Theology in the Raw - Dr. Zach Wagner: What Is Biblical Masculinity? Part 2

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

If you want to listen to our "Extra Innings" conversation about whether marriage is necessary for men to be truly masculine, head over to patreon.com/theologyintheraw and become a member of the Theology in the Raw community. Dr. Zachary Wagner (DPhil, Oxford) is an author, ordained minister, and New Testament scholar. He’s written two books that deal with masculinity, male sexuality, and virtue: Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality and his most recent Men of Virtue: How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World. He is currently pursuing publication for his DPhil thesis, as well as a further writing and research projects on Christianity and Stoicism. Learn more about Zachary on his website.Time Stamps:00:00 Introduction to Part 201:59 Defining “Biblical” masculinity 03:37 What do people mean when the call their view “biblical”? 04:29 How much of the Bible is directed specifically to men? 07:22 Cultural Norms vs Universal Mandates around Gender10:59 Biology: The impact of Testosterone 19:42 How Important are Gender Roles for Discipleship? 21:34 How Jesus “rewrites” Masculinity 25:19 Do husbands have a moral mandate to be the primary breadwinner? 29:03 Post Industrial careers and gender38:02 Do men have a moral obligation to protect women? 49:29 Christian masculinity and non-violence52:27 Does the Bible mandate Chivalry? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Create a dialogue with yourself and in your community. My culture is telling me it is manly to do X, but Jesus taught me why. Can I receive that performance of manliness from my culture, or do I need to critique it? Or do I need to revise it? Or do I need to just fall out, reject it, and say, not so with men of God. It's an ongoing thing, and there's not a single tight proof text answer oftentimes. Hey, friends, welcome to part two of our series on biblical masculinity. If you've missed part one with Seth Trout, I encourage you to go back and listen to it. I think it would be helpful to get two perspectives on this important topic about biblical masculinity. My guest today is Dr. Zachary Wagner, who is an author, ordained minister and New Testament scholar. He holds a doctorate in New Testament from Oxford University and is the author of two books on the topic of masculinity. His first one is non-toxic masculinity, recovering healthy male sexuality.

His second book is Men of Virtue, How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World. If you're watching on YouTube, here is a copy of his book. And just as I did with Seth, we have an extra innings conversation that deals with the question of marriage and masculinity. Do men need to be married to be fully masculine? I asked the same question to Seth in the previous episode and I asked the same question to Zach in this episode. So if you want to listen to this extra innings portion of our conversation, then head over to patreon.com forward slash theology in Raw, become a member of the theology in the raw community. Okay, without further ado, please welcome back to the show. The one and only, Dr. Zachary Wagner.

Zach, welcome back to Theology and to Raw. Let's dive in. what is biblical masculinity? Oh man. So the way I define it in my book is biblical masculinity is the pursuit of Christian virtue refracted through male embodiment or the pursuit of Christian virtue in a male body. And by like in a male body, I'm not doing like I'm not going all in on like a Judith Butler

like gender as performance. or like the distinction between sex and gender. Actually, you know, I'm sympathetic to a lot of the kind of back and forth that has gone and the distinction between our sex embodiment on the one hand as kind of a created biological reality. And then our performance, quote unquote, this is the kind of Butler, I don't know, insight, the Butler argument is that gender is very socially situated and culturally performed and all of that. I don't so I'm not

by saying a Christian character in a male body I'm not trying to downplay the significance of gender or sex quite the opposite I think there's a there's a unique

refracting of Christ like character Christ like virtue through the lens of male embodiment so you'll notice perhaps and then I'll pause and let you let you respond. I am not

leaning in too much to kind of like proof texting biblical texts for defining biblical masculinity. Because I find biblical a kind of imprecise and unhelpful words sometimes. People mean different things when they use it.

And a lot of times it's kind of used as like a club to kind of denigrate other people's views with whom you disagree. You know, like, well, I take the biblical view. And people don't make a distinction of what's recorded in the Bible the is and what is sort of morally mandated in the Bible the ought. And even there, you have to distinguish between what is morally mandated in that cultural context, like head coverings

for women in Corinth, versus what is universally morally mandated for all Christians of all time. Yes. And very relevant for a discussion of biblical masculinity, too, because it's like, who are we talking about? Are we talking about Abraham? Are we talking about Samson? Are we talking about David? Are we talking about Boaz, are we talking about Paul or Jesus? And like all of these questions come up. These are all men whose character is described in scripture. But one of the things I often point out is in the New Testament like kind of directly targeted instruction for men as men is quite limited. I wrote a substack article on this recently. It's you know like 20 odd verses it seems to me in the entire New Testament. And they're directed to men and only men.

directed to men and only like instructional men ought to do X versus there's only about 20 in the entire New Testament. You don't need to name them all, but give us, I immediately thought of it. Yeah, I mean, I mean, Ephesians 5 is a big chunk of it. So that's like almost half. If I recall, like eight verses and Ephesians 5 are directed at men. But that's not men as a whole. That's husbands in particular. That's an important distinction.

