Tim Challies and Prayer, Inconsistent Complementarians, Tithe or Rot, Apologies and Child Sex Abuse Coverup

“It is much easier to pray for a bore than to go visit him.” CS Lewis link

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=66150&picture=woman
link

We are not done looking at the ARC but wanted to catch our readers up on some other stories that should cause some discussion.

Tithe to Reserve Your Membership or Rot

As church giving continues to decline, churches appear to be increasingly desperate to get their members (and anyone else) to tithe. First, Robert Morris says you can get infested by demons if you don't tithe. Now, a Houston pastor won't bury you unless you tithe. 

The pastor of a Houston, Texas, church reportedly refused to host the funeral of a 93-year-old woman who had been a member of his congregation for 50 years because she was not current with her tithing to the church.

According to a My FOX Houston report, Pastor Walter F. Houston of Fourth Missionary Baptist Church refused to bury longtime member Olivia Blair after she died because her lack of financial contributions made her ineligible for the courtesy under the church's bylaws.

Apparently 93 year old Olivia Blair was in the hospital and a nursing home for the past 2 years. She had been attending this church since she was a little girl. The pastor reportedly refused to do the funeral because one has to be a member to get a funeral. To be a member, one has to send money to *reserve* their membership, even when they are sick and dying. 

Tyrone Jacques of PimpPreacher.com said he reached out to pastor Houston to convince him to reconsider before going public with the story, but he would not relent from his position.

.. Jacques said Houston told him: "I am not changing my bylaws for someone who was not active. Olivia Blair had not been a member of this church in eight or nine years! If the family cared so much then why didn't one of them at least send a dollar over here to reserve her membership?"

Tim Challies Didn't Ask the Right Question

Tim Challies wrote No, I Won't Pray For You, which garnered some discussion. 

We recently had someone—a stranger—call the church to ask for prayer. She called out of the blue one morning, from a phone number far away. She said she was feeling sick and needed people to pray for her. Every day for the next six months. “Can I count on you to pray for me?”

For one of the first times in my life I felt total freedom. I said, “I am going to pray for you once, but I will not pray for you every day. I will not pray for you for six months.”He told her to contact her own church for prayer.

He told her to contact her own church for prayer. She apparently called back to his church a week later, asking again and hung up on him when he told her that. I agree with Challies on one point. I cannot pray for everyone who needs prayer and that all of us should have a group of people we can call on to pray for us.

But I think Challies overlooked something critical. She asked for prayer and mentioned she was sick. Was it just prayer that she wanted or was it something more? He didn't bother to ask. Perhaps he could have offered to have someone in his congregation give her call. He could have asked about her support systems and offered to call someone on her behalf.

Sometimes, the very interruption in our day is a God moment. Remember the Good Samaritan? All the good religious people were hurrying along doing their thing and had no time to care for the stranger lying by the road.

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
(NIV Bible Gateway-Matthew25:40-45)

Inconsistent Complementarianism

CBMW posted an article under their *manhood* section called Gavin Peacock's Moment. Peacock (a former soccer player) believes that men need to unify and connect to achieve a common goal. Apparently men have been redeemed to live in such a way that they will reflect God's authority in the home, workplace and church. It looks like women in the workplace do not need unifying relationships in order to reflect the authority and glory of God. This is just a guy thing.

Once again, complementarians appear that they are unable to give a consistent explanation for what a man can do in the workplace (along with the home and church) that a woman cannot do. And don't some of these guys, along with Mary Kassian, one of the inventors of the word *complementarianism* say that woman can do anything in the workplace but not in the church? They are truly *inconsistent.*

he emphasizes structures and relationships among the godhead that overflow into church leadership that, in turn, overflow into and men leading families and homes — what Peacock calls a “rigorous view” of a “consistent complementarianism.” In his teaching, Peacock makes the “connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, which finds its apex in the gospel of Christ,” he told me. “When men get gripped by that vision and what they have been redeemed for, then, we must help them to see what this actually looks like on the ground in the home, church and workplace. Manhood is not about being macho its about being mature; it’s for sportsmen but it’s for all men in any walk of life. And it’s those kind of Christlike men that God will use to further his mission in the world.”

