Fully Alive: A Biblical Vision of Gender that Frees Men and Women to Live Beyond Stereotypes, by Dr. Larry Crabb

**

An excerpt of a review recently posted on Schaeffer's Ghost:

The trouble is the foundation of Crabb’s framework. Although the book purports to be based on a biblical understanding of femininity and masculinity, the primary basis for Crabb’s ideas seems to be … the sex act. Or at least the human reproductive system. Like John Eldredge before him, Crabb sees in sexual intercourse a physical picture of biblical gender roles. Actually, no. That’s not accurate. That might be ok. Crabb seems to see gender roles as a picture of sex. In other words, rather than starting with a study of Scripture as a whole in an attempt to discern its teaching on gender, he seems to start with sex and then cherry-pick the bible verses that best support his claims. 

The entirety of his argument regarding ‘biblical’ femininity seems to rest on the fact that the Hebrew word for ‘female’ is etymologically connected to the word for ‘perforated or punctured’—that is, something with holes in it. Even assuming that he’s done his homework here, and that the etymological connection is a reference to the female sex organ—that somewhere back along the line, the Hebrew term for female was essentially ‘something you nail’—those etymological connections are not an adequate basis for an entire philosophy of gender.

Full review available here.