Complegalitarian

Blog reopened

2008-11-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

The Complementarian blog has reopened for business at a new location and with some new rules. Please join us at the new Complementarian blog. Please be sure to read today's post on the new blog in which I explain how we will try to keep the blog going safely.

Another blog decision time

2008-11-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

The Complegalitarian blog has reached another crisis point. The level of civil discourse has again degenerated to the point where we need to stop and decide if we can speak civilly enough to each other for the blog to continue. Please vote in the following poll. You may add an additional comment, if you wish. I suggest that you do not identify yourself.

Comments are closed and hidden but you can still read previous posts.

Please pray for me as I evaluate the poll results and comments added to it. I would like to continue providing a forum where we can discuss gender issues for the home and church. But I cannot do so unless we are all willing to be civil to each other.

Please keep checking back. We need a cooling off and re-assessment period. I do not know how long the blog will be down, probably at least a week. If the poll results are not adequate for continuing, the blog may be closed.

Many of you have worked hard to be civil on this blog. I thank you very much.

If you wish to email me privately about how we might make this blog safer for everyone, my email address is: wleman1949 at gmail dot com

Reflecting on My First Sunday Ever With a Woman Leading

2008-11-25T10:11:00.000-08:00

I've been attending a small Episcopal church in my area lately. This Sunday's service was led by a deacon (which is what they call a person who has graduated from the Episcopal seminary program---they serve as a deacon for a year or two, and then are ordained as a priest. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm very new to everything in the Anglican communion). The deacon was a woman.

I do not remember a time when I did not know that "women weren't allowed to be pastors." The church I grew up in was a conservative fundamentalist "Bible church," closely resembling Calvinist-slanting Baptist flavor, if I had to describe it. Women were allowed to be active, but only so much. For example, we had an amazing worship leader who was a woman, clearly gifted and called for the task...but on Sunday mornings, she stood off to one side, still obviously leading, and a man stood at the main microphone, singing slightly off-key, so as to keep God pleased. Women are not allowed to lead men, not even when singing.

You would think that spending the total of my thirty-three years in that kind of environment, that a woman leading a congregation would be something I would have a hard time with (or at least, REALLY notice, like, maybe stare incredulously at for awhile instead of focusing on the responsive reading). I was surprised at what actually happened. Because what actually happened was that I forgot all about it, and so did my kids---if they even noticed at all. It was only after the service, talking to my friend on the phone, that I really thought about the fact that this was the first time I've ever been in a service led by a woman.

She was obviously called to do what she was doing, much like the music leader of my childhood. It just felt right to have her there. There was nothing to stare at---she was obviously gifted and responding to her position felt completely normal. It would have felt silly to have a man standing up there as a figure head, to keep God happy, while she spoke and while she led the Lord's Supper---just as it always felt odd to have an "un-called" man up front singing, off-rhythm and off-key, while the woman beside him was clearly leading and clearly supposed to be.

Both Biblical and Egalitarian

2008-11-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Groothius recently blogged that one can be a Christian egalitarian without following the politics of feminism. In her first major point she writes:

Biblical equality is not equivalent to the politics of feminism (the incessant rhetoric of patriarichal-complementarians not withstanding). Rather, biblical equality seeks to understand and explicate biblical teaching regarding the mission and meaning of women and men in the family of God. The question specifically at issue is whether or not the believer’s authority in Christ is conditioned by the gender of the believer. Feminism, on the other hand, is fundamentally a political and cultural agenda. The question of a woman’s biblically-based authority in Christ is not a question that concerns culture at large, but is rather a biblical and theological concern. Thus, a biblical egalitarian is not necessarily a feminist, and a feminist is not likely to be a biblical egalitarian.

How do you think that Christian egalitarians diverge from the politics of feminism?

Differences Between the Genders

2008-11-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Gender Differences in Pain Sensitivity

Boys dominant-dependant, Girls intimate-dependant

Men more likely to hiccup, women more likely to receive negative feedback from others if they are aggressive

Wiki on the history and concept of gender roles

Boys and girls brains are different

Regardless of scientific findings, gender stereotypes continue

Boys brains are bigger

Testosterone shapes brains, women encode memories differently than men, says MRI

Plan your head injury around your gender

Men and women respond to stress differently (MRI scans say)

Boys brains develop along the same lines as girls, only slower (so educate accordingly)

These are just a handful of studies and articles I found while googling. Whether the studies support an egalitarian or complementarian views is up for grabs, but at the very least, firming up *actual* vs. *perceived* (or ignored) gender differences is a benefit to those on all sides of the spectrum.

The comments box is open for comments, as usual, and also for references to studies you've ran across. Plus, if you cite studies that are proven cross-culturally, you get bonus points. :)

The Strawman "Sameness"

2008-11-12T12:08:00.001-08:00

To all those who claim that egals spout sameness,

I don’t know where you heard this from but it appears to be a strawman (empty caricature) that gets presented for demolition every now and then. So go ahead demolish it. I’m right there with you. It’s not our strawman. I don’t know who he belongs to.

Christians who believe in Biblical equality do not believe men and women are without innate differences. We do not wish for men and women to look or act alike. We do not wish for Christians to all look or act alike. Thank God He made men and women different. But let’s not paint all men blue and all women pink trying to emphasize the differences or make new differences. God did a fine job that doesn’t need improving upon.

OK. End of rant! ((SMILES))

Thinking Again about 1 Tim. 3:1-7

2008-11-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

I always find it interesting how we arrive at our conclusions. Do we take into account the differences of languages. When there is a question do we do some research on the original language. By research I do not mean checking Strong’s (the least accurate ‘dictionary’), but looking in as many Greek-English dictionaries we can and checking to see what various scholars think. Do we consider history and culture of the time? Do we check what the early churches were doing 300-600 years later? Are we on the alert for idioms? Do we consider the differences in Greek thinking and Hebrew thinking of the Biblical era? Or do we just believe our local leaders because they are leaders and should know. Are we open to the possibility that no one may know the answer to our questions for certain because it was 2000 years ago and some things have changed beyond comparison?

1 Tim. 3 starts off with pistos ho logos – faithful is the saying. And continues with ei tis – if anyone (anyone means ANYone, not just men) – episkopE oregO kalos ergon epithumeO - supervision is craving, of ideal work he is desiring.

OK, so the faithful saying (is that referring to a local well known saying, a slogan or colloquialism?) is that anyone who desires to minister in supervision is desiring a good thing. Its ideal work; it may even imply that it speaks well of the person who desires to serve thus. So, if someone wants to serve thus, we should be proud of him/her. They deserve a pat on the back for such servantmindedness. Yet, many today would say that if a woman desired to serve in her church in either supervision or ministry (diakonos = transliterated today as deacon), people assume and infer that she is seeking to grasp power. But Paul specifically said “anyone who desires”. So what do we make of that.

Then we have a list of qualifications for those who are desiring the good work of supervision.

Bruce C.E. Fleming in “Familiar Leadership Heresies Uncovered”, lists the furst 12 qualifications as such:

1. Above reproach – the overarching requirement
2. Faithful spouse – as applicable, some were single
3. Temperate – self-controlled (cf. Titus 2:2,5)
4. Sensible or sober – found here and in 2:9a, 15b.
5. Orderly – also used in 2:9a, 15b
6. Hospitable – a wordless ministry (1 Peter 4:9-11)
7. Apt at teaching – ministry of the word (2 Tim. 2:24)
8. Not excessive drinker – or not quarrelsome over wine
9. Not a striker or not pugnacious or a bully
10. Forbearing or gentle – (Phil. 4:5)
11. Uncontentious or not a brawler – (Titus 3:2)
12. Not-avaricious or no lover of money (Heb. 134:5)

Verses 4-7 are qualities showing spiritual maturity:

1. one who leads, manages, guides own household (proistemi – before standing, leading, presiding)
2. having own children in subjection with gravity
3. not a novice (lest he become puffed up with pride and fall into condemnation)
4. having a good testimony (reputation) among unbelievers (outsiders) so as not to fall into disgrace and a snare of the devil.

If we look at the qualities as a list we see they are a list of inner, spiritual characteristics that every believer should aim for. Even being an apt teacher is something every believer can achieve as they mature in their relationship with the Lord. Let the older brethren minister to the younger, let us look out for one another, etc. is a common theme in Scripture. It is not terribly difficult to look up the meanings of words, do the cross references and see this is a reasonable list we can likely all agree upon with the exception of one phrase in vs. 2.

Interpretively translated as ‘husband of one wife’ in most bibles, the Greek is simply “of one woman, man” – heis gunE anEr. Different church denominations and different nations have interpreted this differently. Some have said it meant one had to be a husband, but it seems to me to be a really circuitous route to say that, plus there is nothing anywhere in the Scriptures that requires one to be married in order to serve the Lord. Another meaning has been that a man must have only one wife versus two or more wives, yet while this is a reasonable requirement for ANY married man, it is not one addressed as such in Scripture elsewhere. Another interpretation is that a husband must have married only once, not divorced and then remarried. This I find very far fetched as there were specific requirements for divorce both before and after Christ and divorce was not considered a stigma against the divorcee. And then we have the interpretation that because it is mentioning a husband, then it must mean that one who wishes to be an overseer must be a man. However, taking that interpretation would also mean tagging all the other ideas of being married, and not twice, and having only one wife versus two or more, along with it. But the direct problem with that interpretation is that it would make Paul first words of “anyone who desires” of non effect. It is my opinion that we should read the Scriptures in such a way as to not “strike out” things in other parts of Scripture. If we understand Scripture correctly, it should not be a matter of striking out or nullifying other parts but of all fitting together in a reasonable manner.

”According to Lucien Deiss (notes to the French
Bible, the TOB, Edition Intégrale, p. 646, note a), this
Greek phrase was used in Asia Minor, on both Jewish
and pagan gravestone inscriptions, to designate a woman
or a man, who was faithful to his or her spouse in a way
characterized by “a particularly fervent conjugal love.”

When I read Deiss’ comment about how this phrase
was used on ancient grave inscriptions in Turkey, where
Paul and Timothy ministered, I confirmed it with him
myself, reaching him by telephone in Vaucresson, France.
Some might find this insight into 1 Timothy 3:2
surprising because modern versions of the Bible
translate this Greek phrase as – “husband of one wife” –
making this qualification appear to be restricted to men
only! Instead, rightly understood, this qualification is
about faithfulness in marriage by a Christian spouse. It is
not saying that oversight is “for men only.”

Pages 87-88
Think Again about Church Leaders by Bruce C. E. Fleming (Think Again Series)
or pg 128 in ‘Leadership Heresies” http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3FYPTYWIELEZD”

So, I’m only addressing one question of why some think women cannot be elders or deacons. I’ve shared a few of my reasons why I say that Biblically women can serve in any ministry. My question to you is how do you arrive at your conclusions for this section. How do you take into consideration chapter One and Two. How about chapter Four where Paul is admonishing Timothy not to neglect his gift (11-14). How about chapter Five where Paul speaks of elders (neither male or female) presiding well (proistEmi).

Perhaps, someone can look up proistEmi, episkopE, and presbuteros and tell us what they find.

Please share what you think.

Is Sarah Sumner an egalitarian or a complementarian?

2008-11-08T22:53:00.000-08:00

In a comment on a previous post John Hobbins perceptively wrote:

John wrote:

It's possible to characterize Sarah Sumner as a soft egal or as a very soft comp. But on CBE, she was treated by most as some kind of traitor to the cause. Once again, fine, I should have expected it. That's what movement blogs do.

I decided to ask Sarah which she is. She answered right away several days ago, but I've been waiting for her permission to post her answer. She just gave it. Here is what she wrote:

I think our new marriage book shows that I am really not an egalitarian. I cast three different models of marriage in our book:

business model, democratic model, and biblical model. The distinctiveness of my beliefs comes through more clearly now, I think.

Also note that complementarians say they believe that women are equal to men in dignity, yet they qualify that equality as something that is true “before God.” In that I believe women are equal to men before people (on the basis that we both are created in the image of God, and as Christians both have the same Christ, same Holy Spirit within us) , I am not a complementarian. The problem with complementarians is that they want to say women are not equal to men “before people,” and yet also say that men are not superior to women. That is a blatant contradiction. The problem, I believe with the egalitarian point of view is that egalitarians do not want to acknowledge that equality in the Church, according to the Scriptures, is different from political equality that legally gives women “the right” to demand to be treated in a certain way. I believe the issue of equality is misunderstood on both sides. Maybe I should write a little article on this. Thanks for prompting me.

Hope that helps.

Sarah

I don't think complementarians would accept Dr. Sumner as one of them since she has been senior pastor of a church. And egalitarians might question whether she is fully one of them. I suspect she does not fit neatly into either box. I know from what I have read by Dr. Sumner that she tries so very hard to be fully biblical. She has a kind of prophetic voice that calls all of us, whether egalitarians, complementarians, or neither, to be more biblical in the way we approach gender issues. Maybe Sarah is a complegalitarian! :-)

-------------

UPDATE (Nov. 25) from Sarah: Wayne,

I'm so 20th century I don't even know how to post on this, but you are welcome to, Wayne:

At this point in my life, I am not a blogger yet. I did, however, take a look at some of the comments posted and have found that you are a very thoughtful group of people. I appreciate your remarks and have been sharpened and instructed by them--thank you.

To be specific, I concede that the Bible itself is the only written word that fully shows the actual "biblical" model of marriage. I used that language in attempt to help people look more closely at Ephesians 5. But still, your point is well taken, Marilyn. Also thanks to you, John H. for noticing that my intention is to be honest about the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of the debate--and also of my own take on the matter.

In addition, I wish you could all see for yourselves my friendships with women; I don't want to sound defensive, but the truth is that I have always had many women friends and enjoy great closeness with them. That I repented from being prejudiced against women is really to say that I repented from being prejudiced against myself. As for the comments about a wife being the main breadwinner and what that implies about her position in the marriage, all I can say is that I wish you could meet my husband Jim. Regarding Matthew 18, Jim and I both are convinced that shying away from applying it is very costly to both husband and wife. Jim and I know husbands who say they feel too uncomfortable to confront their wives in a Matthew 18 way, and we know wives who say the same. But not feeling comfortable about applying Scripture is not a good excuse for not applying it. I understand that it's scary to obey Christ's commandments--until you actually DO it and find out that His way works. The key lies in confronting the other person for THEIR sake out of love. When Matthew 18 applied and applied rightly, neither spouse has more power than the other regardless of which one makes more money. Jesus' way levels the ground, so that both spouses can help each other obey the top commandment.

And for the record, I'm a teaching pastor, not a senior pastor. I say that in faith, trusting that anyone who hears me say that will know that I'm simply clarifying my own story and not trying to imply anything about women in the pastorate.

Blessings on you all,
Sarah Sumner

Book Review: "Women's Ministry in the Local Church" by J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt

2008-11-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a guest post from appreciated Complegalitarian commenter, emsolidegloria. She attends a complementarian church, though does not identify with either complementarian or egalitarian positions in full, and wishes for personal reasons to remain anonymous. The following is her review of a book recommended by CBMW's Randy Stinson, Complementarian pastor, C.J. Mahaney, Mary A. Kassian, PhD, and more. John Piper's website discusses the book here.

I enjoyed reading through emsolidegloria's thoughtful commentary, and am sure that you will find reading her perspective worth your time, whether you come from a complementarian or egalitarian perspective.

Warmly,
Molly Aley

A Review of "Women's Ministry in the Local Church" by J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt

Observations by Complegalitarian Commenter, "emsolideogloria" 9/20/08

*Online copy of the full book available here*

This isn't a book review or even a counter-perspective on women's ministry in the local church. Rather it is a collection of observations based on the Duncan / Hunt book, my experience, and how I believe these interact with Scripture. My goal in writing this is to make some contribution to wise formation of ministry involvement including women in my local church.

At places I agree strongly with the authors and at others I don't. While I will try to note the most important contributions that I believe the authors make, I will spend much more time addressing those places where I have questions or concerns about the authors' perspective. There is much more right with this book than wrong with it but I will not spend extensive time highlighting what is right (they have done that themselves); thus, in the absence of propositional disagreement, it is safe to assume that I appreciate what the authors are teaching.

A Vision

First of all, let no foundation be laid than the one which has already been laid, that is, Christ.

"For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ." -2 Cor. 4:6

Women's ministry is to be rooted and grounded in the creative love of God who formed woman in his image from the man as a co-regent and partner for Adam and breathed into her the very same breath of life with which He animated the man. It is founded in the sustaining, merciful love of God, which did not destroy the woman or the man when they sinned, but rather promised them a Savior.

It is found in the pursuing love of God, who never left Himself without a witness in all of human history but chose a people for Himself and set His love on them and sent to them His law, His prophets, and last of all His Son, whom they killed. It is inseparable from the redemptive love of our Immanuel, who did not consider equality with God something to be clung to but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant and humbling himself to death on the cross – becoming what no woman or man could ever be so that we could be called the sons and daughters of God. It is a demonstration of the sanctifying love of God, who loves His church, and who gave gifts to the church in the form of men and women who will build the members of the body into maturity. It looks forward to glorifying love, when the Savior greets his perfected bride at the wedding feast of the Lamb and there will be no more sorrows – only joy in seeing Him as he truly is.

A Definition

While the authors of the book speak of "women's ministry," I do not recall them defining it. Since I'm pedantic about defining terms, I'll observe that the authors of this book seem to be particularly concerned with an organized, perhaps programmatic, division of church ministries that focuses on women, is led by women who function under the authority of the elders, and supports the other ministries of the church.

In a greater sense, though, "women's ministry" eludes definition. In that larger way, "women's ministry" can be seen as all ministry to women and by women in the local church and beyond – extending to all of the spheres of influence to which the women of the local church have been called. It includes, and indeed focuses on, how believing women minister to each other but it does not stop there. In as much as women are indispensible members of the covenant community, women's ministry is also about how women serve and are served by brothers in the church and how they serve as ambassadors extraordinaire to a world in rebellion against their Sovereign Savior.

In keeping with the focus of our authors, I will most often speak of "women's ministry" in the more specific sense but I will also draw connections to the greater sense – the greater purpose even, of women's ministry – as all that women do for the glory of God.

A Purpose

The authors of this book proffer several foundational themes of Paul's epistles which should be seen as the backdrop or context for all women's ministry (p 58-64). I could not agree with these more. Yet, I would proffer Ephesians 4 as an over-arching and unifying purpose for women's ministry that, at least in my mind, expands our understanding of what women's ministry is about.

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy
of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and
gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to
maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body
and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your
call 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all,
who is over all and through all and in all. 7 But grace was given to each
one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
8 Therefore it says,
When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men
(and women?). 9 (In saying, He ascended, what does it mean but that he had
also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is
the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all
things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry,
for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all (men and women) attain
to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature
manhood (and womanhood), to the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the
waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by
craftiness in deceitful schemes.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we
are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from
whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is
equipped, when each part (male or female, young or old, etc) is working
properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

If this passage is written to the entire church and is for the entire church, both men and women, such that "all" means "all," then I cannot think of a better statement of purpose for women's ministry (or youth ministry, or men's ministry, or children's ministry, or single's ministry, or senior's ministry, etc), than this. In other words, this passage reveals God's heart for the entire church – any given ministry within the church should be about helping the saints catch a vision for the glory of God, to know and be known by the Savior, in a way that transforms the unique experiences of the people in that ministry. To elaborate, each ministry of the church has the same grand purpose, but it is woven into the lives of different people in beautifully diverse ways. Thus, while men's ministry and youth ministry have the same over-arching purpose, the goal of each ministry is to help its members grow to maturity and "work properly" as members of the body.

A Commendation

To speak of women as important in the church at all – of the worth of women and their call as disciples – is progress for many local churches in the evangelical movement. I appreciated Duncan's commendation of the pastors who have invested in the women in his life and Susan's of those who have trained her. There is no doubt in my mind that such pastoral investment is immensely valuable for both men and women in the church. Unfortunately, pastors often fail to see the value of investing in women. I've seen the bad fruit of such inattention many times, including in my own church. When I asked him why women were not included in discipleship in our church, my pastor once said that he didn't think it was necessarily wrong for other churches to include women in discipleship but it wasn't going to happen in his church. He explained that men were his priority because he is following the model of Jesus (who chose 12 male disciples) and that, as he understands Scripture, he is "not called to train women."

Such statements are not just offensive; they set aside much that is in Scripture. The church needs to be careful that it does not respond to extreme feminism with equally extreme male chauvinism ("superiority," however couched in "servant leader" terminology). As the authors of this book note, women were among Jesus disciples (though not the twelve). Mary chose the "better part," because she found her purpose at the feet of such a master. Wealthy women supported his ministry and were among his earliest followers. Jesus female disciples stayed with him throughout the dark night of his crucifixion and came first to his tomb. To some of them he first revealed himself as risen. Women were instrumental in the building of the early church. Did Paul consider it a waste of time to invest in Lydia (Acts 16)? It doesn't seem so – in fact, his first action when he got out of prison was to visit her. They "encouraged" the brothers but only Lydia is named – not even the jailer. Was Apollos embarrassed to have been discipled by Priscilla and to consider her (along with her husband) among his first teachers in the faith? This is not an apologetic for how great women are any more than the mentions of male ministry are to be an exaltation of men. Yet, these days it actually appears necessary to produce an apologetic for why ministry to women and by women matters in the local church. This book does produce such an apologetic.

Additionally, this book uses the word "ezar" or "helper" for women in a robust and positive way (p34). While some complementarian authors treat all wives as their husband's personal assistant (and single women in an equally diminutive way), these authors go out of their way to affirm the helping function as one which images God and is characterized by strength – it is a help that is not just practical but deeply spiritual as well. Grasping this concept would be a vital corrective for many in the complementarian movement (see Grudem, BFMW, 32). I believe it would reduce the excuses for men to use a complementarian emphasis on sexual hierarchy to justify their own personal desire for superiority.

My biggest laugh moment, in reading this book, was when Duncan quotes Dorothy Sayers from Creed and Chaos saying, "It is not the business of the church to conform Christ to men but men to Christ." She is a personal favorite of mine and I must appreciate any author who quotes her but to quote her in this book adds a touch of irony. She also said, "What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person." She got more specific on issues related to women in the church in her essay "The Human-Not-Quite-Human". Here is a relevant excerpt:

"Blessed be God," says the Jew, "that hath not made me a woman."
God, of course
may have His own opinion, but the Church is reluctant to endorse it. I think I
have never heard a sermon preached on the story of Martha and Mary that did not
attempt, somehow, somewhere, to explain away its text. Mary's, of course, was
the better part - the Lord said so, and we must not precisely contradict Him.
But we will be careful not to despise Martha. No doubt, He approved of her too.
We could not get on without her, and indeed (having paid lip-service to God's
opinion) we must admit that we greatly prefer her. For Martha was doing a really
feminine job, whereas Mary was just behaving like any other disciple, male or
female; and that is a hard pill to swallow.
Perhaps it is no wonder that the
women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man
like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who
never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made
arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or
"The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised
without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who
never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or
jeered at them for being female; who had no ax to grind and no uneasy male
dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely
unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that
borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from
the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything 'funny' about woman's
nature.

Finally, in commending certain themes in this book, I cannot overlook the authors' emphasis on prayer – especially prayer by women's ministry leaders for the ladies under their care but also for the elders under whose oversight they serve. This couldn't be more essential.

Global Analysis

The authors of this book set up five questions and answer them in the book. Their organization is good and worth retaining for further consideration. For each point in this outline, I will denote any additional observations I might make in italics.

[Edit by M. Aley to Add: My apologies. Blogger did not appreciate the cut-and-paste of this outline and made a real mess of it. I've patched it up as best as I can, but apologies for the odd formatting. To help, I have put the book's points in bold, emsolidegloria's observations in italics. This applies only to the following outline, not to the rest of the review].

1. Why should a church have a women's ministry? P37-38

i. Cultivate godly feminine women

1. Yes, but the word "feminine" carries many connotations and whose ideas of "feminine" are promoted can mean the difference between biblical women's ministry and a ministry that is legalistic and judgmental of women who don't fit the accepted mold.

2. Let us rather cultivate godly women who are passionate about living for the glory of God – who behold the Savior in every line of Scripture, who seek to mortify their own sin, who encourage others in godliness, who evangelize the lost and who clothe their defense of the truth with humility.

ii. Promote healthy Christian marriages

1. Of course. But the details he adds leave room for much controversy. He claims that "egalitarianism… is part of the disintegration of marriage in our culture." Rather, I would suggest that strict role-bound models for marriage are as likely to lead to joyless, selfish, legalistic relationships as Christian egalitarianism. At the same time, either complementarian or egalitarian models, applied with grace, humility and flexibility, can be quite beautiful. Most marriage struggles I've seen are not really about gender roles – especially if you look past the surface. Dave Harvey handles this well in "When Sinners Say 'I Do'."

iii. Promote godly, monogamous, heterosexual marriages

1. The claim that evangelical feminism leaves no reason for heterosexual monogamy is simply false. Scripture and natural law provide ample reason for any evangelical Christian to reject same-sex marriage and infidelity. The claim that celebrating an equal partnership between men and women in the gospel leads to androgyny is one for which I have not found reliable evidence. To claim to see more biblical evidence for a sort of complementarity that is characterized primarily by sexual hierarchy than egalitarianism is Duncan's right as a scholar. His smear of evangelical feminism, however, suggests the slippery slope fallacy to me.

iv. Cultivate among Christian women a joyous celebration of godly, healthy, Christian, male spiritual leadership in the church.

1. Wise pastoral leadership in the church is to be celebrated and the testimony of Scripture seems to be that the apostles and elders of the church were male by God's design.

2. Duncan could have had the grace here to admit that male chauvinism has frequently damaged the testimony of the church and still does in many local churches. When women are appreciated for releasing their husbands to serve the church but not as ones released by their husbands to serve the church, the imbalance is noted. When women are welcomed on some ministry teams but not others; trained in some ways but not others; considered capable of submitting but not leading (and I'm not talking about the pastorate)- think lay ministry or the deaconate here, those behaviors will be noted as statements of value by a watching world. I would suggest that pastors ask, "If someone came in from outside, would they quickly observe that women here are genuinely valued as fellow divine image bearers, heirs of grace, and earthly under-sovereigns with their brothers in Christ? Is there anything in the way that our church separates women that is not necessitated by Scripture? Do women or men in our church believe that we could improve in these areas? (if you don't know, ask)."

v. Help Christian women appreciate the manifold areas of service that are open to them in the church and equip them distinctively as women to fulfill their ministry.

1. Certainly, but Duncan doesn't stop here. He attacks what he calls an "androgynous" approach to discipleship. But I might suggest that a gender inclusive approach to discipleship is far preferable to either (a) discipleship as a "no girls wanted" clubhouse or (b) segregated "women's discipleship" that is characterized by a watered down "theology lite."

i. My summary response

i. Overall, I think Duncan's reasons for women's ministry fall short of the greater purpose I would envision. His thoughts are not necessarily bad – just incomplete – and in my mind carry an anti-egalitarian sub agenda that is not necessary.

2. Who is responsible for the women's ministry? P78

i. The elders of the church

i. Agreed, without reservation. The elders provide leadership, oversight and direction for all the ministries of the local church. A model where women's ministry operates as an autonomous sub-unit is a recipe for disaster and will not achieve the great purpose of building women to maturity as members of the body of Christ for the benefit of all.

ii. Consistent with this pastoral responsibility for the women's ministry should be a pastoral initiative to seek the counsel of the leaders of the women's ministry and to view them as a resource in church life. Greater harmony will result when the pastors include the wise women of the church in decision making that affects them as much as possible. Although the women should submit to the decisions of the elders even if they are not included in the decision making process, exercising pastoral authority in an arbitrary way not only can be provoking to the women, but the elders can miss out on much benefit that they might have received from the counsel of wise women. I don't think the authors disagree with this observation but they do not address this issue clearly.

3. How does women's ministry relate to other ministries in the church? P94

i. As a corporate helper to the whole church

i. The authors see women's ministry assisting other ministries in the church. They apparently have a committee driven (very Presbyterian or Baptist) model in mind. There is nothing wrong with this but I would see women's ministry relating to other ministries as a co-laborer or another team member. I would see the various ministries all helping each other toward that goal of maturity.

4. What are the tasks of women's ministry? P83-105

i. Accent on compassion and community; also submission and discipleship

i. There is biblical warrant for these values and they are very well presented here.

ii. My only additional encouragement would be to not exclude women from any area of ministry Scripture does not. In emphasizing compassion and community, it is important that we not place an improper reliance on perceptions of women as relational, intuitive nurturers. This is generally true, but it can leave out women who are not as gifted in these areas – who would be better suited to helping frame the church budget or administrating an evangelism program or defending and teaching sound doctrine. Those gifts aren't bad just because they are evidenced in a woman instead of a man.

5. How does a church implement a biblical approach to women's ministry? P141-143

i. Authors provide various examples of women's ministry activities in local churches and curriculum suggestions.

i. I struggle with some of these examples personally though I can see how they would be helpful for many women.

ii. Sometimes it can seem like these suggestions constitute a plan for implementing a diminutive or anemic (rather than thoroughly biblical) approach to women's ministry.

[Outline concluded]

Not-so-Random Thoughts

Titus 2

Titus 2:3-5 is a popular text for women's ministry and appropriately so. It may be the most specific text in Scripture justifying woman-to-woman training and discipleship.
Some pastors see this as excusing them from involvement in training women (as one young pastor seemed to once in quoting it to me) but a closer reading shows that this is part of a list of instructions to Titus as to what he is to teach various groups of people in the church. All of the things listed in verses 2-10 are the subtext of verse 1, instructing Titus to "teach what accords with sound doctrine." Titus, as a pastor, is to provide the equipping framework and training for all of these groups of people to excel in godly character and actions.

Other pastors see Titus 2:4-5 as setting forth the things that are important to teach women. Nothing else is needed in women's ministry, they believe, and so nothing (or little) else is allowed to be taught. The focus for women's ministry can amount to "Christian" Home Economics and somewhere in the long list of 'ways women should behave,' God gets lost. The remedy for such a narrow focus is to see the instructions to women in their context and to remember verse 3b.

If this is the exclusive list of things young women are to learn (or older women are to teach):

(1) love of husbands and children,
(2) self-control,
(3) purity,
(4) working at home,
(5)kindness, and
(6) being submissive to their own husbands;

then, young men should only be taught self-control, and older men just get to hear about being sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness – all the time.

But Paul is not meaning to give Titus an exhaustive list or curriculum for men's and women's ministries - he is emphasizing things which ought not be neglected. I've never yet heard a pastor use Titus 2:6 as grounds for teaching that the only thing young men were to be discipled in was self-control.

If a pastor is still inclined to see Titus 2 women's ministry as being about teaching women specific behaviors, then he still has a great reason not to interpret that list of behaviors narrowly. The whole passage says:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or
slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young
women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure,
working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word
of God may not be reviled.

The only direct command is that the older women "teach what is good." Paul's assumption is that as they teach what is good, the younger women are being trained in these good works that will bring glory to God the Father (rather than giving the world an excuse for reviling the gospel). But the admonition to "teach what is good" is quite broad – for above all, God is good. And it is in explicating and learning the glories of His character and His sacrifice on their behalf that the women will be changed and will "grow up in every way" (Eph 4:15). It is worth noting that the verse does NOT say that older women are to disciple the younger ones in how to "love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands." This is to be the fruit of teaching what is good – it is not necessarily the whole of the teaching itself. Women – like men – are to be discipled as Christ-followers. The fruit follows.

