The Patriarchy Connection: The Weird World of Mr Ware

Ancient Greek philosophers made many attempts to figure out the mystery of life - how we are formed in the womb, and what role a woman and man have in the creation of new life. Without microscopes and other modern devices, they had to resort to guessing in more than one instance. 

Eva Cantarella, author of Pandora's Daughters, explains Aristotle's view of the male and female roles in procreation:

Though indispensable, the female contribution is one of matter, with which woman is identified. And the contribution of the woman-matter is passive by nature, while the male contribution, man being form and spirit, is active and creative. In essence the male in reproduction, "converts" female matter with his sperm. Passivity in reproduction is one of the factors that Aristotle uses to justify the social and legal inferiority of woman. (Eva Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role & Status of Women in Greek & Roman Antiquity [MD: The John Hopkins University press, 1987] p 60)

Because the woman's ability to give life has all the potential to make the woman more valuable than the man, Aristotle used motherhood as the source of the woman's subjection: because the woman is considered passive in the act of creating life instead of active, she is less valuable than the man, who is viewed as the one who actually gives life to the child. 

Because hierarchical theology has the same root as patriarchy, we find a similar thought in hierarchical theology. Bruce A. Ware is the author of a lengthy article on the compatibility of our equality as humans created in the Image of God and hierarchical theology in which the man has authority over the woman because of his prior creation.

(Read the article at, http://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-7-No-1/Male-and-Female-Complementarity-and-the-Image-of-God. 

In the weird world of Mr. Ware, all things are not as they seem. What looks right at first becomes quickly left, as he guides us through a maze of incoherent thoughts. 

The first part of the introduction explores what being created in the Image of God actually means. Mr. Ware concludes this exploration with the noble thought that both men and women are created in the image of God and are therefore equal as human beings. But because equality and inequality are like oil and water, and Mr. Ware wants to prove the existence of the latter rather than the former, he tells us that the woman derives the Image of God from the man.

Man is a human being made in the image of God first; woman becomes a human being bearing the image of God only through the man. While both are fully and equally the image of God, there is a built-in priority given to the male that reflects God's design of male-headship in the created order.

What then about the rest of us? How do we become the Image of God since we are born of women, and not perpetually created from a man’s side?  Mr. Ware is of the opinion that both parents contribute, “So, it appears that those born become the image of God because they are born through those who are the image of God.” But because it would create a contradiction in his theology to affirm that only Eve derived the Image from a man, he adds his opinion that Genesis 5 teaches that only the father transfers the Image of God to the child. 

What is true in both texts, of Seth's and the woman's formation respectively, is that they derive their human natures, as Scripture specifically indicates, through the man. Another parallel is clear and is significant: both Seth and Eve are fully and equally the image of God when compared to Adam, who is image of God. So, the present discussion reaffirms and reinforces our earlier declaration that all human beings, women as well as men, children as well as parents, are fully and equally the image of God. But having said this, Scripture indicates in addition to this important point another: God's design regarding how the woman and how a child become the image of God seems to involve inextricably and intentionally the role of the man's prior existence as the image of God.

But if both Seth and Eve derived the Image of God from Adam, how was it possible for Seth, but not for Eve, to transfer the Image to his own children? Could it be that Eve is not mentioned in Genesis 5 because the chapter is “the written account of Adam's line” and the whole point is to show which father goes with which son, the mother being well known to all? In other words, maybe Eve had a bit more to do with Seth being in the Image of God than Mr. Ware would have us acknowledge.

Despite the obvious flaw in his thinking, Mr. Ware continues undeterred. To provide further evidence for his theology, and to remove the possibility that the man’s prior creation could be “nothing more than a sort of tossing of a divine coin,” Mr. Ware informs us that God formed the woman from the man in order to make her dependent of the man.

But God wanted to convey two theological truths (not just one) in the formation of the woman from the rib of Adam: since the woman was taken out of the man, 1) she is fully and equally human since she has come from his bones and his flesh, and 2) her very human nature is constituted, not in parallel fashion to his with both formed from the same earth, but as derived from his own nature so showing a God-chosen dependence upon him for her origination.