You have reference in in 1 John to little young men. do this, older men do this, or I bless you in these ways. You have similar instructions in First Peter for husbands as you do in Ephesians 5. You have like just very glancing things in First Corinthians and elsewhere, like I exhort men everywhere to lift up holy hands. Yes. And there, the point there is that a lot of these, there's more targeted instructions for husbands, but a lot of the exhortations to men are, be godly, be gentle, be like pray and persevere in the faith. Even if they're in a context addressed to men, they're not male specific to pray.

No, I think a large percentage of them you can say, yeah, I think you would exhort Christian women likewise to stand firm in the faith, right? And you would exhort Christian women to pray and instruct those younger than them, that type of thing. So, I mean, folks can go and dig that up on my substack. The title of the post is the New Testament authors almost never talk about masculinity. Yeah. And I think that's an important point when we're thinking about like what is biblical masculinity,

namely that the instruction, the kind of targeted men because you are a men, you ought to live like this. Yes. is pretty limited in the New Testament. But you have hundreds upon hundreds of verses of just moral exhortation all over the New Testament, and the vast, vast majority of that is not gender, is the point I want to make. So that brings us back to the original point. Biblical masculinity is the pursuit of Christian virtue. I want to take on board all those hundreds of verses, not just those couple dozen,

in a male body as a man, for the pursuit of Christ-like character as a man. What are my overarching questions? And I asked Seth this in the previous episode. And it's a question that I've been on a mission to kind of figure out is what is the difference between cultural norms about surrounding masculinity that may or may not be virtuous. Some may be virtuous. Some may be neutral. Some may be not virtuous. Okay.

So that's the cultural. norms the way men may typically think and behave and act versus biological distinctives too i don't know if this is where you were going but there's kind of cultural norms and then there's biological yeah sorry sorry yes and i want to yes and that's another yeah cultural norms biological norms yes um versus and so all of that is its own complicated conversation versus what is what are universally prescribed moral mandates specific to

men? Are men and not women commanded to be for instance chivalrous? Are men and not women, for instance, commanded to provide? Are men and not women commanded to lead? You know, if a man says, I have no

aspiration to be a leader, is he denying his, is he going against a God-given mandate? God-given mandate. It's universally prescribed from males. So sorting that out is tough. And then I also want to refract that through the lens of kind of natural law type things, you know, that there might be, oh, who was it? This said this. The ought, how we should behave, might be vaguely inscribed in the is who we are as embodied persons, you know?

like why did God make men with typically more upper body strength and typically taller and the effects of higher levels of testosterone? Like, is there a reason, a rationale for that that has more implication? So that's my rant. I'll let you figure all that out for me. Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean. Am I asking the right questions? Is that, I mean, is that kind of?

Yeah, that's great. I think these are exactly the right questions. And I think as a thinker, scholar by temperament, I am inclined to let complicated questions be complicated. And also to resist, I think, this like biblicalist evangelical urge to kind of have a few verses. And I say that as someone who for all, intents and purposes is evangelical. Like every evangelical distinctive probably describes me in terms of my view of the Bible

and view of Christian mission and where I worship and the traditions I belong to. But I try to resist that kind of like simplification of questions down to like, well, here's a couple verses that teach X or say Y that quite obviously. to me doesn't have like a broader cultural, biological context like ours in view. And I know you've done a ton of work on this, so I don't need to tell you any of this. But all of this is to say

in my writing of this book, I was really helped, probably one of the more influential books I read in preparing to write this book was Carol Hoeven's T, the story of testosterone. Which kind of as a not, like I'm not an endocrinologist.

I don't know anything about hormones or anything, the rest of it. And she's someone who taught at Harvard and kind of specialized in these hormones that we associate with gender and sex and really makes a compelling case in my view that like testosterone is very much a thing. And it is a radically transformative component of male embodiment. And a thing that both in kind of terms of development in puberty, but also behavior, both before puberty and afterwards, just marks out men as a different breed. in that sense.

Yeah. But even that is kind of unhelpful, it seems to me. Well, not unhelpful, but kind of like incomplete because there's the is and the ought question that you brought up already. It's like, okay, well, we're describing testosterone makes men as a group more tolerant of risk or any number of things. And that's one you can kind of very clearly say that men have a higher risk tolerance. And young men in particular and teenage boys seem to have an infinite risk

tolerance, which is why a lot of them, relatively speaking, die in accidents. You know, like, so what's the is and the ought there? Do we just kind of like throw our teenage boys into risky situations because their biology, like, wires them towards that? Well, no, but there's also something beautiful and wonderful about the kind of adventurous spirit of young men that I think Christians and just anyone who cares about the well-being of boys and men would would do well to kind of channel in helpful and productive ways that are going to serve them well as adults

and serve society well and kind of channeling that towards just ends. All good. But I mean, there's so many other things that are left on the table here. What about individuals that are kind of like outside of the standard deviation or multiple standard deviations away