Churches and child sex abuse: What about saying you're sorry?

I have had the opportunity to interact with a number of families whose children have been the victims of pedophiles in evangelical churches. Some of them are involved in lawsuits against their former churches. I always ask them the same question. 

If the pastors of your church came and asked you for your forgiveness, would you have considered your current lawsuit?

The answer has been unanimously, "No!" They simply wanted to be taken seriously and dealt with compassionately. Yet, we seldom hear of a church doing this. They hide behind lawyers, thinking they are avoiding problems. Unfortunately, in the end, many of these churches end up losing members and donations. Some have even had to shut their doors.

I know of one church in which the pastors, who were not sued, were asked by the elders to apologize to one young man for the way they treated him after he reported a now convicted pedophile. They have yet to do it, years later. This speaks to me a far deeper problem than legalities. It is the absolute inability to accept that they screwed up. It is a deep pride that has not yet yielded to humility.

I thought about this today because our reader, Daisy, shared with us the horrible story of Grace In Broken Arrow. This saga took place in the late 90s at a successful megachurch and its affiliated Christian school. The story is the same old, same old. A trusted, lifetime young member of the church returned from college and became the football coach. He allegedly molested a significant number of young boys at the school. The school administration and the pastors were allegedly aware of the reports but chose not to believe them because they *trusted* this young man.  

Sadly many of these young boys have gone onto lifelong problems with drugs, crime, acting out, etc. Some have walked away from the faith. The pedophile will be in prison until 2023. There has been a couple of lawsuits which resulted in $11 million settlements. People left the once successful school and it eventually shut down. The church has lost many members.

One of the young men, Josh, talks about apologies and forgiveness.

The only direct Grace contact Josh had was with John Dunlavey, who was always apologetic and kind when they ran into each other. So Josh was surprised when Pastor Bob’s lawyers contacted him with a message: Pastor Bob wanted to discuss a settlement with him over lunch at Marie Callender’s, a home-style chain restaurant. Josh thought Pastor Bob wanted to say he was sorry for what had happened. He also thought Pastor Bob was taking him to lunch.

But it soon became clear that Josh was paying his own way, and Pastor Bob was not there to apologize. Josh ordered a glass of water and watched Pastor Bob eat. “He quoted scriptures about how I was sinning against God for coming against his church, his ministry,” Josh remembers. But Josh came prepared with scripture passages of his own, about the responsibility of a shepherd to protect his flock. The message fell on deaf ears. Josh drank his water. Pastor Bob ate a big meal and ordered dessert. –

…After settling his lawsuit, around the time he turned 20, a realization set in. All that bitterness wasn’t making him the person he wanted to be. So he hit the road, crisscrossing the country, ending up at the 2006 Austin City Limits music festival. It was there that he got a tattoo across the underside of his left forearm: Hebrew letters that spell out “mechilah”— forgiveness. Forgiveness was what Josh wanted: not the Christian concept of forgiveness, but more a state of mind—of being at peace with the past.

Forgiveness was a goal, not an immediate reality. Josh returned to Tulsa and made a second suicide attempt. He swallowed two bottles of Tylenol PM and woke up in a hospital bed. “All my family and friends were huddled around me,” Josh says. “I was so embarrassed and disappointed that I was still there.” He spent the next few weeks on the psychiatric ward, wishing he’d been successful. By the time he got the tattoo, life had settled down enough for him to mourn just how much of it he’d missed. 1996 to 2006 was Josh’s lost decade. He was a little kid, and then, suddenly, he was an adult. Growing up, growing into one’s own as a sexual being—Josh had been denied these things. “I couldn’t imagine a future without something terrible happening to me.” 

I have a challenge for churches out there. You claim to trust God and His sovereignty. Why don't you let Him take care of your church while you do the right thing. Say that you are sorry, offer to help and let the chips fall where they may. In the end, you may sleep better at night and maybe some abused kids might actually believe that there is such a thing as a God who cares about them.