It appears to me that Duncan & Hunt subscribe to a narrow view of Titus 2:3-5 (p127). I do not think that this is necessary based on the text or wise in practice.

Evangelism and Discipleship

The authors assume the virtue of same gender evangelism and discipleship. So do I. They also suggest (p105) that evangelizing and discipling women should characterize women's ministry in the local church. I agree. What I do not embrace is their implicit assumption that cross-gender evangelism and discipleship are wrong or even less than ideal. Women should be encouraged and equipped to evangelize both men and women. While a woman's closest relationships will usually be with women and her sphere of influence will usually be widest among women, this is not always the case. The female office manager for a construction company probably interacts with men more than women. She has countless opportunities to be a gospel witness and she should take advantage of each opportunity in the power of the Spirit. Likewise, men should evangelize women.

Similarly, Scripture nowhere prohibits women and men from discipling or counseling each other. It rather seems to assume that this will be happen. While there are distinct benefits to same-gender discipleship, that is not the only way God works. Every Christian is to be an evangelist and disciple-maker. As long as Matthew 28:18-20 is considered a general call for all believers (not just to the eleven or only apostles), we have no warrant for attaching a same-gender rule to it. In a society where the genders are less separated than in the first century, it ought to be far more normative now than then.

The authors suggest that the universal reality of male / female differences speaks to the need for an intentional, deliberate approach to female discipleship (p39-41). In law, the legitimacy of a constitutional concept's application to a particular case can be challenged "facially" or "as applied." A facial challenge says that the concept does not apply at all while an as applied challenge suggests that justices not apply a generally accepted constitutional concept to the given case for particular reasons.

I would suggest that gender differences do not affect how discipleship should occur facially – or, rather, essentially. The core content and focus should be the same when discipling men or women. But there are "as applied" differences between male and female disciples and so these should be recognized in discipling / applying the gospel to the lives of men and women. Differences in dealing with temptation (p41) and, to some extent, even the nature of the temptations faced (only women physically experience miscarriage or hormonal changes associated with menstruation, for instance) are one of the best justifications for same-gender elements to any formal discipleship program. However, I have concerns about the assumption that sex differences are so profound that the entirety of discipleship must be tailored to gender. Men and women are different but the gospel is the same. And the gospel looks very similar when lived by each gender (is there really male kindness and female kindness? Male self-control and female self-control?).

Thus, I would rather have a well-qualified man leading a women's discipleship group (if the group is not to be mixed) than a poorly qualified woman. I've learned much from wise men. I can only imagine how much Apollos benefitted from being discipled by a mature, godly team: Priscilla and Aquila. This example is one of the reasons why I cannot see 1 Timothy 2:12 as a universal prohibition on a woman teaching a man or a man learning from a woman regarding spiritual truths. Rather, I see it as a proscribing a woman from being in a position of spiritual authority over and authoritatively teaching the men (an elder). We should not be quick to overlook the value of spiritual mothers in the church. These women can be a great resource to young men (who are not their natural sons) – guiding, counseling, encouraging and even instructing them in the faith. Further, when both men and women are discipled by a mature male / female team, I actually think far more benefits accrue than when only one gender is doing the discipling. Ideally, this teamwork creates additional contexts for modeling how the gospel is lived out in different sorts of situations.

Diaconate

The authors bring in Dan Doriani to explain possible interpretations of "likewise, the women" in reference to the deacons (p84). They believe that women were / are to be involved in diaconal work (service and caring ministry) but as wives to deacons rather than as deacons themselves. Nonetheless, the authors seem to allow for the possibility of other legitimate interpretations. I would see women as likely to have been deacons in the early church; however, I would not see this as a governing role over the whole church but rather as an office of ministerial service. The diaconate has some responsibility but it is a very submitted level of responsibility – the governing authority remains with the elders.

The authors seem to view male deacons as wise leaders and women as relational helpers. This seems to once again exclude women from exercising wise leadership. In their example (p95), the authors assume that male deacons are to make such simple decisions as to how church resources might be used to assist a single mom and more complicated ones regarding how to care for an abused woman. The women of the church are then "freed" to carry out the male deacons decisions with relational care for these women. Not only is this condescending but I believe this view also robs the church of the counsel and decision making skills of wise women by assuming the women will be too emotional and relational to view the situations objectively. A woman who runs a small business or directs a charity should certainly be as able to make such a decision as a man or to give input into a group decision made by all the deacons. And, since Scripture doesn't prohibit her involvement, neither should we.

The principle of submission should not be seen as "freeing" women (p90) from ever making responsible decisions or being a member of the team that makes such decisions. Nor should a woman's desire to use her gifting in decision-making or helping to set church policies in these matters of service lead to her being branded as "rebellious" by male leadership. A robust view of complementarity should actually convince us that the active participation of both men and women will serve the church well in such decision making.

In my local church, viewing women as helpers to the male deacons (small group leaders), generally means that the men are trained and developed as leaders in ways the women (wives / assistants) are not. Over and over, I have seen ways that this model does not serve the women of the church and may even be detrimental to the men. In this model, the women are often not regarded as strong partners in the ministry of the gospel, their perspective is not welcomed in decision making (how does that value complementarity?), and their giftedness is not fully utilized. I agree that a woman does not need an official position (p88) to serve others with care and compassion -- but neither does a man. If Scripture does not keep her from the office (and the accompanying training and opportunity to more fully use her gifts to serve God's people), then should the elders keep her from it?

In an emphasis on community and compassion, we should be careful not to restrict women from other opportunities for service and ministry (unless Scripture clearly does so). And we should be very reluctant to judge the motives of a woman who desires to serve in non-traditional ways. Can a woman be church administrator? Evangelism coordinator? Head usher? Occasionally facilitate a mixed bible study? Lead or co-lead an Alpha group? Develop curriculum for church use? Serve on the financial accountability / budgeting team that advises the pastors? Coordinate youth ministries? Should women be considered by the elders for these roles? If not, why not?

Personalities

The authors mention strong personalities associated with women's ministry as a negative several times (p31, 139). I've personally observed a fear of strong women (particularly if they are allowed in ministry) in several churches and by more than a couple of pastors. I do think I understand this concern – particularly when semi-autonomous women's ministries begin teaching something contrary to the doctrines of the church or when major personality conflicts threaten to implode a ministry entirely.

Thus, I would share the author's concern about a personality driven women's ministry – or a personality driven local church, for that matter. Somehow, though, I don't recall ever hearing about the woes of a personality driven children's ministry. Would it be accurate, then, to say that many elders / church leaders are MORE concerned about strong personalities in women's ministry than elsewhere in the church? If so, why? Perhaps, my concern would be that in the effort to avoid a personality driven women's ministry, some leadership might demand a women's ministry devoid of personality.

God doesn't call women to efface their personalities any more (or less) than he calls men to do so. Rather, both ought to decrease that He might increase. Both sexes are to yield themselves as instruments of grace. But, women's ministry leaders need not be drab and colorless people who fear to express any gifting or confidence in God lest they be labeled as self-aggrandizing or perceived as a threat to male leadership. That shouldn't be expected or cultivated. Rather, leaders should look for strong, caring and intelligent – even pastorally minded (in the sense of desiring the good of others as God defines it and being willing to work to that end) women who will disciple, encourage, correct and cultivate gifting in others. They are women who challenge other women, who ask good questions, intentionally move conversation past the superficial, counsel those who are in need and bear with the weak gladly. Such women's ministry leaders are gifts to the entire church.

Summary

The church will be best served (and God most glorified), when men and women partner together in the advancement of the gospel. This partnership is one of inter-dependence and the ground of our unity is as sinners, saved by grace, called to serve and transformed for all eternity. Christ's prayer was for our unity – and that is achieved as we find our place, our peace, and our security in Him. Men and women who are secure in the Lord need not be threatened by or compete with each other. We are free to minister to each other, with each other, and to prefer one another in love - without arrogance, condescension or selfish ambition. In such an environment, the value of women in the church will not be in doubt. It will not be remarkable for a prominent pastor to say that the contributions wise women should be appreciated for no one will doubt that they are. Women in the church would be trained and equipped alongside their brothers for most areas of ministry. The Body will grow up in every way into Christ.

Perhaps, I've raised cautions where there are no dangers. Many of my observations may be invalid or tainted by my own sinful judgments. Please take my thoughts for whatever they might be worth and know that they are submitted with love for the church and passion to see God's greatest glory advanced in and through her.

--emsolidegloria

women church leaders

2008-10-31T22:59:00.000-07:00

Mimi at The CBE Scroll blogged this week, asking Able to Lead the Free World, but not a Local Church ?

What do you believe that the Bible says about women having leadership of a local church?

UPDATE (Nov. 1): Many believe that 1 Tim. 2:12 explicitly prohibits any woman from having teaching authority over any man. If you disagree, how do you respond to the charge that you are not following a clear prohibition in the Bible?

Submission (Ephesians 5:21)

2008-10-30T11:27:00.001-07:00

Submission (Ephesians 5:21)

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What Does it Mean for Complementarianism to be Biblical?

2008-10-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

CBMW's Gender Blog has posted What Does it Mean for Complementarianism to be Biblical?

You may wish to read it. You may wish to give Feedback on their post. That feedback is emailed to the blog authors and not displayed for public viewing. Or is you wish you can leave comments here.

Sacred Marriage and Love & Respect: A Conversation, by John Hobbins and Marilyn Johnson, Part 4

2008-10-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

Part Four

Marilyn to John:

What I do know with certainty is this. When I married, I was scared of emotional intimacy. I was frightened that I would lose my husband if he really knew who I was. So, I used periodic bursts of disrespect to push him away whenever circumstances drew us closer. I read L&R and became convicted that the disrespectful behavior needed to stop. It did, and the intimacy came flooding in. That then created a desire for intimacy with God. Based on the response in the marketplace to L&R, I believe that my experiences reflect those of literally hundreds of thousands of other couples.

If you do pick up a copy of Love and Respect, I ask one thing of you. Please read the entire book. The first third of the book focuses on how to stop the “crazy cycle” in which spouses are caught up in negatively reacting to each other. It is the last third that introduces the Rewarded Cycle, arguing that all husbands and wives should be practicing Love and Respect principles first and foremost out of obedience toward Christ. The book has been criticized for its front end. I don't think that is fair. You have to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. And, where most people are right now is "I have a right to....." That's where I was when I first read L&R.

John to Marilyn:

You describe very well the inner connection between marriage and our relationship with God. Marriage in this sense is truly a means of grace. As such, it should be emphasized, marriage can never be about coercion, and is not about mutuality, either, but about grace-alone unconditional love. Here are two quotes from the last part of Sacred Marriage:

“Christianity is one of those rare religions which marries internal reality with outward obedience.”

“A spiritually alive marriage will remain a marriage of two individuals in pursuit of a common vision outside themselves.”

Taken together, the quotes express what one might call a compegal synthesis.

Marilyn to John:

Longer than you may have time to read, sorry! But this is a topic I feel passionately about! I had hoped to have conversations about topics like the above on Complegalitarian, but too many people are in attack mode. I’ve ended up there myself, upon occasion.

John to Marilyn:

I enjoyed reading every line of your sensitive and carefully thought-out reflections!

I agree with you that [Complegalitarian blog] is not a safe place so long as its threads abound in attack mode comments. Nevertheless, in line with "Love hopes all things, endures all things, and believes all things," I want to believe that people will not be oblivious to what this conversation has been about, and why the tone in which we have written is connatural to the content we express.

Sacred Marriage and Love & Respect: A Conversation, by John Hobbins and Marilyn Johnson, Part 3

2008-10-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

Part Three

Marilyn to John:

Having said that, I'm not exactly the typical complementarian wife. I work outside the home. I also represented the market segment complementarians view to be the most difficult to reach - the "I'm an evangelical feminist because nothing as ugly as the complementarianism on which I was raised could possibly be Biblical."

John to Marilyn:

The market segment I represent is even harder to please: "I'm a fourth generation egalitarian who has seen over and over again that egalism is far from being a Holy Grail or a saving grace. Who do you think you're fooling if you wish to suggest that complementarianism is some sort of Holy Grail or saving grace?"

Marilyn to John:

Many complementarians undoubtedly question whether it is appropriate for me to work outside the home. Related to this, I think that complementarians don't have good answers for the "but, what about personality differences" questions. Put in Myers-Briggs terms, complementarian wives are supposed to be ESFJs. It sometimes seems as if the extent of a wife's deviation from an ESFJ personality is defined by complementarians as a sin issue. So, I still struggle with the question of what is sin versus woundedness versus giftedness issue.

John to Marilyn:

I think comps and egals need to allow more room for gift-based authority. Gift-based authority represents almost by definition a deviation from the norm. So what? Open your eyes, as John Wesley did on more than one occasion, and be ready to see God do a new thing.

At the same time, extraordinary gifts and wounds go together. I sometimes go so far as to say that extraordinary gifts are wounds.

Sins and gifts also go together. A harder topic to broach, but it stares us right in the face if we look around. All the great saints in the Bible were also great sinners. Fancy that. It makes one wish for mediocrity at times.

It is no accident that Moses and Paul were both murderers. Was murder a necessary preparation for their life-giving subsequent missions? Murder was a misuse of the gift, the same gift of zeal and sense of justice that God went on to use in positive ways.

Marilyn to John:

On the other hand, I also believe that I should follow traffic laws. If a stoplight is red, I should stop my car even if there are no other cars in sight. If everybody disobeyed traffic laws when they didn't see an immediate need to follow them, the result would be chaos. (And, chaos is what we're currently experiencing when stop lights turn yellow.) I think there's a parallel to gender roles, but I'm either unable or unwilling to develop the argument. And, of course, Thomas' point about our being put in our marriages to serve is always relevant!

John to Marilyn:

More traffic lights, please. I would say that egal family life tends to look like slightly regulated anarchy these days. You would think that Christian comps and egals alike would make common cause against the tendency, for example, to give teenage children almost full control over their lives at an increasingly early age.

That's an easy case, but it's not that different with respect to the question of gender roles. The question: what is the right balance between cultural expectations and flexibility so as to make room for the exercise of particular gifts? More generally: in what sense is the Christian faith to accommodate culture, or instead be counter-cultural, and on what grounds? As you will notice, I have more questions than answers.

Marilyn to John:

I'm not sure that I have a complete response to the egal domain-based arguments that you have raised. I guess there are two issues - our roles and how we relate to each other. With respect to roles, I see the key issue as the couple's intent, not their outcomes. Even if a husband and wife earn comparable incomes, I do believe that they view their jobs differently. She wants to choose whether to work. He wants to choose where/how to work. That difference is huge. The husband assumes the primary responsibility for provision and protection. That supports his authority, irrespective of whether the practical outcome is that she earns a comparable or higher income.

With respect to how the couple relates, Emerson uses the example of Margaret Thatcher, who when once asked how she winds down after a difficult day with Parliament, responded along the lines of, "I curl up in my husband's arms and have a good cry." That example resonates with me. How I want to be perceived in the work place is not who I want to be or should be in relation to my husband.

John to Marilyn:

Your examples are well-chosen. I note that the role-reversal of which you speak was not across-the-board in Margaret Thatcher's case. Indeed, she needed it to be incomplete in order to maintain her sanity. However, I would describe provision and protection on the one hand, and choice on the other, along domain-based lines with sufficient scope given for exceptions to the norm in terms of who detains authority in a particular domain.

For example, in the home, the norm is that the mother provides in the kitchen and protects the physical health of all family members, whereas the father may choose to do so on particular occasions. And if for some reason, roles are reversed for a time, as often in today's world, or even permanently on relatively rare occasions, I fail to see how that alters the norm. BTW, I don't believe that all current cultural norms are excellent. For example, I think the greatest and most destructive gender imbalance in our society right now is the lack of male teachers at the K-12 level. But I appear to be a voice howling in the wilderness on that one.

Sacred Marriage and Love & Respect: A Conversation, by John Hobbins and Marilyn Johnson, Part 2

2008-10-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

Part Two

Marilyn to John:

Thomas' second book, Sacred Influence, carries a similar message to Emerson Eggerichs' Love and Respect. Of the two books, Love and Respect has had greater impact. In part, this reflects the fact that Emerson's message is beautiful for its simplicity. He presents a framework that a couple can apply in real-time, in the middle of a normal verbal exchange that has the potential to escalate into a fight. It's short on ennobling rhetoric, but long on a Biblical framework that enables change. So, it is Love and Respect that I encourage you to read next.

John to Marilyn:

I plan to read it next. It requires great dexterity to offer gender-differentiated advice to couples without falling into time-worn stereotypes. Egals tend to give up on the notion of distinct gender identities and correlative counsel. Meanwhile, non-Christian authors including some feminists find very receptive audiences to even outlandish attempts at defining gender-based differences. The only serious explanation for this is that people by and large are aware of generalized (not absolute) differences even if it is not easy to describe them persuasively.

Marilyn to John:

Emerson argues that there can be no such thing as “mutual submission” in decision making. Mutual submission is possible to the extent that God asks different things of the husband and wife – he is to meet her need for love, and she is to meet his need for respect. Since the needs differ, mutual submission is possible in how the couple relates. However – and contrary to what CBE says – as a practical matter, it is not possible with respect to the outcome of a particular decision.

John to Marilyn:

Point taken. It sounds like Eggerichs does not find "mutual submission" as helpful an umbrella concept as "love and respect." With this I am in full agreement. I sometimes use the term "mutual submission" with couples in marriage prep, but I spend more time describing what it means to honor someone else, and what sacrificial love is about. In an egal culture such as the one we all swim in, honor and sacrificial love have largely gone by the wayside. We associate both honor and sacrifice with military mores (not false in itself) to be avoided by reasonable people (a false conclusion). That is a recipe for mediocrity. Rightly understood, honor, respect, and reverence on the one hand and sacrifice and self-denial on the other describe life-enhancing attitudes of the first order.

Marilyn to John:

I also encourage you to read Love and Respect because it is the complementarian book that has the most thorough discussion of domain-based authority. In fact, it is this discussion that convicted me. For example, Emerson points out that men and women tend to view careers very differently. Women typically view work outside the home as a choice, while men view it as a fundamental responsibility. (This thinking came through on Complegalitarian blog a couple of weeks ago, in Wayne's "what is a Christian feminist" post. Women wanted the right to choose whether they worked and the right to choose the military. Yet, none of them expressed a willingness to assume primary responsibility for supporting a family or defending their country.) Male authority in marriage follows logically from this responsibility to protect and provide. Of all the complementarian books that have attempted to answer the “why does God command me to submit to my husband when I know we’re equals” question, it is Emerson’s discussion of responsibility and authority that I found to be compelling.

John to Marilyn:

As you know, I am a big fan of domain-based authority. Indeed, I think it's important to understand how essential and life-enhancing domain-based and office-based hierarchies are in human life.

I'm also a fan of choice and your distinction between choice and responsibility corresponds well to facts on the ground. Those facts, of course, change to some extent from epoch to epoch and culture to culture.

Marilyn to John:

When I read this section of L&R, I thought back to a time in my marriage when I had just finished graduate school and had been offered my "dream job". Up until that point, my husband's career had come first. I thought that it was my turn, and my husband agreed to the move. However, he pointed out that we would be living in an area where it would be difficult for him to find professional employment. He was willing to make the move and to stay home with our child. But, he asked me to acknowledge that in accepting that job, I was assuming the primary responsibility for supporting our family. If I wanted to quit work (we had a second child on the way), there was a chance that in the near term, I wouldn't be able to. I'm so glad my husband had the wisdom to recognize the implications of the decision we were in the process of making and the maturity to share his concerns in a loving fashion. In reflecting on what he said, I realized that I did not, in fact, want to assume the responsibility of providing for our family. Rather, I wanted to keep open the option to quit work as our family grew. I turned down the job. As I reflected on that incident while reading L&R, I became convinced of the wisdom of the complementarian model.

John to Marilyn:

I'm not sure I follow everything you say, but I'm listening.

In my marriage, both Paola and I have been offered and have turned down "dream jobs" more than once out of a sense of family priorities. In my case, Paola has consistently objected on every occasion I have been offered an academic position. This has not been easy for me (I am a consummate bookworm and I love to teach).

Not that her objections even made sense to me half the time. Nonetheless, I have accepted her stance. It turns out that this stance of hers has been the greatest gift she has given to me. It has kept me in the pastorate which is a place of great blessing at least as I experience it, much fuller and deeper as a life experience than I would have had if I had pursued academics exclusively.

One Egalitarian Muses About Respect

2008-10-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Themes of respect and authority have abounded in the comments sections on Complegalitarian of late, as well as in my own life. I thought I would put together a compilation of quotes on the concept of respect from egalitarian sources. Since "converting" to egalitarianism from soft and hard complementarianism, I know that I was surprised to discover how deep the thread of respect ran.

My comp background had painted a different picture of egalitarianism (which is not to say that all complementarians paint this picture, but more to say that this was the impression that my own unique experience caused me to have). I pictured the "me-first" attitude I saw on television, a home where chaos reigned, absence of structure and routine pre-eminent, loud and angry power struggles... I couldn't have been more wrong. As I studied Christian egalitarian writings, I saw a strong message of respect promoted throughout---a respect based on humanity, not on gender.

As a result, when I ceased to believe that my husband was my leader, I did not cease to respect him. In fact, I sought to understand better what respect meant and what it might look like in my difficult marriage. The following are some excerpts and musings from egalitarian sources (some Christian, some not) on the absolute importance of respect in marriage and other relationships.

From Discovering Biblical Equality (the response manual to CBMW's handbook), on the very first page of the Introduction, we are reminded that egalitarianism is not in opposition to the concepts of authority and respect.

"Egalitarianism recognizes patterns of authority in the family, church, and
society---it is not anarchistic---but rejects the notion that any office,
ministry, or opportunity should be denied anyone on the grounds of gender
alone."

On this website helping young women make wise choices about relationships, readers are taught that one necessary component of a healthy relationship is,

"Respect and Trust: In healthy relationships, you learn to respect and trust
important people in your life. Disagreements may still happen, but you learn to
stay calm and talk about how you feel. Talking calmly helps you to understand
the real reason for not getting along, and it's much easier to figure out how to
fix it. In healthy relationships, working through disagreements often makes the
relationship stronger. In healthy relationships, people respect each other for
who they are. This includes respecting and listening to yourself and your
feelings so you can set boundaries and feel comfortable. You will find that you
learn to understand experiences and feelings of others as well as having them
understand your experiences and feelings."

One non-complementarian professer speaks openly about the need for respect in marriage, explaining that,

"Respect can sometimes be an old-fashioned word, at times it can be
downright annoying because it seems to be the one ingredient that’s been minced,
sliced, grated and chopped many times over, especially in relationship and
marriage manuals and how-to books. There’s respect for one’s parents, for
society’s traditions, for your neighbor, for other races. And then there’s
respect at the workplace, respect for the opinions of your co-workers and
respect for a particular culture’s system of values, no matter how these values
seem so alien from our own. The frequency with which we talk and analyze respect
shows that while it may be an old-fashioned virtue, it still lies at the core of
our ability to achieve success and happiness. Not to mention our acceptance,
social or otherwise, by others.

Respect begets respect. Respect in marriage is the key to fulfilling
relationships and well-bred, considerate children. It may sound rather
repetitious and stale, but when there’s respect in a marriage, the integrity of
marriage as an institution remains intact. What society needs is the dignity of
every man and woman and child multiplied a million times over. If people
respected each other and the property of their neighbors, there wouldn’t be any
crime. And we would even dare say that if there was respect in marriage, there
probably wouldn’t be any divorce.
Oops…maybe we’re stretching that a little, but if we can detect the lack of respect during the courtship stage, we would certainly not commit to a lifetime commitment of married life. So if we refrain
from getting into a marriage where you suspect the respect ingredient will be
blatantly missing, then there wouldn’t be a compelling need to talk about
avoiding divorce since there won’t be a marriage devoid of respect in the first
place."

He then goes on to give a checklist for couples thinking about marriage, warning them that if disrespect is alive and well in their relationship, their would-be marriage is likely to fail.

"Here’s a possible checklist of things your antenna should be catching. And
if you’re honest with yourself and want true happiness, you won’t make excuses
for your beloved’s transgressions, even if he or she is the greatest-looking gal
or lad around. Being beautiful does not give anyone the right to be
disrespectful of others:

Here goes –
When talking about family, do you feel your partner
deeply respects them and thinks the world of them? Or does your partner tend to
air dirty linen much too frequently, revealing intimate details about family
members that ought not to be revealed?

Does your partner arrive punctually for dates and appointments with
you, or is there a habitual tardiness accompanied by lame excuses?

Does your partner make fun of you in public, disregards your opinion
and dismisses you as though you were not around when he/she is with friends?

Does your partner make all decisions on his own without asking you for
yours, especially in matters that involve the two of you?

Does your partner go out of his/her way to please you and say things
that make you feel good?

Does your partner remember birthdays, special occasions, and does
something special for you?

Does your partner recognize your strengths and limitations and
offers encouragement instead of belittling you?

Does your partner show respect for your parents and family?

Does your partner pry into your personal life too much and asks you
embarrassing questions that you’d rather not answer?

No doubt there are a host of other signs (or omens) that will tell you
whether you’re going to be enjoying respect or craving for it. You don’t want to
have to ask for it, respect is something that should come naturally.

If you feel you don’t get enough of it, and you still go ahead with the
marriage, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Many people think marriage would
correct a person’s faults. Marriage, being a noble state to be in, unfortunately
is not a rehabilitation center. Neither is it a correctional facility. If your
partner says things or engages in behavior that puts a big question mark in your
mind, don’t expect marriage to relieve the symptoms. It is not a cure for
diseases like disrespect." [full
article here]

The theme of this advice is that respect is absolutely vital to a relationship, and that respect is not something that is a male thing, but rather a gift that both men and women are to recieve---as well as give. Respect is something we give to humans made in God's image, the gift of being treated with dignity, as a seperate and unique individual. For egalitarians, respect is not a gender thing, it's a human thing.

Doctor's Cloud and Townsend of the famous Boundaries series explain that,

"Boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else, or
shows you where you begin and end... We need to respect the boundaries of
others in order to command respect for our own."

Dr. Bellows says respecting your spouse is vital in order to have good communication, explaining,

"We often immediately reject another’s perceptions, especially when our
views differ. This rejection may even be unconscious. We find ourselves ready to
dispute the things our spouse has to say, to challenge them, or to hear them as
threats. Obviously, such an attitude interferes with two-way communication. The
first step to improved dialogues is to respect your partner.
Respect allows
you to accept another person’s point of view whole-heartedly. Consider and value
your spouse’s perspectives or suggestions. Let your partner know that your
respect and value for him or her supersedes the specific issue you are
discussing."

Respect is not optional for the egalitarian Christian, because respect is not optional for the Christian. We are called to treat others as we would treat ourselves---and what human being does not desire to be offered dignity? We may differ from some complementarians, in that we do not believe that respect is dependant on gender, but rather on humanity. We also may differ from some complementarians because we do not believe that respecting males means to defer to their opinions or to give them authority over us (in fact, sometimes respecting the image of God in a person requires us to refuse to do what they are demanding!). For example, it is not disrespectful to disagree with someone, or to have your own opinion. It is disrespectful, however, to belittle their opinion.

Wikipedia defines respect as being,

"esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal
quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal
quality or ability."

We believe that all created in God's image have great worth. Because we are followers of a Savior who treated society's "scum" with respect, who suffered and died so that those who beat Him might have hope, and who calls us to follow in His footsteps, we can embrace the idea of treating others with respect and we seek to grow in our understanding of what respect means and looks like in our every day interactions.

birth pains

2008-10-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently this blog got pregnant again. I can tell because there are birth pains which have become more intense and they are getting closer together in time. Birthing is a difficult process, but there is joy afterward.

During this labor process, please note the following:

I have added a sentence to the posting guidelines about including evidence to support statements.
I have added a new poll in the margin to see how you all are feeling about the blog.
Previous blog comments are now hidden.
New blog comments are blocked.
Please pray that mother and baby will be safe during labor.
Also please pray that we all can find a way for there to be joy after delivery.

I would ask my co-bloggers to show special respect here on the delivery ward. Please do not blog items which add to the birthing pain.

Sacred Marriage and Love & Respect: A Conversation, by John Hobbins and Marilyn Johnson, Part 1

2008-10-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

Part One

John to Marilyn:

I want to thank you for recommending Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. I picked it up today and have found it absolutely lovely. I will now look for Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs.

Marilyn to John:

Hi John,

Sacred Marriage is a beautiful book, isn't it?

I have such respect for Thomas because his writing reflects a level of surrender to God that most of us only talk about. I don't think that anyone but Gary Thomas could have written Sacred Marriage, in part because the book reflects Thomas' personal marital experiences. To support his family and allow himself time to write, Thomas conducts seminars based on his various books. He typically travels about 120 days a year, and his wife home schools their three children. So, the dynamic in his marriage is that approximately 40 weeks a year, he is gone for three days and his wife is alone with the children. He arrives home from a seminar exhausted by both the public speaking and the demands for one-on-one counseling. His wife, in turn, is exhausted because she has spent three intense days alone with the children. Upon his return, is he to serve his exhausted wife? Or is his wife to serve her exhausted husband? The answer, of course, is "Yes"! It is this dynamic in Thomas' marriage that produced this beautiful book. (However, I think the case can be made that the tone of the book is a bit too somber. For the average couple that doesn't face these stresses on an ongoing basis, shouldn't
there be seasons of pure joy?)

John to Marilyn:

I like the somber tone of the book! I can't stand the unrelenting sweetness and light of the upbeat self-help culture. Thomas won my heart immediately with his first quote, from Socrates:

"By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

Self-helpers will immediately reply that we can be happy and philosophers at the same time. But that's not particularly realistic.

You know, the Bible is famous for "texts of terror," not just stories with Hollywood endings. Thomas performs a real service in describing sympathetically the difficult marriages of Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh, and Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. Most marriages are difficult. I thought he could have done far better with Heloise and Abelard and John Wesley's marriage.

Thomas stays away from the terminology of the Great Tradition out of deference to evangelical sensibilities, but he quotes it with great skill. His Francis de Sales quote is priceless:

"The state of marriage is one that requires more virtue and constancy than any other. It is a perpetual exercise of mortification . . . From this thyme plant, in spite of the bitter nature of its juice, you may be able to draw and make the honey of a holy life."

De Sales develops a sacramental view of marriage: marriage as a means of grace. Thomas, who speaks of "Sacred Marriage," is doing the same.

True Woman Manifesto

2008-10-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

Recently CBMW and Revive Our Hearts had what they called a True Woman conference where they unveiled what they called the True Woman Manifesto.

http://www.truewoman.com/assets/files/TW08_Manifesto.pdf

I am wondering what the comps that hang out here think of it.

Would they sign it or encourage their wife to sign?
Do they have any concerns with it and so would decline to sign?

Thanks, Don

the joy of complementarianism

2008-10-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Some women who function within complementarian marriages and churches state that they experience joy from being complementarian. I invite any complementarians who visit this blog to testify to that joy. Tell us about the joy of obeying biblical commands as you understand them, but also tell us of personal joy you experience from living as a complementarian.

