Merkle, Rebekah. Eve in Exile: And the Restoration of Femininity. Moscow: Canon, 2016.

On X this week, I happened to see an advertisement clip of Rebekah Merkle reading a paragraph of her book that I believed lacked an emphasis on redemption, the gospel and Jesus Christ. When I said as much, a large number of defenders said that I was taking it out of context and making a false judgment. I had assumed that they must have made that charge because they themselves had read the book and knew what I said to be false. Curious to know what the book actually said, I sat down today to read it. I found Merkle to be a delightful author. The book was easy to read and engaging all the way through. She did a great deal of research for this book, and relates a particular form of theology with consistency.

Summary

The book is divided into four main sections. Section one is titled “Two Distractions.” Here Merkle warns against pretending to be a conservative woman in a way that is merely outward show. But she warns equally against drifting with the culture in order to pursue an elusive feminine fulfillment. Instead, she says that the purpose of a woman, along with all of humanity, is “To change the world” (24).

Section two is titled “Enter Feminism.” This is a helpful summary of feminism. Feminism comes out of enlightenment individualism which prizes maximum individual freedom as its highest value. First wave feminism sought voting rights for women so that they could enact prohibition laws because drunkenness was so destructive to husbands and families. Margaret Sanger was part of this first wave, and she wanted “reproductive freedom” for women, giving them the right to abort their babies. Second wave feminism was about freedom from being a housewife. One leading feminist, Betty Friedan, said women needed “the opportunity to pursue careers outside the home and the liberty to leave behind their children and husbands in order to fulfill themselves” (65). But Friedan’s vision didn’t leave women fulfilled; so, they were given psychotropic drugs for relief. The problem was that women didn’t have the hard work they had in the past. They were purposeless. They were no longer required to prepare for a long winter under the threat of death like they had to do prior to the modern period. The basic reason for feminism is that being a woman in the home became easy due to advancements in technology, and society did not value women enough to believe they could do more. So, they were left at home to keep the house tidy (77). Women became bored. Third wave feminism is basically the result of this boredom. It is purposeless and has lost the meaning of womanhood entirely, pursuing other issues like gay rights and transgender bathrooms. Feminism was an enemy of Christianity from the beginning because of its self-centered, individualistic, godless approach to womanhood and life.

Section three is titled, “What Are Women Designed For?” Merkle starts off well here and says that womanhood is rooted in nature and defined by God. This means “there are fixed limits on the feminine nature” (99). The heart of Merkle’s argument in this section is that “women, as God’s creatures are designed by him to fulfill a particular role” (98). She sees four different aspects of a woman’s role, including the requirement to “subdue,” “fill,” “help,” and “glorify.” First, the woman is required to obey the Garden’s “subdue” mandate to bring the earth into subjection by her faithful works. She writes, “The first and most obvious thing God made us to do is work. Hard” (101). Second, the woman is required to “fill,” meaning that she must fill the earth by having godly offspring. Third, she is to “help” her husband, which involves submission. “’Helper’ implies that someone else is in charge, and the helper is in a secondary role” (112). The fourth aspect of the woman’s role is that she is to “glorify” her husband. Merkle correctly says, “If Adam is the crown of creation, then Eve is the crown of the crown. Women are the glory of the glory” (119), which is what Scripture teaches (1 Cor 11:7). Merkle then recognizes the difficulty of these tasks and says that the woman must die before she can live, pointing to the cross and resurrection as an example for believers (123).

Section four is titled, “Living Out Our Design.” In this section Merkle begins to apply practically the theology she outlined in section three. Using Titus 2:3-5 as her text, she says that a woman “subdues” the earth in her home and for her home. She is to keep her home. If she has a job outside the home, it should be in the service of her home, according to Proverbs 31.

Very practically, the way to subdue the earth in the home is to make use of her talents and not to bury them. Her goal should be to build “something” (152). Subduing the home involves feeding everyone and figuring out how to do it with excellence. Maybe “learn about all the traditional cooking techniques,” or “figure out the differences that different types of cookware make to the finished product,” or “master the souflé or the blintz” (154).

The way a woman makes “filling” the earth real is by having and raising godly children. Children are a blessing that should be adored and desired and not avoided for some life outside of them. Another way a woman is called to fill the earth is by fulfilling the Great Commission. Since a woman is not to teach or preach, she obeys the Great Commission differently. Merkle says, “What the pastors explain with words, women sing with hot food, with wine, with welcoming homes, with love and joy….” She explains, “If men are the words, women are the music” (174). She goes on, “Women are prohibited from preaching theology, but it’s never assumed that they shouldn’t know theology” (174). Merkle then gives an example: “The men can talk about the Incarnation, church fathers can write important treatises about it, pastors can preach about it, theologians can parse and define it … but we women are the ones who make it taste like something. We make it smell good” (175).

