Thread by @zugzwanged

Little do the young guys accusing @PLeithart of capitulating to some contemporary spirit of simpery realize that the granddaddy of Theopolitan crypto-feminism, James Jordan himself, was saying all this back in the 80s and 90s!

https://twitter.com/PLeithart/status/1702672111834419676

Understanding what such statements mean really requires some conversance with symbolism, archetypes, and typology and how they work. It also requires minds that don't operate on hair-trigger impressions, but which can patiently think something through and ask genuine questions.

The archetypal Man is Christ, while the archetypal Woman is the Church/people of God. As humanity over against our Head, we stand on the feminine side. There is a sense in which this was always the case, but OT sonship imagery gets concentrated upon and refracted through Christ.

We are sons in the Son, who is our Elder Brother. However, sonship imagery, which used archetypally to apply to the whole people ('Israel is my firstborn son') now focuses on Christ and the people are more typically represented in maternal/bridal imagery.

Leithart and Jordan are also attending to the fact that the Man is first and the Woman final. The completion of the first creation was in the formation of the woman; the completion of the new creation—which begins with the Last Adam—is in the revelation of the glorious Bride.

The coming of the Second Man isn't completed until he is joined with his Bride, forming the Totus Christus, the entire new humanity.

Leithart and Jordan, who are both very attentive to time recognize that this complicates orders that others represent as spatialized hierarchies.

The Apostle Paul is concerned we recognize the man was created *first*, entailing a sort of priority. However, he also connects the woman with glory, entailing a sort of finality and completion. The man's priority does not entail that she is *lesser*, but that she is *later*.

Jordan has also observed how this plays out in the lives of men and societies. Men are most prominent in the phases of initiation and founding and, as time progresses, things become more feminine—and this is good! Women filling realms established and guarded by men is glorious.

And, more particularly, this is the glory of the man: a valorous wife and a thriving household is ultimately even more to be desired than valorous deeds. Seeking to avoid the threat of the feminine, some men can revert to an unattached masculinity and abandon this glory.

Healthy masculinity has a sort of humility that isn't always seeking the spotlight or flexing itself and which can quietly minister to others. Jordan has pushed against some patriarchal types along such lines. A desire for masculine dominance can arrest movement towards glory.

As society moves towards greater glory, femininity will come to greater expression and the sort of raw masculinity that is more typically characteristic of less settled and developed societies will become less dominant and central. Civilization is largely domestication of men.

Such domestication is not emasculation, stripping men of their will and agency, but a development of greater mastery and more elevated expression of these, as men wage more elaborate forms of peace, rather than mere war. New forms of men can arise through such historical process.

This is one way symbolic and archetypal realities can impact individual male lives, calling us to pursue more developed forms of masculinity, rather than engaging in compensatory LARPing as more primitive forms, engaging in juvenile rebellion, or abandoning masculinity altogther.

The connection between biblical symbolism and concrete reality and individual lives can be treacherous (remember the Josh Butler debates!). Symbolism cannot be applied simplistically, or without careful consideration.

Some seem to be reading Leithart's statements to claim that masculinity is somehow negated and we individually all get feminized. That really isn't what he is saying! 😆

We may need to consider ourselves more relative to—not necessarily AS—the archetypal feminine, though.

For instance, we are children of the Bride: when we think of ourselves, we should do so relative to her. We are also those who must love and pursue Lady Wisdom.

Without emasculating or feminizing men, it teaches us to comport ourselves relative to the feminine.

Figures like Bernard of Clairvaux who connect bridal imagery with the soul illustrate another approach found in the tradition. Read such approaches carefully and one will typically encounter far more subtle and discriminating application of symbolism than typically suggested.

Bernard and others also recognize, among other thing, the way that Scripture unsettles and challenges certain gender norms, even though being very clear about humanity being male and female. It doesn't 'queer' gender, but it does make it rather odder sometimes!

The male army of the faithful 144,000 in Revelation is dressed for a white wedding, are martyred victims, and are all virgins. The masculine image of an army is feminized in various ways, but in a way that integrates something more typically feminine into a vision of masculinity.

Moral purity, victimhood, and chastity might more typically be coded as feminine traits (and even more so in the first century AD), but Scripture challenges us to incorporate them into a vision of masculinity that is made more glorious and elevated by them.

It has always been the case that men and women who learn to relate deeply, elaborately, creatively, and happily to the other sex—to be their own sex relative to the other—can integrate strengths of the other sex into their own and become fuller persons as a result.

Attention to biblical symbolism can, without negating masculinity, without emasculating or feminizing men, or androgynizing society, alert us to ways that men and women can become more glorious through more developed relations between them.

Now, there are a number of half-baked and unhealthy visions floating around at the moment, which, to the careless reader, can sound like what Leithart says here, and which really do androgynize society, or emasculate or feminize men. These should be opposed and exposed.

For instance, there are ways of taking the biblical teaching of humble and responsible masculinity and twisting it into a masculinity subject to the demands and expectations of women and the object of blame and lacking in appropriate honour.

There are also those who will use the femininity of the eschatological Bride to empty other biblical teaching about men and women in the Church and household of its force. Against such, we need to hold firmly to all biblical teaching.

This shouldn't be as hard as it seems to be.