UPDATE (Oct. 15): I realize that complementarians often feel outnumbered by egalitarians on this blog. And complementarians who comment often feel that their comments are denigrated, even though we moderators try to make this a safe place. Therefore, for this post, I will only approve positive comments about the joys of being a complementarian.

In other post I will give egalitarians the opportunity to tell about joy they have experienced from functioning as egalitarians within marriage and the church.

clarification of posting guidelines and moderation

2008-10-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

Our posting guidelines state:

Please word posts and comments so that they reflect biblical character (such as "speaking the truth in love", Eph. 4:15). Do not speculate about the motives of others for believing as they do. Refrain from using sarcasm. Focus on issues, not personalities. Comments which do not follow these guidelines may be deleted without warning or explanation.

At times I am asked by someone to disapprove comments from someone else for making various kinds of statements which are not covered by these guidelines.

For instance, I may be asked to disapprove a comment from someone who writes, "Complementarian belief leads to abuse of women." I may not correctly understand the guidelines that I have developed for this blog (this would not be the first time I have not properly understood something I have said), but I don't think that such a generalization can be disapproved by the posting guidelines. Instead, if you disagree with the generalization, you have every right to say so and give reasons why you do.

On the other hand, if someone writes, "Joe Smith believes that I am not a biblical Christian for saying that women should have full equality with men," I would not approve that comment unless Joe Smith has actually said what is claimed in the comment. The comment would be stating something about Joe Smith which is a personal conclusion based on how Joe's comments impact you, but we do not have sufficient evidence from Joe's comments themselves to support the comment about him.

It is difficult enough for us moderators (and we are more than one) to try to disapprove comments which contain things which the posting guidelines ask us not to write. It would be nearly impossible for us to disapprove all forms of logical errors, over-generalizations, etc.

I do not enjoy putting posting reminders and clarifications up as posts. I far prefer posts about the issues we are concerned about on this blog. But clarifying moderation policy is a necessary price to pay for having a blog where we truly attempt to provide a safe place for those with differing opinions about gender issues to discuss them. We really do try to have this be a safe place. But we moderators cannot create safety. We can only do what we can to contribute to safety. The rest is up to each of us to try to speak to each other in a way that is true to our convictions yet also gracious toward those with whom we disagree. Always remember that there are other forums which focus on gender issues which do not allow public comments or if they do, do not allow comments which disagree with the views of the hosts.

Have a good, safe week, everyone!

P.S. I wish I could moderate the comments more quickly these days, but I can't. My wife and I are visiting family. I do not have good access to the Internet while visiting. To get on the Internet I have to drive 3 miles to a grocery store which has a wireless network. Or I just discovered an unsecured wireless network on a residential street 1 1/2 miles from where we are staying with family. So, please be patient if you don't see your comment appear on the blog as soon as it might when I'm home.

Equity in Decision-Making Equals Much Lower Violence Against Wives

2008-10-11T11:05:00.001-07:00

Since the question, "What do the studies say," is something we've been discussing on and off in the comments boxes, I wanted to share the following, emphasis mine.

"Studies also indicate that this traditional view may be one of the factors
involved in creating an environment for abuse. The rate of wife beating in
couples where the husband dominated was found in a study by sociologist Kersti
Yllo to be 300 percent greater than for egalitarian couples. The conclusion of
the analysis was "regardless of context, violence against wives is lower
among couples where there is a relative equality in decision-making...In general, domination of decision making by husbands is associated with the highest levels of violence against wives." Other studies have found
similar results, the majority of battering of wives occurs in homes where the
husband holds the reins of power." [full article here]

With quick and clear explanation that the comps participating on Complegalitarian do NOT support wife abuse (and please do hear that), I think that the above quote demonstrates why so many participants here have strong concerns about the teachings of other complementarians and complementarian churches that teach and believe that "God's way" is males having authority over females.

voluntary submission to comp or egal positions

2008-10-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Complementarians and egalitarians both claim that their interpretation of the Bible on gender issues is the biblical position. I have read a number of blog posts and other writings from complementarians which imply, if not directly state, that those who do not hold to a complementarian position are in error, not following biblical teaching properly. I have to assume that some egalitarians would say the same about those who disagree with their position.

Related to this issue is the question of whether or not those who believe that their position is biblical believe or teach that following their position is voluntary. For instance, do "biblical complementarians" teach that married couples in their churches or spouses in marriages can volunteer to live by complementarian principles? We could add to that question, "Can they volunteer to live by those principles and remain biblical?

Some appear to take the position that it is appropriate (biblical?) to voluntarily choose to follow a comp or egal position. Is it the teaching of standard (whatever that is) comp and egal teaching that choosing to follow that teaching is "voluntary"?

What is Final Decision-Making Authority?

2008-10-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

One of the ways complementarians typically try to define the kind of authority they see a husband possessing in the home is by speaking of "final decision-making authority." Yet that phrase can be understood to mean a variety of different things, and the meaning which someone ascribes to it says a lot about what they understand complementarianism to be.

Some people hear "final decision-making authority" as an affirmation that the husband's word is law. There are a variety of extreme patriarchal expressions of this which seem to imply (or state outright) that the husband is the one who discerns and decides God's will for the family, that the husband's will is ultimate and should never be questioned, that he may choose to consider his wife's input but he is under no obligation to do so. Complementarians and egalitarians are united in decrying this authoritarian and oppressive view.

A close corollary to the my-word-is-law approach, and one which often accompanies it, is the oppressive arrangement in which the wife is expected to run every conceivable decision past her husband. Beyond having some form of "final decision-making authority," the husband in this instance has sole decision-making authority. Essentially, she is not permitted to make any decision. He must micromanage everything. Again, extreme patriarchalists may affirm such levels of control, but egalitarians and complementarians do not.

Others hear "final decision-making authority" as meaning that the husband has a kind of tie-breaking vote when husband and wife do not agree. In this view, the spouses are expected to strive for unanimity where possible, the wife may have considerable input into the decision-making process, and she may have the freedom to make all kinds of decisions without consulting her husband. Yet when husband and wife disagree, the husband is seen as able to cast the deciding vote. I think many complementarians hold this view, which may or may not be oppressive depending on how the husband wields his voting power. If this ability to play a decision-making trump card is used by the husband to domineer his wife, such a marriage won't look very different from the my-word-is-law type of marriage described above. If, however, the husband uses his deciding vote only as a last resort, such a marriage can exhibit a great deal of mutuality and consensus in decision-making.

Egalitarians tend to argue that an arrangement like that is fundamentally oppressive and potentially dangerous because it still gives a sinful man ultimate authority over his wife. I think they certainly have a point.

Some hear "final decision-making authority" and emphasize the finality of the decision. In other words, once an issue has been decided, there is an implicit assumption that the issue should never be brought up again. Wives in this situation may feel not only that they have been trumped by the husband's final vote, but also that once his vote has been cast, she can have no basis for further appeal. Again, it won't be long before women in this situation will begin to feel they have no real voice in their marriages.

For my wife, Lisa, and I, "final decision-making authority" is not a vote to be cast so much as a general framework for decision-making. To begin with, I certainly don't feel I have to make or approve every decision. Lisa makes a variety of decisions, both big and small, affecting not just herself but the whole family, without being required to consult me first. In a high percentage of cases she will consult me first, perhaps because she wants to use me as a sounding board, or because she wants to make sure I don't have any strong objections or scheduling conflicts, or simply because it's a decision we really need to make together.

I likewise am free to make a variety of decisions on my own without first consulting Lisa, but in a high percentage of cases I do consult her. This dynamic is not about rights and obligations so much as it's about mutual courtesy and our desire to benefit from each other's wisdom. In other words, we generally make decisions as a team, and there are no set "rules" for how the decision-making process is carried out.

That's a largely mutual decision-making process which I doubt many egalitarians would object to strongly. So where is there any sense of my having a "final decision-making authority"?

To begin with, Lisa and I both operate with the tacit understanding that when a decision needs to be made, I am ultimately the one responsible to do it. This is not the right to a final vote so much as the responsibility to articulate a decision when one needs to be made. Like the chairman of a board or the leader of a committee who summarizes and integrates the various opinions and ideas which have been expressed, I'm usually the one who summarizes the discussion and says, "Okay, here's what we're gonna do . . ."

Seeing this as ultimately my responsibility helps motivate me to step up to the plate when I might otherwise try to avoid making a decision. And when I do make the decision that needs to be made, Lisa typically finds that comforting rather than oppressive.

But what about the times when Lisa and I do not completely agree? How do we handle that?

In the vast majority of cases, one of us will simply defer to the other. If one feels strongly about something and the other does not, the one to whom it is less important will typically be the one to defer. We love each other, and if we can make each other happy by giving in, we're usually quite willing to do so.

There have, of course, been times in our marriage where we each felt strongly about some point of contention, and those are the times we've argued, and discussed, and cried, and prayed, and yelled, and reconciled, and talked until we're blue in the face. When we just can't seem to see eye to eye on something, and it's a decision we can put off, we'll do so. If we have to do something, then we'll reach some provisional compromise and go on with our lives until the issue crops up again.

There are a few things I've learned over the years from these various decision-making crises. First, I've seen that Lisa and I tend to make decisions differently. I tend to be very slow to make decisions. I'll put off making a decision until I've analyzed all possibilities, anticipated potential pitfalls, counted the costs, and become convinced that a particular course of action is the right one. The downside of my approach is that I can often slip into "analysis paralysis." The upside is that once the decision has been made, I rarely ever second-guess it, and I accept any challenges which result from it as challenges I knew ahead of time I might face.

Lisa, on the other hand, is quicker to become convinced that a particular course of action is the right one. She'll certainly weigh a decision ahead of time, but not to the same extent I do, and she isn't nearly as prone to paralysis and indecision as I am. Conversely, she is far more likely to second-guess a decision once it's been made, wondering if the grass would have been greener if we had taken a different direction.

As I see it, our different approaches to decision-making complement each other perfectly. She's there to prod me into action when action needs to be taken, and I'm there to reassure her when she starts wondering if we made the right decision.

By the way, these tendencies are one reason I never view any decision we make as "final" in the sense that it can never be revisited. I may think something has been "settled," but if Lisa brings it up again, it obviously hasn't been settled to her satisfaction. In many cases, she just needs reassurance, but in some cases, it has become clear that there's something more which needs to be addressed. I may not want to reopen that old can of worms, but if Lisa needs us to, we will.

Another thing I've learned from these decision-making crises is that those are the times which have helped us grow the most. They're painful, and the temptation is always there to cut the disagreement short. There are times I'm certainly tempted to say, "Look, this is what we're doing and that's final." There are also times when Lisa is tempted to throw up her hands and say, "Look, you decide; I don't care any more." But acting the tyrant is not leadership, and knuckling under is not submission. When I feel Lisa has just given up, I don't proclaim victory; I keep the conversation going with the goal of reaching agreement. When Lisa feels I'm just being stubborn, she begins praying that God would change my heart, and tries for the umpteenth time to explain her position in terms I can understand.

Finally, these crises have taught me that the decision we're trying to make is usually not the ultimate source of the conflict. In many cases, the issue at hand is not really the issue at heart. Instead, the point of disagreement is merely the catalyst for exposing insecurities, fears, concerns, and sins we were previously unaware of. We certainly don't enjoy the seasons of strife, but if we were to use some concept of authority or submission to cut those seasons short, our love for each other would never have grown so deep.

So as a complementarian, do I affirm that the husband possesses "final decision-making authority"? As a means of control or a way to silence my wife, certainly not. As a trump card or final vote, no. As a general framework in which decisions can be reached, yes. As a call to accept responsibility for making decisions together with my wife, yes.

Is my view what most complementarians mean when they speak of someone having to make the "final decision"? I don't know. I think many adopt the tie-breaking vote view, but most of the comp marriages I've seen operate very much like mine. The wives are strong and active in the decision-making process, yet there is nevertheless an expectation on the part of both spouses that the ultimate responsibility for family decisions falls to the husband. It certainly isn't the model of marriage most egalitarians articulate, but it's a far cry from the oppressive authoritarian relationships which they may envision when they hear the phrase "final decision-making authority."

Biblical male leadership

2008-09-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

Do any passages in the Bible teach that men, not women, are to be spiritual leaders in houses of worship and in the home? Be sure to quote specific Bible passages to support your answer in support of a yes or no answer to this question.

If you include references to headship, be sure to give biblical evidence for your claims about headship.

In other words, we want all comments on this post to be grounded in actual biblical teaching, specific words of the Bible, not simply systems of logical thought that have been built up that interpret what the Bible means by what it says.

Ware's summary of egalitarian and complementarian positions

2008-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Bruce Ware has summarized his understanding of the egalitarian and complementarian positions.

A High-Profile Conversion to Egalitarianism

2008-09-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

One of the articles in the most recent issue of the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) is A High-Profile Conversion to Egalitarianism, by blogger Denny Burk. This article should be of special interest to those, like myself, who have spent a lot of time in church and Bible school contexts which have connections to Dallas Theological Seminary.

prayer request

2008-09-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

I realize this is a little unusual to post a prayer request, but I believe it is appropriate. Please pray for a member of this blog's community who is having a very difficult time right now with a family crisis. Thanks.

UPDATE (Oct. 1): There has been some progress, but there is a long ways to go. Please keep praying.

Moderation reminders

2008-09-24T22:10:00.001-07:00

This is a reminder that comments on this blog are moderated. Moderation has significantly helped the atmosphere of this blog to be more Christlike. I never like to disapprove a comment. I only disapprove a comment if it breaks one of our posting guidelines in the upper left of this blog.

If my work load can allow it, I try to communicate with those whose comments have been disapproved so they can know why they were not approved and can revise them so them can be re-posted and approved. But many of you do not have your email addresses attached to your posting link, such as on a blog you may have. I have tried as hard as I can googling for some of your email addresses, but am unsuccessful.

So, if you do not see a comment of yours posted, please do feel free to contact me off-blog so I can email you about that post.

Believe it or not, I do not take sides when it comes to moderation. I know that some of you do not believe this and I have to live with that. I do make mistakes in moderating, but I try very hard to following the posting guidelines as my moderating guidelines. And other co-bloggers here, I am sure, do the same when they approve or disapprove comments on this blog.

I am especially on the lookout for sarcasm and similar communication breakers. Any comment such as "See, I told you so. A leopard can't change its spots" or "Fellow blog member, don't even try to get your point across. It won't work. It's a lost cause," will not be approved. You may feel it is a fact when you are sarcastic or in the ballpark of sarcasm, but it is really just a statement of opinion. And it is a statement which does not build up the Body of Christ. Yes, Paul the Apostle was, at times, sarcastic. But as you all know by now, I am not Paul the Apostle. And my writings are not inspired as his were, so I try not to be sarcastic and I try to disallow comments from others which are, as well. Maybe I should add that I come from a family where there were many cruel putdowns. I was often sarcastic myself. But my dear wife helped me understand that my sarcasm was hurtful instead of helpful. By God's grace it stopped essentially immediately, because I love my wife. I'm still working on some of my other sins, which haven't stopped immediately.

We really do welcome all viewpoints on this blog. I appreciate so very much the different comments as well as blog posts from all of you when they are written with graciousness toward those with whom you disagree, especially others on this blog.

Oh, another thing which I do not approve on this blog is airing dirty laundry in public. If you have a private grievance against someone else on this blog, you need to use the biblical approach and email them privately. If you do not have their email address, you can ask me if I have it and I can give it to you if I have it. Or you can post a comment asking that person to email you privately.

Thanks, as always, to each of you who try to help this be a safe place for discussing divisive issues.

Christian bookstores hide magazine

2008-09-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Lifeway bookstores has decided to hide behind the counter the latest issue of Gospel Today magazine because the front cover features women pastors. Click here to read the story.

Lifeway is the same chain of Christian bookstores which participates in the boycott against the TNIV Bible translation. It does not sell the TNIV because it says its gender language is not accurate, although it does sell other English Bibles which have the same gender language.

Ware to Find the Image of God

2008-09-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Several egalitarians on this blog have repeatedly accused complementarian spokesman Bruce Ware of arguing that women are not fully created in the image of God. As a complementarian, the idea that Ware would argue such a thing is indeed disturbing, since the Bible is unmistakably clear that both male and female are completely and equally the image of God. So I dutifully went to the CBMW web-site and found an article by Ware entitled Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God.

Does Ware teach that women are not created in the image of God, or that they are somehow less fully the image of God than men? Here are a few statements from that article:

both male and female exhibit full and equal humanness as the image of God
all men, both male and female, are fully the image of God
Man and woman, then, both are fully the image of God and together share the responsibility to steward the earthly creation God has made.
the creation of male and female as the image of God indicates the equal value of women with men as being fully human, with equal dignity, worth and importance
As is often observed, since this was written in a patriarchal cultural context, it is remarkable that the biblical writer chose to identify the female along with the male as of the exact same name and nature as "man." Male and female are equal in essence and so equal in dignity, worth, and importance.
Another clear biblical testimony to this equality is seen in the position of redeemed men and women in Christ . . . These New Testament passages reflect the Bible's clear teaching that as male and female are equal in their humanity (Gen. 1:26-27), so they are equal in their participation of the fullness of Christ in their redemption (Gal. 3:28)
Scripture clearly teaches the full human and essential equality of man and woman as created in the image of God
the full essential and human equality of male and female in the image of God means there can never rightly be a disparaging of women by men or men by women. Concepts of inferiority or superiority have no place in the God-ordained nature of male and female in the image of God
Nowhere in Scripture is the differentiation between male and female a basis for the male's supposed superiority in value or importance, or for female exploitation. All such attitudes and actions are sinful violations of the very nature of our common humanity as males and females fully and equally created in the image of God

From all this, it seems clear that Ware affirms that women are no less the image of God than men. In fact, he repeats that affirmation at every possible opportunity.

Yet Ware also wants to emphasize the distinction between male and female, and it is his effort to do that in connection with the image of God which leads to statements which seem to undercut his assertion of full ontological equality.

while God did intend to create male and female as equal in their essential nature as human, he also intended to make them different expressions of that essential nature, as male and female reflect different ways, as it were, of being human. Now, the question before us is whether any of these male/female differences relate to the question of what it means for men and women to be created in the image of God.
I will here propose that it may be best to understand the original creation of male and female as one in which the male was made image of God first, in an unmediated fashion, as God formed him from the dust of the ground, while the female was made image of God second, in a mediated fashion, as God chose, not more earth, but the very rib of Adam by which he would create the woman fully and equally the image of God. So, while both are fully image of God, and both are equally the image of God, it may be the case that both are not constituted as the image of God in the identical way. Scripture gives some clues that there is a God-intended temporal priority bestowed upon the man as the original image of God, through whom the woman, as image of God formed from the male, comes to be.

Much of what follows is relatively standard complementarian fare. Ware points to passages which speak of man's temporal priority in creation and the fact that Eve was taken out of the man (1 Timothy 2:13 and 1 Corinthians 11:8). He makes much of the fact that both male and female are called adam, a word which is grammatically masculine (a weak argument, but one which many complementarians still insist on using). He wrestles with the statement in 1 Corinthians 11:7 that man is the "image and glory of God" while woman is the "glory of man." In essence, Ware's arguments in this section boil down to this: the order of creation points to a God-ordained male headship. Not something most egalitarians will agree with, but a fairly typical complementarian view.

Ware then discusses the fact that Genesis 5:3 speaks of Adam having a son in his own image and likeness, pointing out the obvious connection to the creation of mankind in the image of God in Genesis 5:1-2. Ware makes much of the fact that Adam only is mentioned here rather than Eve, and essentially argues that the image of God is passed to children through the fatherhood of the man.

This argument is, in my opinion, clearly a stretch. Why is Seth mentioned as having been born in the likeness and image of Adam only rather than Adam and Eve together? The most obvious answer is that Seth was male as Adam was male, and so more closely resembled Adam than Eve. There is no need to postulate some notion that the image of God is transferred via the fatherhood of the man rather than the parenthood of man and woman together.

Ware then connects Genesis 5:3 and 1 Corinthians 11:7 to make the point that both women and children are made the image of God through the prior existence of the man as image of God. He then draws the following conclusion:

What this suggests, then, is that the concept of male-headship is relevant not only to the question of how men and women are to relate and work together, but it seems also true that male-headship is a part of the very constitution of the woman being created in the image of God. Man is a human being made in the image of God first; woman becomes a human being bearing the image of God only through the man. While both are fully and equally the image of God, there is a built-in priority given to the male that reflects God's design of male-headship in the created order.

In a footnote, Ware again asserts that by pointing to this "built-in priority" he does not intend "to communicate any sense of greater value, dignity, worth, human personhood, or sharing in the image of God that the male possesses over the female."

In all this, Ware seeks to establish the notion that male headship is part of the created order and a fundamental aspect of our nature as male and female. That, again, is a fairly typical complementarian assertion. Yet his linkage of this assertion to the image of God is disturbing, in spite of the fact that he repeatedly asserts that men and women are fully and equally image of God. Ware wants to say that while we are both image of God, we express the image of God differently as male and female. But by using terms like "mediated" and "derivative" to describe how woman reflects the image of God, he sounds too much like earlier theologians who asserted that "the woman herself alone is not the image of God" (Augustine) or that "as regards the individual nature, the woman is defective and misbegotten" (Aquinas).

Once again, Ware clearly and repeatedly repudiates such notions of female inferiority, but he still wants to affirm some measure of male priority in the image of God. In essence, he is coming dangerously close to making an ontological distinction between male and female.

Yet even as I write that, I'm not sure Ware would see the distinction he is making as an ontological one. After all, he might protest, we affirm the full ontological equality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; yet we also affirm that the Son is "begotten" of the Father and that the Spirit "proceeds" from the Father and the Son (or just the Father in the Eastern tradition). If these distinctions do not negate equality of essence, then perhaps it does not follow that Ware's emphasis on Adam and Eve's distinct origins necessarily negates the essential equality of the sexes.

At one level, Ware is doing what theologians often do: namely, affirming two seemingly paradoxical notions without necessarily resolving the paradox in detail. Just as we affirm that God is completely sovereign, yet in such a way that he is not the author of sin or one who does violence to the will of his creatures, so Ware is trying to affirm that man and woman are both fully and equally the image of God, while nevertheless asserting that the distinction between men and women is somehow rooted in our very nature and the way we bear the image of God.

The challenge for me is that I can accept that Ware means what he says about the full ontological equality of women, but I'm not sure what to make of his distinction. Saying that man and woman bear the image of God in different ways certainly goes beyond "functional subordination," and it's hard to see how it is anything less than an ontological distinction. Is there some middle category between ontology and function? Or is this a working out of Ware's assertion that "function always and only follows essence"?

The first half of Ware's article is a long and somewhat abstruse discussion of different views of what the image of God is. Ware begins with "structural views," which identified the image of God as some attribute which was unique to humanity (such as reason or the possession of a soul). He then moves on to "relational views," which saw the image of God being reflected in the nature of our relationship to God and to each other. Ware then discusses and promotes a view he calls "functional holism," which sees the image of God as expressing the totality of what humanity is, what we do, and how we relate to one another. Ware summarizes this view as follows:

The image of God in man as functional holism means that God made human beings, both male and female, to be created and finite representations (images of God) of God's own nature, that in relationship with him and each other, they might be his representatives (imaging God) in carrying out the responsibilities he has given to them. In this sense, we are images of God in order to image God and his purposes in the ordering of our lives and carrying out of our God-given responsibilities.

I think this notion is the key to understanding the distinction Ware is trying to make. He is essentially trying to affirm that men and women are both fully human and fully image of God (ontological equality), but that we cannot accurately represent God ("image" God) unless we are rightly related to him and to each other. Thus, Ware's emphasis on the distinction in the way men and women have been created is meant to show that "functional subordination" is just as much a part of what it means to be made in the image of God as is "ontological equality." This view also relates to his view of the Trinity, which I haven't even begun to examine yet.

So where does that leave us?

First, I think we can safely say that Ware does not, in fact, teach that women are any less created in the image of God than men. When he uses terms like "mediated" and "derivative," he does not mean "diminished."

Second, I think we can all agree that Ware is arguing that gender distinctions go beyond mere differences in role, and are rooted in the created order. Most complementarians believe that to some degree or other, and most egalitarians view that notion as incompatible with ontological equality. Ware's view is that ontological equality and functional subordination are both fundamental to the nature of the Trinity, and that being created in the image of God means that they are both fundamental to the nature of humanity.

Third, Ware seems to have a knack for saying things in a way that is sure to offend the sensibilities of most egalitarians. When Ware uses "mediated" and "derivative" to describe how women bear the image of God, does he not see how most egalitarians (and many comps for that matter) will naturally hear "diminished"? Is Mr. Ware so obtuse that he does not understand how inflammatory such terms will be to his theological opponents? Or does he simply not care? Whenever I read Ware, I do not come away convinced that egalitarians are reading him accurately; but I do come away feeling like Ware has framed things in a way which is sure to infuriate them. If Ware wants to communicate with egalitarians, he needs to stop trampling over their hot-buttons.

In the end, Ware's teaching about the image of God is a highly nuanced theological argument which, frankly, is easily misunderstood. To me, this is the greatest area of concern. It is too easy to assume Ware's language of derivation implies some kind of diminishment, and few people will really take the time to analyze all of Ware's caveats and qualifications. As a theologian, Ware crafts his arguments carefully, and clearly repudiates what most egalitarians accuse him of affirming. Unfortunately, Ware seems to be a poor popularizer of his own theological views, and much gets lost when he tries to communicate with non-specialists. He does not seem able to anticipate how some of his arguments will be understood by the average pastor or layperson, much less by the average egalitarian. The end result is that some comps may misunderstand his teaching on the image of God as implying that men are inherently superior to women; while some egalitarians will use it to prove that comps in general and CBMW in particular do indeed teach that women are less "image of God" than men.

In this post, I've tried to interact with Bruce Ware's teaching on men and women in the image of God carefully and critically. Ware has become such a polarizing figure for some egalitarians that I don't expect them to be very satisfied with my critique. Some will no doubt think me too sympathetic or naive to see the clear implications of Ware's teaching. But reading between the lines is not the same thing as reading critically. Judging from what Ware has actually written, egals and comps should be able to agree with Ware's affirmation that women are fully the "image of God." Where all egals, and some comps, will disagree with Ware is in his affirmation that male headship is an important aspect of what it means to be created in the image of God.

On Faith: Is it hypocritical to think that a woman can lead a nation and not a congregation?

2008-09-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

http://equalitypress.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/one-faith-is-it-hypocritical-to-think-that-a-woman-can-lead-a-nation-and-not-a-congregation/

Obama, Palin, and the Complementarian-Egalitarian Debate

2008-09-20T14:22:00.001-07:00

Obama, Palin, and the Complementarian-Egalitarian Debate, by Mark Strauss

Posted using ShareThis

Wow, this blog is something else!

2008-09-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

I'm wrung out. I've worked hard this week. I had a sugar slump (hypglycemic) tonight. And I had a number of private email exchanges today with a member of this blog's community about things I was not aware of but needed to become aware of, even things I have said of done with a pure intention but came across hurting others. Those exchanges were draining, but necessary. We really do need to listen to each other. We need to hear where we are hurting. We need to be quick to listen and slow to, hmm, I forget, my brain is so drained, what comes next, slow to anger or slow to answer?

Anyway, I want to affirm each one of you who are trying so hard to help this blog be a place where we can express our differences and still love each other. Well, we hope for the love, anyway. We may not always like each other, but we can choose to love each other. I believe that's a biblical position.

I appreciate John Hobbins' repeated reference to practicing 1 Cor. 13 in a marriage, regardless of whether the marriage is comp or egal. That really is what Christ has called us to, a life of love for each other in the Body of Christ, and especially toward each other in the most intimate relationship, that of marriage.

Sometimes I almost feel despair about this blog, wondering if I have been quixotic in my hopes that it could be a safe place for different sides in the comp vs. egal debates to express their feelings and biblical (and other) support for them. And then I see some comments that give me hope again that our efforts, with all of our mistakes (mine included), may make this a safer, or at least healthier, place than ones where only egals get to post or only comps get to post.

And then there are those who are hurting so deeply. Do they belong here in this blog company? It's a serious question. I would hope that someone they can find a place of refuge and comfort here, the loving shoulder of Jesus and his followers to lean upon. And when they make over-arching statements that we want to question logically, what are we to do? Should we try to logically reason with someone who is in deep pain due to a family crisis, to try to get them to see that an ideological or theological is not to blame for everything. Spouses make choices. They may refer to their ideology to bolster their choices but if their choices are unbiblical, no matter how much they cite their idealogy does not make their abusive behavior righteous. All leaning comp teachers that I know of have, at least more recently, recognized that they need to speak out against abuse. And egal teachers need to speak out about the sins which tend to crop up in egal contexts. (I didn't do a very good job on that one in my post awhile back, even though I tried hard to show the possible problems that can associate with either ideology.)

I think that egals outnumber comps here, altho I am not sure. If we judged only by answers to poll questions in the margin, it would appear that comps are in larger numbers. But I think that comps don't feel very welcome here. (I know so, actually, from a variety of evidence, including public comments and private email I receive.) Egals might--I only say might--not feel much compassion for comps here since there are comp blogs and discussion groups which are very mean to egals. I know. I've tried to enter their discussions and even though I have not argued strongly for either position, any questioning of the comp line can be enough sometimes to be banned from their territory. But that kind of treatment does not justify retaliation in kind. We are not called by Jesus to even the score. Instead, he calls us to love, yes, love our enemies, and sometimes comps and egals do become enemies. Jesus didn't call us to like our enemies, but he did call us to love them. And I'm guess that if spend enough time trying to listen well to our enemies and respond lovingly, we might even find that we can like some of them!

OK, it's a rambling post tonight, but I felt such a need to share these things on my heart.

I am sorry to each of you for not being a perfect blog host. I have tried hard to help this be a safe place to post. We moderate comments now. And that helps. But things still slip through the cracks and will continue to do so. I won't be perfect but I will continue to try to make this blog a place where you can say what you believe. And I can only appeal to each of us to try to be as gracious as possible toward those with whom we disagree.

Let us be slow to try to win a logical argument. Let us be quick to try to hear the heart of the person who is writing. Let us risk speaking more in "I" terms rather than "you" terms. I know it hurts when you are criticized for sharing your story in "I" terms. I know that pain very well. But I believe that a fair number of people will respect "I" stories and not shoot you down, but will empathize even if they disagree with an ideological connection you believe is part of your story.

I admit that sometimes I wonder if it is worth keeping this blog going. But if I were to shut it down, it would be giving in to the belief that Christians can't love other enough to hear each other, and, then, loving state where we disagree but do so with great respect. I still want to hold on to the belief that it is possible for the world to know that we are followers of Jesus because we love each other.

Good night, sisters and brothers. I must get some rest.

Why I'm cool with it

2008-09-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

In formulating an explanation to the questions on my previous post, I discovered that it was getting lengthy. Rather than put it in the combox, I've posted it below as a separate blogpost.

To sue, bonnie, lin, and molly,

You all seem to be asking the same question, so I'll respond with the best answer that represents my viewpoint. A caveat, though: most of you already know I'm not the CBMW kind of Comp. I take a position that is much more generous towards women's roles in life than, say, Wayne Grudem. I don't believe that one must be as strict as he to be a Comp. Therefore, my views only represent me and not the more famous Comps out there...at least not yet.