The way a woman makes “helping” her husband real is by turning his desires into a beautiful reality. Merkle says that one day her husband said, “I don’t like kitchens that look like they would smell like cleaner. I think the kitchen should look like it smells like hot food in the oven.” She then says that she proceeded to beautify her kitchen in that way, trying to incorporate her husband’s ideas “into paint choices and wood finishes” (186), which enabled her to turn the kitchen into something they both loved. A woman helps her husband by translating his thoughts and desires into a beautiful reality. Figure out how he wants his children raised, and then run with it, making it happen in a way that takes his breath away (188).

A woman’s role is also to be the glory of her husband. Since the man is the glory of God, and the woman is the glory of the man, then the wife should be the glory of her husband and “multiply that glory in the small things and the great things” (193). She does this by laying down her life, laying down her pride, laying down her dreams, and the result will be “unspeakable fulfillment” (193). Merkle says, “Feminine glory is fruitful. It produces. It builds. It creates. And it does so in ways that are profound and staggering…” (194).

Strengths

This book was not only well-written, but interesting, and I can see why so many have enjoyed it. Merkle did an excellent job describing Feminism, and she is right to warn against its radical individualism. This was perhaps the highlight of the book for me, and she is absolutely correct that its ideology is one of the enemy’s main weapons against women today. Another strength is that Merkle understands the Bible to teach distinct roles for men and women, which are designed by God and planted in human nature. She correctly believes that women are made by God to be strong, intelligent, and creative people who are able to work and accomplish things.

Weaknesses

In turning to the book’s weaknesses, let me say that I count Rebekah Merkle a sister in Christ, and in no way do these critiques intend to reflect negatively upon her as a person or in terms of the promise we share in Christ. After reading the book, I discovered that many people who criticized me for raising concerns on X had evidently not read the book themselves, since after reading the book, it seems the concerns I raised were well-founded. This book leaves Eve in much need of rescue.

There are a number of weaknesses, such as the misuse of Christ’s parable of the talents to teach that we should use our temporal gifts and multiply them for temporal increase, when in fact that parable is about eternal redemption and sanctification. Additionally, I don’t believe Merkle adequately captured femininity. For example, the Hebrew term “helper” does not simply mean submission. A helper is a companion who provides aid and implies a relational and practical orientation to other people. But I will focus on four other areas of concern.

Dominionism

This book is basically dominion theology for women. The controlling idea of the book is that women are to join men in working hard to subdue the earth. It seems to say that the basic problem with women today is that they are purposeless and bored, and therefore, often up to no good. The solution is to put them hard to work, subduing the earth with the promise of great joy and true satisfaction as they do it. In this theology, it is difficult to see how Eve’s own hard work in the home isn’t essentially what rescues her and makes her happy. Her dominion, under her husband, subdues the earth, so she and her home can have great joy.

The problem with dominion theology is that the Bible teaches that this unregenerate earth will not be subdued. The pre-fall command is now physically impossible to obey. Before the fall, Adam and Eve could work the ground, and the ground would produce fruit. No sickness, no pain in childbearing or childrearing, and no death. But after the fall, the Bible says the earth subdues us. Thorns and thistles grow up, making the ground resistant to the man’s work. The woman endures excruciating pain in childbearing and childrearing. And in the end, the man and the woman go back into the dust of the earth, their bodies having been beaten to death by the effect of the curse. Does that sound like subduing the earth? I believe this book gives the wrong answer to the question raised in Ecclesiastes 7:13, “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?”

Apparently, according to the book, a godly woman can. But the true answer is no mere human can do it.

The Bible teaches that only Christ can do what Adam failed to do. One day, Christ will return, and He will regenerate and subdue the earth. Eve can’t do this. She needs a Rescuer. I expected a book with the subtitle “the restoration of femininity” to teach that only Jesus can and will restore femininity, but it does not teach that. It teaches that hard work restores femininity. There is certainly a temporal law-order that should be maintained in the home. But it is not subduing anything. It’s working to stabilize that which will never be subdued, even while we patiently pray and await the One who will.

Law

Another concern with the book is that it is weak on the law, weak on the gospel, and it confuses and blends them into a mixture that is neither. In my post on X, I suspected Doug Wilson’s law-gospel collapse would be in this book, and that was an accurate suspicion.

Instead of giving the good law of God to Christian women, Merkle speaks vaguely of the need to “work like crazy” (104). If a woman’s husband is an electrician, she should figure out how to make him glorious in the home as an electrician. It’s her job to determine what is good in this regard and her husband will know it if she does. She needs to figure out how to take his breath away by raising the children the way he wants to raise them, and so on. This is represented as something doable with a great deal of thought and effort. But notice that this is law-lite, a keepable man-made substitute for God’s law. In truth, what Merkle says women must do isn’t God’s law at all.