in terms of kind of standard manly or male behavior? And, you know, you, I, you know, I, there are probably plenty of, personality character traits or context, um, context factors of my upbringing and all sorts of things that would put me

kind of within the standard deviation of like male preference and, and male behavior. But I'm, there's another percentage of things where I'm probably well outside of the norm of kind of the median male as dictated by cultural factors and testosterone. So I'm also thinking from a Christian perspective, what is our responsibility as the people of God living in a time where their quote unquote is no longer male or female living in a time where marriage has in my view been kind of like relegated in the church

to a not unimportant but truly genuinely it seems to me the New Testament is clear a secondary tier of importance as the kind of family of God that is the church stands above the family that is this biological association between father, mother, and children. So all of these things on the table,

man, I want to look at all of that through the lens of the new world that the spirit is bringing about in believers, in and through the ministry of the church and the transformation of the spirit

and the kingdom of God inaugurated through Jesus' death and resurrection and Jesus ends the gospel of Matthew. Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you when you're making disciples and just look back at Matthew's gospel.

He doesn't talk about manliness or womanliness all that much at all is the joke. I mean, that's the joke that I make. Like Jesus has like no kind of elevate your manly status from beta to alpha discipleship paradigm for his male disciples. Manliness is not like a topic on the

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and subscribe today to get 25% off your variety and 20% off your monthly subscription with code T-I-T-R. Okay, that's 25% off your first pack and 20% off your subscription of brain-boasting bars delivered straight to your door. Start building brain health into your everyday with Mosh bars. Thank you, Mosh, for sponsoring this episode. Well, I think you've made a great distinction, well, great articulation of just some natural law biological realities that do signify.

Like, at the end of the day, there are general differences between men and women, beyond our roles in procreation, which is what the terms male and female signify, you know. And a lot of what makes, and this is going to excite my Catholic friends here, but a lot of what distinguishes males from females are our respective roles in reproduction. even the role that estrogen and testosterone levels play are related largely to roles in reproduction. So, yeah. And I've talked about this. I don't need to get on in the whole like, does that mean we all should procreate or whatever. But beyond that, there are behavioral and, you know, instinctual and temperamental distinctions that are general? Most men are like this.

Most women are like this. But if somebody falls outside those generalities... Is it the Christian's responsibility to push them back towards it? I think is that like... And I think some Christians would say yes. Jesus falls outside of that. Because in the first century, both the Judaism and the Greco-Roman society... Correct.

To be a man in your late 20s or 30 and not married would be very unmanly. to be a man who hasn't fathered children is very unmanly. What do you? Some kind of eunuch, they probably accuse him of that. To be a, you know, a man who let people slap him on the cheek and he turns the other one and let people beat him up when he could have overcome them. Like, what do you? Some kind of woman, you know, would have been an accusation. I mean, he defied gender norms, weeping over Jerusalem and so on. Yeah, there's not much, there's not much more unmanly than getting crucifference. in the Roman world. Right. So that's a challenge, it seems to me, in our construction of a Christian masculinity, what does it mean to be willingly subjected to, not just humiliation, but genuinely, e-masculation.

Right. From the powers of this world. And that's instructive, it seems to me, for Christian men, that Jesus was willing. to be seen as unmanly. Just to be clear, by the cultural standard. So given what I said and what you're saying, I want to make it clear that I think he's pushing back

and not fitting in the box of culturally. Yes, he's rewriting. He's rewriting. Like, what is true power? What is true strength? Yes, yes. What is true masculinity? And even in the kind of course of the conversation,

we in so many cultural contexts, certainly are, certainly the Roman one as well. we associate strength with manliness because it's such an on the surface distinctive between male embodiment and female embodiment. We've alluded to this already. Like, men just are 15% or so, larger, stronger, faster than women.

So if you have kind of two humans and you say, well, this, you know, and you're gender blind, and you say, well, which one is stronger? while we have the stronger one and the weaker one over here, you would be on really good grounds to guess that the stronger one is a man and the weaker one is a woman

if we're talking about physical prowess. Downstream from that, it seems to me, the kind of masculinity, and again, this is where I think Butler is right, she's wrong about all sorts of other things, but is right that there's a cultural, performative aspect to gender and masculinity and femininity.

So, but then Jesus and Paul both in the New Testament are re-articulating a vision of what that strength, that power is. They're not always framing it in terms, not usually actually framing it in terms of manliness or masculinity. But when we're talking about strength, it has massive implications for manliness and for masculinity. So when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, God has chosen the weak things of this world to put the strong to shame. I'm having all sorts of kind of like masculinity, gender association bells going off in my head.

And when Paul in 2nd Corinthians says he rejoices in his weakness, and when I'm weak, then I am strong, because then the strength, the power of Christ can rest upon me. And when Jesus says to him in that kind of by vision or appears to him such as it is in 2nd Corinthians 12 and says to Paul, my power is made perfect in weakness. The Greek there very, I mentioned this in the book, the Greek there very much can be rendered. I would prefer this.