The question is, 'in the Complementarian view, if creation roots male authority over females, which then prohibits women from having spiritual authority over men, then why would Complementarians accept women in civil authority, which seems contrary to the creation design?'

I think this question contains some erroneous assumptions.

1. Creation roots male authority over females,

1A. One assumption is that this "authority" encompasses all of existence, specifically that females are under the direction of males in every aspect of life without limits. In which case, that's a form of omnipotence, not authority. I cannot find any evidence where such unlimited power is mandated in scripture as God's will. Indeed, you know the well the examples to the contrary where women are in authority, so I don't need to list them here.

1B. "Male" authority? I've said this in a previous post as well that God didn't create a female for Adam, but a wife. I hope the meaning of this is not lost on anyone, that Eve was created married. There is no male and female as two separate entities that eventually got married only because there was no one else around. We cannot assume, therefore, that such a thing as "male authority over females" applies as a general state of affairs. The so-called "authority" that we often speak about in creation exists primarily in a marriage relationship (if it exists that way at all; see 1C), and I believe that it should only apply within marriage-related contexts (more on that later).

1C. Authority. This word has never been defined for the comp/egal debate ever to the point where both sides agree what it entails and encompasses. I think we all just assume that it means
- the husband is the boss/calls the shots for all decisions
- the husband is in control of the wife (and the rest of the family)

I believe that our assumptions are only partially true, but whether we can genuinely call it authority remains to be seen, when I'm done with it. In general, I prefer "spiritual leadership" or "head" (it's entirely biblical) to describe the relationship. Take Eph. 5:22, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord." Here's the breakdown:

- the husband is not the Lord, but God commands wives treat their husbands with the kind of submission as if they were submitting to the Lord (which is also true)
- a relative position of respect and deference that wives should give their husbands as a moral act, not a compulsory act
- such deference is not given to any other man
- a position that does not entail a right a husband must maintain by force in general; indeed, it is not an inherent right to leadership but one based on the context of Christ and a wife's moral submission (and only under these circumstances)
- a position where wife and family are under a huband's care, not under his control; having said that, there are instances where a husband can and should act in the best interest of his family to avert danger or harm and to promote godliness.

(If you think this last one is a loophole, it isn't. If a husband chooses to abuse those under his care, that is not acting in the best interest of his family, which means there is no support from God for his actions. What to do about it is a separate issue we can discuss some other time.)

2. which then prohibits women from having spiritual authority over men,

2A. I don't think the argument can be made this way. Indeed, when we get to this content, it is usually 1 Tim. 2 that gets whipped out (not Genesis 2-3). Paul doesn't say that women shouldn't have any authority whatsoever over men, but in a leading/teaching capacity in the church. Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason points out that our translation of "man" and "woman" in this passage is in other places rendered "husband" and "wife." I think he makes a good case that women can, indeed, lead, teach, and have authority in some capacity in church, so long as that authority doesn't trample on the marriage relationship as I've described above. That is a principle.

The actual context in 1 Tim. 2 is sketchy. Why did Paul say what he did? Why didn't Jesus say anything like that? Why does he talk about braided hair and jewelry right before that? Why, why, why? I think we are not answering "why," so we are not arriving at an agreeable hermeneutic on this passage. In my mind, Paul is addressing 'problem women' in the church where Timothy is leading, and that his solution is for such women to get silent and show that their husbands should set them straight. Such should apply to all problem women, yes?

2B. So can women lead Bible studies in mixed company? Yeah.

2C. What if a woman's husband is in the Bible study? I think we take this business of Bible studies too seriously/formally. Everyone is learning together in an informal setting which isn't a uniquely church activity. A better question is 'Can a woman be her own husband's seminary professor?' which is a true authoritative position. We simply use other words, like conflict of interest. For every situation between these poles, I think Christian freedom should dictate what each couple does.

2D. So can women be pastors? If, by that, we mean the official person with ultimate responsibility for directing a congregation spiritually, organizationally and personally into the lives of churchgoers, then no. However, I wouldn't exempt women in being a part of the process by which all of that takes place. I know you must be asking why, so here's my rationale:

Eph. 5:22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

According to this scripture, Christ's relation to His Church is pictured in the husband's relation to the wife. Scripture specifically names the husband (not the wife) in the place of Christ in the picture. The marriage unit picture is, therefore, foundational to the makeup of the Church (afterall, the family is a microcosm of the Church). So, the human people that must lead and direct the Church should be men--they are a type of husband figure for the church body. Wives and women occupying this particular position in church do not fit this biblical picture. It is not that there is anything wrong with women so much as having a woman take directive leadership of the Church changes the image of the Church that God wants to portray. It is undeniable that a woman head pastor of a congregation changes the picture given to us in Eph. 5, not to mention that such a position of authority would throw her marriage into conflict of interest with her husband (if she were married).

3. Why would Complementarians accept women in civil authority?

This is a fair question. On the surface it seems to make sense that if our theology of men and women were universal, then it would naturally extend from the Church arena into all other arenas in life. This is the view that Patriocentrists take, and so they oppose any position where a woman might find herself in authority over men. But I've already made a case that it isn't really a theology of merely "men" and "women." However, besides being impractical to the level of absurd in some cases, it ignores the fact that no other arena besides the Church is built on a relationship between husband and wife and what it means (Christ redeems His Church), at least none other came to mind. That is why I said in my previous post that we do have separate realms on an existential level. Even with something as big as government (some would say especially the government), the primary function of which is not about and does not speak to the unique marriage dynamic that is set up by God to reflect Christ and the Church).

So back to Sarah Palin being a governor and possibly VP. I am way cool with it. As bonnie commented, "the fact that many complementarians are endorsing Sarah Palin for VP indicates....At the very least, [Complementarianism] is facing redefinition." Yeah, I'm cool with that too.

/big grin

the dangerous middle ground where Palin, Mohler, and I occupy

2008-09-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

This is hardly a cheering endorsement from Mohler, though it certainly is an acknowledgement that not all wives and mothers are called to stay at home. It is, however, a clear admonition to not view her as a normal women. She is an exception, like Esther or Deborah, period. She is not so much an example to be followed as she is an exception to the general rule. (molly)
...
Mohler has a consistency problem with this one because Palin professes to be a Christian. Mohler/CBMW teach that Christian women have a 'role'and all that entails that we have discussed here ad nauseum. :o) However, they are also saying that we can separate the civil and spiritual realms for women in leadership. That does not seem to be a problem except that Palin is a Christian woman. Is anyone else not seeing this conumdrum for CBMW? How can they separate the civil and spiritual realm with a Christian woman? You can't. Christians don't have 'realms'. (lin)
...
It is clear that the non-egals want to have their cake and eat it too. (don)

Is CBMW being inconsistent, many ask?

I think it depends on the person speaking. Doug Phillips seems to believe he is more consistent than Al Mohler, but I don't think that matters in light of his views. When you believe that a woman is created for no other purpose than to be a babymama-housekeeper, you've effectively dropped out of reasonable conversation altogether.

Is complementarianism in trouble because of Sarah Palin?

That's funny, and the answer is no. Let me point out that Richard Land (complementarian) was one of the first people to propose naming Sarah Palin for McCain's VP early on in the campaign.

Do I have a problem with consistency as a complementarian?

Well, if I make the kind of errors I've read so far from both egals and patriocentrists, yes. But I haven't. In this previous post, I argued that it is perfectly consistent with my views on Complementarianism that a woman could be a leader in any civil realm she chooses.

To the issue raised that Christians (and certainly complementarians) don't have separate realms, vis a vis a Christian/spiritual realm to a secular realm (and the accusation that complementarians are trying to split life into these two realms): I would contend that this is an incorrect framing of the issue, which is then, incorrectly trying to expose inconsistency in complementarianism.

The idea, 'There is no separate spiritual realm and secular realm for the Christian,' is a theological proposition about how we should conduct ourselves with Christlike integrity wherever we are (not an existential proposition). Al Mohler is not making a contrary theological claim to that. Instead, he is making a simple modal distinction brought up by the case of Sarah Palin. In short, she can wear that hat (whether governor or VP or whatever). As to whether or not there exist separate realms, of course there are--we don't live under a theocracy afterall, and we don't demand that our government be ruled by the Church. This is an argument against a position like Doug Phillips'. That anyone can construe this to be a problem of complementarian proportions is ridiculous.

Is Gov. Palin the exception? Yes, in the sense that I think most women don't have the ability to do what she is doing, including myself. I can hardly find time to read a book much less occupy a public office. But also no, in the sense that she is an exeption because she is exceptional, not because she's bending some rule somewhere to get where she is (which is otherwise closed to women). There is no such rule that prohibits women from exercising public office. Any woman who has the skills to govern effectively and still regard her husband and family properly should be afforded the opportunity to exercise those skills, regardless of whether she is a Christian or not. (I would add, especially if she is a conservative Christian, but that is my bias that we don't need any more liberal pro-abortion politicians hostile to Christianity here in this country). Marilyn did make this point in the combox (much better than I, I think).

For those of you who are salivating at the idea that the issue of Sarah Palin proves that complementarianism as a system of thought is wrong need to aim your guns elsewhere, because you've really missed the point. Some hard complementarians/patriocentrists, like Doug Phillips, are certainly wrong in their views, but their problem isn't complementarianism. It's the refusal in their own hearts to see the full humanity of women.

Sarah Palin is a Christian feminist. What is a Christian feminist?

2008-09-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

This question was asked in a recent comment on this blog:

What is a "Christian feminist"?

I am by no means an expert on feminism or Christian feminism, but I'd like to write down a few thoughts trying to define what a Christian feminist is. And then the floor will be open, as always, for comments.

Words often mean different things to different people. That's one reason why dictionaries often have more than one sense listed among the meanings for a word. If we look up the word feminist in a dictionary we typically get definitions such as these:

of or relating to or advocating equal rights for women; "feminist critique"
a supporter of feminism

wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and equal rights for women.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist

A person who supports the equality of women with men; A member of a feminist political movement; One who believes in the social, political, and economical equality of the sexes; Relating to or in accordance with feminism
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminist

A feminist, then, is someone who believes that men and women should have equal rights. The definition does not say in what areas of life there should be equal rights. The struggle for women to have equal rights has taken different forms depending on what was the focal inequality at any particular time in history.

It wasn't too long ago that women did not have the right to vote (suffrage) in the United States. Women who marched and campaigned for the right to vote were called suffragettes. They fit the definition of feminists since they wanted to be able to vote as men did.

Even before then women did not have the right to own land. Eventually laws were passed that allowed women to own land.

Women have sometimes and in some places not had the right to read or attend school, or at least the right to a higher education beyond, say, the 6th or 8th grade. Today in many, but not all, countries, women have the same right to an education that men do. Feminists call for women to have equal access to education, including higher education.

In many countries, including the United States, women are often not paid the same wages for the same work. Feminists believe that a woman should receive the same wage as a man for the same kind of work.

What, then, would a Christian feminist be? I think the answer would be that a woman who believes in equality for women and is also a Christian would be a Christian feminist. This would not necessarily mean that a Christian feminist would believe that women should have exactly the same jobs as men. I'm sure that there are the same differences of opinion among Christian feminists as there are among the Christian public over whether or not women should be able to have the same roles in the church and home as men do. Some Christian feminists believe that women should be able to be ordained and pastor churches. I assume that some do not.

Sarah Palin is receiving a lot of public attention these days, from the MSM (mainstream media), the Christian media, and bloggers, both Christian and non-Christian. Some, including CBMW, apparently, believe that it is permissible for a Christian woman like Sarah Palin to hold public office, because that is a secular ("civic") job, not a ministry job. Others believe that a woman should have not job at all where she would have any authority over men.

Sarah Palin has been a member of Feminists For Life (FFL) for many years. FFL promotes equality for women as well as the sanctity of life for unborn babies. FFL members seen no contradiction between those two positions, unlike many other people who assume (wrongly, in my opinion) that being a feminist includes the belief that a woman has the right to abort her unborn baby. Sarah Palin is a Christian feminist. Sarah Palin is delighted to break the glass ceiling for the highest offices in the United States, as she mentioned in her speech at the Republical National Convention. But Sarah Palin is strongly pro-life (anti-abortion) and gave testimony to that belief by carrying her Down syndrom son to term this year and valuing and loving him as she loves each of her other children.

When some people hear the word "feminist", the image that comes to mind is of women who called for equal rights for women while some of them made symbolic gestures, such as burning bras, to indicate that they did not want to be restricted by men to "women's work" or roles. They wanted the freedom to do anything a man could do that was physically possible for a woman. Some feminists denounced men, making it sound like they had little need for men in their lives. That, it seems to me, is a distortion of the biblical idea that God has created men and women for each other, to enjoy each other's companionship, to procreate, and to nurture their children together.

Today some people refer to feminists who burned bras and downplayed the need for men in their lives as radical feminists. It may be that any use of the word "feminist" has become so pejorative that some will question whether Christian feminists should call themselves "Christian feminists." If so, what would be a better term to use for someone who is a Christian and believes that women should have the same civil rights as men? I am sure that many Christian feminists are complementarians, believing that husbands have authority over their wives and that women should not have positions of authority over men in the church.

In summary, it seems to me that a Christian feminist is someone who is a Christian and who believes that women should have equal rights to men. Here are some of those rights for which many Christians would agree that women should have equality:

voting
land ownership
protection from abuse
equal pay for equal work
education, or, in particular, higher education

Some, but not all Christians, believe that women should have equal rights in the following areas:

military service
church ministry
civil authority over male employees

Do you have any other ideas about how to define what a Christian feminist is?

Does the term Christian feminist sound like an oxymoron (contradiction in terms) to you?

Kotter and Mohler in Trouble With Patriarchalists, Sarah Palin Raises the Woman Question to a New Height

2008-09-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

It has been interesting to watch and read reactions on Palin's candidacy for the VP ticket, particularly because vehemently negative opinions have arisen from both the Far Left and the Far Right. Consider the words of Doug Phillips (of Vision Forum), via an excerpt from this post, which includes chastising Kotter and Mohler for being "semi-complementarian, semi-egalitarian" (because they have said it is not necessarily sinful to vote for Palin).

...The examples used by David Kotter and Albert Mohler to support their contention that female magistrates are according to God’s will are not only an inconsistent and selective use of Scripture and an elevation of the authority of experience, but are also a fundamental violation of biblical hermeneutics. [Full post here]

Scott Brown (of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches [more info on the FIC movement here) continues along the same lines, challenging those who would vote for Sarah Palin when he writes,

People say, “My vote [for McCain/Palin] is a vote against Obama.” But we must remember [voting for Palin is] also a vote for a curse, for blasphemy, for mothers to leave home, for wives to submit to another man, for women to rebel against the authority structure of the universe, for positions scripture limits to men. [full post here]

Interestingly, not all of the patriarchs are against voting for Palin. Douglas Wilson of Credenda Agenda is one who supports Palin and authoritatively says she is not sinning against the Word by pursuing a political calling. Ornaments of Grace, generally behind Vision Forum's thoughts, writes about being called a "so-called Christian," all because she is not sure that Palin is truly in sin. Truly the candidacy of Sarah Palin has stirred up issues of gender roles, period. Is America behind the curve, as In This Storm, a former patriarchalist like myself, suggests, when it comes to being slow to put women in positions of leadership? It would seem so. This CNN video claims that while American men seem to be in support of Palin, American women, by and large, are not. It appears that the radical feminist and the extreme patriarchalist have something in common, whether they like it or not.

Personally, I am thankful for the discussion I hear all over the place, amongst my friends, family, and community members, as well as in the blogosphere. Underlying currents of belief are being forced into the open, and we are all having to deal with our own culturally-derived, personally-derived and Biblically derived presuppositions---more often, a messy mix of all three--- and examine them carefully in the light of day and in the flesh and blood realities of life on planet earth.

----Hat Tip to the Fine Commenters at on this comment thread (at True Womanhood blog) for some of these links.

Colossians 2:19 -- What does the head do for the body?

2008-09-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

Today I am checking the translation of Colossians in a tribal language. Right now I am checking Col. 2:19. The translation for this verse communicates the idea that the head tells the body what to do. As a translation consultant, I am required to raise a flag whenever a translation says something that doesn't seem to be in the original text. It seems to me that this verse is focusing on how the head nourishes the body.

Do you agree?

Is this verse relevant for helping define the relationship of the head to the body other times in the New Testament such as in Ephesians 5, and 1 Cor. 11-14?

How might marriages be different if a husband viewed one of his roles as nourishing his wife? Wives, what would you like your husband to do for you that would be nourishing?

Marriage Advice From Dr. Love

2008-09-04T15:52:00.001-07:00

Jolly Blogger, a self-described complementarian and a pastor for many years, just hit the ball out of the park with this post on Ten Things I Think About Marriage and the Marriage Relationship.

Yes, I am a Christian egalitarian. Yes, I am recommending a marriage post from a complementarian. Write that factoid down somewhere and keep it safe.

Fighting the deep urge to cut and paste his entire delicious post, I humbly offer a few snippets:

...the Scriptures show that God is comparatively unconcerned about your
marriage and not focused on it much at all.
Granted, I know that you are supremely concerned about your marriage and many
are very focused on making it a good one and my guess is that, if you surveyed
most Christians and churches they would say that the crisis in marriage and
family is one of the most important issues facing the church today.
But a reading of the New Testament doesn't reflect an overwhelming concern
with marriage and the family on the part of it's author (God!).
...
...And for my first thought I'll use the book in the New Testament that gives us the most extensive marriage advice as a basis. That book is Ephesians and it gives us two whole paragraphs on the marriage relationship, along with a very short paragraph on how to be a good Christian kid and one sentence on how to be a good Christian parent. This is a veritable encyclopedia on marriage and family compared to other books in the New Testament.
5. I think I think the first thing to notice is that all of this marital advice comes at the tail end of a long series of expositions and explanations of vital Christian doctrine. The marital advice is just kind of tacked on at the end as one application of the crucial doctrinal matters that precede it. I think it is not too big a stretch to infer from this that understanding all of this doctrine is foundational to understanding our roles in marriage.
Ergo, while it is ok to read a marriage book and/or go to a marriage conference, your time would be better spend reading expositional and theological tomes and going to bible/theology conferences. Again, the marriage stuff is good, but without the extensive biblical/theological grounding you need to apply the marriage advice. Going straight to the marriage advice without taking the extended time to understand the biblical/theological basis will be like putting the proverbial bandaid on cancer.

In closing, here is just one more set of stolen paragraphs:

9. I think I think that many Christian marriages could be enormously
more happy if the spouses would put aside the fact that they are married to one
another and just treat one another as if they were Christians. Galatians 6:10
tells us to do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household
of faith. In other words, of all the relational duties we owe to each
other as humans, as neighbors and as enemies, we are to be especially careful to
fulfill these duties to fellow Christians.
If you are claim to be a Christian and are married to a Christian you owe
your spouse all of the things you owe any other human being, just more so.
In my pre-marital counseling and marriage counseling I try to tell people
that there is no special category of counsel called "marital counseling" it's
all about basic Christian discipleship. This takes me back to my first
point where I say we are missing the boat in marriage and marriage counseling.
[Molly Adds: Read the full post here. Hat tip to Amy at Humble Musings for the recommendation].

David Kotter on women in public office

2008-09-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

David Kotter of CBMW's Gender Blog has just blogged about whether or not it is biblical for a woman, such as Sarah Palin, to be in a high public office, such as that of Vice President of the United States. David concludes, as most evangelical Christians in the U.S. seem to be doing:

Therefore we must be careful to not go beyond the teaching of the Bible. The Bible calls women to specific roles in the church and home, but does not prohibit them from exercising leadership in secular political fields.

I agree with David that the Bible is silent on whether or not a woman can hold political office. I also agree with David that the Bible presents examples of women holding political offices. I happen to come from Alaska where we are proud of Sara Palin's public service and convictions.

The connection is even closer for me: my middle brother is the only politician to have ever defeated Sarah Palin in a campaign. He bested her by a few votes in the primary election for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska a number of years ago.

I agree with Governor Palin that there needs to be a great deal of political reform in the U.S. I am glad that she and her family are consistently pro-life, including Sara's not aborting her own Down Syndrome baby and she and her husband supporting their unwed daughter deciding to carry her own baby to term. I suspect that Sara and Todd Palin's convictions about the sanctity of life helped influence that decision. Their daughter made a wrong decision that resulted in conceiving a baby. But it would have been even more wrong, in my belief, to destroy the life produced from that wrong decision. By the way, my brother and Sara are now friends and he is encouraging people to pray for Sara at this difficult time in the life of her family and as she runs for political office. Perhaps you would like to join me in praying for her, as well.

Feel free to comment on Kotter's post here since there is no public commenting on Gender Blog.

Knowledge Puffs Up; Love Builds Up

2008-09-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

When I was in college, I was a Religion major at a state university. I was also a conservative evangelical, which meant that I spent a great deal of time contradicting the views of my liberal professors. In the process, I found that their arguments were never particularly convincing, but their most effective weapon was the sardonic sneer with which many of them would dismiss me as a mindless fundamentalist. No one wants to be looked at like they're stupid, and I saw many students succumb to these professors' liberal views not because they had been convinced intellectually, but because they had been intimidated emotionally.

Throughout college, therefore, I saw the truth in Paul's statement that "knowledge puffs up" (1 Corinthians 8:1). As I entered seminary, I wondered if I would ever see an example of an intellectual Christian who exemplified the truth that "love builds up."

My first class in seminary was "Theological Foundations," which was essentially an exposition of the five points of Calvinism. If ever there was a subject which could generate more heat than light, it was this one; and indeed, there was a student in the class who was an ardent Arminian. The class was taught by Dr. Roger Nicole, a charming older French Swiss scholar (and egalitarian!) who addressed every student as "Brozer" and "Seester".

As Dr. Nicole carefully explained the Reformed understanding of divine sovereignty, human freedom, and how they relate to creation, redemption, and all of life, our class's token Arminian would get frustrated and raise a variety of objections and counter-arguments. Now, I knew Dr. Nicole had heard every one of these arguments a thousand times before, and that he could easily have blasted this student out of the water. Yet I watched in amazement as he graciously and lovingly dealt with this young man's objections as if it were the first time he had ever heard them. Dr. Nicole readily admitted the possibility that he could be mistaken in his understanding of the doctrines of grace, he acknowledged that the student's questions were important, and he lovingly constructed arguments which completely demolished those objections.

Dr. Nicole's demeanor was loving and respectful even when the student's comments came across as disrespectful and insulting. Dr. Nicole honestly seemed more interested in winning his brother than in winning an argument. I have no idea whether the Arminian student was ultimately persuaded, but I do know that Dr. Nicole had made it as hard as possible for that student to hate him. Dr. Nicole had shown me the other side of the coin: "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

In a comment on my last post, Wayne wrote "I suspect that God cares far more about our heart attitudes in these debates than he does about whether or not we can 'win' arguments." I would agree, and I would add that God isn't the only one who cares about our heart attitudes in these debates. The people on the other side care about our heart attitudes, and if we become abusive and insulting, we simply hand them an emotional justification for rejecting our intellectual arguments. The people on our own side, and those who are still undecided, also care about our heart attitudes, and if they see us heaping abuse on our "opponents", they are more likely to sympathize with our opponents' views.

Dr. Nicole had no idea that the way he was dealing with an argumentative student would earn him the respect of someone who would later disagree with his egalitarianism. When I interact with Dr. Nicole's arguments for egalitarianism I do so with the utmost respect, not because of his considerable intellectual stature, but because of his loving demeanor toward a hostile student some sixteen years ago.

Dr. Nicole's winsomeness stands in stark contrast to much of the bile and vitriol I see expressed in this particular debate. Ideological comps and egals often caricature each other's views, indulge in sarcasm and ridicule of the other side, pretend that the truthfulness of their own view should be self-evident to all, and justify their own intractability by pointing to how they've been treated by the extremists on the other side. Such an approach merely makes the extremists on the other side feel justified in their vilification of us, while failing to persuade those in the middle who might otherwise be willing to listen to us. We would all do well to learn from Dr. Nicole (and Scripture!) that "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

A Woman Vice-President?

2008-08-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

What do the complementarians reading this blog make of the possibility of a woman Vice-President? Would you agree with what John Piper wrote about women in positions of secular authority, which I quoted here? Would that make it hard for you to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket, which might lead to a woman President and Commander-in-Chief?

Ephesians 5:15-6:6, guest post by Don Johnson

2008-08-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

Ephesians 5-6 Pericope Structure
Draft 1.0 by Don Johnson, August 25, 2008

The pericope is from Eph 5:15 to Eph 6:9. I use my own translation below to highlight some aspects.

There are multiple chiasms that contain phrases that are in an inverted parallel form. The chiasms allow one to pair up the appropriate phrases (A with A', B with B' and so on) as they are related in some way. The most important part of a chiasm is in the middle, which is not often the way we do things today; we usually use either the newspaper form with the most important things first or the proof form with the most important thing, the conclusion, last. To assist in the discussion, I gave a unique letter number code to each phrase, so a specific phrase or set of phrases can be discussed easier. Brackets indicate words implied by the Greek text and inserted for clarity.

UPDATE: Indentation to visually assist seeing the chiastic structure can be seen in a pdf version of this file.

A1 Then watch carefully how you walk
B1 not as unwise
B1' but as wise
A1' redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

A2 For this reason,
B2 do not be foolish,
B2' but understanding
A2' what the will of the Lord is.

A3 And do not be drunk with wine,
B3 which is debauchery,

A4 but be filled by the Spirit,
B4 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
C4 singing and praising in your heart to the Lord,
C4' giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to God the Father,
B4' submitting to one another in the fear of Messiah;
A4' wives, [submitting to one another] to your own husbands as to the Lord.

A5 For a husband
B5 is head of his wife,
C5 as also Christ
D5 is Head of the church,
E5 and He is the Savior of the body.
D5' But even as the church
C5' submits to Christ,
B5' so also wives
A5' to their own husbands in everything.

A6 Husbands, agape-love your wives,
B6 even as Christ also agape-loved the assembly and gave Himself up on its behalf
C6 that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the washing of the water in the Word,
D6 that He might present it to Himself as the glorious church,
C6' not having spot or wrinkle, or any such things,
B6' but that it be holy and without blemish.
A6' So, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

A7 He who loves his wife loves himself,
(for no one hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it)
B7 even as also the Lord the church for we are members of His body,
A7' "For this (reason), a man shall leave his father and mother,
and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh." (Gen. 2:24)
B7' The mystery is great, but I speak of Christ and the church.

A8 Nevertheless, everyone in particular, let each one
B8 be loving his own wife as himself
B8' and the wife
A8' respect/fear her husband.

A9 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
B9 "Honor your father and mother," (Ex. 20:12a, with Ex. 20:12b following )
C9 (which is the first commandment with a promise)
B9' "that it may be well with you and you may be long-lived on the earth".
A9' And fathers/parents, do not provoke your children,
but nurture them in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.

A10 Slaves, obey your masters according to flesh,
B10 with fear and trembling,
C10 in singleness of your heart,
D10 as to Christ;
E10 not with eye-service as men-pleasers,
D10' but as slaves of Christ
C10' doing the will of God from the soul,
B10' with good will
A10' serving as slaves to the Master and not as to men.

A11 Each one knowing
B11 that whatever good thing he does,
C11 this he shall receive
D11 from the Master
E11 whether a slave or a freeman.
D11' And masters,
C11' do the same things toward them,
B11' forbearing threatening,
A11' knowing that the Master of you and them is in Heaven
and there is no partiality with Him.

Notes on each numbered section:
1. Herein lies wisdom.

2. Herein lies understanding the will of God.

3. Being filled with the Spirit can appear like drunkenness, but it is not that at all.

4. Here are 4 “-ing” verbs the inner 2 are to God, the outer 2 are to the church. It is important to notice that just as speaking to one another is mutually speaking (each one to others), so submitting to one another is mutually submitting (each one to others), contra Grudem (who correctly points out it might mean some to others, but not in this case). B4' serves as the header principle that will be explained further with examples in the remainder of the pericope. In A4' the verb is omitted and Paul carefully crafts the verb that is to be brought down in the previous phrase, it is reflexive (voluntary), it is to one another (mutually) and it is submitting. That is, the wife is to submit to her husband and the husband is to submit to his wife.

5. C5-C5' is about Christ and the church, the body of Christ. Both (A) husband and wife and
(B) Christ and the church are unity examples using a head/body metaphor. Notice that all the examples of Christ as head in sections 5 and 6 are serving examples, a husband as head is on solid Biblical ground by using those examples in his relationship with his wife.

6. Again, a husband is to consider his wife as his own body and treat her accordingly, that is, with agape-love. Note that agape love per 1 Cor 13 “does not insist on its own way” contra the non-egal claims that the husband has final decision making power.

7. The metaphor of the wife being considered part of the husband's body is continued.

8. This section is the summary and recapitulation of the spousal mutual submission theme in A4'.

9. In B9 and B9' the common theme is that it is a quote from Exodus.

10. In A10, A10', D11 and D11' the common theme is kurios which I translate as Master (instead of Lord) when referring to Jesus and master when referring to humans to show this easier. Section 10 is about slaves, and contains the infamous proof text of slave owners “Slaves, obey your masters.” so we know we need to be extra careful with this pericope.

11. This section is sometimes thought to refer to only slaves (that is, it contains a sometimes missed reference to freeman and slaves) but the structure shows what is going on. C11' contains a symmetry reference “Do the same things” when referring to masters, such symmetry in the hierarchical relationship of masters and slaves is strikingly countercultural.

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Bruce Fleming, Nils Lund, Kenneth Bailey, and David Instone-Brewer for their insights into this passage.

Legalism in egalitarianism and complementarianism

2008-08-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Legalism can kill the spirit of the law by following just the letter of the law. Jesus had a lot to say about this during his ministry.

On this blog we often point out problems, or potential problems, with egalitarianism or complementarianism. One rebuttal to pointing out the problems people have experienced under either framework is noting that the bad experience is not really the way the framework is supposed to work. And several of you have correctly been emphasizing that we are all sinners, complementarians and egalitarians alike. No matter how much we may want to please Christ, and follow his Word as we understand it, and, in particular, follow an egalitarian or complementarian framework, we mess up, we sin.

In this post, I'd like to summarize some of the problems which can result from being legalistic about either egalitarianism or complementarianism. I'm sure I won't think of all the problems, so feel free to add to my lists in the comments. I'll start with egalitarianism because so often complementarianism gets such a bad rap on this blog.

Legalistic egalitarianism can result in:

Demandingness ("I did supper last night, so you have to do it tonight.")
Rules take priority over love ("Remember, we agreed this is a 50-50 marriage, and that's the only way I'm willing to keep going in this marriage."
Inadequate attention to the different giftings of each spouse. Expecting each spouse to do the same things.
Lack of love ("You wanted an egalitarian marriage; now you have to practice what you preach; I'm not going to do your part of our marriage.")
Lack of sacrifice ("You said women can do anything men can; I don't care if it's hard for you; you've gotta make it on your own.")

Obviously, these are extreme examples, but I suspect they remind us of some difficulties some have in marriages which they truly want to be egalitarian.

