LOL Evangelical feminist wymyn throw a fit, think Connubial Christ talk is misogynist, Reformed parachurch group The Gospel Coalition retreats in fear

How dare you objectify me and call me a fertile field!

In the wake of growing controversy, evangelical Reformed parachurch group The Gospel Coalition (TGC) has retracted an article that used explicit sexual language as a metaphor for salvation. However, some say the retraction does not address underlying issues of concern. ... “They do know, right, that the idea of women as a fertile field to be planted with male sperm is not only misogynist but inaccurate? Don’t they????” tweeted author and Baylor University Professor Beth Allison Barr.

More. 

 

Rod Dreher ably defends Josh Butler from an historical point of view here.

Such discussions inevitably ignore the development of ideas within the New Testament itself.

The creepy connubial Christ talk of the New Testament gets some of its inspiration from OT prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah

 For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.

-- Isaiah 54:5

Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD.

-- Jeremiah 3:20

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

-- Jeremiah 31:21

Creepy connubial Christ talk at First Things and the Book of Revelation

Loving with Mary :

Mary, the Shulammite, turns around to Jesus. In his voice and face, she recognizes her husband, her Lord. Jesus is the groom; we ourselves are Mary, the Shulammite. Her grief is our grief, her tears our tears, and her despair our despair. ...

We, his bride, hold on to him, united to him in faith. Every Eighth Day, he comes to us in the preaching of the gospel; every Sunday morning in the breaking of the bread.

When we walk into church and the doors close behind us, we enter into heaven. Eastertide begins; time and space are reconfigured. It is the Eighth Day; we are in Paradise. Eve, the Shulammite, Mary Magdalene—we all join Jesus at the altar. Bread and wine show up. It’s a marriage supper. Our groom, our Lord, unites himself to us, his bride.

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to be clothed

with fine linen, bright and pure—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19:6–8)

And you thought gender confusion was so . . . fringe.

It's creepy he doesn't realize he's the bride

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. 

-- II Corinthians 11:2

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

-- Romans 7:4

What Kind Of Faith Is It When You Say Jesus Is Your Husband And The Father Of Your Child?

From The New York Times, here:

Evangelicals are assuring single moms that God has a plan for them, and it still includes marriage — just not in the way they expected. Rita Viselli found herself pregnant at age 35 with the child of a man she was casually dating. She was a recovering drug addict, the troubled daughter of a single mother herself, and a recent convert to evangelical Christianity. In 2000 she began a Bible study for single mothers in her living room in Southern California. She taught them what she had realized: “I have a husband. His name is Jesus Christ. I have decided that he will be my daughter’s father, and she has grown up being told that God is her father. He is real in our house,” she told me. “He has provided for me and my child better than 10 husbands could have.”

This connubial language pervades the small but growing world of evangelical single mothers’ ministries. It has deep roots in Christian spirituality. In mystical marriage to Jesus, medieval nuns and laywomen found one of the few paths to spiritual authority open to them, an escape from repressive reality. When Margery Kempe, an English mystic born around 1373, heard Jesus say “I take you, Margery, for my wedded wife,” she “felt the fire of love burning in her breast.”

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What if Mary the mother of Jesus thought the same way? That God was the father of her bastard baby? Is that how the Son of God idea started in Christianity, and the idea of the virgin birth, as a kind of spiritual rationalization of a poor woman's predicament which fatefully imbedded itself in the mind of Jesus because that's what Mary kept telling him all his life?

"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."

-- Matthew 23:9