My power, Jesus's power, is completed by weakness. So the true power of the kingdom of God comes through suffering oftentimes and even humiliation, as it did for Paul and as it did for Jesus. That's the normative pattern of Christian power. And you can think of other historical examples of this. You can think of, you know, Diedrich Bonhofer and his legacy and, you know, Martin Luther King, just to give a couple, Martin Luther King Jr. To give a couple kind of 20th century examples, these figures that from kind of a worldly perspective of masculine strength were often humiliated and a little pathetic,

and made to experience suffering at the hands of the more powerful actually are examples of the transformative power of the kingdom of God to affect change in the culture and in the world well beyond even their own depths. Let me go through some questions that often come up. And here I'm thinking, I really want to think biblically. I know you're not big on just taking a verse here and there. But yeah, we'd love to see if you're going to touch.

I'm big on the Bible. I'm very pro-bival. Do men, and I guess this would be specific to husbands, do they have a moral mandate to provide financially for their wife? Because you hear that a lot. I'm going to go through the list. Provide, protect, lead, be shibralist. So I'm going to go down this list just to get your wheels turning.

Because all these are good to provide for somebody else to protect. I just want to know if are these, again, universally prescribed moral mandates for every man of all times. And some of these might, again, apply specifically to married men. Totally. So what I would say to this is I would point, I would ask somebody, okay, if you're arguing that's a biblical mandate, that men need to be the primary bread winner in the home to kind of put it in our own terms. Because that's almost a different question then. Is a man morally obligated to provide for his family?

Versus should a man be the main breadwinner in a home? That's good. Those are different questions. And then to the first one, I would say, well, yes, absolutely. I think anyone who has a family has a wife, has children, has those for whom they are responsible in kind of covenantal relationship, you are responsible to,

from your whatever strength and ability and power and financial resources the Lord blesses you with, to work hard to provide for and care for those people. But is that to the exclusion of a woman also being called to, serve and protect and nurture and provide for those same people if she is also in a similar covenant relationship. Yeah. Well, that is where you, I think you lose me and I think you would struggle to, maybe you wouldn't struggle. I know there are texts that people will point to to

argue this. You know, if anyone does not provide for the needs of his own house. I was going to bring that up. First, Timothy 5-8, it often comes up for things. The context is clearly about widows providing for others and others. It's not even... It's not even... It's actually specific to... He's addressing women specifically in that passage. Oh, I see.

I understand. It's not even about like men providing for women or husbands. Well, this is the thing. Maybe a general principle is good. Yes. Provide for his own. But to say this is applied specifically to husband. It's in anyone.

It's not a man. It's not a husband. Yeah. So I and people who kind of maybe take a different interpretation or a different view from from me and I suspect to you as well on this point They're saying well you're just encouraging men to be lazy or you're kind of Allowing husbands to shirk their responsibility and I'm like no I I I would say that you absolutely have a responsible to see to the fact that the people in your home are provided for and that that

could include, I think in a cultural context like ours, kind of giving your partner, your wife's space, if she has a certain aptitude or training to get out in the world and go do that. And by supporting her, you're making sure that the needs of your family are provided for. It's not just whose name is on the paycheck, I suppose.

But there is, I mean, back to the kind of normative thing, and this is something else I talk about in the book, that for so much of human history, it would have just made sense that men were the, quote, unquote, providers because men are generally better at cutting down trees and hunting boars and need less sleep and get, you have more energy and the kind of rough and tumble of just crud. creating space where people can safe and be flourish and harvesting crops and all these types of things.

Men are of the two sexes, generally speaking, men are better suited for these sorts of things. So you can see how these kind of like the is becomes the ought. Like better suited in a kind of an agrarian pre-industrial age context. Pre-industrial, this is it. Yeah. So then the end- Where most income came through physically demanding work? Yeah.

Is that okay. Yes. That's precisely my argument. Whereas now, I mean, Preston, you and I sit around sending emails all day. What is, you know, not all day, but like a lot of the things we get paid to do potentially in our lives for a larger and larger segment of the workforce are not things that like men have a unique embodied advantage in doing. I mean, men, you know, men on the whole are better at cutting down trees. I don't know if men on the whole are better at sending emails. So, or, you know, like massive explosions in the kind of economic output of the world

are no longer favor male embodiment in that sense. So this is very disruptive. And I think it's especially disruptive for male identity. and it invites us to kind of think carefully, what is my calling as a man, if you are a man, if you're a mother, raising sons, you know, how are you cultivating their character

and their Christ-like virtue? I will be the first to say, in a post-industrial, kind of post-sexual revolution, post-technological revolution, or ongoing technological revolution moments, there's some serious questions to think through as it relates to male embodiment.