Legalistic complementarianism can result in:

Demandingness (hmm, do I hear an echo?!) ("The Bible says you're supposed to submit to me, so submit; I'm the head of this house.")
Husband not listening to his wife ("Just be quiet and listen to me, as a biblical woman is supposed to do"; "I'm not supposed to listen to you; the Bible only says you're supposed to submit to me")
Wife's spiritual giftings not affirmed
Requiring wife's submission without loving sacrifice from the husband
Rules and regulations about what women can and can't do

Be Careful Ware You Aim

2008-08-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

In participating in the discussions on this blog, I've noticed an interesting dynamic: the egalitarians are usually the ones constantly quoting (and sometimes misquoting) the teachings of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, while complementarians like myself are relatively ignorant of them. I had never heard of Bruce Ware, Russell Moore, David Kotter, or any other CBMW representative other than Wayne Grudem until I started listening to egalitarians here. It has only been in response to various disturbing accusations made here that I have gone to the CBMW web-site and read the actual writings published there.

I'm always somewhat bemused when I hear egalitarians talking about CBMW and Bruce Ware as the "official" representatives of the complementarian viewpoint. After all, the argument goes, they coined the term complementarian, so they get to define what it means. Well, here's how they define it in the Preface to Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood:

If one word must be used to describe our position, we prefer the term complementarian, since it suggests both equality and beneficial differences between men and women. We are uncomfortable with the word "traditionalist" because it implies an unwillingness to let Scripture challenge traditional patterns of behavior, and we certainly reject the term "hierarchalist" because it overemphasizes structured authority while giving no suggestion of equality or the beauty of mutual interdependence.

That's a fairly broad definition, and one which I am comfortable applying to myself. The fact that I self-identify as a complementarian does not mean that I must therefore agree with every published statement by CBMW or its principal players any more than the fact that I am registered to vote with a certain political party requires me to agree with every aspect of its platform or every decision made by its elected officials. It simply means that in my study of the Scriptures, I see both equality and mutually beneficial differences between the sexes.

Frankly, I would prefer to paint a positive vision of how my wife and I live out our understanding of "Biblical complementarity" than to become an expert on Bruce Ware's views. Yet in this forum complementarians are constantly being asked to affirm or repudiate the arguments made by CBMW theologians and scholars.

If I can move us toward helpful dialogue by interacting with CBMW statements, I am certainly willing to do so. I'm working on a critique of Bruce Ware's article Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God, which has been summarized by egalitarians as arguing that women are not fully created in the image of God. The trouble is that Ware is apparently such a polarizing figure for egalitarians that if I do not completely repudiate him, I'll likely be seen by the militant egals as some patriarchal wolf in soft-spoken sheep's clothing. The truth is that I can see both sides of his arguments. On the one hand, I see why many of Ware's statements send egals through the roof; but on the other hand, I see that the egals are often quoting him out of context and ignoring those statements where he repeatedly affirms the full ontological equality of women. Perhaps Ware really is a hard-liner who sees women as fundamentally inferior, but I have yet to see what I would call a fair critical assessment of his arguments demonstrating that to be true.

Ultimately, I think the egalitarian preoccupation with Bruce Ware and CBMW is misplaced simply because most rank-and-file complementarians are not even bothering to read them. Average comps are complementarian simply because they see real differences between men and women and they understand the Bible generally to be teaching some form of male leadership. If that view is being reinforced by anyone, it is the various complementarian marriage authors and speakers rather than the scholars at CBMW. Succeed in discrediting Bruce Ware or CBMW and the average comp will respond, "Who's Bruce Ware?" and "What's CBMW?"

Most of the comps here, like most of the egals, simply want to be heard and understood. We all participate in this blog because we are willing to engage in uncomfortable conversations with people who will challenge our views. If we alienate the people on the other side who are actually willing to talk to us, what hope do we have of ever doing anything more than preaching to our respective choirs?

On both sides of this debate, I see a lot of heat but very little light. We're all coming at this issue from a complex range of personal experiences and theological presuppositions. We use the same terms but mean very different things. We blind ourselves to the emotional commitments which motivate us, while dismissing the arguments of others because of their clear biases and emotional commitments.

Ultimately, we need to be careful to read each other critically rather than polemically. That means doing our best to understand what the other side is saying without necessarily accepting that what they say is correct. It means accepting that their beliefs are sincerely held, even if we think those beliefs are misguided. It means reading what people actually write rather than reading in the views of others in their camp, or reading in what we assume their views to be. It means, as I have written before, that we must do our best to stand in the other person's shoes, rather than trying to knock them off their feet.

If we do all that, we can come to communicate and learn from each other, even as we refuse to compromise our own principles. If, however, we let our desire to win an argument get in the way, we're not likely to convince anybody of anything.

article: Further Confessions of a Recovering Feminist

2008-08-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

The CBMW's Gender Blog has just posted Further Confessions of a Recovering Feminist, Part 1, by Courtney Tarter. I recommend that we who interact here on Complegalitarian blog read Courtney's article. It is good for all sides in these debates to read testimonies from anyone, like Courtney, which speak to issues in the complemantarian-egalitarian debates.

Since public comments are not permitted on the Gender Blog, feel free to comment on Courtney's article here. I think that sometimes David Kotter of Gender Blog visits Complegalitarian blog where he can read responses to his blog posts.

My own feeling is that it is helpful for each of us to try to hear what the Spirit of God might be telling us from testimonies from anyone in these debates, regardless of whether or not we agree with every detail of someone's current interpretation of the relevant Scripture passages. What can we learn from each other? What can egalitarians learn from godly complementarians? What can complementarians learn from godly egalitarians? I am not suggesting compromise on what we consider important issues, but I am suggesting that God may be able to teach us something, even from people with whom we disagree. I hope that that is something that we in the Body of Christ can agree upon, as we relate to Christ the head of his Body, the Church.

The Upside Down God (An Egalitarian Muses)

2008-08-12T22:21:00.001-07:00

The complementarian John Piper says (in his book, What's the Difference) that the essence of femininity is to affirm, respect and follow the leadership of a man. This means that as a female, Piper believes I find my femininity only in so far as I affirm that godly men, as opposed to godly women, are my leaders---and that I encourage and support them as such.

Another way to think about it might be to say that because I do not affirm Piper's model, Piper does not believe I am feminine. If Piper's opinion mattered to me, I might find that a bit offensive. Ha.

The egalitarian model rightly affirms that men and women are complementary, yet also, and rightly (in my opinion), does not spend a lot of time laying out how and when and where those complementary features lie. This is because men and women are firstly humans, a name for creatures infinitely diverse and unique in and of themselves, gender notwithstanding.

But women are certainly different from men, even if only in terms of body parts. Women have sexual organs that men don't have, and vice versa. Most of us believe there are more differences between the sexes than merely uterus and testes, but this student would like to know how to tell which differences are culturally derived definitions of "true" manhood and womanhood and which differences are actually hard-wired traits?

Many historically American held "gender differences," for example, have proven to have more basis in popular stereotype than fact. The idea that women talk more than men do, for example, has been proven inaccurate. The Victorians accepted the "fact" that women were easily frightened creatures and wont to fainting spells, but that had everything to do with tight corsets restricting airways than it did women actually fainting due to legitimate female gender differences. (This article from the BBC news scientifically explains the 78 genetic differences---funny).

Perhaps another top reason that egalitarians tend to shy away from forming a checklist of gender differences is because we've seen differences between the sexes used to bolster the idea that men should be in charge of women. One recent blog post seemed to suggest that because a husband was more likely than a wife to fend off a burglar, the husband is obviously designed to be in charge of the wife. Yet these reasons often fall flat, because the same sort of reasoning can be used to shoot male leadership in the foot.

My husband, who has plenty of hair on his chest, fights residence and forest fires with the Emergency Services team, and who's known for his throaty male cries at sporting events, shrieked like a baby last week when a bat flew overhead in our living room. While he cowered in a doorway, I jumped up with glee (having always wanted to see a live bat up close) trapped the bat in a glass dish and expressed true sorrow that the children were asleep and therefore missing such a rich opportunity to observe a wild Alaskan bat.

Does this prove that I was designed by God to lead our home? Or does it just prove that Jeff and I are human beings, having both innate and environmentally derived differences, unique yet also complementary to each other, as all humans are? Does being different prove authority? Or does being different just prove that...well, we're different.

Consider the fact that women tend to be more global thinkers, generally able to consider multiple sources of information at once and to think and reason from a broader interconnected place than most men. This fact clearly proves that women should lead men. Or perhaps the fact that girls tend to speak earlier than little boys do. Aha. Another proof that women were designed to rule. No? Seems silly, doesn't it---almost embarrassing for me to type. Stating one way that men and women often differ is simply stating a generality---in no way does it "prove" that anyone should rule over anyone else.

For those scratching their heads, let me try and explain. This egalitarian tends to think that in the community of God, everything gets turned on it's head. For many who view the Scriptures like me, it's those who walk in the fruit of the Spirit who are spiritual "leaders," for in God's economy, rank, social status, appearance, education and other worldly avenues of authority aren't acceptable tokens for true spiritual leadership.

Some egalitarians, myself included, feel that the males in New Testament times, having much more power than the females, were being instructed by Paul to love their wives as their own selves: ie, even though your social structure gives you the power to command obedience, consider whether or not you would want to be in her shoes and how you would want to be treated, and then love her accordingly. This is the way of Christ. The world's strong stood on the backs of the weak and still do to this day. Christ, the strongest of all, went straight for the weak and lifted them up, despite the horrified gasps of those in power around Him.

Just as Paul didn't command Philemon to release Onesimus, but hinted rather strongly that Onesimus was now Philemon's brother and a co-equal heir in God's sight (See Philemon), so Paul did not command husbands to release wives from their legal position of submission. But he did command husbands to think of their wives in the same way that they think of themselves, "as your own body." Paul commanded Christian husbands to love their wives in the way that the Jesus he describes (in that same letter to the Ephesians) loves His bride: giving all for her, giving her His identity, raising her up to His level to rule with Him.

Who is this Jesus who turns everything upside down?

In the worldly system, leaders lead in order to lead. Those in power like to stay in power, because that means they get what they want, they get to do things their way, get to be on top. But in God's economy, those in power use their power to come under. The biggest leader is the biggest server, and vice versa. Leaders lead that they might help others become leaders.

The complementarian Piper appears to define the feminine women as those happily under the authority, in one way or another, of masculine men. In other words, from birth all the way to death. She will never mature out of that place, by virtue of her gender. But for most egalitarians, spiritual authority exists that those being led might be brought into maturity (Eph. 4:11-13). Those who have power are to use their power to bring others up to where they are. Yes, this is upside-down thinking, compared to what goes on in the world. But that is what the One we follow has done.

"But God, rich in mercy, for the great love He bore us, brought us to life with
Christ even when we were dead in our sins; it is by His grace you are
saved. And in union with Christ Jesus He raised us up and enthroned us
with Him in the heavenly realms, so that He might display in the ages to come
how immense are the resources of His grace..." ---Ephesians 2:4-7a TNEB

Revisiting My Personal Spaghetti Jar Incident

2008-08-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I wrote about a time in my marriage when I chose to set aside my personal convictions and sense of God's will for the sake of my wife's needs. The point of that post was that while some might see my "submitting" or "yielding" to my wife in this way as an abdication of my "headship", I see it as an example of headship done right.

Unfortunately, this post has become a sticking point for some here, so I feel the need to clarify a few things. Like the spaghetti jar incident, there is a world of context which I could not include in that previous post. Without that context, some people saw in my descriptions evidence of an abusive form of control, and it has skewed their understanding of much that I have written since.

The conviction in question is our decision not to use contraception. In my previous post, I talked briefly about the history of how I came to this conviction long before I met Lisa. I did this primarily to emphasize that this belief was not the result of some patriarchal teaching I had received, but was something I came to through a long process of prayer, reflection, and counting the potential costs of such a conviction. It would seem, however, that the emphasis on how I came to my conviction gave some the impression that I had unilaterally imposed this conviction on my wife, taking away her "reproductive freedom" and forcing her to have children she didn't want.

That's simply not the case. The conviction not to use birth control did originate with me, but I did not impose it on Lisa. I told her early on in our courtship about my conviction so that she could run for the exit if she wanted to. She didn't. Instead she asked questions and we examined the issue of contraception together, counting the potential costs, considering arguments for and against, etc. After much prayer on her part, Lisa came to share my conviction about the use of contraception. This was long before we got married.

So it was our conviction not to use birth-control which led to our having three children within the first four years of our marriage. Lisa and I were both delighted about each pregnancy, and while we began to hope that our rate of conception would slow down, Lisa was never "forced" to have a child she didn't want. We actually had a miscarriage between our second and third children, and we were both heartbroken over it. When Lisa became pregnant with our third child not long afterward, she was thrilled.

Having three children under three is stressful enough by itself, but when Bethany was born that stress was compounded by other stresses. We moved into our first house a month before Bethany was born, so we were faced with the stress of getting settled, taking on the responsibilities of home ownership, and bearing the financial burden of a mortgage. At the same time, our nine-year-old nephew was dying of leukemia, and that tragedy naturally cast a shadow over everything else in our lives. This was the unwritten context of my statement in the previous post that Lisa was "physically exhausted, stressed out, worried about the future, and probably more than a little Post-Partum." In the face of all this, Lisa began asking about the possibility of using birth control. It was not that she had wanted to use contraception the whole time and that she had to get "exhausted" and "stressed out" before I would even consider it. Rather, it was the stress which led her to begin questioning whether our conviction really made sense.

Much has been made of what I described as my initial response to Lisa's questioning: "At first, I tried to give her perspective and reassure her, I made it clear that I still believed this was God's will for our family, I pointed out the need to follow God's will even when it proves personally costly, and I generally tried to get her to see things my way." To those who assumed I had unilaterally decided we would not use contraception and had forced Lisa to have children she didn't want, I can see how this sounds callous, patronizing, and paternalistic. It wasn't. This was not some sermon I preached to Lisa to get her to buck up and pay the costs of "my" convictions; this was a series of discussions in which we tried to reestablish unity. Since Lisa was questioning a belief she had previously held, my first inclination was to try and shore up her confidence in that conviction. And while I continued to believe it was God's will for us not to try to control the planning of our family, I began praying that God would either change her heart or change mine. This is something I do every time Lisa and I are not in agreement.

As we continued to discuss the question of contraception, it became clear to me that Lisa was feeling "desperate," "trapped," and "frustrated." Again, some have read my description of Lisa's feelings at that point as a sign of my callousness, as if my wife has to become "desperate" before I will really listen to her. On the contrary, I was trying to listen to her and see her perspective throughout our discussions, but it is often the case that I just don't "get" how deeply she is feeling something until her pain becomes painfully clear. I'm afraid that despite my best intentions, I can be as clueless as the next guy.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed to put my wife's needs before my convictions, no matter how long I had held them or how firmly I still believed in them. So as I wrote in that previous post, I went for a walk and prayed, "Lord, I can cling to my convictions and destroy my wife, or I can show her that she means more to me than my convictions."

While I remember this process taking a long time, as Lisa and I reconstructed the timeline of events the other night it became clear that we couldn't have been discussing this issue for more than a few weeks. We used birth control for the next nine months, at which time Lisa concluded on her own that it was indeed God's will that we not use contraception.

My point in giving this very personal story was to offer a positive example of how to work through times when husband and wife do not see eye to eye. Though convinced of what I believed was God's will for us, I took my wife's perspective as an indication that I might have gotten that wrong. When it became clear that she needed to see that I cared more for her than for any conviction, I yielded and trusted God to work things out. Thankfully, he did.

This is the key lesson. I believe God is ultimately the head of my family. He is the one with absolute authority. It is his will, not mine, which is paramount. If I believe all that, then I can trust him to make sure that his will is followed.

Another key lesson is that neither Lisa nor I acted unilaterally. Extreme complementarians might say that I was wrong not to stand firm on an issue I believed to be God's will, that I should have just drawn a line in the sand and demanded submission. I know, however, that it would have been foolish to do that. First, it would have shown my wife that I think I am infallible when it comes to discerning God's will. Second, it would have undermined her trust in my leadership and her security in my love. How many complementarian men damage their marriages for the sake of not appearing weak?

Extreme egalitarians might say that Lisa should have just gone out and gotten on the pill whether I liked it or not. After all, who am I to make decisions involving her body? But this, likewise, would have undermined trust and damaged our relationship. How many egalitarian marriages die because someone chooses independence over "mutuality"?

Lisa and I have not used contraception since that time, and by God's grace, we did not continue to have babies every sixteen months. Alexa, our youngest, was born three years after Bethany, and she is now seven years old. Far from being pressured to have babies she didn't want, Lisa has largely been the one longing for more, and we've been praying for years that God would bless us with a fifth child. I am happy to report that we are finally expecting again, and we couldn't be more delighted.

When I first told this story, I didn't intend to write this much about our reproductive decisions. I'm grateful that Lisa is willing to let me share such personal details on such a public forum. I hope that by doing so, and giving a little more context, I've cleared up at least some of the misunderstandings of that previous post.

Authority, Power, and Control

2008-08-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

In a recent comment, I stated that I want to combat the mistaken notion that authority equals control. In other words, I believe it is possible to have authority without being "authoritarian" and "controlling". In response, both an egalitarian and a complementarian contested that notion. The egalitarian basically argued that authority always leads to controlling behaviors, while the complementarian questioned whether it is inconsistent to make a distinction between authority and control. It would appear, therefore, that we need to clarify some terms.

Note that I am not trying to deal with Greek terms which are typically translated as "authority," "power," and "control"; I am merely trying to make sure we mean the same things when we use these English terms.

The Oxford American dictionary defines authority as "the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience" or "the right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another." When we use the term "authority," we are speaking of the right to do something, to make a decision, or to give an order and expect it to be followed. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, "By what authority" he was teaching in the temple (Matthew 21:23), they were essentially asking him what "right" he had to teach.

The dictionary defines power as "the ability to do something or act in a particular way" and "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events." Thus, where authority has to do with "rights," power has to do with "ability."

Is it possible to have authority without power, or power without authority? Absolutely. In ancient Israel, David had authority as king, while Absalom quietly secured the power of popular support. Similarly, Ahab had the authority as king, but his wife Jezebel was the one with the real power. A church may have pastors and elders in official positions of authority, yet essentially be run by some member of the congregation who has the power to influence decisions. In a marriage, regardless of how "authority" is divided, one spouse may have all the "power" in the relationship. I think that we can say with some certainty that "authority" does not equal "power".

The dictionary defines "control" as "the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events." As such, control and power are largely synonymous. Yet "control" connotes the successful exercise of power. If I lose "control" of my car, it is not for lack of "authority." I am licensed to drive, and therefore have the "right" to operate an automobile. Neither is it for lack of "power." I am physically able to drive, I have the knowledge of how to drive, and I have years of experience doing it. If I lose control of my car, it is because I have failed somehow to exercise my ability to drive.

Control can be positive or negative depending on the kind of control being talked about. "Self-control" is listed among the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23). An elder is expected to keep his children "under control" (1 Timothy 3:4 NASB; literally, "in obedience"). In English, "losing control" is always seen as a bad thing.

Yet there are also negative forms of control. To be "controlling" is to attempt to control everything another person does, says, or thinks. A "control-freak" is someone who wants to control people or things he has no authority to control. While "losing control" is always bad, "releasing control" is usually seen as good. It implies that someone who previously had "control issues" is no longer trying to control that which should not or cannot be controlled.

When I wrote that it is a mistake to equate authority with control, I was using "control" in this negative sense of being "controlling." In other words, I was asserting that one can be in authority over someone else without trying to control everything the other person says, thinks, or does. I am under the authority of my employers, but I am grateful that they don't try to micromanage everything I do. Though I am constrained by their authority to pursue the priorities and accomplish the tasks which they designate, I am free to offer my input, take personal initiative, work the way I work best, etc.

In English, we recognize the distinction between proper authority and those who misuse their authority. We refer to the latter as "authoritarian." I think the connection between authoritarianism and controlling behavior is clear, but in that case we're dealing with the misuse of authority and a sinful form of control.

With respect to marriage, male supremacists ascribe absolute authority to the husband: that is, he has the right to tell anyone in his household to do virtually anything. This is indeed dangerous, yet even absolute authority may not lead to "control" (in the sense of "controlling"), if he does not also have the "power" to enforce his will. Remember, it is "power" which "tends to corrupt" and "absolute power" which "corrupts absolutely." Absolute authority, combined with absolute power, will almost certainly lead to abusive forms of control.

Complementarians ascribe absolute authority in marriage not to the husband, but to Christ. Neither do they (at least theoretically) give the husband absolute power. Rather, complementarianism asserts that the husband has limited authority in marriage, and by extension, limited power and control. Complementarians may differ as to how this actually plays out, what kind of authority the husband actually has, and in what ways that authority is limited, but they all agree that it is limited in some way.

Egalitarians assert "equal" or "mutual" authority in marriage. Egalitarians may differ as to how this actually plays out, and they still have to deal with the proper division of "power." Again, it is "power" which "tends to corrupt," and even in egalitarian marriages, one spouse may wield emotional, financial, or other forms of power over the other. Thus, the absence of authority does not necessarily equal the absence of control.

Whatever their differences, both comps and egals agree that Christ-like love is the best restraint against abuses of authority and/or power within marriage. We likewise agree in condemning the unhealthy "control" of one spouse by another. Perhaps if we stop confusing the meaning of terms like "authority," "power," and "control," we can avoid much of the confusion which so overshadows the things about which we agree.

Lessons from a Spaghetti Jar

2008-07-31T20:16:00.000-07:00

In a recent comment thread, someone pointed to an interview with a complementarian woman who describes how submission to her husband plays out in every day life. Some of the things she lists include:

Responding to the priorities he has established in the realms of caring for the home, such as cooking, cleaning . . . and any other tasks he delegates to me.
Regularly sharing my “to do” list with him and asking him if anything should be removed or added, which items are his priorities for me to do, etc.
Providing companionship in ways that are meaningful to him. In our marriage this includes things like getting up early to have breakfast with him, not only so I can prepare it for him but also because he appreciates spending a little time with me in the morning.
It also includes joyfully greeting him when he comes home at the end of the day, relaxing with him when he desires to relax together (even if my ‘to do’ list beckons), giving him my attention when he wants to talk (even if I am tempted to be distracted by something else).

When asked what was the biggest surprise to her about marriage, she wrote:

I never anticipated how many times we would disagree on small things, mostly matters of preference, and how I was not at all entitled to have my own way on these things just because they were small, or just because they fell under the category of home management, or for any other reason. (Just to give you an idea, I’m talking about dumb little things like how long to store an opened jar of spaghetti sauce in the fridge before it gets thrown away.) My husband might make a decision at times based on my input, but he’s not obligated to do this.

What are we to make of this woman's perspective on submission? One egalitarian wrote, "I think the clear implication is that she looks after the home in every way and she is not entitled to make a decision about how long the spaghetti jar stays open in the fridge." A complementarian then responded with an alternative understanding: perhaps the husband threw out the spaghetti jar without consulting her about it, she got upset, and later realized it wasn't a big deal. When last I checked, the discussion of the spaghetti jar is still ongoing.

The spaghetti jar incident illustrates the challenges of the complegalitarian debate in microcosm. When personal experiences are shared, we inevitably view them from the outside looking in, and there is a world of context which we have not been given. Yet the temptation to draw conclusions about these personal experiences is overwhelming. Our minds are designed to interpret new information as well as to receive it, and so we immediately take the story and view it through the lens of our own presuppositions.

Is it possible that the spaghetti jar incident gives us a window into a marriage where the husband micromanages the wife? Certainly it is. Much of what this woman wrote makes me squirm, because if her husband is demanding that he be able to review her to-do list and decide when food should be thrown out, this couple's understanding of headship and submission needs some serious modification.

On the other hand, if these are not things her husband requires, but things which she does voluntarily in order to bless him and show her love to him, her description of what submission looks like becomes much less uncomfortable. My wife often asks me about her plans for a given day, not because I require it but because she likes to use me as a sounding board and because she wants to know if I have something that will affect those plans. Likewise, I usually check with her before scheduling something. In a good marriage, this kind of stuff has more to do with courtesy and unity than with control.

Getting back to the spaghetti jar incident, is it plausible that the husband simply threw something away that he thought was bad and she was the one with the control issue? I don't see why not. Conflicts in marriage often arise as the result of little things that one spouse or the other gets frustrated over.

So it could be that this woman or her husband merely has a pet peeve about wasting food, or it could be that he obsessively inspects the cupboards like the husband in Sleeping With the Enemy. Both are plausible interpretations, but only one of them (or perhaps neither of them) is true. The point is that we just don't know for sure. Before the "spaghetti jar incident" becomes a permanent part of complegalitarian lore, maybe somebody should contact this woman and ask for more detail about who did what with the spaghetti!

Much like the story of the spaghetti jar, the Bible passages we see as relevant to the complegalitarian debate are open to interpretation, and there is a lot about the context of these passages we just don't know. Both sides tire of the other acting as if its own interpretations are self-evident, and rightly so. In reality, each camp's interpretation of a given passage may be more or less plausible, and the jury is still out on which one is true. Perhaps neither camp has it right! This is, again, why we need to make the effort to listen to one another, question our own interpretive assumptions, and do our best to "step into each other's shoes." If we can read this much into a passing reference to a spaghetti jar, what are we reading into the Scriptures?

What bugs each side

2008-07-30T11:41:00.001-07:00

I want to add to David's preceding post. I think I'm seeing more clearly what it is that bugs each side (not that there are simply two) in this debate the most.

It bugs complementarians when people connect them with abuse, subordination of women, etc.

It bugs egalitarians when people suggest that they are not "biblical" or are working from a feminist agenda.

I'm sure I've over-simplified, but these are themes that I see coming up time and time again on this blog.

I wish that neither side would call themselves the "biblical" position, or at least I wish that each side would say "We believe our position is biblical, but we fully recognize that the other side believes they are more so." Of course, there are extremes of each position which are unbiblical, in the sense of subjugating, demeaning women, or of dismissing the value of men in women's lives, etc. But we must be careful not to caricature people when they are truly attempting to be biblical and follow Christ in the lives, marriages, churches, etc.

We can't resolve differences unless we quit thinking of the other side as unbiblical, when the other side is trying to be faithful to Scripture as they understand it. I know, for a fact, that there are complementarians and egalitarians, both, who do so.

Why don't we, on this blog, work even harder to stop judging the other side, and try to listen to each other, what each side believes supports their position.

No one has a monopoly on spirituality nor sin.

And it's not "all relative" either. I'm tired of hearing that, if you disagree with one position then you are accused of believing that "it's all relative".

Engaged in Different Conversations

2008-07-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

The comments on my recent post about gender were really enlightening to me. I'm realizing that much of the difficulty complementarians and egalitarians have in communicating is that we're each engaged in different conversations.

It seems clear to me that the fundamental issue with most egalitarians is the eradication of gender-based hierarchies in the church and in the home. I know, I'm displaying a penetrating grasp of the obvious!

But here's the thing. Complementarians are not primarily concerned with maintaining gender-based hierarchies, but with resisting a multi-faceted attack on what they regard as biblical understandings of masculinity and femininity.

In the aforementioned post, I expressed my surprise at how some egalitarians tend to minimize gender distinctions. I made no statements about one gender being more fit to rule another or to make decisions or to fulfill certain roles. Yet that was immediately where most of the egalitarians who commented on that post took the discussion. I was thinking of gender distinctions in a context of facilitating communication and interaction between husbands and wives, but the assumption among many was that I was trying to build a case for male rule. To counter any such tactical maneuvering, several egalitarians responded by downplaying gender differences or by saying that whatever differences exist, they are irrelevant to the conversation.

But which conversation are we talking about? The egalitarian conversation about the evils of gender-based hierarchies, or the complementarian conversation about what it means to be male and female?

Now, please understand me, I am not pretending that complementarians do not assert that leadership in the home and in the church is in some respect reserved for men. We do. But the driving concern for most complementarians is not the narrow question of who is supposed to lead, but the broader question of gender identity and how that plays out in relationship.

Let me also say that I am not asserting that egalitarians are not concerned about gender identity or that they don't focus on that broader question. They certainly do. But at the very least it seems fair to say that they are far less interested in making gender distinctions, and more than a little suspicious that such distinctions might be used to bolster some notion of hierarchy.

For the rank-and-file complementarian, the primary evil to be resisted is a feminist culture which has distorted gender and assaulted the family. For generations, men have systematically been told that their masculinity is a problem to be solved, that they have nothing unique to contribute, that women can do everything they can do and can probably do it better. Conversely, women have been told that working outside the home is more glamorous, rewarding, and fulfilling than working in the home and raising children, that men are brutes who want to take advantage of them, and that dependence on a man in any form will ultimately lead to bondage. Yet in spite of these pervasive cultural assumptions, popular culture continues to traffic in sexual stereotypes, women continue to be exploited in a seemingly endless variety of ways, men have become increasingly childish or churlish, and families have become alarmingly fractured. In short, half a century of feminism has done little to solve the problems it has tried to address.

Personally, I look at the failure of feminism like I do the failure of communism: both fail because they do not take the reality of human nature into account. Communism failed because it removed the worker's incentive to work, and it relied on the innate integrity of government officials to redistribute wealth fairly without abusing their power. Feminism, likewise, fails because it works against, rather than with, the reality of gender differences.

At its heart, complementarianism is an attempt to offer a Biblical antidote to the distortions of feminism, to promote a vision of "manhood and womanhood" which frees us to relate to one another in accordance with our own masculinity and femininity. It is a sincere attempt to be counter-cultural and Biblically based.

Whether or not complementarians succeed at being counter-cultural and Biblical is clearly open to debate, but I hope this helps to clarify the conversations most complementarians are interested in having. We're not talking about gender distinctions and complementary "roles" as some clever way to justify male leadership, but as a solution to the current morass of gender confusion.

Egalitarians, on the other hand, tend to zero in on the singular question of equality in the church and home, and they see anything short of full functional equality as fundamentally unequal. Consequently, when complementarians gravitate toward other questions, it may look to an egalitarian like an attempt to change the subject or to create oblique justifications for hierarchy. The egalitarian therefore tries to sidestep what are perceived as flanking maneuvers and to refocus the discussion on hierarchy. In doing so, they give the complementarian the distinct impression that egalitarians are operating from an essentially feminist perspective.

The more I listen to the arguments and perspectives presented on both sides of this debate, the more convinced I am that each group is engaged in a different conversation and motivated by different primary concerns. As each tries to steer the other back to the issues they regard as central, each gets the mistaken impression that the other is being unfair and stubbornly refusing to listen. Just as husbands and wives must work through countless misunderstandings in order to learn to speak one another's language, it would appear that comps and egals must do the same.

Making Distinctions, Part 2

2008-07-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

Between Submission and Submission

Or perhaps, Submission vs. Submission. Now that I've said that husbands can submit to their wives without biblical violations, I can't let that fly without making another important distinction, the distinction between the kind of submission a husband should have to his wife and vice versa. I tend to agree with David's thoughts in an earlier post that men and women are created differently and that those differences need to be respected (and I would also add NOT exploited) in how spouses submit to each other.

I've commented earlier that the question for Complementarians is not how much submitting should be excercised, but what kind. In his Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem makes the case that the role of a wife includes a unique kind of submission that wives should afford their husbands that isn't replicated in any other type of relationship. I see nothing wrong with that. After all, my husband only has one wife--me--and logically should receive a unique and designated kind of love and respect (and deference) from me that I don't show to anyone else.

