Foster’s Need for Other Men

I would like to address this tweet and video by Michael Foster as a follow up to my original review of his book. The question here is not whether relationships between men might be a good thing but rather what men need. The claim here by Foster is not in fact that it would be good to have a relationship with other men “who get it” but that men need other men. Of course, Foster extends this needing to a gang of men in his book but Scripture doesn’t in fact say this as I’ve handled in talking about fraternity in one section of my review of his work. Further, Foster is explicitly adapting a secular ethic to a Christian framework by echoing the neo-pagan Jack Donovan that is unhealthy and ultimately rooted in homosocial tendencies not reflected in the Scriptures.

The relationship of David and Jonathan is quite unique in the pages of Scripture, something that is both good and wholesome. However, the providential relationship the two maintained is not paradigmatic for all relationships especially in an age where homosexual behavior plagues a culture. Rather, the closeness they exhibit is essentially a type of proto-Christian love we see finally exhibited in the person and work of Christ among both sexes and not merely man-to-man. Can men be friends, even really good friends? Sure. But, the gender/sex of Jonathan/David is not in view in the Scriptures. Jonathan and David didn’t love each other as deep friends because they were men, but because they were David and Jonathan loving each other as he loved himself (1 Samuel 18:1, 20:16; Lev. 19:18).

We need to avoid the sort of Greek thinking that splits something like this into a discussion quite foreign from its original context in focusing on one quality of their persons and misses the forest for the trees. The relationship in play was covenantal and dealt with the house of David, not merely David or Jonathan themselves or a particular quality they had. For all the reliance in certain quarters on James Jordan, one would think the typology and the covenantal nature of the relationship invoked between David and Jonathan would be more easily recognized than the gender identity they both shared.

Christian love is different than the old pagan and fallen strictures that posited a heavy split between the sexes due to physical and other differences between men and women. In the gospel of John we see Christ expressing intimacy among his friends who were both men and women. He deeply loved Mary and Martha as much as he loved Lazarus and John. The words used to express that love are the same for both sexes and not merely for the men close to him. Take a close and deep look at the gospels and I think you’ll see what I mean.

Yes, of course Jesus had the twelve disciples but he was never unaccompanied by women in the gospels in his earthly ministry. In fact, we even see women leading the way on occasion in terms of their devotion to him and friendship with him contra the pettiness of his disciples. The intimacy of friendship is seen in actions like washing one’s hair in perfume on his feet, laying on his breast, and devoting one’s life to his service. Christ also received such intimate friendships between the sexes willingly and without reserve. That engagement on the part of men and women for Christ transcended any known cultures in play at the time and in fact put Jesus and his followers in hot water on occasion. But, look at the nature of friendship and association with Christ. Friendship and familial relations with Christ is a matter of obeying his commands and not in fact bound to whether one is a man or a woman (John 15:14; Mark 3:31-35; Matthew 12:46–50; Luke 8:19-21). The only man that men really need is Christ himself and the only way to him is to trust and obey him. But, that same need exists for women also.

Paul makes it very clear in Ephesians 4 that we are all sons of God in Jesus Christ and that the brotherhood we have in the church is not strictly speaking a male-only thing. Galatians 3:26 calls us all sons of God through faith in Jesus and not merely the men of the church. Further, Galatians 3:26 is paired with Gal. 3:28 that says there is neither male nor female in our oneness in Christ, we are all sons together. If we’re all sons together, that also means that everyone who is in Christ is a brother in and of Christ and not merely men in using such language. Romans 8:14 repeats this to tell us that whoever is of the Holy Spirit is a son of God. Christian brotherhood is one that extends to all who know Christ and not merely to men. In other words, the brotherhood of the church is the church of men and women God has called together to be in union with him through Christ and by the Holy Spirit.

In 2 Cor. 6:18, Paul does speak of both sons and daughters in coming to know Christ so it’s clear that Paul isn’t advocating the erasure of all distinctions between men and women in the church. The distinctions Paul made are covenantal and not in fact due to some hidden brotherhood and sisterhood that draws a sharp line between the sexes so that our main concern in terms of who we associate with is driven by whether we are men or women. Paul also traveled with Aquila and Priscilla in spreading the gospel among the Gentiles and had to know both of them well beyond a sort of Sunday morning acquaintance (Romans 16:3-5). Take note that the holy kiss in Romans 16 is premised on the deep relationships of both men and women serving in the church together, it is the church as a whole that greets one another in such loving intimacy, and not men alone (Romans 16:3-16).

There is no encouragement and exhortation when instructing the churches in the New Testament that is for men only that doesn’t also address women in some way. All of us are to ‘grow up as the mature man, lay aside falsehood, for we are members of one another’ and even submit to one another (Eph. 4:13, 25; 5:21). We’re to confess our sins to one another, encourage, exhort, stimulate one another to good deeds, admonish, all of which belongs in a repeated focus of these things, and so much so that one chief way to do this is in song and worship before God as the whole congregation (Col 3:16; James 5:16; Heb. 3:13; 10:24). How does this occur? By having a monthly men’s forum or by not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the Body of Christ any time we do meet (Heb. 10:25)? Have all the men’s forums you like, but the primary call of the New Testament church was for all members to assemble, “from the least to the greatest”–men, women, children, infants, young, and old–in honor to our Lord, in deep filial relationships with both men and women, and in worshiping him (Heb. 8:11; Joel 2:16).

None of this means men can’t get together or that we can’t be friends and women can’t do the same in the church. But, you don’t find the foibles of our postmodern insecurities about gender identity and association in play in the pages of Scripture. The Scriptures are entirely unconcerned with the assertions of Michael Foster below because the real focus of relational activity is the local church congregation as a whole in the Bible and not merely part of it.

Let me also just comment on the TikTok video that goes with the post Foster offers. We don’t know what the problem is with the young man thinking about suicide. He’s in the military however, a place where young men are together a lot. If friendship with other men was the key to solving his issue, you’d think the military would be the one place where he’d find opportunity for such relationships. Even Foster has acknowledged the camaraderie of war. But, the truth is we don’t know why he was upset and the two people in the video are actually total strangers to each other. A female police officer would have acted the very same way as the man responding to the traffic stop in the first place. The reasons for suicide among men in the military are complex and typically don’t have to do with men hanging out with each other or developing deep relationships. Usually, there is some trauma or family/marital separation in play. There is nothing in this video for Foster’s case except a gut-wrenching appeal to sympathy. Of course, we all feel for the guy in pain but the solution is found in Christ alone and not in some relational bonding with another man or a hug by one on the roadside.

And, this is one point we need to finally make. You will notice everything (including the kitchen sink) being thrown at you to look at men and their “need” for other men the way Foster and white supremacists like Jack Donovan advocate but what you will not find is good argumentation and what the Scriptures say about these things. I’ve already read a reflection by one pastor this morning whose work I dearly love, but Scripture is very much missing in his endorsement of what Foster outlines in talking about this video.

Men of God, your cultural preferences aren’t enough to shepherd the people of God. Feed them with the word of the living God. That is the only thing that will increase their faith and right their point of view (Romans 8:5, 10:17; Gal. 3:2, 5).

A Theology of Leisure

One of the reasons why I say we need a theology of leisure has to do with the nature of innovation and technology. Our economy is all about knowledge today. Without the time to play, to enjoy, to associate freely with others, to game, to explore, and to tinker in technological development separate from whatever job obligations you require to live and provide for your family you won’t be able to innovate or improve technology in any significant way. We tend to emphasize work as hard labor or drudgery but even here work isn’t what it used to be. As the gospel progresses in our society, work itself is transformed into something creative and glorious and so is our leisure time.

