Dr. David Edgington fills the pages of his book with real-life counseling situations and actual interactions with the church’s prominent figures. He provides the testimonies of men and women affected by the sins of reviling and white-knighting. You will not be bored reading the book! I read this 268-page book in four days. I couldn’t put it down. You won’t be bored, but you may be offended. That’s ok. May that offense be the work of the Spirit to soften your heart and open your eyes to the severity of the problem.

With the help of New Christendom Press, Dr. David Edgington has set fire to feminism. Through his new book, Edgington exposes the toxic effects that feminism has had in the field of counseling in general, and in Christian marriages in particular. In four parts, Edgington offers a full view of the problem today and its hard-fought solution: foundations, failures, feminization, and freedom.

Foundations

If the doctrinal foundations are shaky, then every application or exhortation will be misguided and topple over all who seek stability on these foundations. Fundamental to the biblical worldview through which to see how God made the world is patriarchy, rightly understood. Sadly, people from the world and the church have responded negatively to patriarchy. “Smash the patriarchy!” we’re told. What an interesting command, especially when we realize that God designed the world to be pervasively patriarchal. Edgington skillfully summarizes the biblical data that undergird creation’s design of father-rule. He encourages us to recover the right view of Genesis 3:16: the man’s God-given rule, and the woman’s desire to usurp her husband. Patriarchy is pre-Fall and good. Perhaps most ironically, the white knight emerges from the fact of patriarchy, but he turns out to function as an abuse of patriarchy. The white knight is that male (pastor, counselor, established presence) who uses his God-given authority to defend, minimize, rationalize, or downplay the sins of women, and to attack the godly man who has a reviling wife.

Edgington’s chapter on submission is a necessary corrective to modern misuses and present perspectives on defining or applying the term. Some argue for a kind of “mutual submission,” which is simply a distortion of Paul’s words from Ephesians 5. I’ve noted this distortion myself many times. Many contend that the man and the woman are to submit mutually to each other. A little biblical logic goes a long way. For those who think that husbands and wives should mutually submit, what would they say of the parent-child relation, or the master-slave relation? Does the parent submit to his child? Does the master subject himself to his slave? Clearly, the husband does not submit to his wife. But this is the view that feminism sets forth, and too many in the church seem too happy to interpret God’s Word according to the world. Edgington’s section on why women initiate divorce more than men is fascinating and informative. He has a section on whether the woman should prioritize submission to her husband or her pastor. Although I don’t disagree with his remarks in this short section, a little more clarity or nuance would have helped his comments. I say this because a pastor (or a church’s group of elders) does have a spiritual authority over both man and woman, which authority should be consulted and considered. Sometimes, the woman should take her pastor’s counsel over her husband’s. As a counselor, Edgington offers practical applications by showing examples of unsubmissive wives and highlighting what to look for in potential wives. This section itself could be passed on to a man looking for a godly wife, or pulled out and made as a Sunday School lesson or Bible study.

In chapter 3, when laying the foundation, Edgington uncovers the kingdom of darkness to put on display the demons at work. Christian marriages are the field for a lot of spiritual warfare. Edgington shows several ways the demons work to undo the holy union between man and wife. The tongue, DARVO as a tactic (Deny, Attack, Reverse, Victim, Offender), mental illness, bitterness, unforgiveness, and other factors are part and parcel of the devilish arsenal to lay siege to sanctified marriages. The Bible has a lot to say. The demons have a lot to hate. In whose hands are our men and women?

Failures

Lamentably, as David demonstrates, people have listened more to the devil than to the Deity, more to the world than to the Word. Pastors, counselors, teachers, publishing houses, and organizations have been so severely affected by worldly thinking that they turn out to be white knights, wittingly or unwittingly. As a pastor, I found chapter 4 personally incisive. Through his words I was able to reflect on my own preaching, teaching, and counseling ministry. How do I fare? Do my words enable the reviling wife? Do my words defend the godly husband? Do my words call out sin wherever it is found, in either man or wife? I am strong on the men and in their sin in the church. Am I equally strong with the women and their sin? Or am I (unintentionally) a white knight myself? Every pastor must read this chapter, and the following one on joint counseling.

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