Lydia's Corner: Genesis 35:1-36:43 Matthew 12:1-21 Psalm 15:1-5 Proverbs 3:21-26

Comments

Tim Challies and Prayer, Inconsistent Complementarians, Tithe or Rot, Apologies and Child Sex Abuse Coverup — 466 Comments

  1. “You claim to trust God and His sovereignty.” Now the truth is finally made known: “God’s sovereignty” is actually a smokescreen for “give me more control.” Sad.

  2. About membership and money and funerals. I am glad you brought that up. One of the problems my church has been having (along with a lot of others) seems to be that quite a few people totally quit participating and quit giving for years and years but leave their name on the roll in order to be able to have a church funeral. The real problem, I am told, is that the church has to remit to the higher-ups certain monies based on membership, and these people cost the church money over the years. I don’t know the figures, but it was discussed as a financial problem the church could not solve. Which reminds me, this is December and I need to either send them a check or remove myself from the rolls, don’t you know. Not that they would throw me out, but just because it is the right thing to do when you can.

  3. XianJaneway wrote:

    “You claim to trust God and His sovereignty.” Now the truth is finally made known: “God’s sovereignty” is actually a smokescreen for “give me more control.” Sad.

    Ever heard of “Rule by Divine Right”?

    AKA “God in His Sovereignty hath Willed that MY Boot shalt be on YOUR neck forever!”

  4. Orhodox priests will bury the dead when there are no other clergy available regardless of religion. The burial rites are different from hose of Orthodox of course, but we take the idea of “Bury the dead” as an act of charity literally. “For the peace of the whole world and the salvation of all let us pray to the Lord.” I would assume/hope that all respectable churches follow the same practice. Consider in Catholic countries he inevitable presence of a priest at John Doe burials; the moving conclusion of The Day of the Jackal comes to mind.

  5. Josh ordered a glass of water and watched Pastor Bob eat. “He quoted scriptures about how I was sinning against God for coming against his church, his ministry,” Josh remembers. But Josh came prepared with scripture passages of his own, about the responsibility of a shepherd to protect his flock. The message fell on deaf ears. Josh drank his water. Pastor Bob ate a big meal and ordered dessert.

    “Watched Pastor Bob eat” or “watched Pastor Bob eat, and eat, and eat”?

    “There are three things that will not be satisfied, four that will not say, “Enough”: Sheol, and the barren womb, Earth that is never satisfied with water, And fire that never says, “Enough.”
    Move over, Agur. “And a preacher-man’s pie hole.”

    The 300+ pound (150+ kilo) Pastor waddling into his pulpit to rant and rave against some other (usually Sexual) sin after his fifth helping at the church potluck has a basis in fact.

    P.S. Some years ago, Internet Monk had a posting on the Forgotten Sin of Gluttony.
    P.P.S. Marie Callendar’s is one of the pricier eateries of its type.

  6. Hester wrote:

    So the MISSIONARY Baptist church won’t reach out to people who haven’t already reserved their membership with $$$?

    All about the Benjamins, baby.

  7. Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    Josh ordered a glass of water and watched Pastor Bob eat. “He quoted scriptures about how I was sinning against God for coming against his church, his ministry,” Josh remembers. But Josh came prepared with scripture passages of his own, about the responsibility of a shepherd to protect his flock. The message fell on deaf ears. Josh drank his water. Pastor Bob ate a big meal and ordered dessert.
    “Watched Pastor Bob eat” or “watched Pastor Bob eat, and eat, and eat”?
    “There are three things that will not be satisfied, four that will not say, “Enough”: Sheol, and the barren womb, Earth that is never satisfied with water, And fire that never says, “Enough.”
    Move over, Agur. “And a preacher-man’s pie hole.”
    The 300+ pound (150+ kilo) Pastor waddling into his pulpit to rant and rave against some other (usually Sexual) sin after his fifth helping at the church potluck has a basis in fact.
    P.S. Some years ago, Internet Monk had a posting on the Forgotten Sin of Gluttony.
    P.P.S. Marie Callendar’s is one of the pricier eateries of its type.

    Wrote a blog about 18-20 months ago about gluttony and it is a sin just like the others. ( it was for years, my downfall…I was a tub of lard…)
    I caught flak from that blog only second to a blog I wrote on the lust for money.
    Some sins are more ” accepted” and are okay to some people, especially here in the South…

  8. Anonymous wrote:

    Aren’t all words invented?

