You Tell Me: Women and Theology

Here’s a question from my email that I don’t know how to answer. Can you help me out?

Why are so few women interested in theology?  

First, I suppose, we need to think a little bit about whether it is accurate to say that few women are interested in theology. I don’t know many other women in my real life that like theology as much as I do, so my gut feeling is that there is truth in the question. I have theologically interested friends online, but many of them feel like they are odd-women-out in their real lives, too.

We’d also need to think about whether women in general are less interested in theology than men in general. I don’t know many men who are interested in theology, either. However, I do think that men who are interested in theology have an easier time finding other men with the same interest than a woman has finding other women who enjoy theology.

Also from the email:

It just seems so sad that there are so few Marys today that really dig into God’s Word.

This statement suggests that the problem is worse now than in earlier times. Do you think this is so? I know there were women of the past who wrote doctrinally deep letters and poems and hymns, but I suspect they, too, were exceptions to the norm. And as this statement reminds us, there’s an historical account in the Bible dealing with the issue. This makes me think it’s a universal problem. People tend to make a priority out of pressing duties (and they are duties) and in the process, neglect more important ones.

Here’s a little more:

I have recently been in contact with two women who were instrumental in my conversion 30 years ago. Although both seem to have faith in the Lord, neither of them seem particularly interested in theology, and I guess that surprises me.  

So the emailer is not writing specifically about young women, who might be overwhelmed with the obligations of home and children. I’m concerned that even asking the question might add to the pressure to excel at everything that many younger women feel. But Mary yearned to know Jesus better and that’s something that should be true of all of us at every stage of life.

What do you think? 

Round the Sphere Again: Learning from Others

Those Who Don’t Look Like Us
Amy Scott encourages us to learn from people who are not exactly in our group.

[T]he more we invest our lives into learning and growing from those that don’t “look like us”, the more we’ll learn. 

(Amy’s Humble Musings)

Those on Whose Shoulders We Stand
There are so many reasons to learn about (and from) the Church fathers (The Upward Call).

A Short Explanation of Total Depravity

The word total in the term total depravity means that the depravity that came to all of us as a result of the fall affects every part of our being. If I’d been naming the doctrine, I’d have called it “comprehensive” depravity, but no one asked me, so  we’re stuck with a name that many find confusing.

It all boils down to this: Post-fall, nothing in us works the way it was created to work. Our bodies have their faults. We get sick; our teeth decay; we have genetic imperfections; and we all eventually die. Our minds are imperfect, leaving our thinking powers warped. Our emotions run amuck, too. And this depravity extends to our wills, leaving us with desires that have also been corrupted. 

The corruption of our desires—of our will—puts us in a pickle when it comes to the demands God makes on us as his creatures. He commands that we obey him, but in our natural state, we don’t really want to, and even when we make an attempt to obey, we don’t do it for the right reasons. Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us that people in their natural post fall state—those who remain dead in trespasses and sins—are living out their lives in the cravings of their flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind. They don’t care about pleasing God; but rather, they care about pleasing their own flesh. This problem of persistent warped desires is universal. Those who are not yet believers remain in that state and those who are believers were once in that state.

You see the predicament, right? God’s commandments are nothing more than what people ought to be doing, yet the corruption that came to every one of us through the fall warps our desires so that we just keep on indulging our twisted cravings instead of doing what God asks us to do. Fallen human beings are so intransigent in this disobedience that scripture tells us that the natural person—a person who remains as they are born post fall without any supernatural intervention—is unable to submit to God’s commands (Romans 8:7-8). 

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