On Unwin’s 1934 Book and Historical Science

For the second time in recent weeks I’ve seen folks pushing Unwin’s 1934 book on sex and culture. I would just like to issue a couple of precautionary warnings about picking up a near hundred year old social science work and acting like its conclusions are true without more in the way of examination and thought simply because most Christians would agree that traditional sexual morality stabilizes society versus the alternative. Among Christians on social media, often what happens is that people read an article like Durston’s and if they go beyond rank confirmation bias in the first place, they’ll add Unwin to a list of referenced sources as proof with quotes to follow, and exhibit a sort of Wikipedia-level knowledge of what he presented as true. Then, major planks of Unwin’s thought become talking points on Facebook, in sermons, in conversations with others, and sometimes enough momentum gets going that the relevant bullet points go viral. But, an actual analysis of the text in question and its thesis isn’t typically done and this is where we get into trouble.

Some of what Kathryn Yusoff points out about the historical practice of science is helpful for us to remember even if you may have to sift out what she offers on race and racism in looking at geology and other science through the lens of critical theory. Early twentieth century social science suffers from a lot of problems that we don’t typically think about today in our Google-inspired bullet-pointed examination of anything people consider “science”.

Anthropology and the social sciences in some ways were very much in their infancy in the days leading up to World War II, still very much bound to Enlightenment concerns that included both the works of Freud and Darwin, similar methodologies that helped produce Nazi ideology are present in older works like Unwin’s, and they inevitably work with the sort of gloss that would make Hegel himself proud. A way to think about this without all the references to the philosophy of science that no one but myself and a few others read is still possible. The way they practiced science a hundred years ago can be compared to movie depictions of the quintessential safari hat wearing old English gentlemen traipsing through the jungle with a magnifying glass with locals at hand to guide him where he wants to go, all the while thinking he’s about to discover something momentous that the indigenous there have known about for ten generations. Because. Science.

That’s why you see Unwin surveying 80+ cultures/civilizations for commonalities, something almost impossible to capably do today even with the vast level of technology we can bring to such a question. The West has had to learn the hard way that social science can’t be capably practiced with such a wide scope and devastating presuppositions in play. Further, the glosses required to do so make it very difficult to come to definitive conclusions about any given subject under examination. The categories employed in differentiating between cultures and civilizations are usually quite arbitrary and easily subject to question. Further, Unwin excluded other data as Christians we’d value such as the fact that the earliest cities and civilizations we see in the Genesis narrative are in fact from the line of Cain. Technology in its primal form develops in light of the sons of polygamy and not the sort of monogamy Christians normally envision (Gen 4:19-22).

Few have even bothered to really counter Unwin’s work because of the advent of postmodern/post-structuralist philosophy underlying science that calls the question entirely irrelevant even while it helps men like Marcuse argue that sexual libido should be a primary driver to overturn Western civilization. We don’t see much in the way of replies to Unwin but not because his work can’t be capably countered. In fact, I imagine it would be very easy to write a Yusoff-like criticism of Unwin through the eyes of critical theory. Rather, Unwin actually assists someone like Marcuse more than we might consider at first glance.

This, of course, dovetails into some of the recent criticism I’ve laid down contra Foster/Tennant and how they view sex as the engine of dominion. Marcuse would actually agree and further uses sexual libido to corrupt civilization rather than stabilize it. We’d like to say at first glance, like some others have, that the way forward for civilization is monogamy and avoiding sex before marriage but this misses the forest for the trees.

For the Christian, the real driver of life in Christ is love as it is proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can’t be like Foucault in analyzing sex and marriage thinking all we need to look at is the how of the relationship in terms of its power to stabilize society. We need to understand both the what and the why of this thing God called the union of two becoming one.

Further, we also have to get back to why we do anything apart from its perceived utility. God commanded for us to live a certain way and we do so because we are his children. Trust and obey is the order of the day in terms of how we live our lives in love through Christ and by the work of the Holy Spirit. We love God and we love our neighbor as ourselves because God himself is love and first loved us. While doing so has tremendous benefit to society merely doing what’s required because it’s practical or we think it will solve some social problem is a reductive pragmatism rather than true obedience to God and his word.

A PDF of the Review Is Now Available

A number of friends suggested I put the reviews on Foster/Tennant’s It’s Good to Be a Man for each chapter in a PDF so they could all be in one document. The PDF below contains each chapter review in order and can be redistributed freely for use in a church or other context as long as you don’t modify the content or charge people for the document.

You can find the PDF here.

An Extended Review of It’s Good to Be a Man

Update: You can download a PDF of all of the chapter reviews here or keep reading to review them individually online. The links to each chapter entry are below.

Introduction
A few weeks ago I decided to read and review Michael Foster and Bnonn Tennant’s book It’s Good to Be a Man. The posts included in this review were written over the last couple of weeks as I read through each chapter. I’d generally read a chapter a day and then wrote my thoughts about the chapter in review on the same day and posted them to friends on Facebook. Once finished, I decided to take the completed posts and put them up here where they can be publicly accessed.

On the whole, I can’t recommend Foster/Tennant’s book and as you go through the chapter-by-chapter reviews, you’ll see why. Although I offer heavy criticism of the work, I wouldn’t call this an exposé as my primary focus is not on the authors themselves but the arguments and claims they make that I find generally wanting. I don’t expect everyone to agree with my conclusions and since this set of reviews was a read-then-review effort chapter-by-chapter, a more complete review in summary that addresses the book overall may be something I’ll write later. I also included in this series of posts a couple of excursions about video games and other technological issues that Foster/Tennant comment on and in one case Douglas Wilson as well.

I didn’t read any other reviews of the book with the exception of a quick read of Alastair Robert’s review of Foster/Tennant’s book and another prior to reading the book and offering my own comments. For my part, reviewing two books in one shot isn’t fair to the writers and not every work lends itself to the sort of compare and contrast normally done when that’s the strategy. I wouldn’t call myself an expert in masculinity so I’m not approaching this as having read thoroughly either the requisite social science research, so-called red-pill secular masculinity literature, or more Christian considerations of the topic. I do have expertise in philosophy, theology, development, social science, technology, and interdisciplinary approaches concerning a variety of issues that likely make my contribution informed in a different way that is both unique and thought-provoking.

I’ve also not consulted with the authors in writing except to ask about their own qualifications especially as it pertains to methodology, something I address later in one of the posts. I hope folks find these reviews useful and offer them in the spirit of helping to steer young Reformed men toward a Christian understanding of what it means to be a man that may not be working with the same training and considerations that I might offer. In any case, enjoy.

Here is the full list of chapter reviews and other relevant material from beginning to end:

Is Jerusalem Burning?

The War Between Patriarchies

The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man

Sex and Sexuality

Toxic Sexuality

The Effeminate Church

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2

Gravitas Through Duty

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

The Necessity of Fraternity

The Excellence of Marriage

Just a closing note: I’ll likely spice up the theme and looks of this new blog as I go, though I like the minimalist approach because it forces you to focus on the text offered. Stay tuned!

The Excellence of Marriage

Foster/Tennant in their final chapter handle marriage and do so with a sort of flair that demonstrates the primacy they maintain for men and masculinity over and above women and their God-given place in marriage. For Foster/Tennant, marriage is essentially a tool to help men accomplish their mission in life and not much more. The authors speak of two rails which run on this track. The first rail is being in a gang with other men to help a man get there. The other rail, Foster/Tennant say, is having a wife. Of course, talking about two rails effectively makes brotherhood equivalent to marriage in terms of its nature and role in a man’s life rather than recognizing the fuller and more central nature of two becoming one in marriage. The reader might also get the impression that brotherhood, since it’s the first rail, is more important than marriage though Foster/Tennant don’t come right out and say that. Men like Jack Donovan likely would, however.

Throughout the book, Foster/Tennant are typically busy making claims without actually substantiating them in terms of real argumentation. The same is true here where various passages of Scripture are put forward as proof-texts but detailed treatment of the texts in question are typically not offered. The authors present two different kind of women in summary fashion as they are discussed in the Proverbs but focus very little on the comparisons made in any detail. So, the reader is left to infer what a ‘Proverbs 31 wife’ looks like and what kind of woman to avoid in finding a wife.

