About a decade ago I first picked up this book. Something was bothering me, and I put it down. In the intervening time two things have happened. One is that, completely apart from this book I, too, fell in love with the story of God's divine romance with us. Passages like Ezekiel 16 would jump out at me, and I began to savor a figurative reading of the Song of Songs. I even read other authors on the topic like Brian Simmons and portions of Madame Guyon. This first step was important b/c in a way I may not have been ready for the unabashed bliss of God in relation to His Bride without it. This was not a truth trumpeted by my tradition, and it took awhile for me to be comfortable with it. The second thing that happened is that I started to become theologically savvy. Having been immersed in a lot of theological errors that had a negative effect on those I loved and upon me, I started to understand the import of theological study not just for head knowledge but for personal formation and the shaping of the Bride.
These two parts of me have been a bit at war while finally picking up this book for a full read-through. I don't often write book reviews, but I thought engaging this might be helpful for others either in choosing whether to read it or in reading with discernment.
First of all, I do find much in this book beautiful. For instance, there is a lovely scene when God is about to build woman in which His overwhelming passion at considering His own future counterpart is brilliantly evoked. Likewise, the scene in which Adam and Eve chase through the nascent world to find each other (he takes liberties in this regards, broadening the account and not having God lead one to another as God does in Genesis 2:22) is in some ways spell-binding in their pure hunger for human community, in other ways a bit disturbing for reasons I will get to. Also, I don't mind a writer fleshing things out in ways that are not explicit in scripture. It is ok to me that he sends the angels, for instance, on complicated assignments related to Christ's passion that are nowhere mentioned in scripture. Even when I trip on some choices, I recognize that this can be helpful to narrative development. Some people will cry "eisegesis" in resistance, however.
What DID repeatedly trouble me was where the narrative explicitly conflicted w/ a plausible read of scripture or doctrine of God. For instance, even in the earliest pages of the book we have several significant mischaracterizations of God's nature. (a) God is presented as downright weary from creating, I suppose as a way of explaining His choice to rest a day, establishing the patterns of rest for creation, but scripturally and doctrinally God never wearies. (b) Although this point is partially reversed, it would seem, three-quarters of the way through the book, God is presented as needing an angel to plant a seed of revelation in Him that He might be able to have a counterpart (and around the time when this point is--although not clearly--corrected later in the book by an allusion to God's knowing before time, we are given a new doozy in that God disappears from heaven during the incarnation and that the angels are left leaderless after His death... both poor doctrine that is never especially corrected). (c) God is presented repeatedly from the outset as male--not just as "He" but as male (and there is a profound theological difference). Moreover, the man Adam is repeatedly presented as the only member of creation who thereby can be His image and as the only one who rules the earth (Eve is his non-ruling counterpart who by contrast does not image God). Adam is the only one like God; Eve is an other even though taken from Adam's substance. The writer repeatedly displays awe at Eve and women, but it is for her beauty, her incomprehensibility, and her ability to lavish love in return.
It is possible that some reading my review may wonder what is wrong w/ the points I have listed as error (c). Some of these errors have spotted church history again and again. In regards to the concepts of women, they have even taken harsher forms. As Genesis 1:27 makes clear in the Hebrew and in its better English translations, both sexes are in the image of God, "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Moreover, in verse 28, this "them"--male AND female--were charged to rule the earth. God is indeed primarily (although not always--e.g., Isaiah 42:14; 46:3-4; 49:15; 66:13; Hosea 13:8; Psalm 123:2; Luke 13:20-21; 15:3-10, and as a midwife, then a female profession in Psalm 22:9-10; 71:6; Isaiah 66:9; additionally Wisdom is personified as female in Proverbs) revealed to us in terms of masculine metaphors and is even personable to us that way as Father and Son, and it is appropriate to refer to Him w/ the male pronoun. However, it is clear that He is a spiritual being, and that this being is what you might either call gender-full or gender transcendent (encompassing the giftings we find strongest in both genders, both of which are a faint reflection of Him). Eve is given to Adam as his help meet, but what is sometimes obscured is that this "help" (or ezer) is a military term usually applied to God and always (other than here) applied to a power that comes to the rescue of another who is weaker. The "meet" (or kenegedo--face to face, one like unto him) is what makes it clear that they are on the same footing (as opposed to hers being superior, lol) and are meant in their purest creation to see each other face to face (vis a vis) as equals in essence and authority. Adam needed a warrior-rescuer equal to him, not just someone to adore for her beauty and mystery. Unfortunately, Edwards both gives way to poor theology about God and about human gender and falls into biased cultural caricatures about what woman is and has to offer. To a strong degree, this book is built upon this unstable footing as it seeks to compare the divine romance of the Lord and the Bride to that of a little "lord" and his pretty bride.
I think a lot of this problem is because some exegetes are prone to reading "back" the mystery of Christ and the Bride into the mystery of husband and wife (as mentioned in Ephesians 5). The reasoning is that if Christ is that much greater than the Bride, then so must the husband be to the wife in God's ideal. The problem is that you aren't supposed to read analogies that way. The mystery of the husband and wife has some pertinence to the mystery of Christ and the Bride, but the latter is a mystery that far supersedes the former and that has components that the former does NOT hold as is typical with analogies (for analogies are different from one another by definition). This is read back into Genesis, into 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, and even into the way 1 Timothy 2 is often quite unnaturally translated to seem to say something about women that it does not.
There is good news in all of this!!! When I was starting the final chapters of the book, after having scribbled "No"s of frustration in the margins of many pages, I mentioned my conflict to a friend. It was a book in some ways near to my heart, but in other ways the theology was driving me crazy. And the fact that this book was often recommended to single women during my college days compounded that frustration due to the untrue presentation (even if cherishing us in a one-dimensional way) of women's gifting. My friend informed me that she was fairly certain the author, Gene Edwards, had changed his position on these theological issues since writing the book. I did some internet searches, and it would appear that she is correct!! It would appear that in his golden years he is able to proclaim both the divine love story and a true appropriation of women (that I would imagine would have to have something to do with a corrected appropriation of the "gender" or non-gender of God). It's just too bad that the errors were woven throughout what has become a classic book, whereas his corrective book (see link below) has gotten far less press/audience. Perhaps my review can be a drop in the bucket to change that. Amazon is not letting me link to the page I wish to, but search for "God's Word to Women, Gene Edwards, A Time Past Due" and you'll come up with an interesting article which comprises the first chapter of his book "The Christian Woman Set Free."
