Tag archives for books

It could just be that the most important Greek word for the Christian man is found only three times in the New Testament. Paul Coughlin in his forthcoming book Unleashing Courageous Faith: The Hidden Power of a Man’s Soul claims that the average, emasculated Christian man needs to tap into what the Greeks called thumos, or courage. (Interestingly enough, English versions translate thumos in its three occurrences as “wrath.” Cf. Romans 2:8, Ephesians and 4:31 and Revelation 15:1.)

This book may have worked better (though it is still forthcoming and too early to tell for sure) on the heels of John Eldredge’s similarly-themed books, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul, etc. (Note the similarity of subtitles even!) Having therefore read Eldredge, Coughlin’s message strikes me as a bit outmoded. I feel like I have read this before and learned more about the author’s dog than biblical masculinity (the first chapter “When a Dog is More Manly”). It’s a been there, done that kind of feeling.

Although, to quickly contradict myself, its message does seem consonant with a recent trend in evangelicalism toward encouraging boys to grow up and to be men. The Harris brothers’ Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations is representative and immediately comes to mind. Also, the social justice telos of Coughlin’s thumos contemporizes what is otherwise Eldredge recycled. This push towards real, meaningful action (rather than fishing or climbing a mountain) may be wherein lies the book’s contribution to masculinity.

The critique of Unleashing Courageous Faith I have to offer is much of the same offered concerning Eldredge’s work: a lack of biblical exegesis while drawing deeply from the well of cultural media (movies [in this case Wizard of Oz], songs, etc.). Coughlin’s observations and questions are on target while his response repeatedly returns to a need for thumos. He asks good questions but gives no timely answer based on Scripture, favoring instead the Greeks’ notion of raw man-courage. His proposed solution to the lack of masculinity which is based on Greeks, movies, Nobel prize laureates, and songs in the end proves burdensome when the solution that seems apparent to me is Jesus.

Yes, many have an effeminate Jesus in mind when they consider our Lord, but the solution is not to tap into a Greek notion of man-courage, but to study the ways of our Lord in the Scriptures. While tapping into thumos feels burdensome, there is one who says,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:25-30).

This is a gender-inclusive mandate from Christ to examine his ways and learn from him. Would that the time spent meditating on the latent kernel of man-courage thumos be better employed studying the ways of Christ.