The authors then claim that whatever else one understands about marriage, a wife is only a complement to a man’s mission and not the mission itself. Remember that for Foster/Tennant their definition of mission is, “your best effort at wisely integrating your interests, skills, and circumstances into a personal vision for exercising dominion over what God has given you”. The definition Joe Boot has offered is “biblical theology externalized and applied to every area of life”. The differences are important because Dr. Boot’s definition is both more wide-ranging and more comprehensive. For Foster/Tennant, their vision is on the whole related to vocation rather than the understanding that all of life is mission in God to glorify him and enjoy him forever (WSC Q/A 1).

Foster/Tennant’s definition limits the nature of the mission in play. When all of life in obedience to God becomes the mission, a wife becomes not only a complement to man’s mission but also a central and integral focus of his life in loving and serving God. So, there is a sense in which a wife is the mission rather than a mere complement to it because everything is a matter of obedience to and love for God. After all, the Scriptures flat out say ‘to love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her’ (Eph. 5:25). Foster/Tennant aren’t interested in giving anything up because their idea of a man has other more important things to do.

Christ’s entire focus as the incarnate Messiah in establishing dominion on this earth was to give himself up for his own bride the church and Ephesians dictates a similar focus for men in marriage. The ‘great mystery’ of Ephesians 5:32 is the fact that as Christ becomes one with his bride so too a man and woman become one together in marriage to pursue a life in God as one. Note that a wife isn’t just a complement to her husband in terms of granting assistance but that they become one person together pursuing the mission of applying biblical theology to all of life.

Foster/Tennant then continue down the path of looking at marriage with their reductive mission. For the authors, a man should have a mission in play before he seeks a wife and women desire a man already on mission. Of course, as usual, these claims are provided without any evidence that they are either true or necessary for young men in finding a wife. But, for the Christian man whose entire life is already a matter of glorifying God and enjoying him forever why isn’t obedience to God enough for Foster/Tennant prior to marriage? What wife wouldn’t want a man that is obedient to God and loves him above all else?

The Scriptures provide no prescriptive command for a man to have a particular calling in life discerned prior to getting married and in fact the descriptive narrative of much of the Bible would seem to speak against what Foster/Tennant offer. Moses married Zipporah after fleeing Pharaoh while on the run for murder but before he is tasked by God to lead Israel out of slavery, a mission he didn’t exactly want to pursue in the first place (Exodus 2:21; 3:10). Jacob after stealing his brother’s blessing is sent away by Isaac to marry from the daughters of Laban because his mother couldn’t stand the thought of him marrying a Canaanite. Isaac blesses Jacob, clues him in to the covenant of his father, and Jacob has a dream along the way but his mission as such isn’t revealed as something he really pursues until after he was married, wrestles with God, became Israel, and in fullness not until after he was long gone as a patriarch given how his purpose was wrapped up in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bringing the world to Christ (Genesis 17:3-8; 28:1-4; 32:24-32; 35:9-12; John 8:56). Besides, as noted before, the Bible says what is required of a man. The Bible does not say, “Make sure you know what you’re going to do with your life before getting married”. Rather, the Bible says that the Lord requires a man to “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Foster/Tennant would like to see men adopt a specific calling based on giftedness, interest, and skills but this ignores wildcards like circumstance and opportunity. Additionally, the sort of 1950s blue collar ideal of having a factory job, working for the same company for 40 years, and making sure your kids do better than you surely has an influence on how Foster/Tennant are considering something like this. Circumstances, opportunity, and life often cause change and men exist in seasons of life, so a person might spend only part of their life running a business, pastoring a church, working a corporate job, being a missionary, or any number of other things as their vocational identity and what God makes possible at any given time. Look at the life of Moses, first a royal son, then a criminal and fugitive, then a shepherd in the middle of nowhere, then a hesitant leader calling men out of slavery, then a leader of the people, and eventually one whose face shone with the glory of God. Was Zipporah merely an afterthought or just some kind of complement or helper in keeping Moses on task in running from Pharaoh and living in the middle of nowhere never to think of another calling or mission? Rather, Zipporah appears more like a woman that helped Moses remain faithful to his actual calling, ‘glorifying God and enjoying him forever’ (Exodus 4:24-26). Foster/Tennant’s advice might be something to consider for upwardly mobile people thinking they’re going to have a great career out of college, but what they present isn’t really true to the vast array of life callings and providential directions God often has for people. Furthermore, the pastoral advice the authors attempt to give just isn’t laid out anywhere in the Scriptures.

On occasion, Foster/Tennant seem to fuss with words rather than deal with what’s actually being said. Men are often referred to as incomplete without ‘their better half’ and while it’s certainly true that any man is fully made in the image of God without a woman we also know that the Scriptures matter-of-fact say that it wasn’t good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). So, man was given woman and she becomes part of a man in their joining (Genesis 2:23-24). In other words, without a wife a man isn’t really what God designed for man to be once they are together. Even Christ himself has a bride. So, perhaps a crass consideration of man as incomplete is unwarranted but the deeper meaning of incompleteness is most certainly relevant in thinking about what it means to be man and wife together.

Foster/Tennant continue their reductive postmodern treatment of marriage by deemphasizing things that the Scriptures note as important. For Foster/Tennant, it’s just okay for a man to be “a little smitten” with an attractive woman that might make a good wife, but becoming infatuated or crazy about a woman is supposedly unmanly and ungodly. Yet, Jacob himself finds Rachel, kisses her on the spot, lifts up his voice, and weeps! Then, he immediately indentures himself for seven years in waiting to secure his newly found bride (Genesis 29:11; 18). Even the Proverbs talk about a man with a woman in love as something too wonderful to understand (Proverbs 31:19).

Foster/Tennant also claim that marriage is never a matter of finding one’s soulmate or that there is only ever one particular woman in the world for a man. The authors say, “Placing a woman on a pedestal like this, thinking of her as “the one” is enormously destructive and actually reflects the vestiges (and possibly return) of pagan thinking in our culture. It is yet another variant of androgyny…” Foster/Tennant are attempting to deny the notion of “true love” and in the process deemphasize the nature of the joining of man and wife together by God in love as found in the Scriptures. The authors also unwittingly reduce the woman in marriage to a mere companion or helper that can be easily replaced. Foster/Tennant are just wrong here and barking up the wrong tree. Eve in the creation account is the pinnacle of creation and the last created being God put in place in the Garden of Eden. Women are referred to explicitly as the glory of man just as man is the glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7). So, there is more here to think about in terms of who women are in marriage aside from the notion that they are merely a weaker vessel called alongside to help a man do his real work.

God only created one particular woman for Adam so in the paradigmatic case for marriage what Foster/Tennant say just isn’t true. Further, how would Paul apply the authors’ understanding of marriage on this point to the church? The Bible says that God predestined a particular people in Christ, foreknew each of them, called them, justified them, sanctified them, and glorified them (Eph 1:3-5; Romans 8:28-29). In fact, God not only chose a particular people as his singular bride in saving them, he also ordains and works all circumstances together for their good in seeing them come to and remain in Christ. Would Foster/Tennant answer, “Well, not really…”?

Foster/Tennant also amazingly omit any reference to Song of Songs in the entire chapter (or book!) and for obvious reasons. There, both bride and groom express love for one another that is at once intimate, dazzling, romantic, and obviously expressive of two people who think that they are made for each other. The full import of “My beloved is mine, and I am his” takes on a meaning in Christ and God that far transcends the baseless claims of Foster/Tennant in considering the full implications of God’s sovereignty when it comes to marriage (Song of Solomon 2:16). Now, of course, the secret things belong to God and discerning the woman God has for a man is not always simple or easy but the clear implication of Scriptures is that marriage is between a man and a woman that God arranges providentially between them. To say otherwise is to be something other than confessionally Reformed in terms of one’s theological outlook.