The true law of God, summarized in the Decalogue, is crushingly rigorous. God’s law exposes our sin and drives us out of ourselves to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and rescue. He receives, redeems, washes us, counts us righteous and adopts us by free grace. Under grace, Christ then points us to this same law, but removes the rigor of it, as the rule of faithfulness, accepting and delighting in our faithful efforts to grow in obedience. A husband’s mere opinion is never the standard for his wife. Rather a faithful feminine woman in Christ is filled with every grace and virtue of the Spirit of Christ and is growing in keeping God’s good law more and more as the true expression of love to God and love to her family. She does this according to her feminine mode of humanity, as a helper, a companion who provides aid. She is the glory of her husband strictly and only as he is the glory of Christ (not as he is an electrician). Thus, she is the glory of her husband by putting on the graces of the Holy Spirit, Christlikeness, as the wife and helper of her husband. She has Christian liberty where there is no law, and is not required by God’s law to come up with ideas about how to make her husband glorious. According to Scripture and the Reformed confessions, good works are strictly defined by the law of God.

She should do good works in the home with the feminine inflection of an orientation to people in order to nurture relationships, to draw people together, especially in her family and church. A faithful woman aims toward obedience to Christ, to know Him more, to reflect Him to others, but her heart is tender to her sin because the true standard, the moral obedience and character of Christ Himself, is unachievable on this side of heaven. The law-lite of this book will leave women who are temporally strong feeling quite accomplished and proud of themselves, but those with sensitive consciences will feel depressed, unable to live up to the made-up standards. Worst of all, neither the strong nor the tender will be made to feel their need of constant, daily, rescue in Christ and His gracious gospel.

Gospel

The gospel proper, or strictly, was, as far as I could tell, absent from the book. There was, however, gospel-lite. The book used the word “gospel,” but then called for the woman to die and rise, turning the gospel into a work to be performed by the woman. The gospel was never declared as that great finished work, the grand indicative of redemption, which J. Gresham Machen says is the hallmark of true Christianity, contra liberalism.

According to the Bible, the gospel strictly is that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3-4). The law teaches that even while you work hard to honor and obey Christ in your home, you will sin terribly, but the gospel declares that Christ’s blood washes you and cleanses you of all guilt. Your sin against Christ’s good law in your home incurs His judgment, but His free gift of righteousness clothes you and secures for you an eternal inheritance. As a believer, in union with Christ and His righteousness, He freely accepts your efforts to keep His law with a glad heart and without the slightest hint of condemnation due to your imperfections. Without this gospel message of Jesus Christ shining as the diamond at the heart of rescue out of Feminist exile and into biblical femininity, there can be no biblical femininity at all. The gospel alone will lead your heart to adore Christ and therefore give you the strength to keep His law as a woman of grace.

The gospel also directs Christian women to their ultimate feminine end, which is not homemaking. It’s communion with Christ, beholding His face, and being filled with His character to His great glory. This book leaves one with the impression that the purpose of femininity is the temporal transformation of the home. To what end? The book says the goal is profound personal satisfaction. But the true end of human beings is God Himself, knowing Him, communing with Him, and participating in His communicable attributes for fullness of life in Him to His glory. If true femininity involves forging and strengthening relational bonds among people, drawing people in and toward one another, and to God Himself, then the only way to do that faithfully is by centering on Jesus, the Redeemer, who is the true good, the true friend. True femininity loves others in the truth and tells the truth in love, no matter what the other person does. A husband and wife must have such a friendship of virtue, celebrating and seeking the true good for and in each other, which is Christ Himself. It means husbands and wives lay down their lives by keeping the moral law of God, under grace, toward their spouse, their children, and others God has put into their lives to love, no matter how they respond, for the joy of communion with Christ and glorifying Him. It means preaching the law and the gospel of Jesus Christ to their children, encouraging their spouse in the same, and being an example to all.

The Church

I was astonished that the church was completely absent from this book, though that seems to be typical of dominionism generally. True biblical womanhood has much to do with the church and not just the home. There were no exhortations in this book about how true femininity works itself out among God’s people in local churches. Aren’t women to nurture the life of Christ and relationships in the church by speaking the truth in love? Shouldn’t women use their words to build into the community a culture of love, unity, and peace? Merkle is correct that women should not preach to the church (1 Tim 2:12). That is a problem today that needs to be corrected. But in the New Testament, women played a vital role in the church, performing many services with feminine inflection (Rom 16:1-2, etc). Scripture even tells us that Priscilla went with her husband Aquilla to take Apollos, a preacher, aside and teach him truths he did not yet know or understand (Acts 18:26).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the good news is that Eve has a Rescuer. The Lord Jesus rescues men and women from their sin against God’s good law and thus their perversions of human nature. His death and resurrection wins our hearts to Him and teaches us to live as Christian men and women. And one day, this great Jesus will return, and as the second Adam, He will subdue the earth.

Due to the weaknesses of this book, I cannot recommend it to Christian women looking for a good book on biblical femininity. I would recommend the older Puritan works to my sisters in Christ. Maybe Of Domestical Duties by William Gouge, or Building a Godly Home by the same author. For a modern Puritan treatment of the Christian home and the role of a wife and mother, an excellent book is Living in a Godly Marriage by Joel Beeke and James La Belle. A good and readable ethics book on masculinity and femininity from a natural law perspective is On the Meaning of Sex by J. Budziszewski.