Our Five Aspects Ministries web site has recently been undergoing a major revamp. I write today to alert you to some resources in the revamped web site which we’re offering free of charge to any who are interested in them - 16 audio lectures that accompany our study course Five Aspects of Man. Each lecture is in MP3 format and is downloadable, or may be listened to via a conventional browser.
The Five Aspects of Man are Lord of the Earth, Husbandman, Savior, Sage, and Glory of God. The course examines each of these aspects as it was created, as the fall and curse impact it adversely, and as each aspect functions in the life of a man undergoing redemption - fifteen lessons in all.
For each lesson I’ve added a 30-minute lecture exploring collateral ideas and issues that will help the student tackle the textbook material. An introductory lecture covers concepts valid for the entire course. These lectures stand alone, independent of the textbook material, free of charge, 16 lectures in all.
You may access any of these lectures on this page of our website.
Three other men and I have been working our way through “Five Aspects.” It’s been helpful as we’ve sought to apply who God has made us as men to our lives as husbands, fathers, churchmen, employees, etc. Thanks for the good work!
On Biblical Masculinity. Is there much in this material looking at the situation of single Christian men? I.e. who are not in an immediate position to marry.
If I might explain why I’ve asked … years ago, when I first attended a Promise Keepers’ rally in my own city, some 700 men turned up. I had gone to the rally in large part because it was offering a ‘breakout’ on the Saturday morning for the single men. The room ended up completely crowded; as the pastor organising it told me later, “We thought we’d get 45-50 guys along. We got over a hundred and twenty”.
I get it why you, and this site indeed, talk about masculinity in terms of being a husband and father, but not all Christian men are in this situation. Hence my question.
I have been reading and following the site and podcast created by Michael Foster and @bnonn to address the subject of masculinity broadly enough to speak to husbands, fathers, and single men. I introduced a younger, single friend to the site and he’s said that he’s benefited greatly from it.
The site is called It’s Good to Be a Man. If he wishes, @bnonn can speak to it more specifically, but its general aim is to properly direct the thinking of men who might otherwise be (or may already have been) influenced by movements like the Red Pill and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).
Alastair Roberts has a good amount of content on his blog and Youtube channel, Alastair’s Adversaria. Doug Wilson and Toby Sumpter have an ever-deepening ocean of content available through various means in books, sermons, blogs, and podcasts; they have extensively addressed masculinity and manhood in both general and family contexts.
Note: If any of this (that is, referencing outside resources like these or any of these men in particular) violates community guidelines, I apologize.
Dear Ross,
My counsel would be to look to Job as an example of the kind of fatherhood every man must pursue:
Because I delivered the poor who cried for help,
And the orphan who had no helper.
The blessing of the one ready to perish came upon me,
And I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.
I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;
My justice was like a robe and a turban.
I was eyes to the blind
And feet to the lame.
I was a father to the needy,
And I investigated the case which I did not know.
I broke the jaws of the wicked
And snatched the prey from his teeth. - Job 29:12-17
A big part of righteous Job’s work was outside the bounds of his employment, family, and church relationships. It involved being strong on behalf of the weak and the fatherless, those outside. None of this is out of bounds to you. There’s an overwhelming amount of work to be done, and as men we all fall short of our responsibilities in these areas. May God bless you as, pursuing this work by faith, you become a father to the fatherless where you are.
Enjoying listening through these. I find it takes time to assimilate this stuff and it helps to go over it again. Just heard this nugget from the Savior: Redeemed lecture, about 15 minutes in:
Men and women actually died as martyrs for defending the Bible’s truth about all of these questions [about the nature of Christ and the Trinity]. And they died by the truckload in the wars that racked Europe during the Protestant Reformation about 500 years ago.
At this moment of history you’re not likely to lose your life over a doctrinal matter—but you might lose your soul, depending on whether you embrace the modern versions of some very old heresies. And if you do not lose your soul you may still lose your saltiness, as Jesus would put it, because you have embraced one or more of the fashionable heresies of this century and so you’ve lost all your effectiveness as a servant of Christ.
