Is Complementarianism for Dummies?

"Last week a reporter asked me to define “complementarianism.”  She didn’t know what it meant. And that’s not entirely surprising."

Mary Kassian

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aiga_toilets_inv.svg

Male / Female Symbols

The 25th anniversary of the Danvers Statement and the incorporation of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) is less than five months away.  For those not familiar with the history of CBMW, I provided a summary several months ago.  It was based on Wayne Grudem's detailed explanation of events that occurred, which I found on the CBMW website.  That website is undergoing 'reconstruction', and Grudem's historical account is not currently accessible.  Fortunately, significant excerpts have been preserved here at TWW at the link provided.  Grudem explained:

"We next met at the Sheraton Ferncroft Resort in Danvers, Massachusetts, on December 2-3, 1987, just prior to the 1987 ETS meeting at Gordon- Conwell Seminary. We finalized our statement, called it the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and voted to incorporate as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. CBMW was off and running.

But we were still meeting secretly in 1987, not posting the meeting anywhere, not letting anyone know what we were doing. We just didn't want to get involved in controversy and argument while we were still getting organized and deciding what exactly we would stand for."

Mary Kassian, a friend and colleague of Grudem who helped craft the Danvers Statement, recently spoke at a conference sponsored by The Gospel Coalition (TGC) called Here is Our God.  It was held June 22-24, 2012 and was the first ever TGC women's gathering, although there were some male speakers including John Piper, Don Carson, and Tim Keller.  As an aside, Kassian also spoke at the SBC Pastors' Wives Luncheon

About a week after the TGC conference concluded, Kassian wrote a post on her Girls Gone Wise blog called "Complementarianism for Dummies".  It is making the rounds and has been featured on Justin Taylor's blog and the True Woman website.  In her blog post Kassian writes:

"Last week a reporter asked me to define “complementarianism.”  She didn’t know what it meant. And that’s not entirely surprising.

“Complementarity” is a word that doesn’t appear in the Bible, but is used by people to summarize a biblical concept. It’s like the word “Trinity.” The Bible never uses the word “Trinity.” But it’s undeniable that it points to a Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Though the concept of male-female complementarity is present from Genesis through Revelation, the label “complementarian” has only been in use for about 25 years. It was coined by a group of scholars who got together to try and come up with a word to describe someone who ascribes to the historic, biblical idea that male and female are equal, but different. The need for such a label arose in response to the proposition that equality means role-interchangeability (egalitarianism)—a concept that was first forwarded and popularized in Evangelical circles in the 1970s and 80s by “Biblical Feminists.”

 I’ve read several posts on the internet lately from people who misunderstand and/or misrepresent the complementarian view.  I was at the meeting, 25 years ago, where the word “complementarian” was chosen.  So I think I have a good grasp on the word’s definition.

 In this post I want to boil it down for you. In emulation of the popular “for Dummies” series of instructional books, I’ll give you a “Complementarianism for Dummies” primer on the intended meaning of the word."

Perhaps the reason Kassian found it necessary to write "Complementarianism for Dummies" is because of information like this.

Here is how complementarianism is described by Wikipedia:

"Complementarianism is a theological view held by some in Christianity and other world religions, such as Islam, that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere. The word ‘'complementary’' and its cognates are currently used to denote this view. For those whose complementarian view is biblically-prescribed, these separate roles preclude women from specific functions of ministry within the Church, It assigns leadership roles to men and support roles to women, based on the interpretation of certain biblical passages. One of its precepts is that while women may assist in the decision making process, the ultimate authority for the decision is the purview of the male in marriage, courtship, and in the polity of churches subscribing to this view."

The Wiki article provides the following list of supporters of complementarianism:

"Complementarianism is promoted by parachurch organizations including the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, FamilyLife, Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Promise Keepers. Noted supporters of the Complementarian position include J.I. Packer, Wayne Grudem, Albert Mohler, Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll, C. J. Mahaney, Adrian Rogers, Richard Land, Ligon Duncan, Gerald Bray, Terry Virgo, John Wimber, Tim Keller, John F. MacArthur, C.S. Lewis, John Piper and Elisabeth Elliot, missionary and wife of the missionary Jim Elliot."

When the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 was embraced by the Southern Baptist Convention, I was supportive of complementarianism. My family belonged to the same church as Paige and Dorothy Patterson, although they rarely attended due to their busy schedules. Beginning in the fall of 1988, I tuned into Adrian Rogers' weekly television outreach called Love Worth Finding. I would NEVER miss it because I was hungry for God's Word. I ordered cassette tapes of his sermons and faithfully listened to them. That was my routine for around five years.

A Baptist church in our area held a conference featuring Elizabeth Elliot, and I attended because I was impressed by her. I had several of her cassettes as well. I participated in a number of Bible studies including Bible Study Fellowship for seven years, beginning with Acts of the Apostles and ending with the Minor Prophets. I continually listened to messages on Christian radio from John MacArthur to Alistair Begg to David Jeremiah.  My pastor taught at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I began attending chapel services there from 2006 until 2008.  The ONLY reason I share all of these details is to help you understand that I am very serious about my Christian walk and have been for almost 25 years. 

One of the reasons Dee and I started The Wartburg Watch is because we are very concerned about some of the trends we are seeing in Christendom, particularly complementarianism.  Being the mother of two daughters who are grown but not yet married, I am deeply disturbed when I hear discussions like this.

Complementarianism: Essential or Expendable?

Chaplain Mike over on the Internet Monk website has written several posts on complementarianism which we highly recommend. 

Complementarian Gymnastics and Complementarianism is a Sham.

Rachel Held Evans received a whopping 370 comments on her piece called It's Not Complementarianism; It's Patriarchy.

Denny Burk, who teaches at Boyce College (the undergraduate arm of Southern Seminary) and is involved with CBMW, wrote a rebuttal to Evans' article that can be accessed here.

Then Evans responded to Burk with a post that garnered over 500 comments.

Also, The Gospel Coalition is featuring an article Debatable: Is Complementarianism Just Another Word for Patriarchy? which has generated quite a bit of discussion.

Now that Mary Kassian has come out with her article "Complementarianism for Dummies", we expect the debate to rage on.  In our upcoming post, I will share my motherly advice about complementarianism in a memo to my daughters. 

In the meantime, we'd love for our readers to share their views on complementarianism.

Lydia's Corner:  Nahum 1:1-3:19   Revelation 8:1-13   Psalm 136:1-26   Proverbs 30:7-9

 

Comments

Is Complementarianism for Dummies? — 371 Comments

  1. Um, does Mary realize that egalitarianism began around the turn of the century? Just saying…..

  2. And actually there are threads of it throughout church history, particularly in the early church, but throughout.

    Just. Saying.

  3. I really wanted to try and understand, and listen to the TGC video. I got past the pious prayer, and I even survived the few minutes of Pope Piper. But I had to stop at about 7:23 when these 'godly' men were able to laugh about gender identity. How could anyone, to whom such a situation was confided, allow that situation to become a joke?! How sad. And to think that these sorts of men are the leading voices in the SBC. Lord, have mercy! And I say/type that with a serious tone.

  4. Deb,

    You and Dee have written a bit on how “complimentarianism” affects women. I’d like to share a little on how it affects men.

    (Full disclosure: I have exclusively attended churches that would fall under the complimentarian umbrella. I am not an egalitarian – my bible won’t let me – and I’m not a complimentarian any longer – however that is defined, as I can’t support some of the strange teachings that fall within its ill-defined definition)

    By placing all responsibility for decision making – especially in the family – on the man, men are often overburdened with extra work and worry. When there is teaching on gender roles in the family/church or in pre-marital counseling, young men can be brutally pummelled with a list of responsibilities. “The first five minutes of this sermon will be directed toward the ladies. The rest will deal with the men, because God places the greater responsibility on your shoulders” or some such thing.

    But I think what this does, even if unwittingly, is it gives kind of a dual-separation for the leaders within the circles that teach complimentarianism. First, it separates the men from the women. Then it separates the men who are able to successfully live out its demands from the men who aren’t. It creates an extra-elite class of people: male LEADERS. I’ve heard more than once the idea that if a family is in financial trouble, the woman should, out of “duty,” let the family collapse rather than usurp the man’s responsibility and step in and fix things. It’s the man’s responsibility after all!

  5. Sad observer,

    Mutuality was around in the Garden of Eden. You have to READ INTO Genesis any kind of authority over before the fall. Which is exactly what they do. What is interesting is you don’t find this exeigesis very common until about the 1970’s. That is when we started being inundated with interpretations desperate to find Adam as Eve’s created authority before the Fall. Before that, it was usually taken for granted and not necessary.

    See, they really are driven by culture and not what scripture really teaches.

  6. Steve, Never forget the guys teaching it on stage are not working in the real world. Could you see Piper reporting to a female Lesbian boss every day? How about Mohler or Mahaney?

    Not only that but many of these men are taken care of financially by women who tithe! Think about that one for a moment. IF they really believed what they were teaching they would never take any money from any single or widowed woman. Only men. But when it comes to money, genitals don’t matter as much.

  7. As to the post, things are not going well in comp world. Even regular old soft comps are appalled at some of the teaching now coming from this group. They are fighting for survival. It has gone Patriarchal and allowed some partnering with the Fringe groups like Baucham and others. And yet, even Piper has become ridiculous about it with his teaching on taking abuse for a season and his "sabbatical to fix his marriage". Driscoll has not helped with his "the wife should offer up her backside when she is not up to sex" teaching. And Moore complaining that Comps are wimps and we need more patriarchy. the whole movement has become bizarre and tries to offer this doctrine as primary salvic doctrine.

    They have become a caricature. Silly. Meaningless because there are so many rules and roles and they need a Talmud of sorts to distribute to people because many of them are not on the same page. Who are they? Are they closer to Islam than Christianity when it comes to women? Yes, it often looks like that. They put out very confusing teaching.

    One blog post on CBMW mused over whether women would be subordinate to men in heaven. Seriously? A Christian "theologian" actually wonders about this? That is Mormon doctrine. That is how bad it has gotten and why we should be Bereans or we won't recognize false teaching even if a musing. Piper is quoted over there in one article that women should be careful even in giving men driving instructions so it won't look like they are instructing a man. If that is not Islamic type thinking, what is? Who can live this stuff out? It only makes both women and men watching each other instead of "abiding in Christ" and looking to them. It is self focused. It is not of Christ at all.

  8. I continue to believe Scriptures calls for male leadership within the home and within the church. How it plays out is much influenced by the personalities involved.

    But perhaps we could acknowledge that what the Muslim world teaches and practices regarding the subjugation of their women is NOT what Piper, Mohler, Russ and others teach. It’s not even close.

  9. “But perhaps we could acknowledge that what the Muslim world teaches and practices regarding the subjugation of their women is NOT what Piper, Mohler, Russ and others teach. It’s not even close.”

    It is the same exact foundational thinking concerning gender. How it plays out is different. But the foundational belief of male authority is the same.

  10. I believe that when we create these specific terms or jargon particular to our understanding or beliefs in religion then we limit the Holy Spirit’s use of women.

    It is done deliberately and purposefully to limit the influence of women in the church. And the people being used won’t even see it like that.

    It is diabolical, if you ask me.

    It is a travesty, or misrepresentation of God when men, and misguided women do it, seek to limit what God can and do to use HIS OWN creation.

    How insulting to God.

  11. I’m a complimentarian, just not how CBMW defines it. I believe that men and women compliment and need each other.

    But I don’t believe in male headship in the church (or home). I’m convinced that the gospel is best reflected by treating men and women as fully equal, which means egalitarianism. Anything else suggests that women are second-class citizens in the sight of God.

  12. @ Jimmy:

    Muslim practice may not be what the members of CBMW teach (though Piper’s amusing little illustration of a woman trying to give a man directions without giving him directions makes you wonder). But it is pretty much what Doug Phillips, Vision Forum and all the other patriarchs that CBMW-inclined folks are now partnering with teach. All that’s missing is public veiling and widespread open support for wifebeating. So if CBMW doesn’t like people mistaking them for patriarchs and misogynists, maybe they should stop hanging out with patriarchs and misogynists.

  13. “I believe that when we create these specific terms or jargon particular to our understanding or beliefs in religion then we limit the Holy Spirit’s use of women.

    It is done deliberately and purposefully to limit the influence of women in the church. And the people being used won’t even see it like that.

    It is diabolical, if you ask me.

    It is a travesty, or misrepresentation of God when men, and misguided women do it, seek to limit what God can and do to use HIS OWN creation.

    How insulting to God.

    Tem, Yes. Satan loves it for many reasons and that is one of them.

    On the last thread we talked a lot about NPD. This doctrine has been used by many and since it was elevated to salvic doctrine by CBMW many have seriuosly hurt by it with the blessing of the church.

    Diabolical? Absolutely

  14. "I’m a complimentarian, just not how CBMW defines it. I believe that men and women compliment and need each other." Ian, That is what mutualists believe. Isn't it clever that CBMW stole that word and redefined what it means for a whole generation.

  15. “[Complementarianism] was coined by a group of scholars who got together to try and come up with a word to describe someone who ascribes to the historic, biblical idea that male and female are equal, but different. The need for such a label arose in response to the proposition that equality means role-interchangeability (egalitarianism)—a concept that was first forwarded and popularized in Evangelical circles in the 1970s and 80s by ‘Biblical Feminists.'”

    It cracks me up how she thinks that egalitarians think men and women aren’t different. Of course they think men and women are different. It’s patently obvious and the whole world has known it since Eden, except for a few extremely radical feminists. Notice also, in her definition of “complementarian,” nothing is said about roles, but in her definition of “egalitarian,” roles have crept in. So they must be included in the definition of complementarian, even though she chose not to mention them (which makes her definition a lot more palatable).

    Also, I love that Dee & Deb used a bathroom sign at the beginning of this post because I’ve actually heard bathroom signs used as an argument for why women shouldn’t wear pants. : )

  16. Jimmy:

    You said:”I continue to believe Scriptures calls for male leadership within the home and within the church. How it plays out is much influenced by the personalities involved.

    But perhaps we could acknowledge that what the Muslim world teaches and practices regarding the subjugation of their women is NOT what Piper, Mohler, Russ and others teach. It’s not even close.”

    Apples and oranges. You just do not get it do you. You do not even try do you?

  17. Eagle:

    You said to Jimmy–:”Hey Jimmy..if John Piper found a Biblical defense of pedophilia would you rush to his defense?”

    I would love to read his answer to your question.

  18. Eagle,

    Regarding Campus Crusade for Christ’s embrace of complementarianism, here is how it was announced in the Journal on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Spring 1999) by Wayne Grudem (CBMW president at the time):

    Campus Crusade For Christ Adopts Complementarian Policy On The Family (link)

    Wayne Grudem

    President, CBMW

    “On the morning of July 28, Campus Crusade staff member Rick Hove ran out of Moby Arena at Colorado State University and called me from a pay phone. “Dennis Rainey just announced the Campus Crusade statement on marriage and the family,” Hove reported. “He told us it will be available to all the staff as they leave the auditorium this morning.”

    I was excited to hear the news, and I thanked God for it. I knew that for seven months, Dennis Rainey, Director of the FamilyLife division of Campus Crusade for Christ, had been working within the huge organization (20,000 staff) to gain official adoption of a statement like the one endorsed last year by the Southern Baptist Convention. (Rainey is a member of the CBMW Board of Reference.) What staff members received that morning was exactly the same as the SBC statement, plus the addition of a fifth paragraph to supplement and clarify it (see page 5 for the full statement).

    What is the significance of this statement?

    1. It will have a positive influence on the next generation of Christian leaders:

    Campus Crusade for Christ staff members now have clear organizational endorsement to teach and affirm biblical standards on manhood and womanhood in the family. I believe this will enhance evangelism on campuses because thousands of students have grown up in broken or dysfunctional families, and they are hungry to hear how to build a strong marriage based on biblical principles. It will also solidify complementarian teachings among the many developing Christian leaders influenced by Campus Crusade on campuses around the world…”

     

  19. Recently I asked myself, “How would my husband respond to this?” “This” being: 20 years of going to hear a woman preach every week. Membership in a church where the woman pastor got together with other women to make the decisions for the church. Being told how the church is nothing without the women, so he needs to get going with supporting the women tailoring the church experience so that other women would feel comfortable and attend. Being told that the church has been inappropriately masculinized is a far weaker place for it. And so on and so on.

    I’m pretty sure that my husband would perceive that church is not a place for him. I’m also sure that he would never spend his time soothing the other men and persuading them that God made them to support the women in their church endeavors. I don’t think he would care at all that the women leaders were nice and told him how valuable he was.

    I don’t think he’d show up at a place like that.

  20. Dee and Deb,

    I am looking forward to the upcoming post for single women. Ironically I was trying to find a burka to wear to the church I previously attended. They wanted my money, time, 6 days a week spent In service to the church, yet because I was a woman I was not to be heard. (Regardless of the fact that I am created by God with intellect, reason, judgement, and discernment). This teaching is culturally reactionary, damaging, and unBiblical in the second class nature of women that is advocated.

    What is next, church Jirge’s to condone public stoning of women?

  21. “I continue to believe Scriptures calls for male leadership within the home and within the church. How it plays out is much influenced by the personalities involved.”

    This one always kills me. People functioning in a completely egalitarian way but needing to say, “Oh no! He is leading her!” See Ian and Larissa. See most “complementarian” marriages. I call this: “Guys won’t play house and church with the women unless the women will say that the guys are the bosses. God made men and women differently: women want playmates and men want to be called the boss. That’s how we complement each other.”

    We live in a culture that has an ideal of egalitarianism, even if we fail to live it perfectly. The gospel is just as true in an egalitarian culture as it is in a hierarchal one. There’s no need to create an alternative culture based on 1st century Rome.

  22. I don’t buy into the patriarchal garbage. That is exactly what complementarianism is – an authoritative, patriarchal system in disguise. I have a daughter and she will be raised to be well aware of this kind of stuff so she can avoid ever getting involved with someone who buys into it. I will not let her be bullied in such a system.

    This kind of stuff has been happening for years and is 100% in contradiction to the teaching of Jesus. Shortly after Jesus left the Earth, the church quickly started to silence women, creating rules on what they can say and do. The Gospels do not say anywhere that Jesus told his female followers to go back and submit to their fathers/men. It’s amazing how quickly after Jesus left that the men wanted the women in a subservient role. Part tradition, part culture influence the thinking of early Christianity. Yet it in opposition to the actions and teachings of Jesus.

    And yet these crazies created a new doctrine that a woman’s salvation is dependent of her submitting to males.

    It’s no wonder so many women on the outside looking in don’t want anything to do with this type of Christianity – why would they want to commit themselves to slavery for the rest of their lives?

  23. Hester said,

    “So if CBMW doesn’t like people mistaking them for patriarchs and misogynists, maybe they should stop hanging out with patriarchs and misogynists.”

    Yes, when John Piper, a council member of CBMW, invites Doug Wilson to various Desiring God conferences, one has to wonder about the not so hidden agenda.

    God, Manhood and Ministry – DG’s 2012 Pastors Conference

    Doug Wilson is Speaking at DG’s Fall Conference (2009)

    Doug Wilson has quite a bit to share at the 2012 DG Pastors Conference. The following is taken straight from the above link.

    – Masculinity Is the Glad Assumption of Responsibility (Doug Wilson)
    – What Is Father Hunger? (Doug Wilson)
    – Dads, Your Leadership Role Is Inescapable (Doug Wilson)
    – Departing from Masculinity: Two Ditches to Avoid (Doug Wilson)
    – What Does It Mean to Be a Man? (Doug Wilson)
    – Discipling Men in the Local Church (Doug Wilson)
    – Lessons Doug Wilson Learned from His Dad (Doug Wilson)
    – Parenting Grown Children (Doug Wilson)
    – The Difference Between Masculinity and Femininity (Doug Wilson)
    – How Young Men Prepare for Marriage (Doug Wilson)

     

  24. I made it through the video to the 22 min. mark, but just couldn’t tolerate the nonsense one minute longer.

    It was at the point where Piper is exasperated that no egalitarian has ever been successful at answering the 8-yr. old girl who asks her mother what it means to grow up to be a woman. Piper says it won’t do to merely answer in terms of plumbing…..

    and yet that’s precisely the basis for their “headship” belief. God evidently chose those with particular plumbing to be leaders. Ugh….

  25. Anon 1 @ 4:26 am –

    I agree with you except for I believe they “are driven by the ‘FEAR’ of culture and not what scripture really says.” They read an incredible amount of “extras” into scripture and lay heavy burdens on the backs of many . . . men and women.

  26. jack

    The only ones who laugh about it are the ones not affected by it. And if they are not affected by it, then they have no business being pastors.

  27. Jimmy

    Spoken like a man. I heard a sermon in which a young pastor discussed how, on the day he got married, he met with his wife’s father and they “transferred headship” to him. I have one thing to say. MOOOOOOOOOO!

  28. First, “Complementarianism” is one mouthful of a word. Eight syllables by my count, with a rhythm reminiscent of Marxspeak.

    And whatever it originally meant, after giving Entropy some time to set in, it ends up as eight-syllable theobabble for “Male Supremacist”.

  29. To Our Readers

    Dee is on a short break at the beach and may not be commenting much until Thursday. But, this post is so good that I sneaked inside to comment. Good job, Deb.

  30. I heard a sermon in which a young pastor discussed how, on the day he got married, he met with his wife’s father and they “transferred headship” to him. — Dee

    Was there a written Bill of Sale?
    And how was the Transfer of Ownership recorded?

  31. Anon1 said-

    “Not only that but many of these men are taken care of financially by women who tithe! Think about that one for a moment. IF they really believed what they were teaching they would never take any money from any single or widowed woman. Only men.”

    Truth. Instead- they would be giving them money. Making sure each and every widow or poor single females are well taken care of to the best of their ability. I hope they are doing that-the Lord is watching.

    Eagle said:

    “Let me state on the record that I think many of these clowns (or in Driscoll’s case thug…) J.I. Packer, Wayne Grudem, Albert Mohler, Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll, many of these clowns especially C.J. Mahaney, Adrian Rogers, Richard Land, Ligon Duncan, Gerald Bray, Terry Virgo, John Wimber, John F. MacArthur, and John Piper wouldn’t last 5 minutes in an empire where there “faith” is illegal.”

    Or perhaps last 5 minutes in the drudgery of going to a non-bubble secular job every day in the “world” (horrors) with only unbelievers with whom to associate with, drink Starbucks and eat lunch. (Not to mention having an unbeliever as a boss over them.)

  32. Dee,

    Hope you’re having a relaxing time.

    As I sit at my kitchen table observing nature in my backyard, I have realized something that I believe applies to the complementarian crowd. 

    The reason a large number of birds are flocking to my feeders is because I am meeting their needs with delicious birdseed, suet, and water.  A mockingbird family has been coming regularly, with two little ones flapping their wings and holding their mouths open wide for food.  The variety of birds is remarkable! They are blessing my life because I am providing their sustenance. 

    I believe the reverse is happening in these complementarian / patriarchal churches.  Our brothers (and especially sisters) are flocking away (pun intended!) because they are not being fed the Word of God.  At least that’s how I see it for my sisters in Christ.  I will be addressing this on Thursday.

  33. Deb said-

    “- How Young Men Prepare for Marriage (Doug Wilson)”
    “- Dads, Your Leadership Role Is Inescapable (Doug Wilson)”

    Read about Steven Sitler and you will find out how Wilson, elders at Christ Church and the fathers of the couple answer these 2 statements. (Fully aware that I repeat myself with reference to this sad Sitler tragedy…want to keep it up front since the marriage just happened a year ago.)

  34. Dee said: “Spoken like a man. I heard a sermon in which a young pastor discussed how, on the day he got married, he met with his wife’s father and they “transferred headship” to him. I have one thing to say. MOOOOOOOOOO!”

    This is most definitely happening in homeschooling/courtship circles, Dee. I’ve seen/heard it at weddings during actual wedding ceremony when the dad “gives” the bride away.

  35. I have two teenagers at this point, and one of each gender. Honestly? Neither one of them have EVER asked the questions about, ‘what makes me man or woman’ in the light that he asks it in the video. I also noticed he never answered the question either.

    Why is it they can’t never address things without going into sex change operations, gay marriages, etc?

    It’s like they are saying you either do it my way, or you will be transformed into a homosexual or something along those lines. The world is the way it is because you didn’t do it our way – evidence? Those that are not heterosexual.

    The more they talk the more they confuse their own stand.

    It seems to me they are scared of the giftedness that the Lord gives to each individual, and how they are to celebrate that. Those gifts are for the Lord’s glory, and yet they take it personally if it colors outside their lines…its NOT for them! God gave them the gifts for HIM after all! They seem to be usurping.

    Kassian? Honestly, I think she is just a mouthpiece they use to say things that wouldn’t be politically correct if it came from their own lips.

  36. It’s like they are saying you either do it my way, or you will be transformed into a homosexual or something along those lines.

    As in Putting a Hex on you? The Curse of Faggotry?

    A lot of preachers have a one-track mind. They’re like the one townsman in Lenny Bruce’s “Masked Man” (off-color spoof of The Lone Ranger) who after Masked Man outs himself & Tonto (hey, it’s Lenny Bruce), spends the entire rest of the skit pointing at Masked Man and screaming “FAAG! FAAAAG!! FAAAAAAG!!!”

    Kassian? Honestly, I think she is just a mouthpiece they use to say things that wouldn’t be politically correct if it came from their own lips.

    The afternoon drive-time guys on KFI have a more colorful term: “Spokeshole”.

  37. I notice they put CS Lewis in their list of complementarians.
    CS Lewis died in 1963, the term complementarianism, and the Danvers statement, is from 1987.

    Even if Lewis made some comments (before his marriage, I think) that comps may agree with, you cannot claim he would have been willing to sign the entire Danvers statement or describe himself as one.

  38. Eagle – thanks so much for the tip on the posts re. Chan over at Imonk.

    The things Chan says about elderly people make me very angry – what will he do when he’s 89?

    Youth castigates age for what age cannot help… I suppose ’twas ever thus, but Chan’s take is extremely ugly,

    *

    the “for dummies” part of Kassian’s statement really irks me – given that it I think) shows her low regard for the people she’s addressing. How a woman could stand there and recite the party line is beyond me, but…

  39. Anon1-

    You said

    “One blog post on CBMW mused over whether women would be subordinate to men in heaven. Seriously? A Christian “theologian” actually wonders about this? That is Mormon doctrine.”

    About 20 years ago, I heard a Calvary Chapel pastor say that he thought that women would actually become male in heaven. He reasoned that there were no female angels or spirits described in heaven and that marriage was only temporary. From this, he concluded that women would become male in heaven…pretty nifty, huh?

    On a more serious point, I think Christian women who object to their church’s teaching on subjugation, should stop making love to their husbands until they agree to their wives full and equal status as a human being.

    I wonder how quickly some churches would “all of the sudden” embrace an egalitarian doctrine?

  40. Doubtful, you’ll like this too, perhaps.
    Anon1 @ 4:26AM said:   
       “You have to READ INTO Genesis any kind of authority over before the fall. Which is exactly what they do. What is interesting is you don’t find this exeigesis very common until about the 1970′s.”
         Sometimes I try, with varying success, to guess the tiny seed-beginnings of things going horribly awry. (such as complementarianism)
         1973. Hugely influential “Knowing God” by J I Packer. Chapter 7 Thy Word is Truth: 
    “God speaks to the man and woman whom he has made. ‘God…said to them…’ (v.28).  Here is God addressing human beings directly. Thus fellowship between God and them is inaugurated.  Note the categories into which God’s utterances to them in the rest of the story fall.  God’s first word to Adam and Eve is a word of COMMAND, summoning them to fulfill humankind’s vocation of ruling the created order. (‘Be fruitful… And have dominion…’ v.28)”
    After this Packer adds the further categories of relationship between God’s word and his creatures, making it clear there are NO further categories: TESTIMONY, PROHIBITION, and PROMISE. 
    So what category does Packer leave out of Gen. 1:28, … substituting … ellipses…? ….
    BLESSING!  “And God BLESSED them”
    He substitutes command and summons, making these the false focus of the whole male/female, be fruitful/multiply blessing. (Moses actually has God’s first command later in Gen. 2:16 just before the first prohibition, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.” (Including the one of LIFE))
    IMO, From this little seed of omission (from a Bible verse, no less) and redirection to commands, summons, fulfilling vocational roles etc. has grown the whole complementarian house of cards.

  41. Am I the ONLY Wartburgian who believes the Bible clearly teaches male leadership in the home and in the church?

  42. the comps are majoring in the minors, and missing the big picture…as always more concerned about the lifestyles of the faithful rather than clothing the naked, feeding the poor, and being the hands and feet of Jesus.

  43. I rarely post anonymously, but the ironies of complementarianism are so thick, and potential results so devastating, that all I can think of is to answer fools according to their folly. So, some thoughts and observations.

    First, I am curious … if at least some (many? most?) complementarians hold to a doctrine that women shouldn’t be teaching in authority over men, shouldn’t Ms. Kassian’s post actually be narrowed to “Complementarianism for [Only Women] Dummies”?

    Second, if they additionally are of the ilk that believe women are more easily deceived, how can anyone then be truly certain that Ms. Kassian is not being thus affected?

    Third, I have discovered the perfect theme song for Patriarchy. It is: “It’s Reigning Men” by the Whether Girls.

  44. Having shed my not-so-anonymous persona in the above comment, I will add the following:

    I know a couple who escaped the pseudo-Christian cult of Mormonism several decades ago. They shared much about the practical outworking of the religious system, and so I am finding the theological comparisons here on TWW between complementarianism and Mormonism worth people investigating further. We need to consider what the end results are of systems that combine complementarianism with patriarchy with authoritarian black-and-white thinking.

    For instance, complementarian scholars and advocates especially just might want to look for socio-psychological research about the disproportionately high rates of depression among Mormon wives compared to the general populace.
    Is it possible that this can be attributed at least in part to the intensity of roles split by gender, along with religious requirements which result in unreachable expectations put on their women to be “good,” obedient, submissive wives? After all, in their religion, women can ONLY ascend in their heavenly reward as high as do their husbands … and ultimately, only if the husband chooses to call them forth beyond the veil. So, he can dispose of her in heaven regardless of whether he did so on earth. This system also sometimes results in the wives pressuring their men not to be slackers, lest it hamper the wife’s spiritual ambitions.

    Both ways, the documentable psychological results of such conditional and complementarian systems might prove a fruitful field for research. If this system is truly “God-ordained,” how do you explain such destructive results in men and women who attempt to live thereby?

  45. Second, if they additionally are of the ilk that believe women are more easily deceived, how can anyone then be truly certain that Ms. Kassian is not being thus affected?

    (giggles)

    I’m sure some ‘head’ proof read it for her prior to publication!

  46. About 20 years ago, I heard a Calvary Chapel pastor say that he thought that women would actually become male in heaven. He reasoned that there were no female angels or spirits described in heaven and that marriage was only temporary. From this, he concluded that women would become male in heaven…pretty nifty, huh? — Doubtful

    That’s not Mormon. I think I know where that comes from, and the timing (around 20 years ago) is about right.

    There was this Bible called the DAKE’S ANNOTATED BIBLE which was THE Word of God for that aberrant “fellowship” I got mixed up with in the Seventies. Four-column page format; the two inner columns being the actual Bible (KJV) while the two outer columns were “Dake’s Notes”, at about three times the font density of the actual KJV text, going to the edge of the page like a Francis E Dec kook-rant flier. (And that doesn’t count page after page of End Time Prophecy and Biblical History diagrams.)

    Sort of the Ultimate Expression of Dispensationalism, everything cross-indexed and proof-texted to the point of Obsession. Not a single loose end anywhere.

    And one of the things in Dake’s Notes (besides the Mormonesque idea of God in all Three Persons having bodies of “spirit matter” and sitting on three physical thrones on a planet called Heaven somewhere in the northern sky) was that EVERYTHING except physical life on Earth was Male. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all the Angels, all the “spirit animals” (embodied in “spiritual matter”) were Male; the Female was a special creation for procreation only. Proof of this was that Christ incarnated as a male.

