help readers in that way, and I think Byrd is a good writer, I felt she was working very hard to express some ideas that have heretofore not been expressed very well, Sometimes a wider vocabulary is helpful when trying to help people think outside the box, Though I do think her denigration of the term “role” as someth orth century stage term was needless, I mean, so what if thats where we originally got the term, its a term people now understand and can appropriately use to express in English the idea of specific characteristics and functions of a person that are unique to them.
Just because its not in the scriptures doesnt mean it isnt helpful to the English speaking world cf, “trinity”. I thought that was a rather silly argument,

In fact theres a lot of silly in this book in a good way though, Some of the light heartedness helped keep it winsome, Which was good because otherwise Id have thought it was a very shallowly constructed screed against conservative evangelical men and I can see that, without a charitable eye, it would not go down easy to many men AND women within the reformed evangelical community.


What else
I really liked where Byrd was aiming to go working to flesh out this idea of colaborers in Christ, expressed in ways that better embodied what Jesus and the NT authors taught us about loving God and each other, and making disciples of the whole world.
The terminology of “ally” as opposed to “helper” was interesting, and I think probably helpfully dare I use the word! imparts in modern English what the term was going for originally at least I think she made the case for this very well.
Secondly, I think that looking at what it means to be male and female and “in Christ” outside of typical headship/submission framework rubric was interesting and helpful, Though she completely leaves out a discussion on what headship OUGHT to look like in marriage, Still, the point was interesting, and it led me to ask how we can better express ourselves so we can be more biblical in our living out of the gospel.
How can we see each other not as less than male and female, but more to the point, as children of God, Finally, I really identified with her drive toward making much of women as not simply created to bolster a mans ego or a mans mission, They are inherently valuable image bearers with unique contributions to make, and much to offer the church! Their value isnt only in who they marry as if they arent complete or useful unless they are married.
This is the most important and salient point, I think and the practical outworking of this reality is what I hear her calling the church to rightly live into.


What I found wanting was the mechanism she used to support these important ideas, Her exegesis waslacking. It seemed and I could be wrong on this that the essence of her arguments or issues with guys like Grudem and Piper, lie with a right understanding of the trinity specifically the intertrinitarian relationship between the father and the son.
But I did not hear a compelling scriptural, or even philosophical case for her argument for her case and I wanted to hear it! Second, there was no addressing theTimothyscripture which indicates that women are not to teach but remain silent in church.
I thought her explanation it wasnt strictly an exposition of the context aroundCor,was excellent and helpful. But how can you address this topic, or write a book like this, and not addressTimothyThis is not just lacking, it's mystifying, Thirdly, I found her explanations around the scriptures she quoted as very creative and imaginative and there IS room for creative thinking and existential imagination around texts, as we try and get into the proverbial “shoes” of each person like Ruth, Phoebe and more.
But the exposition of the text should come prior to lay groundwork, and this was always very thin, And I think the imaginative guesswork around some of these instances in scripture was a bit more than the text could support the example of the “androgynous” genealogy at the end of Ruth that seemed to her different stylistically from the rest of the book, and was the first thing that sort of caused me to cock my head a little in confusion.
Nothing to back that up, just a feeling on her part and one I disagreed with,

This was my frustration with this book, Its well expressed, its ideas are thought provoking and even helpful, There are creative new looks at the texts and at characters like Phoebe, for example, But I found myself again and again thinking of the hermeneutical principle that we should interpret the implicit by the explicit, I think what bugged me so much about this book was that this principle was almost reversed, Her existential imagination ran roughshod over the explicit teachings we have, and I would have liked to have to better exposit the relevant texts to show in a biblical theological was how her points made sense.


Typically I would not be “frustrated” with a book like this Id just see poor exposition and thin arguments and chuck it aside, But in this case I wanted to agree with Aimee, I think she has some interesting and very helpful points to make, But frustration arose when her arguments simply werent very well supported, I hope she writes follow up editions and addresses the foundational supports for her thinking/conclusions, A big part of my life in recent years has been learning that things I would expect to be thoroughly uncontroversial, are, in fact, controversial,

This book is no exception,

This book is not a feminist Oracle, or a tome on how and why women should assume all power in the church,

This is a book about discipleship first, and confronting false assumptions and teachings second, Yes, about women in the church, but also about the Trinity, salvation, and more,

I find myself even further disturbed by the pushback this book and the author have both received than I did before reading it,

I recommend reading it with an open mind and heart, No, I did not agree with every single word, But I found it quite helpful and generated a lot of personal reflection and things to study further, A poorly argued book, with a few valid points,

This review is a little late seems this controversy has already blown over, But I wanted to actually read the book, before commenting,


SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK
Byrd has her systematic theology straight, when it comes to the Trinity and the church, But she misfires when reacting to patriarchy and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood hereafter CBMW, John Piper and Wayne Grudem wrote and edited “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” in, and cofounded CBMW around the same time,

I do not know Byrds personal story, but from reading this book, and listening to her on the Mortification of Spin podcast for a few years, she obviously has a chip on her shoulder against the selfconscious assertion of male headship in overly patriarchal, conservative churches.
I have not read Byrds book about men and women being friends, in which she rejects the Billy Graham, now Mike Pence rule of a man never meeting alone with a woman not your wife.


