Responding to a It's Good to Be a Man Review

I appreciate Pastor Matt Damico's recent review of It’s Good to Be a Man (linked at the bottom). It’s clear he has read it and considered it thoughtfully. I’m glad that he finds it to be a helpful book overall, one which he can recommend. I wanted to briefly address his two qualifications: one theological and the other a matter of precision.

They aren’t without merit. I will tackle them in reverse order.

Damico believes that our "lack of precision undermines what the book aims to do." I think that is true in a few places. If we were to do a second edition, I would add several qualifying adverbs and a few clarifying sentences. Additionally, I would probably entirely redo the most problematic chapter (ch. 5). I think Bnonn and I both grew tremendously as writers through the process of writing this book. While I’m sure the arguments would stay the same, the shape of the book would be somewhat different if we wrote it now.

Consider Proverbs 10:4: “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” This is a general truth. It does not mean that all diligent people will be rich, nor does it mean that all lazy people will be poor. We all know for a fact that some diligent people lack riches and some lazy people have them. Moreover, this isn’t a commentary on whether or not people have hands. I know that sounds ridiculous, but some people read words that woodenly these days. It’s imprecise speech. It’s proverbial. It’s meant to stick with you and move you to action. That’s what we were going for in this book, no doubt imperfectly (hence, Damico’s qualification).

We had to stew on Damico’s theological critique that we misapplied the Creator-creature distinction. That was a new critique. I was, at least in part, pulling from William K. Mouser’s thinking. In The Story of Sex in Scripture, Mouser writes:

In bearing the image of God, both men and women are patterned after God’s attributes, and in our rebirth we are being conformed to the image of Christ. But in our sexuality, men are to replicate as creatures the masculine roles of God, and women are to replicate the feminine roles of the creation–bride, wife, mother, city, and finally the chosen dwelling place of God. There is no neuter, neutral, or genderless ground.

In a final sense masculinity not only ‘expresses’ headship; it is the head. In a final sense, femininity not only ‘establishes’ home; it is the home. Mature masculinity expresses headship through words and works to provide and protect the dependents and domain under its authority. Mature femininity establishes home through lifegiving and wisdom, providing dwelling for men, children, and even for God.

The value of woman is that she, like man, is created in the image of God. The price of woman is that she, like man, is bought with the blood of Christ. Her equality of essence and nature are grounded in Scripture. So in image, man and woman are the same, but in glory, they are different. It is the glory of man to share masculinity with God. It is the glory of woman to share femininity.

I recommend Mouser’s book as it is short and explains how God, a spirit without a body, can be masculine. Anyhow, we made it clear in a few spots that men and women equally bear the image of God. We were trying to be symbolic (we think Scripture uses the same symbolism) and not ontological in the passage Daminco cites. However, the book wasn’t about the contrasting men and women. So, it didn’t come up a lot.

One more thing. Damico says:

At times, the authors affirm that Genesis 1:26–28 is given to both men and women, yet at other times the emphasis is that dominion is given to men. These statements are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they were not clarified and explained.

In Chapter 3, we write, “But these duties of dominion fall on them both, because the creation mandate is given to mankind collectively.” So, we focus on the male side of that dominion because that was the book’s purpose. Most books on masculinity I’ve read constantly contrast men and women and/or focus on manhood purely in terms of marriage or fatherhood. We were trying to do something different. Overall, I think we succeeded, but the reviews have been sharpening.

Link: https://cbmw.org/.../review-of-michael-foster-dominic.../