Likewise, a husband should show his wife a unique kind of love and respect (and submission) toward his wife that isn't replicated in any other relationship either.

Is this submission "mutual?" Yes. Is it equivalent? Definitely not. But what is submission anyway? Even in defining submission within the marriage context, there are varying connotations. Complementarianism holds that men and women do not require and are not made to require the same kind of submission from each other, but do require the appropriate submission from each other. Even Egalitarians seem to use the word 'submit' a little differently when referring to whomever is doing the submitting. Again, the issue is about the nature of submitting, not how much or how often or to what degree one should submit to the other and if the other should reciprocate in equal quantities. I realize that this is a rather broad generality, and I think scripturally it is meant to be.

To throw a little more perspective onto things, imagine if wives always contested their husbands. Imagine if husbands continually ignored their wives. (Do we really need to imagine?) Now we can understand why Paul would spend time addressing the marriage relationship in scripture, for it appears that it was because wives were not submitting to their own husbands that Paul makes his declarations.

Perhaps this is where I should have started from the beginning. There is plenty of fear and suspicion to be had without a clear understanding of the motivations of the Apostle Paul whenever Christians talk about any kind of submission. We still have a long way to go to reach clarity, but I hope my making a distinction here contributes in some small way.

Making Distinctions, Part 1

2008-07-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

In a previous comment way back somewhere (I can't find it now), I ruminated about the possibility that in our debating over roles and the meaning of roles, we might be skipping over some important distinctions in the frenzied tossing about of concepts back and forth.

After much private ruminating, I think have enough text for a series. I won't consider this a work of academic proportions, as I didn't engage in extensive research and won't have a barrage of citations. However, as something to chew on, I hope it passes muster.

Between Complementarianism and Patriarchy
As I see it, ground level complementarianism simply states that there are divinely purposed roles for men and women to function in the family and in the church (yes, some roles not being swappable). Patriarchy can be seen as an extreme form of complementarianism, but I believe that its characteristics are less an extension of Complementarianism and more like Complementarianism's 'cult,' like the Jehovah's Witnesses are to Christianity(1). Therefore, I find much about patriarchy's views on complementarian principles objectionable.

1. Husband/father headship. Complementarianism simply gives the husband/father the role of representative leader that carries a unique accountability to God (Genesis 3). With that role logically comes a certain amount of authority. Complementarianism does not place the husband over the wife in terms of authority but logically maintains that deference be given to him because of his position. Is this a "priviledge?" If it is, it is a slight one and one not without narrow limits. This is not male hierarchy or male superiority any more than it is female inferiority.

Patriarchy seeks to centralize all authority to the head position and expands its reach into areas of life that minimizes the other figure in the marriage and home, namely the wife. Patriarchy views wives as means to the husbands' ends. From this point of view comes all the examples of husbands micromanaging (to put it nicely) their wives' lives for the purpose of making husbands' lives fulfilled and convenient. This is neither biblical nor justifiable. Scripture gives to the man a wife as a helper. Nowhere does the Lord God call her a maid, a butler, a servant, a tool, and certainly not a slave. As my pastor once preached as well, "Marriage is not to make you happy; it is to make you holy." Indeed, God commands the man to leave his home (meaning his familial identity) and cleave to his wife, yet patriarchy insists on the husband making the wife conform to his leanings and identity. One could more biblically state that the husband should be the one conforming more to his wife's identity instead.

What does the position of head contain? A man has the responsibility to make sure that what he and his family does is right in the sight of God, simply put. He is the one that has to answer for the collective state of his household; this doesn't mean that he speaks for his wife as an individual, but for both husband and wife as a unit.

2. One flesh unity in marriage. Complementarians and Egalitarians both agree that husband and wife should act together in building the character of their marriage and family. Patriarchy seeks to make this task univocal rather than in unity, and since authority is centralized in the husband, he then might find himself deciding things that he likely has little wisdom to give, like how many babies his wife should bear, what clothes his wife should wear, determining the occupations of his children beforehand, etc. The result is clearly not one flesh unity, but forced conformity (as discussed above).

3. Eve was created to be Adam's helper/helpmate. Complementarianism acknowledges that Eve wasn't just any female, but Adam's wife, pointing to a relationship between the two that existed the moment she began to exist. Outside of this relationship, who Adam and Eve were to each other would have been meaningless. Similarly, as Complementarians apply the Adam & Eve theme to the rest of humanity, it only makes sense in a marriage relationship that a woman is her man's helpmate. Therefore, there cannot be any patriarchal generalization that females in society are helpers to males in society. Thus, it is not wrong for women to hold positions of civic authority over men and similarly not wrong for women to have authority over men in the church provided that their authority does not violate a more foundational principle of 1 Tim. 2:12 (that women cannot have authority in church over their own husbands).

4. Wives are to submit to their husbands. That 'wives are to submit to their husbands' does not conversely mean that husbands are not to submit to their wives, yet this is precisely what patriarchy implicitly holds. (Oh, perhaps husbands may submit to their wives, but in patriarchal terms, such submitting must be done only if he wills or desires to submit. Pathetic.) A wife's submission is to God first and to her husband second and that submission to her husband is because of her submission to God. I am not now going to kill wifely submission with a thousand qualifications, so please don't misunderstand when I say that when a husband is sinful in his treatment and demands of his wife, her obligation not to sin is greater than her obligation to submit to her husband, so a wife should not feel compelled to obey the will of her husband in those times. Let me be redundant for clarity: a husband's sin need not be his wife's sin as well.

5. Should a husband submit to his wife? We've asked this question before on Complegalitarian without making this particular distinction, so allow me to make it here. Patriarchy says 'no.' Complementarians should correct the question to read "When should a husband submit to his wife?" As stated above, the mandate that wives are to submit to their husbands doesn't negate the fact that husbands need to listen and submit to their wives--when?--on the occasions that they should submit to their wives. This is what "mutual submission" means to me. It isn't 50/50, because 50/50 can be unjust by disregarding the nature of the subject.

First of all, these are not contrary statements. One may now try to accuse me of using an argument from silence, but I'll remind us that it is legitimate when we would expect circumstances to otherwise contradict the silence. In a couple of instances in scripture, we see married women acting without any explicit direction from their husbands in action very much in accordance to the providence of God.

Example 1 - In Genesis 2:1-4, Moses' mother orchestrates the saving of Moses' infant life by putting him into the basket in the river and then directing Miriam to watch over the baby.

Example 2 - To Moses again, his wife is the one that decides to circumsize their sons without his intitial knowledge.(Exod. 4:24-26) If patriarchy (the kind we're talking about) were the case, we would expect to see a reprimand of some kind of both women for making decisions that their husbands had to comply with--ahem--submitted to. But we don't. Instead, we see Yahweh's implicit approval of these women as having acted in accordance to His will when (especially in the latter case) the husband had not.

As a Complementarian, I see many problems with Patriarchy and agree with many of our Egalitarian commenters about them. However, I do object to the blurring of Complementarianism to share Patriarchy's views in the same way and in the same relationship.

(1) The most striking similarity about this comparison is the psychological irony that both Jehovah's Witnesses and Patriarchalists seem to play out, that all things so done by the ruling authority in the name of loving God and loving family actually end up robbing God and family of the love they truly ought to receive by substituting a false love of cultish control and demanding compliance in all things.

Bruce Ware, the Danvers Statement, and Kunsman's Thoughts on Framing Hierarchy as the Only Means of Transcending Marital Contention

2008-07-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

[I recently read a provocative essay on the Danvers Statement and Bruce Ware's recent comments about abuse, written by complementarian Southern Baptist, Cindy Kunsman RN, BSN, MMin, ND. I have copied her essay in full, below, with her permission, because I think it raises some fascinating questions and observations that (may or do) merit concern. You can find Cindy blogging at Under Much Grace, and can read the essay in it's original form here: Losing Sight of Our Purpose (Part IV): The Subtle Implications of Legal and Moral Code. ---Molly]

Losing Sight of Our Purpose (Part IV): The Subtle Implications of Legal and Moral Code

A recent, previous post discussed CBMW and the “Rationales” of the Danvers Statement, a document that seeks to elucidate what the Bible teaches concerning gender. Just as thethe laws of a society codify the beliefs of that society and thus reflect its morality, so I believe that CBMW hopes to set a standard for the church concerning the issues of gender. Though this body does not establish formal laws, it presumes to seek to clarify Biblical standards. They define specific moral standards through their teachings as a guide for conduct, much like civil laws do within society.

Individuals within a society indirectly understand the relationship between law and morals and often confuse it, believing that the law, at least to some degree, defines what is moral. Civil laws, though they are based upon a moral code, cannot be assumed to be moral within a pluralistic society. The abortion laws present an excellent example of how the law has a subtly misleading and detrimental effect on beliefs over time. People infer that because the act is declared legal (not punishable under civil law), the act gains a level of legitimacy as a result, making previously clear moral distinctions ambiguous.I believe that Bruce ware’s irresponsible, provocative statement in a sermon at Denton Bible Church paves the way for just such a subtle misunderstanding by those with abusive tendencies:

"And husbands on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that
threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the
ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to
become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought
to as men in their homes and in churches."

He follows quickly with a statement that Christians should follow the ideal plan that God designed, that of a husband who loves his wife as Christ loves the church and a wife who submits to her husband with gladness. As with many of Ware’s similarly provocative teachings, he believes that his declaration of his ideal model somehow relieves him of the consequences of his earlier statement. The mention of abuse in this manner not only sensitizes the listener to rightfully and logically anticipate abuse in some cases, but it also alleviates man of full responsibility for his actions.

Not unlike a law which people subtly misconstrue to represent right moral action, this statement lends a subtle quality of legitimacy to spousal abuse by making man’s immoral action contingent upon the performance of another. It externalizes man’s locus of control, legitimizing a “victim of circumstance” mentality that “passes the buck” to the woman, subtly implying that woman is morally culpable for man’s action. The husband’s headship becomes at least partially if not completely contingent upon his wife’s submission. The demands of ideological hierarchy reduce Christian marriage to a legalistic, cause-and-effect arrangement of keeping score.

Here are my specific contentions with the subtleties of Ware’s statement:

1. It creates a false dichotomy of choice between either aggression or passivity.

Ill feelings towards one’s spouse to such a great degree as to move a man to abuse are inevitable consequences within all marriages. The Danvers Statement and Ware himself both frame the relationship between husband and wife as a naturally contentious one, defined in the Fourth Danvers Affirmation: “In the home, the husband's loving, humble headship tends to be replaced by domination or passivity; the wife's intelligent, willing submission tends to be replaced by usurpation or servility.”

There are no VIABLE alternative courses of action available to fallen man apart from these offered both by Ware and the Danvers Statement. I assert that the enmity that God put between the serpent and the woman has been divisively redirected to the position between husband and wife. We are told that the fallen man has options, but the likelihood of opting for an unviable choice other than aggression or passivity is highly unlikely by definition. There are multiple logical fallacies at play in this assumption.

2. The act of abuse is not strongly defined or qualified to be unconscionable.

Though the Christian ideal is presented after the justifiable choice of abuse for man in a sinful state or less than ideal circumstances, this does not eradicate the concept from the mind or understanding of the listener. Abuse is a pejorative and word that creates emotional arousal.Imagine that you hire an attorney to write a threatening letter to someone, but you do not want to be perceived in a negative light. By stating that you never intended for the letter to be sent, you can push the limits of the situation while also enjoying all the benefits of the threat. The recipient has the option of trusting your profession of intent, and in some cases might be required to render to you the benefit of the doubt, or the alternative aspect of simply accepting the receipt of the letter as conveying the intended threat.

I believe that this represents a similar situation wherein intentional vagueness and implied assumption subtly convey anticipated aggression, but Ware can also deny his own culpability for encouraging the negative choice. He did not directly advocate abuse, but he did imply that it was an inevitable consequence in some instances.I believe Ware relies on these same techniques to claim that the Father in the Trinity is not of greater authority than the Son, but he applies the loaded language terms or slogans of “ultimate” or “supreme” to differentiate the Father’s authority from that of the Son. He then claims that “ultimate” and “supreme” do not equate to “more” or “greater” authority for the Father in comparison to the Son, but these unique and novel definitions are not honest and true to the common, accepted understanding of the terms.

3. The Christian ideal of hierarchy serves as the only viable means of transcending the inevitable and unavoidable contention within the husband-wife relationship.

Even the regenerate Christian man must work to master the Christian life through devotion, discipline, study and experience. Until such mastery of the Word of God can be obtained, the Christian experiences that which is common to all marriages, regardless of whether they are Christian. So the Christian can and likely should anticipate the justifiable desire to abuse, because both Ware and Danvers frame the elements in this manner. This is a double bind.

4. CBMW teaches that the woman’s role is a passive role, but then presents this passive (and characteristically feminine) role as the only viable alternative to abuse.

The passive/feminine choice suggests an option that is highly undesirable if not repugnant to the man. In terms of gender stereotype, the role of abuser or aggressor provides the most masculine option of the two presented. Ware offers no additional examples of an assertive response, so the listener is encouraged to choose the violent option as opposed to taking no action whatsoever. This is a double bind.

5. Man MUST choose a corrective course of action in order to manage his wife’s undesirable rebellious behavior.

His role as leader anticipates action, but the responsibilities of his hierarchical role as family leader REQUIRE a response. He is compelled to choose some form of discipline in order to fulfil his own God-ordained gender role within the marriage, but he must also act in the best interest of his wife by correcting her. And the wife is required to submit.

6. The paradigm assigns the first cause of the husband’s frustration to the wife by requiring submission, but this is contradictory.

If the marriage relationship is characterized by the heated tension between these two parties, it is incumbent upon the woman to somehow avoid the first cause to circumvent the potential for abuse. The paradigm requires that she somehow miraculously act against her own character within marriage (while very human like the husband mentioned previously, lacking mastery of the skills that will provide for her own safety). She is deemed as both the causative agent as well as the curative agent. The greater burden of culpability for the man’s actions falls to her and not the more powerful man of authority. She becomes his external locus of control. This is a double bind.

My Concerns in Broader Perspective:

The Southern Baptist Convention does not condone spousal abuse, and as we noted in a previous post, it makes strong, definitive statements against it. I also do not believe that Bruce Ware added his statement into his teaching as a guidepost and primary point. But he did convey that message whether or not he intended to do so, and abusers and victims alike will understand the indirectly spoken and unwritten rules. He was merely echoing the the Fourth Davnvers Affirmation in the context of the example of a marriage, idealistically presuming that born-again Believers would be restrained by the Holy Spirit of Love.

But the statement was uttered, and I am not surprised. It is a logical conclusion of what Danvers presupposes, an assumption that is not Biblical.What would you call that which seeks to break asunder what God has joined in marriage and called blessed? Considering the enmity that God placed between the serpent and the woman as a component of the proto evangellian (the first promise of our Redeemer), I would call it that which is motivated by the influence and spirit of “anti-Christ.”

And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and
her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” Genesis
3:15

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Matt
12:34

“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which
cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man... But those things which proceed
out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.”Matt
15:11-18

“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that
which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth
forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth
speaketh.”Luke 6:45

“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of
life.” Prov 4:23
The above essay was written by Cindy Kunsman and can be found in full by clicking here.

Equality or Uniformity?

2008-07-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

The other day, Wayne linked to an "open letter to egalitarians" in which a complementarian blogger asked a series of "semi-pragmatic" questions about how egalitarians would react to various situations. The questions he asked all seemed to be aimed at teasing out of egalitarians what they see as appropriate masculine and feminine behavior: stuff like whether the husband or wife should confront a burglar in the house, whether an egal woman would be offended if a man held the door for her, etc.

At first, I thought these questions were largely silly and focused on issues which are not really at the heart of the complegalitarian debate. As Molly wrote in one of the comments on that post, egalitarians do not necessarily deny gender distinctions and are capable of recognizing some form of "complementarity" between the sexes. However, as I read many of the responses by those who identified themselves as egalitarians, I was disappointed to see a vision of the sexes which seemed to blur, minimize, or otherwise gloss over gender distinctions. Perhaps the complementarian blogger's questions weren't as far afield as I had thought.

Wayne then asked his own series of "true or false" questions, the first of which being, "Complementarian husbands do not treat their wives as equals." One commenter responded, "I still think equal but different in practice means unequal. but I do know couples who are comp in theory and egal in practice, so I don't want to go overboard with the generalisations." I think this egalitarian was trying to be magnanimous, but there are two things about this statement that bother me.

First, there's the bit about "comp in theory and egal in practice," which I hear tossed about by egals quite frequently. Basically, this kind of thinking tells me that I have no way of really being heard or taken seriously. If I describe the way I treat my wife, and egals conclude that I really do treat her as an equal, then they will simply conclude that I am inconsistent: that I am a "practical egalitarian" who fancies himself a complementarian. My perspective is that treating my wife as an equal is absolutely consistent with my complementarian understanding. Will that perspective be taken seriously, or summarily dismissed as a logical impossibility?

Second, there's that statement about "different but equal" practically meaning unequal. This is another egalitarian assertion I hear quite often, and it is effective because it has the ring of a truism. After all, in American history, "separate but equal" was the stated goal of racial segregation in education. The idea was that you would have black schools and white schools, and that students at each would receive an "equal" education. The reality of course was that white schools got most of the funding, so practically speaking, there was gross inequality in the quality of education received by black and white students. The idea that husband and wife can be regarded as "different but equal" therefore sounds like another thinly-veiled attempt to justify oppression.

The question I have is this: "Are men and women not different?" If the answer is that we are different in any real sense (beyond genitalia), then there must be some sense in which we should strive to be "different but equal."

Are our only options to downplay our differences in order to pursue a meaningful equality, or to emphasize our differences to the point where equality is impossible? Feminism has tried for generations to minimize the differences between the sexes, to claim that most perceived differences are the result of nurture rather than nature, and to push for a sexual uniformity which is problematic on many levels. At the other extreme, male supremacists exaggerate the differences between men and women, claiming that men are innately superior. As mediating positions between these two extremes, egalitarianism and complementarianism must both come to terms with how we can recognize and celebrate our differences while also affirming our fundamental equality.

In our home, I regard both myself and my wife as equally created in the image of God, so that we have the same intrinsic value and the same fundamental humanity. We have likewise both equally been corrupted by the Fall, so that our capacity for depravity runs equally deep. We therefore have equal need of a Savior, and equal access to salvation in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:28, 1 Peter 3:7). In Christ we have equal access to the Father, so that he hears and answers her prayers as readily as he does mine. In Christ we are both indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and so are equally capable of discerning God's will. When it comes to our essential nature and our relationship with God, my masculinity counts for nothing.

Yet this recognition of our fundamental equality does not mean that I treat my wife (or any woman, for that matter) the same way I would a man. As sexual beings, Lisa and I are built differently, we think differently, we react differently to the same situations. She sees things to which I am blind and vice versa. It is this recognition of profound differences between us, differences rooted in nature as well as nurture, that drives us to try to understand and learn from each other. It drives us to become interdependent, variously leaning on each other's strengths and compensating for each other's weaknesses. Ultimately, we recognize the differences and that affects the way we treat one another.

We need to be careful not to confuse "equality" with "uniformity." Personally, I cannot embrace any vision of gender which tells me that my desire to protect and provide for the women in my life is somehow arrogant, sexist, or paternalistic. I cannot embrace a vision of gender in which treating women as equals practically means treating them as nothing special. I know not all egalitarians promote such a vision, but it surprises and saddens me that many seem to.

True or False?

2008-07-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

1. Complementarian husbands do not treat their wives as equals.

2. The Bible teaches that males should lead, in the home and church.

3. Egalitarian women are offended when men open doors for them.

4. Egalitarian husbands never abuse their wives.

5. Egalitarians believe that we should have unisex toilets in public places.

6. Women start more cults than men do.

7. The Bible teaches that women are more easily deceived than men.

8. More complementarians abuse their wives than egalitarians.

9. Egalitarians believe that women should be able to pastor churches.

10. Adam was created first, so Eve (and all other women since her) should obey their husbands.

UPDATE, July 26: I have written fairly lengthy responses to these ten points. Feel free to respond to them, if you wish to continue discussion on any of these points. Thank you to each person who has commented on this post so far.

Open Letter to Egalitarians

2008-07-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

David Kotter of the CBMW Gender Blog has blogged about Mike Seaver's open letter to egalitarians. As usual, public comments are not allowed in response on the Gender Blog, however you can privately email your comments to David. Or you can comment on Mike Seaver's post.

You Don't Have to Exercise Your "Rights"

2008-07-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

Jesus once said to his disciples:

Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13:12-17, TNIV).

In this passage, Jesus does not deny his authority over his disciples, but he makes it clear that he has laid aside whatever "rights" he might claim in order to serve them in profound humility. He then tells us that we will be "blessed" if we follow his example.

Complementarians assert that husbands have the "right" to expect their wives to submit to them, and egalitarians vehemently challenge any such notion. We can, and do, debate these assertions ad nauseam, but whatever theological position we adopt, our course of action as Christians is clear: we are to follow Christ's example of laying aside whatever "rights" we may legitimately claim.

For example, a recent comment thread has focused on the question of how a wife should respond when her husband wants sex and she doesn't. If they're arguing and she's feeling hurt or misunderstood, should she yield her body to him when her heart is not in it? Should she feel guilty for feeling used, objectified, or even violated? Scripture clearly teaches that husband and wife both have authority over and rights to each other's bodies, and that we should not deny each other except for a limited time and by mutual consent (1 Corinthians 7:3-5), but how do we live that out in a way which does not result in frustration and pain?

This is a very real problem, and I am tempted to deal with the ethical dilemma which the wife faces in such circumstances. But my focus here is on the cause of the dilemma: namely, the husband's demand for sex. Eliminate the husband's demand, and you largely eliminate the wife's dilemma.

Now, I'm not saying that the husband should never want sex; only that he should never demand it. According to the Bible, I have the "right" to my wife's body; but I want more than just her body. I want her passion, and I'll never get that by making demands. Consequently, if I exercise my "right" to sex, I strip sex of everything which makes it most enjoyable.

Note the degree of self-interest in that last paragraph. It is my desire for passionate sex which drives me not to demand perfunctory, half-hearted sex. I know that if I am a gentleman and I wait until my wife is just as passionate for me as I am for her, what we experience together will be well worth the wait. A gift which is given freely and enthusiastically means far more than one which has been coerced in some way.

The same thing applies to other forms of submission. When Lisa and I don't see eye to eye on something, I might be able to "get my way" by playing what I call the "submission trump card." But would I really be "getting my way"? I want more from my wife than grudging resignation to some unilateral decision. So I don't make unilateral decisions, and I never play the "submission trump card". Rather, I seek unanimity, I ask her perspective, I encourage her to pray that God would reveal his will to both of us. I'll talk more about how we make decisions in another post, but for now, my point is that whatever my "rights" may be, wisdom and love dictate that I set those "rights" aside for the sake of not riding roughshod over my wife.

Complementarians and egalitarians differ over what they see as the husband's and wife's proper "rights" and "roles." I do think it is important to consider those questions, because we need to understand the proper framework in which to interact with each other as husband and wife. Yet whatever conclusions we come to about rights and roles, Christ's example is clear: we are to lay aside our "rights" for the sake of washing one another's feet. His promise is that we will be "blessed" when we do.

Will Positive Examples Be Taken Seriously?

2008-07-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

In a recent thread, several people gave accounts of marriages which are problematic in some way. There were stories of several so-called "complementarian" marriages in which the wife is not able to make any decision without running it past her husband. There was the so-called "egalitarian" marriage in which the husband showed no impulse to protect, support, and cherish his wife in her time of need. There were seemingly "model" marriages which can only be described as whitewashed tombs. And, of course, there were the horror stories of abuse. After several of these negative examples, one commenter opined that she wishes she had more positive examples to cite. Another replied with the following hopeful plea:

Maybe there are some folks with "beautiful marriages" reading this who could lead the way?

On the whole, the institution of marriage is in a state of disarray today. Divorce, marital infidelity, and domestic violence are rampant, and there does not appear to be much appreciable difference between Christians and non-Christians. Anecdotally, we all know plenty of broken homes and miserable marriages; and we can think of few marriages we can genuinely describe as "beautiful." Beyond that, we all know too many families which appeared to be "perfect" but which suddenly seemed to implode. Who can blame us, therefore, if we grow cynical and wonder if any marriage is truly happy?

Then there are our suspicions that no marriage on the other side of the complegalitarian divide can really be happy. If I claim that my "complementarian" marriage is a happy one, at least some egalitarians will dismiss that claim. "Of course you think it's happy! You're the one with all the power. But your wife is likely in a state of quiet desperation." If my wife were to write in and tell you what a wonderful marriage she has, those same egalitarians will assert that she is somehow deceived, ignorant of what true freedom and equality feels like, afraid to speak out, or trying hard to convince herself that she really is happy. Conversely, if a male egalitarian talks about how wonderful his marriage is, many complementarians will suspect him of just settling for the easy way out and abdicating his leadership. Or if an egalitarian woman describes her happy marriage, those same comps will suspect her of somehow "running the show".

All of these suspicions and stereotypes can make it difficult to cite positive examples of marriages that work. But it seems to me that comps and egals would find much common ground if we actually began talking about how to have a successful marriage. I have long contended that there is not much visible difference between a good complementarian marriage and a good egalitarian marriage. I have read moderate comps and moderate egals say essentially the same thing in the comments on this blog. I have also read comments by hardline egals who cannot accept that it is possible to have a complementarian marriage in which the husband leads without becoming authoritarian; and comments by hardline comps who cannot accept that an egalitarian marriage can function well without one person clearly being in charge.

If we spend all our time reacting to the hardliners, we'll do little to improve the state of Christian marriage. But if we set aside our assumptions and prejudices long enough to consider some positive examples, I think we'll find there's much about which we agree.

I've been married to Lisa for fourteen years. During that entire span, I've been blessed to be able to work at home, and during almost that entire span, she's been a stay-at-home mom and homeschooler. That means that she's had to deal with my presence more than most women who have been married twice as long. Yet rather than smothering each other or growing tired of each other, we have become incredibly close.

We've certainly had our conflicts, and some of them have gotten ugly. There have been times when we seriously wondered if our marriage would survive. Thankfully, those times have been relatively few and far between. And when we've had them, we've eventually swallowed our pride, repented, and worked through them.

Aside from my relationship with Christ, my marriage to Lisa is my greatest source of happiness. I regard being her husband as my highest "calling" and most important "vocation." I've seen that by the power of the Spirit, a husband and wife truly can die to self and live for each other, and that when they do, they can experience rich delight and inexpressible joy.

Lisa and I have forged what we see as a "beautiful marriage" in a complementarian framework, and I would love to write about how we interact with each other on a daily basis, how we work through the times when we don't see eye to eye, and how we view authority and submission. I wonder, however, if any such discussions will be taken seriously. Will the examples I give be regarded as a valid working out of complementarian principles? Or will they be viewed with suspicion and summarily dismissed? Am I able to reach across the aisle to find common ground upon which to build "beautiful" Christian marriages? Or is my only option preaching to the choir?

Preaching to the choir certainly is easier, but that's not why I participate in this blog.

CBMW on abuses of male headship

2008-07-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

On this blog we often discuss ways that men abuse women. The CBMW strongly supports the idea of male headship in the home, which they equate with male authority or leadership. But CBMW opposes abuses of such male leadership. There is an important article on the CBMW website by Steven Tracy titled I Corinthians 11:3: A Corrective to Distortions and Abuses of Male Headship.

After reading Tracy's article, feel free to comment on it here.

As a personal note, I continue to question equating headship with authority. I do not find any biblical passages which teach that a biblical "head" has authority over its body or person over whom it is the head. We have mentioned this many times on this blog, but feel free to comment on it, as well, here.

A Little Levity

2008-07-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

In the interests of lightening things up a bit and hopefully giving every one here a good laugh, I hereby submit the following anecdote.

Today I was at a book display and I picked up When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy by John Piper. While I was reading the blurb on the back cover a salesman told me how much the book had meant to him personally. He also told me that he is the worship leader at his church, and as such he felt uneasy about carrying that book around. After all, some people might wonder why their worship leader would not "desire God" and be full of joy.

I then told him about a similar experience of not wanting people to see a book I was reading.

When I was in college, I was trying hard to understand these often inscrutable creatures known as women. I had read a good book by Elisabeth Elliott called The Mark of a Man, and decided to see if she had written anything else on the subject of men and women. The book I found was entitled Let Me Be A Woman, and it was basically a series of letters to her engaged daughter.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and felt it was even better than the book she had written for men. However, carrying the book around was indeed problematic. After all, what are people supposed to think when they see a young man walking around with a book entitled Let Me Be A Woman?!

Stepping Into Someone Else's Shoes

2008-07-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

As a kid, my mother always encouraged me to try to "step into someone else's shoes." In other words, she wanted me to try to see things from someone else's perspective, even if—or rather, especially when—I didn't agree with them.

Since I've become a Christian, that impulse to try and understand where other people are coming from has been reinforced by my belief in the image of God, the sensus divinitatus, and the radical depravity of humanity. The Bible teaches that we are all created in the image of God, yet we are all radically and pervasively sinful. Consequently, every one of us has the capacity to commit the most heinous acts of evil. Yet God's restraining power, our innate "sense of the divine," our conscience, and various external constraints help to keep our sinfulness in check, so that none of us is as completely wicked as we have the capacity to become.

The resulting combination of Biblical theology and motherly wisdom has led me to look at the victories and failures of other people and to do my best to understand and learn from them. I do this because of Paul's injunction in 1 Corinthians 10:12: "If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!"

In the recent discussion of abuse, I've naturally had in mind the people in my family who have suffered and endured abuse of various kinds. By God's grace, I have never personally had to suffer the kind of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse which some readers of this blog have endured. Yet each of those forms of abuse has been suffered by various members of my family, and so I am well acquainted with the devastating and ongoing effects of such abuse.

One of those family members endured continual emotional abuse and occasional physical abuse from her husband for more than fifty years. Trying to understand the internal workings of that fractured relationship has taught me much about the ambiguities of abusive relationships.

First, I've tried to put myself into this woman's shoes. In spite of being encouraged to divorce her husband by pastors, friends, fellow church-goers, and even her own children, she chose to stick it out until death finally took him earlier this year. Some of her motivations for doing so were unmistakably Christ-like and incredibly noble. Yet as far as I can see, she also chose to stay because of her own insecurities (most of which are the direct result of being told how worthless she was for so long). Then there are the motivations which could even be described as selfish or sinful. There's an element in which her identity became tied up in the martyrdom of her marriage. She may have been afraid that if she left him, she would shatter her sense of identity, lose the sympathy and admiration of others, and render meaningless the years of abuse she had already endured.

Similarly, her coping mechanisms were a mixed bag of godly and fleshly reactions. On the one hand, this woman showed Christ-like devotion to her husband, even when his declining health would have given her the perfect opportunity to neglect or to punish him for a lifetime of mistreatment. On the other hand, she developed a pattern of passive aggression which helped contribute to the ongoing strife. She also had a habit of telling people outside their marriage about his latest stream of invective and insult. Given what she endured, who can blame her for such things? Yet if everything that does not come from faith is truly sin (Romans 14:23), it is not unreasonable to conclude that these fleshly coping mechanisms, while understandable, are nevertheless sinful.