    I don’t know the origin of the Dake’s, but looking back I suspect it dates from the mid- to late 19th Century — the Mormonesque idea of God’s Throne Planet (called “Heaven” instead of “Kolob”), the “Principle of Segregation” all over the Deuteronomy and Leviticus notes, and the Spiritualist idea of Ectoplasm (“spirit matter”) all come from the Victorian Era. The same time period as when — according to Chaplain Mike over at Internet Monk — Dispensationalism started viewing the Bible as a Spiritual Engineering manual of Fact, Fact, Fact.

    When I described Dake’s to a friend, his exact words were “This Dake might have started out sane, but he sure didn’t end up that way.”

  47. HUG – I remember Dake’s being very popular back when, but never bothered checking into it… No wonder there’s so much weird “teaching” (derived from Dake) floating around out there!

    It really does sound like the annotations are a product of various strange mid-late 19th c. religious movements.

  48. Guys, stop ragging Jimmy. You may be disagree with him, but he has a right to express his opinions on her, as we all do.

    In answer to Jimmy’s point about Islam, however, I would say, which Islam do you mean? Having been to Turkey, I can tell you there’s a world of difference between the way women appear to live there and how I understand women live in Saudi Arabia, for example.

    Good points about C S Lewis as well. People have suggested that he changed his views, or at least his practical behaviour, regarding women after he married. He was also of a different age, and of a different church polity – hierarchy in the church (eg the priest standing while he knelt) actually delighted him. He believed in democracy because he felt that it was the only safeguard against human sin, but felt heaven would be still be monarchy (in the sense that Christ would be King), a view which probably most of us would share. I’m not sure how he would feel in the company of some of the other men listed with him.

    I’m a bit disappointed that J I Packer is among them, to be honest.

    Re the stuff about gender identity, etc, most transsexuals want to follow the gender stereotype of the role they want to switch to rather than challenge it, so I don’t know why the complimentarians raise that old chestnut.

    Peace to you all from England, where it’s teeming with rain at the mo (again) LOL

  49. Kolya – You just raised an excellent point about women and Islam. There are *so many* different Muslim countries and societies in the world, and they are very diverse.

    We only see extreme examples from places like Afghanistan, and mistake that for what happens in all Muslim countries.

    Wrong.

  50. And Kolya, the person you are defending likes to troll this site and others.

    It can be very destructive.

  51. Lindsay said, I think, there are others that believe male leadership in the home and church are taught in Scripture.

    I guess that’s two of us.

  52. Shedding my previous semi-pseudonym (with the tell-tale avatar photo) I would add some very serious research notes. I know a couple who escaped the pseudo-Christian cult of Mormonism several decades ago. From some theological and sociological research I did at that time, I’d suggest that there are enough similarities to the *paradigm structures* of Mormonism and complementarianism to warrant more research. Despite the core theological differences that distinguish Christianity and Mormonism, both Mormonism and Christian complementarianism seem to use thinking structures that include heavily analytic, black-and-white information processing styles that split things apart. This shows up in leadership hierarchies for roles in religion, marriage, and family; and social divisions (such as consistent versus nominal followers).

    Complementarian scholars and advocates might want to investigate what these kinds of thinking patterns typically lead to in terms of their psychological, social, and organizational impact. For instance, look for socio-psychological research done as early as the 1980s about the disproportionately high rates of depression among Mormon wives compared to the general populace. Is it possible that this could be attributed at least in part to something in the roles split by gender, along with intense religious requirements which result in unreachable expectations put on their women to be “good,” obedient, submissive wives? After all, in their religion, women can ONLY ascend into a heavenly reward as high as do their husbands … and ultimately, only if the husband chooses to call them forth beyond the veil. So, he can dispose of her in heaven regardless of whether he did so on earth.

    From anecdotal evidence back then, I heard that the Mormon theological system also sometimes results in the wives pressuring their men not to be slackers, lest it hamper the wife’s spiritual ambitions. Since she can only advance in heaven as far as he does, she pushes he to be more diligent. Are there any cases in complementarian Christendom of patriarchal leaders counseling or urging or supporting a woman in their congregations to pressure (or even divorce) a husband who refuses to take headship in the marriage? Does the leader himself pressure the husbands to perform by conforming?

    That was all from a few decades ago, before complementarianism as a system started taking off in Christendom. I suspect that current research into the consequences of these kinds of conditional, complementarian systems might might yield some very interesting results. If the complementarian system is truly “God-ordained” and as close to the core of the gospel as some seem to imply, how could any destructive results in men and women who attempt to live thereby be explained? Is it always the fault of fallen people … or is it possible that the underlying thinking systems themselves are flawed?

  53. Well, seeing as it doesn’t really matter how many people on this thread do or do not believe in male headship in the home, because it has about as much bearing on their salvation as what they ate for dinner last night…

    But when patriarchs (the people CBMW is beginning to associate with) begin to add mediators between women and Jesus, core doctrine does come into play and we can get out the big guns. Who you recommend and associate with says a lot sometimes about what you REALLY believe.

  54. Addendum:

    I know that CBMW does not believe in mediators between women and Jesus. But if they don’t, they shouldn’t go anywhere near people that do.

  55. Women become male in heaven? That’s just…wow. Did he miss that angels (and God, for that matter) have no gender? And if there is no marriage in heaven, that means no one is submitting on the basis of gender at all. Unless of course you’re a patriarch and you think ALL women submit to ALL men…

    I’m not kidding, there really are a LOT of parallels between things Mohammed said and things that the patriarchs have said. I didn’t realize how many until I started running down that rabbit trail this morning.

  56. Brad,

    “Are there any cases in complementarian Christendom of patriarchal leaders counseling or urging or supporting a woman in their congregations to pressure (or even divorce) a husband who refuses to take headship in the marriage?”

    For a wife in a patriarchal family to do this straight-forwardly would be considered unsubmissive behavior. Her encouragement of her husband to step up is supposed to ALL be in the form of submission to his “vision” WHATEVER that may be. The claim is that ALL men have vision and it is the wife’s job to find out what that vision is and get behind it no matter what, unless it is sinful. If she does this, supposedly he will step up his efforts if she steps down. And in no case should she EVER take over the role of spiritual leadership of the children, even if he’s a slacker in that area – supposedly her relinquishing of that role will put the pressure on him to take it over. I don’t know if this is true of all patriarchal circles but it definitely is at Vision Forum. And if a woman so much as asks others for help or advice on how to get her husband to lead, she is ignored because of her “disrespect” for her husband. Because men are inherently respectable. *Eye roll*

  57. Hester,

    “CBMW does not believe in mediators between women and Jesus.”

    Seriously?! Wow… I’ve never heard that one before. Can you refer me to where this has been stated? Who mediates for women then?

  58. Jan … Yup. I can totally see that for a wife to put the pressure on would be inconsistent. But probably not so much a problem (at least on the surface of things) for pastors/preachers and other male leaders to apply the pressure. So … if we start connecting together the *Courageous* line of thinking (and products) and the general operating procedures of authoritarian ministries, then it easily becomes an oppressive, perfectionistic system for both men and women. And underneath the surface, there is that really troubling assumption of the pastors/leaders acting as a role of mediation between congregants and God. And we’re right back into the errors of the Shepherding Movement and related forms of “aligning” with the authorities in the (supposedly) God-appointed hierarchy over us.

  59. I happen to believe this is a key debate within the church. In fact, I am of the opinion this has turned into a battleground issue. There are complementarians who strongly believe that the integrity of the gospel rests upon the importance (in their minds) of maintaining male leadership/authority roles in the church, and excluding women from preaching/teaching/leading. Likewise, there are egalitarians (like myself) who believe wholeheartedly that the integrity of the gospel rests upon the importance of the full participation of women in all areas of ministry within the church, which should not be decided on the basis of gender, but rather on the giftings of the Spirit, by whom we are baptized into one body.

    The reason this is an important battleground is because it rests upon a proper understanding of the scriptures and the new covenant. There cannot be two ways of interpreting this. Either complementarianism is correct, or egalitarianism is correct. And one is wrong. That’s the battle line as I see it.

    Moreover, if there if to be renewal and revival…if there is to be unity and harmony….if there is to be power and glory….and if the church is going to be a city set on a hill – a place of refuge for all peoples – this issue needs to be dealt with decisively.

    Forgive me for being so triumphant, but I am convinced that those who steadfastly refuse to examine the scriptures in light of (relatively) recent evidence which supports egalitarianism against a complementarian interpretation of scripture and the consequential hierarchical (gender-based) relationships within the church that grow out of it, will simply become marginalized and obsolete.

    At the end of the day, biblical egalitarianism will become the new order, and those that reject complementarian (hierarchical, heretical) orderings within the church will experience God’s power and blessing!

  60. @ Jan:

    Yes, there are some extreme patriarchs who actually claim that husbands are some kind of spiritual intercessor for their wives/daughters. This follows naturally from their idea that fathers are the prophet, priest and king of their home, and the whole Gothard-y concept of “spiritual covering” that they love so much. Thing is, it is VERY difficult to find this idea plainly spelled out, because it is SO patently heretical that even Christians without much theological training (the main demographic that buys the patriarchs’ products) could probably spot the issue. Also, as far as I know, this idea is restricted to the extreme Reconstructionist Reformed wing of the patriarchy movement, not the “young cool hip” wing ala Mark Driscoll.

    I will work on finding you a link that succinctly explains the concept. For starters, head over to ThatMom (Karen Campbell) and the archives of Under Much Grace (Cindy Kunsman). Under Much Grace has a TON of detailed theological info on patriarchy. It gets disturbing pretty fast.

  61. @ Deb:

    Doug Wilson is scary, no bones about it. In addition to being a Reconstructionist (as far as I know), he’s also a neo-Confederate. For Pete’s sake, he even wrote a book about why slavery wasn’t so bad after all (Southern Slavery: As It Was). He also has his own college in Idaho and he’s deeply involved with Veritas Press, a popular curriculum suppler in Christian homeschool circles.

    Some of those session titles sound rather juicy. The first one made me laugh. Color me feminist, but I guess I thought that EVERYONE was supposed to assume responsibility for their own actions, regardless of gender. Of course, I’ve heard Christian women use headship/submission as a cop-out for years. Things like this:

    “I’m so glad my husband is in charge! That way I don’t have to make any decisions! It’s so liberating!”

    “Sure, it was stupid decision, but at least this way it’s not MY fault when it all goes wrong.” (Because using submission as a backdoor to blame and stick it to the guy MUST be what Paul intended…)

    Personal responsibility? Phtt. Who needs it?

  62. I didn’t say *I* believed in male headship/leadership — I said that your definition of leadership is probably veeerrrrry different from the rest of the Wartburgers here.

    If I am being 100% honest with myself, I don’t know exactly how to label my personal beliefs on male/female roles in marriage. I’m confident that I’m very egalitarian leaning. VERY. Almost to the point of calling myself a full-blown egalitarian. I just shy away from these labels in general because they’re awfully destructive and take the focus off the main thing. Like Hester said above, my salvation has as much to do with my comp/egal stance as it does on what I ate for dinner last night.

    However, giving the devil his due and all, I will concede that I do believe there are some comp marriages that work and work extraordinarily well…especially when the husband remembers that teeny, yet important tidbit to love the wife as Christ loved the church. The rest of the comp marriages I know personally tend to focus more on the leadership than the love/sacrifice.

    And speaking of love, I have to go keep score at my husband’s softball game so I better dash!

  63. Jimmy,

    I am probably about as close as you’ll get on here to a fellow believer in male leadership. I wear a headcovering to worship as a symbol of my husband being my head. (1 Cor. 11)

    However I’m honestly re-evaluating pretty much all the doctrines I’ve attached to my faith right now, and I get the feeling that if I could directly ask Jesus for His definition of “leadership” and “headship” and “authority” it would be quite different from the system I’ve been a part of the past decade. A system that has, to be honest, drained my faith dry. Why do you suppose that I am able to sense the Lord’s presence in my life so much more closely when I reject the notion that I am dependent upon my husband’s leadership to experience growth in Him, or that my growth must be consistent with his beliefs? (And don’t get me wrong – I have a good husband who is faithful to lead me spiritually and read God’s Word with me and our children). Why am I only now able to pray freely and naturally to Him after nearly ten years of having not a clue what to say to Him? Why am I only now able to accept that He really does love me, and not just for “being fruitful and multiplying”? Could it be that my understanding of male headship caused me to make an idol out of my husband (and trust me, IF any man is worthy of that, it would be my husband), to put my relationship with him before my relationship with God? Didn’t Christ come to reconcile ALL to God directly, male and female alike? Did I just misunderstand the entire doctrine that I held for ten years?

    Sorry to bombard you with questions Jimmy. I’m not trying to be festicious. I really would like to know your thoughts since clearly you are the only one on here who understands male leadership as I have for a long time. Tell me, am I just deceived? Because clearly if I am, the Spirit that has been at work in my life in such a real way, gently holding this doctrine to the light of examination for me to see its flaws, is just a figment of my imagination. And if that’s the case, perhaps I’ve only just imagined God’s existence…

    Please don’t cop-out and tell me I should just “ask my own husband at home.” I’d like to hear your thoughts.

  64. Hi Dee and Deb,

    Allow me to share. I married at a young age and was part of Churches that taught patriarchy and were big fans of Piper. In fact, I actually became a fan of Piper’s and began reading everything I could by him, including the big blue book on patriarchy. Anyways, during this time I fell in love with a powerful, strong, and articulate woman who was clearly a leader. We got married under the guise of this so called biblicism and found ourselves having great difficulty in our marriage relationship. We thought if we could just learn more about how complementarianism played itself out we could be happy. We even got involved in a church where one of the author’s from Piper’s big blue book attended. It was at this church where we really began to have problems. In our old church the pastor had actually told my wife that because she was a woman she could not teach even though he believed that she was the best teacher at the church. He told her that if you were a male you could be a pastor but because you are not you need to just be content. This was spoken to her by a pastor who wondered out loud from the pulpit about polygamy and how he was disappointed that it was no longer culturally accepted. Anyways, because of comments like these we left that church/cult and began attending a church with one of the authors in the big blue book. At this church we ran into the same thing, comments being spoken to my wife about how incredibly gifted she was as a teacher/preahcer but because she was a wpman she needed to be content with just volunteering. I began to distance myself from this teaching, but the foundation of mind control and destruction had already been laid in my wife’s mind. For years I myself was personally torn about the whole teaching of patriarchy, but too immature to speak up. In fact I was even making myway up the evangelical ladder of whose who in Christendom (cringe) because of my wife’s giftedness as a teacher. Anyways, after about fifteen years of being married it finally came to a head and the $4!t (of unbiblical patriarchy) hit the fan. My wife could not take it anymore and we wound up getting a divorce. She was so damaged from the teaching that according to her even though she loved me she did not think she could take another day of being in this religious mindset. She had been so wounded, beat down, and torn up that she began to associate this extreme patriarchy with me because I had kept us in that community. Once she filed for divorce I experienced almost no support from the so called mature complemenatarians, but rather much judgment. In fact, several of the high profile Christians like the ones who teach at SBTS completely cut me off. These were people who had us in their home. They believed that it was my responsibility to keep her from divorcing, but at this point I had come to see how unbiblical their teaching was and how controlling it was. Because of this I realized that I had to let her go. She left the faith for the most part and began a series of destructive relationships. She internalized all the pain and it began to show in her life. She remarried and eventually became an alcoholic because of the ridicule and pain she experienced. She went rom being a health nut who did triatholons since she was 18 to a morbidly obese woman in a matter of a couple of years. She was actually hospitalized about ten years ago because of health complications associated with her weight. I say all this to make a point of how destructive patriarchy can be. Had I been a true man I would have been able to recognize how destructive the teaching we were hearing was. However, at the time I saw evangelicalism as my path to fame, notoriety, and power. All horrendous motivations. I believe I loved Jesus but was greatly deceived and very immature. Since the divorce in 1999 I have left the evangelical church and have sought to heal from this experience. I wish I could bring healing to my ex, but I can only pray for mercy for myself and her. She has even told me that she knows it wasn’t entirely my fault but that the ultra authoritarian environment just took its toll on her and she is still trying 13 years later to figure out what happened, what is real, etc…..

  65. Hester,

    “Of course, I’ve heard Christian women use headship/submission as a cop-out for years. Things like this:

    “I’m so glad my husband is in charge! That way I don’t have to make any decisions! It’s so liberating!”

    “Sure, it was stupid decision, but at least this way it’s not MY fault when it all goes wrong.”

    This is convicting. This has been similar to my attitude at times. And it is the exact opposite of being a help-meet. How helpful can a woman really be to her husband if she is only an extension of him? 🙁

    You know what? They’re so focused on how Feminism gives men a cop-out, that they can’t even see that Patriarchy gives women a cop-out. Any view which promotes one gender as superior makes everybody the loser.

  66. Ghost

    Thank you for your willingness to share you sad story. Funny, I imagine how you John Piper pal would respond. He would say she was never really a Christian in the first place and blithely go on his way, convinced of his own election. There is much done in the name of the faith and it i sad that it came to this for her. I was blessed to have met Pete Briscoe early on who encouraged me to teach, even when I thought I couldn’t. Please know that I am grateful for your transparency and pray for both your former wife and you. I am so sorry.

  67. Hester

    If CBMW does not believe in mediators between the wife and God then how do they push the idea of needing a head in the marriage?

  68. Doubtful

    Oh my goodness-a Calvary Chapel type thought women would become male in heaven? That is absolutely amazing. 

  69. Retha

    On the CS Lewis thing-these guys are schizophrenic. At one point they claim him and at another they reject him. Some Neo Cals do not believe he was Christian because he allowed for a soldier of Tash (Chronicles of Narnia) tobe in heaven. It is now cool to diss Lewis amongst these guys who are oh so pure in their theology. 

  70. Deb

    I am so glad you have joined me in the bird watching kingdom. It is the best money we have spent and brings us so much joy. To this day, Fadi still asks after my hummingbirds. he used to sit staring at them as a little boy. Will kinda takes it for granted. Saw a seagull today proudly strutting around with a little fish in his mouth. 

    BTW, one of the sweetest things I see is when the mother bluebird is about to drop her eggs, the dad feeds her the worms from his mouth. We have now hatched 5 babies which, if all goes well, will add to the 9 others so far. The Parsons have added 14 new bluebirds to NC! 

  71. I watch the birds as well. Have observed finches, doves, hummingbirds (that was rare and at a time when my daughter was fascinated), and swallows build and hatch. Today Mr. Hawk was in the yard. He is a beauty, but I fear for the babies that were high in a tree nearby. Yesterday the babes were a-squawking and I frightened Mr. Hawk away . . . I best watch out for my small dog as well. Mr. Hawk has gown quite a bit in the past few years.

  72. Jeannette Altes said,

    Hmmm…..”Here Is Our God” is the title of their conference.
    So….find out what the conference was about and you find out what their god is….

    Excellent comment!  Maybe we should start saying “the god of complementarianism”.

     

     

     

  73. Bridget,

    We have a hawk in our neighborhood, too.  Last fall it swooped down and tried to pick up my neighbor’s miniature chihuahua (which couldn’t have weighed more than a couple of pounds).  Its talons really injured the dog.  Sadly, the dog died a few months later, but it was getting up there in age.  

  74. @ Dee:

    I wish I could answer that question better… This idea is so riddled with problems. Is the father a high priest, or just a priest? ‘Cause we’ve already got a High Priest (His name starts with J). If the father’s some other kind of priest, HOW precisely is he a priest? And what does a priest DO, anyway? Aren’t they always intercessory in some way? Because the priests under the Old Covenant were, and Jesus definitely is. So if he’s a priest, but he doesn’t intercede spiritually in any extraordinary way or perform any other “priestly” duties of any kind, how is he a “priest” at all?!

    Here they’ll object and say, “Well, he can pray for his family.” True. But I can do that, too. That’s why Christians are a KINGDOM OF PRIESTS. We’re the priests (regardless of gender) and Jesus is the high priest. Where did this third level of “in-between” priesthood come from? Was the Levite priesthood not enough and now we need to duplicate the Aaronic priesthood too?

    And here’s the other problem. We all agree that we need an intercessor/mediator between us and God the Father. So what happens if our intercessor goes away? (Imagine if Jesus just popped out of existence one day.) So if Mr. Jones the patriarch is actually doing some kind of meaningful spiritual intercession, what happens when he dies? Who is now the designated intercessor for the Jones family? Or are the Joneses left in limbo, completely cut off from God?

    So confused. Somebody flick me in the head if I’m completely off track here.

  75. Ghost,

    I am writing a post tomorrow warning my daughters (and any other young ladies who are still single) about the dangers of complementarianism.  I plan to include your testimony as proof of its harmful effects.  I hope that’s O.K.

    Thank you for being so open about your (and your ex-wife’s) devastating experience with complementarianism / patriarchy.  Yes, I do plan to connect comp with patriarchy because the complementarians have not drawn a line in the sand.

  76. In any marriage, there should be complementary exchanges. One is better at some things than the other. Since I am better at chemistry, when the kids were little, I began doing the laundry to deal with stains, on which I am an expert, and now, since my office is in the home, it makes sense for me to keep doing the laundry. She is better at gardening — both foodstuffs and decorative. I am better at bookkeeping and tax issues. She is better at theology, bible exposition, etc. She is better at educational issues and I at construction and the like. She is a whiz at tearing out plasterboard and I am better at putting it up as we remodel.

    But that is not to say that any role in our home is gender determined, except that she bore the children and nursed them, but when they were first at home from the hospital, they slept on Daddy’s chest for a few nights so she could get some much needed sleep. And I was the one who taught them to hold their bottle at 4-5 months of age, and led in discipline (“What choices did you have and what consequences did you expct?” “What choice did you make.” started at 3 yo with punishment being having to talk it out with Dad and then do time out.)

    So we both have an individual relationship with Jesus, pray at the table sort of alternately but not strictly so, read and share Christian literature (commentaries, Christian web sites), and explore original meanings and the history and culture behind the epistles and gospels.

    One point. The word translated “submit” cannot mean a one-sided thing like our word, because a verse or two earlier, Paul wrote that we are to “xubmit” to one another. Mutual submission, in the sense that makes the man head of the woman, does not make sense. So the word cannot mean that. What it really has to mean is to have a cooperative spirit. And in response to having a wife with a cooperative spirit, the man is to love her enough to voluntarily submit to crucifixion for her. I do not think there are may patriarchists who would do that for their wife!

  77. @Hester-

    “And here’s the other problem. We all agree that we need an intercessor/mediator between us and God the Father. So what happens if our intercessor goes away? (Imagine if Jesus just popped out of existence one day.) So if Mr. Jones the patriarch is actually doing some kind of meaningful spiritual intercession, what happens when he dies? Who is now the designated intercessor for the Jones family? Or are the Joneses left in limbo, completely cut off from God?”

    I know what you mean Hester. Here is my crazy question– why did God allow him to die before her in the first place and leave her without her headship/spiritual leader/prophet/priest/king/provivder (as taught by Baucham and A29)? If a woman absolutely needs a spiritual leader and authority to go to God for her; to lead her and the family spiritually, (husband if married-father/pastor/elder if single) then why would God take away the very thing (her husband through death) a wife needs for her spiritual growth? Doesn’t God know she needs a spiritual leader? It seems inefficient, not to mention cruel, for God to go to all that trouble to allow the spiritual head of the family to die– only to make the poor wife look for another husband or be under the authority of some elder or her pastor or whatever it is they do in that circumstance. I do not understand this at all. It would seem husbands of Christian wives should never be the ones to die first.

  78. I will share my view – that sharing my view on this issue is not productive.

    The blog world is not a good place to discuss this issue because of the limitations on this form of communication and the cemented positions of most people on this issue in public forums.

  79. I can’t bear to listen to Piper anymore. Complementarianism hurts too much. For some people it’s not a problem, because the ‘roles’ fit their natural personality types. For others of us it is a descent into Hell. I spent over 20 years in a strongly comp and calvinistic church (the one my husband grew up in) and in the end I had to flee it. To my husband’s everlasting credit, in the end he chose to leave it and join the church i was going to. When, at his request, I accompanied him there on his final Sunday, I was cold-shouldered by some of the leaders, and I knew exactly why. I, a mere female, had presumed to take my husband away from them. God called me to be a teacher of His word, it’s how I function, but there was no room for me there except teaching children in Sunday School, which gets old very quickly if it’s not you. One time my husband, who was a member of session, was asked to take on some extra responsibility. We had a young family, and he was working the impossible hours that doctors work during their specialist training, plus studying as well. Not being a guy who likes to say no directly to people, his response was, “Oh, I’d have to discuss that with Lynne.” (note that I was not involved in any of this) A couple of weeks later we were at the wedding of church members, and I found myself suddenly subjected to all these teasing jokes from some elders about being an “unsubmissive woman”. i was mortified.

    For years I believed this teaching, because it was the only one I’d ever heard, and it tied my life in knots. It got so bad that at one point we were on a family outing for the day and I had a migraine. Rather than spoil my husband’s fun, I hid it from everyone, prayed frantically for strength, and at every stop I’d be slipping off to the Ladies to throw up. Yes, that was insanity, and yes, we’ve had some marriage problems to sort out, but we’ve made it to 35 years and we’re still together. But that’s where the teaching takes you.

    But in 35 years of marriage, and raising 2 kids (1 son, 1 daughter) to adulthood, neither of them ever asked me what does it mean to be a man or a woman? If they had I would have told them it meant being the unique human being God has called you to be and serving him though who you are. Gender doesn’t have much to do with it — not because gender distinctions aren’t important (that’s just silly — there’s a reason that, as a straight woman I’m married to a man) but because there’s no one way of being a man or a woman. My gender informs everything I do and the way I do it, but it doesn’t dictate it or circumscribe it. My husband doesn’t do the driving on long trips because he’s the man, he does it because he likes driving and I don’t.

    also, no one could ever explain to me what a spiritual leader in a marriage is, where the term is found in the Bible, or why I need one. Once, during our years at that church, my husband was asked to take a turn leading the service while the minister was away. I wrote it for him — wrote the prayers in full, the segues, chose the hymns and put it all together. all he had to do was read it No one knew it had been done by his wife and not himself. Afterwards people came up and said it was the best put together service they’d heard in years. They would have choked if they knew a woman had written it.

  80. @Anonymous at 10:55 PM … while I can understand and even agree that perhaps few people may have their mind *changed* by participating in an online forum, there is something to be said for *crowdsourcing* points on the relevant issues. It can bring together important insights that are not yet all in one place or at one time. It can spark important thinking about related topics and sources.

    For instance, I hadn’t made the connections between Mormonism and some of what seems to be emerging from the complementarian movement until someone else in this thread mentioned it. So I posted a thought about that with some suggestions for follow-up research possibilities on indicators of where things could be leading. As a cultural analyst and futurist, I believe that how people think makes a difference, and part of my research work involves watching for the logical conclusions of those ways people think and what the consequences turn out to be … whether they are constructive or destructive.

    And so, for someone who is already undergoing a change process on their beliefs and practices regarding gender roles, this kind of digital repository can be of benefit.

    Also, I’m not sure an in-person discussion would necessarily be safer than a blog dialogue. This issue just seems to hit the emotional hot buttons for people on all sides of the question. Maybe that’s because we all see it as having serious spiritual and personal and social implications. If we didn’t believe there were long-term consequences to our views, we wouldn’t be so entrenched in them – whether we are complementarian or egalitarian or anotherkindoftarian.

  81. Dee and Deb,

    I would prefer that you keep it vague in the main posting. I am a regular reader of WW and wanted to post my experience for the commenter type of readers. I guess I feel more safety there. I still have a very fragile faith and only deserve to be a negative example to people. If you wouldn’t mind not sharing too much in the general post I would appreciate it…

  82. Ah, I remember when the time came for me to ask my parents the immortal question that every girl child will someday ask: “What does it mean to be a woman?”. It was a beautiful spring day, and my tender eight-year-old mind was full of curiosity and a yearning to understand my role in the world. I tugged on Mother’s skirts and asked “Mummy, what does it mean to be a woman?”. Unfortunately my mother was an egalitarian and told me that, other than biological differences, she wasn’t totally sure there was an easy answer to that question.

    I don’t mean to blame my parents for my issues, but if I had to pick a reason why I’m now a transexual and an atheist, that moment is probably it.

  83. Yikes, I just realized there is another Jan who has commented on here who is definitely not me! I was just reading over the post about Doubtful’s deconversion (from back in March?) and saw she’d commented there but I haven’t found any other places she’s commented.

    Is there any way to distinguish this or should I modify my name?

    For the record, my very first comment was on the May 18 post about the Here is Our God women’s conference. Sorry if anyone was confused.

  84. Haven’t read through all the comments yet. I’m definitely egalitarian. Maybe it’s because of my stubborn argumentative independent streak, which I get from my dad. Of course, he got it from his mum, my gran, who was the most amazing person I’ve ever had the fortune to know. She was incredibly bold and independent – especially for a woman born in 1914 – and also the most serving, selfless Christian woman. She likely wouldn’t meet the ‘standard’ for a woman as defined by complementarians, but they’d be hard pressed to find someone more godly. And surely that’s the most important thing.

  85. “Even if Lewis made some comments (before his marriage, I think) that comps may agree with, you cannot claim he would have been willing to sign the entire Danvers statement or describe himself as one.”

    Not after being married to Joy. She changed his outlook on this considerably.

  86. “I’m a bit disappointed that J I Packer is among them, to be honest.”

    There was a blogger about this topic years back that happened to attend the same church as Packer’s wife. It was a church that allowed women to preach. Packer did not attend the same church as her. I thought that was interesting.

  87. Dee, Deb, & Bridget,

    I love to be regaled with bird tales! My wife and I just love the hummers that frequent the feeder we keep for them. We have other birds that frequent our place too. It’s like a joyful concert, straight out of Beethoven’s “Pastorale” (6th symphony).

  88. @ HUG,

    Calvary Chapel huh? Why am I not surprised? I’m glad I got free of all that horse-malarky years ago.

  89. Many are too afraid to free themselves for fear of being consigned to the fires of hell if they dare and opt-out of what they were grilled and re-grilled into believing. The fear factor has got to be huge. Couple that with the belief that these guys speak the actual words of the Almighty through the Bible, and you’ve got a perfect storm of misery, despair, and hopelessness.

  90. I make no bones about the fact that I am a complementarian, but I hope that you all will graciously hear me out for a brief second.

    I stumbled across this blog and have just spent way too long reading way too many of these comments. In my view, there is a lot of misunderstanding going on here. It seems that a lot of you want to demonize Piper and others for some reason (not really sure how that works, considering the venom that is directed at Calvinists and complementarians for THEIR perceived theological snobbery, but anyway…).

    The complementarian position is really quite simple. First, it is important for you all to keep in mind that complementarianism purports to be a truth about the world (i.e., a truth about the intended roles of men and women in marriages and in the church). A necessary corollary of that is that complementarianism (as a doctrinal concept) does not stand or fall with your opinion of John Piper, or with how some guy in your old church treated his wife, or how some woman you know really wants to pastor a church. None of those things illuminate whether complementarianism is a true description of God’s design or not.

    Second, in general terms, complementarianism boils down to this (which is all derived from Genesis 1-3, combined with the later affirmation and elaboration of those texts by Jesus and Paul): (1) men and women are both God’s image-bearers, both with equal dignity as humans and (if regenerate) co-heirs with Christ; (2) men and women are nonetheless different; (3) God created man and woman (equal, but distinct) to form a pair in marriage and in ministry (i.e., to “complement” one another); (4) God created man and woman to fill different roles within those pairings (marriage and ministry); (5) God created man with the responsibility to lead, provide, and protect, and in a properly functioning marriage or church, that is man’s role (there are obviously cases where marriage does not end up “properly functioning–for instance, if the husband dies or is seriously disabled, etc.); (6) God created woman with the purpose of coming alongside man (“alongside,” and also “under” his leadership) in the overarching purpose of glorifying God (but this does not mean that women have no ministry independent of men); and (7) the roles of men and women in marriage and in the church should be considered and practiced in accordance with the call of all Christians to charity, servanthood, and sacrifice.

