David Capes’s Assault Against the “Assault” Against “the male-female distinction”

We live at a time when people want to deny or erase the male-female distinction: to do so is to assault humanity itself and diminish God in the process.
– David Capes, 21st century

There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no “male and female”; you are all one in the Messiah Jesus.
– Paul, 1st century (translated by N.T. Wright in the 21st century)

At the blog for “The Voice” Bible, David Capes posted yesterday “They Come in Pairs (no, it’s not about Noah’s ark)” to correct, or perhaps to clarify, posts from Creig Marlowe. Capes also says he’s been inspired by the Marlowe posts and also by comments elsewhere made by N. T. Wright. The gist of Capes’s post is to acknowledge what Marlowe does with “binaries” in Genesis, but he wants to move away from what Marlowe does to make a greater acknowledgement of some sharp inherent distinction between male and female as part of God and as part of humanity. His post is written to assault the assault against “the male-female distinction.”

Here’s the paragraph in which Capes gives Marlowe’s “binary” method the nod:

Dr. Marlowe is correct that some of these binaries form a hendiadys (literally, one through two). A hendiadys is an expression of a single idea by the use of two words often connected with “and” or some other conjunction. “His legal case is not black and white” uses a hendiadys. “Black and white” is not describing the color of the case but essentially that the facts of the case are not clear. If a case is “open and shut,” on the other hand, it is clear. In Genesis 1.1 “heavens and earth” describe not so much two things but one for which there is no Hebrew word,”the universe.” “Heaven” means everything above your head and “earth” means everything below your feet, in a sense then both words together mean “everything.” That is why we translated Gen 1.1 in The Voice: In the beginning God created everthing [sic], the heavens above, the earth below . . . “

Here’s the conclusion of Capes, his assault against this alleged assault on humanity itself:

The final binary “male and female” deserves special attention. Male and female make up one thing, humanity, and this humanity reflects the image of God. But it is in their differences, their complementarities that male and female reflect the imago dei. Male has no greater claim than female on imaging God. It is in their union together and distinctions from one another that God’s likeness is on full display. We live at a time when people want to deny or erase the male-female distinction: to do so is to assault humanity itself and diminish God in the process. Here is the commentary embedded at Genesis 1:27 in The Voice:

The crown of God’s creation is a new creature, a creature that can sound the heartbeat of its Creator. That creature, made male and female, reflects God’s own relational richness. The human family is to join God in the ongoing work of creation. The earth below and the sky above with all their inhabitants are too beautiful and too good to be left alone. They need the tender care and close attention that only God’s favored creature can give.

In Genesis 1:28ff. God blesses the humans and gives them the prime directive: be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. In other words, humans are now directed to participate with God in the ongoing work of creation. God no longer creates ex nihilo. He uses preexisting elements and persons in order to fashion the next generation. Through the sexual union male and female become one flesh and life as we know it goes on.

What is interesting is how much more space and “special attention” Capes gives to this “final binary” of six total that he reviews. He need not apply his logic of distinction to any of the other five “binaries.” For the “the male-female” binary, Capes feels the need to assert “their differences, their complementarities.” For the “the male-female” binary, there needs to be “the sexual.”

N. T. Wright, who “inspires” Capes, has said that these special binaries are indeed the most special. They are the ones that must be complementary. The metaphors of difference, the constructs, therefore, whenever there is sexual difference, must be realities of difference, even if the Lamb (a male) and the Church (a female) are married.

Here are just a few problems:

1. With the sexual in the binary of special attention to save all humanity, there is this idea, a hint of it anyway, that the Creator Being is sexual in the same way a human “male and female ” must be to keep the creation of “the next generation” going. Capes cannot go that far, of course. The best he’ll let himself do is to admit the following:  “Good points, Emily. There are some wonderful images of God in the Scriptures that clearly describe the feminine side.” But he has to distinguish sharply the god-human binary (as a male-female binary) from all the other binaries, for the sake of the next generation.
2. The logic of a “hendiadys” ostensibly must be abandoned when there is sex. The assertion of “both/and” categorical binaries, for Capes, becomes an assault, towards a denial or erasure of the male-female distinction.
3. Genesis 5 and the story of Noah is still close by, despite what Capes wants for his funny blog title: “… Pairs (no, it’s not about Noah’s ark).” So when Paul uses “ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ” as a frozen phrase to his Greek readers in 1st century Galatia explicitly in order “to deny or erase the male-female distinction,” he’s likely not forgetting that old story of salvation that requires pairs on the ark, where in the LXX the same phrase is used. Paul is saying that his “Messiah,” who never was a male-one-flesh-with-a-female kind of savior, makes this very special sex binary a hendiadys.