Emotions, Gender and Scholarship (by Lynn Cohick)

This post is by co-editor in the Story of God Bible Commentary, and author of an excellent new commentary on Philippians in that series.

Emotions, Gender, and Scholarship

This weekend I attended a memorial for a colleague’s daughter who had passed away from cancer in her 20s.  She graduated from Wheaton College, and a park bench on campus was dedicated to her memory.  Her father told a story about sitting with his daughter on a glorious sunny day in Central Park NYC as she awaited experimental treatment. She asked him, “Why me, Dad?”  It was the question he dreaded, so he stalled for time. “What do you mean?”  She astonished him with her follow-up: “why am I chosen to be so blessed?”  This young woman knew the deep joy of the Lord, a joy unlike all others, because it is wrapped in divine love and peace.

As my colleague spoke, I tried very hard not to cry – you know that lump you get in your throat and you can’t swallow.  Why was I overcome? I think because her life was a testimony to the supernatural grace that God gives, which can come with excruciating pain. Her mother shed silent tears, and we all wished at that moment that the one we were remembering was sitting before us on the new bench.

And I thought of Paul’s statements to the Philippians, that he wanted to know Christ (3:10), to be with Christ (1:23); he declared that, “to die is gain” (1:21).  That matched this young woman’s testimony.  And I also thought of Paul’s statements about sorrow, that he grieved Epaphroditus’s illness. He shares that if his friend had died, Paul would have felt the deepest sorrow (2:26-8). And I thought, yes, we are right there with you, Paul. Those who remain to remember the life of one who lived in God’s joy have the unhappy honor of singing a testimony amidst our pain to the great goodness of God whose mercies confound the wise.

Emotions are an interesting aspect of our being, and of our communities. They can be gender coded, with women often stereotyped as more emotional than men, at least in our Western culture.  It is assumed that women would be more sensitive, less rational, than men. It came as a bit of a shock to me that not all cultures hold to this. In 2000, when we were moving back to the States from Kenya, the farewell party for my husband given by his co-workers included a number of testimonies.  The nurse matron spoke about how much she would miss his leadership, but that she would not show tears because, “what would my son think of his mother?”

Gendered stereotypes exist in scholarship as well; some might suggest my writing is less interactive with (mostly male) critical scholarship, or more biased towards agendas deemed favorable towards women. But scholarship and writing are not that simple. In my Philippians commentary, for example, I speak about the possible interpretations of the roles played by Euodia and Syntyche. Here are the lines from Philippians 4:2-3:

I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

After laying out the various positions and observing these women’s crucial role in contending for the gospel alongside early Christian leaders like Paul and Clement, I conclude that the only point we can be sure of is that Paul identifies these women as co-workers. Some might expect me to claim Paul cited these women as overseers, others would be disappointed that I was not more direct in declaring them as such.

Scholarship itself is not advanced when gendered stereotypes about emotions or church leadership operate in the background.