    In the practical outworking in a marriage, complementarianism often looks more or less identical to egalitarianism. The truth of the matter is that headship and submission (as understood in complementarianism) are not the same thing as dominance and subservience, or superior importance and inferior importance. If a husband and wife practice headship and submission, with selflessness and charity, as instituted by the Bible, then both spouses should be affirmed by the other, and all decisions should ultimately be mutual. (This is where I urge you to consider the biblical view of complementarianism, not the perverted version of “complementarianism” where some woman feels totally constrained and bottled up because she doesn’t understand the biblical picture or where some man runs roughshod over his wife because he doesn’t understand the biblical picture.)

  91. To Just stopping by,

    Just because people have been sharing their war wounds on this comment thread doesn’t mean that’s the only reason they reject complementarianism, though it does explain why we take it so seriously — it’s not just a theory belonging to some school of theology, but a practice which impacts real people, sometimes with disastrous consequences. At the very least that should indicate that anyone with a pastoral heart would want to make sure they were building on a foundation of actual truth.

    Egalitarianism has some serious Bible scholarship behind it, and it wasn’t just invented in the last 40 years, though the education of women has opened new doors for it. This is not the place for a lengthy explanation, and frankly I don’t have the time — I have things to go and do with my husband! 🙂 But egals do not believe their was any hierarchy between man and woman until after the fall, where the man’s rulership over the woman, and the woman’s codependency towards the man are part of the curse. Woman was not created to be man’s assistant, the Hebrew words translated as a help(er) meet (or fitting) ezer kenegedo, uses a strong word for help, one which is used of God Himself elsewhere in the OT (think of O God our Help in Ages Past — that sort of help) and kenegedo, translated as “meet” literally means a face to face counterpart.

    In the NT, we are called to live as a new creation, undoing the curse. If you look at the narratives, you see that both Jesus and Paul related to women in ways that were revolutionary in their patriarchal culture. Women were set free from the curse, but were not to use their freedom in such a way to scandalise the culture (these days it is the oppression of women that scandalises the culture — something to think about!) Paul also said a couple of things to specific churches about their situation (eg that women had to be learners before they could be teachers) and somehow we think that applies in all cultures through all time, even while we say other things in the same passages were situational. If we read the scriptures carefully, it is man, not God, who has a problem with the equality of women.
    Enough! If you are seriously interested in the egal point of view, there are plenty of books and websites we can direct you towards — if you are, in fact just passing by to commit a drive by shooting, I’m afraid you were firing blanks. Your arguments have been heard before and countered by heaps of scholars, we remain un-shot.

  92. I was walking my dog this morning, and as always, listening to prz music. When Micheal W. Smith broke from the usual tune, and sang “MY CHAINS ARE GONE, I’VE BEEN SET FREE…” my heart soared. Not only for me personally, but for all my brothers and sisters at TWW!! If I had the money and the email addresses of Pope Piper, and his minions, I’d ‘gift’ that song to them from iTunes. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, they’d be set free too! Even now, I can hardly type from my hands wanting to lift themselves in prz and honor. SING IT WITH ME: “MY CHAINS ARE GONE, I’VE BEEN SET FREE!”

  93. Just Stopping By –

    Lynne T. did a great little synopsis for you, and she is right. If you have any interest in egalitarianism (otherwise known as mutuality) you are certainly capable of finding the resources.

    Most of the people here at TWW can quote the complementarian line just as well as you do. Most of us know it, understand it, and reject it. Quite frankly, even before I know there was an alternative understanding of Genesis 1-3, I rejected the complementarian reading of it. Because it just doesn’t say all the things you outline in your comment. You have to first believe those things and then read them into Genesis. Honestly. It just doesn’t say that.

  94. just stopping by,

    It’s obvious you are just parroting the very same words you have heard from Piper. Do you not hear how extraordinarily contradictory the words “alongside” but “under” are? Piper has come up with some fluffy, fancy words in an effort to placate those he relegates to the “under” position, but carefully hides the “authority, ruler, patriarch” words. You see, all believers are designated to the “under” position. All are subject to one another. When you see that truth, you will be set free. It was for that freedom Christ died. (Gal. 5:1)

    Rather than parroting the words of another, if you will diligently study the Bible for yourself, you will see the truth. My prayer is that you will have such a hunger for truth, you will refuse to accept anything less regardless of who is disguising it with fluff.

  95. @ Just Stopping By:

    I am on the fence between complementarianism and egalitarianism, so I have not necessarily rejected complementarianism. However, I find it interesting that you pointed out that a complementarian marriage “on the ground” may look no different than an egalitarian marriage. Are you aware that some major voices in the complementarian movement are beginning to say this is a problem? “Functionally egalitarian” is a dirty word now. In fact, John Piper (whom you are so eager to defend) implied years ago in CBMW’s online book that all women should submit to all men. That is a patriarchal idea, NOT a complementarian one. The drift toward patriarchy has only gotten more extreme since.

    Also, I would advise you to keep a closer eye on John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and many other currently popular Calvinists (“Neo-Calvinists”). Some serious questions have been raised about the integrity of their theology, on multiple points. See the blog Paul’s Passing Thoughts and make of it what you will.

  96. Just Stopping By,

    If a complementarian marriage “on the ground” doesn’t necessarily look any different than an egalitarian one, why does a complementarian church look so different than an egalitarian church “one the ground”? Why doesn’t functional egalitarianism look the same in the home as in the church?

    Even if you do not delve into the rich resources available about biblical egalitarianism, you might want to google “symbolic traditionalism pragmatic egalitarianism”. It talks about the complementarian marriage that “looks” egalitarian. It is an interesting read.

  97. Wow, a firestorm of comments. I have been an egalitarian on racial issues since age 10, after coming to Christ at age 9, and figuring out that Jesus would not have me hate or disadvantage another. It would not be “doing unto others what I would have done to me”.
    Then about age 15, I became an egalitarian on gender issues. I observed my outwardly complementarian mother being the spiritual leader in our family and a leader in SBC life as a state WMU officer, traveling to lead workshops and meetings where women would speak (not “preach”, but those were sermons none the less) and others would learn.
    It took me into my 30s to understand that others’ gender preference should not deprive them of the rights I enjoy — again that golden rule thing — including the right I enjoy to be in a legally recognized relationship with the one I love.
    My favorite misinterpretation is the “help meet” thing. In the Psalms, the psalmist describes God as his helper, using the exact word that is in Genesis. So, by simple analogy, “As God is to the psalmist, Eve is to Adam.” Sounds more matriarchal than patriarchal!!! Thus we come to why an egalitarian position can be as biblical as any patriarchal one.

  98. Piper says, “I don’t think you have to be a complementarian to be saved, and so it’s not essential at that level…but if you do the kind of gymnastics that I think you have to do in order to escape Ephesians 5, you’re going to get the gospel wrong.” Then he corrects himself by saying, “That’s an overstatement. You will tend to go in that direction and, sooner or later, you’re going to get the gospel wrong.”

    This seems to me to be contradictory. I would think that Piper would believe that one can’t be saved apart from understanding and embracing the gospel. So, if a person gets the gospel wrong (whether “sooner or later”), wouldn’t that mean that the person is not saved, or cannot be saved? Isn’t he essentially saying that you can’t really be saved if you’re a complementarian? But he started out by saying that you don’t have to be a complementarian to be saved. Very confusing!

    I also just can’t understand why these men are so concerned about how other people work out their marriages. What business is it of theirs? They seem so sure that their way is the right way and they want to everybody else to do it their way, too. Very controlling. (Actually, I do understand where they’re coming from, because I spent 30 years in a denomination where this stuff was propagated. It’s just that I see it now for what it is, and I’m sorry that I bought into it for so long.)

  99. Just Stopping By,

    Like Hester, I am “on the fence.” I’m coming out of patriarchal thinking.

    You said:

    “The truth of the matter is that headship and submission (as understood in complementarianism) are not the same thing as dominance and subservience, or superior importance and inferior importance. If a husband and wife practice headship and submission, with selflessness and charity, as instituted by the Bible, then both spouses should be affirmed by the other, and all decisions should ultimately be mutual.”

    But all too often, what is communicated (intentionally or unintentionally) when this doctrine is preached is dominance/superiority and subservience/inferiority, even if that’s a misunderstanding. That’s how it’s clicking in people’s minds. That’s how it’s lived out to people who take it the most seriously. And only the people who don’t take it all that seriously are the ones who end up looking more mutual. The slightest attempt to change this faulty mindset starts to sound strangely… egalitarian. I begin to wonder what the point is at all.

    Oh, and you forgot a biggie in your 5th point (man’s roles): Sacrifice. Laying down one’s own needs and desires for his bride to the very death of him. The definition of Christ’s headship.

  100. “I also just can’t understand why these men are so concerned about how other people work out their marriages. What business is it of theirs?”

    What business is it of ours to ask?
    Why do we give a rip?
    If people want to believe whatever they believe about men and women, roles, etc., why do we feel the need to add our two cents to correct them or persuade others to agree with our view?
    Just askin’.

  101. Tedro

    Why do we care? Because it is affecting our churches, the ones that we attend. It seesm like every young man coming out of seminary these days is into control, discipline and telling women to be quiet.

  102. Thanks for the comments! Some of you mentioned not having time to respond to me, and I certainly don’t have time to respond point-for-point to each of you, but I want to clarify and emphasize a few things.

    Eagle says: “Sorry my bullshit detector is going off with your statement. First John Piper is a cancer on Christianity. His theological statements in so many areas, complementarianism, disasters, etc.. is among the most fucked up I have seen.”

    I disagree that Piper is a cancer on Christianity. However, I grant you that I think his post on the tornadoes was poorly written and not very nuanced.

    Lynne T says: “Just because people have been sharing their war wounds on this comment thread doesn’t mean that’s the only reason they reject complementarianism, though it does explain why we take it so seriously — it’s not just a theory belonging to some school of theology, but a practice which impacts real people, sometimes with disastrous consequences.”

    This is the point I was trying to make the first time–your “war stories” are not “war stories” about biblical complementarianism, but about perverted male dominance or about poor teaching of the doctrine that has lead women to cower in the corner. Neither of these things are what biblical complementarianism pictures. My point is that to the extent you are recounting war stories, you are not at all talking about complementarianism, but sin. Any complementarian who understands biblical complementarianism would say that. There may be some people who say they are complementarian and then get it tragically wrong, but an indictment of their error is not an indictment of the doctrine of complementarianism.

    Lynne T also says: “At the very least that should indicate that anyone with a pastoral heart would want to make sure they were building on a foundation of actual truth.”

    I do not understand why you all are so willing to attribute ill motives to Piper and others. They clearly do believe that they are building on a foundation of actual truth. Even if they are wrong, they think they are right. They aren’t just teaching something they know to be false in order to torment women. The implication that they are is entirely unfair.

    Lynne T also says: “Woman was not created to be man’s assistant, the Hebrew words translated as a help(er) meet (or fitting) ezer kenegedo, uses a strong word for help, one which is used of God Himself elsewhere in the OT (think of O God our Help in Ages Past — that sort of help) and kenegedo, translated as “meet” literally means a face to face counterpart.”

    That’s fine. I don’t think any complementarian (who understands biblical complementarianism) would have a problem with your view as expressed in this quote. (But in the interest of avoiding getting sidetracked arguing about whether any given person would agree with that statement, I will voluntarily walk that statement back to say that at least MOST complementarians would affirm your view as expressed in this quote.) Again, complementarianism is not about subjugating women. Women are face-to-face counterparts–equals. Women are not mere assistants, but partners–partners with different roles in two particular contexts (marriage and church government), but you are misunderstanding (or poorly articulating) the complementarian view of gender roles.

    Victorious says: “It’s obvious you are just parroting the very same words you have heard from Piper. Do you not hear how extraordinarily contradictory the words “alongside” but “under” are? Piper has come up with some fluffy, fancy words in an effort to placate those he relegates to the “under” position, but carefully hides the “authority, ruler, patriarch” words.”

    You are misunderstanding Piper, and furthermore, you are attributing ill will to Piper for no other reason than your preconceived notion of what gender equality means. Piper is not inventing “fluff” in order to subjugate women. Men and women are complete equals in Piper’s mind. It is not “contradictory” to say that equals have different roles. (And in reality, there roles are very similar in a lot of ways, but complementarians hold that men are uniquely responsible as leaders in a marriage and in church government. Notice that this leadership is modeled after Jesus, however, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, etc.–in other words, male headship is to be characterized by humility, servanthood, and responsibility.)

    Victorious also says: “You see, all believers are designated to the “under” position. All are subject to one another. When you see that truth, you will be set free. It was for that freedom Christ died. (Gal. 5:1)”

    Yes. True. Complementarians affirm this.

    Moniker says: “I also just can’t understand why these men are so concerned about how other people work out their marriages. What business is it of theirs? They seem so sure that their way is the right way and they want to everybody else to do it their way, too. Very controlling.”

    The reverse could be asked of you. And the answer of course is that they believe it to be a matter of great importance (although not ultimate importance) to God.

    Jan says: “But all too often, what is communicated (intentionally or unintentionally) when this doctrine is preached is dominance/superiority and subservience/inferiority, even if that’s a misunderstanding. That’s how it’s clicking in people’s minds. That’s how it’s lived out to people who take it the most seriously. And only the people who don’t take it all that seriously are the ones who end up looking more mutual. The slightest attempt to change this faulty mindset starts to sound strangely… egalitarian. I begin to wonder what the point is at all.”

    I understand that some people do not grasp what the idea of headship and submission really is. (That much is self-evident from these comments.) I think that you make a great error of generalization when you say that dominance/subservience is how it is lived out to the people who to it the most seriously. I would argue that the people who take it the most seriously are the people who humbly seek to understand biblical complementarianism, and in the people in my life, it doesn’t result in this oppression that you all are speaking of.

    Jan also says: “Oh, and you forgot a biggie in your 5th point (man’s roles): Sacrifice. Laying down one’s own needs and desires for his bride to the very death of him. The definition of Christ’s headship.”

    Yes. Absolutely. I didn’t mean to leave that out. I included it in point #7 because in reality I believe that we are all called to sacrificial love as imitators of Jesus. However, it is true that in a sense, men (at least in marriage and in church leadership) are called uniquely to a higher order of sacrifice.

  103. just stopping by

    I can tell that you just stopped by due to the nature of your comment. Do you understand how this blog differentiates between Calvinists and Calvinistas? It s important to your understanding of our comments. Please go to our definitions page to check that one out.

    Secondly, be very careful when you use the word “misunderstanding.” It can sound quite condescending, particularly if you convey that you do not misunderstand and everyone else here does. There are people here who could run circles around many Calvinistas (please note the word) and the fact that you just “stopped by” shows that you have not spent way too much time (as you sweetly put it) reading our comments but way too little time and care in doing so.

    Then, of course, you use the tired Calvinista term “the BIBLICAL view of complementarianism.” How tedious. When you have trouble defining your belief, you throw out the fact that, of course, you are BIBLICAL and ipso facto we are not. Case closed. Why even bother commenting at all? You see, if you are Biblical and we are not then you, of course, are amongst the elect and we are obviously the unregenerate dregs, probably part of the non-elect. You pull the same nonsense as Piper showing you have studied your mentor well.

    Next time, please try to converse instead of being snotty.

  104. Moniker

    Piper is trying to link the Gospel to comp theology. And anyone who doesn’t buy it is not a believer in the Gospel and that means such a slug is not unregenerate. This is an ungodly tactic and Piper should be ashamed of himself. But, of course, he is not because he obviously is correct. Frankly I am wearying of these arrogant men who are so cocksure of themselves that they throw the Gospel term around in a willy nilly fashion . They pretend to love the Gospel but they use it to prive they are righteous and the rest of us are not.

  105. just stopping by,

    Since you are such a strong defender of John Piper, does it bother you that he invited Doug Wilson to speak at the latest Pastors’ Conference?

    It’s also noteworthy that Piper took a 9-month leave of absence last year to work on his marriage.  Hmmmm……

  106. Just Stopping By:

    “If a husband and wife practice headship and submission, with selflessness and charity, as instituted by the Bible, then both spouses should be affirmed by the other, and all decisions should ultimately be mutual.”

    Then doesn’t your definition of complementarianism kind of collapse on itself? I’m not trying to be facetious, I’m just confused. If all decisions should ultimately be mutual, then what is the practical meaning of the difference between “headship” and “submission”? If the man being the “head” and the woman “submitting” DOES entail a practical difference of some sort, then how can the decisions ultimately be mutual?

    I guess what I’m saying here is that if we read that passage from Paul as you suggest we read it, it sounds like Paul is advocating for egalitarian marriage. He calls women to submit, and men to sacrifice. In other words, women put their husbands first, and husbands put their wives first. That sounds the same to me, not different. Why does there need to be an implied difference in the “roles?”

    (BTW women’s submission in that verse corresponds to the man’s sacrifice, not to his headship (headship corresponds to the head/body metaphor). It’s not that women submit and men head; rather, women submit and men sacrifice. The further metaphor is head/body and finally Christ/Church. 3 pairs in those verses; it’s best not to mix-and-match them.)

  107. And I understand in the original Greek, the word translated “Submit” can also be translated “Respect”.

  108. Just Stopping By,

    I must say you are naive in your comments. I studied under some of the most well known comps out there. I attended Bethlehem for a while during the midst of the scholarly war on gender. Piper’s view is wrong. He is so black and white about things that it has led to Driscoll type copycats. Please don’t just stop by again. I suggest you spend a few weeks reading this blog before you blindly paint with comp colored glasses.

  109. It’s also noteworthy that Piper took a 9-month leave of absence last year to work on his marriage. Hmmmm…… — Deb

    Took that long to beat and browbeat his woman back into her Biblical place?

    “Last week a reporter asked me to define “complementarianism.”

    In practice and as chronicled here, two words: MALE SUPREMACIST.

  110. Doug Wilson is scary, no bones about it. In addition to being a Reconstructionist (as far as I know), he’s also a neo-Confederate. For Pete’s sake, he even wrote a book about why slavery wasn’t so bad after all (Southern Slavery: As It Was). — Hester

    Defending a Peculiar Institution regarding Certain Animate Property?

  111. “Next time, please try to converse instead of being snotty.”

    I don’t think it’s possible! I’m actually shocked we didn’t get the “you’re all a bunch of radical feminists!” bit….

  112. From some theological and sociological research I did at that time, I’d suggest that there are enough similarities to the *paradigm structures* of Mormonism and complementarianism to warrant more research. Despite the core theological differences that distinguish Christianity and Mormonism… — Brad Futurist Guy

    From experience in the Seventies, most “Christian Cult Watch” groups of the time defined CULT(TM) ONLY in terms of aberrant theology, NOT in control-freak or abusive/manipulative behavior towards their people. A LOT of damage got done by abusive “Fellowships” whose Evangelical Theology dotted every I, and crossed every T, and slipped right under the Cult-Sniffers’ radar.

  113. The Gospel is not about marriage or about male or female roles in a marriage. The Gospel is actually being diminished when it is compared to the institution of marriage. The Gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ and and his life, death, and resurrection to redeem mankind! Marriage does no such thing. The verses in Ephesians call us to mutual submission right before Paul gives us some examples of how this can look in several different relationship scenarios. He was speaking at a certain time and to a certain culture. It was not a new list of laws. Paul was addessing the specific issues of that church, in that city, in that culture, in that time. Now there is much we can take from that, but should we revert to slavery so we can follow the teaching to the letter of the law?

  114. I noticed my comment was ignored by Just Stopping By.

    I would remind everyone that the word translated submit in the KJV and other places CANNOT mean what we understand the word to mean, because just a verse or so earlier, all Christians are to “submit” to each other. If the meaning is the Calvinista Patriarchalist meaning, that is IMPOSSIBLE. Substitute “respect” or “cooperate with” and it works. So “submit” is NOT what Paul and the Holy Spirit were commanding a wife do to her husband. It is the patriarchist translators of the KJV who are to blame for the misunderstanding, that, and that most translations since have gone back to the KJV for a meaning when uncertain about a word (read the translators notes in the front of the version you have!)

    It is also the case that in the first century, head did not mean “boss” or “ruler” or even “leader”. The most common meaning is source, and that fits into the passages where it is used metaphorically, such as Adam being the source of Eve, via an alleged rib. It is also the case that the head was thought of as being the source of food for the body, and in the first century, the husband was responsible for providing, including doing the shopping, since women were not seen out in public without their husband, and so he did the food purchasing too.

    My other favorite misunderstanding is the “head covering” stuff. There Paul, who said that circumcision was not important, is replying to an issue in the church involved due to a controversy about hair cuts. In some communities of the time, a woman with short hair was assumed to be a prostitute which could bring dishonor on the church. Paul was suggesting an alternative while making fun of this issue being a controversy in the church. If you read it assuming he is showing them, by irony, that they are making mountains out of molehills, it is rather clear. BTW, I wonder how Paul would write about some of the stuff that happens in our churches today; I suspect that many would be the target of belly laughs by the Apostle.

  115. @ Headless Unicorn Guy … You’re absolutely right about the problem of Christians having a definition of “cult” that is only THEOLOGICAL, i.e., heresy. Christian enterprises that inflict damage via total control of followers have escaped being labeled a cult because they maintain doctrinal orthodoxy … at least in words, though their practices often deny and defy the gospel.

    Meanwhile, the criteria for a cult in the SOCIOLOGICAL sense have been in place for well over 50 years, and include many of the practices we see in authoritarian ministries, churches, and movements. Here’s a summary list of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s criteria:

    1. Milieu Control – restrict what communication modes are allowed.

    2. Mystical Manipulation – appeal to some higher purpose, as set by the leader or organization.

    3. The Demand for Purity – require purity of thinking, that is, with a black-and-white mentality where every view our group holds is absolutely correct.

    4. The Cult of Confession – use a radical level of personal confession to unburden people from their crimes (real or imagined) against the organization and realign them with its principles.

    5. The “Sacred Science” – promote our moral vision as ultimate: Our way of life is the only right one.

    6. Loading the Language – create code words and insider jargon that reduce complex problems to simplistic solutions, and condense categories into judgmental labels.

    7. Doctrine Over Person – require people to conform to our perfect system of truth so that individuality is eradicated and sublime conformity is the sacred norm.

    8. The Dispensing of Existence – exercise the “right” to decide who has the right to exist in public and who needs to be isolated or excommunicated.

    (I posted a three-part series on this a while back, in case people want details: http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/the-hunger-games-trilogy-5a/ )

    At the very least, some seemingly orthodox ministries act in “cultic” ways, and I have to wonder if we’re moving into a paradigm shift where such groups are labeled as malignant and UNorthodox because their anti-grace actions counteract the essence of the gospel on so many different levels, as has been discussed here. Such as questionable practices that in reality place males as spiritual mediators over women not just as heads of households. Confusing, contradictory statements that say complementarianism isn’t a gospel requirement but if you aren’t complementarian it somehow gets you off track with the gospel. The question of whether complementarianism supports a misogynistic system that excuses and/or promotes domestic violence (physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse). That is serious stuff …

  116. 56 years a Baptist, mostly SBC

    I really appreciate your thorough comment, and I concur.  I’m planning to address some of this in today’s post, so I hope the conversation about translations of those key passages will continue.

  117. just stopping by….

    You said, “male headship is to be characterized by humility, servanthood, and responsibility”

    Again, virtue, servanthood and responsibility are not gender specific. To attribute some simply because of their “maleness” is truly unscriptural and misleading.

    Jesus Himself came as a servant for all of us to emulate.

  118. Just stopping by,

    I could have easily written out those exact same points you did – they’re so easy to put on paper. Why do they get so incredibly distorted when people actually go to live them, though? What is it about this teaching that makes it so easy to distort? Are you absolutely certain there’s not something inherently distorted with the teaching itself? (I am not convinced either way yet, so I do appreciate this conversation). If not, then what clarifications need to be made to keep sinners from distorting it? How, for instance, do we keep men from making themselves responsible for their wife’s submission? How do we keep women from relying on their husbands for spiritual growth rather than the Holy Spirit? See, this doctrine needs clarification after clarification to clear the murkiness that keeps creeping in, yet the clarifications I hear given only keep digging a deeper hole.

    Anyway… just take some time to ponder it. I encourage you to keep reading here for a while before trying to change everybody’s mind. Most of us know exactly what you believe already and are unconvinced. Are you certain the only reason it’s being rejected is because of misunderstanding?

    Also, do you view patriarchy as a distortion of complementarianism? Or is it (as I’ve understood) complementarianism in its most serious and consistent form? I see it as a sort of instruction manual for complementarianism – hence the reason most ‘biblical patriarchs’ see complementarianism as a joke… like teaching a principle without any practical application. A car without wheels. Am I way off?

  119. Preliminarily, I would note that there seems to be quite a bit of anger in some of these comments. I sense that many of you have deep-seated bitterness in your souls, and as professing Christians (most of you, I think), I would encourage you to examine that in light of the scriptures. I am not trying to be harsh or judgmental. I am simply trying to engage in a respectful dialogue.

    @Dee: I read your definition of Calvinista, and I must say that your criticism of Piper as a Calvinista and also as being a “cocksure” and “ungodly” seems ironic, at best. You criticize Piper for supposedly believing that complementarianism is essential for salvation (and implying that Piper therefore has condemned you as non-elect), while at the same time, you are saying that Piper is “ungodly,” “arrogant,” “destroying our churches,” etc. That is very hypocritical, and as I have pointed out, your attitude toward Piper is quite judgmental and lacking charity. And in fact, Piper said that complementarianism is NOT essential to salvation – although in his view, you are in danger of misinterpreting the more essential parts of scripture if you are willing to read complementarian ideas out of the text.

    On a related note, it is mind-blowing to me that you would tell me to check out the definition of “Calvinista” and also tell me that I am being condescending within the space of three sentences. Your definition of Calvinista is not only incredibly condescending and uncharitable, but it is also flat wrong. Of course Calvinists BELIEVE that they are right (and consequently that people who disagree are wrong), but so do you. Everyone does, or else they wouldn’t believe what they believe. And at the same time, you can find plenty of quotes from these very “Calvinistas” to the effect that they are fallible sinners and do not have all the answers–quite the opposite of saying that they are “absolutely convinced” that their interpretation of the Bible is perfect. And it is not at all inconsistent for them to always earnestly believe that they are correct, and yet also earnestly believe that they are not always correct. In other words, of course they don’t think any particular belief of theirs is incorrect (or else they would not hold it), but neither do they think as a general matter that no belief of theirs could be incorrect.

    As to the “biblical complementarianism” thing… I was NOT throwing that out as a trump card to say you are wrong and I am right. (I’m not sure why you read it that way, considering that I wasn’t talking about your egalitarian views at all.) I WAS saying that to clarify that when you blast male dominance or whatever, you are not addressing a biblical view of complementarianism. You are using a logical fallacy of attacking the complementarian position by attacking things that the complementarian position does not support. No serious complementarian (at least not of the “Calvinista” variety) holds that complementarianism involves male dominance. So you can’t undermine their view of gender roles by attacking something that they also attack. It doesn’t work that way. That is why I referred to “biblical complementarianism” (as opposed to sin masquerading as complementarianism).

    In summary, despite your plea for me to “converse” instead of being “snotty,” I find your response to me to be most condescending and unhelpful – quite angry, in fact. I feel that I am trying to converse and you are simply the one being snotty. You read a lot into what I said (for instance, never did I comment on whether I thought you were elect or not).

    @Deb: It appears to me that Doug Wilson has been the unfortunate victim of a lot of spiteful lies and gossip in the same way that Piper has been maligned in these comments. To help me consider your question, what am I supposed to object to (about Doug Wilson being invited to speak at a conference), exactly?

    And as to Piper… I am not sure why Piper taking time to work on his marriage is somehow a condemnation of him. I suspect you will say (in so many words), “if complementarianism was actually biblical, then he would have a perfect marriage and wouldn’t need to ‘work on it'” – but I think that reflects a wrong view of scripture. The world is fallen, each of us in sinful, and each of us must deal with the consequences of sin. No complementarian (again, at least not a “Calvinista”) would say that holding a complementarian view of marriage means that marriage will be perfect and trouble-free. “Calvinistas” (and I) would say that every marriage needs work, and every marriage will look different in terms of dealing with the baggage of sin that each spouse brings to the table, and that those truths have no bearing on whether complementarianism or egalitarianism is the more biblical position. I think that it is asking too much to expect John Piper to have a perfect marriage in order to validate his view of scripture regarding marriage. Every Christian holds a view of what scripture commands, and yet every Christian falls short of his/her ideals. Plus, shouldn’t Piper be commended for stepping away from his “Calvinista” lifestyle of attending too many conferences in order to prioritize his wife?

    @sad observer: Thank you for a respectful response. I appreciate the effort to engage in dialogue without simply demonizing people.

    I agree that complementarianism affirms that husband and wife are both to sacrifice/submit to one another in Christ, but I don’t think that my view of complementarianism collapses on itself. Complementarianism holds that God has charged men with a unique responsibility in marriage and in the church. I can’t tell you why God has ordered creation in that way, but I can point to scriptures that explicitly and implicitly affirm that doctrine. Complementarians hold that the practical difference is in the roles of the husband and wife. By “roles,” I do not mean a posture of humble servanthood or submission (which both are called to), and I do not mean that men take the trash out while women wash the dishes (the Bible does not address specific tasks with that specificity). What I mean by “roles” is the space that each spouse occupies in the relationship. The husband’s role is to take the hits for his wife, to provide for his wife, to love his wife, to initiate with his wife (whether initiating prayer or visions for the family or whatever else), to provide for his children, to love and discipline his children, etc. The wife’s role is to affirm her husband’s leadership, to be respectful to him, to challenge him, to help him develop and implement a vision for the family, to love and discipline the kids, etc. Both husband and wife are called to be family oriented in the sense of spending time together, spending time with the kids, nurturing the home, etc. But at the same time, the husband has a unique responsibility to provide for the physical well-being of his family by working for food and clothing and shelter. That is what it looks like to mirror Christ’s love for the church – to provide and protect, emotionally and physically.

    The reason that I say decisions should be mutual in a complementarian marriage is two-fold: (1) ideally, the spouses could come to an agreement on the wisdom of the decision itself; but (2) if they cannot (which surely happens from time to time), then a decision still must be made, and the complementarian view provides a framework for moving forward in times of conflict and indecisiveness – i.e., the spouses should consult, seek wisdom from God, and ultimately the wife should trust her husband’s leadership, unless his judgment is sinful. For the husband’s part, he is called to imitate Christ’s humble and sacrificial love for the church in all of marriage, including conflicted decision-making. He should make wise decisions, putting the interest of his wife (and the family) ahead of his individual interests. As for the wife, if she doesn’t or can’t trust a man’s leadership in such situations, she shouldn’t get married to him. She is called to respect her husband’s servant leadership as the church is called to respect Christ’s servant leadership. Taking that one step further, if the woman not only has trouble with the idea of submitting to authority in marriage but also with submitting to authority generally, then I would urge her to reconsider whether she is truly in a posture of humble submission to Jesus Christ as Lord.

    As for the language of “headship and submission”… I just used that because it is the phraseology commonly used. However, I agree with you in substance that there are several metaphors at play and perhaps it is more nuanced to avoid mixing the metaphors.

  120. You’re absolutely right about the problem of Christians having a definition of “cult” that is only THEOLOGICAL, i.e., heresy. Christian enterprises that inflict damage via total control of followers have escaped being labeled a cult because they maintain doctrinal orthodoxy … at least in words, though their practices often deny and defy the gospel.

    Meanwhile, the criteria for a cult in the SOCIOLOGICAL sense have been in place for well over 50 years, and include many of the practices we see in authoritarian ministries, churches, and movements. — Brad Futurist Guy

    The Christian Fellowship(TM) I was mixed up in back in Hal Lindsay’s heyday hit totally or partially on seven of those eight criteria. Yet they were not a CULT(TM). Their theology was Completely Born-Again Bible-Believing Conservative Evangelical(TM), just like all the Cult-Sniffer groups of the time with the addition of Charles Finney & Hal Lindsay (and maybe Watchman Nee) to Scripture(TM) in all but name.

    So they weren’t a CULT(TM), and my resistance to their Discipling(TM) and Shepherding(TM) for the Salvation of My Soul was due to my own hard-heartedness and Love of Sin. (“SCRIPTURE! SCRIPTURE! SCRIPTURE! SCRIPTURE!”)

    Yet they weren’t a CULT(TM). And the original Western-Rite Liturgical Church who put my head back together after many years in the Post-Evangelical Wilderness WAS.