The pagan and postmodern view is one that is reductive and disallows the biblical nature of marriage, something Foster/Tennant do in spades here. There is even more in the way of problems with this particular chapter given the importance God has placed on the joining of men and women together in marriage. Foster/Tennant even go so far as to claim they know the subconscious desires of what women want in the closing section of their treatment of marriage! But, any critical review has to stop somewhere and by now readers have been made quite aware that It’s Good to Be a Man is not a book for young men to read in being a Christian man.

Next Review:

Is Jerusalem Burning?

The War Between Patriarchies

The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man

Sex and Sexuality

Toxic Sexuality

The Effeminate Church

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2

Gravitas Through Duty

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

The Necessity of Fraternity

The Excellence of Marriage

The Necessity of Fraternity

Foster/Tennant continue on to talk of the necessity of fraternity in this next chapter. For the authors, having a gang, tribe, or brotherhood of associated men is something a man needs in order to be a man. The claim here is not just that men should have other men around them but that it remains a necessity as far as being a Christian man is concerned. The view Foster/Tennant put forward hails more from the masculinity movement itself than any biblical consideration offered in the chapter they write. The chapter begins with a quote from a Catholic scholar, descends into popular descriptions in five different movies, and ends with reference to comments made by Jack Donovan. Along the way, some biblical material is put forward or discussed but only in piecemeal fashion as the authors craft a larger doctrine in line with red-pill masculinity that easily make this chapter the most dangerous in the book. What the authors don’t do is make a biblical case for the sort of fraternity they espouse. There is certainly a kernel of truth to the notion that men befriend one another and sometimes develop lifelong relationships with other men but membership in the church is not like joining a motorcycle club. The problem here is that Foster/Tennant mean much more than mere friendship and the design they have in play goes against the very working of the gospel to move away from natural tribal affiliations and fraternities toward a gospel life in and among the wider church.

Foster/Tennant would have Christian men gather a “tribe” around them and aren’t afraid to use the term “gang” in reference to a brotherhood they feel should work as a primary guide and center of their life on mission. In fact, the authors even argue that male intimacy is a sort of lost art in today’s society and use the friendship of David and Jonathan as support for what they consider to be a model friendship. There is a subtle equivocation here between friendship and fraternity that Foster/Tennant miss as they present it. A deep and abiding friendship of two men is not necessarily the same as a fraternity or gang of men working together toward a common purpose. In fact, Jonathan and David were at the crossroads of a relationship where they had opposing missions in play between Jonathan’s father King Saul and the divinely ordained replacement found in David. Foster/Tennant would have the reader believe that these friends and newfound brothers are in play to help with one’s mission and yet that wasn’t the case with David and Jonathan. Yet, Foster/Tennant roll with the equivocation between friend and brotherhood because a story like Jonathan and David helps them establish their unique brand of brotherhood as a matter of male intimacy.

Foster/Tennant argue that “sexual homogeneity is what forms the strong bonds of friendship” yet somehow overlook the fact that it is entirely possible to be friends with members of the opposite sex as well as join them in common cause. Further, Foster/Tennant spend no time actually exegeting 1 Samuel 18 where Jonathan is first noted loving David as he loves himself, a virtual restatement of the Second Greatest Commandment, an obligation we have toward all those we know, and not just someone that might inspire us or we might befriend. As usual, the claims they make are just claims with little in the way of actual support for their argument. Instead, the reader is pointed to examples from several movies, an example of a returned soldier that misses the camaraderie of war, and the claim that all this just isn’t gay or homosexual in nature. Yet, Foster/Tennant outright say that men need the love of men. Men need this love emotionally and to exercise dominion over the world. The authors go so far as to say that it is needed for “the most basic piety…to exercise dominion over yourself”. Without the correctability offered by brotherhood, a man can’t even be virile according to Foster/Tennant.

But, does the Bible really teach that intimate male friendship and deep abiding relationships between men in their own tribe or gang remain required for a man to be Christian and live in obedience to Christ? The answer is that no such requirements are listed in the Bible for men to maintain same sex relationships and to say so does in fact border on a sort of homosexual or homosocial advocacy. Foster/Tennant can avoid the charge in their own minds because they present a reductive view of sexuality and sex in the first place as the engine of dominion. And, to be clear, Foster/Tennant would manifestly deny that there is anything “gay” in putting forward what they believe about fraternity. But, homosexual behavior is not just about the physical act of two men together. Homosexuality is also about the exercise of power, male intimacy, and things common to the very items described above that Foster/Tennant say is required for even “the most basic piety”. The background and argument for this point of view has to be framed from the observable postmodern culture inspiring it especially since the Scriptures aren’t playing a central role here in their presentation of the topic.

Jack Donovan is cited twice in the last part of the chapter and has a very similar view to the one espoused by Foster/Tennant but it’s likely that few know that Donovan himself has been (is?) a homosexual, a white nationalist, and a former Satanist who has been busy leading neopagan groups over the last several years. Curiously, his increased denial of his previous identities seems to track with his increased popularity in red-pill masculinity circles. I guess fundraising from normal folks is hard when you’re leading the Wolves of Vinland, a Norse neopagan group outside Lynchburg, Virginia complete with their own Viking long hall where they ritually slaughter animals on their compound.

Somehow Foster/Tennant feel Donovan’s contribution is important enough to directly quote in their book even while Donovan remains anything but a Christian and in no sense offers his consideration of the sort of tribes and gangs in question as biblical. Rather, Donovan’s position presents an evolutionary view of men associating with men to do men things. The point here is not to poison the well or offer any sort of guilt by association but instead to trace where these ideas are actually coming from as presented by Foster/Tennant with the very sources they use in their book.

Foster/Tennant are mimicking the general considerations of an Alt-Right, red-pilled, neopagan masculinity seen very easily in white nationalism and white supremacy circles. Further, the view the authors espouse is also the very sort of thing that is attracting gay men to white supremacy in recent years. Foster/Tennant are not making a biblical case in this chapter about friendship or fraternity even while they quote certain Bible passages they feel remain favorable to their view. Rather, they mimic a sort of churchified presentation of fraternity among men that is eerily similar to what neopagans like Donovan advocate.

But what does the Bible teach about tribes, fraternities, and friendship? Simply put, our Lord came to end the curse and separation of Babel through Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The particularity of Israel in the Old Testament became universal in Christ and that is why tribes and peoples now come to faith in Christ and do not in fact remain separate or look for new associations outside the church that already bought them. Nations still exist and tribes and peoples are to be led to the gospel, but as we advance toward the eschaton there is no sense in which Christian men or anyone else should be starting and maintaining new tribes or new gangs dedicated to this or that purpose the way Foster/Tennant suppose. Why? Because Christians themselves are together “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation (ethnos, tribe/people), a people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). Note that membership in the church is available to all and in Christ there is no distinction between men and women or Jew and Greek (Gal. 3:28). The gang-level correctability Foster/Tennant would like to note as instrumental and required for men to be Christian is not seen in the New Testament and isn’t how the church functions. Instead, Paul encourages men and women–really, the whole church–to engage in “teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16). James 5:16 instructs us to confess our sins to one another and pray for each other. The church is to gather together regularly to encourage one another, stimulating one another to love and good deeds, and exhorting each other daily (Heb. 3:13 10:24-25). Real discipleship happens in the church among the whole congregation and not in some group of men along for the ride like they’re the Sons of Anarchy.

Additionally, confessional Reformed theology and practice has consistently stayed away from fraternal organizations and groups that Catholics and others consider valuable whether fraternal orders, monastic orders, or pseudo-religious groups like the Masons. There are very good reasons why this is the case including the tendency of an organization or group of people to replace the church, to corrupt men through inappropriate associations, and engage in false teaching. In fact, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church even released a report against Freemasonry and similar groups as the kind of thing that competes against the church and fails to establish true Christian univeralism found in all those from “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” that bow down before the Father (Rev. 5:9). No doubt, Foster/Tennant would like to claim their brotherhood is a brotherhood in the Lord but the problem is that the church’s brotherhood is one that includes men, women, children, and in Paul’s day even slaves and masters (Eph. 6:1-9; Gal 3:26-29).