And I'm just not of the opinion that kind of putting the genie back in the bottle and saying, wouldn't it be great if we could go back to 1950 or 1800 or 1750 and just live as men lived back then? And then kind of use your political

and ecclesial and cultural influence to kind of rewind the clock Richard Reeves is really helpful on this in his book of Boys and Men. We can't do that, unfortunately. And I think, I say unfortunately, but I think in many ways we wouldn't want to.

So it, and even people who are like very kind of like traditionally inclined, culturally conservative, I think if you really press, do you want to go back to when life was like this? there's all sorts of things that they... It's usually white men that say that. Right.

The 50s are the best and all the black men are like, well, let's have a conversation. Yeah. So yeah, real quick, he said something. I so want to let it go. Do other studies to show that men need less sleep? Yeah, there are. Just a little bit. So my wife and I are complete outwaters.

Oh, funny. I need more. My wife can. get five hours of sleep and she has more energy than I'll have in a whole week combined. And I need eight, nine. If I get seven, I'm like, suckish. That's unfortunate. So we're, you're failing to live up to your masculine, uh, calling, Preston.

I, I hate to, I hate to, I, but yeah, no, there's on average. I can't, I can't like cite it for you, but I know, I know I've read that multiple places. You know, it's interesting in that going back to the, and I want to come back to these questions, but I've gotten into a marathon running. My son's ultramarathoner. So we watch all kinds of videos on ultra marathon running, people running 100, 200, 300 plus miles. And what's fascinating is when it comes to the shorter ultra mile ultramarathons, 100 is short. When you get longer than that, 200, 250, some women are actually breaking up. Yes. records. And there's been, I read, I need to look more into this, that there's something about estrogen that in the very, very, very long run can actually be more beneficial.

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know what that, but anyway, we don't need to. I just, yeah, there's a few, there's a few examples along these lines that Hoving gives in her book, T, the story of testosterone, where there's just a few isolated examples of things where you can actually say women actually. seem to be better at these physical activities or these specific sports. Or not even sports like this thing in this sport. It tends to be very narrow. And yeah, that's interesting to me. And human beings are complex, ma'am. So should men provide, to summarize what I think you were saying, men should not be lazy, should, I mean, just biblically,

the Bible does have this kind of Protestant work ethic. Like, you know, if you're able to work, you should work. And work means typically 12 hours a day, six days a week. And hey, you go a day off, unlike, you know, people in society. So there is built into the Bible this very strong work ethic. But what you're saying is there's, at least I think you said, there's not really a biblical mandate that the man must sort of make more, must be the only provider or make more. Or to the exclusion of the woman. I would argue that. And I'll say this also quickly,

that because of that kind of, it's helpful to think of it in a surplus. Men are those who will often, not always, it's often, usually, normatively language, not must, not always every time, without exception, it must be X language.

But men are often the ones in a relationship, but with a man and a woman who will find themselves with a surplus of strength or a surplus of resources and you can say like gender pay gaps are part of this as well you know if even like unjust systems

where men tend to make more money or tend to access promotions and stuff like this that's kind of a separate conversation to like how should Christians be activists against those sorts of things? I think I would be inclined to say yes. But if you're a man, you're often going to find that you, not often, I don't want to say quite that way. Men just have a surplus of physical and often financial resources for a whole variety of resources, for a whole variety of reasons with which they can provide. So I like get it

that there is a normativeness to a husband makes more money than the wife, but that is not the same thing as saying a husband must make more money than a wife. And I do wonder in a pre-industrial age, if the distinction between male working, female, possibly working, who's making more, just doesn't even make sense. I mean, I've done, I can speak to like the ancient Israel context. I mean, there was no, I mean, the man and the women were both co-labors on. Everybody was working full-time. farm. Now, there was a division of labor, largely long gender lines, but both were absolutely

essential for the financial stability of the family. In fact, what was the most significant part of financial stability? Having kids, raising kids. And women were typically took the lead on that, not to the exclusion of the father, obviously, but they had a primary role, especially early on. And kids were seen as kind of like a very significant factor in the economic stability to family. So again, just the whole question is just, yeah, we just have to really make a firm distinction between what the Bible says in its ancient culture and how applicable is that to our post-industrial age. What about protect? Should, or do women have a moral, and I guess this, well, no, let's generalize this, men and women, not just husbands and wives.