  121. Preliminarily, I would note that there seems to be quite a bit of anger in some of these comments. I sense that many of you have deep-seated bitterness in your souls, and as professing Christians (most of you, I think), I would encourage you to examine that in light of the scriptures. — Just Stopping By

    Did that come direct from the Holy Spirit through your Spiritual Gift of Discernment(TM)?

    Because it’s one of the slickest passive-aggressive backhands I’ve ever seen on a Christian blog.

  122. To address a few more points…

    (1) Deb, yes I am married.

    (2) I completely affirm the view that both husband and wife should submit to one another in marriage. I do not find that to contradict a view of the husband as holding unique responsibility to lead his family. You can all stop trying to convince me that the Bible calls both men and women to submit not only to Christ but also to each other. I whole-heartedly affirm that.

  123. Just stopping by:

    You said:”Preliminarily, I would note that there seems to be quite a bit of anger in some of these comments. I sense that many of you have deep-seated bitterness in your souls, and as professing Christians (most of you, I think), I would encourage you to examine that in light of the scriptures. I am not trying to be harsh or judgmental. I am simply trying to engage in a respectful dialogue.”

    What a bunch of hooey. Examine yourself before you get so concerned about others.

    You sound mighty judgmental to me!

  124. @ Jan:

    I want to believe that complementarianism is different from patriarchy, and that it’s not just patriarchy lite or patriarchy for sissies. I know that not every complementarian couple are patriarchal, and many complementarian marriages work great. However, I have seen SO much patriarchal behavior occurring in marriages where the word “patriarchy” was never used, let alone self-consciously glorified like in Vision Forum circles. I’ve seen men forbid their wives from leaving the house on certain days of the week. I’ve heard fathers apologize to their daughters for giving them good educations, because by doing so they are “making them choose” between a career and a family. And this is in allegedly non-patriarchal families!

    I do currently believe that complementarianism CAN be salvaged from patriarchy, but only if the evangelical church en masse acts soon and comes down really hard. What this would entail is a nationwide boycott of all Vision Forum products; all speakers who use or like the word “patriarchy”; anyone who advocates any kind of inequality between boys’ and girls’ educations, etc. Most importantly it would involve the major complementarians articulating, in no uncertain terms, the differences between them and the patriarchs and sticking to their guns to the bitter end.

    Unfortunately, though, I suspect most evangelicals are either too theologically illiterate or cowardly to do what’s required to kill this cancer. And so complementarianism will slip, quietly and by degrees, into the dark night of patriarchy, until finally the two are indistinguishable. And what we will be left with, in certain circles, is a generation of broken, uneducated women and domineering, arrogant men.

    I guess that’s my dose of doomerism for the day. I just hope I’m wrong.

  125. @ Just Stopping By:

    Please articulate how Doug Wilson has been “spitefully” lied about. Neo-Confederacy is no laughing matter and Reconstructionism is a hairsbreadth away from heresy, and there is ample proof of his involvement in both.

  126. @ Deb:

    Thank you, Deb, for reminding us all about Federal Vision. That makes THREE scary things Wilson has hitched his wagon to.

  127. I am addressing the following three comments from Just Stopping By:

    1.” It seems that a lot of you want to demonize Piper and others for some reason (not really sure how that works, considering the venom that is directed at Calvinists and complementarians for THEIR perceived theological snobbery, but anyway…).”

    2.”The complementarian position is really quite simple.”

    3. …..” or with how some guy in your old church treated his wife, or how some woman you know really wants to pastor a church.”

    First, just the fact that the argument is egalitarian vs. complimentarian lends itself to only the comp view having the possibility of snobbery. Snobbery is impossible to exist in a truly egalitarian view. The word complimentarian is misleading from the start. It sounds like a hierarchy does not exist in it.

    Second, If the complimentarian view is so simple then why have the very leaders of CBMW written volumes on the subject.

    And the third very ‘cold’ comment Just Stopping By wrote bothers me a lot, and I find it very ‘telling’ and has been very common among the comp bloggers, and causes me to ask where is the godly compassion for the people who have been hurt by comps who were supposedly not practicing it correctly.

  128. Stopping by

    Please provide scriptural references to the notion that the Bible says man should be the leader, in ANY context, and the woman cannot. I guarantee you cannot find unequivocal passages in the New Testament. And I will tell you that if you were to read broadly in the evangelical egalitarian literature, you would not say such things as “biblical complementarianism” because it does not exist, it is not biblical.

  129. Jan,

    Thanks so much for the tone of your post. I find it very refreshing. I enjoy dialogue, and I know that I don’t have all the answers. As I said above, I always believe that I am correct, but I do not believe that I am always correct. That pretty much should answer your question about “am I absolutely certain” that my view (and the prevailing view) of complementarianism is not distorted in and of itself. No, I cannot be “absolutely certain” of that. But I do not believe that it is a distorted doctrine.

    It is a tricky issue of how to clarify this doctrine in practice. To be honest, I don’t think we can, at least not entirely. I think the pain in marriage is inherent in the curse. However, this does not excuse any sin. It does not excuse a power-tripping husband. But it also does not excuse a power-tripping wife. The focus in this discussion seems to be on how men screw up marriage. And I agree that men screw up marriage. BUT, women screw up marriage too. There is way too much finger-pointing going on around here (at men). What ever happened to examining your own heart? Yes, your husband is a sinner – whether he is a passive man who won’t stand up to sin, won’t provide for you, won’t be involved in your life, etc., or he is a harsh man who won’t consider your well-being ahead of his own, won’t affirm your value as a wife (and co-heir with Christ, if applicable), etc. BUT, is sitting around in forums ripping John Piper for teaching men to be humble, Godly servant-leaders in the home really your highest calling? Do you communicate this utter distrust and bitterness toward men in general to your husband? Even if not (or if you take issue with my characterization there), don’t ignore the fact that as much as your husband disappoints your expectations, you also sin against him and disappoint his expectations. Men crave respect, admiration, and trust. Are you giving it to him? (These questions and thoughts are not personally directed at Jan… just reflections in general because it seems that this entire conversation is being approached from the perspective of blaming men for screwing up complementarianism. That’s true, but it’s only part of the true reality.)

    I am not sure what you mean by the paragraph regarding patriarchy. I think you mean to question whether complementarianism is just an excuse for men to rule over women – the evidence of that being that men just teach the idea of headship/submission without any practical guidance (presumably because they don’t have any good guidance because they just made the idea up anyway as a pretext to subjugate women). If that is what you mean, then I think your question is implying that if God’s design is really complementarian, then there should be clear principles of application that could be taught and practiced. For one thing, I don’t think that is a valid assumption. Just because something is “good” to God, does not mean that there is an easy 3-step process to obey God perfectly. Second, I think that the teaching of this issue is complicated, precisely because it is a culturally sensitive topic. No man feels entirely comfortable standing up and teaching women about biblical submission in marriage. This is because men like John Piper see their own sin and the sin of the men around them. This is not unique to headship/submission, though. It is the same idea as preaching on forgiveness when someone who you have offended is in the crowd. Or preaching on joyful giving when everyone knows that the giving is partly going to support your salary. These are uncomfortable situations for teachers of the Word. The sin and tension in these situations has no bearing on the ultimate truth of scripture, but it can put bearers of truth in an uncomfortable position.

    I don’t expect to change everyone’s (or anyone’s) mind around here. I have no delusions of grandeur in that sense. I did want to stand up for civility in this dialogue, though, and stand against what I perceive to be hateful (or “spiteful,” if you prefer a less loaded word) attitudes and anger toward men who would themselves show charity to the people in this forum despite their disagreements.

    This is at times little more than a bash-Piper fest, and what makes it even worse is that Piper is being bashed for things that he does not believe or teach (e.g., spiritual mediation by the husband). The tone of this blog post (and comments) and the definition of Calvinista (I limit my comments to the things that I have read) is not that of constructive dialogue, but of rallying around the demonization of a perceived enemy. And the hypocrisy is too obvious to even need to mention. Criticize Piper for supposedly implying that complementarianism is essential for salvation? Sure. Denounce him and treat him as an enemy of the gospel? Of course. So did I miss something, or is the prevailing thought around here that egalitarianism is more or less essential for salvation? If not (and if people here consider Piper to be a brother in Christ), then the tone of this dialogue should look dramatically different.

  130. just stopping by,

    WOW, you’re really hung up on ‘tone’.  Sorry you don’t like the tone of the post I wrote.  I thought I really ‘toned’ it down. 🙂

     

  131. Tone is a “straw man” (I hate that term, but comps, calvinistas, and patriarchs use it ALL THE TIME so why not us too?)

    Let’s argue the straw man so we don’t have to deal with the real issue at hand.

  132. Lindsey,

    Isn’t is always guys who say “I don’t like your ‘tone’ ?” I guess we’re just not winsome enough for them.

  133. OK, after reading a few more of the recent comments, I am going to have to follow through on my promise not to respond point-to-point to everyone. I will say a few things to vaguely respond to a couple criticisms. Beyond that, I am happy to continue to dialogue with Jan and perhaps others who respond with insightful comments, but as a matter of time, I cannot continue to defend complementarianism from every conceivable attack on this blog. I don’t get paid to do this.

    First, I have compassion for those hurt by their spouses, regardless of what doctrines either of them hold to. I apologize if that does not come through as I try to type out coherent and reasonably concise responses over an internet forum.

    Second, regarding Doug Wilson, I may respond to specific quotes of his (properly sourced so I can see context) if you’d like. As of now, I know that he is controversial. I have heard him say a few things in a manner that I would probably avoid, but for the most part, I agree doctrinally with what I have heard from his own mouth (but I have certainly not heard everything to come out of his mouth). I will not comment on “Federal Vision” generally. Again, I would ask that you give me a particular proposition of FV theology that you would like me to comment on. Perhaps it is due to my lack of comprehensive knowledge regarding FV theology, but I would prefer to respond to the particular belief that you find troubling (as you articulate it).

  134. “Let’s argue the straw man so we don’t have to deal with the real issue at hand.”

    … says the person who makes absolutely no attempt to substantively respond to me.

  135. Just stopping by:

    You said:”OK, after reading a few more of the recent comments, I am going to have to follow through on my promise not to respond point-to-point to everyone. I will say a few things to vaguely respond to a couple criticisms. Beyond that, I am happy to continue to dialogue with Jan and perhaps others who respond with insightful comments, but as a matter of time, I cannot continue to defend complementarianism from every conceivable attack on this blog. I don’t get paid to do this.”

    Hooey again. I don’t think you came here for dialogue.

  136. Just stopping by,

    I’m finding it hard to pin down what you’re actually arguing about complementarianism. (And no, it’s not simply because I haven’t carefully considered your comments or the larger issue of complementarianism. Believe me, I take this very seriously.) You bend over backwards to argue that the complementarianism preached by Piper and co. is a bastardisation of a wonderfully ‘biblical’ doctrine, yet you say that the practice of that doctrine looks a lot like egalitarianism when it’s lived out. Huh? Why then this insistence on defending complementarianism? Let’s put aside the labels and semantics and consider this:

    Do you believe that women should be allowed to preach to both men and women?

    Can women be elders in the church?

    Can a woman spiritually teach a man?

    Should a husband submit to his wife?

    Are men and women equally equipped to serve in God’s kingdom, equal image bearers of God’s glory?

    And conversely,

    Should a woman ultimately defer to her husband’s decisions?

    Should women be followers and men leaders?

    I ask these questions, Just Stopping By, not because I am confused about these issues. (See, I’ve carefully considered the biblical case for equality, and whaddaya know! there are these phrases in scripture like ’submit to one another’ and ‘neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus’. And there are these people like Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Pheobe, Priscilla, and Junia. And isn’t it interesting…they were women! Seems like God favours mutuality and community in His kingdom, and gives men AND women talents to use them for his glory.)

    I ask these questions because your answers will probably illuminate the fact that as much as you think Piper and co. do not represent the true, pure version of this doctrine – complementarianism is fundamentally flawed, no matter how nicely you dress it up. It all boils down to the fundamental issue of whether God allows both men and women to equally serve in his Kingdom.

    You said

    “Women are not mere assistants, but partners–partners with different roles in two particular contexts”

    Ah, that’s a favourite line of nice mild complementarians, isn’t it? I’d suggest you read Rebecca Merrill Groothuis’s excellent book ‘Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality’. In it, she articulates very well the contradiction of the central premise of complementarianism – that women and men are equal but with different roles. You can’t have it both ways. There is no such thing as being equal in being, but unequal in role.

    You also said

    “complementarianism (as a doctrinal concept) does not stand or fall with your opinion of John Piper, or with how some guy in your old church treated his wife, or how some woman you know really wants to pastor a church. None of those things illuminate whether complementarianism is a true description of God’s design or not.”

    Quite right, Just Stopping By. I don’t base my opinion of complementarianism on any of these things. I base my opinion of complementarianism on my opinion of God – the God who showed us who he was in Jesus. And on that basis, I embrace the mutuality and community which God calls us to in his kingdom.

    You say you’re calling for civility in this conversation. I think you should consider the inherent incivility of the complementarian position and the bondage it places on women and men.

  137. Dee was the first to bring up “tone” – accusing me of being condescending, if you remember.

    And Deb, your tone was not the worst. I didn’t have you primarily in mind when talking about tone. Nonetheless, your tone regarding Piper working on his marriage was condescending and dismissive. I await your substantive response to my comments about Piper working on his marriage…

  138. Anonymous 10:55pm Tues wrote:
    “I will share my view – that sharing my view on this issue is not productive.
    The blog world is not a good place to discuss this issue because of the limitations on this form of communication and the cemented positions of most people on this issue in public forum”
    By ‘this issue,” I assume Anon means Complementarianism. But let us not forget, this post also addresses the issue of Dummies. With that in mind, the Apostle Paul said something crystal clear in Ephesians 5:17, just before the much disputed complementary passage. Perhaps the Dummies issue should be discussed more in the blog world.
    Cogito, ergo sum. Non cogito, ergo POOF!!!
    Dont’t be a POOF!!! Cogitate! (Eph 5:17 DAAV)

  139. JSB – I never addressed you in the first place. I could care two-toots about your views, honestly. I’ve been in patriocentric camps long enough to figure people like you out. Not worth my time or energy, and quite honestly I can’t believe I’m even responding.

    My point in the tone straw man comment is to point out EXACTLY what you folks do. Detract, detract, detract. Let’s tell other Christians to “watch their tone” and “read their Bibles” with a smug tone.

    Fact is, I don’t think you are “just stopping by” — “just trolling around” would be more true.

  140. JSBO,
    Just one main tought I have about the complementarian system. Headship and submission are very frequently paired, but I think this is unbiblical and illogical. This pairing is akin to pairing singing cucumbers and hairbrushes. Headship goes with bodyship, only and always. Paul also pairs sacrifice with submission, and love with respect in Eph. 5.

  141. @ Just Stopping By:

    A few things.

    1. “There is way too much finger-pointing going on around here (at men). Whatever happened to examining your own heart?”

    You seem to assume that the people blaming men have not already examined themselves. How do you know this to be true? Is it not possible that self-examination occurred, and the examining party still found themselves to be innocent in a particular situation?

    2. “This is at times little more than a bash-Piper fest, and what makes it even worse is that Piper is being bashed for things that he does not believe or teach (e.g., spiritual mediation by the husband).”

    I was the one who started the discussion about spiritual mediation by husbands, and I believe if you go back and read my comments, I made it very clear that CBMW (and thus John Piper) does not believe in this doctrine. My concern was that they are beginning to associate with people who might, or do believe it. However, Piper does imply in CBMW’s online book that all women should submit to all men in some way (NOT in marriage or the church), which is patently unbiblical.

    3. “And the hypocrisy is too obvious to even need to mention. Criticize Piper for supposedly implying that complementarianism is essential for salvation? Sure. Denounce him and treat him as an enemy of the gospel? Of course. So did I miss something, or is the prevailing thought around here that egalitarianism is more or less essential for salvation?”

    I fail to see the hypocrisy. When Piper says that an egalitarian is eventually going to “get the Gospel wrong,” he is saying they will eventually wander into heresy. Getting the Gospel wrong = not saved. He is saying they have just taken the first step toward denying or misunderstanding/misrepresenting Christ. And if someone falls into heresy, Piper (as a Calvinist who believes in eternal security/perseverance of the saints) SHOULD believe that they were never saved in the first place. You cannot lose your salvation in Calvinism; ergo, if you eventually become a heretic, you were ALWAYS lost.

    As for implying that the commenters here believe egalitarianism is essential for salvation, that is untrue. Strong feelings about something does not equal a belief that it is essential for salvation. And what is wrong, per se, with criticizing someone’s theology? You have criticized the theology of egalitarians and the people on this thread, and implied they may believe that egalitarianism is essential to salvation. You have done the exact same thing you accuse them of doing to John Piper, except in reverse. You will probably say that I am “shutting down dialogue” by pointing this out, but this IS what you are doing.

    4. “I am not sure what you mean by the paragraph regarding patriarchy. I think you mean to question whether complementarianism is just an excuse for men to rule over women – the evidence of that being that men just teach the idea of headship/submission without any practical guidance (presumably because they don’t have any good guidance because they just made the idea up anyway as a pretext to subjugate women).”

    Actually, Jan is talking about a distinct theology when she mentions patriarchy. You would probably call it wrong-headed or sinful complementarianism, but its proponents have actually stated that complementarianism doesn’t go far enough and is unbiblical/too liberal. Look up some stuff about Vision Forum and Doug Phillips to get you started on this topic. The Under Much Grace blog is a good place to start.

  142. JJ:

    “You bend over backwards to argue that the complementarianism preached by Piper and co. is a bastardisation of a wonderfully ‘biblical’ doctrine, yet you say that the practice of that doctrine looks a lot like egalitarianism when it’s lived out. Huh? Why then this insistence on defending complementarianism?”

    You misunderstood me (and I don’t mean that condescendingly). I generally affirm the view of complementarianism preached by Piper. AND I think it looks more like egalitarianism when it is lived out than the people commenting on this blog seem to think.

    “Do you believe that women should be allowed to preach to both men and women?”

    I guess it depends on what you have in view by “preach.” I do not believe that women should occupy the office of congregational pastor in church government. I value women’s contributions to theological discussions, but I do not think that the Bible contemplates women in a regular “teaching” role over the whole church.

    “Can women be elders in the church?”

    No. At least not as I use the term “elder.”

    “Can a woman spiritually teach a man?”

    What do you mean?

    “Should a husband submit to his wife?”

    Yes, in a sense. But this sounds like a loaded question that deserves a nuanced answer.

    “Are men and women equally equipped to serve in God’s kingdom, equal image bearers of God’s glory?”

    Yes, but I qualify that by saying I am not sure what you mean by “equally equipped” and it is possible that we would have some disagreement about what that means because I think that men and women are created distinct of one another in certain ways. I would consider them “equally equipped,” but you suggest that “equal” implies “same,” and I would disagree with that.

    “Should a woman ultimately defer to her husband’s decisions?”

    Short answer (again, deserves more nuance): as long as he does not lead her into sin, yes.

    “Should women be followers and men leaders?”

    Not that simple. Men and women should both be leaders. In some contexts, both men and women should be followers (because everyone can’t be a leader all the time – too many chiefs, not enough Indians). In marriage, the husband is uniquely called to leadership. In church government, qualified men are uniquely called to leadership.

    “I ask these questions, Just Stopping By, not because I am confused about these issues. (See, I’ve carefully considered the biblical case for equality, and whaddaya know! there are these phrases in scripture like ’submit to one another’ and ‘neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus’. And there are these people like Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Pheobe, Priscilla, and Junia. And isn’t it interesting…they were women! Seems like God favours mutuality and community in His kingdom, and gives men AND women talents to use them for his glory.)”

    Yes, and complementarians would acknowledge and affirm those scriptural accounts that you reference…

    “I ask these questions because your answers will probably illuminate the fact that as much as you think Piper and co. do not represent the true, pure version of this doctrine – complementarianism is fundamentally flawed, no matter how nicely you dress it up. It all boils down to the fundamental issue of whether God allows both men and women to equally serve in his Kingdom.”

    Again, I don’t think Piper is fundamentally flawed in his view on complementarianism. And I do believe that God allows men to equally serve in his Kingdom. But you say that I don’t actually believe that because you take “equal” to mean “without distinction.”

    “You say you’re calling for civility in this conversation. I think you should consider the inherent incivility of the complementarian position and the bondage it places on women and men.”

    That is a cheap way to win an argument. Just dismiss the other position as inherently offensive.

  143. Another way to put it is:
    Head/Body — Metaphorical descriptive nouns.
    Understand, be filled, submit, give, love, nourish, cherish, respect etc— prescriptive verbs.

  144. Hester:

    First, you say Piper “implied” that all women should be subject to all men (outside of marital or church leadership context). I am wary of you saying that he implied that, because that means that he didn’t actually SAY that. And I do not think that he would say that because I don’t think he believes that. But at any rate, I agree with you that the Bible does not generally subordinate women to men.

    As for this: “I fail to see the hypocrisy. When Piper says that an egalitarian is eventually going to “get the Gospel wrong,” he is saying they will eventually wander into heresy. Getting the Gospel wrong = not saved. He is saying they have just taken the first step toward denying or misunderstanding/misrepresenting Christ. And if someone falls into heresy, Piper (as a Calvinist who believes in eternal security/perseverance of the saints) SHOULD believe that they were never saved in the first place. You cannot lose your salvation in Calvinism; ergo, if you eventually become a heretic, you were ALWAYS lost.

    As for implying that the commenters here believe egalitarianism is essential for salvation, that is untrue. Strong feelings about something does not equal a belief that it is essential for salvation. And what is wrong, per se, with criticizing someone’s theology? You have criticized the theology of egalitarians and the people on this thread, and implied they may believe that egalitarianism is essential to salvation. You have done the exact same thing you accuse them of doing to John Piper, except in reverse. You will probably say that I am “shutting down dialogue” by pointing this out, but this IS what you are doing.”

    I am tracking with your first paragraph. Although I think being on the path to heresy is different than being in heresy. And I think Piper’s whole point was to refrain from commenting definitively on the outcome of any particular person’s soul while warning that views egalitarianism as a step in the wrong direction. You all have twisted that to say that Piper was condemning egalitarians when I think that he purposely took care to issue a strong warning WITHOUT condemning egalitarians.

    WRT to your second paragraph… My whole point was that this entire conversation is not occurring in the healthy, constructive tone that it should if it is between brothers and sisters in Christ. Sarcastically demonizing John Piper is not appropriate if you believe him to be a Christian (and probably not appropriate anyway). So I was assuming from the rhetoric in this discussion that people don’t regard Piper as a brother in Christ. I never suggested that there is something wrong with theological disagreements — I am well aware that I am engaging in that right now. And my criticism about thinking egalitarianism is necessary to salvation was not merely a substantive criticism, but it was rather a criticism of the hypocrisy of being upset with Piper’s allegedly exclusive claims about complementarianism while holding similar attitudes about egalitarianism.

  145. Dave A A:

    “Just one main tought I have about the complementarian system. Headship and submission are very frequently paired, but I think this is unbiblical and illogical. This pairing is akin to pairing singing cucumbers and hairbrushes. Headship goes with bodyship, only and always. Paul also pairs sacrifice with submission, and love with respect in Eph. 5.”

    I commented on this above. Perhaps you missed it. I was using the terminology because it is common, but I acknowledge that headship and submission come from separate metaphors.

  146. I’m so tired of “yes…BUT’S” when defining the alleged “differences” between men and women of God.

  147. Just Stopping By,

    I appreciate your desire to zealously defend the truth. That is admirable. I have a couple questions for you thst will help us all better understand who we are engaging in discussion with.

    1) Do you or have you attended Bethlehem?
    2) Are you or were you a part of the pastoral training program/seminary at Bethlehem?
    3) Do you think that a group like TFTG distorts the meaning of the gospel by incorporating gender into the doctrinal affirmations for the group?
    4) It is interesting to me that Roger Nicole would not have been able to be a part of TFTG. What are your thoughts assessments on that?
    5) I used to hold to many of the positions that you do, but found that several of them are on shaky foundation. In particular I am not thinking about your understanding of the word hupotasso, authentein, etc….but more about the ten inferences that Grudem and Piper draw from Gen 1-3 that “suppoert” their view on gender. Can you admit that these suppositions are not that black and white, but more a shade of gray?
    6) How old are you?
    7) How long ago did you receive your theological training?
    8) Did your wife work to put you through school?
    9) What do you do now vocationally? I ask this because I think Piper’s view as articulated doesn’t work on the business world. There are women bosses that must lead with authority. I don’t want a woman surgeon operating on me that has to defer tp a male nurse just because she is a female. I want her to lead and take over and not be concerned with whether or not she is upholding the males supposed inherent leadership role. Would you generally agree with that?

  148. 1) Do you or have you attended Bethlehem?

    No.

    2) Are you or were you a part of the pastoral training program/seminary at Bethlehem?

    No.

    3) Do you think that a group like TFTG distorts the meaning of the gospel by incorporating gender into the doctrinal affirmations for the group?

    No. I think the goal of T4G is to band together as evangelicals who hold to the inerrancy and authority of scripture. As I do not think that T4G claims that its doctrinal statement is a checklist for salvation or any such thing, I am not sure what the basis is for alleging that T4G distorts the meaning of the gospel.

    4) It is interesting to me that Roger Nicole would not have been able to be a part of TFTG. What are your thoughts assessments on that?

    See my above comments. The organizers of T4G are free to draft a doctrinal statement however they see fit. If I don’t believe the doctrinal statement is counter to scripture, then I don’t care about what names wouldn’t approve of the doctrinal statement.

    5) I used to hold to many of the positions that you do, but found that several of them are on shaky foundation. In particular I am not thinking about your understanding of the word hupotasso, authentein, etc….but more about the ten inferences that Grudem and Piper draw from Gen 1-3 that “suppoert” their view on gender. Can you admit that these suppositions are not that black and white, but more a shade of gray?

    I acknowledge that I am not God, am not omniscient, and am doing the best I can with what I have to go on.

    6) How old are you?

    Younger than 30, but closer to 30 than 20.

    7) How long ago did you receive your theological training?

    I have not received formal theological training (if you are referring to seminary).

    8) Did your wife work to put you through school?

    No. My wife currently works, and I was in graduate school for a time during our marriage, but my wife has never been in the position of having to work to put me through school.

    9) What do you do now vocationally? I ask this because I think Piper’s view as articulated doesn’t work on the business world. There are women bosses that must lead with authority. I don’t want a woman surgeon operating on me that has to defer tp a male nurse just because she is a female. I want her to lead and take over and not be concerned with whether or not she is upholding the males supposed inherent leadership role. Would you generally agree with that?

    I am in a professional field. I acknowledge the disconnect between people in full-time ministry and people in the marketplace, and I think that is a difficult issue. However, I do not view complementarianism as necessarily informing relationships between a male employee and a female boss.

  149. Just stopping by_

    If you continue to insist that complementarianism, and such things as women not being the pastor of a church, please cite scripture. I do not think you can!!!! So if you won’t cite scripture, you are damaging your argument. Complementarianism is a human invention pasted over the bible and is not biblical. So please quit referencing God and the Bible unless you reference chapter and verse. And New Testament, please, because that is the New Covenant in writing.

  150. Just Stopping By,

    Okay, thanks for clearing up some points.

    One thing I do want to mention: there is a LOT of discussion of Piper and Phillips and other leading men that goes on on this blog. I want to add a caveat to that, though…. You’ve stated that your impression of this discussion is that Wartburg readers and comments seem to show a mistrust of men or a sort of “blame the man” attitude when it comes to complementarianism.

    I’d like to offer another view. Yes, men get talked about on here more than women–that’s partly a function of the fact that there are more national leaders in the church who are men than there are women, especially in circles that publicly promote complementarianism. But we also talk about people like Mary Kassian and other outspoken complementarian women who stick by the doctrine. I think everyone here recognizes that either gender can believe in (and make a mess of) complementarianism. So….much as I can see how you might have gotten the impression that we mistrust men and won’t examine the hearts of ourselves as women, I would really urge you to reconsider this issue, because I think it’s becoming a red herring in your quest to understand our points.

    (Also I’d point out that some of the most feisty comments here come from guys!) 🙂

    As to your points about what you believe regarding complementarianism, thanks for clearing that up. You’re actually one of the first complementarians I’ve ever spoken with who was able to comfortably discuss the mutuality in the nature of submitting and sacrifice, and that’s refreshing to find! 🙂

    The problem I have with complementarianism is that the roles as they are defined (husband leading/wife following, husband initiating/wife supporting, etc.) are not directly mentioned anywhere in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t tell husband to lead, it doesn’t tell wives to get behind their husband’s vision, it doesn’t say the husband is supposed to be the one with the vision as opposed to the wife having it, etc. From what I can tell (and have read and had explained to me by complementarians), these definitions of those roles are defended by an appeal to the idea of husband as head and wife as submitter, which, as I’ve already stated, is not (in my view) a correct interpretation of those verses.

    I think it kind of circles back to my original question. The strongest “laying out” that the Bible does of how husbands and wives relate to each other is in Ephesians 5, and there seems to be a lot of mutuality implied in the submission/sacrifice relationship. I don’t see where else in the Bible the *differences* between men and women’s roles (especially the differences as you have defined them) are stated.

    So, I guess THAT’S my real question….it seems like you’re agreeing that the verses imply a lot of mutuality, but for the differing definitions of roles to work, those verses would have to NOT imply mutuality. At least, it seems so to me.

    Thanks for the discussion!

  151. Just stopping by

    I am male. From comments here, there are many males commenting on this site. “An Attorney” is very likely male as is “Arce”. I suspect that many that you think are female are actually male.

    I do spend about half of my time representing women in abusive relationships and much of the abuse is justified by complementarist/patriarchist beliefs of the abuser.

  152. Hi Just Stopping By

    You said that ‘complementarians would acknowledge and affirm those scriptural accounts’ that I referenced. Filtered through their complementarian lens, yes. But reading and affirming these accounts for what they actually portray – women who were spiritual leaders and teachers? No.

    Another book I’d urge you to read is Scot McKnight’s ‘The Blue Parakeet’. Towards the end of the book he deals very clearly and succinctly with the issue of women in church leadership, addressing the great variety of ministry (including leadership) scripture has actually portrayed women engaging in. Complementarians overlook or downplay these biblical examples because they confound their preconceived view of women’s roles.
    Both books I mentioned – by Scot McKnight and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis – are well worth reading.

    You said “I don’t think Piper is fundamentally flawed in his view on complementarianism”.

    Now you misunderstand me. That wasn’t the point of my comment. I didn’t say you thought Piper was flawed in his view. (As you’ve made clear, you and he are quite in agreement.) I said that *complementarianism*, in its essence, is flawed. Its fundamental premises are flawed.

    You also said “That is a cheap way to win an argument. Just dismiss the other position as inherently offensive.”

    Come now, Stoppy. That’s unfair of you. I wasn’t taking a cheap shot by pointing out the incivility of the complementarian position. Perhaps if you carefully considered my points (and the resources I mentioned) instead of dismissing them yourself, you would see that my final statement was consistent with the logic of my whole post. Complementarianism denies the full manifestation of women’s God-given personhood.

    The term’s (incivility) Latin roots literally mean ‘not of a citizen’. So yes, those who call themselves citizens of heaven and continue to oppress women in the name of complementarianism are indeed showing great incivility. And I’m fully entitled to describe it as such.

  153. “I sense that many of you have deep-seated bitterness in your souls,”

    Playing the “bitterness” card. How predictable. Do you know how often those who oppose female subordination hear that? It’s used as a way to slap them right back into their place … except it won’t work here.

  154. @sad observer: Thanks for the continued dialogue! I will respond specifically with respect to marriage, as that seems to be the context in which we are primarily operating at the moment.

    I understand the tension between mutuality in submission and differing roles. (Incidentally, as other commenters were talking about, I also understand the alleged tension between equality in worth and differing roles, but I find the argument that these are in tension to be much less persuasive than the argument about mutuality in submission.) As I said, I agree that Ephesians 5 and scripture generally affirm the mutuality of sacrifice and submission, particularly in marriage. However, the mutuality of “posture” is different from the mutuality of “role.” Scripture clearly exhorts Christians to live in the posture of humble servitude, in imitation of Jesus. (See Philippians 2.) I believe this holds all the more true in the covenant relationship of marriage.