Our fathers were not fools for contending earnestly for the faith in their day. It’s helpful to remember why we fight for the biblical truths under attack today.
Two more nuggets. This one from the Sage: Created lecture, 5½ minutes in:
The most fundamental premise about wisdom and wise men is this: experience is everything. And experience, of course, is something which continually looks to the past and builds on top of it for every single step into the future you take. If the past has no credibility for you simply because it is old, then it is impossible for you to become a wise man.
And this from Sage: Fallen, 24 minutes in:
A man who is a sage in the comprehensive sense, and a woman who embodies Lady Wisdom in her own soul—either one of these people will have similar insights and living skills. The difference between men and women as far as wisdom is concerned has very little to do with the being wise part. Instead, the differences lie in how they get to be wise in the first place…
For women, so much of their physical and psychological maturation is almost hardwired. A host of biological processes help to shape and to define and affirm a woman’s intrinsic femininity—and most societies contain a variety of social customs and institutions that reinforce all the biological things which turn little girls into adult women.
When it comes to males, however, the biological props are almost nonexistent. And the ones which are present—namely, a man’s awakening sex drive and his development of physical strength as his body first matures—these things do far more to overwhelm a man’s budding masculine adulthood than anything else.
The point is this: for women, becoming wise is something like growing up, or growing into something. For a man, however, becoming wise is a quest—it is a difficult quest for something he does not have, and something which he must acquire if he is to be happy and successful and wise.
I do not think it is “automatic” in the sense you may suppose. I am convinced, however, that the path toward wisdom is “greased” for a woman in ways it is not so for a boy on the path to becoming a man, that a male faces challenges to attaining wisdom which are not only peculiar to him, but (compared to the path a woman follows) is far more fraught with dangers, toils, and snares.
A young man needs - badly needs! - the management of older, wiser men in order to join their company. Unlike the female, whose biology and the very design of her femininity serve as built-in guides along which she may move toward feminine maturity, the male’s maturation is a quest, as I put it, for something he utterly lacks. The “powers” which awaken in him upon puberty - muscles and testosterone - can spin him off into all sorts of unwholesome and dangerous directions.
Yes, I know that females can be fools and foolish. I reared four daughters. Sometimes it was challenging! And, I also remember well my own upbringing. And that of two younger brothers. It was a whole 'nuther project for us to attain to maturity.
I’ve heard a story of a school where a leader said to the staff, “These girls are soon going to be wives and mothers” or something like that, and everybody nodded and smiled. Then he said, “These boys are soon going to be husbands and fathers.” and everybody was horrified. I think this was Wilson, perhaps related in Future Men.
That no one (supposedly) was horrified that the girls would soon be wives and mothers at least points to an expectation that this near-term development prompted no worries concerning the young girls. But, how often, do you suppose, the same expectation holds true for male students in a (high?) school?
Precisely. It’s always horrific to think of the 18 year old boys being married soon, but rarely so for the girls. I would assume the reason is almost always because they are naturally more mature (having started earlier?) and more responsible by that age (no idea why). Is that what you mean?
You suggest that girls may have started maturing earlier than boys, and you acknowledge, as I do, that the expectations people usually have (or used to have in recent generations) about the “arrival” of girls at maturity coming earlier than for boys.
So far, we’re in agreement.
Where I sense a possible disagreement is at the place where I point to reasons for this difference. I think it is rooted ultimately in the design of women qua females, their intrinsic hard-wiring for relationship and for life-giving, not merely on a biological level (e.g. having babies) but in all the vast number of ways that women create the conditions, the settings, the environments of good living.
Such dynamics in the soul of a female dispose her toward the specific dynamics by which wisdom is most easily attained, namely via relationship to others, especially older females.
I submit that in the intrinsic nature of masculinity there is no similar dynamic that naturally disposes the male to relationship, especially to other males, in ways that foster a disciple-mentor relationship.