Unending Questions

Kids ask a lot of questions. According to a 2013 British study by online retailer Littlewoods.com, girls do so more than boys, asking as many as 390 questions per day based on a thousand participants. Apparently, 82 percent of these questions are addressed to mothers. A quarter of the children interviewed said they would go first to their mother because their father would say, “Ask your mum.” 

If this study is correct, mothers start their lives asking questions and are still dealing with a huge number of questions when many other adults have grown out of the habit of frequent asking.

I had eight children – seven boys and one girl – and this quizzing stage has protracted over many years of my life. This might be why I am still asking lots of questions, to the point of becoming annoying (especially to my husband, when I ask a question a minute about a movie he is trying to simply enjoy).

Inquisitive Women

And this might be a reason why I wrote a book about interesting questions Christian women have asked (or have been asked) in the course of history. The variety and depth of their questions surprised me. From seemingly petty questions about hairstyles to profound inquiries about the nature and relationship of body and soul, they took these issues seriously and persisted until they received satisfactory answers.

While most of the women in my book, Questions Women Asked, were not seen as theologians, their questions helped more famous theologians carefully examine their own answers. In the fourth century, Marcella of Rome approached Jerome (translator of the Bible in Latin) with her numerous questions, insisting “in season and out of season” despite his initial rejection.

Apparently, she was not the only woman to approach Jerome with questions. Besides his immediate circle of followers, he received letters from other countries, including Gaul (today’s France), where Hedibia and Algasia sent him, each separately, lists of specific questions on the exegesis of Biblical passages.

With her questions, sixteenth-century Elizabeth Aske Bowes forced John Knox to face queries he had tried to ignore in his own soul. It was only upon her insistence that he addressed those uneasy subjects, producing some of the most comforting letters in church history.

Renée of France did the same with John Calvin by asking, “Should we pray for God’s enemies?” Dissatisfied with his quick reply to her troubling question, she insisted that he take a closer look at not only the issue, in itself, but at the inappropriate responses that the typical, generic answer had caused in some radical Huguenots.

In the following century, Elisabeth of the Palatinate forced Descartes to thoroughly examine his teachings on the distinction between mind and body, persisting (despite his frequent dismissals) until he modified one of his writings on human emotions.

Careful Answers

Not all Christian women received their answers from others. In fact, most of the women in my book came to their conclusions by careful reflection and study of God’s word. In the case of Macrina, it was her famous brother, Gregory of Nyssa, who came to her for answers about the resurrection of the body. And, although we don’t have a record of specific questions her other renowned brother, Basil of Caesarea, asked her, she greatly influenced his decision to turn his desire for an ascetic life into a more concrete expression of Christian living, building the first hospital and leprosarium in history – a model for other Christians and a reason of envy for the pagan Emperor Julian.

Christine of Pizan agonized for some time over the question of whether a woman is a defective human being. As strange as that might seem in our day, this was the conclusion she had initially drawn from the widely accepted, stereotypical images of women portrayed in many writings of her time. Her final answer was firmly based on both logic and Scriptures.

Naturally, not all questions can be fully answered in this life. The Bible tells us there are “secret things” which “belong unto the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29). When a deeply distressed friend asked Anne Ross Cousin how Christians could sing in Heaven if their loved ones are missing, Anne could only remind her of John 13:7, where Jesus said: “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”

It was not a dismissive answer. The verses of the poem Anne sent back in reply show how deeply and personally she had taken her friend’s question. She had crossed similar valleys, and the only way she had come to trust God’s Word about an uncertain future was by deepening her understanding of the God who has revealed himself in the present. As Deuteronomy 29:29 continues, “But those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

The same Anne Cousin who had turned Samuel Rutherford’s last words of joyful expectancy into a beautiful song (“Glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel’s Land”) could state, as an answer to her own doubts, “One dawn-streaked opening leads to light above, Christ alway loved Thy will, and proved Thy will is love.” Knowing who God is provides an implicit answer to our fervent questions and prayers.

Still Exploring

When Reformation Heritage Books started a Facebook page for a discussion of Questions Women Asked, I was immediately impressed at the questions and insights of those who posted. One question seems to pull another, like cherries (an Italian expression). It’s an inspiring sight because we all help each other see things from different perspectives, as iron sharpens iron. And we learn not only from our present friends and acquaintances but from people of other times and other cultures, like the women in Questions Women Asked.

The more we ask, the more we learn. The more we admit we still only know in part, the more we realize there is a whole “sea of wonders” to explore, as the 18th-century poetess Ann Griffiths wrote. She aspired to spend her life in it – a wish that God is always more than willing to grant.