Q. It appears to me that historically speaking it is the ministry of Jesus (Lk. 8.1-3) which involved female disciples and the theology that arose out of Pentecost wherein calling and gifting, not gender was to determine roles in the Jesus movement, not the incarnation, and Mary’s involvement in it, that led to women’s various new roles in the Jesus movement. I say this especially in light of the Pauline literature. How would you differ at this point? A.... Read more
Q. There is a difference in the Bible between naming and activities. Yes indeed there are various activities in which God is said to be like a mother, and Jesus as well, but God is nowhere named Mother in the Bible, and to reduce God the Father to God the parent is to depersonalize the language. Jesus had a human mother and a heavenly Father and in this he was unique, and he did not call God the Father ‘Mother’... Read more
Q. Luke 1.35 is about the Holy Spirit, not about God the Father. It is the Spirit who overshadows and protects Mary but also it is the Spirit that conveys the divine power that produces the child in Mary’s womb. This has nothing to do with God’s begetting the eternal Son which took place before space and time. God is called Father because of that begetting, not because of what happened in Mary’s womb. This should have been clear when... Read more
Q. For me one crucial text to understanding all this is Phil. 2.5-11, and it is one of the keys to understanding why we have exhortations to imitate Christ or to have the same mental attitude about life and follow his example. I take what that text says very seriously. God the Son could have taken advantage of being equal to God the Father, but instead, to be genuinely human without in any way giving up his divinity, he put... Read more
So far as I can see there is no real discussion in your book of human fallenness or the ongoing effects of original sin on human nature, and this puzzled me not least since many of the early Christian interpreters thought that the virginal conception and the sanctifying of Mary’s womb (not her immaculate conception) was so that Jesus could be like Adam before the Fall, without an inclination to sin or a sin nature. Was there a reason you... Read more
Speaking personally, I am not comfortable with the term theotokos as applied after the NT era to Mary, any more than I think later Mariology in regard to her sinlessness or immaculate conception, or perpetual virginity or bodily assumption into heaven has any grounding in what the NT says about Mary, nor is a logical or proper extension of what the NT does say about her. God the Son existed long before Mary, and when God the Son took on... Read more
My wife is a biologist and botanist, now retired, and enjoying gardening, but she reminds me that at least one of your arguments which has to do with Jesus being a unique male doesn’t really work considering the issue of chromosomes. The male sperm provides the necessary chromosome for a fetus to be a male, and this is not ever the contribution of the woman. What this means is that in the virginal conception while Mary certainly did her part,... Read more
With so many books of late written about women in the NT, and even the subdiscipline of feminist interpretations of women in the NT, what was it that prompted you to write this book in particular? Yes, it was with fear and trepidation that I entered into such a well-stocked field! I became convinced that attention to Mary was still not an oversaturated market (especially for Protestants) and that the theological questions her role in God’s salvation prompted demanded... Read more
Women and the Gender of God (Eerdmans, 2022, $24.95) is certainly one of the more probing and thought provoking books written about women in the Bible and the larger gender issues written in the last 20 or so years. Professor Peeler, who teaches at Wheaton College has provided us with a detailed, well-researched book that even for readers like me that have read so many books in this field, must say here is something both fresh and challenging in a... Read more
This auto-biography of a rock star is atypical in so many ways, not least it is not about dissipation, immorality, drug taking, and it has a lot negative and healthy things to say about the narcissism of fame and stardom. Nor is it about suddenly growing a conscience long enough to do a benefit concert for some worthy cause. No there is much more here to show that this person, and the band that supported his efforts was going well... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In