    But I believe that scripture also points to a distinct “role” of submission for the wife and “role” of servant-leadership and ultimate responsibility for the husband, even while both relate to each other (and to Christ) from a posture of humble servanthood and submission. I believe this is evident in the creation account and affirmed in the “profound mystery” of Ephesians 5.

    First, the creation account: God created Adam first; then God put Adam to work; then God created Eve as a helper and companion. (Genesis 2.) Later, Eve is tempted; Eve succumbs to temptation; and then God confronts… Adam? (Genesis 3.) These accounts affirm (implicitly, admittedly) a role for the husband as the spouse that God holds responsible as the leader. (God also of course said that he was creating Eve as a helper to Adam…) In combination with Paul’s language in Ephesians 5, the inference of the differing roles of husband and wife is strengthened even more.

    Second, Ephesians 5: Paul sets the tone by exhorting Christians to mutuality of submission (not just in marriage, but also from children to parents and vice-versa, and from slaves to masters and vice-versa). Do egalitarians hold that this principle of mutual submission means that parents and children must fulfill the exact same roles? Of course not. Paul says, “Everyone, submit to one another. Specifically, wives to your husbands like this. Husbands to your wives like that. Children to your parents like this. Parents to your children like that. Slaves to your masters like this. Masters to your slaves like that.”

    So how are wives and husbands to submit to one another? Well, wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ, in trust and respect (vv. 22-24, 33). Husbands are to submit to their wives as Christ “submits” (scare quotes because of the limitations of language as applied to Christ) to the church, in sacrificial love (vv. 25-30, 33). Well, how does Christ relate to the church, exactly? Well, he initiated the salvation of the saints, he came as a humble servant, he died for his bride, and he leads the church as the head.

    I don’t think this undermines the idea of mutuality in marriage (and even in roles, in a sense), just that the primary roles of each spouse are different. I don’t say that the wife can’t initiate with her husband; but I say that the husband is responsible initiate with his wife. I don’t say that the wife can’t have a vision for the future of the family (and share it with her husband); but I say that the husband is responsible for having a vision as a means of providing and protecting, for both emotional needs and physical needs. I don’t say that the husband can’t nurture in the home; but I say that the wife is uniquely called to nurture in the home. And so on…

    I hope that made sense. You may not be persuaded, but I hope that I was able to communicate effectively. I don’t claim a superior ability to articulate difficult spiritual concepts.

  155. “Do you believe the reason Eve sinned is because man didn’t guide her properly in the Garden of Eden? Do you believe that if Adam led Eve sin would never have entered the world?”

    Well, as you know, that is a trick question because unlike Greg Boyd, the Calvinistas and I believe in the sovereignty of God.

  156. @ Just Stopping By:

    Thanks for your thoughtful response. As Sad Observer pointed out, I think we may actually agree on a lot and I, too, am impressed by your views of mutuality/”functional egalitarianism” given the fact that you so strongly self-describe as complementarian. I have a few more things to say, though. I apologize in advance for the length – lots of quotations!

    1. “First, you say Piper ‘implied’ that all women should be subject to all men (outside of marital or church leadership context). I am wary of you saying that he implied that, because that means that he didn’t actually SAY that. And I do not think that he would say that because I don’t think he believes that.”

    From Chapter 1 Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood from CBMW (this book has many contributing authors, but Piper wrote this chapter):

    “At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.”

    “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.”

    “Ephesians 5:22, Titus 2:5 and 1 Peter 3:1,5 exhort wives to be subject to ‘your own’ (idiois) husbands. This term ‘your own’ shows that the relationship of leadership and submission between a woman and her husband should be different from the relationship of leadership and submission which she may have with men in general.”

    “To illustrate: it is simply impossible that from time to time a woman not be put in a position of influencing or guiding men. For example, a housewife in her backyard may be asked by a man how to get to the freeway. At that point she is giving a kind of leadership. She has superior knowledge that the man needs and he submits himself to her guidance. But we all know that there is a way for that housewife to direct the man that neither of them feels their mature masculinity or femininity compromised.”

    In the first two statements, we find, essentially, Piper’s definition of Biblical manhood and womanhood. At first they seem to leave some leeway (“ways appropriate to differing relationships”), but the third and fourth quotes make his meaning clear. The third quote makes clear that all woman must/should submit to all men in some way (“the relationship of leadership and submission she may have with men in general”), and the fourth quote shows that this submission relationship apparently extends even to such minutiae as giving directions to the highway.

    Piper has stretched submission beyond its breaking point here. There’s precious little (or no) Biblical evidence that women are supposed to submit to every man they meet. Are we supposed to submit to our brothers? Uncles? Our cousins Ned and Harry? The atheist cashier at the grocery store? At most, complementarians can say that women should submit to their husbands and elders/pastors in the church. So yes, in my view, Piper HAS said (pretty baldly, in fact) that all women must submit to all men, even if it is in some small way.

    Here’s the link to the book if you want to check me (Piper’s chapter starts on p. 25):
    http://dwynrhh6bluza.cloudfront.net/resources/documents/1599/bbmw.pdf?1281042734

    2. “And I think Piper’s whole point was to refrain from commenting definitively on the outcome of any particular person’s soul while warning that views egalitarianism as a step in the wrong direction. You all have twisted that to say that Piper was condemning egalitarians when I think that he purposely took care to issue a strong warning WITHOUT condemning egalitarians.”

    I agree with you that Piper probably did not intend to say that egalitarians are lost. However, I still think it was presumptuous of him to claim that an egalitarian will eventually “get the Gospel wrong.” This is akin to a Baptist claiming that an Episcopalian will inevitably “get the Gospel wrong” because they baptize infants. Both comp/egal and infant/believer’s baptism are central issues that have far-reaching effects on how the church works, but neither inevitably works to erode core doctrines.

    3. “My whole point was that this entire conversation is not occurring in the healthy, constructive tone that it should if it is between brothers and sisters in Christ. … So I was assuming from the rhetoric in this discussion that people don’t regard Piper as a brother in Christ. … And my criticism about thinking egalitarianism is necessary to salvation was not merely a substantive criticism, but it was rather a criticism of the hypocrisy of being upset with Piper’s allegedly exclusive claims about complementarianism while holding similar attitudes about egalitarianism.”

    If any of the commenters here believed that egalitarianism was necessary for salvation, your point would be well-taken. However, since none of them do, they are not being hypocritical. Could they have been more charitable toward Piper? Possibly. But personally I think this remains a moot point. “Tone” is also a pretty slippery, subjective thing, esp. in the written word, and I wouldn’t give it too much weight as a criticism of someone’s argument.

  157. Just stopping by,

    Thanks for your response. I wish that I had time to read everything else you’ve written but I don’t. I’m a busy mom.

    I just want to repeat my encouragement to you to continue reading here for a bit. Seek to understand. Ask questions. Everyone here deserves to be understood by you every bit as much as you seem to want them to understand you. You’ve shown up as one who thinks you have the right words to clear away what you perceive as misunderstanding and bitterness. It would be better for you to seek to understand the hurts represented here first. I think you’d soon find that what you perceive as bitterness is actually astonishment and a very justified anger at how the Bible can become so misused to hurt, silence, badger, manipulate, and control people. I quietly read here for nearly a year before offering any thoughts. You sound exactly as I would have had I dove right in. A certain tragedy in my life since then (as well as others that have occured in the past decade I’ve spent in Reformed Christianity – including devastating financial loss and experiencing the deaths of two of my children) have caused me to question everything I’ve attached to my faith and this doctrine, along with Calvinism, is at the top of the list. I’ve set them aside entirely and don’t see myself subscribing to any labels any time soon – whether it be patriarchy, complementarian, egalitarian, or feminism; Calvinism or Arminianism. I am exploring and questioning all sides of the issue as much as possible and see myself wandering away from the need to systematize my thoughts. God’s word is more complex than our tidy little systems.

    I really would love to hear your answer to Eagle’s question at 1:48 PM.

  158. JSB-

    I went to the link and read the post about how wives should respond to abuse. Let me say this clearly for anyone else who may be reading this: Assault is a crime and needs to be reported to the authorites. Other forms of abuse need to be handled by people who are knowledgeable about options. A church is probably not the place to find these people, although it would be nice if the church was equipped to handle these situations.

    Just, you seem like a nice guy, but you also seem a little idealistic. When it comes to abuse, your idealism can be dangerous for the victim. You are welcome to your complementarianism, but please do not believe that it informs you adequately to advise victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse. And please never tell a victim to go to their church.

  159. Still no cites to specific verses and language.

    The same word is used in Genesis and Psalms. God is the “help-meet” of the Psalmist. So if God is to the Psalmist as Eve is to Adam, then Adam should submit to Eve as the leader, not vice versa.

    The word translated “submit” and “be subject to” does not carry that meaning in English in the way it is preached and taught. “Respect” or “cooperate” is a better English interpretation and does not imply subservience or kowtowing. There is no evidence here of man in leadership. Stopping by, you have not document scriptural support for submission in marriage.

    So where are your verses to show women cannot lead in the church???

  160. Hey everyone,

    I have appreciated just stopping by’s comments because he has given us a glimpse into his world.  Here are some of my observations:

    – Disagreement = wrong ‘tone’

    –  Disagreement means we are ‘bitter’

    –  Disagreement means we are male bashing

    I guess he hasn’t stumbled across our EChurch posts where we feature a sermon each week by a male pastor.

    This is called ‘groupthink’ and most of these guys aren’t even aware they are doing it. 

     

  161. @Hester:

    I’ve been saying all along that I think we agree on a lot in practice. I’ve been trying to explain that the images of complementarianism that are being savagely criticized around here are not true complementarianism. That is why I say it is entirely unfair to attribute such ill will to John Piper et al.

    (1) Piper in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood:

    I largely agree with Piper in the first several quoted paragraphs. I feel that egalitarians sometimes insist on saying that men and women are essentially the same. (One of the commenters earlier was arguing that “equal” means “same.”) I disagree with that. Now all of our natures are corrupted after the fall, so there will be men with a corrupted masculinity and women with a corrupted femininity. But I basically agree with Piper there.

    I half agree with your criticism of Piper’s highway example. I agree that there is no imperative for women generally to submit to men. However, as I just said, I do think that in general, men and women have different make-ups that play themselves out beyond just the marriage and church contexts. But this IS an area where perhaps Piper’s perspective suffers for not having worked in a context outside of the church. Piper works in the environment of a complementarian church and lives in a complementarian marriage, and he is in a position of great authority at Bethlehem. I think that, combined with his propensity to get carried away in the magnificence of the nuance of doctrine may have resulted in an ill-advised highway example that does not effectively communicate with his audience.

    (2) Piper on egalitarianism:

    I can accept your position there. I don’t really have a problem with what Piper said, but perhaps he could have further qualified it by saying that he thinks it “presents a grave danger of” descending into heresy or something (instead of saying that it “results in” descending into heresy). I just think that if you know Piper’s theology, you would know that even if you are in heresy at one point in time, that does not mean that you are not elect. So, whether it results in heresy or is merely likely to lead to heresy, the distinction holds no real substantive importance in Piper’s theology.

    (3) I hear you about tone in the written word. Again, I would just suggest that there is still some sort of double standard at play. There is some kind of monkey business going on when people impute ill motives to Piper for no particular reason and twist his words to mean the exact opposite of what he says.

  162. “However, the mutuality of “posture” is different from the mutuality of “role.”

    JSB, do you not see this as more “double-speak?” Neither the word poster or role is found in scripture. They have been made up just like “equal but different” for the purpose of promoting a hierarchy of power.

  163. Obviously I meant “posture” above. My bad. 🙂

    And last but not least, you can search the scriptures until the cows come home and not find one place where men are commanded to have authority over a woman. Not one.

  164. Last post and I will have to be done for the day… may be back later tonight.

    @56 years: I have little to no interest in responding to your posts because they are do not seem to be good faith efforts to engage in dialogue. I gave a scriptural defense of my position WRT marriage (citing chapters and verses) and you accused me of not citing scripture and demanded my argument WRT to church leadership. No thanks. I can find better ways to waste my time than engaging with someone who doesn’t actually want to engage with me.

    @Deb: Can you not see the sarcasm in your own post? And yet you accuse me of thinking that “disagreement = wrong tone.” It’s not the fact that you disagree. It is your TONE. Same with the bitterness and male bashing. I’m not just saying that because people disagree with me. I’m saying it because of the completely unjustified and twisted attacks on men like John Piper who would engage you in compassionate dialogue rather than shout you down.

    @Jan: “I think you’d soon find that what you perceive as bitterness is actually astonishment and a very justified anger at how the Bible can become so misused to hurt, silence, badger, manipulate, and control people.”

    That is fine. I understand that. But a big part of my point here is that the misuse of the Bible does not make what the Bible says any less true.

    And, finally, by popular demand (i.e., Jan’s request)… @eagle: “What do you think is more offensive to God? Walking into hell proud, with my head held high? Or being led to a personal faith by a woman who disciples me? What pisses God off more?”

    I do not believe that a man being led to personal faith in Christ by a woman is offensive to God. Why would I believe that? The Great Commission was not to men only. Church leadership is restricted to qualified men, not evangelism.

  165. jsut stopping by

    You once again show your agenda. Bitterness is the typical word used to marginalize those who oppose a certain viewpoint. Oh yes, and “angry.”

    Secondly, we are far more open to diagreeable viewpoints than most of the Calvinista crowd. For example, I allow your comment in spite ot its difficult nuances.

    Thirdly, how do you know that I am an egalitarian? Or does you biblically based theology only allow for two points of view?

  166. just stopping by,

    Just remember this … here on our blog we allow dissenting opinions.  Try that on the blogs of the men you admire and see what happens, that is, if they even allow comments.  Please don’t forget that.

  167. JSB,

    Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I have some follow up responses to clarify some things in my questions. In order to keep the post short(er) I will focus just on question 3 and some of the theme of question 4. However, I will not exegete question 4:)

    In response to my third question you said:

    3) Do you think that a group like TFTG distorts the meaning of the gospel by incorporating gender into the doctrinal affirmations for the group?

    “No. I think the goal of T4G is to band together as evangelicals who hold to the inerrancy and authority of scripture. As I do not think that T4G claims that its doctrinal statement is a checklist for salvation or any such thing, I am not sure what the basis is for alleging that T4G distorts the meaning of the gospel.”

    If the goal of T4G is to band together as evangelicals who hold to inerrancy and authority of Scripture then I think a better name would be:

    “Reformed Inerrantists together for a meeting.” In other words, the “basis for alleging that T4G distorts the meaning of the gospel” is that they are not simply together for the gospel. By distorting I am talking about a distortion in two ways. The first way is in the meaning of the actual word “gospel.” The clarifications you make about who they are makes it clear that it is a sect of Christendom that is coming together. The phrase together for the gospel implies that anyone who believes in the gospel is invited to these meetings. This is why I brought up Roger Nicole. Nicole did far more to promote doctrines that you hold dear i.e. inerrancy then the majority of any of the founders of T4G (Google him a bit or ask somebody over at Justin Taylor’s blog what Nicole did if you are unfamiliar, you can ask specifically with relation to ETS). Nicole also holds to a robust view of God’s sovereignty in salvation which I think you would like; however, he is was an egalitarian. You simply cannot use the deductio ad absurdum to state that anyone who is an egalitarian must not be Biblical and will eventually get the gospel wrong.

    The second reason I have a “basis for alleging that T4G distorts the meaning of the gospel” is the way in which they make the theological sense of the word “gospel” meaningless or perhaps a “synonym for what a group believes about several theological topics.” If being together 4 the gospel means holding to a set of doctrinal distinctives (several of which are secondary or tertiary level doctrines)then they have redefined the term “gospel”.

    I have attended a T4G meeting and looked at the list of doctrinal distinctives that they asked people to sign. Even when I was a vary staunch complementarian I struggled with that being lumped into a gospel declaration.

  168. stopping by

    Your comment at 12:50 (thankfully I was out enjoying the waves at Wrightsville Beach) is getting close to the line. You are helping us to define the problem of rabid complementarianism (that oughtta get you going) and doctrine based on harshness instead of love. Let’s take it back a notch.

  169. I wanted to ask you another question, just stopping by. I hope you don’t mind me picking your brain a second. 🙂

    Many of the comps/patriarchs I know (not my own husband) would consider it a sin for you to be discussing theology with me, a woman for the following reasons:

    1) If I as a woman have a theological question, the only man I’m allowed to ask is my own husband, and it must be at home. (1 Cor. 14:35)

    2) This discussion might result in you learning something from me, and that would be sin since women are not allowed to teach men. Likewise, men should not learn from women.

    Do you have any thoughts on this? Is the online format an exception or does this only apply to meeting together at church? If there is a distinction, what is it and why?

  170. Just stopping by 1:26

    It is now 4:30 and I have a had a fun day at the beach being an “egalitarian” while at the same time being angry and bitter and ignoring Scripture along with my husband of 32 years. I am somewhat irritated by your approach and find that it has much in common with another person by the name of Jimmy. Warning-by the time i have caught up with your comments, I hope things are a bit nicer.

  171. JSB,

    I wanted to respond to you comment on Wed Jul 11, 2012 at 03:50 PM said:

    The question was asked you:
    “Do you believe the reason Eve sinned is because man didn’t guide her properly in the Garden of Eden? Do you believe that if Adam led Eve sin would never have entered the world?”

    You responded:
    Well, as you know, that is a trick question because unlike Greg Boyd, the Calvinistas and I believe in the sovereignty of God.

    I think the majority of the Calvinistic tradition would be very comfortable answering the question. After all much of the reformed theology of justification is based around a what-would-have-happened-scenario with Adam and the covenant of works. To believe the sovereignty of God does not mean you cannot answer the question. As someone who holds to what would be termed a “Calvinistic” view of salvation, I disagree with the way you have lumped yourself in the category. That being said, please answer the question

  172. just stopping by

    Why bring up Greg Boyd? And Eagle is not asking a trick question. You see, I had the opportunity to meet him in  person about a week ago. He is a kind man who is wrestling with the faith in an open and honest fashion. So, once again, cut out the nonsesne and answer people in a straightforward fashion. Of is this how they “train” people in the calvinista sects.” Winsome attack dogs for the Gospel and Biblical defense of all things Piper.

  173. Just stopping by,

    You said: “The Great Commission was not to men only.”

    The Great Commission: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

    Reasons (according to comps/patriarchs) a woman cannot do this:

    1) “GO.” Women are told they must STAY. At home.

    2) “Make disciples.” Can a woman disciple a man? This involves teaching and preaching.

    3) “Baptizing.” Would a baptism done by a woman be considered valid?

    4) “Teaching them to obey.” Hoooo boy I think you can see why complementarianism makes this problematic.

    Still think women can do this too?

  174. Dana

    The church has a terrible history in the abuse arena. You have no idea how many times we have received emails from women being told to return to their winsomely abusive husbands in their patriarchal churches because I believe that may of these churches cannot, and will not believe the extent of abuse that can occur by such men. The counseling given at such churches is substandard. Also, such churches rarely report abuse to authorities, believing, somehow, that they are above the law and uniquely gifted by the Spirit to give advice. It is terribly upsetting.

    One Calvinista church that I know told a pastor’s wife to return to her abusive husbandwith her three kids so that she could get counseling. Thankfully, she had disobedient partents who told the church “hell no” and got her out of there.

  175. just stopping by

    I have just finished reading a book about the persecution of the Christian under Nero while I was on the beach being angry and bitter. i am not sure you can even begin to understand the word “savage.” Savage is what happened to those Christians. 

    You are really, really getting out of line. Deb and i approach this blog in an egalitarian manner. So, if one of us decided you go, you go. And, given the history of this blog of over three years and the fact we have only throw about 1o people off the blog, that is saying something.  You are definitely in a category of your own. I am getting closer and closer. Maybe a nice fish dinner and a glass of wine might settle me down. Let’s see.

     

  176. Deb

    No problem for “just” on those blogs. It would be “hale, learty and well met” and much air kissing.

  177. Dee,

    I agree that JSB is getting out of line, but I also think that the weight of truth and of Scripture is on our side. Let’s let him pontificate a little bit more. If he becomes hostile and beligerant and minimizes abuse then obviously he will have to go, but for now I think we may be able to help him see the error of his ways and help him have a more biblical, gospel-centered view of things. What say you?

  178. Rtjsb
    Good thoughts about renaming t4g RITFAM and the redefinition of “Gospel”.
    I just reviewed their Affirmations and Denials, and still find nothing there about the GOODNESS of God.(though they do say He’s gracious in one place) IF He’s not good, how can it be good news?

  179. just stopping by said,

    “And at the same time, you can find plenty of quotes from these very “Calvinistas” to the effect that they are fallible sinners and do not have all the answers–quite the opposite of saying that they are “absolutely convinced” that their interpretation of the Bible is perfect.”

    When I was a young Calvinette at the Christian Reformed church, part of our duty was to recite this Christian Reformed doctrinal Statement; “We believe that the Heidelburg Catechism, The Canons of Dordt, and the Belgic Confession ARE the TRUE interpretation of the Word of God.

    P.S. And Calvinette does not have quotation marks because we really were Calvinettes.

  180. Dee:

    You said to JSB:”Just stopping by 1:26

    It is now 4:30 and I have a had a fun day at the beach being an “egalitarian” while at the same time being angry and bitter and ignoring Scripture along with my husband of 32 years. I am somewhat irritated by your approach and find that it has much in common with another person by the name of Jimmy. Warning-by the time i have caught up with your comments, I hope things are a bit nicer.”

    I thought maybe JSB was Jimmy.

  181. Mot,

    I think JSB is actually more articulate than Jimmy. They are close in condescension level, but I think JSB is a better writer.

  182. Just stopping by,

    In your response to me at 12:50 PM, you seemed to think I (and others) might have anger towards men, my husband in particular.

    Because I DO desire to honor my husband though I question the comp doctrine, I think I’d better clarify that my struggle with it has more to do with my own heart. I’ve said this in other threads, but my husband is a good man who I admire very much. He knows I admire him. If I want/don’t want something, he would not override me. He would NEVER hurt me. Also, the men at my church that have taught us these doctrines are good, kind men who have helped us in many ways, especially through the difficulties we’ve been through that I mentioned above. I have no personal complaints at all against them. If we leave the church, it will be peacably. My struggle is not with men at all.

    My struggle is with the doctrine itself. I see how it has often caused me to defer decisions to my husband, grateful that I don’t have to make up my mind, only to blame him (silently, never vocalized) when things go wrong, standing back and watching him struggle to pick up the pieces. Also, the Holy Spirit had no room to work in my life when I felt (because of complementarianism) that He must always work first in my husband’s heart and then mine. Why, if I have a husband for a spiritual head, would the Holy Spirit ever work first in my heart to bring about understanding and conviction? Especially if it contradicts my husband’s beliefs. This is very problematic for me. I see how much more whole my relationship with my husband, and my relationship with the Lord, might have been these past 10 years had we never heard of complementarianism. Can you see what I’m saying?

  183. Wow, this has been some kind of debate!

    At the risk of raising more ire than has already been raised, I think JSB has tried to dialogue in a reasonable way for the most part.

    Yeah, he has erred on arrogance quite a few times (and made false assumptions), but he is not the only one who has done so in this conversation. In my opinion, sarcastic responses can lead one to a perception of “bitter” and “angry” from the other party, and if I am not mistaken, this is exactly what happened in this situation. I think the longer JSB will stay here, he will see that there is no bitterness and anger on this blog.

    Coming from someone who has been on the “Dissenting” side of Wartburg before, it is rather easy to misunderstand the heart of this blog, especially when the dialogue gets “heated” against people you respect (In the case of JSB, John Piper)…

    Give him time though, IF JSB is truly not a troll, then he will begin to think more deeply about these things, as I have…even in light of his respect of John Piper and others.

    Now, to comment to Just Stopping By:

    As someone who has been on the fence for sometime on the whole Comp issue, I am intrigued by this whole conversation.

    I line up with your thinking on Comp being functionally Egalitarian in a marriage, (At least that is what Ephesians 5 says to me).. but I am a bit confused on the whole “roles” thing.

    You said,

    “I don’t think this undermines the idea of mutuality in marriage (and even in roles, in a sense), just that the primary roles of each spouse are different. I don’t say that the wife can’t initiate with her husband; but I say that the husband is responsible initiate with his wife. I don’t say that the wife can’t have a vision for the future of the family (and share it with her husband); but I say that the husband is responsible for having a vision as a means of providing and protecting, for both emotional needs and physical needs. I don’t say that the husband can’t nurture in the home; but I say that the wife is uniquely called to nurture in the home. And so on…”

    I understand where you are coming from, but where exactly does Ephesians 5 imply that a man is uniquely called to initiate leadership over the woman? I think the thrust of Ephesians 5 is for a man to have sacrifical love for his wife, not authority over her as Christ has over the church..(Hence why it says LOVE your wife as Christ LOVES the church)..

    Maybe this is why 56years asked for further scripture on where a man is uniquely called to leadership in marriage…It seems you might have to read this into the text in Genesis and Ephesians 5 to come to that conclusion (Not saying this could not be so, but it certainly raises questions)…

    You may be right, and I have a lot to learn, but I am not seeing the comp doctrine as the sturdy foundation I once saw it.

    I have been reading a bit of Ben Witherington lately (NT Scholar), and he has made a lot of excellent points in regards to the functionality of a woman within the church and in marriage. He is quite brilliant, and it was refreshing for me to read something other than John Piper and Wayne Grudem on the matter..

    Looking forward for the conversation to continue…

  184. I agree with Seeker – JSB may have been a bit abrasive at a few points, but he doesn’t deserve to be kicked off the blog. I would hate for any false impressions he got of TWW to be reinforced by a booting. At least he’s having a substantive (if “energetic”) conversation – which is far preferable to Jimmy’s drive-by-shooting context-free one-liners.

  185. Hey All:

    JSB is just avoiding citing scripture because there is none that supports that men are to be leaders and women not, either in marriage in the church. And there are counterexamples in the Bible. As Seeker said, the comps (and patriarchs) are reading that interpretation INTO the scripture, and not from the scripture, because it is NOT THERE!!!

    It is true that men and women are different in a lot of ways, but none of them are particularly relevant to being a leader, except perhaps that men may be a little more likely to get into physical confrontations (as a result of socialization) and that is probably not a good leadership trait.

    The whole comp male leadership thing is culture overlaid over the scripture and is not Biblical. That is why the term “Biblical complementarianism” is not meaningful, for there is no such thing. Their attempt to use Genesis is neither a true exegesis nor relevant to the New Testament church, and their interpretation of the NT household codes misses a key aspect, that the word they base so much on cannot mean in modern English what the word in the first century Greek means, because its use contradicts the modern English meaning.

    There is an old saying. Don’t start a fight if you don’t have superior capability. And Just Stopping By just demonstrated why he should not have come here to take on the TWW community: He was set to lose from the outset. But it was a fun afternoon, wasn’t it.

  186. When I was a young Calvinette at the Christian Reformed church, part of our duty was to recite this Christian Reformed doctrinal Statement; “We believe that the Heidelburg Catechism, The Canons of Dordt, and the Belgic Confession ARE the TRUE interpretation of the Word of God.”

    P.S. And Calvinette does not have quotation marks because we really were Calvinettes. — Patti

    Calvinette = Female Calvinjugend?

    And (Godwin’s Law Invocation) WHY DO “CERTAIN INFAMOUS POLITICAL MOVEMENTS(TM)” KEEP COMING TO MIND?

    I have just finished reading a book about the persecution of the Christian under Nero while I was on the beach being angry and bitter. i am not sure you can even begin to understand the word “savage.” Savage is what happened to those Christians. — Dee

    “Savage” also describes what those Certain Infamous Political Movements(TM) did to their enemies real & imagined. Whether under the banner of the Hakenkreuz or Krasnaya Zvezada.

  187. I have no intentions of booting JSB.  I just wanted to remind him that we are willing for him to express his viewpoint in this forum.  I have lost track of how many of our regular commenters have had comments DELETED on Calvinista blogs.  I believe that alone speaks volumes.

  188. Dee, I’d also like to say I think JSB should be allowed to stay. I’m enjoying this conversation. It’s not easy to get answers out of other comp men without them blowing up and calling you a feminist or shutting down. Gotta give him that. 🙂 I haven’t found him to be intentionally offensive.

    JSB,

    I apologize if I’ve come across badly in any of this conversation so far. Honestly, this whole issue is just a big question mark in my mind. Thank you for trying to answer some of the questions I have. It’s apparent to me that you are coming from an pretty different “flavor” of complementarianism from what I’ve gotten used to hearing. That’s what’s confusing – there are SO many different ones. Why? If complementarianism is right, which comps draw the line at the right place and are able to be consistent about it? Agh…

  189. Dear Mary Kassian,

    Many people will benefit tons more from your silence, so I suggest you be a good complementarian female and be quiet.

    Thank you!

  190. eagle

    It is the same racket. However, Dee has settled down after a fair to middllin glass of pinot noir.

  191. Response

    What do you mean if he becomes belligerant…. I am willing to let him go on however, betcha this, no matter the argument, we have not bowed the kneee at Piper and that is a heresy of untold magnitude.There will be no convincing.

  192. DaveAA

    They are definetly not into love either. Love is defined as “that which universalists believe and is therefore irrelevant.”

  193. 56 years

    More fun for me since i was sitting on a beach. There is much reading into the Scriptures on the part of hardline comps and that is why they must always put the word “biblcial” or “Gospel”  in front of what they say. if they didn’t, it might be a bit hard for those actually trying to figure out when in the world they came up with their doctrine.  If it isn’t evident, you have to say it.

  194. Deb

    Glad you are more level headed than I. I actually consideed booting him until I had a nice dinner and a glass of pinot noir. Then it came to me. He is here and  fighting hard primarily because he is threatened by our blog. He is putting the word “biblical” in front of his points primarily because, unless he said it, it would not be self-evident. Finally, I have learned something very important from the argument. Go ahead and question many things but never, ever question Piper because….whatever.

    I do not believe his intent was thoughtful dialogue. One only has to read his opening salvo. So, unless I need to go back to English Lit 101 or I have suffered a TIA which is always possible, this is not a robust exchange of the Inklings in some English pub.

  195. Jan

    He stays, for now but in his very opening statement he was intentionally offensive unless he is a moron. Since I happen to know from whence his email address originates, i know he is not a moron so I choose the former.

  196. I do actually think there is within most women a natural tendency to defer to their husband. It certainly can erode over time but it seems to be there at the start of most relationships.

  197. Well, as you know, that is a trick question because unlike Greg Boyd, the Calvinistas and I believe in the sovereignty of God. — JBS

    So did Mohammed.

    Years ago, a writer contact of mine moved to Louisville and tried to hook up with a church. The first church he tried was into Extreme Predestination (probably Hypercalvinist), and he reported the same symptoms that have plagued Islam throughout its history.

  198. To wit:

    1) Passivity and Fatalism — “Whatever God Wills…”

    2) No checks on abusive leadership — “I got away with it, so it must be God’s Will…”

    3) No responsibility — “Not My Fault! God Willed It!”

    4) Hair-trigger hostility toward any dissent — “YOU DOUBT THE SOVERIGNITY OF GOD???”

  199. HUG

    Corollary to  “you doubt the sovereignty of God” is If you don’t see it my way, you doubt my definitio of the sovereignty of God because He agrees wth me.

  200. Dee,

    Yeah, his opening statement and quite a few other lines definitely made my eyebrows involuntarily arch. I haven’t read every single thing he wrote either because it’s just wayyy too much to process, so I may very well be missing some things. If you need to boot him, don’t keep him around on my account. 🙂 This whole conversation is getting a little dizzying anyway!

    I’m totally jealous of you having a fish dinner and wine at the beach, BTW.

  201. Part of my big issue with this is the way complementarians like Kassian euphemize what they actually mean. Case in point, the quote from Kassian featured above:

    [“Complementarianism”] was coined by a group of scholars who got together to try and come up with a word to describe someone who ascribes to the historic, biblical idea that male and female are equal, but different. The need for such a label arose in response to the proposition that equality means role-interchangeability (egalitarianism). . .