    Yes. In this instance, however, Mary Kassian claims to be one of the inventors of the word yet her discussions on the matter have been inconsistent. That is concerning since she is one of the ground breakers in the area. If she is unable to define it in a consistent manner that makes sense to me, then there are many, many others who will not understand it either.

    I always go to the source for an explanation. The source, in this instance, has added great confusion to the debate.

  9. Anonymous wrote:

    Dee:
    A linguistic question.
    Aren’t all words invented?

    Ba-da-boom.

    Some words are silly, though. Like “galoshes”.

  10. Since you mentioned both tithing and Tim Challies in the same post (although not on the same subject), I thought I’d link a well-reasoned and clearly articulated post Mr. Challies wrote last January explaining why the tithe does not apply under the New Covenant: How Much Money Am I Supposed to Give Away?. I may not agree with Mr. Challies on all points (such as his comp doctrine) but this short post is great and really worth reading.

  11. @ Tim:

    Never, ever forget that TWW invented the term “Calvinistas” which has clearly demonstrated the difference between the regular Reformed and the zealously Reformed.

  12. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    Some words are silly, though. Like “galoshes”.

    I once heard the words “cellar door” described as the beautiful sounding – in the sense of euphonious – phrase in the English language. Just say it a few times and you’ll see why.

  13. dee wrote:

    Never, ever forget that TWW invented the term “Calvinistas”

    A much needed contribution to the lexicon too, Dee, since it delineates that crowd from garden variety Reformed folk like me.

  14. “Sometimes, the very interruption in our day is a God moment. Remember the Good Samaritan? All the good religious people were hurrying along doing their thing and had no time to care for the stranger lying by the road.”

    I read a thing about that story by Amy-Jill Levine in which she said that the typical way that christians tell that story misses an important point. She says that the samaritans and the jews at that time were enemies, actual dangerous might do you serious bodily harm enemies-not just strangers or a despised group to each other-actual enemies. She was saying that this kind of takes it to a different level. Jesus was saying that your neighbor, and the one who unexpectedly helps you might even be your actual enemy. That does sound like something Jesus would say, bit of a radical that he was.

    Dr. Levine is jewish and is a professor of new testament studies at Vanderbilt. She has a little different take on some things.

  15. “But I think Challies overlooked something critical. She asked for prayer and mentioned she was sick. Was it just prayer that she wanted or was it something more? He didn’t bother to ask. Perhaps he could have offered to have someone in his congregation give her call. He could have asked about her support systems and offered to call someone on her behalf.

    Sometimes, the very interruption in our day is a God moment. Remember the Good Samaritan? All the good religious people were hurrying along doing their thing and had no time to care for the stranger lying by the road.”

    Spot on, Dee! The woman is obviously scared to death. Maybe she has little in the way of friend/family support. Maybe she has some mental illness that’s driving it.

    I’m not going to cast aspersions here without any info, so I don’t want to take this too far, but it doesn’t sound like Challies spent much time at all talking to her to find out what her problems were. He could also have called her minister to let him know how strung out this woman was – he/she may not know that, or they may not care about her.

    In any event, it sounds like, as a minister, Challies simply passed on an opportunity to be the Good Samaritan and do a bit more for one of God’s own. The whole ‘I ain’t got time to pray for you anymore’ response just seems too much like the priest and Levite who passed by the wounded man.

  16. Nancy wrote:

    She was saying that this kind of takes it to a different level. Jesus was saying that your neighbor, and the one who unexpectedly helps you might even be your actual enemy.

    I really like Amy-Jill Levine’s lectures and writing – a very good source of enlightenment for me. I heard that same explanation years ago and it made so much sense to me – while some may not preach that as the lesson out of ignorance, I think some do it purposely because there people they themselves would refuse to help.

  17. Apparently 93 year old Olivia Blair was in the hospital and a nursing home for the past 2 years. She had been attending this church since she was a little girl. The pastor reportedly refused to do the funeral because one has to be a member to get a funeral. To be a member, one has to send money to *reserve* their membership, even when they are sick and dying.