Do men have a moral obligation to protect women? I mean, have you heard this before? I feel like it's an air of these conversations. So specifically men to women? Yes, yes. Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to answer it really similarly, frankly. It's men normatively. I just preached this past weekend at our church on,

and this was an entire coincidence, I was asked to slot in for a week in a four-week series on Ruth, and I get Ruth Chapter 2, which is all about Boaz. So I'm like this kind of like masculinity, Christian masculinity guy who's written a couple books on this, and then I happen to show up on the week where we're talking about Boaz. It was not planned by me or the senior pastor, but there we are. And I think Boaz is a really interesting example of what it looks like for, a man to use his resources such as they are to protect and provide for women who are in a vulnerable

position in this case Naomi and Ruth as two widows return and sojourners and you know the the the the gleaning laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are specifically Leviticus 19 specifically said you can't you know don't cut the very edges of your field don't go back and pick up the stuff that you drop leave them for the poor and for the foreigner and wouldn't you know ruth is both of those things she is both poor and a foreigner so boaz is being obedience to Torah in making sure that someone like ruth can be provided for when someone like ruth and naomi would struggle to provide for themselves. And this is why widows show up all the time in the biblical instruction, both old and New Testament, is because they were uniquely vulnerable, kind of members

of society, outside of this care and protection. And Ruth, too, is also really interesting, because Boaz tells Ruth, I've told my men, he says, I've charged my men not to touch you, which is, we don't know if that's kind of like a racist, like harassing, like this moabitis, get out of you're not allowed to glean in the field, or if there's a sexual connotation there, that she was vulnerable to be assaulted by these workers in the field who would mistreat her. But Boaz kind of uses his authority

to instruct his men not to do that, as well as he tells Ruth not to go out into the other fields. Maybe he knows something about the workers in those fields or the owners of those fields that she doesn't know. Don't go out there, stay here. It kind of comes up all throughout Ruth, too. this protective dynamic and this

provisional dynamic and this care and concern. So again, like I think Boaz, I just want to like hold that up to Christian men and say this is a beautiful example of what it looks like not merely for like a man to protect

a woman or not merely for a husband to protect a wife or a husband to protect his wife's children. But a man in a broader social extended family situation in the case of Naomi's relation to a limelike to be attentive to the vulnerabilities of the people around him in this case women and to care for their needs particularly when they're in a vulnerable spot and but the the kind of direction of strength to vulnerability and helper to help is not always male to female it's not and even in

scripture we see this. I gave these three examples in the sermon. You know, Rahab is protective of the spies and Esther is protective of the people, the Jewish people and the land. In her context, she uses her authority, her position as queen to protect her people. And the women who support Jesus' ministry are providing for Jesus using their financial means. So there's, I think, again, because of that surplus of strength and resources that often finds itself in the hands of men, there's a normative pattern where men will often find themselves in a position to be helpful. And women, not always, but more often than men, again, in most contexts in human history, will find themselves in a position of relative vulnerability and being in need of help. And men have, when they can, a responsibility

to help and serve others, just as women have a responsibility when they're in a position to help to give of themselves and serve others. But the distinctions between male and female embodiment and the social kind of cachet that often comes with being a man implies that don't be surprised

if you as a man find yourself in a position to protect in a unique way that might not be available to a woman. And we haven't gotten into questions of like pacifism and all of this. I don't know if you want to go down that road, but that's another thing. I was actually going to go on that road. But yeah, so to understand your point, I like what you're saying. I haven't thought about like this, that you're kind of situating protection in a broader vision of those with power should protect those without power, the marginalized.

And especially in the vulnerable or whatever you want to think about that. Especially in the biblical world, typically men were those with power. Yes. You're also not limiting protection to the kind of physical protection because I could see someone to make a argument that, well, if men are, if God designed men to be physically stronger than women, then built into that is the duty to physically protect or protect women from physical harm. And that, that can I give an example real quick? Yes, yes. Because the, because the like kind of, this just came to my mind. Because the kind of stereotypical, like, men need to protect examples. Like someone breaks into the home, who's like going to fight the guy sort of thing. And there's, like, there's. And there. There's, again, pacifism questions associated with this. And this is about as complicated as questions of pacifism get in the sense of like when you're protecting the people that you love and that you're responsible for from violence, from others, can you kind of meet that violence with violence? But let's assume that, you know, self-defense, a kind of Christian view of doctrine of self-defense as valid. So, you know, if a man has the physical advantage in the home, it seems to me that he is,

meaning like he's stronger and faster and more physically capable than his wife. Yes, I think it makes a ton of sense. And he's responsible to not kind of shy away from the danger, but to use his relative strength to protect those who are relatively vulnerable, in this case, his wife and children. But if we're using a gun in self-defense, like, well, it, like, again, just assume that you would be justified as a Christian. And I'm not even, I don't even, I'm not even sure I take this to you. But assume you would be justified as a Christian to kind of, like, shoot, use a gun to defend

yourself from an intruder in the home. If, like, the wife gets to the gun first and then can, like, shoot the intruder in the leg. Or if she's a better shot than you Or if she's a better shot Like is is the husband in sin I don't know I don't think so I hope not

I hope we wouldn't say that Or if your wife is You know black widow Oronda Rousey Yeah totally She's one of these outlier cases Where she Again outlier cases

But that I think Is just shows how the cultural context Can complicate these questions Because you know If you're using a gun There's not a ton of physical advantage To being male anymore So yeah

I don't know if that's a helpful example or not. That's no. These are, yeah, this is exactly how I think, how I think about it. And again, I'm always, because I am just such a nerdy exegiate, I just constantly think, what, if I wanted to defend this view, men should protect women, but what verses do we go to, you know? And there is, and what verses are speaking of is and what are, what is the odd? Do you have any in mind? I'm thinking, you know, Job 29 is kind of this like, oh, how old is that? It's like the male verse.