    “Equal but different” actually means “equal but subordinate,” because what is meant by “roles” is that men have the authority to lead, and women are to follow. This really isn’t about men going to the office and women being homemakers. This is about men being in charge of women. But they don’t come right out and say this because of how unpalatable it sounds. Instead they talk about “equal but different” and claim egalitarians don’t believe there are differences.

    Egalitarians don’t believe God assigned authority unilaterally to one sex over the other– but again, complementarians won’t come right out and say that this is where the disagreement lies. Instead they fudge over their own position and misrepresent the egalitarian one.

    And I’m left asking, if coming right out and saying what they mean is so unpalatable, doesn’t that say something about the complementarian position? If it’s really such a beautiful truth, then why the need to skirt around it like this?

  202. I haven’t read the whole thread, but as soon as I saw this on my Facebook feed, I had to post it here:

    Some men believe that God promised them they could find subservient wives in every corner of the world. So God made the world round.

  203. Talking about women in leadership, both Billy Graham and Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ) were mentored by Dr. Henrietta C. Meares.  Bright and his wife Vonette lived with Dr. Meares for 11 years. 

    Also, John Piper graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary, so it's no wonder he is so confused…

     

  204. Dee,

    Good point. Stopping By was a beligerant at first for sure. I think we were able to help his tone become more gospel-centered, biblical, and complementary 🙂

  205. I’m really don’t want to dive into the debate. Feels like a waste of time to me. But…. 🙂

    JSB suggested that those here are about “male bashing”….did he actually read the POST? It is about a woman….

    Oh, the irony…..

  206. Jan

    It’s OK. I really needed a break. Usually I do well with bulls in china shops (maybe because i can be like one as well) but I was a bit touchy. However, I am slowly regaining my wits and stamina. Onto the good battle. 

  207. Kristen

    Bottom line: Women cannot have anything to say about leadership. They can't lead which means they will always be subordinate. The whole thing of separate but equal is not true. When women have no say about the way a church is run, then they are not equal. To say that caring for the toddlers is the same is silly and everyone knows it. Steve Gaines hid the fact that a pedophile (supposedly not active) was on the staff of his church for months. This was a decision that will go down in infamy as stupid. But, he made the decision. He would say a woman has no business in leadership. i have news for men like him. If he had listened to a woman, he would not have found himselves having to justify keeping a pedophile in the pastorate. Instead, the women were busy keeping pedophiles out of his nursery while he was keeping one hidden on staff.

  208. Jeanette

    JSB was a screed from start to finish. Nothing we  said was of value. Even worse, we are bitter, angry, unbiblical etc. We actually disagreed with Piper-darn it! His approach was learned from the leaders of YRR crowd whose specialty is the take no prisoners, “we are the champions” approach to the “gospel” according to Piper.

    It is interesting. He appears to be defending Piper more rigorously than the Scripture.Some of the angriest people I have seen on blogs are the hardcore, Piper can do and say no wrong. That is why they have him autograph their Bibles.

  209. JSB, you stepped up and made your case. But Wartburg tends to take a moderate/liberal approach to theology. Conservative male commentary is generally disapproved of by the community ( and authors.) Now you know.

  210. Kristen,

    I have found your writing to be extremely helpful in helping me to understand what God meant for women to be. Especially your writing on 1 Cor. 11 (headcoverings). I wear one to worship but probably not for much longer.

  211. Jan, I’m grateful and honored that my writings have been helpful to you. May the Holy Spirit guide you as to when is the right time to make a change/take a stand.

  212. This has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
    Just noticed there’s now an American flag next to my name – I’m over here for about three weeks for a conference and a couple of meetings for my degree. I’m currently in Colorado, and I have to say I’m loving the warm weather!

  213. Dee said,
    “They are definetly not into love either. Love is defined as “that which universalists believe and is therefore irrelevant.”
    Right! Not one mention in the T4G A&D’s of the Love of Jesus, nor our love for him, nor our love for one another, neighbors, and enemies. Not even of husband for wife, though they take the time and space to say that men (in general) are to lead in their homes as husbands and fathers.
    To pick on Dr Packer again, in his monumentally influential 1973 book, he changes Rom 5:5 “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” to “THE KNOWLEDGE OF the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.”
    To give Dr Piper equal time, in his most popular book, he paraphrases Eph 5:25 “as Christ also LED (Paul said loved) the church…”

  214. Preliminarily, I would note that there seems to be quite a bit of anger in some of these comments. I sense that many of you have deep-seated bitterness in your souls, and as professing Christians (most of you, I think), I would encourage you to examine that in light of the scriptures. —” Just Stopping By

    Did that come direct from the Holy Spirit through your Spiritual Gift of Discernment(TM)?

    Because it’s one of the slickest passive-aggressive backhands I’ve ever seen on a Christian blog

    Oh no, this is typical. Go to ad hominem instead of engaging the facts or interpretations, etc. Act like you are more pious by accusing the other side of being angry or bitter. This is in the comp/pat playbook. She is only doing what has been taught to thousands.

  215. “JSB, you stepped up and made your case. But Wartburg tends to take a moderate/liberal approach to theology. Conservative male commentary is generally disapproved of by the community ( and authors.) Now you know.”

    Let us analyze this statement.

    1. Is a moderate/liberal approach to theology concerning salvation?
    2. Does it include comp/pat doctrine as a salvic dotrine?
    3. I am assuming you do not know any conservative men who are mutualists? I know quite a few.

  216. “Well, as you know, that is a trick question because unlike Greg Boyd, the Calvinistas and I believe in the sovereignty of God. — JBS

    So did Mohammed.”

    HUG, you made me spew my Earl Grey. How True. I know it is bad when they trot out Sovereignty of God to be more pious. As you know, God is Sovereign over His own Sovereignty unless one is a Calvinist or a Muslim. :o)

  217. “To pick on Dr Packer again, in his monumentally influential 1973 book, he changes Rom 5:5 “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” to “THE KNOWLEDGE OF the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.”
    To give Dr Piper equal time, in his most popular book, he paraphrases Eph 5:25 “as Christ also LED (Paul said loved) the church…””

    Thank you, Dave. I see subtle changes like this all the time to fit a doctrine they are pushing and we must be vigilent and point them out for others. It makes me sick.

  218. @ Jimmy:

    Who is defining the terms “conservative,” “moderate” and “liberal”? Those are meaningless buzzwords without an author’s personal definition emblazoned in neon red letters right before them.

  219. So, the end of this discussion is that the comp on line today could not cite a bible text that supports comp doctrine, whether comp lite or patriarchy. So there is no such thing as “biblical complementarianism” or “biblical patriarchy”, and there is no biblical justification for keeping women out of leadership roles in the church or for them to be “under the covering” of some male “head”, any more than a man should be “under the covering” of some female “head”. Therefore, men and women can be equal as God created them.

    Let the only cover of any importance in a marriage be the covers on the bed!

  220. That’s it! Wasting Earl Grey is the ultimate! Especially living where I live, and it’s only sold in import stores with at least a 50% mark-up!

    I’m far too lazy, and don’t have access to enough Ritalin to read each post, and every thought and argument. But I came away from the comments earlier this morning with one thought. If Pope Piper, and his little band of like-minded ‘leaders’ really were such humble and ‘godly’ men, then why don’t they come out with some sort of public statement regarding all their die-hard followers, and demand that they stop idolizing them. Let them go on record for saying to their followers to stop quoting them, and use the Word!

    This past spring I attended our organizations annual conference. I kept hearing the phrase “…come along side…”; and I’ve mentioned before, names like Piper, Molher, and Tim Tebow are more likely to be heard in our Sunday gathering, than Jesus.

    Start offering their over-priced books, with wide empty margins,and the ‘study-guides’, with lots of empty space, and lines on which to register your ‘answers’ FOR FREE!! After all, isn’t the good news for everyone, and not just the middle to upper class folks who can afford the drive to their local ‘christian’ bookstore? And all those huge conferences…If they’re humble, and their true purpose is to spread the good news, shouldn’t they be willing to go to the smallest church in the county and offer their teachings for free? Instead of finding the largest convention center around, and charging FAR MORE than most people can afford to pay?

    I don’t get it.

    Not being very articulate this morning, am I? Sorry! But when someone spews their Earl Grey, I know that I have to speak out!! TRAVESTY of all TRAVESTIES!!

  221. I’m back with a brief follow-up before I turn in.

    First, Hester and Seeker, I appreciate your support. Until I read Seeker’s post justifying my existence at TWW, I was actually pretty determined not to come back at all because of the dismissive and derogatory comments (about how I am crossing the line and don’t deserve a voice here, etc.). I have generally enjoyed the dialogue, at least where people have approached me with a shred of grace and willingness to dialogue on equal footing. Unfortunately, it is exhausting and time-consuming to try to keep up with all of your comments when I am so outnumbered. As much as I would like to continue to dialogue, I will not be able to do so in as much depth as I did today. So I may check back and selectively respond to some comments that I believe are either particularly insightful or particularly earnest in wanting to hear me out. As I said earlier, though, I respect your right to disagree, and I am not going to waste my time responding to people who will never be willing to “agree to disagree.”

    Second, I sincerely apologize that my first comment came across so harshly. I did not intend that. Honestly, I was looking for something else online and happened upon this. It looked intriguing so I started reading. Before long, I felt like the complementarian position was getting a really unfair shake among this crowd, so I merely wanted to comment and attempt to bridge the divide a bit (and say Piper isn’t the devil, etc.). I did not mean to be as offensive as I apparently was at first.

    By the way, speaking of Piper, there seems to be this belief that I am a cultish follower of John Piper. I like Piper a lot and agree with most (the vast majority) of his theology. But as I said earlier, I would not follow Piper off a cliff. Also, for the record, I would not ask Piper to autograph my Bible. I think the fact that people do that IS troubling. I have disagreed with Piper’s statement about the tornadoes in this very dialogue. I have also criticized at least his judgment in the way that he has presented his position (and possibly his actual position, although I really think he agrees with me) on one or two other occasions in this dialogue. There is one issue in particular that I am wrestling with right now in terms of whether I accept the same position that Piper holds, or one of two alternative positions that other prominent theologians hold. So, this may not stop you from thinking that I worship John Piper, but just for the record (and anyone who DOES take me at my word), I am going to go ahead and make it clear that I do not.

    56 years: In light of your posts, I would simply like to point out the irony of lambasting “Calvinistas” for allegedly being “absolutely certain” that they hold the correct interpretation of scripture.

    And finally, Jan… I have enjoyed dialoguing with you. As this conversation has gone, I come to sympathize with you more and more. It sounds like your husband is not causing you grief, and for that I am glad. But I am saddened by the “complementarian” views that those around you apparently hold. I reject those views as a misunderstanding of what we have been calling “headship and submission.” I earnestly hope that you can come to reconcile the scripture with a more “egalitarian” (if I may) view of complementarianism. Specifically, WRT the Great Commission, women are clearly in view. As many have pointed out, a number of enumerated women (and likely others) were active in growing the early church. Jesus appeared to women first after the resurrection. Now, I do not believe that those things contradict the principle that God has appointed certain leadership roles in the church to be held only by “qualified men” – there are plenty of other facts that support that conclusion (all 12/13 disciples were men, the scriptures were written by men, Paul explicitly called for men to be in leadership positions, etc.). I also believe that there are many reasons why it is wise for women to disciple women and men to disciple men (I mean particularly after conversion as they are trained in the faith) and perhaps biblically mandated as well. But I find no justification for reading scripture to say that women are to leave all evangelism and ministry to men. I think it is tragic if people teach that.

    With respect to I Corinthians 14:35, there are a couple of persuasive interpretations of that verse. For one thing, as I basically said in the previous paragraph, it cannot mean that women can never discuss the faith except with their husbands or anything like that because Paul (who wrote it) was partnering with women in ministry. Regardless of which interpretation you accept, I don’t think that you can read I Corinthians 14:35 to say that women cannot engage in spiritual conversations where men are present.

    One more post script… I’d like to emphasize this just one more time. I know I have said it a million times it feels like, but people continue to do what I have been trying to urge you not to do. Please do not judge “complementarianism” based on bad apples that you have come across in your life experience who purport to be complementarian. I (and Piper and the rest) would unequivocally reject a lot of the behavior and statements that people have referred to in these comments. Please be careful not to judge all complementarians (including Piper and the “Calvinistas”) by the behavior and attitudes of some men who tell their wives that the Great Commission is a mandate to men only, etc. Those guys would reject that kind of nonsense.

  222. And, jack, so many of these resources are made available either free on line or at very low cost in print (although the print deals are often limited time deals). Also, Piper for one, lives very simply. How can you say this stuff when you clearly do not know very much about Piper and his ministry? (I really don’t want to sound condescending, but challenging Piper to teach obedience to scripture instead of to himself and implying that Piper and others write these books to make money off of them is really pretty ignorant. There’s just no getting around that.)

  223. JSB
    I have nothing at all against Dr Piper personally or pastorally, but as a conservative (biblically) male commenter, I am deeply, deeply troubled by the loose (liberal) approach he sometimes takes with scripture. Why change the biblical word “loved” to “led”, or change hedonism (called a thorn which chokes out the Word by Jesus) into a good thing– indeed into a requirement for regeneration, so long as it’s a “Christian” variety?

  224. I forgot one thing I meant to say… I wanted to respond to eagle re: the problem of pain (and Greg Boyd).

    The problem of pain is difficult to process emotionally. I totally understand that. The short version of how I deal with the problem of pain is that I trust in the Bible’s authority to teach me about the nature of God and the world. When my emotions are in tension with the Bible (e.g., in the case of some of the crucial paradoxes of Christianity such as the deity AND humanity of Christ, the three persons but one God of the Trinity, etc.), I must consider the possibility that the Bible is true and my heart is deceiving (see Jeremiah 17:9). Such it is with God’s sovereignty, omniscience, AND goodness. In an effort to escape the problem of pain, Greg Boyd tries to affirm each of these three truths (and thus affirm scriptural teaching) but ends up with explanations like, “well, God is omniscient, but he just can’t know the future.” Boyd’s attempt to reconcile that with scriptures that talk about God ordaining certain things from before the creation of the world (including the crucifixion) is entirely unpersuasive to me. So, ultimately, I feel that I have a choice between Boyd’s explanation (or my own contrived explanation) or scripture – and I choose scripture.

  225. I’m losing it. I was also going to do Dave A A the courtesy of responding while I was already responding to eagle.

    I can’t answer your question WRT to changing “loved” to “led” off the top of my head. I would have to look at the context of what Piper was saying. Frankly, I don’t want to do that right now – I want to go to bed. But, WRT to “Christian hedonism,” I don’t really understand what your problem with that is. It sounds like the only hang-up is that you don’t like Piper’s terminology. To that I would say, so be it. That’s fair for you to not like him calling it that, but I don’t think that’s a very significant criticism. If your beef is with the substantive principle (i.e., that God is most glorified by us when we are most satisfied in him), then please explain what that beef is exactly. I am not sure what you mean when you refer to it as a “requirement for regeneration.” Do you have a quote from Piper saying that? If so, I’d like to examine it in context.

  226. Oh JSB:-( Perhaps you can enlighten us as to just how well, and how long you’ve known John Piper and his ministry. And how arrogant for you to say I’m ignorant. Maybe I’m misinformed, but I’m a bit put off that you’d call me ignorant.

    So you see, it seems that you’ve kind of made my point for me. The way that you’ve taken on this personal crusade to defend and protect Pope Piper is astounding!

    In stead of calling me ignorant, why not share with me facts and figures to support your case. I’m certainly open to learning.

  227. Alright, last post… for real this time! 😀

    I also meant to respond to Seeker’s question. I really appreciated your approach in responding to me, so I definitely want to return the favor by responding to your question.

    “I understand where you are coming from, but where exactly does Ephesians 5 imply that a man is uniquely called to initiate leadership over the woman? I think the thrust of Ephesians 5 is for a man to have sacrifical love for his wife, not authority over her as Christ has over the church..(Hence why it says LOVE your wife as Christ LOVES the church)..”

    I think a lot of it really comes from vv. 22-24, where Paul calls wives to submit to their husbands “in everything.” You may try to explain that kind of language away (I know 56 years will). That’s fine, but you have to acknowledge that it is odd that Paul doesn’t just say, “husbands and wives should each love the other like Christ loved the church,” if that is essentially what he meant to say. Again, as I said earlier, I go back to the parallel exhortations that Paul makes at the beginning of Ephesians 6. Ephesians 5:21 through 6:9 are really one big section of text where Paul elaborates on what he means by “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). Why would Paul make separate exhortations to wives and husbands, using totally different language, and in the same context (immediately prior, actually) where he separately exhorts parents and children about how to “submit to one another”?

    To me, that is the biggest indicator that Paul has different roles in mind. And, of course, I think it is very easy to read those different roles to be consistent with both the Genesis account and Paul’s similarly distinct exhortations to wives and husbands in Colossians 3. Even Ephesians 5:33 instructs husbands to “love” their wives and wives to “respect” their husbands. Why doesn’t Paul just tell wives to “love” their husbands? Some people (some feminists, for instance) may even be offended by the idea of “respect” when it is directed to wives and not husbands. If they are (offended by that at all), that would simply be another indicator to me that they read that as a different exhortation to husbands than to wives. My view, of course, is that the “love” and “respect” exhortations are indeed different, although very similar in spirit and in principle.

  228. jack, this is a major rabbit trail. I really don’t want to get hung up on this dispute with you. I gave you a few basic facts. But it is not hard to find evidence of anything that I said in response to you. My assertions (about Piper in particular) were not controversial. I would encourage you to Google it for yourself.

    And I apologize for offending you. “Misinformed” may been a better way of putting it than “ignorant.” Even though the definition of “ignorant” is literally “lacking information or awareness in general” (which is to say that the two words are synonyms), I understand that the term “ignorant” may be a little more loaded in our modern parlance.

  229. “Unless a man be born again into a Christian Hedonist he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John Piper, Desiring God, page 55)

  230. So many comments, I’m not sure if anyone has asked this yet, so I apologise if I’ve missed part of the discussion.
    ‘Equal but different’ and ‘different roles’ are ideas I just can’t square with what God is like. Either he created women with lesser abilities so they aren’t allowed to do certain things, or he created men and women with the same abilities but tells women not to utilise some of them. Either way, that makes God seem very mean. I can’t put that – women having/using less abilities – together with the God who paid the price in Christ and who tells us there is neither slave nor free, male nor female in Him but that we are all cherished children of God. I just can’t fit those two ideas together.

  231. Too late to detail my personal beef with Piper’s primary teaching, but this article does a good job.
    http://www.thefaithfulword.org/mythrejectjoy.html
    To summarize– something else (joy) is elevated to the primary aim, and the love is demoted.. I Cor 14:1 Just as in complementarianism leadership is elevated above love as a husband’s aim.

  232. Jack said: “SING IT WITH ME: “MY CHAINS ARE GONE, I’VE BEEN SET FREE!” ”

    Thanks, Jack! I LOVE that song!!

  233. Equal in position but separate in roles is separate but equal in a new suit. For those with ears to hear, let them hear.

  234. just stopping by asked: “Why would Paul make separate exhortations to wives and husbands, using totally different language…”

    Allow me to explain the reason. Since Ephesians 5 seems to be the stumbling block some, I’ll share how I see Paul’s exhortation to slaves first, then children, and then wives. So it won’t be too long, I’ll divide it up into those three.

    SLAVES:

    First, I do not see them as “commands” per se. Rather I see them as Paul’s effort (admonishments?) to change an existing system of harsh domination between members of various groups where authority had been usurped. In other words, unrighteous control was prevalent among many as opposed to treatment as one wanted to be treated.

    It may be easier for you to see this if I show it first in the master/slave relationship. We know slavery was rampant but from the beginning, this was never God’s plan nor did He establish a system of domination of one over the other among His people. We see, throughout scripture God’s efforts to protect the well-being of slaves and educate slaveholders how to treat them fairly. With the many scriptures in the OT that support fair, just treatment of slaves, we look at Paul’s admonishments to both slaves (weak and vulnerable) and masters (stronger and more powerful)

    Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ…Eph 6:5

    And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening…Eph 6:9

    Paul is not supporting nor endorsing the continuation of the practice; on the contrary, he is appealing to their sense of fair treatment one to another to ensure a peaceable relationship in an existing situation and time that permitted privileges to one to the exclusion of the other.

    We know he continued in this effort to eradicate the existing system and implement one that is patterned after mutual respect when he encouraged Philemon to change his attitude toward his slave to one of a brother in Christ. He further tells slaves that if they became a believer while being a slave, to remain in that position (because of the late hour) but if they could become free, to rather do that.

    We see his view of slavery in other places which you can research yourself that the system that allowed for one having power over another was never God’s plan and you will see progressive efforts throughout the Word and throughout history to eliminate and/or rescue those who have been oppressed by such a system.

  235. CHILDREN:

    Next we can briefly look at Paul’s admonishment to children and parents. Again, we know from scripture (and history) the harsh manner parents have treated their children; i.e. “Passing through the fire” and offering them to false idols, selling them as slaves. We see the relationship between Saul & Jonathan, Absalom’s rebellion against his father David, and the stoning of a rebellious son whose parents brought him to the elders of the city to complain that he was a drunkard and a glutton. Compare the treatment of the father to his son in the parable of the prodigal son.

    So Paul entreats children (weaker and vulnerable) to be obedient to their parents (stronger and powerful) so it will be well with them in their care and then admonishes the father not to be harsh nor to exasperate the children but to instruct them in the way of the Lord.

    Children,obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

    Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Eph 6:4

    Again, Paul does not endorse nor encourage an authoritarian, harsh relationship between parents and their children, but appeals to peaceable respect between them.

  236. WIVES:

    And finally, we turn to Paul’s efforts to raise the status of wives and curtail the practices of harsh treatment toward them in an era that previously permitted polygamy, concubinage,marriage by purchase or by capture in war, slave-marriage, and putting away wives for any cause. He first speaks to the wife as the weaker, more vulnerable vessel:

    …..and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

    For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself the Savior of the body. Eph 5:23

    Paul is not establishing nor maintaining a system or relationship that was historically abused by husbands. He is appealing to the wife to see the husband in terms of Christ’s saving the church. He’s encouraging a new perspective and attitude toward the one who will love her and sacrifice himself for her as Christ did.

    But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything Eph 5:24

    Paul is comparing the church being in the care and nourishment of Christ to the wife’s being the recipient of the care and nourishment of her husband. We know this by the words of admonishment to husbands to care for (nourish) and cherish her as Christ does to the church.

    And then to the stronger, more powerful husband:

    Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her…Eph 5:25

    He makes no mention of authority, control, or power in this relationship. Only “agape” love which gives itself up for another. This is radically different than the pattern of husbands to their wives which de-valued her, divorced her for any reason, and took multiple wives in total disregard for the original purpose of marriage.

    In keeping with Paul’s efforts to change the erroneous concept of the husband’s authority, we find him specifically saying that the wife has equal authority in the home and the same as the husband in the sexual relationship. (1 Cor. 7) Surely we cannot interpret his words as commands that encourage anything other than mutual, reciprocal, loving, respectful treatment.

    There are only two genders in the body of Christ and none speak specifically to one that is not applicable, as far as I can see, to the other. Paul mentions 3 relationships in Ephesians that again, need specific reminders due to the nature of their close day-to-day living arrangements as well as the possibility of abuse by the stronger or more powerful.

    The “mystery” of Christ’s relationship to the church is Christ’s giving Himself, humbling Himself, emptying Himself, and His servanthood as exemplary of His willingly subjecting Himself on behalf of the Church. In other words, He subjects Himself not to her, but for her sake.

  237. Jimmy

    You are tolerated and that is neither liberal or conservative. There should be some modicum of respect for our ability to tolerate many. And you should know.

  238. Dave 10:39

    That is an importatn observation. I never noticed that. However, given his followers, it does not surprise me. They are into leading and rarely talk about love.

  239. Anon1 10:41

    That is the reason that I found his initial salvo and his continued comments irritating. He is passive aggressive and then makes us feel like we are the mean ones.

  240. Sergius  11:15

    Two points to consider: I am a nurse and know the benefits of red wine  as opposed to white. Secondly, there is debate on the blackened fsh dilemna. Does heat demand red? Is there such a thing as “biblical” wine choices?

  241. JSB

    Enough of calling people ignorant. The same could be said of your manners.  You did good in your earlier comment but you cannot contain yourself. We have written extensively about the enormous money that is to be had at book endorsements and speaking conferences. We have also written that John Piper lives a simple lifestyle.(The advantage of not just stopping by is knowing the breadth of our posts) But, both of us have MBAs and we learned that money is not the only currency in life and I will leave that up to you to figure out.

    As for 56 years, his point is this. We critique the Calvinistas for their rigid point of view. 56 years and I would argue that there should be an allowance for multiple views on secondary issues. But, the Gospel Coalition guys are now writing serious articles about why secondary issues should be treated as “almost” primary issues. In other words, shut everyone down except them. You cannot peacefully coexist with your fellow brothers and sisters while at the same time implying heresy and nonbiblical egalitarianism. Calvinists were able to coexist. Calvinistas are not.

  242. JSB

    You know full well that ignorant is more than a little loaded in our modern parlance. You are quite clever at throwing out the words and then semibacktracking. Do you really want to influence people or just have a good time in slashing  and trashing? My guess is you are capable of the former but you are so invested in your ideas that you approach it like it is the Holy Grail and you are on a Crusade. Just be aware that we are so open about our thoughts that we allow even our harshest critics to comment here. I can well assure you, the Neo Cals do not. They either do not allow comments or they delete disagreeble ones and maintain websites that are merely “atta boys”.

  243. @dee:

    I know you are probably not going to listen to me (being that you have not dignified a single comment of mine in this entire conversation with a substantive response), and I can’t make you give anything I say a fair consideration, but I really don’t think that I have been passive-aggressive in saying what I said. I have tried to have a substantive discussion (and probably made some ill-advised or insensitive comments in the process – for which I apologize), and you have only responded to me with intimidation/threats (of banning me), accusations (usually baseless), and name-calling. I would just like to gently call you back to your own “Rules of the Road” for this blog and urge you to show a bit more grace in your disagreement with me. It would be sincerely appreciated.

    @Dave A A:

    OK. I know this a bit of rabbit trail from the comp/egal issue, but I’d like to briefly address it. Please don’t jump on me for saying this, but I honestly believe that the refutation of Christian Hedonism that you linked to misunderstands Piper’s view of joy and “hedonism.” That’s not to be condescending or anything like that, but I think that the teaching that he attacks is not exactly the teaching that Piper espouses. I think that really makes all the difference (but admittedly I’m not sure if the author of that post would still disagree with what I believe to be Piper’s actual teaching). In my opinion, it is sort of a matter of semantics. The author of that post appears to take a few selected quotes from Piper out of context, and then confusion ensues. So, let me explain where I think the wires got crossed… Feel free to disagree and explain why…

    First of all, here is a brief explanation by Piper of what he means when he talks about Christian Hedonism (since we are not in disagreement about most of the fundamental truths that Piper discusses to set up his argument, you could skip to the heading “What Must I Do to Be Saved?” about 3/4 of the way down): http://es.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/conversion-to-christ-the-making-of-a-christian-hedonist/print?lang=en

    So, this author starts his entire argument by referencing the (uncited) definition of “hedonism” as being SOLELY motivated by pleasure. He says “if ‘joy’ is only one of many things that motivate you, then you are not a hedonist.” Well, for one thing, I don’t think that is the definition of “hedonism” (when I look it up in a dictionary, the definition is just “the pursuit of pleasure,” not “the exclusive pursuit of pleasure”). But, even if that was the definition of hedonism, this is really just taking issue with Piper’s decision to call his teaching “Christian Hedonism.” You can’t reject Piper’s teaching just because of what he called it. You can disapprove of what he called it, but you have to let Piper explain what he means by Christian Hedonism. If Piper has defined his own terms (by giving his own definition of what he means by “Christian Hedonism,” then in order to reject the substance of his teaching, you need to accept his terminology, at least for purposes of arguing against him. You can’t just say, “Well, Piper means X, but the dictionary says Y, and Y is wrong. Therefore, Piper is wrong.” If you don’t think that X is wrong, then you don’t reject Piper’s teaching on Christian Hedonism, you just think that it’s confusing that he chose to call it that.

    So the argument (from the link) goes like this: Hedonism means exclusive pursuit of pleasure. Piper says that Christian Hedonism is necessary for salvation. Therefore, Piper thinks that not just the essence of the gospel, but actually the ENTIRETY of the gospel is about pleasure, at the exclusion of love, the Ten Commandments, etc. This is clearly wrong, because Jesus says that the greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor. Therefore, Piper is wrong.

    The problem with that is that Piper doesn’t teach that. Piper teaches (as you will see in the link I provided) that in order to be saved, we must “believe on him, receive him, turn from our sin, obey him, humble ourselves like little children, and love him more than we love our family, our possessions, or our own life” (he cites a number of scriptures referring to the conditions that must be satisfied to enter the kingdom of heaven). He then says that he believes scripture to teach that the unifying principle of all of these separate “conditions” (i.e., what drives people to do these things – from their perspective in the moment, at least) is the pursuit of God as our highest pleasure. He doesn’t say that Christians have to affirm the doctrine of Christian Hedonism (or the name that Piper has given it) in order to be saved. He says that inherent in the conversion experience is the decision to value God above all else as the greatest imaginable source of pleasure and joy. (“And therefore I say, when a person is converted to Jesus Christ, that person is made into a Christian Hedonist.”) I don’t want to repeat Piper’s entire argument right here (for the sake of length), but in that link, he cites Matthew 13:44 and Hebrews 11:6 in his effort to explain why he thinks scripture affirms the idea of seeking God for eternal reward.

    @Pam:

    I think we have addressed that issue somewhat (although certainly not exhaustively) in the comments above. My primary response to your question (if you call it that) is that we must look to scripture for answers. You seem hung up on the idea that if God created men and women for different roles in certain contexts, then God is mean. (I would disagree with that, based partly on what I think is a slightly more nuanced understanding of roles, but I certainly understand where you are coming from.) For me, if scripture says God is good AND God did X, and you think X seems unfair or mean, then something has to give. Either scripture is wrong, or you are getting something wrong. I choose to attempt to bring my mind and heart into conformity with scripture rather than to bring scripture into conformity with my heart (for, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, “the heart is deceitful above all else”). This is fundamentally the same objection that eagle has WRT the problem of pain, just applied to a different issue.

    (Just to preempt any response to this effect: I know that some egalitarians would base their rejection of complementarianism in exegesis. But that is not the source of Pam’s objection. In fact, it appears to me that it may not the primary source of many commenters’ rejection of complementarianism because this dialogue is littered with anecdotes about abusive men and the like, and much less with appeals to scripture as authority. As one further point, this is one of the problems I have with egalitarianism and Boyd’s view of sovereignty (and other things) – for instance, it seems like Boyd finds the idea of God sovereignly ordaining sin/pain to be unpalatable, so he attempts to work backwards and find support in scripture to justify his rejection of an orthodox view of sovereignty.)

    @Victorious:

    I appreciate the turn your comments have taken with this thorough and substantive response. I actually agree with a lot of what you say. I don’t think that you are adequately addressing the thrust of my argument from that text, though.

    Do you hold the view that children and parents have the exact same roles as one another (i.e., that their submission to one another is to look exactly the same)?

    My view is that Paul gives a general instruction to all Christians: “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” He then specifically applies that, as you said, to three particular kinds of relationships where there is a unique power dynamic. But that still doesn’t explain why he gives each of the six groups of people a separate and distinct exhortation. If his point was simply to tell husbands not to abuse their wives, fathers not to sell their kids into slavery, and masters to be kind to their slaves, then why didn’t he just say that? And if the submission that he had in mind was of exactly the same variety for both wives and husbands then why did he use the imagery of Christ and the church and go into these nonparallel (parallel and mutual in one sense, of course, but also not parallel and not mutual in another sense) exhortations to wives and husbands?

  244. Which questions, eagle?

    It would help me tremendously if you could repost which questions you are talking about (so I don’t have to search and guess). I think I answered some of them, at least.

  245. Just stopping by:

    You asked, “If his point was simply to tell husbands not to abuse their wives, fathers not to sell their kids into slavery, and masters to be kind to their slaves, then why didn’t he just say that? ”

    Paul’s exhortations even in this manner were radical for the time in which the conditions were just the opposite as I mentioned above.