    I take it that the pastor did not do any “pastoral” visits to her while she was in the nursing home either…

    Ok, I see a new financial product: tithe insurance. So you can stay church members even if everything crashes down on you. Job could have used it… (please do not already exist please do not already exist because that would be sad)

  18. srs wrote:

    Ok, I see a new financial product: tithe insurance. So you can stay church members even if everything crashes down on you.

    Funniest statement of the month!!!!! “We’ve got you covered!”

  19. srs wrote:

    Ok, I see a new financial product: tithe insurance. So you can stay church members even if everything crashes down on you.

    I’ve heard of tithing called “fire insurance.” I have nothing to add.

  20. Hester wrote:

    So the MISSIONARY Baptist church won’t reach out to people who haven’t already reserved their membership with $$$?

    XD

  21. K.D. wrote:

    Wrote a blog about 18-20 months ago about gluttony and it is a sin just like the others. ( it was for years, my downfall…I was a tub of lard…)
    I caught flak from that blog only second to a blog I wrote on the lust for money.
    Some sins are more ” accepted” and are okay to some people, especially here in the South…

    I know you like to eat hearty in the Former Confederate States, even after middle-age spread sets in (op.cit. a certain Elvis Presley).

    And that it used to be customary for a preacher-man to clean his plate when having dinner visiting one of his parishoners as a way to complement the cook.

    And you have those church potlucks, again where not cleaning your plate is an insult to the cooks.

    But still… blogs like “Stuff Fundys Like” have so many family pictures of spheroid pastors it’s become a running joke. (And on YouTube I’ve actually seen pastors almost too fat to walk railing from the pulpit; used to be blogs that specialized in those videos.)

  22. Anonymous wrote:

    Dee:
    A linguistic question.
    Aren’t all words invented?

    The point is that the word “complementarian” was specifically designed to hide what it is really about. No one with a brain thinks that males and females are identical or interchangeable. And no one with a brain thinks that all males are identical and interchangeable nor are all females identical or interchangeable. That point is not in dispute, despite the “complementarian” talking points about equal meaning identical.

    The word is meant to hide meaning, not to carry meaning in the “yes be yes” sense. These people have an agenda of hierarchy, not complementarity. That is the problem. Not coining a word to be deceptive. If their teachings were “biblical” they would not have to hide behind propaganda techniques.

  23. @ Nancy:

    And Samaritans were considered unclean heretics by pious leaders of the Pharisees, so that is another level. The unclean heretic was the truly godly one in that parable. Jesus is concerned with the heart and not with DNA.

  24. “…he [Peacock] emphasizes structures and relationships among the godhead that overflow into church leadership that, in turn, overflow into and men leading families and homes — what Peacock calls a “rigorous view” of a “consistent complementarianism.” In his teaching, Peacock makes the “connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, which finds its apex in the gospel of Christ,” he told me.

    Where to start with this. Really, are “structures and relationships among the godhead” something that Peacock actually knows anything about? Are those “structures and relationships” that he speculates about something we should be really concerned about? We can’t have faithful gospel proclamation without emphasizing speculative “structures and relationships among the godhead?” Really?

    A “consistent and rigorous complementarianism” would mean that all men are above all women in authority. That would be a consistent, if wrong, argument from “the Creation Order.” That means, no female bosses of males. No females in the marketplace. No female professionals, because they might make John Piper uncomfortable. Thankfully, though, we would still have Owen (not John) to write like a tweenage girl. So there’s that.

    Peacock makes the connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, but that doesn’t mean that there is an actual connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God. It’s just more speculation which pumps up Peacock’s ego and self-importance. Why, how would we ever get the first idea about God’s glory without male authority? We would be clueless about God’s authority and glory if a male is ever under the authority of a female? God’s glory and authority would be obscured by women being equal to a man? Male authority and priority is critical to the gospel? Really?

    What is wrong with these people? Are they so intoxicated by their own arrogance and pride that they can no longer think?

  25. In his teaching, Peacock makes the “connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, which finds its apex in the gospel of Christ,” he told me.

    Peacock Restated: The Gospel of Christ is the apex of the connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God.