Next Review:

Is Jerusalem Burning?

The War Between Patriarchies

The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man

Sex and Sexuality

Toxic Sexuality

The Effeminate Church

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2

Gravitas Through Duty

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

The Necessity of Fraternity

The Excellence of Marriage

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

Today is two for one day in reviewing all things Foster/Tennant. This review will address the chapters “How to Bear the Weight” and “Manhood through Mission”. The chapters really address much the same thing as they focus on the mission and calling of men particularly as it pertains to their work. Overall, the chapters end with the sort of bland mission/vision goal setting we find in almost any other self-help book where someone is examining their future and making changes for the better. After all the theological talk, the net result of Foster/Tennant’s advice is to write out three to five achievable goals that aren’t impossible in spiritual, physical, economic, vocational, and relational areas to start a new life. Then, the authors want their new recruits to write out a mission statement describing it all and go to town getting it done. Anyone working in the corporate world should recognize the sort of advice given here, merely ‘dominionized’ for Foster/Tennant and their overall focus on men as rulers of their destiny in line with what they see as the kingdom work of the mission of God. This is coupled with additional advice asking the reader to consider what makes them happy, what they’re good at, and how they’re gifted in order to think about where to go next in doing work for the kingdom. Reading along, I almost expected the authors to pull out a spiritual gifts test for the reader to take and send in for Foster and Tennant to score!

Of course, Foster/Tennant continue to present a reductive account in invoking the missio Dei, a term they use but yet again don’t bother to define. Men are told to order their lives according to God’s mission but what is that exactly and how does that take place? Of course, the mission of God as he reveals himself and establishes his kingdom in the Three and One of the Trinity is no small thing to quietly pass by on the way to thinking about the mission of men and their participation in the same. Joe Boot’s work The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society is especially instructive here but not found referenced within their pages nor is there any real discussion of what the mission of God actually is in Foster/Tennant. Dr. Boot defines the missio Dei as “the universal implementation of the ‘reign of God” found first in the “‘sending of God’ (of His Son, the Holy Spirit and His church) and the universal ‘reign of God’ (basileia tou Theou) and is therefore not limited to earlier, somewhat truncated, soteriological, cultural, or ecclesiastical definitions of ‘mission'”. The reason a definition must be offered is because the mission of God is a controversial term and exists as such both used and abused by a great many folks in trying to understand the work of God and our salvation in him. Over the last thirty years, a lot of postmodern nonsense slipped into the church in the name of both the missio Dei and “missional” theology so a proper definition is in fact necessary. Foster/Tennant likely agree with a definition like the one offered by Dr. Boot given their emphasis on dominion, but at the same time simply assuming that’s what they mean isn’t helpful in understanding the corresponding mission of the redeemed man in response. Dr. Boot goes on to define mission as straight out hundred proof “biblical theology and doxology as the mission…biblical theology externalized and applied to every area of life”. Foster/Tennant define mission instead as, “your best effort at wisely integrating your interests, skills, and circumstances into a personal vision for exercising dominion over what God has given you”. The difference between Dr. Boot’s understanding of mission and Foster/Tennant could not be more profound. Foster/Tennant essentially present a Christianized version of modern psychological self-help psychobabble rather than focusing on the true mission of mankind in God’s sending. That is why chapter 12 ends with goal setting and crafting mission statements instead of understanding and applying the consideration that theology determines doxology in how we live.

A constant strategy of Foster/Tennant in the book is to present a negative case and enforce a negative dialectic. So, the first three points of “Manhood Through Mission” is about avoiding the wrong assumptions about “mission”. Why do Foster/Tennant go here instead of fleshing out a fuller conception of mission as defined by Boot? The simple answer is that there just isn’t anything but the skin and bones here of what in other contexts is just a repeat of secular psychology and typical career advice the reader could find almost anywhere. So, Foster/Tennant have to talk about something and decide to frame the matter in theological terms rooted in dominion. But, Joel Osteen or Tony Robbins could have told the reader to have three to five goals and a mission statement as a way to a “Best Life Now” sort of future.

However, there are likely more complex social reasons why Foster/Tennant dive down into a negative dialectic about mission and a man’s work. There is a sort of Rust Belt blue collar flavor to Foster/Tennant’s book that is likely more about the authors and their background than they let on in their writing. Having lived in western rural PA for several years now, the commentary they write at once resonates with a prevalent mindset among many of the folks who remain here after the coal, lumber, and steel industries have left the region, stuck in dead-end low wage low skill manual labor jobs, and perpetuating what might be called a sort of lower to lower middle class lifestyle transferred from generation to generation as poverty reigns supreme. After all, the median per capita income for the county we live in is $25,000 a year. Work is drudgery for many of these folks and they live for the weekend to fish, hunt, or roll around in ATV’s. The so-called Rust Belt that runs from New York to the Midwest is filled with the lingering problems of industrial decline, poverty, mindsets that on the whole are often quite negative about innovation and moving past one’s circumstances, a poor work ethic, a lack of initiative, and a generational culture that sees nothing but low wage work and just surviving going forward.

Foster/Tennant are busy in these two chapters tempering the expectations of men in terms of having any sort of grand visions or plans toward a better future as a result of dominion. Elsewhere in the book they want to avoid being dreamers. In fact, the authors tell their readers to abandon the idea that a man’s mission must be epic and that a person’s mission will be limited by the extent to which a man conforms to God’s law, another way of saying that being successful and obeying God’s law in society don’t work well together. Expect to be banned from Twitter. ‘Don’t get too excited about all this dominion stuff,’ they’d say. Further, Foster/Tennant also want men to avoid thinking mission will include any sort of detailed map of a man’s life. In chapter 11, the authors make quite the point to say that dominion is a matter of toil and grind rather than “palaces and throne rooms”. “Manning up” is all about not being lazy, a struggle, and hard labor. Adam’s curse in working is still in effect and you’ll certainly feel it. A man’s life can’t be easy and soft and must find blessing in “pushing a heavy boulder up a mountain every day only for it to roll back down”. Foster/Tennant want the reader to believe that happiness isn’t found in a material/spiritual dualism and appeal to Christ as the one who helps a man cope with the illusion that “your life sucks less than it does” as a result of seeing it differently in Christ.

Foster/Tennant claim that “the Spirit changes everything” and they’re not being Gnostic, but they don’t escape the charge quite so easily. If Christ really does redeem work and transforms the everyday life of men, is work still a curse? In passing, we might ask whether work was the curse in the first place since that’s not what the Bible actually teaches. Foster/Tennant only suggest changing one’s “mindset of toil and futility” and look at things another way in Christ. The problem here is that work itself has been changed, not only that our mind must change. Toil and grind may reflect some “dirty jobs” in the economy but men are not in fact limited to continuing in lives and careers that are low wage and low skilled. Further, Foster/Tennant’s perspective here is about man as an individual and forgets that the mission is actually multi-generational. Therefore, a map detailing both specific plans and multi-generational dreams more than just a few goals is the sort of planning that is likely going to be more helpful than thinking you’re on mission simply because you think of your dead-end job differently. Part of the authors’ mindset is reinforced by universalizing passages of Scripture about suffering that were never meant to be taken that way. American culture is largely Christian and self-determinative. Men are not in fact bound to stay in bad jobs and hard labor like they live in a concentration camp in Siberia or slave on a farm for a Roman noble. Education is widely available here to switch careers and businesses can be started at the drop of a hat with almost nothing. Opportunity is had by all to take the risks necessary to move into a more complete mission-minded framework in advancing the kingdom. And, yes, failure is likely too but never remains unrecoverable in American life. But, Foster/Tennant make nothing of these new realities while focusing on how hard and difficult work is and saying it’s going to stay that way, except of course in how one thinks about it. What good really does it do to tell men, “Yeah, your life really does suck, but think happy thoughts!”?