Byrd shows she can read the Bible Christocentrically, but melds her reading with a feminine ist reading that is sometimes insightful, but usually stretches the text to make a point.
She quotes mainline egalitarians like Richard Bauckham liberally an intended pun, as they are liberal indeed as her intellectual ammunition against complementarianism the view that the Bible lays out distinct and different roles for men and women.
Byrd even tries to refute the use of “role” as a modern invention, which is bizarre,

Byrd equates the Eternal Subordination of the Son Trinitarian error with the CBMW movement, This is unfair. What about John Piper Her critique that CBMW is allowing erroneous teaching is a fair point, but misses the role of parachurch organizations,
Byrd does not allow a parachurch group to organize itself around a second order doctrinal issue, CBMW must repudiate ESS pages, But there are many such groups out there Promise Keepers, Right to Life, etc, that do good work and rightly include “cobelligerents, ” Why does Byrd not inveigh as strongly against Right to Life for working with Roman Catholics Because she is really opposed to CBMWs goal: recovering biblical manhood and womanhood.
Thus her title.

Byrd thinks CBMW calls for Christians to pursue genderspecific virtues, not specified in the Bible, She affirms there aregendered ways of being human, but insists we should not force it, This ignores Ephesians, which she never deals with, She has to twist the plain meaning of Titusto make this point, And it loses the Pauline perspective: “you are justified, now act like it, God made you a man, now act like one, ” This is not inherently legalistic, as her theological friend Michael Horton would tell her, She is right, though, to instinctively react against legalistic tendencies in the patriarchal movement, There are real problems there, but Byrd does not have the right solution,

Byrd sees CBMWs view as reducing men and women to single roles: authority and submission, which is “THE creation distinction between man and woman” emphasis Byrds, Im not sure this is fair CBMW is seeking to recover that aspect, which the larger culture now rejects, Not to claim it is THE distinction, It seems Byrd actually rejects it herself, or is tempted to, in reaction against CBMW,

It IS a fair criticism of Byrds to say that marriages have suffered where the wife needed to share her wisdom, and the husband needed to listen to her.
But instead they follow patriarchal counsel and artificially act in ONLY authority and submission roles, Ive seen that personally several times, But Byrd doesnt argue this point well at all, If someone can point me to a source that does, Id be grateful,

Byrd argues that God made Adam first, then Eve, which means she is his telos Greek for goal, or end, But that turnsTimothy:on its head, a passage Byrd never even addresses, Woman was made for man, not man for the woman, that passage says clearly, while also clearly asserting that this is not some culturally relative custom, but built into the order of creation.


IsCorinthians:just about refraining from uninspired speech that disrupts the prophecy going on Why single out the women, then

Byrds point about the parachurch world in chapteris fairly helpful.
Often the parachurch tail wags the church dog, when it should be the other way around, This chapter helped my own selfawareness as a pastor: what are the parachurch voices to which I listen, and why Do they matter more to me than biblical orthodoxy, my pastoral work and calling, and the voices of my pastoral colleagues


RESPONSE TO THE BOOK
The controversy around this book represents a discouraging low point in the ongoing discussion of the roles of men and women over the lastyears.




It is revealing that Zondervan published this book, not Crossway or PampR, Byrd selfidentifies as a staunchly orthodox and confessional OPC! churchperson, But the publishers associated with that orbit did not take her book on, With good reason. Who she quotes and the argument she makes fits much better in the Eerdmans/Baker/Zondervan orbit less interested in conforming to confessional and complementarian lines,

Ive been extremely disappointed in the response to Byrds book from “my side, ” I agree with the Danvers Statement, CBMWs main statement, Shane Anderson, previously unknown to me, appears just unhinged, The Genevan Commons Facebook group behaved immaturely and meanly toward Byrd, at the least, and wont apologize, it seems, They seem to adopt Trumpian tactics that the best way to refute your ideological opponent is to ridicule them, Even our more mature voices have partially justified their behavior: “If she wants to enter the arena of theological debate, shes gotta take criticism like a man, ” This only proves Byrds point that complementarian advocates tend to wrongly marginalize or exclude women from theological conversation, and put them down to keep them “in their place, ” Maybe the “mans world” of theological discourse could benefit from including women, Its no blow to true Christian masculinity when someone points out a real biblical violation in a group of Christian men behaving badly toward a woman, The church needs to behave better than this in our disagreements,

We should have places in our churches to foster healthy biblical masculinity, and places of coed discipleship and theological discussion, We shouldnt have to polarize between those pursuing masculinity Fight, Laugh, Feast!, and the milder PCA version of complementarianism Mortification of Spin!, Let Christians come to their own convictions and practices on the details between these, instead of setting up camps and lobbing water ballons at each other, when the affects of Bostock loom upon us all.
But Aimee Byrd seems to be leaving the complementarian orbit altogether,

Much better criticism of the book has come from the current CBMW president, Denny Burk,  
sitelink sbts. edu/article/wayst

Mark Jones' review is also very good,
sitelink com/

And John Piper still advocates a sane view of the biblical roles of men and women, it seems to me, My read is that he has integrated Byrd's best criticisms, here for example:

July,
sitelink desiringgod. org/interview

“Biblical manhood and womanhood in the relationship of marriage does not consist in a mere list of things you may or may not say, things you may or may not do, but rather in a biblically informed, Spiritshaped disposition and demeanor that reflects a mans unique calling to be the head of the home, and a womans unique calling to gladly support that calling of the man by coming alongside him with her unique, indispensable womanly gifts.
”

I honestly dont know after reading Byrds book if she would agree with Piper or not, My read is that she is objecting a reasonable and biblical complementarian view because of patriarchal abuses of it which she has suffered or observed personally, .