Lest I be misunderstood at this point, let me reiterate that my relationship with this family member is an extremely close one. Words cannot express my admiration and affection for her. Yet as I have tried to understand her reasons for staying and her methods of coping, I have come to the conclusion that some of them were godly and some of them were sinful. Some of them were noble and others were pathetic. We can learn much from her victoriousness in suffering, but we can also learn much about what not to do.

As for her husband, I also try to put myself in his shoes. I try to understand how a man could be so ugly to his wife and yet remain faithful to her for fifty years. This man was intelligent, personable, at times charming, at times selfless and sacrificial, a good father to his children, and a doting grandfather to his grandchildren. He could be tender to his wife moments after he told her she was stupid, and he appeared to be completely oblivious to the contradiction in it all. I have seen abusive relationships where the man would be intentionally sweet and tender in order to keep his wife confused, hopeful, and loyal. I can honestly say that this man seemed to show no such cunning. He simply seemed blind to the fact that there was anything wrong with the way he treated his wife!

How does one begin to understand such a man? One can gain insight from his childhood and upbringing. One can see how his failures in business and his feeling that he was never given the respect he deserved fed his need to tear down his wife. One can look at his wife's various sins and shortcomings and see how they could certainly be a source of frustration to him. Yet ultimately, none of these things can be used to justify his cruelty. Whatever the contributing factors, this man repeatedly chose to surrender to his sinful nature and to abuse the woman he had vowed to love and cherish.

When I try to stand in this man's shoes, I can only go so far. As much as I may be able to sympathize with his various frustrations in life, his abusive actions are an absolute mystery to me. I come away from the exercise of standing in this man's shoes with the following conclusion: our capacity for sin is profound, and "there but for the grace of God go I."

Sadly, this is just one of the abusive relationships in my family, and so I have other sets of shoes I've had to try on. In every case, considering these relationships fills me with rage toward the abuser, hurt for the abused, and a poignant sense of how tangled and destructive these relationships really are. There is no easy way to "fix" or undo the hurt which has been done. It seems the best I can do is to learn what I can so as to avoid inflicting such hurt and confusion on those I love.

I've written all this not because I enjoy talking about it, but because I think the way comps and egals discuss the subject of abuse is generally unhelpful. We make such sweeping, dogmatic assertions about it that we continually misrepresent the awful, confusing reality of it. When someone speaks of abuse as a sinful response, we assume they mean that the abused is therefore to blame for their abuse. To correct that, someone else will speak as if the victim in an abusive relationship is practically without sin, which of course is an oversimplification as well. Then of course there are those helpful barbs which go something like, "if you teach this then you are complicit in the abuse." The end result is that we talk past each other about an incredibly difficult and painful subject, engendering animosity and suspicion on both sides.

Frankly, we can do better, and we can start by trying to stand in each other's shoes. If we stand in the shoes of the people with whom we disagree, we find it harder to assume that they are intentionally twisting Scripture and teaching falsehood. If we try to understand their motivations for teaching as they do, we may just conclude that they are merely misguided and confused rather than deliberately malicious and cruel. And if we reach that point, we may just be able to reason together from Scripture without becoming abusive ourselves.

What Can We Say About Abuse?

2008-07-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I tried to give us a little perspective regarding Bruce Ware's recent comments that men sometimes respond to women who challenge their authority by becoming abusive. I hesitated to write such a post for fear that some might charge me with encouraging or otherwise enabling abuse, but I hoped to offer some balance to the discussion. I have to say that most of the comments on that post, including those which took issue with it, were charitable and civil. I sincerely appreciate that.

In this post, I'd like to talk a little more about the issue of abuse to consider what we can and cannot legitimately say about it. I hope that by doing so, I can help both sides to better understand each other.

Let's start with what we agree on.

First, both complementarians and egalitarians would agree that physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse are always sinful and never deserved. I don't care how difficult, obnoxious, hateful, and downright evil someone is, no Christian should resort to beating or berating such a person. I can find nothing in the Bible which prescribes that we give someone a good beating or tongue-lashing. (Okay, there are those proverbs about rods for the backs of fools, but we're not told to wield those rods ourselves.)

Consequently, no abusive husband can justify his violence by pointing to his wife's obstinacy. Whatever her sins may be, if he resorts to abuse in any form, he is sinning and will be answerable to God for such sin.

As I wrote yesterday, abusive men do not merely abuse when they feel challenged. Very often, they abuse even when their wives are walking on eggshells trying not to cross them. An abusive husband may abuse merely to remind his wife that he is in charge, or because he is irritated that she submits to him out of fear rather than out of love (how's that for irony?), or simply because he feels he has no control over other areas of his life. The terrifying reality of abuse is that the abused has absolutely no control. Even perfect compliance is no guarantee that the abuse will stop.

We must therefore work hard to make it clear to battered women that they must get out! Not only is it necessary for their own safety, it is actually the loving thing to do. It is the only way their husbands will have any hope of being made to see their own sin. Accepting abuse does nothing but reinforce it, and taking a beating is not the same thing as Biblical submission.

Now, having said all that, I think we need to be careful not to go to the other extreme and pretend that abusive men abuse in some kind of vacuum. An abusive man certainly does not need to be provoked in order to resort to abuse. But can he be? Is it never the case that he resorts to abuse in response to some sinful action on the part of his wife?

Please understand me, I have already said that no act, no matter how sinful or ugly, justifies an abusive response. Nevertheless, abuse is sometimes a response to sin on the part of the abused. It is an illegitimate and damnable response, and it is never just a response, but there is a sense in which we can legitimately speak of it as being a response.

It is foolish to pretend otherwise, and I think it's here that egalitarians sometimes do battered women a disservice. One of the reasons battered women stay in abusive relationships as long as they do is that they frequently blame themselves for provoking their husbands. They know when they have been selfish, or manipulative, or spiteful, or obstinate; and in their guilt over their part in the conflict they excuse their husbands' abusiveness! Such women do not need to be told that they have "done nothing wrong." Frankly, they're not likely to believe it. Rather, they need to be told that no matter what they've done wrong, it does not excuse their husbands' abusiveness.

As I see it, complementarians like Ware need to go the extra mile to make sure they don't give the impression that abuse is always a response to some prior sin on the part of the woman. Conversely, egalitarians need to stop implying that abuse is never a response to some prior sin on the part of the woman. The reality is that as sinful men and women, we are all prone to wound without provocation, to respond in sinful ways when provoked, and to lash out whenever we feel out of control. Such a vicious cycle of sin begetting more sin can only be broken by the power of the Spirit and the "more excellent way" of Christ-like love.

Dangerous Comments

2008-07-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

I suppose I'm naive, but I've been genuinely surprised by the outcry concerning Bruce Ware's recent remarks that men sometimes respond to women who challenge their authority either by being abusive or by becoming passive. Obviously, egalitarians will object to Ware's assertion that husbands have any such "authority" over their wives, but most criticisms I've seen of Ware's statements don't seem to focus on that. Instead, Ware is being accused of implying that spousal abuse is always a response to the wife's prior sin of disobedience or rebellion.

As far as I can see, Ware neither stated nor implied any such thing. Ware, in laying out the complementarian view, stated first that male headship was part of God's creation design. No surprises there, that's standard complementarian teaching. He then laid out how in sin, that "good and wise" plan gets overturned:

What happens in sin is that that very wise and good plan of God, of male headship, is sought to be overturned as women now, as sinners, want instead to have their way instead of submitting to their husbands, to do what they would like to do and really seek to work to have their husbands fulfill their will rather than serving them. And the husbands, on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescing, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches.

Now, has Ware really said anything that scandalous here? He has said that in sin, God's design for a harmonious male-female relationship (which he sees as requiring male headship) gets overturned. Women seek their own way and want to use their husbands for their own ends. Apart from Ware's assumptions of male headship, would any egalitarian disagree that it is sinful for a woman to deal with her husband in such a self-centered and self-seeking manner? Ware then says that men have two different sinful responses to such "threats to their authority." One is to become abusive; the other is to disengage and become passive. Apart from the "threat to authority" language, can any egalitarian honestly tell me that this is not an accurate description of how men tend to behave in a difficult relationship? Examples of men who bully and men who check out are legion, and Ware describes both approaches as "sinful."

The real problem with what Ware said is that his words can easily be misunderstood to mean that all marital problems ultimately can be attributed to women failing to submit to their husbands' "authority." Do I think Ware meant to imply that? No. But it's certainly not hard to infer it from the way he spoke of the woman's sin first and then spoke of the man's sinful "responses."

Does an abuser only abuse in response to some "threat to his authority"? Absolutely not. An abusive man will abuse both when he feels challenged, and when the abused is trying hard to comply with his every whim. Abuse always proceeds out of the abuser's sinful nature, and can never be justified, or even ameliorated, by pointing to some sin in the abused.

Some have claimed that Ware's statements are "dangerous," because they will be used by abusers to justify their abuse. Of course they will. But then, an abuser will use anything he can to justify his abuse. Do we really think that an abusive man, sitting next to his wife at Denton Bible Church, upon hearing Ware's statements quoted above, would honestly think to himself, "Hey, it never occurred to me before now that my abusive behavior is merely a response to my wife's sinfulness! Here I've been feeling unnecessarily guilty when really it's all her fault!" No sinner needs to be told to blame someone else for his or her sin! That's one thing we all come by quite naturally.

The reality of physical, mental, and emotional abuse is indeed horrific. It is sickening to realize how prevalent it is, how often it is swept under the rug, and how prone we are to turn and look the other way. The Bible has been used to justify every conceivable manner of abuse, and countless people have misunderstood it as encouraging victims to allow themselves to be victimized. We might therefore conclude that the Bible is "dangerous" and discard it, but that is not a valid option for any of us who believe the Bible to be the Word of God. So we must do our best to understand what the Bible teaches, and to correct what we believe to be misunderstandings of what the Bible teaches—especially when it comes to the subject of abuse.

If, therefore, God's Word can be misunderstood as justifying abuse, perhaps we should extend just a little grace to Mr. Ware. He certainly could have been more precise and more careful in the way he phrased his comments. And he certainly could have made it more clear that abuse is a heinous sin which can never be justified in the sight of God. But it is probably safe to assume that Mr. Ware had no intention of saying anything "dangerous" or "hurtful" to women.

Bruce Ware on wife abuse

2008-07-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

Dr. Marie Fortune recently blogged about wife abuse and statements by former CBMW president, Dr. Bruce Ware. Fortune quotes Ware:

"And husbands on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches," Ware said recently from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas.

Fortune also quotes Ware's conclusion:

Ware's conclusion is quite limited: "He will have to rule, and because he's a sinner, this can happen in one of two ways. It can happen either through ruling that is abusive and oppressive--and of course we all know the horrors of that and the ugliness of that--but here's the other way in which he can respond when his authority is threatened. He can acquiesce. He can become passive. He can give up any responsibility that he thought he had to be the leader in the relationship and just say 'OK dear,' 'Whatever you say dear,' 'Fine dear' and become a passive husband, because of sin."

Fortune responds:

Talk about dichotomous thinking. Actually, there is a third option for men and women in heterosexual marriage. What about those thousands of marriages that I know, like my parents' for fifty years, where two adults stand side by side as equal partners, faithful to each other and their children, living out Gospel values everyday?

What we have here is a professor of theology who clearly knows nothing about wife abuse and domestic violence and someone who is willing to expend enormous energy blaming battered women and excusing batterers with a high gloss, labored theological rationalization.

The "sin" is "that he [male humans] will have to rule," i.e. the man's desire to rule over and dominate another human being and his willingness to use force and violence to accomplish this.

What do you think? Is Dr. Fortune taking Dr. Ware's words out of context? Does she have an important insight?

judgement upon women rulers

2008-07-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Complementarian blog reader Sam C asks a good question about a verse of the Bible. Read his comment on this post, think about it, and respond in the comments to Sam.

Complementarian Bruce Ware: Women Recieve Salvation By Faith Through Works, and More

2008-06-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

Does Dr. Bruce Ware Accurately Represent

the Way that Jesus Thinks of Women?

Dr. Ware, member of the complementarian group CBMW's council and professor of theology at SBTS, has made waves with a recent sermon he gave. While some complementarians are outraged, Ware's sermon is being hailed by others, like Denny Burk, associate professor at Criswell, as,

"...one of the finest, most succinct presentations of the Complementarian point of
view that I have ever heard.
[Read the full post here, comments section is long, but certainly interesting, including many female complementarians voicing disagreement with Burk and Ware].

To this amateur theologian, I wonder why Ware's sermon doesn't trouble Christ-followers on many fronts. This post deals with what I see to be two of the most disturbing, two points that I imagine those from both complementarian and egalitarian camps may be able to agree are of concern:

Ware: Male Abuse Is Often a Response to Female Disobedience

Ware said that one reason men abuse their wives is because wives do not respect male authority. To quote from Ware's sermon,

"And husbands on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that threat
to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways
men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become
passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as
men in their homes and in churches..."

Ware believes that sin, for a woman, is not obeying her husband. According to Ware, a husband's abusive behaviour often stems from a natural outrage at the woman's insubordination. Though Ware says he does not agree with abuse as a proper way to handle conflict, he is authoritatively teaching that male abuse often arises as a response to the female's "sin" of not being submissive to the male. His teaching seems to imply that the worse sin is female insubordination.

Commenting on selected passages from the first three chapters of Genesis, Ware said Eve's curse in the Garden of Eden meant "her desire will be to have her way" instead of her obeying her husband, "because she's a sinner." [quoted from the Ethics Daily
article, here].

Considering we claim to follow a God who talks about the righteous being those who help the weak (from being abused by the strong), this teaching of Ware's seems to be more in line with the reason many Muslim women are covered from head to toe. In the Taliban's estimation, the women incite the men to sin---the man's sin is a lesser offense, and if we can get the women in line, the men will sin less---therefore women are required to wear burqas. Though it is certainly different in some ways from Taliban-esque thinking, Ware's logical construct for explaining the rational behind much of male abuse is sorrowfully not.

A blog post by a former Complegalitarian writer, further discussing concerns with Ware's comments about abused women, is here.

Ware: A Woman's Salvation Comes By Faith Through Her Obedient Womb

At this point many readers familiar with abused/abuser dynamics might be wondering what could possibly be more disturbing than Ware's comments about why many men abuse. Well, this. In his sermon, Ware essentially preaches a doctrine of salvation by faith through works for women. If Ware is correct, it appears that a woman's salvation hinges upon her active acceptance of complementarian gender roles. Quoting again from the Ethics Daily article,

Ware also touched on a verse from First Timothy saying that women "shall be saved in childbearing," by noting that the word translated as "saved" always refers to eternal salvation.

"It means that a woman will demonstrate that she is in fact a Christian, that she has submitted to God's ways by affirming and embracing her God-designed identity as--for the most part, generally this is true--as wife and mother, rather than chafing against it, rather than bucking against it, rather than wanting to be a man, wanting to be in a man's position, wanting to teach and exercise authority over men," Ware said. "Rather than wanting that, she accepts and embraces who she is as woman, because she knows God and she knows his ways are right and good, so she is marked as a Christian by her submission to God and in that her acceptance of God's design for her as a woman."

Cindy Kinsman, who has spoken in the past her concerns with the rise of "hard" complementarian thought in the Southern Baptist church (and who was soundly criticised for it), voices concern about Ware's recent sermon, saying,

For women, interpreting I Timothy 2:15 in the manner Ware describes (apart from
the full context of the verse, even withstanding previous complemenarian
teachings) argues that God mediates salvation to women differently, through
certain works in combination with faith.

In Closing

That Ware spoke at a large much-lauded conservative church is troubling. That he is praised for "rightly and clearly representing complementarian doctrine" is more troubling. I will admit, after wading through all of these posts, to sitting here with a heavy heart. If this is not an adequate representation of complementarian doctrine for you, and if you live in circles where Ware is considered an authoritative leader, please make your voice heard.

Complementarians: Answers to These Concerns?

2008-06-23T00:55:00.001-07:00

Sam at Unrelated Ramblings recently posed some critisicm to complementarian thought (please read the full post here).

To sum them up in my own words, his two main thoughts are:

1. What purpose does it serve to have women as inferiors in a spiritual/church/home hierarchy when they appear to be quite capable of leadership in every other area?

2. Upon deciding on hierarchal gender roles, doesn't the then required "practical details" list (regarding the specifics of what women can and can't do in the church and home) seem a little more like the old covenant and less like the new?

When I was a complementarian, my answer to the first question would have been that it doesn't matter if women are or are not capable---that's not the point. The point is that Christ and His Church must be exemplified in our lives. That we may have to sublimate parts of ourselves in order to do that is a small sacrifice compared to what He did for us. God's word is to be obeyed, when we feel like it and when we don't, and the Bible clearly says that women are not to be leaders in the home or the church. Whether or not it "makes sense" from our vantage point is beside the point.

My former answer to the second comment would have been that it only feels like "law" if you don't grasp the liberating spirit of it.

My answer now to Sam's post is something along the lines of, "Good post, brother." I think the criticisms are valid points worth talking about, primarily because I think that the complementarian interpretation of Scripture is one optional interpretation, not the only one, therefore questions like Sam's have a lot to do with how a person like myself gauges which interpretations are more likely to be accurate. It's an interesting thing---looking at optional interpretations and judging them. Worth discussing.

Also, especially in the interest of fairness, it would be nice to hear other complementarian responses to Sam's questions besides the ones I imagined myself giving. Thoughts?

1 Peter 3: 1-8 (Complementarian and Egalitarian Interpretation)

2008-06-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

1In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives,
2as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.
3Your adornment must not be merely external--braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses;
4but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

5For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands;

6just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.
7You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

8To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;

9not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.
[NASB]

How does this passage inform or effect your faith-and-gender framework?

Are Women Allowed To Teach Men?

2008-06-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

Today's post at the christian feminism blog is titled Are Women Allowed To Teach Men? The post raises a number of questions:

Does this verse [1 Tim. 2:12] bar women from not only teaching the scripture to men, but from holding ANY teaching position in which they would instruct men? Should christian women be forbidden from becoming college professors at co-ed universities? Or public speakers? Should they be judges, senators, governors, or hold other political offices? Should christian women hire male employees if they run their own businesses? Extreme complementarians would assert that christian men should NEVER put themselves under a woman’s authority in any setting: church, home, business, school, and so forth and that christian women should never aspire to obtain any position in the church, home, and business, political, and educational realms that would make them the “boss,” “expert,” “teacher,” “instructor,” or “leader” over men.
On the other hand, more moderate-complementarians claim this verse only applies to church and home. So, a woman may teach a man math or history in a college class, but cannot teach on scripture in a co-ed adult bible class. She may “share” a testimony or encouraging word, but cannot teach, pontificate, or expound upon the Bible. A woman may have authority over her male students or employees, but never in the church. In the church, she may never hold any position other than backup singer, nursery worker, or jobs ministries made up solely of women and children.

If you are interested in this topic, read other posts in the series on that blog. And feel free to comment here or on at blog.

HT: JK Gayle

What is the Debate between Complementarians and Egalitarians really about?

2008-05-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

John Hobbins, who has become a friend, has begun posting a series on the Complementarian-Egalitarian divide. The first post is titled What is the Debate between Complementarians and Egalitarians really about?

I recommend John's series for readers of this blog. John always makes me think, whether or not I agree with him or not. He has a heart for true Christian spirituality.

UPDATE: Suzanne McCarthy is also blogging on this topic.

Married to One of "Them" (A Complementarian and Egalitarian in Marriage)

2008-05-24T00:14:00.000-07:00

It's akin to a Republican and Democrat being married, but only during an election year. In actuality, they have it much easier. Politics, while we all love our political issues, are not what spin the globe. Whereas the way a married couple chooses to give structure to their relationship is an area much more integrated with all aspects of life. A comp/egal marriage is probably more akin to a Christian/Jewish marriage. So can you love when you live in two totally different paradigms?

Yes.

But it's really hard.

I'm an egalitarian (now) and I was married to a complementarian. I'm not really sure to what degree that is, but I will say that in the name of sacrificial love, he's chosen to refuse the path of forcing me to comply with a complementarian outlook and instead has opted for a, "we choose together" framework for our home. For my part, I was more than willing to let him continue to "have the final say," for the same reason that he wasn't willing to have it anymore. Because of love.

It's been two years since I quit patriarchy (otherwise known as hard complementarianism). There was a lot of pain there. By the time I "quit," I was a deeply wounded person (much of it not due to patriarchy but due to the sharp fundamentalist outlook I'd had on other big issues, etc). A huge part of my pain was the fact that because I was female, I'd not allowed myself to be "myself." In the "Biblical Womanhood" world, godly women are quiet, submissive, teachable, and for God's sake, never behind a pulpit. I stuffed myself into the box I thought God wanted me in for so long, I started thinking the world was a wooden square. Then God, in His good grace, let the box drop.

Once I was free, I'll admit it. It took me awhile to relax. Like an abused caged wild animal newly set free, most any movement made me flinch and anything that looked like a cage wall made me snarl and run. I am seeing that change. A lot of things that were triggers before aren't triggers now. I'm a lot less sensitive than I was. Things inside of me are healing---or at least are beginning to. I can look back and not just see pain, but see how the pain started, how it grew, and see how much of it was my own fault. And, good grief, a lot of it was so my fault.

I know things are hard for my husband, or so I would think, what with the two of us seeing things so very differently. We were already opposites from the get-go, and this just magifies it. He's having to operate in a way that he may not feel is well supported in the Scriptures. And that is hard for me. It troubles me to think that he has to lay down his Scriptural views because mine are different. Actually, it more than troubles me. I really don't like it. And yet I can't/won't go back to a hierarchal structure. Call it an allergy to cages (and maybe I'll grow out of it, but right now, it's strong). Even if I would, he refuses, because he would know it was violating what I think Scripture says. Maybe he's wrong for folding. Maybe he should demand to lead. Maybe I'm wrong for not being willing to fold myself. I don't know.

Honestly, in the long run, I think the one doing the most sacrificing is my husband. And as for an answer to that, I don't see one and neither does he. So we live together and learn to love, without a sound structure that we agree on for this marriage of two totally different people. Sometimes I wish we had one. At other times, I'm glad that we don't. We are forced to work together, forced to learn to listen, forced to learn to grow in ways that, when all is said and done, can only make Christ shine brighter. I lay down the theological/emotional/intellectual guns that I so badly want to fire, and in the process, find a person on the other side of the divide---my husband, a person that is deep, that is delightful, a person that God calls beloved. At those times, I think that seeing things the same way is over-rated.

So how do you do it, and/or how have you seen it done? How do two different paradigms live in union? Is Christ big enough for both?

*Edit Later to Add:
This post prompted a great discussion between my husband and I tonight as to "where we're both at" on the comp/egal continuum, and so now I have to take back some of the above. He's currently uncomfortable being called a complementarian. (Last time we talked about this was 4-5 months ago, when he expressed views that landed at a fairly soft-comp sort of place). So I have to take a lot of the personal nature of the above post back, and yet I still think the subject of the post itself is something worth talking about.

The Top Three

2008-05-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

What are the three most convincing passages in Scripture that have helped to form your current position (of Complementarian, Egalitarian, or somewhere in the middle). Please feel free to explain/expound.

Ravi Zacharias on the equality between the sexes

2008-05-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

At the University of Michigan in 2003, Ravi Zacharias fielded a question about gender roles and equality from a student in the audience. Here are the video clips of his repsonse. The relevant portion spans the tail end of the first video and the first portion of the second, so keep in mind that the first question that appears on the video is not a mistake. You will just have to watch past it (or ffwd through it) to get to the right one and then finish it with the second clip. My apologies for the technical difficulty.

Bottom line, according to Zacharias, the question of roles is not a question of equality. We should not confuse these two ideas when we are talking about the marriage relationship and the nature of each gender.

Discuss.

Women in Church Leadership

2008-05-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

I just discovered this blog series, posted last month on Women in Church Leadership. Ray, the pastor blogger interacts well with Bible passages on this divisive issue.

In the third post of the series Ray writes:

As I mentioned in my last post, when asking a question of Scripture, it is important to weigh the evidence for and against as on a scale. In this case, there is surprisingly scant biblical evidence that absolutely, categorically prohibits women from being leaders in the church. And yet, there is surprisingly substantial biblical evidence that supports women in church leadership. To be honest, there is no place in Scripture where it says, “Women should be able to become ordained ministers,” mostly, as I have mentioned before, because our contemporary model of ministry has become overly professionalized and is often far from the grass-roots, Spirit-blown movement of the early Christians.

He then discusses specific Bible passages that describe women spiritual leaders.

Ray concludes:

Many conservative Protestants sideline women from participating in the gospel ministry of the church, allegedly on biblical grounds. In actuality, the biblical evidence tips in favor of women leaders. More than likely, their prohibition stems from incomplete theology (errant biblical interpretation and application) or just tradition. On the other side of the coin, many liberal Protestants gladly endorse women as ordained “ministers,” completely unhinged from the witness of Scripture. They mistakenly claim that women have the “right” to assume leadership in the church by invoking a modern paradigm of inalienable rights that is foreign to the world of the Bible.

Throughout these posts, I have explored the relevant biblical texts and conclude that, based on the weight of Scripture, women ought be included in the various leadership roles of the church. There are many qualifications required of Christian leaders found in the New Testament, including faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, sound doctrine, concern for the flock, and the Spirit-activated gifts for ministry. But being a man is not one of those qualifications.

Read Ray's posts and then comment, either on Ray's blog, on this blog, or on both of them.

What EgalitariansTotally Do NOT Get (About Complementarians)

2008-05-03T00:15:00.001-07:00

Call all Complementarians (near and far, hard or soft, dashingly hot or strangely odd)! You are cordially invited to share your thoughts about what you feel Egal's totally don't get (about your beliefs) in the comments box below.

This is an opportunity to share what it is you think most Egalitarians fail to understand when it comes to comprehending your Complementarian framework.

Egalitarians, you are humbly requested to, ahem, "mutually submit" yourselves to the following honor code:

Repeat slowly to self: I, [name here], will not read the comments section of this blog post until I have committed to refrain from commenting in response to this post or the comments it generates, unless---and only unless---my comment is toward a participating Comp and consists of something along the lines of, "Thank you so much for sharing."

Please know that there is no hidden agenda to this post. I'm genuinely interested and think I can learn a lot from this (and have been meaning to get this question written into a post for some time).

"Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively."
— Carl Rogers

Who's the Boss?

2008-04-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

I have recently "met" Paul Burleson and am really enjoying perusing through his blog, VTMBottomLine, as lately it's touching on many egalitarian/complementarian issues. His most recent post, Who's the Boss, hits on one my earlier (badly) attempted questions. I thought I would repost it here, with the particular re-asking-of-the-question in bold:

Who's The Boss?
As I tried to show in my last post, this whole thing of who's the boss?
became an issue between male and female only after the fall and the entrance of
sin. It was never a problem originally because there was only one boss. God
Himself. Then that fiasco that culminated in Genesis 3:16 which is the
description of what resulted between human and divine relationships. Down deep
every fallen individual wants to be in charge of their own life. So the process
of redemption began in time and on earth. [It had already had it's beginnings in
eternity. Redemption is no after-thought with God.]

But, interestingly, God is now working with fallen humanity which
eventually sets up a culture or society that is also fallen. It is within that
context that God works to bring about His plan to restore relationships to their
original plan and purpose.

God accommodates Himself to the culture produced and, in many ways, even
inspires His word [through men and centuries of time] using the words and the
meaning of words that are within that fallen culture. His revelation progresses
to the final word He gives in Christ Himself of course. [Hebrews 1:1] He defines
the full picture of redemption and gives conclusive meaning to all the Father's
plan and purposes that are to be re-established through Grace. ["This is my
beloved Son..hear ye Him."]

This is illustrated well in the account of Israel's desire for a King. They
wanted one. They got one. Saul. You remember that, I'm sure. Later God gave a
better one..David..and the beat went on. Now remember, God's plan and purpose
was always for Him to be their only Sovereign. But fallen culture/society [a
collection of the life strategies of fallen people] produced something other.
Even in a chosen nation like Israel. God worked within a Covenant relationship
with her, for sure, but He had to shape, protect, and even condemn some 'bent
out of shape' relationships with her along the way . But that's where God
worked. Within that structure.

Priests? The same situation. A High Priest was needed to bring about
redemption because of having to work with fallen humanity. Originally, God was
Sovereign, Lord, King, High Priest, Ruler, you name it..He was it to His human
creation. And, ultimately, Jesus would/will be seen as Lord, King, Master, High
Priest. You name it, He is it. The human king is not. The husband is not. The
pastor is not. [The father is NOT the Prophet, Priest or King of the New
Covenant home Jesus is].

In the New Covenant, Grace restores those relationships to their original
intention and, eternity, at His return, will only bring it all home. This must
not be missed if we are to understand the New Testament.

That brings me to the illustration of all I've said that will help us the
most, I think. It is the understanding of Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 against
the backdrop I've just given. It is there [because we unfortunately try to make
a hierarchical interpretation of those passages fit with God's purpose in
creation when it doesn't at all] that major confusion is set up in New Covenant
relationships if we're not extremely careful.

We must remember that in scripture no one is commanded to "subject" anyone
under them. Originally that was not intended and would violate God's plan. [This
is why slavery is so abhorrent. It violates God's original plan and purpose for
humanity although He worked within a fallen culture where it, unfortunately, was
the norm often times. The same can be said of gender slavery.] It is certainly
true that in the New Covenant kind of relationship we have in Christ, [a new
culture/society] because of Grace, that forced subjection certainly isn't
allowed. That would obviously violate the forbidding of such as commanded in
Mark 10:42-44 and other places.

Well then what is it the passages in question [Ephesians 5 and Colossians
3] are saying? That is what we turn to now.In Ephesians 5 and similar places
where there is to a "subjecting" [serving--hupotasso] it is in the middle voice
[Greek] which means to choose to serve. [In English we have the active and
passive but the Greek is more intricate than that.]

For the Church or Body of Christ, it is never by fiat or because of a
demand by someone who is the ruler of someone else. There is but one Lord for
all believers.In fact, this whole section of Eph. 5 is not speaking about
authority or rule at all or even "who's the boss." It is addressing a serving
[subjecting] that is chosen from within the person doing the serving. In
Ephesians 5:21 it is everyone choosing to serve each other. This refers to male
and female, pastor and people, parents and children, anyone who is in Grace.
Remember this is the New Covenant. [The new culture in Christ.]

In verse 22 the word "submit" isn't even there. Verse 22 is connected to
verse 21 [there were no verse/chapter divisions originally, as you know I'm
sure] where it is used for all Christians toward each other as we've said.It is
only then that verse 22 describes the wife's serving of her husband, with verses
25-31 describing the husband's serving of his wife as Christ does the Church,
and all this is an outgrowth of all being filled with the Spirit. [verse 18] It
is this change of heart that comes because of Grace [remember that horrible
thing of Genesis 3:16 where everyone wanted to be the 'boss'] that is being
described and it continues to be described in chapter 6 of children to parents
[a different word is used here] and slaves to their masters.

They were to choose to serve in a different way. From the heart as to the
Lord. The masters were to do likewise to the slaves.Of course there were those
in charge as the parents were of the children [that's why the different word]
and masters were of their slaves.

