How Do the Nonphysical Differences Between Men and Women Relate to the Physical Differences?
In C. S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Perelandra, Dr. Ransom is on the planet Venus and at one point witnesses an angelic celebration. He realizes that some of the angels seem to be masculine and some feminine. We’re told that Ransom “found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore.”1 There was something unmissable and yet also indefinable about this masculinity and femininity. Some of us may relate: we know masculinity and femininity exist, we recognize them when we see them, but we struggle to put our finger on exactly what each consists of.
In his book The Meaning of Marriage, Tim Keller makes a similar point:
It is my experience that it is nearly impossible to come up with a single, detailed, and very specific set of “manly” or “womanly” characteristics that fits every temperament and culture. Rather than defining “masculinity” and “femininity” (a traditional approach) or denying and suppressing them (a secular approach), I propose that within each Christian community you watch for and appreciate the inevitable differences that will appear between male and female in your particular generation, culture, people, and place.2
This means that true, biblical masculinity and true, biblical femininity are, respectively, simply what naturally emerges when men and women grow in Christ. Biblically speaking, masculinity is what long-term sanctification produces in Christian men and femininity what long-term sanctification produces in women.
This must certainly be true; whatever else manhood and womanhood are, they can’t be less than or different from godliness in a man or a woman. We can often recognize real masculinity and femininity when we see it, even if we don’t necessarily feel able to pin such things down.
Writer and teacher Jen Wilkin suggests that our physical differences go some way to explaining our nonphysical differences. For example, she says, the greater physical size and strength of most men compared to most women significantly shapes how each sex sees the world.3 Women, she suggests, will more likely be conscious of physical vulnerability in a way that won’t generally be the case with as many men, and as a result women are more likely to be attuned to and sympathetic toward vulnerability in others.
I was recently glancing at a discussion on Facebook about transgenderism and noticed that someone—not a Christian, by all accounts—made a similar point. The issue was whether transgender women (biological males identifying as female) could fully enter into the experience of womanhood without having had to encounter the world as a biological female, and this commenter (a woman) said, “In my experience men finally ‘get it’ when they become elderly. You have no clue what it’s like to live in a world where half the population can beat you to a pulp.” Entering into older age and beginning to experience a measure of physical vulnerability can help men understand something of what many women have experienced in the course of their whole lives.
This principle—that many of the observable differences between men and women have their origins in our physical differences—makes a lot of sense. Our body, soul, and spirit are deeply connected, as we’ve seen. It would certainly make sense that our bodily encounter with the world would shape how we each instinctively think, perceive, and behave. It would also make sense that the physical commonalities we share as a biological sex lead to general and observable differences between men and women that are nevertheless not absolute and which will vary from culture to culture.
Nonphyscial Differences
Some of these differences may be reflected in biblical passages addressed specifically to men or women. We need to be careful not to read more into such texts than may be there, especially by generalizing from something that may be particular. But it strikes me that in a number of places we may be getting some indirect glimpses into what some of our nonphysical differences look like.
In his instructions to Timothy about church life in Ephesus, Paul directs the following instructions to men:
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. (1 Tim. 2:8)
Paul is directing this call to pray specifically to men. This is not to suggest that Paul doesn’t want the women in the church to similarly lift up holy hands in prayer. The rest of the Bible makes abundantly clear that prayer is not a privilege reserved only for men. All Christians are to be people of prayer. But for some reason Paul felt that this needed to be said to the men in particular.
It seems that Paul’s words were triggered by particular behavior he’d learned about in the Christian circles he was writing to. Among the men, prayer was either being neglected or it was being practiced alongside ongoing enmity between them. Paul’s response is clear: he wants the men to lift holy hands in prayer. The focus is not so much on the hands being lifted as on them being pure. We’ll see at a later point that the Bible shows us a range of postures that were used in prayer—we’ll need to come back and think about that. But the point here is less about the posture than the attitude.
This must certainly be true; whatever else manhood and womanhood are, they can’t be less than or different from godliness in a man or a woman.
But though there is clearly specific behavior Paul is responding to, we also see that it has wider application. Paul hints at this by saying he wants men to be praying “in every place.” This goes far beyond what the guys are up to in Ephesus; the directive extends to men everywhere (and, by implication, in every time). This is not just for them there; it is for us too.
This being so, it may reflect something more generally true of men than women. Men are generally more likely to need to hear the admonition to pray than women. It is not that women don’t need the same level of encouragement to pray—they do. The issue instead is that perhaps men, overall, are more likely to be quarrelsome—not universally (all men, without exception), absolutely (all men to the same extent, with no variation), or exclusively (only men, as if women couldn’t be quarrelsome), but generally, typically. And if this is the case, then it makes sense of what Paul is calling men to do in response. If there is a tendency for men to be quarrelsome, then calling them to be men of prayer instead is not arbitrary. Rather than wrestle one another in conflict, they are to wrestle God in prayer (like Epaphras, in Colossians 4:12). Better to have “hands raised in prayer to God, not raised in clenched fists towards one another.”4 Inasmuch as men sense this trait within them, it is something that can be channeled in a healthy way and put to spiritual use.
