Book review — The Masculine Mandate, by Richard D. Phillips

by Dan Phillips

The Masculine Mandate, by Richard D. Phillips

(Harrisonburg: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2010; 174 pages)

As I began teaching a 30-week course on marriage and the Bible, it was with some apprehension.

Any reader could pitch a number of accurate guesses as to reasons for that feeling, but the specific niggle was this: what is Biblical manhood — specifically, malehood? How do you textually ground and express the specific difference between God's intent in creating male human beings?

I had read a number of books and articles, and they hadn't helped much. Most of them simply gave popular opinions — popular evangelicaloid opinions — without much bothering to ground them directly in Scripture. Others were some fun, but in the final analysis just nuts. One had a lot of Bible — but it was almost all irrelevant. For instance, it went on and on about what Genesis 1:26-28 teaches us about being a man. The problem? Just read it. "Male and female." Oopsie. Is that the best we can do?

Then came this book by Richard Phillips (no relation, except in Christ), and it flicked the switch for me.

In a very solid, very readable, very Biblical, very theological, very engaging, and very practical way, Phillips leads us to Genesis 2 which, after all, is the narrative of the creation of the first male, in distinction from the creation of the first female. Phillips focuses on and develops Genesis 2:7, 8, and 15. Man's distinctive, pre-Eve task: to work and to keep the garden (8). These are expressed in service and leadership (9).

Phillips develops work as meaning "to cultivate as a gardener" (12ff.), and keep as "to protect as a sword-bearer" (14ff.). He then unfolds these ideas in the categories of man's calling to work (17ff.), man as the image of God (31ff.), and man as shepherd-lord (43ff.). These all focus on the conceptual aspect, getting the ideas Scripturally validated and illustrated.

Then Phillips turns to the practical application, with three chapters on marriage, two on training children, and one each on men in friendship, in the church, and as servants of the Lord.

This was one of those books that just turned on the floodlights for me. I took Phillips' basic idea, and went at the text hammer and tongs. I found in the Hebrew text and context even more clues, verification, and opening of the ideas, thanks to the fundamental pointer Phillips had given me. From what I found, I could probably write another book complementary (see what I did there?) to Phillips' My development of these ideas particularly began with session 23, and went on for several additional studies.

At the end comes a section of questions for reflection and discussion, making the book usable for group-studies; as well as indices of Scripture, subjects, and names. Unfortunately, endnotes also come at the back of the book, a reall bad decision on the publisher's part that is a disservice both to author and reader.

This is just a really terrific book. I don't for the life of me know why it isn't better-known and more widely-discussed. Instead of Driscoll, big Gospel sites ought to be promoting Phillips. I don't know another book that does what Richard Phillips does here at all, let alone so well.

I recommend it to everyone: boys/men/husbands/fathers/pastors, for obvious reasons; girls/single ladies to know what to look for in a man; moms to know how to raise their boys.

Get, read, review, recommend.

UPDATE: I just got word that the book will be on sale for $5 this Friday, November 29, via Ligonier's Black Friday sale.

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The Open Letter is Postponed One Day

by Frank Turk

 You know what? I ran out of daylight AND moonlight this week, and the video response will be worth it. It may not be the top-10 post I sort of promised, but it's worth the wait -- worth letting me have an extra night to get it in the can. But as a warm-up for that post (to be tomorrow, and DJP's post will roll over into Friday), I have an oldie but a goodie along the same lines. Enjoy.

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Anyway, since Phil re-reviewed the "Why We're Not Emergent" book, I thought I'd coat-tail him again and sort of pre-emptively review the other book he raved about in that post. But as I was reading it, I had this problem I had to resolve: I found another book which I thought needed a review in a much more urgent way.

That "more urgent" book is a little tome called Pop Goes the Church (hereafter PGTC) by a fellow named Tim Stevens, and I came across it in my own bookstore. See: we belong to this marketing group which helps us out by publishing very slick advertising materials and mailing them to our customer lists, which is of course a perfect thing -- except that it causes us, from time to time, to bring in books we wouldn't otherwise, um, proffer. The reason is simple: these books get the ad money from publishers, and that money ultimately pays for the catalog.

Yes, I get it: that's ugly. That is also the way it goes when you join a marketing group: you have to somehow get past the 20% junk and somehow capitalize on the 80% better-than-junk to try to get people to come back into the store.

Anyway, I grabbed the copy of PTCG and started reading it so I could review it, and the strangest thing happened to me: I realized that the other book was actually reviewing this particular book for me. If I were a charismatic, I think I would attribute this to the Holy Spirit speaking directly to me through these two books. But of course, I have to maintain the semblance of dignity here, so let's just say that God, in His providence, gave me the fodder for a brilliant blog post today, and you're merely fortunate enough to get to read it.

See: here's the thing. Over the last couple of weeks there has been a little dust-up in the blogosphere as to whether one should recommend that others not read a book one finds offensive. One blogger in particular tried to make his point very transparent by deleting posts at his blog which disagreed with him about his point of view -- which, I think, is not exactly the message he was trying to send, but we all have an idiom which we tend to drop into.

Anyway, rather than make the obvious "don't read this book" post about Tim Stevens' book, let me suggest something else instead: first read David Wells' book The Courage to be Protestant and then read Tim Stevens' book. Because it seems to me that the only way to really "get" either one of these books is to actually put them side by side and, frankly, let the best man win.

Seriously: read them both and compare them.  Or read them both and then give them to your pastor. Just don't freak out when he realizes that one of these books is a cook book, and he likes that one better. It'll be perfectly creepy like that Twilight Zone episode "To Serve man", because that's exactly what one of these books is advocating: to serve man.

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There is an awesome update to this post, BTW: Tim Stevens now wants to remove the word "saved" from the Christian vocabulary when we are speaking to lost people.  That is so amazing its making my eyes hurt.  Maybe my eyes hurt from forcing iMovie to place text where I really, really want it.

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