    Let me ask you this…using your line of reasoning/questioning. If Paul was giving husbands power and/or authority over their wives, why didn’t he just say that? Surely he knew the appropriate words to convey that should that have been what he was commanding. You see? Nowhere do we find husbands being commanded or entitled to this authority except in 1 Cor. 7 where wives have the same auhority in the most intimate area between them.

  246. Exactly, victorious. By pushing the strictly defined different roles interpretation of Ephesians and the like we really miss what made it – and the early Christians so radical. We turn something that was pretty shocking – considering women properly human rather than property (heck, considering women at all) into something limiting and mundane – men do this, women do this, etc. We make the passage incredibly shallow. Really, when we interpret it just through the lens of roles and complementarians, we’re weakening scripture.

  247. I noticed that JSB did not respond to the reponse I gave to him. Interesting. Any final thoughts JSB?

  248. Just Stopping by…

    Forgot to answer this part of your question.

    You asked, “Do you hold the view that children and parents have the exact same roles as one another (i.e., that their submission to one another is to look exactly the same)?”

    Notice in the “particular relationships” that Paul speaks first to the weaker/most vulnerable individual first. It seems to be a soft, endearing, understanding of the position they are in. This is very important to see…he is encouraging them. He is telling them they will be treated with love (after) he speaks to the one who has (up till now) been in a position to mistreat them. We know from reading scripture how these particular individuals have been mistreated; wives, children, and slaves.
    So after telling the children that scripture to obey their parents, he quotes from Exodus 20 as a promise that if they do so, it will be well with them and they will have a long life. It’s meant to be an encouragement to them. But then, he speaks to the ones who have not always treated their children with love and specifically mentions fathers. This doesn’t mean that absence of the admonition to “mothers” gives them permission to provoke the children. Virtue is not gender specific.

    Then you said: “My view is that Paul gives a general instruction to all Christians: “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” He then specifically applies that, as you said, to three particular kinds of relationships where there is a unique power dynamic.”

    Again, note that the individual spoken to first is the wife who may find herself in a more vulnerable position as was common in that day as mentioned above. It is an encouragement to her that though she may find herself in a subordinate position, (after) he speaks to the one who (up till now) has had the power to mistreat them, it will be well with them as they will (from now on) be the recipient of love and nourishment.

    He then speaks to the husband who, though not God-ordained) may have used his power to neglect,mistreat, or divorce his wife for any cause. The picture Paul holds up before the husband is that of Christ and how He loves and nurtures those He loves. He tells them that the agape love they should have is that of giving up his very life for her as Christ did the church.

    Also notice that these passages cannot be yanked out of the context of the whole chapter. The virtues and behaviors flow out of the result of being filled with the Holy Spirit (verse 18). Here’s how the list of “participles” looks in context:

    Being filled
    Speaking
    Singing
    Making melody
    Giving thanks
    Submitting one to another

    Believers are to always be “one-anothering.”

    Hope I answered your question.

  249. @Victorious:

    You are conveniently ignoring my questions (and especially my question about whether parents and children have the same “roles”). Posing more and more questions to me is fine (as it has been going on for this entire dialogue, from various people), but I would appreciate it if you would also attempt to address my chief disagreement with you in our readings of Ephesians 5.

    As to your question, I have already explained my view (above) of Paul’s call for men to lead their wives: (1) Jesus’s love for the church was manifested in servant-leadership, in initiating salvation, etc.; (2) Paul calls women to submit to their husbands in everything; and (3) there must be some reason that he uses different language and imagery in explaining how wives are to submit vs. how husbands are to submit. Both are called to “submission” to one another, but the submission looks different for wives than it does for husbands (hence, I described this idea earlier as calling for similar “posture,” but different “roles” – terms that I obviously know are not lifted directly from the text but that I believe help summarize what the text is saying in shorthand).

    @Eagle:

    (1) I gave you my answer to this. You didn’t like my answer, but the Pharisees didn’t always like Jesus’s answers (which they thought to be non-answers) either. I don’t care if other Reformed theologians have speculated about this question before. We do not know the answer to this question – it’s an impossible question, if you believe in God’s sovereignty (which, again, is hard to reject in light of scriptures like Acts 2:23). I think what we do know, though, is that Adam was complicit in Eve’s sin. So take that as my answer.

    (2) I clearly answered this question at 4:28 yesterday.

    (3) First, it doesn’t matter what I think of God’s sovereignty. Either God is sovereign or he isn’t. My views on that issue do not affect reality. So even if my views about God’s sovereignty changed in light of a personal tragedy, the truth about God’s sovereignty would not change. If God was sovereign before, he would still be sovereign even though I no longer believed it; if God was not sovereign before, then he would still not be sovereign.

    Second, we must conceive of God’s will in at least two senses: his moral will and his sovereign will. It is not God’s moral will that a six-year-old girl be brutalized. God’s moral will is clearly expressed in scripture. But things that are in conflict with God’s moral will still happen. So how do we reconcile that? Well, this is one of the great paradoxes of Christianity. Scripture affirms three truths (among others) about God: God is sovereign; God is good; AND God is all-powerful. We ask, how can this be? Paul responds, who is the creature to question the creator? Because I believe in the authority of scripture as the Word of God, I must affirm all three truths about God. I have to accept the idea that the finite mind cannot comprehend an infinite God. There are a lot of things that I can’t “explain” perfectly (e.g., how Jesus could be fully God and also fully man). But yes, as a Christian of the Reformed persuasion, I believe that God ordains things to come to pass on earth (AND, of course, that humans are fully responsible for our actions, including sin).

  250. Sorry, Victorious, you must have posted a further response while I was typing up my response. (I haven’t read your additional response yet, but it appears that you simply forgot to include that in your first post.)

  251. @Victorious:

    I totally agree that believers are to always be “one-anothering.” Entirely. That’s why I think we are perhaps miscommunicating. Egals often say (including in this extended dialogue) that comps do not actually believe women are equal in worth and that comps hide their true views under false rhetoric about equality. That is a very disingenuous way to engage in a debate. It just dismisses the other person’s view (explicitly) in favor of some third view that has been constructed in the arguer’s mind. What I am trying to say is this: you don’t need to convince me that husbands and wives are both called to “one-anothering.” I already agree with that, and have said as much over and over again. You need to convince me that the way a wife “one-anothers” her husband is supposed to look exactly the same as the way a husband “one-anothers” his wife.

    You say that husbands “may” have treated their wives poorly in the past, and therefore Paul needs to comfort wives (and you say the same thing about children and slaves). You use the word “may,” but the clear implication (I believe) of what you are saying is that husbands had mistreated their wives in the past. I think the way you approach this wrongly informs how you view the text. I agree that some husbands had treated their wives poorly in the past (obviously) – and really, all husbands have sinned against their wives, but I think you had some particular kind of abuse in mind, and not merely sin generally. The issue that I have with the way you approach the text is that you take that fact to mean that wives are the victims in marriage. (Wives are the victims of abuse. Thus they need to be comforted by Paul. Husbands are the abusers in marriage. Thus they need to be instructed by Paul.) For one thing, that is a big generalization. Some husbands have treated their wives abusively, sure. But not all husbands. And, moreover, some wives have mistreated their husbands to a degree that rises to abuse (or do you deny this?).

    In summary, I am not persuaded by your approach which results in you reading Paul’s instruction to women to submit to their husbands (which is repeated elsewhere in scripture – e.g., Colossians 3, I Peter 3) as nothing more than encouragement to wives that their husbands have now been reprimanded for their bad behavior.

    How do you read I Peter 3:1-7, where unlike Ephesians 5, the extended instruction is to the wives rather than to the husbands?

  252. Wow! Okay Just Stopping By you have officially become annoying.

    Unless, I am reading you wrong, which is possible….you basically are comparing your answer with the answers Jesus gave to the Pharisees with regards to question #1. You say you don’t care and that we can’t know etc…. Jesus actually spoke about middle knowledge.. Apparently, you can parrot your reformed teachers only as far as you have read them. Think for yourself and don’t put yourself in the “Piper and I” camp when you don’t really know what he or other reformed thinkers have pontificated over.

    It is not a small segment of reformed Christianity that has “speculated” over this. So much of the discussion surrounding double imputation and what that includes is based upon what one believes related to the supposed covenant of works and what would have happened if Adam obeyed. Don’t lecture us on the nuances of reformed theology and then try to play the sovereignty card. Your response to that question is one of the most condenscending responses you have given. You are not Jesus, my friend. You are not Paul. I am not Jesus. I am not Paul. Therefore, don’t bring that type of condescension into the discussion.

    You have no idea what I or many of the people on this blog believe. You have not exercised charity first, as Piper would encourage you. You have not sought to understand before being understood, at least in your presentation. Stop the non-sense. If you want to have helpful dialogue don’t you dare put yourself in the position of Jesus and say those interacting with you are pharisees when you don’t even know the first thing about those interacting with you.

    Good Day

  253. Just Stopping By:

    You said, “Both are called to “submission” to one another, but the submission looks different for wives than it does for husbands (hence, I described this idea earlier as calling for similar “posture,” but different “roles” – terms that I obviously know are not lifted directly from the text but that I believe help summarize what the text is saying in shorthand).”

    Not only is the word “roles” not there, but rather than helping the context, it is confusing the context. There are no “roles” in scipture; but behaviors, attitudes, virtues, conduct, etc. The reason you see the wife’s submission as different from the husbands, is because you are seeing her “under” as a negative and the husband’s as a positive “over.” When in fact, by telling husbands to lay down their very life for their wives, he is leveling the playing field in a manner of speech. She is the recipient of his loving, cherishing, and nourishing as the church is the recipient of Christ’s loving, cherishing, and nourishing. He did that by humbly laying down His life for us. We respond by respecting what He has done for us and we receive the benefits of that love.

    It’s difficult to see after years of being taught differently but if you do a search for the words “one another”, you will find the manner in which we are to relate to one another and I believe there are over 50 or so in the NT if I remember correctly.

    Btw, I don’t find Jesus referring to Himself as a servant-leader. He specifically says He came as one who serves (Luke 22). When we make up words to prove our preconceived notion, it inevitably leads us off track. I’m not saying you made up that word, but you’ve evidently heard it enough times to make it part of your vocabularly and apply it where it doesn’t belong. OK….great discussion.

  254. My goodness, Response, chill. I never equated myself with Jesus (nor would I). You are looking for something to beat me up about. I was just pointing to the fact that Jesus’s questioners interpreted some of his answers as non-answers, as well. Ignore that, if you’d like. The point is that I answered the question in the best way that I know how.

    WRT to Reformed theologians… I am aware that they have speculated about what might have happened. I don’t care to, and I think that saying Adam was complicit in Eve’s sin is sufficient to answer Eagle’s question (which was not, “what if the fall had never happened?”.

  255. Victorious:

    You are still trying to convince me that a husband should humbly serve his wife. I got it. I agree with that.

    We may be at the point where we agree to disagree, but I think roles are clearly implied (if not stated) in Titus 2 and even in Proverbs 31 (which is commonly cited to empower wives outside the home, but also affirms her unique role inside the home).

  256. Dee and Deb,

    According to your rules of the road, “Foul Language will not be tolerated. We get to decide what constitutes foul.”

    With that in mind, I would draw your attention to Eagle’s comment of 7/11/2012 @ 4:13am and JSB’s unfortuneate quote of Eagle’s comment at 7/11/2012 @ 10:12am. Such language is neither appreciated nor desired. I would request that appropriate actions and admonitions be taken.

  257. JSB,

    My apologies for reading you wrong. I admitted as much in my response that might be a possibility. I am sorry to have misunderstood you in that way.

    I am not looking for something to beat you up about. I have interacted with you and watched others interact with you and at times you really do move into a passive aggressive, gnostic knowledge holder who must teach others type of mode.

    I just find it interesting that those who know a little bit about a topic find it their calling to lecture others who have thought for hundreds if not thousands of hours over the topic. I am referring to Dee and Deb. They have literally spent years of their lives wrestling through these issues and you do not seem to respect that. Instead, you assume that they have not heard your interpretation before and they just need the information.

    That being said, did you have any response to my thoughts on T4G?

  258. Victorious

    Once again an excellent post. I was beginning to despair there was any church on the face of the earth that didn’t slice and dice the gospel into a male/female legal book.

    Why do you suppose comps can’t see the unscriptural, erroneous bondage they create when they deny half of the body of Christ the freedom to function in the gifts of the Holy Spirit?

    It doesn’t take a degree to see it, after all.

  259. Response: “I just find it interesting that those who know a little bit about a topic find it their calling to lecture others who have thought for hundreds if not thousands of hours over the topic. I am referring to Dee and Deb. They have literally spent years of their lives wrestling through these issues and you do not seem to respect that. Instead, you assume that they have not heard your interpretation before and they just need the information.”

    Look, I have said many times that I do not have grand visions of swooping in here and convincing all of you to accept the complementarian view. (I hope that you do, in time, but that is not my expectation in talking with all of you.) I said that I initially commented because I felt that the complementarian view was not getting a fair treatment here. If Dee has spent years of her life wrestling with complementarianism (and I believe that if she says so), then she ought to have something better to say to me than simply try to intimidate me and take cheap shots at me. Many people here have mischaracterized (and then mocked, mercilessly) what I believe to be the complementarian doctrine that Mary Kassian, John Piper, and others espouse. If they have heard our interpretation of complementarianism before, then why do they insist on imputing some twisted version of it to us? (Again, I believe it if they say they have heard it before, but their comments do not reflect that they are responding that interpretation of complementarianism.)

    Response: “That being said, did you have any response to my thoughts on T4G?”

    Apologies – I forgot about that topic of discussion. Wasn’t intending to ignore it necessarily. That being said, though, I don’t really want to go into a long discussion about that. My understanding of your position is that they should not adopt such a universal name for themselves if their doctrinal statement involves any secondary issues. That’s fine with me if that is your view. I don’t really share that view (partly because simply as a practical matter, regardless of where you draw the line, there will always be somebody just outside of that line shouting about how “the group is too exclusive,” “Jesus would let us in,” etc.), but I respect where you are coming from.

  260. Just Passing By,

    One more point, if I may. You said, “He then specifically applies that, as you said, to three particular kinds of relationships where there is a unique power dynamic.”

    Just because we see “power dynamics” anywhere throughout scripture, it doesn’t follow that it’s supposed to be that way or assume it’s a good thing. History (secular and scriptural) is replete with the horrid aftermath of power of humans over others. It’s a certain invitation to abuse. What’s that saying about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? That’s why we find scripture emphasizing the importance of believers “one-anothering” and heed Jesus words that the gentiles rule over one another, but it shall not be so with us.

    Try not to read power-dynamics into scripture. It helps to clean the lenses through which we see.

  261. Also, Response, if I referred to you as someone “who knows a little bit about a topic” in the way that you said that about my knowledge regarding complementarianism, I would get blasted. Just wanted to point that out. I glossed over it in my response, but the double standard is clear.

  262. Victorious:

    I hear you about power dynamics, and in some contexts, I would perhaps agree with you. But I think you overstate your case. If humans are never to have power over one another (in the sense of authority), then do you reject government? Do you reject church structure and discipline? Do you reject parental authority?

  263. JSB,

    I do not remember all of your comments, but I do have one question for you. In all of the points that you have made about a variety of topics have you even once admitted that you are wrong or changed your mind because of some of the interaction on this blog?

  264. Response,

    I’m not exactly sure what you are asking.

    I have acknowledged that some of my comments offended people when it was not my intention and apologized for that.

    I have not changed my views of complementarianism in the course of these discussions. Have you?

  265. If telling A to “submit” to B is to establish that B is the leader, then the instruction for all As, Bs, and Cs, to submit to each other is to make all leaders to rule over all, which is a logical and sociological impossibility. So the word choice by the KJV translators is inappropriate. It does not work that way.

    In the first century, women were chattel property who could be disposed of as property, including being sold into slavery by the husband. It is not that case that some husbands MAY have abused their wives, the position of wife in the first century was almost always one of being a victim of the system which treated them as equivalent to a slave, so that the vast majority were abused. To suggest that the husband was to love his wife to the extent of being willing to die for her was a radical change from the status quo of the day. As an example, the law of the day provided that when a man died, his property went to his eldest child, unless he had provided otherwise, and his widow(s), unless cared for by that child, were out on the street, literally.

  266. JSB-

    The part of the comp view I most disagree with (and I disagree with comp as defined by the CBMW consequently my marriage would be described as egal if one wanted to label it) is this: the CBMW has an online book outlining their views called “Building Strong Families” by Dennis Rainey.

    Chapter 4 discusses the husband as prophet, priest and king over his wife. Do you believe the husband is priest over his wife and if you do, could you please describe what he specifically does for her in this role?

    Would you agree that the husband hears from God for her and “passes these words onto his wife” as described by this book which Piper helped author?

    I would imagine the authors are quick to say there is no intermediary for anyone but Jesus; we all can hear from God; we all have the Holy Spirit, but how can the husband NOT be viewed as an intermediary (albeit a lesser type) if he is hearing from God for his wife? The wife must be viewed as needy spiritually, lacking something, needing him to accomplish something that she cannot do herself which is to hear from God. I find that incredibly disturbing.
    http://gospelcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Building-Strong-Families.pdf

    Sounds very much like–no, not an intermediary but a kinda sorta lesser intermediary—smithing words, it would seem to me. Thank you for any thoughts you care to share.

    Oh, and our famous wordsmithy Doug Wilson was mentioned earlier — you had asked what some might have against him? His error filled Federal Vision views aside (you can look up his video on whether baptism is required for salvation…in which he chuckles and responds…yes and no), and while you have your search engine handy, google Steven Sitler and Katie Travis-current members of his Christ Church and see how “pastor” Wilson dealt with an extremely, incredibly disturbing pedophile case (Sitler) under his watch. It is easy to find- please do the work if you care to know.

    Character matters when observing the fruit of teachers…not only doctrine. Since we have angels of light and false teachers appearing with all or most of the right doctrine, we have to examine their moral character and how they live and love. CJ Mahaney would be another good example of what I am describing (promoted very much by both Piper and John MacArthur). Right words, but seemingly quite lacking in character and love towards his fellow believers (but one finds out these examples of moral character and living and loving only if one cares to read the “evil” blogs with an open mind, which I try to do).

  267. JSB,

    I wasn’t just asking with regards to complementarianism, but with regards to any interaction. You seem to play the “mystery” card or a lot, rather than being open to correction. It just concerns me a bit when I hear you parrot thoughts and ideas of others and seem unwilling to open up to the possibility that you have misspoke or stated something that is not accurate. Even when pressed about your position you retorted to a Doug Wilson statement and said something to the effect of the basis of having a thought is thinking you are right. Philosophically I am not sure that holds true, but that is not my point. I do not think it is a healthy place spiritually or biblically to be in a place where you think you are right always, but that you do not believe you are always right. It’s cute sounding, but not even Paul thought this. He didn’t even examine himself and trust that judgment fully because he knew he was flawed. I believe the Scriptures are inerrant, but I do not believe mine, yours, Dee’s, Deb’s, Driscoll, Burleson, Pope Benedict, or anyone elses interpretation of the Scriptures is inerrant. I would just caution you with regards to this.

    For the record, yes, my views on complementarianism and egalitarianism have definitely changed as I have interacted on this board. I personally believe in what I call super-soft complementarianism. I do not believe in any hierarchy of roles, nor patriarchy. My understanding of where Dee, Deb, Eagle, and others are coming from has definitely caused me to change some of my views.

  268. Just Stopping By: You said, “I hear you about power dynamics, and in some contexts, I would perhaps agree with you. But I think you overstate your case. If humans are never to have power over one another (in the sense of authority), then do you reject government? Do you reject church structure and discipline? Do you reject parental authority?”

    Of course I do not reject government. The purpose is (according to scripture) to protect citizens from harm and punish crime. The power the government has in Romans 13 is clarified by the words exousia and archon. But we don’t have to worry about the government using it’s exousia/archon against us if our behavior is as it should be. So yes, it’s a secular agency that serves citizens as a protection.

    And the purpose of parents is guidance, nuture, protect. Children “hupakouo” their parents and it will be well with them as the recipients of their guidance, nuture, and protection. Do you know of a scripture that commands parents to make their children “obey” or to be authority to them?

  269. OK. I really apologize for having to cut short (especially to Diane, as I have not had a chance to really interact with you at all yet). But I need to get some things done. Briefly, though…

    @Diane:

    I will have to look into the context of the prophet, priest, and king thing. I could see myself agreeing with that statement if it is metaphorical in the same way that I believe the call to husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church is metaphorical. Jesus is obviously THE prophet, priest, and king for us – for men and for women, married or single. No husband can be that. But a husband could imitate Christ in that just as he imitates Christ’s love for the church. Does Paul’s call for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church mean that husbands are literally the saviors of their wives and so on? No. And I don’t know of anyone who holds that view. So, long story short, I need to look at the context, and I don’t have time to get deep into that right now.

    I will also look into some of the other things you mentioned further.

    @Response:

    I do “always believe I am right,” but when I say “believe,” I mean that I think my position is more likely than not correct. Again, I would hold the position that I hold if I did not believe that. However, as I said, I also do not “believe I am always right.” I do not think that I have an inerrant interpretation of scripture. Not even close. I have not meant to imply that. I have meant to explain the views that I believe to be correct, but I will readily admit that my belief does not make it so.

    Also, while my beliefs about complementarianism have not changed, a few of the more respectful commenters have challenged me in some other ways (e.g., by demonstrating our common ground, etc.). Unfortunately, the attitude of many of the commenters here has also been instructive in a different way.

  270. @Victorious:

    You didn’t answer my question about parents. Do you reject parental authority? If you do not, then we don’t need to argue about scriptures. If you do, how do you deal with your kids (if you have them)? (And if you don’t, how would you deal with them?)

    Also, you didn’t answer my question about authority in the church. A few more questions: What about the authority of an employer? What about Dee’s authority that she loves to talk about as the host of this blog?

    @Eagle:

    I never said that these beliefs of mine do not cause me to wrestle with the truth, struggle with tensions like those you bring up, or battle doubt. I am not writing an autobiography here. I am just outlining my beliefs in response to your questions.

  271. JSB @ 1:04

    You have been having quite the dialogue these past two days. I have read all if it and chose not to jump in. There was enough going on 🙂

    I was curious about your statement below –

    “Adam was complicit in Eve’s sin”

    It seems to me that Eve sinned when she was deceived and took and ate, and Adam sinned when he took and ate the fruit as well. How does that turn into “Adam was complicit in Eve’s sin?”

    To me it’s Eve’s sin and Adam’s sin(.)

  272. An interesting read is the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. Just substitute the appropriate gender.

  273. @Juniper: Race and gender are totally different.

    @Bridget: Yes. Adam’s sin is really separate from Eve’s sin, I suppose – it is a little bit of a tricky semantic dance, though, because I do think that you can sin by sitting idly by while others sin. Adam sinned by eating the fruit. I think it is a persuasive reading of the text to say that he also sinned by not attempting to prevent Eve from falling into sin, in accordance with God’s prior directive to Adam.

    I’ve got to bow out. Too much going on. Just want to give advance notice that I am most likely done commenting on this topic. However, I leave you all with this, if you are interested in a slightly more detailed exegesis of some of the texts we have discussed:

    http://evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/2009/12/in-defense-of-complementarianism-a-response-to-allen-yeh-part-3.html

  274. Forgot to say thanks… Thank you to all who engaged in thoughtful dialogue. I thought some of it was rather useful and challenging.

  275. Just Stopping by….

    You asked: You didn’t answer my question about parents. Do you reject parental authority? If you do not, then we don’t need to argue about scriptures. If you do, how do you deal with your kids (if you have them)? (And if you don’t, how would you deal with them?)”

    I did answer above with this: And the purpose of parents is guidance, nuture, protect. Children “hupakouo” their parents and it will be well with them as the recipients of their guidance, nuture, and protection. Do you know of a scripture that commands parents to make their children “obey” or to be authority to them?

    You asked: “Also, you didn’t answer my question about authority in the church. A few more questions: What about the authority of an employer? What about Dee’s authority that she loves to talk about as the host of this blog?”

    I have strong reservations about the condition of our churches today, JPB. I’ve been a believer for just over 35 yrs. and at the moment am a very happy, contented member of the Wartburg E-church. Since the topic of this thread seems to be the relationship of believers to one another, I hesitate to change that to the direction of church, but I will say that the way Paul tells us an assembly should function is found in 1 Cor. 14 where all members operate in their giftings for the edification of one another.

    As a condition of an employee receiving a financial stipend on a regular basis, has certain responsibilities outlined in a job description and assuming he fulfills them, has fulfilled his part of the agreement with the employer. If that employer has any authority over the employee, it is within the confines of that contract or agreement only; not over his/her personal life or personal choices.

    As far as dee and deb and this blog are concerned, I suppose you could refer to their hosting it as authority, but more appropriately a decision-making authority. And again, the scope is limited to this one area not over individuals lives and/or personal choices/freedoms. They are the perfect hosts who exercise great latitude, compassion, and fairness in both their topics and their responses to posters.

    Hope that answers your question.

  276. JSB,
    Thanks for checking out the hedonistic rabbit trail. 2 more interesting points on Piper’s complementary teaching– no need to respond—-
    This about some recent Piper teachings, from someone not at all antagonistic to him:
    http://www.faithvillage.com/article/45abcfcbe3524554a53c207c78277792/with_all_due_respect_to_john_piper___
    And this from Desiring God, Chapter 8, Marriage, 1983
    To understand the wife’s submission we need to understand the husband’s “headship,” because her submission is based on his headship. (“Wives be subject . . . for the husband is the head.”) What is the meaning of “head” in Ephesians 5:23? 
    And:
    Therefore when Paul says, “Wives, be subject to your husbands . . . for the husband is the head of the wife,” he means a wife should recognize and honor her husband’s greater responsibility to lead the home. She should be disposed to yield to her husband’s authority and should be inclined to follow his leadership.
    Notice anything odd about the scriptures quoted? This chapter has been greatly quoted and paraphrased by other authors and teachers in the following 29 years, so I think these omissions (…) significant.

  277. Enjoying all of this so far.

    Victorious, I really appreciate your points on all of this. It certainly makes sense and I believe is a strong point. (Which gives strong consideration that the Complimentarian view may not be the “sole” Biblical view.)

    And JSB, I appreciate your willingness to stay within this debate, and respond to the numerous questions that you have been asked. Honestly, it is good to have a different point of view on here, because for people like me who are really trying hard to have an open mind and figure all of this out, it is good to see this taken to a deeper level (which usually only happens in a debate like this)..

    As I am directly in the middle of all of this, still wrestling in what the Bible is directing us to consider in our marriages and how church leadership plays out, I am thankful for this conversation.

    So from what I understand so far—

    The basic Egalitarian principal (Or mutualist position) is Paul was addressing the weaker vessel first (Children, Woman, Slaves) with a basic principal to encourage them to become the recepient of a new radical principal within a Christian context (Husband loving wife as Christ loves the church, etc)–In short, the playing field is leveled…and there is no “over, under” leadership dynamic.

    And the basic Complimentarian position states that the Husband should love and respect his wife, he still is “over” her and the wife is “under” his authority. In other words, the Husbands “role” is to be the “leader” or “authority” in the Home and the wife’s “role” is to be “under” that leadership and authority although she has her own personal “roles” that is different than the husband.

    I may be wrong on the latter, but that is the basics I suppose.

    Here is a question for both parties….

    In Ephesians 5:21– the word submitting is upotasso…which is added in verse 22..

    I am no Greek Scholar by any means, but from what I can tell with a quick lookup on the Greek definition…it means “to subordinate”….

    Where exactly can “respect” be found in this? Does that come forth from the context alone…or can upotasso actually mean “respect” on some levels..

    The same thing for Kephale—I know the basic meaning is “head”—which can allude to source….but what is the more likely meaning for this when Kephale is used…

    I appreciate any Greek Scholars out there who could help with this! Thanks all!

  278. Dave AA:
    I could, by elision, make the Bible say almost anything. Just pick the right chapter and elide out some words and keep others. I think, when I see the ellipses, that someone is playing tricks with the text to prove a point that the text does not support. So I instantly am suspicious about what they are leaving out. E.g., I could take a Romney speech and turn it into him telling people to vote for Obama. BTW, that can be done on audio as well as in print.

  279. JSB wrote:

    “@Diane:

    I will have to look into the context of the prophet, priest, and king thing. I could see myself agreeing with that statement if it is metaphorical in the same way that I believe the call to husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church is metaphorical. Jesus is obviously THE prophet, priest, and king for us – for men and for women, married or single. No husband can be that. But a husband could imitate Christ in that just as he imitates Christ’s love for the church. Does Paul’s call for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church mean that husbands are literally the saviors of their wives and so on? No. And I don’t know of anyone who holds that view. So, long story short, I need to look at the context, and I don’t have time to get deep into that right now.

    I will also look into some of the other things you mentioned further.”

    I do hope you will be back to address my comment and not bow out as you mentioned above. And yes, I have read some who teach the husband is responsible for sanctifying his wife– washing her and presenting her to Jesus in heaven (apparently confused about Ephesians 5:26-27 in that it is Jesus Who sanctifies — Tim Challies being one recent example). So that appears to me to be a form of a savior, in a sanctifying context.

    I understand if you do not have the time to get into it now. I assumed you were familiar enough already with the prophet, priest & king of the CBMW. I do not think the CBMW meant priest or prophet as a metaphor…but as one who literally brings his wife to God and speaks the world of God from God to her. That is how I understand chapter 4, but am open to correction if anyone knows differently.
    Thank you, again, for sharing your thoughts.

  280. Seeker, you asked: “Where exactly can “respect” be found in this? Does that come forth from the context alone…or can upotasso actually mean “respect” on some levels..”

    All believers are “under” one another and consequently are the recipients of one another’s goodness, compassion, respect, love, joy, gifts, talents, and everything. That’s what a community of 2/3 gathered together or an assembly of 1,000 do for one another…mutually care. That’s the witness we have to the world, “by this will all men know you are my disciples…if you have love for one another.”

  281. Victorious,

    Thank you for your response! I am slowly starting to piece this whole thing together, so correct me if I am wrong….(Writing out my thoughts here)..

    So from what I understand, the word itself means “subject too or subordinate”, but in the context we “subject ourselves” to each other through reverence of Christ, as we are filled with the spirit—which in turn will amount to love, respect, to each other.

    So although it never states directly that a Husband should “subject” himself to his wife but rather “love” his wife—it does say he should in verse 21…And in turn, as a Husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church, this implies that the Husband is to subject himself to his wife with sacrifical love–which would have been huge in that historical context…

    I think the lightbulb is slowly starting to turn on…

    So here is a thought…How can Complimentarians basically ignore verse 21 “one another”….Do they have a way to expalin this “mutual subjection” away?

    This is definitley starting to become more clear to me, but to be honest, it is so easy to be confused in all of this.

    For years, I assumed a Complimentarian point of view—Heard it preached time and time again, and assumed it as I read some of the New Testament writings, but after reading some historical and theological arguements apart from Wayne Grudem and others who espouse this view…the deck of cards is starting to collapse.

    When I got married, my wife and I basically shared a functional egalitarian relationship. I of course have tried to initiate many things with her as far as conversations about Christ, praying together, so on and so forth…but at the end of the day, I have relied on her to initiate much of this as well.

    I depend on her as much as she depends on me..So although I have always assumed the man was the “head” of the household…it never practically made sense in our marriage…Naturally, it never seemed to make sense, as we have consistently made decisions together, worked together, and depended on each other since day 1.

    The only other thing I have yet to figure out completely, but I am still searching, is the functionality on woman in leadership roles in the church as pastor, elders, etc….

    Although my church is “softer” in regards to allowing Woman to preach/teach from the pulpit from time to time, and allowing woman to teach in Sunday School–for all ages, and allowing woman to serve on leadership teams…It has yet to see woman serve in a pastoral function…

    Ben Witherington has helped me tremendously to see the “other side” in this regard of church leadership, but this is basically unheard of in SBC in the Deep South, which is what I have been a part of my whole life…

    A whole lot more I need to study on this, but I appreciate the conversation!