    That, my friends, is a blatant example of the Gendered Other Gospel that these people are peddling. It is a disgrace for them to grab the glory of the Eternal Son to glorify and lift themselves up and pretend that the Gospel of Christ is about male authority.

  26. Let’s see if this formatting is a little better.

    In his teaching, Peacock makes the “connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, which finds its apex in the gospel of Christ,” he told me.

    Peacock Restated: The Gospel of Christ is the apex of the connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God.

    That, my friends, is a blatant example of the Gendered Other Gospel that these people are peddling. It is a disgrace for them to grab the glory of the Eternal Son to glorify and lift themselves up and pretend that the Gospel of Christ is about male authority.

  27. Steve Scott wrote:

    It’s not like any money I drop in the plate has my name written on it.

    We like the receipts from the church to deduct from our taxes.

  28. @ chris:
    Here is your comment. It is a good one.

    “Cold. Freezing cold. With all due respect, if the Lord puts a person in my path, they are getting prayed for. Evelyn Christensen once wrote about a women who responded to her request for prayer the same way you responded to that woman. It was a chapter she wrote on how to forgive, and I hope the woman you turned away reads that book, and forgives you.

    You don’t have to pray for people like this woman, you most definitely don’t. But the one missing out on a blessing is you.”

  29. Regarding Challies, I wonder at why he even wrote this post. What was the point? To humblebrag about being so important that a woman would call *him* a “celebrity” to pray for her? And do it twice?

    I didn’t see anything in his post about sharing the gospel with her. Just a brush-off to call her own church and implicitly to stop bothering Challies and his people. What if she doesn’t know the Lord? Isn’t that of primary importance?

    What if Jesus had done that? How many times did he reach out to people without asking them which church they belong to? Challies needs to get real and his church needs to find a group of people willing to pray. I think this post shows what he is really about. He likes to pontificate more than pastor, and I mean pastor his own flock by example and exhortation to reach out to those who are hurting. He shows in this post that he is a blogger and not a pastor.

  30. dee wrote:

    Steve Scott wrote:

    It’s not like any money I drop in the plate has my name written on it.

    We like the receipts from the church to deduct from our taxes.

    Yes, I was a deacon for a number of years, counted the offerings and allocated the money to various budgets, and was in charge of the benevolent fund. I wonder if trumpeting our giving before not only the church leadership, but the IRS as well, to get a tax deduction, would get a reply from Jesus of, “truly, I say to you, you have your reward in full.”

    Some of the stuff people try to pull to get a deduction. Man.

  31. @ dee:

    She could have had a spare million to provide to a church where the pastor would pray for a stranger who merely asked for prayer. You never know that angel that is on the other side of the door knocking unless you open it and invite them it. It might even be the Savior himself.

  32. Gram3 wrote:

    Peacock makes the connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, but that doesn’t mean that there is an actual connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God. It’s just more speculation which pumps up Peacock’s ego and self-importance.

    One man’s speculation is another man’s theology.

  33. @ William G.:
    That is how it’s supposed to work. I am sickened by the way in which people are using *death* to make money, especially from the elderly. Sounds like extortion to me, or “protection” money paid to the Mafia.

    I guess the understanding of these kinds of rites of passage isn’t entrepeneurial in the denomination i was raised in, because i never head of abuses like this until i began reading this blog. I find this one especially mind-boggling. (Especially coming on top f all the rest of the expenses involved in funerals and burial, headstones et. al.)

  34. @ Steve Scott:
    Years ago, we contributed to an inner city mission. I asked for a receipt for taxes and was challenged on it. I agreed to give the mission the tax savings the next year, which was about 20% of the gift, and kept a spread sheet for the purpose for many years. Now, without a mortgage deduction, I take the standard deduction, as a tithe by itself is never enough to make itemizing worthwhile.

  35. @ dee:

    I’ll do you one better. Eyjafjallajökull-the name of a glacier in Iceland.

    There’s a lake in Webster, MA called Chaubunagungamaug. That’s the name that usually shows up on maps, but there’s an even longer alternative one: Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. I think I beat your glacier. 😉

  36. @ Gram3:
    Gram, I couldn’t agree more. The first time I saw Piper speak in person, he pronounced w/ grave authority that God does NOT ever speak audibly to people, because “God does not have vocal chords.”