of Proverbs 31 where Job talks about his, you know, all the righteous things he did. But it's, you know, Job's a weird book and how much of it's even like what we should follow, you know, so he's kind of describing, you know, how he stuck up for the innocent and stuff. I would need to go back and read it. But there's, there's, if I recall, there's stuff in there about him, um, standing up for the needy. But again, that's, it's kind of like to your previous point about, yeah, he's showing that I was a wealthy, righteous man and I used that to help other people. Great. But I'm trying to think of other verses that would come close to morally mandating that if a man,

that men and only men have a responsibility to protect women as a universal moral mandate. Can you think of any? I'm sure people are going to light up comments here. Yeah, I'm sure there's people who are going to exactly. Which send them in. Again, I'm not saying there aren't any. I'm just... Yeah, nothing immediately is coming to mind

that would be gendered, I suppose. Husbands laying down your life for your wife? That's good. I don't know if that's thinking specifically in protection, but it could include... Well, I think it's... Well, here's what I will say. So this hears me, you know, at the...

If anyone's listening to the way I'm talking about this and, like, saying he doesn't think husband should protect. I'm like, no, absolutely. Absolutely, husbands should protect. And there's a normative pattern contained in male embodiment, which I think is why the instruction to husbands in Ephesians 5, this is helpful. I'm glad you brought it up, is kind of assuming this position of strength and power, a surplus from which husbands can give of themselves for the benefit of their wives. that's not on my reading, that's not kind of like patriarchal leadership,

that's a leveraging of this pattern of embodiment again for the benefit of others. And what this looks like as a man, even if you're someone who doesn't feel all that physically imposing or impressive, even today men have access to all sorts of social and cultural power and influence that women don't. And I think your call as a man is to use that power when it's in your purview to protect and serve others, including women when they're in a position of vulnerability relative to you.

I definitely have an instinctual drive to, let's just limit it to physical protection. Yeah, if somebody wanted to harm my wife or kids or something, I would rip their head off and punt it to this 20-yard line. However, I am an advocate of absolute nonviolence. So my wife and I wrestle with this. You know, we joke about it. She's like, you're the pacifist. I'm not. So I guess I'll take it.

Instinctually, I have. So, you know, I've written a lot about nonviolence. And, you know, so to be clear, that's what I think the Bible teaches. I feel like your typical, masculine, whatever guy that like, oh, dude, I would, oh, yeah. I've had some encounters where I feel like I have crossed the line, not physically, but came very, very close.

There's one instance. I'm so glad the guy drove off because I know for a fact I would have violated my ethic and probably would have been arrested. No, really, I'm just being honest. Yeah. You know, so by that instinct, when men protect it just seems so right, but I've just so, my whole life is oriented around. Here's what I think. Now, what does the Bible say? And trying to, so I just, I, if somebody's, if somebody, I always, I always play devil's advocate with myself.

Somebody said, well, Preston, you don't have a biblical mandate to protect your, you know, women. And they said, show me, you know, defend that from scripture. Then I'm constantly like, okay, well, how would I defend this in scripture? Not just relying on natural law or, you know. Yeah. Does protect mean being willing to fight somebody? Maybe sometimes it could. Usually that's not the best.

Usually de-escalation or getting out of the situation. Or just getting in between somebody who's trying to harm somebody else. Like placing your body on the line in between. the person who is potentially going to be harmed or and the person who would harm them. That, I mean, that seems like a very clear Christian option available. So I think the kind of like reaching for violence that is a male tendency is, well, maybe it's more just putting yourself in the way and being willing to suffer instead of someone else suffering. is often the case. Like you don't need to throw hands.

Sometimes you just need to get willing to get punched. Right. Yeah. And that would often be an effective way of protecting somebody else. It's just you getting punched instead. So, yeah, I mean, we could spend the whole time talking about it. That's good. Let's talk about chivalry.

Okay. What is chivalry? Oh, gosh. Same thing. Is this a cultural norm that might be good, might be good or neutral? You know, men should be chivalrous towards women. Women don't, in a way that women don't be, shouldn't be chivalrous towards men, you know, should men hold the door for women, should men, you know, blank, blink, blink, blank,

but all the kind of things that constitute what chivalry is. Should the man ask the woman for her hand in marriage? So the man asked the woman out on a date should blah, blah, blah. Is there anything in the Bible that would morally mandate or promote or celebrate chivalry or is this simply a cultural thing? Yeah. My answer leans towards the latter. I don't want to say like the only or the merely cultural. Like culture is downstream from created reality.

