The passage overall is concerned with men and women inhabiting their proper roles, and a part of that means looking the part. Men should look like men, and women should look like women. And so Paul says, “Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? –Denny Burk

[Note: “Debatable” is a new feature in which we briefly summarize debates within the evangelical community.]

The Issue Is Christianity masculine? Has ministry become effeminate? The consideration of such questions by leaders in the Reformed movement (for example, John Piper recently said that Christianity has a “masculine feel”) has initiated a debate about whether the modern resurgence of “muscular Christianity” is scriptural and, more generally, whether cultural expectations should shape Christian views of manhood.

Position #1 – In an article for Modern Reformation titled “Muscular Christianity,” Michael Horton, a professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary, argues that “In the drive to make churches more guy-friendly, we risk confusing cultural (especially American) customs with biblical discipleship”:

The back story on all of this is the rise of the “masculine Christianity movement” in Victorian England, especially with Charles Kingsley’s fictional stories in Two Years Ago (1857). D. L. Moody popularized the movement in the United States and baseball-player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday preached it as he pretended to hit a home run against the devil. For those of us raised on testimonies from recently converted football players in youth group, Tim Tebow is hardly a new phenomenon. Reacting against the safe deity, John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart (2001) offered a God who is wild and unpredictable. Neither image is grounded adequately in Scripture. With good intentions, the Promise Keepers movement apparently did not have a significant lasting impact. Nor, I predict, will the call of New Calvinists to a Jesus with “callused hands and big biceps,” “the Ultimate Fighting Jesus.”

[…]

Position #2 — In his reply (Michael Horton, Gender Stereotypes, and Me), Doug Wilson, pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho and Senior Fellow at New Saint Andrews College, says that Horton’s critique appears to rest on a confusion about the role of what gender stereotypes from our culture means since creational differences are expressed in a cultural context:

Suppose you overheard one of the kids from your church telling one of the sweet little church ladies to “eff off.” Suppose you confronted him about it, and he defended himself by saying that the meaning assigned to those particular sounds were assigned by our culture, and not by the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture. Suppose further that he scoffs and says that the whole thing is “linguistically arbitrary.” And, you know, he’s right, and I suppose you also know that he is entirely and completely in the wrong. It is linguistically arbitary, and he still doesn’t get to speak that way.

[…]

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