1.5/5 ⭐️ (I think this is one of the longest reviews I’ve written)
I want to be clear: complementarianism is not inherently sexist. You can be a complementarian who loves and cares about women and who has a different interpretation of scripture than I do and that doesn’t make you an unloving, unkind misogynist.
While I fall on the egalitarian side of the isle, I read complementarian authors fairly regularly, in fact the other authors in this series are complementarian; I found their books insightful and not at all a reductionist view towards women.
This book, well, I feel differently. Now I’d like to start with what I felt the author did well. He made some good points!
I liked in the Defining Courage chapter, how he talked about virtues, I felt that was a great explanation that I’ll definitely use in the future. Also when he talks about our greatest danger being God, I thought that was great! I also liked this quote: “This gospel is the fountain of Christian courage. It is the source of holy boldness and fortitude. And this gospel courage has two distinct movements—boldness before God and boldness before men.” I think that summarized the majority of this book!
I don’t feel like the author was concise which took away from his points. Most of the book wasn’t new info.
He began to lose me as he lumped in egalitarianism with progressive theology and said we need to call it out as sin (which believe it or not you CAN be egalitarian without subscribing to progressive theology).
The book has a bias against women and a cultural view on women that paints them as weak. I can’t help but feel like women were an afterthought while writing this. Most of his examples and explanations were overtly masculine (even when they didn’t need to be!). I think (genuinely - I don’t mean this to be insulting) he wrote this book expressly for men and then realized he needed to add something since this is a part of a larger body of work that is for both sexes.
While I can say that I appreciate the courage (*ba dum tiss*) that it takes to talk about differences between men and women, I can also say the author did an objectively bad job.
When he shifts from talking about men to women’s differences in how they display courage he actually says “Women, children, and the weak are able to cultivate and display Christian courage in their stability of soul and patient endurance of evil.” Like my brother in Christ are you well??? Why do men get pages of praise while women are lumped in with CHILDREN AND THE WEAK?? That actually made me laugh it was so ridiculous. He also really only talks about womens courage in the context of “marry, submit, bear children, and be quiet” - “what about single women?” you might be asking (apparently they don’t exist?)
He also gives Sarah as the most lengthy example (how she submits to Abraham) instead of using more applicable texts like Deborah, Mary, Esther, or Ruth. He does briefly mention Jael (and he talks about Abigail - again as quietly submissive) but it’s very telling that Sarah’s his main example from the Bible. He also gives Shakespearean examples (only in how those women submit and are gentle). He then makes a weird, side point in how it’s “unseemly” for women to fight in battle (when talking about Narnia) unless they have no other choice, and points to how Lucy fighting in battle wasn’t actually courage - no, no! - her courageous act was submitting to Peter. Overall, he pigeonholed examples to fit his narrative - disappointing when he could’ve found more robust examples of courage than just “submit!”
Submission isn’t a bad thing in fact it’s a very very good thing, but it’s not the ONLY thing and it’s disappointing that this author gave such a half-hearted attempt at addressing feminine courage - I’d rather he not attempt at all.
I don’t think the author hates women and I agreed with some of his ideas and loved how he emboldened men to be courageous in this book. But I do think he has too simple and too low (not LOW but lower than it should be) a view of us as image bearers and as his sisters in Christ, and I think some of his ideas of how women operate are more fiction than fact and I think he (as a Christian man) has a duty to do better.