So I think when we say something is merely cultural, we can be, if we're not careful. we can be overly dismissive of it. That's good. And if we think, like, is culture bad? Well, aspects of it can be, but aspects of it can be really good and beautiful and rich. So if there are cultural patterns where we have, you know,

an expectation, for example, that men should be the one to propose, for example. And that's part of the thing. this kind of broader Western tradition of chivalry. I don't look at that and think that's automatically bad that there's that cultural standard. Or it would be bad for a father to tell his son that when he's dating somebody. Or even for a father to express a hope or an expectation of that for a young man who's dating his daughter or something like that.

That doesn't automatically bother me. because part of the beauty, it seems to me, of sex embodiment is these kind of cultural patterns and expressions of maleness and femaleness that are just good things. I mean, have you had Felipe Doveille on? No, not yet, no. Okay, yeah, because he wrote this book a couple years ago called Gender as Love, and I think he can be helpful on this,

and he takes a kind of Augustinian view, in the sense of like gender as an expression of the created good, of human embodiment, and therefore not bad. But all of those cultural standards can and should be subjected to the kind of ethic of the kingdom of God. And if the cultural standard that a man proposes to a woman

is experienced by that man and that woman as life-giving and expression of honor and care for the woman and honor and care for the man and no one is denigrated or diminished in that cultural good well and good i don't think christians need to reject that nor do i think they're in sin if they do do express Like if a woman were to propose to a man. Again, back to Ruth. There's kind of like a very transgressive role reversal in the way in Ruth Chapter 3, she propositions. Yeah.

Not in the sexual sense. Although it feels really close to that a little bit when you read Ruth 3. She got oiled up and snuggled up to her half drunk cousin in a barn in the middle of night. While he was sleeping. Counsel that. My daughter. So, yeah, I would not exhort women to do the same. same. I don't think anyone would exert our daughter to do the same, but Naomi was, you know,

had some big ideas. So all that to say, I think when something is kind of like even culturally transgressive of gender norms, it's like disorienting to us. And we get uncomfortable reading the narrative. I think Ruth three is supposed to make you uncomfortable. But then you're supposed to be impressed with the kind of restraint of Boaz, the honor, the way Boas, the way Boaz then leans into his role as a kinsman Redeemer, but he's like, I'm not even first in line, all of these sorts of things. So they're moving within and even sometimes transgressing cultural norms of manhood and womanhood in that story, but all in a way that I think clearly is honoring to Boaz and honoring to Ruth of their dignity as persons and their mailness and their femaleness. So, yeah, chivalry. It's just a big, fat, mixed bag to me, where there's a lot of things that are intended to honor women, express the role, quote, unquote, of men to protect women.

And there's a lot of good there. And I think there's a lot, like, back to this, like, nitrid. Like, the, the oaths that knights would take were all about protecting. the vulnerable. And this is what we've been talking about this whole time. And I think that's good. And there's Christian, there's a Christian heritage there that is good.

But it's so, so easily oftentimes, can tick over into patronizing, patriarchal, even misogynistic tendencies that I think Christians would also want to reject. from where I see the scripture pointing and the Christian tradition more broadly. So yeah, create a dialogue with yourself and in your community

between the standards of manliness and masculinity that you've received from your culture and the teaching that you have received from the Lord Jesus whom you claim to worship and put those things into conversation with one another. And that's not going to be a one-time conversation. You're going to be to spend your whole life doing that, saying, my culture is telling me it is manly to do X, but Jesus

taught me why. And can I receive that performance of manliness from my culture, or do I need to critique it? Or do I need to revise it? Or do I need to just all out reject it and say, not so with men of God? It's an ongoing thing, and there's not a single tight kind of definitive proof text answer oftentimes. A couple things, Zach, before I let you go. First of all, I wanted to let people know that you've been doing a lot of speaking on your book, Men of Virtue, How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World.

I hold it up one more time for my YouTubers. Fantastic book. I did endorse it. Excellent. Oh, Anthony Bradley. Oh, good. I'm in good company. I love Anthony.

He's solid. But yeah, so can people reach out to you if they want you to come and talk on this issue or talk on other things? I know you've been traveling around a lot. Yeah, much in every way. I'm in a season right now. I, as you know, I've been serving kind of in the Christian nonprofit sphere for a long time. And I'm in a season where I'm kind of leaning more into writing and speaking and would love for folks to reach out. if I can be helpful kind of in a college context, university context, church context.

I love kind of talking about these things with men, talking about men and manhood in mixed groups. I find that really dynamic and engaging as well and love those conversations. So yeah, I can travel, have me out. I'd love to connect with folks. And you can contact me on my website, Zachary C. Wagner.com. If you're interested in that, I'd love to to come out for men's retreat or to share a sermon or whatever, whatever could be of help. So yeah, thanks for that, Preston. I appreciate you kind of putting that out there. All right.

Last question. This is going to be for our extra innings portion. I want to ask you about masculinity and marriage. Do men need to be married to fulfill their vocation as a masculine man? Again, this is for the extra innings portion. If you want to access it, head over to Patreon. dot com forward slash the algen-rah where you can check out our extra indians conversation.