Brethren Under Fire
The Days of Avoiding Giving Offense Are Over
With only a few exceptions out of scores of appearances in the New Testament, the word "brothers" (adelphoi) refers to men and women collectively. And yet the common practice in the modern churches (I write this on a Sunday when I have had to hear an expansive bishop do it a half-dozen times), even those with orthodox pretensions, is to avoid this biblical use as an offense to women, as though identifying them as "brethren" were a transgression against their dignity and merit.
Surely there is no fault in referring to men and women severally on reasonable occasion.But heavily balancing church language against biblical language in these matters clearly serves the egalitarian heresy, which effaces the headship of the man over the woman and the biblical doctrine of her comprehension in him—as wicked and unspeakable as this doctrine is to the anti-hierarchalism of the modern way of thinking and the apologetic religion that apes it—and upon which reference to both sexes with masculine grammatical markers rests theologically. In Christianity and Orthodox Judaism—both inescapably patriarchal faiths—the woman is primordially contained within the man, and as such, her sex is related to his in such a way that her fundamentally derivative life is found in his federal priority, so that general references to men are also to women.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!
personal subscriptions
Purchase Print &
Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
gift subscriptions
GIVE Print &
Online Subscription
Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
kindle subscription
OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)
Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.
more on culture from the online archives
35.2—Mar/Apr 2022
on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
32.6—November/December 2019
The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis by Alan Jacobs by Jesse Russell
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