In other words, the woman must be the man’s subject and dependent of him or Genesis 2 speaks only of equality.

In an effort to find his “derivation” theology already in Genesis 1, Mr. Ware points out that the Hebrew word ‘adam, found in Genesis 1.26, is a masculine word and therefore it teaches us “that woman possesses her common human nature only through the prior nature of the man.”  Mr. Ware seems strangely unaware of the fact that the gender of a word is an artificial linguistic tool, not a theological statement; for example, spirit is a feminine word in Hebrew but neuter in Greek. Mr. Ware adds to the confusion when he writes, “Since this is so, we should resist the movement today in Bible translation that would customarily render instances of áa„d£a„m with the fully non-gender specific term ‘human being'. This misses the God-intended implication conveyed by the masculine generic ‘man,' viz., that woman possesses her common human nature only through the prior nature of the man.” How strange then that the creators of the Greek Septuagint (250 BCE) translated ‘adam with anthropos, a non-gender specific Greek term for “human being.”  Perhaps the dictionary has it right, and ‘adam is a non-gender specific word for “human being” in Hebrew.

As long as Mr. Ware’s focus was on the first humans, his theology was able to survive, albeit full of holes. But when he begins to apply it to singles, the boat sinks before it even has had a change to float.  Mr. Ware writes that a marriage is only a shadow of the union between Christ and the church, wherefore “no believing single will miss out on the reality of marriage even if God calls him or her to live without the shadow.” So far so good. But when the question of the man’s authority is brought up, Mr. Ware suddenly writes that the man's prior creation “does not entail the authority of all men over all women,” for the man’s authority should be extended only to Christian husbands and the elders of the church. All single people should therefore be members of a church “where they may be involved in the authority structure of that church,” for “qualified male elders are responsible for the spiritual welfare of their membership, and so single women, in particular, may find a source of spiritual counsel and guidance from these male elders in the absence of a husband who might otherwise offer such help.” If only married women are subject to their husbands, why does Mr. Ware nevertheless insist that Christian single women offer deference to Christian single men?

Second, the temporal priority of the male in the image of God means that in general, within male-female relationships among singles, there should be a deference offered to the men by the women of the group, which acknowledges the woman's reception of her human nature in the image of God through the man, but which also stops short of a full and general submission of women to men. Deference, respect, and honor should be showed to men, but never should there be an expectation that all the women must submit to the men's wishes. And for single men, there should be a gentle and respectful leadership exerted within a mixed group, while this also falls short of the special authority that husbands and fathers have in their homes, or that elders have in the assembly. Because all are in the image of God, and because women generally are image of God through the man, some expression of this male-headship principle ought to be exhibited generally among women and men, while reserving the particular full relationships of authority to those specified in Scripture, viz. in the home and the believing community.

Although Mr. Ware has an explanation to the subjection of women and children, he doesn’t provide an explanation how a man can have authority over another man. Since all men are directly in the image of God and therefore equal, Mr. Ware lacks the means to make a man subject to another man, wherefore he lacks a foundation for the authority of the elders in the church.


 To conclude, Mr. Ware's "derivation" theology has several serious flaws:

1. Why do men not derive the Image of God from women although they are born of women?
2. How do men transfer the Image of God to their children if also Seth derived the Image of God from Adam in the likeness of his mother Eve?
3. If husbands have authority over their wives because Eve was created from Adam, what is the foundation of a man's authority over another man?
4. If all men do not have authority over all women, why must single Christian women offer deference to single Christian men?

We know today that the woman has a far more active role in procreation than Aristotle thought. In addition, since Aristotle's fall from grace, the woman has been released from her inferior position in society and has advanced to near equality with the man. It is an unspeakable tragedy that hierarchical theology has become the new torch bearer for the idea that the woman has a lesser role in the creation of new life, wherefore she must be the man's subject - all in the name of God.