The same may be true of what Paul then says to women in the next verses:
Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. (1 Tim. 2:9–10)
Again, we can assume Paul’s exhortation is prompted by particular behavior among his readers that he had become aware of. He is correcting a real issue in a real place. But (also again) the fact that this comes in a letter in which the aim is to show “how one ought to behave in the household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15), we can assume it is not only about them but has wider significance beyond Ephesus at that time. If I am correct, we might expect to see another correlation between what Paul is steering them away from and what he is steering them to. The issue seems to be ostentatious dress. Not that Paul is discouraging effort in appearance; he’s discouraging effort that is deliberately attention seeking. This tendency isn’t entirely absent among men, and again Paul is not arguing against personal grooming or taking care in one’s appearance; he is arguing against ostentation.
Surely there is significance in that Paul’s instruction is directed toward women and not toward men. Just as not only men can be quarrelsome, so too not only women can be vain about appearance. But just as it is telling that Paul directed men in particular not to be quarrelsome, it is likely telling that here it is women he directs not to be ostentatious. I think we can legitimately infer from this that ostentation might be more of an issue among women in general than among men.
And just as Paul, observing a particular trait among men, directed them to channel that trait in a more spiritually constructive direction, so too he does the same here. If there is a tendency to draw the attention of others anywhere, it’s better to draw it toward God through good works than toward self through ostentatious appearance.
These texts were both prompted by Paul’s observing and redirecting negative traits. But he observes positive traits too. Writing to the Christians in Thessalonica, Paul reminds them of how he had ministered when he had been with them in person:
We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. (1 Thess. 2:7)
Paul often likens gospel ministry to the work of a parent. Here he specifically likens it to the work of a mother nursing small children. There was a warmth and tenderness in his ministry that brings to his mind how a mother cares for such a young child.
We mustn’t read into the maternal imagery more than is clearly there, but it is interesting that Paul should especially associate these traits with women nursing babies. He expects such care to be present among mothers. However typically they may be so, they are clearly not exclusively so, as here we find Paul himself embodying the very same qualities in his apostolic ministry.
This sort of tenderness is not uniformly going to be present in all mothers without exception, nor should men shy away from being characterized by it (or Paul would not be drawing attention to his own example of it). Gentleness, with all that it involves, is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit that all believers are called to bear (Gal. 5:22–23). If it is true that it is more commonly found in women (or at least in nursing mothers), it is not meant to be found only there. This surely is the point. Inasmuch as there may be traits (positive and negative) that are generally true of men and women, we must not be hard and fast about it. Such traits (again, inasmuch as they exist) are not going to be characteristic of any sex absolutely, universally, or exclusively. They may be typical, but they will also be unevenly present and shared with the other sex as well. If, say, gentleness is more typical of women, it isn’t equally true of all women to the same extent. And some men are gentler than some women. This does not mean that such men are in any way lacking in their masculinity; it simply reflects that we manifest the ninefold fruit of the Holy Spirit in differing proportions, between the sexes and within them. God has not called women to bear half the fruit of the Spirit and men the other half. All of us are to be marked by all that comprises this fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. We celebrate these wherever we see them, and we never stigmatize any who bear some of them in surprising measure. Being more manly will never mean being less spiritual. Sam Andreades puts it this way:
Gender comes in specialties. Specialties are things we all might do sometimes, but the specialist focuses on especially doing them. We may do many things for each other that are the same, but the gender magic happens when we lean into the asymmetries. Just as, physically, both males and females need both androgen and estrogen hormones, and it is the relative amounts that differ in the sexes, so the gender distinctives are things that both men and women may be able to do, and do do, but when done as specialties to one another, they propel relationship.5
So the differences that exist are not absolute, as though the things men can do only men can do, and the things women can do no man could ever do. Yet there are some general ways in which men and women are distinct from each other while at the same time being very much alike. We are not meant to be interchangeable, so that all one can do, the other must also do in exactly the same way. It is not always helpful to compare one with another, as though we are pitted against each other in a zero-sum competition.6
As with many things, G. K. Chesterton hits the nail on the head in this short poem:
If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the town beside the country,
And if I set the man beside the woman,
I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.7
Notes:
- C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (1943; repr., London: HarperCollins, 2005), 253.
- Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Marriage with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), 200.
- Jen Wilkin, “General Session 2,” Advance 2017 conference, hosted by Acts29 US Southeast, accessed June 28, 2020, https://vimeo.com/243476316.
- Angus MacLeay, Teaching 1 Timothy: From Text to Message (Ross-Shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2012), 99.
- Sam Andreades, Engendered: God’s Gift of Gender Difference in Relationship (Wooster, OH: Weaver, 2015), 132; emphasis original.
- See the observation by Eric Metaxas in Seven Women and the Secret of Their Greatness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015), xviii–xix.
- G. K. Chesterton, “Comparisons,” Poetry Nook website, accessed December 1, 2020, https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/comparisons-4.
This article is adapted from What God Has to Say about Our Bodies: How the Gospel Is Good News for Our Physical Selves by Sam Allbery.
Sam Allberry is the associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville. He is the author of various books, including One with My Lord; What God Has to Say about Our Bodies; and Is God Anti-Gay?, and the cohost of the podcast You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. He is a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
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