(Un)Biblical Masculinity
Setting Aside Cultural Notions of Masculinity to Become a Male Disciple of Jesus.
Christians have always been tempted to take our cues from the culture we happen to inhabit, then look to Scripture for confirmation. The pattern is familiar: a cultural account of strength, success, leadership, or the good life gets absorbed as common sense, and Scripture is recruited to underwrite what the culture has already taught us to want. The result is a Christianity that sounds biblical and operates culturally.
Unmanly is a project about that pattern. It uses the current literature on Christian manhood and biblical masculinity as a working example, because the manhood conversation is where the pattern shows up most plainly right now. Men are being told what masculinity looks like, and then told that Scripture supports it. The cultural account comes first; the theological work comes second, when it comes at all.
The Core Argument
The Corrective is Not a Better Cultural Account. It is Discipleship.
The question worth asking is not what kind of man a man should be, but what it looks like for a particular man, in the relationships and circumstances he actually occupies, to live under the authority of Christ. Biological sex matters and shapes how that life takes form. It is not the governing framework. Discipleship is.
What Unmanly is really after, then, is not a position on manhood. It is the slow, theological work of letting Scripture set the terms before culture does.
Unmanly applies the Thinking Christian Framework to one domain of every community's life: Male and Female.
The Argument
Unmanly in Five Parts
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Identifying the Problem
Cultural masculinity works as a rival sacred-social order.
What the Bible Says About Men
Scripture asks whether men are faithful, not whether they are masculine.
Jesus, Paragon of Humanity
Christ shows us what it means to be human, not what it means to be masculine.
The Alternative: Male Discipleship
Follow Christ first, then ask what that looks like as a man.
The Church and Male Formation
The church's task is to make men faithful, not masculine.
Start Here
Three Ways In
Reflect
Living Unmanly, an eight-day reading plan through the texts at the center of the debate.
Read
The Unmanly Essays
Eight essays on what Scripture does and does not say about being a man.
01The Trouble With Biblical Manhood“Recovering Biblical Manhood” is a worthy aspiration, but the biblical text does not deliver the abstract definitions Piper and Grudem are looking for. The...02Being a Male Disciple Instead of Pursuing Biblical Manhood or MasculinityThe path forward is not a sharper theory of masculinity but a more deeply formed male disciple.03Jesus: Paragon of Masculinity or Humanity?Jesus is the paragon of humanity, not masculinity. His mission, boldness, obedience, and self-sacrifice are human traits, given to every disciple.04Strong Men, Weak Theology: Rethinking Masculinity Through the CrossDiscipleship is the only adequate framework for Christian manhood because it trains anyone to live under Christ’s authority.05Masculinity, Maturity, and Misreadings: What Paul and the Bible Say About Being a ManPaul’s exhortation to “act like men” in 1 Corinthians 16:13 is a call to mature courage addressed to the whole Corinthian church.06Punching Life in the Mouth? Why Christian Manhood Isn’t About MachismoChristian manhood cannot be grounded in a cultural masculinity script because such scripts are cultural constructions, not biblical categories.07Bodies, Bondservants, and the Bible: Thinking Christian About ManhoodMales and females experience the world differently, but the difference is a function of embodied embedding rather than a gendered essence.08Unmarried, Unmanly? Rethinking Maleness Apart from MarriageChristian manhood is not the same thing as being a Christian husband or father. Collapsing the two reduces Christian manhood to a role a significant portio...
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The Unmanly Series on Thinking Christian
Asked and Answered