  282. Seeker –

    You are seeing some of the same issues that I came to see. My husband and I were in a comp world that was becoming more and more pat, but functioned more like mutualists. Every so often there would be some “new” teaching that left me feeling like we just weren’t doing marriage right because we didn’t funtion a certain way. I have come to believe that much of what we were being taugnt was extra-biblical and not helpful at all.

    It is quite interesting to let yourself read outside of the suggested circle of books and find that there are actually some pretty solid arguments for other interpretations of scripture. Sometimes the Reformed view of scripture seems very wooden and literal. For instance, I don’t think Paul was giving a new list of commandments to obey in Ephesians. That is how JSB’s comments came across to me at times. We have to remember that the book was a letter written to a certain group of people gathered in a certain city 2000 years ago, not only that, but we are reading translated versions with meanings of words changing over those years.

  283. “But, even if that was the definition of hedonism, this is really just taking issue with Piper’s decision to call his teaching “Christian Hedonism.” You can’t reject Piper’s teaching just because of what he called it. You can disapprove of what he called it, but you have to let Piper explain what he means by Christian Hedonism”

    No, in fact we don’t. And should not. One of the biggest glaring problems in the Calvinista movement is the changing of defintions. Some do not think that is a big deal. Really? Read history. It is a HUGE deal.

    Another definition that Piper and Mahaney changed subtly and there was much parsing over it was their sermons at Resolved a few years back called the “Scream of the Damned”. Basically they were saying that Jesus was ‘damned” on the cross. There was much parsing from the YRR on how “damned is the same thing as cursed”. No, it is not.

    They are also trying to be shock jocks while subtly redefining words. I never trust them and warn folks to check everything they say. They are dangerous. Christian Hedonism has been one of the most confusing and deadly teachings out there. We are seeing the fallout in all the angry mean YRR guys going into churches. It is just that few connect the dots.

  284. “Also, you didn’t answer my question about authority in the church. A few more questions: What about the authority of an employer? What about Dee’s authority that she loves to talk about as the host of this blog?”

    The body of Christ is NOT the world. The authority in the body if it is a REAL body is Jesus Christ. We have those who are more spiritually mature but they would be appalled you call it “authority”. We have those with specific gifts of teaching, etc, but they woudl be appalled you think of it as having “authority” over others in teh Body. Servants? Yes.

    What you are proposing is exactly what Jesus warned against: People who love to lord it over. You are going a step further than how even Christ described Himself while here. Something to think about. It is that serious.

  285. Seeker and Bridget, there are lots of scriptures that contradict the teaching that husbands have authority. Let me just list a few.

    1) There is no verse where husbands are told/commanded to have authority over his wife.
    2) 1 Tim. 5:15 records Paul encouraging the younger women (rather than going house to house with idle time and being busybodies) to get married and oikodespoteō the house. Thayer Definition of oikodespoteo
    – to be master (or head) of a house
    – to rule a household, manage family affairs
    3) 1 Cor. 7:14 records the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
    4) Can there be greater mutuality than “submitting” ourselves one to another? Eph 5:21
    5) Jesus spoke of serving one another as contrasted to the gentiles who rule over one another and call that a “good thing.”

    If comps see this doctrine as so important, why can they not find scripture that defines areas of male/female responsibilities. For example, who manages the finances? Who takes out the trash? ….smile…Who goes to the grocery store and decides what to buy? Whose job is it to trim the bushes around the house? Whose responsible for doing dishes? Where are these things defined in scripture OR even implied? What if they have no children and both work? Shouldn’t they share household chores?

    The Bible isn’t a law book on gender distinctions. Believers come into a relationship with a wide variety of talents, gifts, and abilities and each is accountable to God for using them. To try to fit all men or all women into one mold is a disservice to the Creator who knew us before we were born and knew the background we would bring into the relationship. Jesus recognized the difference between individuals but refused to call one greater than the other. Nor should we give entitlement to some and deny privileges to others. And if some are not capable or qualified, we should help them achieve their full potential if they so desire.

    ….lol sorry for the rant…

  286. All I can say is that we all need to read Eph 5 from an interlinear with no chapter breaks. We need to see that it starts way back up there around with: Be filled with the spirit. Vs 21 is almost always ignored by the comps/pats nor do they acknowledge that “submit” is repeated by the translators in verse 22 to make it look like it is only for wives. Which it is not. It is for ALL believers. Grudem has tried hard to explain away why verse 21 is not for all believers but then he is Grudem.

  287. Victorious, You are absolutely right. All they are doing is simply trying to make scripture into a Talmud of sorts so that some can be on top and others on the bottom. It is insidious

  288. “It is quite interesting to let yourself read outside of the suggested circle of books and find that there are actually some pretty solid arguments for other interpretations of scripture. Sometimes the Reformed view of scripture seems very wooden and literal.”

    Thank you, Bridget! This is so true. Amazing how being in the comp bubble it all seems so biblical. But get out of the bubble and it can start to look totally UNbiblical. Same with the Calvinista literal wooden interpretations. I get weary with their wooden literal interpretations of the Psalms. Psalms are man talking to God. Are we to pray imprecatory prayers because David did? Some of it is just a lack of common sense because of indoctrination.

  289. JSB
    If you look back to what I said when you first starting commenting, I asked why you brought up Greg Boyd. Also, I asked why you believe that I am an egalitarian? I actually have a different view than most so i was curious that you decided to label me.You did not answer me.

    Secondly, I told you to be kind to Eagle whom you insulted by blowing off his question calling it a trick question. I explained to you his history and told you to understand that he has been hurt by the church and is really trying to understand what is going on. He is now an agnostic who is questioning faith. The questions he asks are very important to him. This, to me, is most substantive when i advocate for one of our readers.

    I deeply care about the many people who visit this blog who have been deeply wounded by those who claim to be Christians. I sped nights praying for them. Some days I pace angrily around my house, frustrated that the church can be so cruel to its own. I have been reduced to tears by tales of pedophilia, abuse and callousness. i sometimes find it difficult to fall asleep.

    As I have viewed your comments, unbeknownst to you, you have added to some of those wounds by what you said and how you said it. I believe that you can do better. This is more than an argument about the role of gender. Doctrine,especially secondary doctrines, should never, ever trump love. As one pastor I know said-God is far more interested in the process than the outcome.

    My job as glamorous blog queen does not necessarily rest in simply answering your arguments. In fact, I believe that our many intelligent and thoughtful commenters did a fine job of debating and providing counterpoint, many far better than I.

    My job also involves providing observations. I have been at this job for over 3 years and, due to the relatively lively comment section of this blog, and our policy of putting up with all sorts of folks, I, along with Deb, have developed some ability to call out interactions that we find difficult or hurtful. You may disagree but you can’t blow off our experience in this medium.

    So, sometimes I decide that I want to approach a commenter in a different fashion. My blog, my rules of the road. And I did ask you some questions. You didn’t answer them and so I decided to try something different. At least you noticed that.

  290. Victorious,

    Thanks for the link…I will look him up a bit more.

    In essence, no matter who is right or wrong, I think there can definitely be a strong counterpoint to Complimentarianism as it is taught.

    I will continue to study and have an open mind, because I have barely skimmed the surface in all of this, but conversations like today have certainly helped.

    I will say I do appreciate a lot of what the reformed community has to say—even some labeled as “Calvinista’s”..but I do agree much of what they tend to offer can be wooden and literal…and it is easier to see that now in regards to Comp theology.

  291. Deb -Topic of Language

    I can’t believe the numbers of comments on this topic. Well done! Someone commented on bad language in one of the comments. I am having trouble finding it now-both the commenters and the comments involved. Let me say this. When there is hefty conversation ongoing, an occasional swear may fly. We may sometimes overlook it if it is not excessive.Also, we have people from all walks of life commenting on this blog. That may mean that some people will communicate differently. Recently, Lifeway removed The Blind Side from their store due to language complaints. yet this is an excellent story of redemption. I disagree with that decision. In fact, it might be a good post. 

    I brought this up in the comment section to see if others have thoughts.

     

  292. Wow…I haven’t been on here all day and this thread is starting to remind me of the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going and going and…

  293. Adiaphoric- fulfillment of gender roles.
    Non-Adiaphoric- fulfillment of non-dummy-ness.
    Eph 5:15-17 Be very careful, then, how you live —not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.

  294. The Blind Side removed for language – good grief!

    Does Lifeway think Jesus was around perfect language and prim and properness while he was hanging out with fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, and casting demons out of possessed people?

    We need to teach disciples to be IN the world but not of it, not “get thy worldliness away from me.” I saw the language. A friend used the F word. They’re still a friend – sheesh.

  295. Dee,

    Regarding censoring “The Blind Side”, and language in general (on blogs, perhaps this one):

    What is “bad language” is very cultural and subjective. What may be a scandalous word to someone from one part of the country is simply a non-issue for someone from a different part of the country, despite similar religious convictions. This is no epiphany, of course.

    My husband is from England, and you will not find a more sincere, God-honoring person than he. Same with his mum. The only word off-limits to them is F—. I’m told I should not say “bollocks”, though — but it’s a word so culturally removed from me that I have no idea the level of disgrace I’ve just stirred up here.

    Given the world-wide, multicultural nature of blogs, I think it would serve everyone well if people mellowed out about language and embraced some tolerance.

    (I personally prefer raw honesty to sweet & nice dishonesty.)

  296. Just,

    I know your last comment suggested you won’t be back, but anyway…
    You criticised someone earlier in the thread for talking about what Piper has implied (I think it was in discussing abuse, but I could be wrong – there’s been so many comments) rather than his actual words. But you have at least twice talked about implied gender roles in the Bible. Surely that’s being hypocritical?
    Secondly, and I hadn’t been going to write this in case I seemed to be that stereotypical ‘angry feminazi who hates men’, but I don’t really care if you see me that way (I do quite happily call myself a feminist, though). I’ll cut straight to the chase. You’re male. That’s not said as some sort of accusation, just as a statement of fact. The thing is, though, as a male, you won’t have been told the things many women have been told, or had the experiences they’ve had under the guise of ‘roles’. Personally, I’ve had very little, and I’m really fortunate in that. The most I’ve really been told (and only a couple of times) is that my pursuit of quite a high level of education is hindering the ‘more important’ job of Finding A Husband, and that my education is going to scare men away (of course, I wouldn’t be interested in a man who was scared of a woman with postgraduate degrees). Connected to that is the very common assumption (rarely spoken, but ask any single Christian woman over 25 and she can tell you how real this is) that if you’re a single woman you’re incomplete. Because men are ‘leaders’, a woman without a husband is ‘leaderless’ and therefore deficient. This is really insidious because it isn’t said overtly,so it’s harder to speak out against, but it’s definitely there. It makes women feel voiceless.

  297. Dee and Deb,

    Have you ever thought about running a post about the similarities between the patriarchy/complementarian argument and the pro-slavery arguments of the 19th century?

    J.

  298. “I personally prefer raw honesty to sweet & nice dishonesty.” – elastigirl

    Yes! This is so important. So many church cultures promote the appearance of civility and Unity(TM) (read ‘uniformity) over honesty that it becomes impossible to acknowledge abuse without upsetting the whole paradigm. And upsetting a church’s cultural paradigm is a good way to find yourself on the rough end of disfellowship….

  299. Juniper

    Yes. In fact, I want to do a little expose of a certain leader of the patriarchy movement who seems to be quite taken with antebellum loveliness and how kindly the slaves were treated.

  300. Dee, my children went to one of said antebellum lover’s classical schools. We witnessed authoritarianism, constant playing of the “gossip” card and the”bitterness” card, and almost cult-like behavior. Finally had the sense to get out and move on.

  301. Oh, and not to mention, the blatant misogyny pervading the culture. Paying the women teachers less than the men teachers for the same job was just one of the signs.

  302. The most I’ve really been told (and only a couple of times) is that my pursuit of quite a high level of education is hindering the ‘more important’ job of Finding A Husband, and that my education is going to scare men away (of course, I wouldn’t be interested in a man who was scared of a woman with postgraduate degrees). Connected to that is the very common assumption (rarely spoken, but ask any single Christian woman over 25 and she can tell you how real this is) that if you’re a single woman you’re incomplete. — Pam

    I think this is more an artifact of “Salvation by Marriage Alone”, a subject that’s been bandied about on a lot of blogs. The guy who used to blog at “Totem to Temple” years ago related that a single guy over 30 is assumed to be a perv until proven otherwise (by marrying), and comment threads at Internet Monk over the years have related other horror stories:

    The woman who had to endure dates with Christian men who were obviously looking for “A Wife” and it was obvious she was just the required piece of equipment to achieve that goal.

    The man who put it this way: “Then you get married and are finally allowed to sit with the grown-ups.”

    And the other who said it best: “It’s the same inside or outside the church: If you’re not doing somebody, you’re a NOBODY.” Just that in the churches it has to involve a ring and a wedding.

  303. @Seeker:

    You asked above about the Greek text of Ephesians 5:21-23; the text will follow, along with my translation:

    Ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις ἐν φόβῳ ⸀Χριστοῦ, αἱ γυναῖκες τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀνδράσιν ⸆ ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ, ὅτι ἀνήρ ⸉ἐστιν κεφαλὴ τῆς γυναικὸς ὡς καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς κεφαλὴ τῆς ἐκκλησίας, ⸀αὐτὸς σωτὴρ τοῦ σώματος·

    “…and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

    Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church—he himself being the savior of the body.”

    There are some grammatical features in the text worth noting:

    1. There is no verb in v. 22, but this isn’t an uncommon feature in Koine.
    2. The main verb has to be supplied from v. 21 (the supplied verb being a form of ὑποτάσσω).
    3. The pericope begins all the way back in v. 18, and Paul’s focus is on what is means to be filled (πληροῦσθε) with the Spirit. In the context we show that we have been filled with the Spirit by (a) speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, (b) always giving thanks to God the Father for one another, and (c) submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
    4. But v. 22, specifically, is an explanation of what it means to “[submit] to one another (Ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις)”; specifically the way that we submit to one another is that (a) wives submit to their husbands as to the Lord”, and (b) husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church (cf. v. 25).
    5. Therefore the command to submission is given to both husbands and wives, but the commanded submission is explained in two different ways.

    Where Paul’s use of κεφαλὴ is concerned, there isn’t a single lexicon recognized in the world of Greek scholarship (and by this I don’t mean “Thayer’s”; the most widely recognized lexicons are the BDAG [University of Chicago Press], the Lidell-Scott [Simon Wallenburg Press], and the Louw-Nida [2 vols; United Bible Society]) that lists a possible meaning of “source” for κεφαλὴ when κεφαλὴ refers to persons. Until the publishers of those lexicons are convinced, I remain unconvinced.

    I hope that helps.

  304. But this “submitting” cannot mean what we in 21st century mean by “submitting”, since every Christian is to “submit” to every other Christian. The image is that we all put others above us, which cannot mean “obey” them, or “do what they say”, or “let them make the decisions”, since that is a logical and sociological impossibility. So, we need a different word in English because our “submit” is not what the writer could possibly have meant, since it is an impossibility.

  305. “So, we need a different word in English…..”

    Whether or not we come up with a different word, the important thing to remember is that the submission of wives is not different than that of the husband and all believers one to another. When we focus on one word within one verse only, it erroneously emphasizes it as directed to only one group; i.e. married women, when in fact it is applied across the board; married, single, male, female regardless of ethnicity.

  306. Reformed Rebel;

    You give me hope that there are some Reformed young folks who do not take the party line in all things. Thank you.

  307. Thanks for your kind comment, Miss Dee.

    For the sake of clarity, and to ward off misunderstanding, I do think that there is a biblical command to headship (for husbands) and submission (between all believers, but specifically addressed to wives in Ephesians 5). Ultimately, I don’t think that the problem is with our understanding of submission, but with our understanding of headship. That’s where the real rub is, at least in my mind.

    We have too many men running around and placing parameters around headship that the Bible doesn’t place, while ignoring the ones that it does. Furthermore, the details of what this “headship” and “submission” look like are not detailed exhaustively in the text of Scripture, and I think that isn’t because God forgot about them! What submission and headship look like in the details is going to differ widely from marriage to marriage. Speaking only for myself, in 2 years of being married, I’ve only had to “throw my weight around” on headship once.

    My wife has a huge heart, and will run herself ragged helping anyone who needs it. The one time I’ve had to say to her, “Baby, you’re going to listen to me on this & do what I ask” was when she was going to run herself in to the ground helping some folks at the seminary, and in doing so wasn’t taking very good care of herself. If you’re wondering what my demand of her was, it was this: “You will spend the afternoon at the spa of your choice either getting a massage, or a mani/pedi; frankly I don’t care what you do while your there, but you will be there before you do anything else.” She had been saying for weeks that she really wanted to go to the spa, but didn’t have time because of all of the other stuff she was doing.

    In keeping with Christ’s command to “love my wife as my own flesh”, I dutifully packed her off for a day at the spa, while I handled cleaning house, doing the laundry, and making dinner for her.

    Personally, I think that, as a husband, if I have to start demanding that my wife submit to me, something else has already gone horribly wrong.

  308. Reformed Rebel

    Could not your wife have done the same for you? I have done similar things for my husband-putting my foot down and sending him for a rest. How is that a gender difference-authority, submission, etc?

  309. I took Reformed Rebel’s last comment above as humor, irony actually, pointing out how his only exercise of any “headship” was to send his wife to a spa!! How droll!

  310. It was meant to be quite droll!

    And Dee my wife has an actual “wife card”; really. It’s a business card that says “Wife Card”.

    Perhaps I had my tongue stuffed too firmly in my cheek when I wrote the above comment! My primary point is found in the last line:

    Personally, I think that, as a husband, if I have to start demanding that my wife submit to me, something else has already gone horribly wrong.

  311. So in answer to your question, Dee, if my wife says, “Go take a nap, silly man”, my only response is, “Yes, ma’am.”

  312. Reformed Rebel

    Listen, anytime a wife says to take a nap, leap at the opportunity.  And it appears that 56 years is a heckuva lot smarter than me:)

  313. Reformed Rebel said:

    “Baby, you’re going to listen to me on this & do what I ask” was when she was going to run herself in to the ground helping some folks at the seminary, and in doing so wasn’t taking very good care of herself. If you’re wondering what my demand of her was, it was this…

    I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’t mean you “exerted” your “authority” by telling her she was “going to listen to you” and using the word “demand” before following up with a nice day off for your wife. But it sure sounds as though you thought you had the final word.

    That’s what comps are noted for… implying authority while softening it with fluffy words.

    I could be wrong, but I’m still reading a sense of entitlement in your post.

  314. ***DISCLAIMER***

    THE ABOVE COMMENT ABOUT ‘DEMANDING’ MY WIFE GO TO THE SPA WAS MEANT TO BE IRONIC. IT WAS ENTIRELY TONGUE IN CHEEK AND WASN’T MEANT TO IMPLY THAT I AM A GIANT COMPLEMENTARIAN ASSHOLE WHO SHOULD BE DRUG OUT AND SHOT BECAUSE OF A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT. I HAVE BEEN SUFFICIENTLY CASTIGATED, AND REPENT IN DUST AND ASHES FOR ACTUALLY HAVING AN IRONIC SENSE OF HUMOR.

    I SHALL NOW ENGAGE IN SEVERAL HOURS OF SELF-FLAGELLATION.

  315. Rebel,

    Please don’t. It is just that for some, this issue is highly emotional, so they do not see the humor, of which irony is the most difficult to see, looking through what, at first glance seems to fit a different mold.

  316. No need to shout, Rebel. Given your post above about agreeing with headship of the husband and specific submission of the wife, the humor didn’t come across as you evidently intended. I said I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but again, we’ve seen the topic of headship/submission couched so often in words and humor in an effort to soften abrasive, erronesous teachings that some (including me obviously) find little to laugh at.

  317. “Where Paul’s use of κεφαλὴ is concerned, there isn’t a single lexicon recognized in the world of Greek scholarship (and by this I don’t mean “Thayer’s”; the most widely recognized lexicons are the BDAG [University of Chicago Press], the Lidell-Scott [Simon Wallenburg Press], and the Louw-Nida [2 vols; United Bible Society]) that lists a possible meaning of “source” for κεφαλὴ when κεφαλὴ refers to persons. Until the publishers of those lexicons are convinced, I remain unconvinced.”

    Actually it means a literal “head” as head on your shoulders. What we have to do is go back to the 1st Century and understand what they meant by “head” and how it was used.

    Let’s face it, there are several perfect Greek words for authority that were NOT inspired for this passage? Why? And while Jesus is the “head” of the church as in the source for all the church needs, this passage is not talking about heirarchy but HOLINESS. This passage is not giving wives a mediator between her and Christ.

    In the first century they believed the head on your shoulders was the source for the body as in feeding, breathing, etc. They thought the “heart” was where all thinking and decisions were made. REmember that next time you all are reading scripture and it makes perfect sense. We tend to interpret the word heart as in feelings only. That is not how they viewed it in totalality.(About 100 years after Paul, the Physcian, Galen, discovered the brain operated the body limbs)

    In the 1st Century because of how society operated the husband was the “source” for his wife’s needs. There is no such thing as “headship”. That is silly. That would be like saying “armship” or “legship”.

    Kenneth Bailey who grew up and studied in the ME and is a Christian scholar has some excellent teaching on this. We tend to read scripture through our Western eyes and it turns it into a rule book of silly roles and rules and formulas. Let us abide in Christ and that will make a great marriage.

  318. It is sort of like what Arce says on TWW fairly often. The issues here are very highly emotional and there is real pain for some people who have been abused or whose ancestors were abused, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, and some of those things continue to happen related to race and gender, and frankly, within the evangelical community, to those who profess that Jesus taught and exemplified that God loves and that his grace is not a means of control (aka “sovereign grace”, which is not grace at all. Those hurts are real and they color the vision of many.

    From the 1600s to 1865, blacks in this country were deprived of any rights, including the right to life. Girls and women were raped and the boys and men beaten, whipped and even branded.

    From 1865 to the 1960s, and in many places later than that, blacks were discriminated against, relegated to a lower status, lynched, and otherwise victimized. And today, blacks are more likely to be stopped by law enforcement; if stopped, more likely to be searched; if stopped or searched, more likely to be arrested; if arrested, more likely to be charged with a felony; if charged, more likely to be convicted; if convicted, more likely to be sentenced to prison (vs. probation or community service or treatment); if sentenced, more likely to be sent for a longer term; if imprisoned, more likely to be put in solitary. More likely to be sentenced to life without parole or execution. And when they get out, less likely to be able to get a job, a place to live, or to find their children, who have been taken away and put into foster homes or adopted out.

    So understand the reaction.

  319. @Reformed,

    Thank you for breaking it down for me. From what I have been studying recently, what you said seems to line up right on the money.

    I definitely see a mutual submission in Ephesians 5, and I do not see where there is greater “authority”–one over the other.

    As far as “headship”…I have heard often it implies source, but like you, I have not seen any major Greek Lexicon that refers to source either.

    @Anon1,

    I understand completely what you are saying, but I have been searching for some scholarly sources directing me to this meaning. I admit, I don’t have a large library or access to these sources (scholarly that is)…I purchased “logos software” a few months ago, and most of those commentaries imply head as authority rather than source.

    You mention Kenneth Bailey…Is there a particular commentary or specific book that you could recommend for me to look at that deals with “source” form his works? Any other scholars who could touch on this subject as well?

    Basically, is there a large realm of scholars who see Kephale as “source” rather than “authority/leader, or are they in the minority? (Not saying they are “wrong” because they are in the minority, but most commentaries I have read and come across all imply headship/authority, although I do not have a vast library of commentaries on the matter.)

    In considering the meaning of Kephale, I can’t help but ponder certain questions.

    I understand how meanings can change over time, and I can see how “source” fits the context (Which alone implies that the Complementarian understanding is not THE BEST Biblical interpretation on the matter)…You mentioned if head is suppoed to mean “authority” then Paul would have used other commonly used Greek words for “authority”…I can see that, however, is there a more common used word for “source” in the Greek…Or is Head that common used word to imply source? IF there is a more common word for source, why would Paul not use it as well?

    If head is implicated to mean source, why do most English translations avoid the word “source”?

    I guess what I am trying to nail down in all of this is to make sure that there is no implication of “leader,authority” in the meaning of “head”.

    As always, I appreciate the conversation. I am seeing more and more the idea of equal ground, mutual submission rather than mutual submission PLUS Husband as leader, etc.., but as I wrestle through all of this, I want to make sure I have a deep understanding in the meaning of all this before I convince myself.

  320. “I understand completely what you are saying, but I have been searching for some scholarly sources directing me to this meaning. I admit, I don’t have a large library or access to these sources (scholarly that is)…I purchased “logos software” a few months ago, and most of those commentaries imply head as authority rather than source.”

    This gets somewhat deep and I won’t go into it but here are some thoughts:

    Lexicons, etc, were written centuries later and are not always helpful. How was this word used in Koine Greek at the time, We can get some word understanding from reading classical Greek. Such as the word “authenteo” which is only used once in the NT (Timothy) and translated as authority over. It isn’t that at all. Earlier translations such as Jerome got it right translating it as domineer.

    How was “Kephale” used in Koine Greek? What is confusing about this word is that it is used to denote a literal head and we must know what they thought about the head in the 1st century. Same with Heart.

    koine Greek had about 20,000 words total. Contrast that with our language which has upwards of 700,000. So “head” could be a literal head on shoulders and also used as a metaphor of sorts as a source for the body. (This is what comes from hanging around translation blogs and some translator teams! And one reason why I know chuckle when someone claims an literal translation. We would never understand that!

    “You mention Kenneth Bailey…Is there a particular commentary or specific book that you could recommend for me to look at that deals with “source” form his works? Any other scholars who could touch on this subject as well?”

    It has been years and not sure of exact source but I do recommend Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. He does excellent work on the Parables and even the Christmas story. Complete with diagrams!

    “Basically, is there a large realm of scholars who see Kephale as “source” rather than “authority/leader, or are they in the minority? (Not saying they are “wrong” because they are in the minority, but most commentaries I have read and come across all imply headship/authority, although I do not have a vast library of commentaries on the matter.)”

    Would it surprise you than men have translated it as authority for a long time? The only time a real authority word is used between husband and wives is in 1 Corin 7 and it is used for both.

    “I understand how meanings can change over time, and I can see how “source” fits the context (Which alone implies that the Complementarian understanding is not THE BEST Biblical interpretation on the matter)…You mentioned if head is suppoed to mean “authority” then Paul would have used other commonly used Greek words for “authority”…I can see that, however, is there a more common used word for “source” in the Greek…Or is Head that common used word to imply source? IF there is a more common word for source, why would Paul not use it as well?”

    Because “head” was known in the 1st century as the part of the human that supplied the Body with what it needed. We do not know “head” way at all. We read our Gentile chain of being back into it and make it an authority concept.

    “If head is implicated to mean source, why do most English translations avoid the word “source”?”

    Who are the translators? :o) YOu are getting stuck on the word. What we have to do is understand how they viewed head in the 1st century. also how they viewed the heart, too. This is why we cannot make the bible a rule book. The most important part of that passage is “be filled with the spirit”. (Print out Eph with no chap breaks for verses. It helps. They put chapter breaks between chap 4-5 that are not helpful at all)

    “I guess what I am trying to nail down in all of this is to make sure that there is no implication of “leader,authority” in the meaning of “head”.”

    In the 1st Century that was pretty much the way it was. The husband was the authority. And for that reason, the inspired “Kephale” is pretty shocking. I am sure it was shocking to those in Ephesus reading it for the first time.Because no where does Paul use any regular Koine Greek words for authority when writing about husband wife relationship EXCEPT in 1 Corin 7.

    “As always, I appreciate the conversation. I am seeing more and more the idea of equal ground, mutual submission rather than mutual submission PLUS Husband as leader, etc.., but as I wrestle through all of this, I want to make sure I have a deep understanding in the meaning of all this before I convince myself

    Does it really make a difference? The question to ask yourself is in what way would it change how you live? Go back to Jesus. Read Him over and over and it will help to illuminate Paul.

  321. Anon 1 on Tue Jul 17, 2012 at 03:06 AM on kephale, etc.

    AMEN and AMEN. Excellent answer and comment. Thank you.

  322. R R, I think you’re onto something big. We can make a whole movement, with books, videos, conferences etc on Bibilical Spahood for Women. Here’s how it goes. The wife is the body. The body is made of flesh. This means the wife is commanded to be fleshly, or carnal. Since da hubby takes care of da headship stuff, da widdle woman shouldn’t worry her widdle head over spiritual stuff. Therefore, every Sunday morning, da Bible commands her to “head” to da SPA, where her bodyship can be properly provided and protected!

  323. Hmm… PROperly PROvided and PROtected– 3 PROs. That’ll be our next movement. 3 ways to apply spahood more PROfessionally in da bedroom, to keep, da ol’ boy from straying. Then we balance things out with the 3 CONs. 3 ways wives can apply spahood to CON the ol’ boy into giving her whatever bodily stuff her widdle heart desires.

  324. @Anon1,

    Thanks so much for your excellent response. This answers what I wanted to know.

    I will look on amazon and see if I can purchase Kenneth Bailey’s book.

    “Does it really make a difference?”

    When it comes to how my marriage is concerned…No, learning all of this is really not going to make a difference. I have never practically lived out a “complimentarian” marriage as the Comp’s would desire me too…As I mentioned before, my wife and I are functionally mutual in how our marriage works.

    The main difference for me is understanding the truth of scripture as it is. I live in an area where it is taught consistently the “man is the head of the household”….”the leader of the home”, etc, etc….(And most churches around here are not “Calvinista” or “Reformed”…)

    This is the common understanding of passages like Ephesians 5 due to the word “head”—and most have no clue what “head” is really referring too.

    As I study all of this, along with asking questions on here, I am learning that head is an entirely different meaning than I (and others) once thought.

    I basically want to have deep meaning and understanding on this so I can understand the full truth of scripture, rather than a distorted truth of a man made doctrine. That makes all the difference for me.

    Plus, I know one day I will probablly interact with others about this passage and what it really means…and I don’t want to interact with them without fully knowing what I am talking about. That doesn’t help the truth of this passage at all.

    Thanks again for all your help..and yes, I am learning more everyday of what it means to understand Jesus to illuminate Paul.

  325. As a woman who has embraced recovery and freedom from the marriage killing doctrine that I was obligated to “submit in everything” to my husband, I heard the perfect example of the destructive teaching from James MacDonald last night on the radio.

    Here is a link to the sermon. Click and the clip about how failure to submit to your husband = rejecting God automatically plays as their “teaser”.

    Take two minutes and listen from 11:50 for the submit to your husband as if he is God. JM is quite clear that even if you disagree profoundly with your husbands decisions/direction as way off track, you are responsible to submit “as to the Lord” which he takes to mean that you are in rebellion to the Lord if you do not submit- even if it is causing you great pain. At 13;42 “If you rebel against your husband’s authority…, you are rebelling agaisnt God. You are hindering God’s work in your family by refusing your husband”.

    I bought this stuff- HOOK, LINE, and SINKER! Thankfully, I can listen now without being triggered. Now I just think “Charis, how dumb could ya be!” and feel sorry for the other women who buy it.

  326. Seeker –

    You can still get the Kenneth Bailey book and many others by him. I recently picked it up at Amazon. It is extremely refreshing to get a view of scripture from someone who understands the culture that the scriptures were written in, and to 🙂 It really does help me to get away from imposing my Western Religious thoughts into the text and (me) arrogantly thinking I’ve got it all buttoned up.

  327. I’ve read most the comments and am almost finished.
    Now thought I’d share a thought of mine.
    The problem that comps have, or the reason why they have a hard time letting go of their false doctrine of male leadership is because they make the mistake in thinking that Paul compares the husband, in Ehp 5, to divinity. But “Christ” is not a term of divinity or Godhood, it only speaks to his humanity.
    So, in the comp mind, the husband has authority because Christ as God has authority, but the thought is a full blown error. It is nothing more than a misunderstanding of the term “Christ” and how it is used.
    Husband are NEVER compared to God/divinity but complementarians think otherwise. This is one of their hang ups. If they understood that husbands are being compared to Jesus’ humanity, his flesh – he died, sacrificed himself, (Eph 5!)- then comps could come back down to earth. God cannot die, the husband is compared to FLESH.