But, notice, there is a lesser inherent condition where one is in charge of
another because of some unique lacking such as the maturity of children or the
non-freedom of the slaves. If men are to be in charge of women in the
family, what is it that is lacking in the female that makes male authority inherently needed?

There is none.

And in Ephesians 5 or Colossians 3 [or Genesis 1 and 2 for that matter]
there is none indicated. It took the fall for the problem of lording it over to
arise as reflected in fallen cultures. No ruling or authority meant here at all.
It is serving that is at issue here. Not "authority."

The problem seems to stem from the meaning of the word "head" in this
passage. It isn't speaking of "rule" or "authority." It is speaking of
origination or source. If ruling or authority had been intended, the word
[remember His revelation was given in that Greco/Roman culture not ours] "arche"
[archon-Rom 13:3] meaning leader or ruler would have been used. Or even the word
"exousea." [Rom 13:1-2] meaning "authority" would have said it. But the word is,
indeed, "kephale." It meant to them the origination or source. [As God is to
Christ and Christ is to the Church and the man is to the woman.]

In fact, it's interesting to me the scriptures never declare the man to be
the "head" of the family but the wife only. Both husband and wife are the source
[head in the Greek way of thinking] of that family of the New Covenant. But had
the "authority" or "rule" of Christ of the Church or the husband of the wife
been intended other language would have been used. As, for example, in
scripture, [because of their culture understanding it this way] to "rule," the
feet are used metaphorically. "To be put under [some one's] feet." What did
"head" mean to them? As I said...origination or source.

A side note of interest. In Colossians 2:10 we are told [told to all
christians] "In Him you have been made complete and He is the head over all rule
and authority." In verse 15 it is pointed out He, by His Cross work, has
"disarmed all rulers and authorities." So...we are to not allow ourselves to be
judged [a standard set and deemed violated by another] concerning food, drink,
new moons sabbaths or such because, as verse 19 says, all of us are connected to
the Head. [Christ] It is not saying He's the authority over all authorities or
rulers. [Though He certainly is.] It's saying He is the source of all
Authorities that exist. Now He has disarmed all and is the only source [head] of
life, nourishment, [rule and authority too for that matter reversing that
Genesis 3:16 mess] for all His people in the New Covenant established on Grace
in Christ.

It is true that redeemed Christians are living in a fallen culture with
established "rulers" authorities" and will until He returns and are to obey
[serve] them. But it is inside out. It is a heart issue for us. Were we to
operate the Church or family that way, [with rulers or authorities by virtue of
position] we would be bringing our fallen culture into the meaning of scripture
and not be letting scripture alone be our guide. You can see, I'm sure, that I
do not believe the scriptures support a patriarchial approach to the family at
all. You have to bring fallen culture in as a foundation for that kind of view.
The sufficiency of the scripture is where I believe we ought to stand. Where
Christ is our Head [source] AND Lord. [BossThat brings me to say this in
conclusion. The cultural context in which the scriptures were inspired used
language with their meaning not ours.

I've said this ad-nauseam. To us, "head" means "boss" or "leader" or "one
in charge." Not to them. It meant origination or source. It is trying to
interpret the text with our cultural connotations rather than the original
connotation of their language that gets us into hot water with the intended
meaning of scripture, it seems to me.

[A final aside. I've read where someone said, though I can't remember who
or where at the moment, that Aristotle believed the head was the source of male
sperm and it traveled down the spine to the genitals. Plato believed the head
was the seat of the soul which was, in his mind, a seed itself. He often used
'Kephale' to refer to the beginning of a story. Athena is said to have come from
her father's [Zeus] head. No wonder Paul would use 'head' the way he did. It had
the meaning of "source" to them and that WAS the truth God was speaking. Culture
does impact scripture but let's be sure we know how, why, and which one is doing
the impacting.]

This post comes from The VTMbottomline Blog, and is reposted with permission from the author, Paul Burleson. I'm looking forward to the discussion in the comments box.

Musings After an (unwanted) C/E Debate: The Art of Un-Warfare

2008-04-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

I am a part of an email group made up of mothers of many young children and have been for many years. It's a Christian group and, for the most part, fairly conservative--at least, the vocal ones are. Since I have five young children, a resource like this group can be nice, even though five kids is a fairly small family there. Usually, life with my "small" family keeps me too busy to even bother to read through the email digest, but every so often I will, and, once in a while, I will write a post to send in.

Recently, this group was talking about how adult children, especially daughters, are Biblically commanded to stay home until and/or if they become married. Mothers were being encouraged to train their daughters that way, etc, and to beware the dangerous world of feminism. So I wrote a post of polite dissent, using many passages of Scripture to explain my position and mentioning some of the many women in Scripture who did not "home-keep," such as the women who travelled with Jesus, or Phoebe, who Paul had deliver the letter to the Romans.

Many women emailed me to tell me thank you, to let me know that the group has many who are not ultra-conservative and that it's nice to hear dissenting voices. But one woman emailed me more than a few times, letting me know, in that lovely "righteous anger" that we Christians can use so well, that because I disagreed with her position, I was obviously not a student of God's Word, was relativistic, my words were poisonous and she wouldn't read them (though she must have read enough to let me know how horrifically wrong I was), and that I obviously didn't believe Scripture at all.

She closed her final letters, of course, by letting me know she'd be praying for me (you know, that warm "Christian" way of sticking a knife in your rib) and, well, that was that.

What bothered me was the complete lack of logic employed in her responses. She couldn't hear anything I said---and, for that matter, didn't appear to be trying to. She'd formed her interpretational grid and it was water-tight. Not only was it infallible, but it had to be protected: it was dangerous to even listen to any other arguments. She wrote claiming she wanted conversation and asking me to answer a few questions, but it turned out conversation was the last thing we had. People can't have a conversation when one side has their fingers in their ears and then, despite the fact that they openly tell you they will not listen to the answers you gave to their questions, proceed to tell you exactly what you think and why, resorting to personal jabs while doing so.

Urgh. It got me thinking about how dumb we all can be. I was on the receiving end of a wildly whacking combatant (though I didn't even want a fight!), and yet I can think of many times when I did the exact same thing. Did it for God, no less! That was back when my theology was something I had to protect against any dissenting opinions, back when my beliefs about gender were part and parcel with the Gospel, back when I thought our normal/resting position was to be ready to fight instead of ready to embrace.

Good grief. I hope I have matured and I hope I will continue to do so (by the sheer grace of our holy God). I admit, I had the urge to take a stick and whop this particular writer a few times. She said some vicious things about my heart, making huge assumptions about what I must be like all because I did not agree with her. She employed no reasoning skills whatsoever. When it came to listening skills, it was like talking to a stump. And she was so mean! I at least wanted her to know how wrong she was for doing that.

But why? Because I care about what she thinks about me? I'd love to pretend like I was hurt and wounded but, uh, no. I don't even know this woman. What do I care what she thinks? Do you want to know why I wanted her to know she was wrong in her approach? Mainly because I want to have the last word. I want to end the little flurry with the feeling of having thrown the last knife. Which means I'm no different from the attacker. Whether she was right or wrong, she violated what it means to walk in the Spirit by the way she treated me. And I did the exact same back to her.

So what is more important---to be "right" in intellectual belief, or to live rightly? When Jesus was dividing the sheep and the goats, He seemed to think that those who "got" the Gospel---those who showed it by serving the underdog's of the world---were the ones who knew Him, not the ones who knew about Him. Ouch. Knowing about Him (and ramming that down dissenters throats) is a heck of a lot easier.

Sometimes things that the complementarian/patriarchy camp says make my stomach lurch. This isn't their fault: it's just where I'm at. I've had a really bad experience living in the C world. I came out with something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, if that makes any sense. My health is just now pulling itself back together, slowly, in pieces. Sometimes I read a C statement and I want to fire out comments or posts---and do---from that place of adrenalin-fueled reactionary instinct, like a missile gun seeing an enemy and shooting accordingly.

But I am a Christian. Far higher than gender roles (or lack thereof) is the "role" given to all followers of Christ: we are called to walk by the Spirit, to live by the Spirit, to be taught by the Spirit. Like the womb of a fertile woman, I am designed to bear the Spirit's fruit. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Gentleness. Self-control. There is no law against such as these, because the world cannot ever have enough of such things.

But those things go against most of my natural inclinations. They must be born in me through Him, because this branch will naturally wither up on it's own. Far higher than the law of my warring members, which want to stab and thrust and parry (or run and hide, or scoff and criticize, etc), is the Law of God, the Law that says Love sums up the law.

I must give the benefit of the doubt to those I am speaking with: that they love God as much as I do, that they have the right to interpret Scripture differently than I do, and that calling them names or assuming evil motives on their interpretational choices is sheer folly on my part. And sometimes, in order to help me do that, I must remember what it feels like to not be heard, to have assumptions made about my heart all because I disagree, to be put into a box and sealed up. It doesn't feel good. It's not what we were born to be. It's not what I was born to do. Though I do it far too often. Conversation is only conversation in so far as two people are actually taking the time to listen to eachother. I know that I could stand to do a much better job of that.

The Structure of Authority: Heirarchal vs Networked and It's Influence on Our Intrepretation of Gender Roles

2008-04-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

Resonate writer, Len Hjalmarson, recently mused on the Evolution of Heirarchy, discussing how factors like access to technology and information are forcing us to change the way we think of authority structures. No longer do we live in a world where only one person knows what to do----now many people have access to facts that help one decide what decisions should be made and how.

The human world was once a fairly unconnected place and the way "things were run" reflected that. For example, the Old Testament nation of Israel longed for a king, as opposed to the more recent instance in the United States, where "getting a king" was purposely and passionately avoided. The more fluid our communities become, the more we find heirarchal authority structures struggling to fit. Hjalmarson writes

There is paradigmatic shift occurring. Hierarchy limits options because it
limits connectivity, and we live in an connected world. Information that has to
flow from the top down through rigidly defined chains has limited effect.
Information that is randomly distributed and readily available creates
collaboration. These more open structures are by nature empowering and generate
change that works from the bottom up as well as from the top down. And change
and transformation and inclusion are implicit in body life.

Boundaries in traditional settings are used to determine who is in and who
is out. In new communities boundaries are not protective walls but are porous
and become meeting places. In living systems boundaries are where information is
exchanged and new relationships take form. Boundaries .. edges.. are the places
of emergence and the frontier for engagement.

The article compares the New Testament picture of Body life, as expressed in passages like Ephesians 4, with the way the world is transitioning away from heirarchal structures and into more fluid networked bodies.

The networked church has more in common with the life we see in the book of
Acts than does the hierarchical church.

William Bridges writes,“Networked technology takes power from the head of
an organization and distributes it to the hands.”This practice can be tainted
with paternalism. Empowering does not mean giving power to people who had none,
but rather recognizing and freeing the power that is there. When we are “in
Christ” we are already empowered, but frequently our structures have impeded
rather than invited the participation of the gifted community and have thus
constrained the Holy Spirit and limited growth.

How does the above fit within the distinctly different egalitarian and complementarian frameworks, if at all? Is the movement away from heirarchy the result of human rebellion or is it a move into a more sane and beneficial way of organizing social groups? Is a complementarian able to agree with the above perspectives and still be a staunch complementarian, and/or is an egalitarian unable to approve of heirarchal organizational structures at all? And how much of our underlying assumption of what "good authority" looks like (be it heirarchal, fluid, or otherwise) color our interpretation of what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 5 and other similar passages?

Children Mature But Wives Never Do (?)

2008-03-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Wifely submission/subjection doesn't come up in the Ten Commandments (which is interesting, what with the way it's proclaimed by some to be the answer to societal woes). Children are to obey parents in the Big Ten, but wives (and slaves) are not commanded to obey. Apparently, their subjection wasn't important enough to rate inclusion, but why, I wonder?

I would posit that it's because children are in a state of needing someone wiser and older to obey. The obedience of children makes sense: the toddler isn't aware that running in front of the car is dangerous. He needs a shepherd to guide him into maturity.

As an adult, he will respect his parents for what they did for him, but he will no longer obey them as a child. In fact, if things run their course, it will one day be the parents "obeying" the child, as he gently leads them to finely chopped meals and helps them clean themselves when bodily wastes emit.

In otherwords, the obedience of a child is a temporary thing in order for the child to grow into a competant capable adult. Interestingly, this is also how authority in church leadership is defined by Paul, as a temporary thing in order to get those "younger" to a place of equal or greater maturity than that of the leader (see Ephesians 4:11-13).

As is the case with children, are women literally in need of a masculine authority to obey in order to be safe, in order for them to walk in wisdom (whether in the home or in the church)?

If so, when does the woman get to grow into maturity? And why does both the authority of the parent and the church leader act as a tool to aid the "younger" to grow to a place of maturity (and thus the authorities "job" is to work him/herself out of a job, as it were), but the authority of the husband (in the complementarian framework) remain something the woman must always be subject to?

In other words, why does female subjection not seem to make good common sense (to me, anyways) when so many of the other commands do?

The Declaration of Independence excluded women

2008-03-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

According to the CBE Scroll, the authors of the second paragraph of the U.S. Declaration of Independence excluded women when they wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The CBE Scroll says:

The mention made of ‘men’ above refers to both men and women; right? Wrong! When Thomas Jefferson and those who helped him draft the Declaration of Independence wrote of governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, they did not include women. In fact, in 1787 they gave white male property owners over the age of twenty-one the right to vote, and they did not give the same right to women. That would have to wait until 1920.

I assumed, I guess, that "all men" was an inclusive term in the Declaration of Independence. But what the CBE Scroll claims makes sense in light of property ownership, lack of women's suffrage, etc.

Do you think that the authors of the Declaration of Independence included women with "all men"?

Biblical manhood and womanhood

2008-03-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Both complementarians and egalitarians claim that their interpretation of the the Bible is the one that reflects "Biblical manhood and womanhood." Both sides have biblical scholars who present evidence from the Bible which, they say, supports their viewpoint.

Do you feel that it is right for either side to claim the label of being "biblical" with regard to gender issues?

When both sides claim to be "biblical" how does one determine which side actually is?

What does the Bible say?

2008-03-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile I like to summarize some of what I've been hearing in comments on this blog. I'd like to do that now by listing some of the things that the Bible says or ~~does say~~ does not say about the gender issues. When I use the word "says," I am referring to some explicit statement in the Bible that directly says what at least some of us believe. Feel free to correct me if I make a mistake about any of these:

The Bible says that Christians are to submit to "one another" (Eph. 5:21).
The Bible tells wives to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22).
The Bible does not explicitly tell husbands to submit to their wives.
Husbands are instructed to love their wives as Christ loved the church and died for it.
The Bible never says that husbands have authority over their wives.
The Bible never says that husbands are to lead their wives.
The Bible says that a husband is the kephale (~~literally~~ non-symbolic meaning, "head"; there is debate about its symbolic meaning) of his wife.
The Bible says that there is a unity of head and body.
The Bible never says that a woman is subordinate to her husband.
The Bible does not say that women are to "obey" their husbands.
The Bible never says that a woman is in any way inferior to her husband.
The Bible does not explicitly describe differences of responsibility based on whether a person is a husband or a wife.
The Bible says that a woman is not to "usurp" authority over a man or to teach him.
The Bible says that Priscilla and her husband Aquila "explained to [Apollos]the way of God more accurately."
The Bible says that Eve was deceived by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
The Bible says that Adam yielded to temptation in the Garden of Eden.
The Bible says that the ground was cursed after the Fall.
The Bibles says that the serpent was cursed after the Fall.
The Bible does not say that either Adam nor Eve was cursed after the Fall.
The Bible does not say that a man's "rule" over his wife or a woman's pain in childbirth was part of the curse after the Fall.
The Bible says that some women prophesied (Acts).
The first person to tell the good news that Jesus had come back to life was Mary, a woman.
Jesus taught men, as well as women.
Jesus did not treat women as inferior to men as was the cultural norm of his day.
Jesus submitted his will to that of his heavenly Father.
Jesus taught his disciples that greatness comes from serving others.
The Bible teaches that both fathers and mothers are to manage their home life.
Children are to obey their parents, both fathers and mothers.
The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 6 5) are not gender-based.
The Bible does not say that any of the gifts of the Spirit are gender-based.

What else would you add that the Bible explicitly says or does not say about gender issues?

Do you spot any errors n my list?

women in church leadership

2008-03-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

This Side of Sunday blog recently wrestled with questions about the interpretation of Bible passages having to do with women in church leadership. The post was written by a former complementarian who now believes that the Bible teaches egalitarianism.

The KIND of woman matters?

2008-03-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

I lifted this blog post off of the Triablogue blog, posted by Gene Bridges concerning Isaiah 3:12, which says,

As for My people, children are their oppressors,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err,
And destroy the way of your paths.
NKJV

(I found that reading the chapter from the beginning helps with the context of what follows.)

I've been asked to comment on the (mis)use of Isaiah 3:12 by some complementarians.

First, let me clear, I am a biblical complementarian, not an egalitarian. That said, my position is heavily caveated. I don't affirm women as elders in a local church, but a seminary is not a local church. Ergo, yes, it's fine with me if women teach male students in seminary. I am also on a personal mission to get more women engaged in E-pologetics. We need you!

I have heard this passage used in the way Wade describes, and it's got nothing to do with the *fact* of female rulers/misrulers. Rather it speaks to the *reasons* they are ruling.

Children
Women

The men are absent? Why would that be? To what would that be a reference?

1. Well, when children oppress, that speaks to an inversion of the created order, not in the home, but society as a whole. Children, under no circumstances are to have authority as rulers. "Children" were oppressing. Which children?

Answer: Child rulers. I would also point out that the definition of a "child ruler" in the Ancient Near East,as in the OT law on stoning rebellious children, is quite flexible. Not all references to "children" mean "little boys and girls," what we would call elementary or preschool age children or slightly older.

The law on stoning a rebellious child, for example,deals with any child, specifically adult children, who disgrace the family. A child who oppresses as a ruler, would be any ruler of young age that is oppressive.

2. And women rule over them. How? Through those child rulers. There women acting as coregents and counselors and coopting the power of the throne in the highest tradition of the evil houses of the North, following after that whorish Queen Jezebel who certainly set the bar high, did she not,for the very name "Jezebel" has been ruined for every generation since.

Women in the court and their influence is spoken of in somewhat positive fashion in some places. Jerusha, mother of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah was daughter of Zadok, high priest,and a godly woman.

On the other hand, we have the story of Ahaziah, 22 years of age when enthroned, who walked in the ways of Ahab. His mothers name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri. She engaged in a systematic campaign to overthrow the House of David. Jehoram was 32 when he took the throne, and reigned 8 years. He walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab did, for Ahab's daughter was his wife. Then we have Shimeath and Jehozabad referenced in 2 Chronicles 24. Look it up and see why they are there. As with the Assyrians God raised up to judge Israel (and whom God held accountable for their sins in so doing), so God uses Zabad and Jehozabad to judge Joash.

And that's the point of the passage here. The reference to "women ruling over them" has nothing to doone way or the other with women in leadership roles and the intrinsic role of women. Rather, Isaiah is making a reference to the history of young rulers who have been influenced by mothers and wives who have followed not after God but the gods of the pagans. We see this in 2 Chronicles, where the Chronicler makes constant reference from the time of Ahab to the insinuation of women from Ahab's family into the House of David. The same pattern appears over and over. It's a repeat of the Sin at Meribah in Numbers - the intermarriage with the Moabite women. It's a repeat of Solomon's women problems - for he let them worship their idols. It's a repeat of Jezebel's role in the life of Ahab. It is, in short, an ongoing problem in the life at court in Jerusalem. This gets repeated even in the NT and is a signal of apostasy. Remember the role women played in the life of the royal court under Herod?

The problem isn't related women for the sake of women - it's what sort of women are involved - women like Jezebel. and Athaliah, not women like Jechiliah, Jerusha and Jehoshabeath. Look carefully at the books of the Kings and Chronicles. Very often, the mention is quick (blink and you'll miss it), but an evil, immature king is connected to a woman who is depicted in the background. When good king is listed,and you see a connection to a female, I would say the presumption is that the author is making a tacit comment that this woman was godly and had positive influence.

If you're one of those who thinks women involved in high level government positions, to take a more mundane example, is a sign of a wicked nation, this text doesn't support you. It's not about the gender of who is sitting on the throne, it's about the power behind the throne, namely the wives, mothers, and counselors of those men. Men ruled, but the women in their lives corrupted them. It tells us (a) to watch who we marry and to whom we listen, and (b) gives us a good reason to "leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife, if the problem is your wicked mother or grandmother, and it speaks to the tremendous influence (and responsibility) women have over the men in their lives, both sons and husbands. Men, listen to the godly women in your lives and take their wise counsel to heart! Men, stand up to the ungodly women in your lives and and rebuke them!

I believe Gene brings legitimate added context to 1 Tim. 2:12 (see first full paragraph). Does this address questions about authority and women in the church? Or, do his considerations answer questions that the Apostle Paul doesn't even invite us to ask (per the Grudem/CBMW view)? Would egalitarians be comfortable with these considerations given by a complementarian? Does it fit with a complementarian view of church leadership?

What does "one another" mean in Eph. 5:21?

2008-03-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

One of the differences between some completarians and, I think, all egalitarians is in how they interpret and/or apply the meaning of Greek allelois (English "one another") in Eph. 5:21. Egalitarians understand this word to refer to mutual relationships within the Body of Christ, that is, that each Christian is to submit to each other Christian, where submission is a voluntary act of deferring to the desires of another.

Some complementarians believe that "one another" is to be applied more restrictively. The narrowest interpretation of the word that I have read about, if I have understood the claim correctly, is that the word only applies to submission relationships which follow Eph. 5:21. According to the Greek text there is one such submission (Greek hupotasso) relationship, namely, that of wives to their husbands (5:22). Some complementarians believe that submission relationships following Eph. 5:21 include the "obey" (Greek hupakouo) relationships, namely, children to their parents (6:1) and slaves to their masters (6:5).

Some complementarians, again, if I understand them correctly, believe that "one another" does not refer to mutual submission at all, but only to any relationship where the Bible says that one person is to submit to another, such as those relationships described in my next paragraph.

As I have written previously, there are other passages in the Bible which also use the Greek word hupotasso ("submit"). In Col. 3:18, also, wives are told to submit to their husbands. In Heb. 13:17 we are told to both "obey" and "submit" to our spiritual (church) leaders. In James 4:7 we are told to "submit" to God.

Here are some questions that we can discuss:

What relationships do you think "one another" refers to in Eph. 5:21?
Do you understand "one another" to refer to mutual submission relationships (each Christian to each other Christian) or only unilateral submission relationships?
Are any of the "one another" relationships dependent on the gender of any individuals?
Are any of the "one another" relationships dependent on the social or employment status of any individuals?
Do you understand loving service to someone, servant-heartedness toward someone, or obedience to someone to be forms of biblical submission to that person?
If you believe that "one another" refers to how any Christian is to submit to any other Christian, in an appropriate situation, do you believe that that submission no longer applies to a man if he marries a woman to whom he previously had a mutual submission relationship, as he relates to her within their marriage?

I realize that these are difficult questions, perhaps some that you have never considered before. Don't feel like you need to answer each of them, if they are difficult for you. But if you can address some of them in comments to this post, that would be helpful for our discussions on this blog. As always, try to support your answers with evidence, especially evidence from the Bible.

submission and subordination

2008-03-09T16:02:00.001-07:00

Maybe I do a better job of asking questions than answering them. In any case, I have tried to follow the arguments for and against eternal subordination of the Jesus Christ the Son to God the Father. I believe I have also heard it taught that wives are to be subordinate to their husbands.

But I'm thinking that the Bible teaches that Christ submitted himself to the will of his Father. And the Bible teaches that wives are to submit to their husbands, as well as that within the Body of Christ we are to submit to each other. We are taught to submit ourselves to governmental authorities. But I can't recall any biblical teaching about subordination.

Am I forgetting some biblical teaching? Or does subordination mean the same thing as submission to some people?

It would seem to me that subordination has to do with rank, such as a lieutenant being subordinate to a general in the military. Those who have subordinates have authority over those subordinates, in my understanding. Submission, on the other hand, seems to me, to be an act. Submission, as far as I know, does not imply that one is submitting to someone who has authority over them, although it is possible for someone to submit to someone who has authority over them. It seems to me that subordination and submission are different things. One can be subordinate to another but not submit to that person (technically called a superordinate, in some disciplines). That lack of submission to do what an authority figures commands can be a serious matter of disobedience, a breach of protocol. A parent can submit to the wishes of their children, while not being subordinate to their children.

I'm not convinced that the Bible teaches anything about Christ being subordinate to his heavenly Father or that women are subordinate to their husbands. But Phil. 2 beautifully describes the willing submission of Christ to a process in which he was born as a human to be a servant.

If you'll allow (hmm, do you have any choice?!) this punster the following: perhaps thinking about submission in terms of subordination is rank!

Does naming imply authority?

2008-03-05T15:11:00.001-08:00

Some complementarians believe that naming someone implies that you have authority over them. They believe that because Adam named Eve and himself in Genesis 2:23, Adam had authority over Eve. Hebrew scholar John Hobbins blogs today on this question. John concludes:

Naming is not always about wielding authority. It can be an expression of love and appreciation, the conclusion of a process of discovery and self-discovery.

Is There Such a Thing as a Complegalitarian?

2008-03-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

For fun tonight I googled on "complegalitarian." There were hits to this blog or to posts on other blogs about this blog. Then I spotted a hit on the title "Is There Such a Thing as a Complegalitarian?" It's an essay by my friend Mark Strauss. Mark is a complementarian. Sometimes he refers to himself as a mild complementarian. In any case, if you'd like to read his essay, click here.

A Critique (on CBMW's Claims Regarding Who Taught the Concept of an Eternally Subordinated Son)

2008-02-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

The CBMW gender blog claims that these thinkers taught a model of the Trinity that includes an eternally subordinated Son:

Hilary of Poitiers (c. 291-371), who was widely known as the Athanasius of the Western tradition. His work on the Trinity, De Trinitate, clearly expresses order and ranking in the Godhead.
Athanasius (c. 296-373) argued against Arianism at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and saw his view emerge victorious. Yet, in his Orationes contra Arionos (Orations against Arius), he articulates the eternality of the Son and expresses a clear order within the Godhead.
St. Augustine (354-430), famed bishop of Hippo, whose theology undergirded the Reformation. In his classic work On the Trinity, Augustine emphasized the unity of the Trinity and also reflected on the eternal subordination of the Son.
Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-394), Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379) and Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-390), the great Cappadocian Fathers, whose teachings on the Trinity were formative for the nascent Christian church, expressed order or ranking within the Godhead.
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), a profoundly important philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition. In his classic work Summa Theologica (Sum of Theology), he argues that, as the Father is not from another, it is in no way fitting for Him to be sent, but only for the Son and the Holy Spirit.
John Calvin (1509-1564), a father of the Reformation and author of the first systematic theology, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin adopted Augustine's view of the Trinity...

Personally, I would like to see some quotes instead of a list of names, because expressing a belief in Trinitarian order is not the same thing as expressing a belief in the permanent subordination of the members of the Trinity.

For example, the above list of names from CBMW included Athanasius, yet it is the Athanasian Creed that says,

25. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.

26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal."

The CBMW blog also includes Gregory of Nyssa, yet in so doing demonstrates a misunderstood comprehension of "eternally begotten." Yes, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus is begotten of the Father, but we must take care to understand the words of the Creed as the writers intended, not as we see them fitting into our pre-existing conclusions.

"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father…"

But "begotten" is not an indication of a permanently subordinated Son, and therein lies the rub. An explanatory footnote (found in full here, emphasis below mine) adds the following important information,

Arius said that if the Father has begotten the Son, then the Son must be inferior to the Father, as a prince is inferior to a king. Athanasius replied that a son is precisely the same sort of being as his father, and that the only son of a king is destined himself to be a king. It is true that an earthly son is younger than his father, and that there is a time when he is not yet what he will be. But God is not in time. Time, like distance, is a relation between physical events, and has meaning only in the context of the physical universe.

When we say that the Son is begotten of the Father, we do not refer to an event in the remote past, but to an eternal and timeless relation between the Persons of the Godhead. Thus, while we say of an earthly prince that he may some day hope to become what his father is now, we say of God the Son that He is eternally what God the Father is eternally.

In other words, the Fathers considered "begotten" to be indicative of a relationship, not a hierarchical position.

But in Grudem's Systematic Theology, he clearly says the opposite,

“This is why the idea of eternal equality in being but subordination in role has been essential to the church’s doctrine of the Trinity since it was first affirmed in the Nicene Creed, which said that the Son was “begotten of the Father before all ages” and that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Surprisingly, some recent evangelical writings have denied an eternal subordination in role among members of the Trinity, but it has clearly been part of the church’s doctrine of the Trinity (in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox expressions), at least since Nicea (A.D. 325).”

No, it has not. Permanent hierarchical subordination can only be seen if one defines the word, "begotten" in a way that differs from the meaning given to it by Gregory of Nyssa and Athanasius.

Unfortunately, most readers at CBMW are not going to take the time to see if the CBMW blog is speaking the truth. For the typical reader, it will just looks like "big names" are on CBMW's side.

The problem, as this post shows, is that it's not necessarily true.

I would like to see quotes, not just names. Sure, stating that John Calvin believed in permanent subordination within the Trinity is one thing, but actually showing us (or citing for us) where he did so is quite another.

In closing, I offer a small portion of the Second Helvetic Confession which deals specifically with the concept of permanent subordination within the Trinity (emphasis mine):

God Is Three. Notwithstanding we believe and teach that the same immense, one and indivisible God is in person inseparably and without confusion distinguished as Father, Son and Holy Spirit so, as the Father has begotten the Son from eternity, the Son is begotten by an ineffable generation, and the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from them both, and the same from eternity and is to be worshipped with both.

Thus there are not three gods, but three persons, consubstantial, coeternal, and coequal; distinct with respect to hypostases, and with respect to order, the one preceding the other yet without any inequality. For according to the nature or essence they are so joined together that they are one God, and the divine nature is common to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

… We also condemn all heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate to another in the Trinity, and that there is something unequal in it, a greater or a less, something corporeal or corporeally conceived, something different with respect to character or will, something mixed or solitary, as if the Son and Holy Spirit were the affections and properties of one God the Father, as the Monarchians, Novatians, Praxeas, Patripassians, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Aetius, Macedonius, Antropomorphites, Arius, and such like, have thought.

Are Christ and women eternally subordinated?

2008-02-18T19:57:00.001-08:00

In the fourth century a church council denounced the belief in eternal subordinationism of the Son to the Father within the Trinity, and called that belief a heresy. Eternal subordinationism claimed that the Son was unequal to the Father both in value (not as fully deity as the father is) and role. Today some teach that while eternal subordinationism is heretical, it is not heretical to believe that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father. CBMW's Gender Blog begins a series today promoting the eternal subordination (not subordinationism) of the Son to the Father. From this starting point, our brothers and sisters at CBMW believe that God has designed a hierarchical pattern in the Trinity which is reflected elsewhere in relationships. In this hierarchy some individuals are equal in value but different in roles from other individuals. In this hierarchy wives are subordinate to husbands.

Three years ago Bible scholar Ben Witherington blogged that there is no eternal subordination for either Christ or women.

What do you think? And why?

HT: Mike Aubrey

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