Binary Reasoning and Gender Balance

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The binary sets that informed the reasoning of the early Hebrew are natural and universally observed. They display a hierarchical relationship between the entities of the set. Males are larger and stronger than females. The sun is the greater light, the moon the lesser, yet both sun and moon rule their domains (Gen. 1:16). The Hebrew observation of binary sets as having both balance and hierarchy is reflected in their social structure. The social structure of the biblical Hebrew was neither matriarchal nor patriarchal. It was characterized by a male-female balance of authority and separate domains.

The binary sets of the Bible are not arbitrary. They are based on empirical observation of the order in creation. Not every set of opposites is a binary set in the biblical sense. The opposites “tall and short” do not constitute a binary set because those are contextually dependent. Were I to stand beside a Watusi warrior I would appear short. However, were I to stand beside a Pygmy, I would appear tall. The entities of a true binary set are not contextually dependent. They do not derive meaning from human experience other than their observation as natural sets: male-female, sun-moon, light-dark, and life-death.

The opposites hot-cold are not a binary set because those are subjective. What might feel cold to one person may not feel cold to another.

The Hebrew way of reasoning should be distinguished from dualistic reasoning which divides reality into two irreconcilable halves. The Egyptologist Frédéric Servajean notes that unlike dualism, Egyptian duality is integrative and dynamic. Servajean's article "Duality" in the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (2008) examines how ancient Egyptian reasoning involved natural pairs of opposites. He defines duality as a dynamic coexistence of two elements that balance and define each other such as light and dark and order and chaos. Servajean believes that this was the conceptual framework by which the Egyptians made sense of the cosmos. However, he does not investigate the influence of the Hebrew ruler-priests whose perceptions of the order of Creation were informed by empirical observations. When the Hebrew ruler-priests studied the order of creation they observed that one of entities in the natural pair (binary set) is greater than its partner.

My Journey to Greater Understanding

I studied for a Master of Divinity at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania. That degree was awarded in 1988. Many years after that I was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters for my work on gender, specifically about the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood.

My doubts about women’s ordination launched me into a twenty-year study of that dangerous innovation. I drew on my background in anthropology, philosophy, and linguistics. I noted that no women served as priests among the biblical Hebrew. Likewise, men did not serve as midwives. This suggested that men and women have distinct types of blood work: the priests in the place of blood sacrifice where women were forbidden to enter, and the woman in the birthing chamber where men were forbidden to enter. Two types of blood work in two distinct places and the two were always maintained apart. I pondered that a great deal.

Among the biblical Hebrew who delivered to us the authoritative moral law, male and female are distinct physiologically, anatomically, emotionally, and in the roles they were created to perform. This seems obvious even to those who minimize the distinction between males and females. Some realities cannot be denied.

When Riley Gaines asked the University of Pittsburgh professor Gabby Yearwood if an archaeologist can differentiate between two sets of 100-year bones as male and female, Professor Yearwood answered “no” to which the audience of students laughed. Yearwood responded, "I'm not sure why I'm being laughed at! I'm the expert... I have a Ph.D.!" The students recognize that someone can get a Ph.D. in anthropology and still be ignorant of basic facts about humans. Forensic medicine has been identifying the sex of human remains since the 16th century, and today we have the advantage of genetic testing as well.

Pondering the two distinct types of blood work took me deeper into consideration of the binary reasoning of the biblical Hebrew. That reasoning is based on empirical observation of the hierarchies in the order of creation. These hierarchies are expressed in a small number of binary sets: Creator-creature, life-death, heaven-earth, male-female, and sun-moon. The Apostle Paul uses binary reasoning in 1 Corinthians 15 when he contrasts the Creator and the creature, the sun and the moon, and the perishable and the imperishable. 

The Church receives the reasoning of the biblical Hebrew through the Apostles. That Tradition builds a protective hedge around what the Creator has established as good. Life is greater than death. Thus, the Hebrew were never to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk (forbidden three places in Scripture). This action blurs the distinction between life and death because the mother’s milk is to sustain the life of the offspring. This prohibition represents the typical rabbinic “hedge” around the Torah.

There is a binary distinction between humans and non-human animals. Bestiality is forbidden because it blurs the distinction between humans and animals.

Homosex is forbidden because it blurs the distinction between male and female, a binary set established by God in the beginning and by which humanity is to survive extinction. Homosex, transvestism, and bestiality represent denial of divine authority. The Triune God has a purpose for each person. Rebellion against His purpose brings gradual loss of the divine image. Therefore, those who oppose His authority are to be pitied and humble intercession offered for them.

The spilling of human semen (onanism) was regarded as an unrighteous act because this violates the divinely established order in creation. The seed that should fall to the earth is the seed of the plants with roots in the earth. The seed of man should fall on his own type (the womb), from which man comes forth. In 191 A.D., Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted.” (The Instruction of Children)

The prohibition against onanism reflects the ancient wisdom that was informed by observation of patterns in nature. It is based on reality, not imagined entities or moral relativism. Dr. David C. Innes of King’s College in New York City, recently wrote, “Living in reality also means living in principled awareness of who is in charge of all things and thus living in recognition of what is true.”

The hedge extended even to the sowing of seed and to textiles. The Hebrew were not to sow two types of seed in the same field or weave cloth using two different types of fiber.

Such prohibitions sound strange to people today. They are seen as baseless religious restrictions. Some reject binary reasoning entirely though it is the logical outcome of empirical observations of the order of creation. Though the world casts Bible believers are naive or stupid, binary reasoning is the basis for great complexity of thought. Consider the complexity of Artificial Intelligence and advanced computation. Both are driven by binary code. Consider how the diversity of organisms in the Cambrian Explosion is characterized by the emergence of binary and symmetrical features.

Related reading: Orthodoxy Requires Binary Reasoning; STEM Education: Theories About the Cambrian Explosion; Philosophers' Corner: Two Types of Binary Reasoning; A Christian Anthropologist Considers Gender in the Bible; Male and Female are Primary in Hebrew Scriptures; Territorial Ambitions of the Early Hebrew