    …..? THE HECK???????

    When did Piper get his Theological Ear/Nose/Throat degree? I guess Moses and Samuel were both heretics?

  37. Hester wrote:

    There’s a lake in Webster, MA called Chaubunagungamaug. That’s the name that usually shows up on maps, but there’s an even longer alternative one: Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. I think I beat your glacier.

    My favorite, which can’t quite beat that name in length, is the state fish of Hawaii, known as the reef triggerfish or humuhumunukunukuapua’a.

  38. XianJaneway wrote:

    The first time I saw Piper speak in person, he pronounced w/ grave authority that God does NOT ever speak audibly to people, because “God does not have vocal chords.”

    That’s why he’s always fluttering his hands!
    It’s a Jedi Mind Trick gesture so whatever he says his audience Be-LEEEEVES him!

  39. @ Xianjaneway:

    The first time I saw Piper speak in person, he pronounced w/grave authority that God does NOT ever speak audibly to people, because “God does not have vocal chords.”

    Jesus had vocal cords. There’s four entire books of the Bible filled with nothing but him going around speaking audibly to people.

    And yes, I know this isn’t what Piper was referring to but I just couldn’t resist. 😉

  40. @ Josh:
    That is lovely! The Hawaiian language is so beautiful when fluent native speakers are talking or chanting. It’s so fluid and fresh-sounding.

  41. @ numo:

    Well, there’s an old joke that it means “You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fishes in the middle,” but that was made up. Apparently the real meaning is “fishing place at the boundaries” / “neutral meeting ground.”

  42. ” “I am going to pray for you once,” Wow I always considered that gold. I rarely ask, no never ask for prayer in local churches, ever. I will online on exactly four blogs, but I limit that and usually get sick a bit out of terror. I have come to learn praying for people, in some spiritual communities is a power control issue, like friendship, fellowship, and probably one of the vilest of human traits “love”, hope is up there to. They are extremely effective at control and manipulation thus using them for that is justified and should be honored and emulated.

    Now back to the real church. This is somewhat sarcastic but I can say I honestly feel this way at times and it is done alot in some faith communities and families.

    In my earthly family, there were times we would hate each other, but never would we boot a fellow family member out, and no matter what they had done to us, and trust me there was some real awful situations we eventually all reconciled. I know that is not very Christian but it is very human.

  43. A church I was a member of years ago once sent me a “bill” for “tithe owed”. They knew what I did for a living and basically took the average wage for my profession and sent me a bill for 10 percent of that. I told the pastor I paid my offering in cash and that what I gave was between God and I, not the church or the government (tax credit). I was then told they gave out numbered envelopes to track what members gave, so they could “budget” and that they considered I still owed them money. My membership was terminated that day upon my request. I have not been an “official” member of a church since. From what I’ve read here at TWW that’s a good thing.

  44. I wonder if people like Owen Strachan and Denny Burk are really no cleverer than what they show us in their blogs (which would be pitiful, given that they are both professors, at college and seminary, respectively), of if they have to pretend to be a lot dumber than they really are, otherwise their ideology-driven arguments just don’t make sense. That would be supremely cynical, wouldn’t it?

    But then again, Hanlon’s razor usually applies.

  45. @ dee:
    I don’t like the words complementarian or equalitarian. Neither appear in the NT, although the idea might be there.

    Complementarian is almost always used in arguments about authority and submission, which I think is a pity. It should also be confined to the church rather than the world, i.e. keeping these separate is not being inconsistent.

    Egality or equality can likewise be misunderstood and needs defining. The key part of a verse always quoted on this doesn’t use the term (‘all one in Christ Jesus’). I don’t like it if it is used to follow the unisex culture around us, as though male and female are synonyms. People are not ‘equal’, some use their ‘talents’ to very different effect, and deserve different rewards. Some shoulder greater responsibility than others.

    If, however, the idea is to treat people equally, to avoid favouritism such as defer to the rich and ignore the poor in a James 2 partiality sense, then I think this is (to me obviously) a good thing.