A proper chapter on mission in light of the missio Dei would address the blessings and nature of risk, reward, and ownership as it pertains to vocation and life. Men need to take more risk in our society and can, not less. Outlining man’s mission is about understanding the progressive work of God and the favor he bestows in offering grace and giftedness in vocation to men and their families. Further, otherwise ordinary men who have adopted the sort of hundred proof mission Dr. Boot outlines in his book have turned the world upside down, they’ve built nations, fought tyrants, and done things never thought possible before much like the Hebrews 11 men and women before them. When men became biblical men during the Reformation in taking God at his word, they spawned multi-generational advancement that included things like the advent of modern science, Ivy League universities, accounting, banking, global trade, technological innovation, freedom of women from bad patriarchal designs and limiting lives, peace among the nations, and global prosperity through capitalism. In fact, in the last thirty years, a billion people have been brought out of extreme poverty through the outworking of Protestant economic thought. So, I very much take issue with the notion that the calling and work of men on mission is somehow always going to be something other than epic. Foster/Tennant are just dead wrong here and their reductive approach to mission is really just recasting Rust Belt-like poverty in Christian terms. What Foster/Tennant miss is that “epic” is normal for our God and abundant life or the shalom peace of God has far more this life blessing attached to it than they let on in their negative assessment of men at work in this life.

True to form, Foster/Tennant enforce a postmodern outlook even in the way they consider their negative assessment of where men are in the culture and society around them. Foster/Tennant tell men, “the deck is stacked against you, it is a shock to the system…A lot of men awaken to this reality only to stew on the raw deal they got. And, to be sure, modern men are victims of a twisted man-hating system. They are casualties of the war on gender: scarred, injured, and discouraged…We can relate.” I doubt seriously that Foster/Tennant have read Foucault and Marcuse and instead intuit their own insecurities in relating the notion that men are victims and that the deck is stacked against them. Further, the authors also seem to be unaware of Marx and how he talked about awakening the proletariat as they attempt to do the same with men they feel find themselves in this terrible position. They echo the language of Marx, Marcuse, and even Foucault in seeing a system at work bent to destroy them, a victimization as a result of gender wars, and a sort of technological rationality to it all that is inescapable. Had Foster/Tennant any real knowledge of how critical theorists, postmodernists, and even Marx himself thought and wrote about these things they likely would have expressed what they want to say differently because otherwise they risk informed readers seeing their claims as yet another postmodern systemic critique of society. But, instead Foster/Tennant go along with the standard cultural way to say these things in fine postmodern fashion.

This is a problem not only because Foster/Tennant echo postmodern language but more importantly what they claim simply isn’t true. While the notion of white privilege is a myth of no small measure that serves the postmodern gods of our society through critical theory, there is enough evidence in social science research to consider that what Foster/Tennant call out as the victimization of men is really just a remembrance of the blessings men in general continue to enjoy in our society. Christians don’t call what social scientists see as white privilege a matter of privilege, but there are in fact a great many benefits in being a man in a society that is still largely Christian that Foster/Tennant ignore in their special pleading. Further, using postmodern discursive techniques helps prep Christians to think about society in postmodern ways and inadvertently lends credence to deconstruction in Christian life and society. More importantly, however, men find themselves in the situation they’re in by virtue of their own action and not in fact because of a system designed to beat them down. Men aren’t victims. Men are blessed by God to be men and women are also blessed to be who they are even when both find themselves in trouble and sin. After all, the title of Foster/Tennant’s book is “It’s Good to Be a Man” but you wouldn’t know that by reading these two chapters! A simple change of mind or “wokeness” isn’t going to turn things around for men and their problems either. Foster/Tennant know this otherwise they wouldn’t attempt to move men from red-pilled angry status to being faithful to God in life. But, at the end of the day, their advice isn’t all that different from other self-help manuals or the postmodern move toward utopia, ‘Change the way you think about things, live differently, stick with your tribe, but keep doing what you’re doing even though you continue to suffer and nothing seems to change’, Marcuse practically said the same thing in One-Dimensional Man in pining toward utopia. About the only thing Foster/Tennant add is getting into a good church and being among good men with some kind of spiritual father in the lead. Tomorrow’s post will address the sort of fraternity Foster/Tennant advocate. As you can likely tell, there are a few problems there to consider as well.

Next Review:

Is Jerusalem Burning?

The War Between Patriarchies

The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man

Sex and Sexuality

Toxic Sexuality

The Effeminate Church

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2

Gravitas Through Duty

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

The Necessity of Fraternity

The Excellence of Marriage

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Michael Foster and Douglas Wilson engage in a conversation on YouTube about pornography and video games in a way that remains problematic. For one, linking video games to pornography puts a stigma on one that only belongs to the other. Is there something inherently wrong with video games like there is with pornography? The answer is of course no. Another way to look at this equation is to consider that Foster and Wilson are also making pornography something less by equating it to video games. Elsewhere, Foster has had to admit that video games in fact are not in and of themselves wrong and that right use of them is possible. Here in this video he is not so careful, however. After all, great marketing copy masquerading as pastoral advice is never a matter of making careful distinctions. For the extended commentary you’ll have to pay $79 a year on Canon+ via your iPhone.

Just in passing we might note that Foster/Tennant complain in their book about young men using YouTube to fix a car but somehow it’s useful for telling people how to be a man. Remember that Foster/Tennant have written that sonship can’t be gained from YouTube and that spiritual fathers/pastors have to be physically present in the lives of their newfound adopted sons. There is more here to Foster and Wilson’s commentary about masculinity aside from their misguided critique of video games. Technology itself is being disparaged while the authors also take advantage of its capability to spread their message. Why have pastoral conversations on YouTube at all if it can’t be “learned from afar” and “cannot be picked up from YouTube or from blogs or from books”? “Real life discipling” isn’t via YouTube but look at all the videos Foster and Wilson provide in attempting to do that very thing, especially if you spring for the annual Canon+ subscription on your smartphone. Have we forgotten the words of Jesus, “therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them” (Matt. 23:3)?

Porn and video games are inextricably linked here in Foster and Wilson’s eyes due to how they both supposedly dissipate masculine strength. The sort of pastoral advice that oscillates between one extreme and the other continues to enforce a postmodern dialectic. Participating in video games on the one hand is effeminate and fake dominion while on the other carefully qualified to be just fine. What exactly constitutes reasonable use and participation in video games Foster and Wilson never really specify or even mention in this short clip while the claim is made that video games produce effeminate men. The ambiguity and blurred lines between the two make for problematic advice and demonstrates how subjective and empty this kind of pastoral counseling remains. If pressed, the abuse of video games remains the target even while Foster and Wilson sloppily indict video games themselves as the producer of something other than masculinity.

What is the scriptural basis, however, for equating video games to pornography in a video like this? Foster and Wilson use a sort of interpretive maximalism to inordinately apply Proverbs 31:3 to video games as yet another example of “do not give your strength to women”. Foster picks up on what he and Tennant argue elsewhere, that somehow “playing video games and “binge watching shows” is “fake dominion”. Isn’t it interesting that binge watching Netflix is also included here? The so-called Metaverse isn’t even a reality but it also gets indiscriminately added. How about the kitchen sink? Should we throw that in also? Why not just say don’t waste your time with activities that aren’t productive rather than making all this about masculinity, dominion, and effeminate behavior? The Scriptures clearly say that believers are to wisely redeem their time as given to us by God (Eph. 5:16). But, this is an admonition Foster and Wilson won’t immediately go to because it is given to the church as a whole and not just men. In other words, the Scriptures that really apply to the abuse of something aren’t invoked because they don’t help Foster and Wilson enforce their problematic understanding of biblical masculinity.

