Mark Coppenger On Manliness
June 7, 2023
Published on
truthscript
I begin this piece by recalling my prayer for the graduates delivered at SBTS and SEBTS, one in which I prayed that the men would be manly and the women womanly. Of course, our culture, with its burgeoning "gender nihilism" (an expression coined by Harvard's Harvey Mansfield), doesn't appreciate talk of manliness. But discomfort with that expression has permeated Evangelicalism, albeit with pushback within the ranks. I track those developments and then make application to the controversy over women pastors, observing that those who encourage and defend female pastoral aspirants betray their duty to defend two other women, the Bride of Christ and Lady Wisdom (Prov. 1).