One of the greatest weaknesses of Foster/Tennant’s It’s Good to Be a Man is that it never really defines masculinity. Everywhere the term is used as if the reader knows what the word means. The problem here, of course, is that there are competing definitions for the word across a wide spectrum even among authors that Foster/Tennant utilize and value. Douglas Wilson himself vaguely defines masculinity as a sort of sacrificial responsibility. Leon Podles defines masculinity as a pattern of union and separation. More basic definitions such as what makes a man a man are also everywhere. In all these definitions, echoes of Freud or Jung abound. Sometimes, the noun is treated like a verb. Masculinity is a set of behaviors rather than a state of being. What do Foster/Tennant mean when they use the term? We don’t really know except that they base their ontology of a man off the dominion mandate and the behaviors they identify as part of what Genesis lays out in the creation narrative. So, at best we can only infer that Foster/Tennant mean masculinity is something wrapped in the exercise of power to dominate the world through production, with sex as the engine of dominion in being fruitful and skillful workmanship at the ready to maximize dominion.

The undue emphasis on production, however, could easily be seen as yet another place where postmodernism is in play. Here is another area where Foster/Tennant and Wilson fall short. Is life only a matter of work? Put another way, was the garden in Eden only for working? Wasn’t the garden also something to enjoy? Wasn’t the Lord himself walking in the garden in the cool of the day, signifying both communion and enjoyment with him that should have been had without the Fall (Genesis 3:8)?

The Bible says “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” not work constantly and never stop. The Bible also indicates in Deut 14:26 that after tithing obligations are taken care of a man can buy whatever he likes in feasting before the Lord including “strong drink”–yet another thing that can lead to a ruined life if abused. Wine itself is made especially to gladden the heart of man (Psalm 104:15). In fact, even the Sabbath rest of the Lord’s Day in each week is not the only time when leisure is in play especially in a society where work itself is not the grueling thing it has been in the past due to the ever-expanding influence of the gospel in our society both through technology and the outworking of Christian culture.

What Reformed churches need to spend more time on here is developing a theology of leisure. Notice what Foster and Wilson are criticizing here, what’s in view while doing so, and what they don’t. Video games are equated to pornography while whiskey is on the table between them. So, there has to be some implicit theology of leisure and enjoyment in play on the part of Wilson and Foster yet they’re selective about what they enjoy. What about something like football? Football is practically another religion in the lives of many men yet it receives absolutely no attention in Foster/Tennant’s book on what it means to be a man. Neither does baseball, basketball, golf, cricket, soccer, hiking, fishing, or camping. Why not? Well, for one, football and other activities like it are seen as masculine affairs. Whiskey is something they would say men enjoy. Video games and the use of technology, however, are not typically seen in those categories and they’re new to our society. So, video games become an easy target in violating the sacrosanct ideas of masculinity that they value in fine Luddite fashion. Further, football is seen as real while video games are virtual or fake. But, as I’ve commented before on Foster/Tennant’s book this dichotomy is false as everything in this world is both real and physically situated.

The other problem here is that Foster/Tennant are only concerned to deal with masculinity as it pertains to productivity and do not in fact treat leisure or play–enjoying God forever (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 1)–in their book. Curiously, a lack of focus on enjoying God forever also means a flattened and reductive view of sex that misses its enjoyable qualities in favor of producing children and seeing it as the engine of dominion. That’s also why we see Foster/Tennant and Wilson minimize the problem of pornography among men but maximize the negative potential of abusing video games in their book and this video. Foster/Tennant even state on their ‘It’s Good to Be a Man’ website that pornography use isn’t adultery in the confessional sense of ‘actual adultery’ that would result in divorce, because after all ‘it’s just pixels’. Someone tell Jesus (Matthew 5:27–28)! The only way to arrive at that conclusion is to focus on the nature of sex as a productive physical activity in marriage to exercise dominion and to continue to embrace a false dichotomy between what is real and what remains for them a virtual fantasy. The problem is that Foster/Tennant’s definition of sex remains reductive and as a result has implications far beyond merely thinking about how to be fruitful and multiply. This, of course, has clear implications for women also in terms of how their own consideration of something like unfaithfulness in pornography is ignored or minimized in favor of enforcing artificial distinctions between the real and virtual that Foster/Tennant maintain without basis.

Like the Ginsu steak knives however, there is more here in the special pleading Foster and Wilson offer and what they ignore with video games more specifically. Video games are played by both men and women in significant numbers. The notion that video games are the sole province of young men with time to waste is inaccurate, as 41.5 percent of video games are played by women and 58.5 percent by men. So, the further claim that video games are inherently masculine is also suspect. Recent studies have shown that video games can increase your attention span, improve intelligence, increase the ability to make decisions and problem-solving, and even improve memory and learning. In a knowledge-based economy, these are important skills to develop while the physical skill of digging a ditch is likely less helpful from an earning perspective (though there is something to be said for the lacking supply of tradesmen). Video games can also be a creative force in observing and creating new connections between different tasks and problem-solving. In other words, participation in technological endeavors more broadly enforces the creative nature of men and women made in the image of God to excel and adapt to present circumstances.

And, skill with video games is applicable to a wide range of important careers in technology and other spaces. Learning how to interact with AI and other automated algorithms in game play gives an important perspective to dealing with technology in other areas of life. The church overall needs to work on things like data literacy and technological capabilities from infancy forward because society’s increased rate of innovation means rightly dividing the word of truth going forward is going to mean fluency in all things technological. Tomorrow’s apologists for the faith are going to be technologists, not textual critics or marketing hacks. But, Foster and Wilson only reductively consider video games as a societal problem and then proceed to do armchair analysis of social, political, and psychological factors in concluding that masculinity is something governments condemn as Pharaoh did in killing male children. Perhaps in another post I’ll demonstrate how they don’t even get that societal diagnosis right but hopefully I’ve provided enough food for thought here in considering what they have to say and how far it remains from the truth of the matter.

Next Review:

Is Jerusalem Burning?

The War Between Patriarchies

The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man

Sex and Sexuality

Toxic Sexuality

The Effeminate Church

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2

Gravitas Through Duty

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

The Necessity of Fraternity

The Excellence of Marriage

Gravitas Through Duty

Foster/Tennant continue on with gravitas and expand on the qualities and duties of masculinity in the next chapter. One of the most curious things about a book like this is how comments are made along the way that can’t be ignored that frame what’s being claimed by the authors. Claims along the way reveal assumptions about men, masculinity, women, and how they all relate together that are in fact troublesome here. For example, on the one hand gravitas is all a matter of God’s grace and yet for Foster/Tennant it’s also something that must be earned. The postmodern slip and slide goes back and forth between these two extremes throughout these chapters and likely signals a problem with how the authors view justification by faith as well as sanctification. We might remember that Tennant was excommunicated by his church for issues with justification so this is no small issue to note. Men, the authors say, “procure well-regulated morals” but do so via God’s “undeserved help”. Dominion isn’t earned, but “we do need to earn…the ability to use this gift well”.

A more disturbing example is the way the authors talk about women in reference to men. For Foster/Tennant women remain sex objects while men are seen by women as “success objects”. Sexual objectification is a huge topic that is normally the province of feminist and psychological theory though Foster/Tennant do not demonstrate any real knowledge of such in their book other than the popular usage of such terms. The reason noting this remains important is not just because of a deep-seated prejudice the authors demonstrate toward women. Using the term “sex object” in passing is problematic in any discussion since it has such a long history in gender and other studies. In other words, how the authors use words are not just a matter of what they mean but also what they signify to others. True to form, the authors aren’t entirely unaware that they’re dipping into popular discourse because of how they term women and men as sex or success objects.

The authors are merely content to assert that women are viewed as sex objects and move on to talk about how that makes women and sex “the baseline purpose of that sex, the foundational design, the way in which they fulfill their duties of dominion” in contrast to men who are built to work. The implication for Foster/Tennant is that women exist primarily to have sex with men and in doing so help men fulfill the dominion mandate. Saying so is entirely reductive on the part of who women were created to be in conjuction with men. Sex is certainly a central part of marriage but in and of itself is not its entirety nor even its main focus. Again, remember that for Foster/Tennant sex is the engine of dominion.

In saying so as they move on to other points, Foster/Tennant remain a feminist’s dream target in making it very clear that their view of women is misogynist, reductive, and the very thing feminists have worked to undo all these years. Foster/Tennant seem entirely unaware that treating someone as an object means according to Nussbaum that women are at the very least instruments for men, do not have any sort of bodily autonomy, lacking in agency, interchangeable with other objects, retain no boundaries, remain the property of men, and the feelings and experiences of women need not be taken into account in order for men to be gratified. Langton, for example, also considers the sexual objectification of women to reduce women to their bodies, their appearance, and a matter of silencing them. The source for much of society’s current thought about sexual objectification actually moves all the way back to Kant in lowering a person to be something other than human and stunting the full recognition that they too exist as someone rational and capable of making choices. In a way, Foster/Tennant’s view is reminiscent of the way Aristotle viewed slaves as instruments and extensions of their master’s hand ( Pol. 1.1254b, great discussion in the first chapter of Agamben, The Use of Bodies re: instrumentality). What the reader should remember, however, is that the Bible does not describe or reduce women in this way.

As if seeing women as sex objects wasn’t enough, Foster/Tennant spend no real time talking about pornography–the dirty underside of considering women in this way. The problem is only mentioned three times in the entire book, twice in the first chapter, and finally in reference to romance novels as “women’s porn”. In reality, their view of women as sex objects minimizes the significance of the problem of porn by reductively considering women and who they are in relation to men.

Of course, Foster/Tennant also claim that men are seen as “success objects” as well. All of this fits nicely into thinking about women and men with stereotypical roles that cave to the discourse of the prevailing culture, carry on a reductive consideration of both sexes, enforce a dialectic of opposition, and on the whole remain unhelpful and unbiblical. The treatment offered in passing by the authors is more a reflection of traditional societal perspectives framed by historical Enlightenment-bound philosophy and postmodern culture than they might care to admit or make known.

The outlook provided by Foster/Tennant frame the rest of the considerations in the chapter as the focus attempts to make certain values more masculine than the Bible makes plain by enforcing a stark set of supposed differences between men and women. Other problems ought to be noticed along the way also. Foster/Tennant are very quick to overextend analogies and so a husband as head of the wife in Ephesians 5:23 for them somehow means that “the man is, put crudely, the brains of the operation”. That’s not what Ephesians 5 teaches and the interpretive maximalism that entertains logical fallacies via false analogies continues to handicap their consideration of what it means to be a man. Somehow, Foster/Tennant have also forgotten about Abigail and Nabal (1 Samuel 25). Nabal is boorish and unwise, described by his own wife as a “worthless man” while Abigail goes against her husband’s wishes and provides King David with what he needs. Later, Abigail then marries King David when Nabal dies as a result of hearing what happened when God judges the matter in a rather final way. All of this is odd behavior if being the head means being the brains of the outfit of any particular couple. Rather, headship is about covenantal arrangements not cerebral function.

For Foster/Tennant since women are sex objects wisdom, workmanship, and strength are chiefly masculine traits. Sure, a woman can gain wisdom but only by asking her husband or pastors. Workmanship is only available to men even while women can demonstrate skill because only men, according to Foster/Tennant, are useful. Why? Men are success objects and being useful apparently has little to do with being a sex object! Then, strength for the authors is inherently masculine because “a woman who is strong like this is butch and unnatural”.

All this is patently absurd since wisdom, workmanship, and even strength are not masculine values in the Bible even in the main. Men and women due to their differences may express such things differently but they all remain the province of anyone made in God’s image and led by the Holy Spirit, including women. Wisdom is personified as a woman in the Scriptures even while she represents the logos of the preincarnate Christ (Proverbs 8:1, 22-31). Wisdom is something the Proverbs 31 wife has in verse 26 that shows no sign of being bestowed upon by her husband but rather an inherent part of who she is, how she is to be valued in a husband finding such a wife, and what she does in fearing and serving God. When we turn to the New Testament, Paul himself in the first chapter of Ephesians prays that the Father give all the saints (v. 1) “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him…that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened”.

The section in Ephesians 5 on women and men in marriage is prefaced by telling the whole church to “look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise…addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”. Colossians 4 instructs the church as a whole to “walk in wisdom toward outsiders”. 1 Corinthians 1 contrasts divine wisdom with human wisdom, indicating that wisdom among mankind is a matter of what both men and women have and display. There really is no instance where wisdom is seen as a masculine virtue in the main contra what women might gain “at home” as claimed by Foster/Tennant.

Workmanship is also something both men and women develop. As if Proverbs 31 wasn’t enough of a rebuke to the notion that masculinity is chiefly about developing useful skills, Foster/Tennant also ignore the duties and calling of women in their lives and vocations to focus on men as success objects. Women are not sex objects as Foster/Tennant maintain even if the broader culture of society might view it that way. Women are mothers and daughters, lovers, fighters, champions of the faith, mentioned as such in Hebrews 11, and honored in the Scriptures right beside men for their great and useful contributions to God’s calling in their lives. Women devoutly run businesses in the Bible and host apostolic missionaries (Acts 15:11-15). Other women are prophetesses and servants in the church, applying gifts of mercy and care to those in need (Acts 21:8-9; 1 Tim 3:11). Miriam composes and sings a song spontaneously in response to the song of Moses, leading other women in worship before the entire congregation (Exodus 15:20-21). Still others are evangelists and even correct men who are publicly in error (Acts 18:24-28). On rare occasions, women may even drive a tent peg into the head of their enemies or lead when men won’t (Judges 4). Nowhere in the Scriptures can a reader find workmanship or usefulness as a strictly masculine value.

Strength for Foster/Tennant is defined as “the fortitude through which you stand firm under pressure, through which you translate the virtue of wisdom into action”. But, how is this exclusively masculine? The answer of course is that strength isn’t exclusively masculine especially when defined this way. Deborah and Jael have already been mentioned above. The Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1 in opposing Pharaoh is another. Rahab the harlot hides the spies of Israel in Jericho, helps them escape, and finds a place in the messianic line of Christ himself as a result (Joshua 2; Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:31 James 2:25). Hebrews 11 goes on to talk of the faith of women who received back their dead by resurrection (v. 35; 2 Kings 4).

The rest of the chapter continues in attempting to flesh out additional values that just don’t pass muster in terms of being strictly masculine. Women also envision and plan, build and supply, and guard and fight. Enterprise, constancy, and readiness are not the sole province of men. Foster/Tennant simply fail to prove that masculinity is defined by these things and embrace a false piety as a result. All the commentary they provide is interesting but it offers nothing in the way of biblical support for their view. In fact, as pointed out above there is much in the way of biblical support to see the things Foster/Tennant point out as inherently a part of what it means to be made in the image of God for both men and women.

The next post will comment on video games as a special aside mentioned in this chapter but there is another video by Foster that deserves additional commentary. I’ll link to the video tomorrow and provide commentary. Then, on to chapter 11 on ‘bearing the weight’ of dominion.

Next Review:

Is Jerusalem Burning?

The War Between Patriarchies

The Anti-Technological Stance of It’s Good to Be a Man

Sex and Sexuality

Toxic Sexuality

The Effeminate Church

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 1

No Fatherhood, No Manhood – Part 2

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 1

No Gravitas, No Manhood – Part 2

Gravitas Through Duty

How Porn & Video Games Hijack Manhood

Two for One Day – How to Bear the Weight/Manhood Through Mission

The Necessity of Fraternity

The Excellence of Marriage