    The greatest levellers of all are our worthlessness as guilty sinners before God, the grace that was given us that we might believe and have eternal life, and the death that every one of us will have to face. This, I think, put some perspective on arguing exactly who has a right to do what and whether we ‘succeed’ in life!

  46. Josh wrote:

    Hester wrote:

    There’s a lake in Webster, MA called Chaubunagungamaug. That’s the name that usually shows up on maps, but there’s an even longer alternative one: Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. I think I beat your glacier.

    My favorite, which can’t quite beat that name in length, is the state fish of Hawaii, known as the reef triggerfish or humuhumunukunukuapua’a.

    My favorite is the train station in Wales, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

  47. Dave wrote:

    My favorite is the train station in Wales, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

    Not as good as Pratt’s Bottom near London.

  48. Gavin Peacock has been bitten by the neo-Calvinist ‘every square inch’ bug as evidenced by his misuse of the word “redeemed.” People are redeemed by the blood of Christ shed for them on the cross. Cultures are not “redeemed”, marriages are not “redeemed”, cities are not “redeemed”, communities are not “redeemed” except insofar as individual believers in cultures, marriages, cities, and communities have been forgiven, for to use these kinds of descriptions takes the focus off of what Christ has done for each of us and puts it on peoples’ efforts, peoples’ works.

  49. Steve Scott wrote:

    dee wrote:

    Steve Scott wrote:

    It’s not like any money I drop in the plate has my name written on it.

    We like the receipts from the church to deduct from our taxes.

    Yes, I was a deacon for a number of years, counted the offerings and allocated the money to various budgets, and was in charge of the benevolent fund. I wonder if trumpeting our giving before not only the church leadership, but the IRS as well, to get a tax deduction, would get a reply from Jesus of, “truly, I say to you, you have your reward in full.”

    Some of the stuff people try to pull to get a deduction. Man.

    I was the church financial secretary for several years too. Our by laws stated the pastor/elders could not access the names and figures of who put what in the plate. Kept all contributors on an equal footing, no special ins or outs,with the leadership.
    Only God knows the desires, motives of the giver. Best to leave that kind of assessment to Him.

  50. Ken wrote:

    Not as good as Pratt’s Bottom near London.

    For a place name (in KY) Lickskillet has a certain ring to it.

  51. I do wills and trusts for people. I can imagine a bequest of hundreds of thousands of dollars to a church, provided that that church, not knowing of the bequest, held a funeral/memorial service for the person. I think a lot of these pastors have no idea of how generous with the church many life-long attenders or members are in their estate plans, but I will recommend to clients to make those bequests conditional on the church treating the elder members like a part of the family to be cherished and visited while alive, and celebrated when they pass on.

  52. Ken wrote:

    Egality or equality can likewise be misunderstood and needs defining. The key part of a verse always quoted on this doesn’t use the term (‘all one in Christ Jesus’). I don’t like it if it is used to follow the unisex culture around us, as though male and female are synonyms.

    The point of that verse is to say that human distinctions do not create tiers of worth or authority in the Kingdom. We are brothers and sisters “in Christ” not males in authority and females derivatively imaging God. It is not the way you were born but whether you have been born of the Spirit.

    I don’t support “unisex culture.” That’s a straw man with respect to the discussion on “complementarianism.” I fully believe males and females are complementary. But that is not what they are saying it means. They are the ones saying that complementary refers primarily to positions in a structural hierarchy.

    Complementarian is almost always used in arguments about authority and submission, which I think is a pity. It should also be confined to the church rather than the world, i.e. keeping these separate is not being inconsistent.

    It is being inconsistent to say that hierarchy between males and females exists only in the church and home. If the argument is made from Creation Order, and it is, then the hierarchy should apply in all spheres. Picking and choosing is not being consistent. The various proponents cannot agree where the lines should be drawn, so how is that “statute” not void for vagueness? How can I ever know if I’m submitting enough? I can’t, and that legalism keeps women *and* men in bondage to human laws.

    Where can you find in the Bible that hierarchy applies in the home or church but not in other spheres?

  53. brian wrote:

    have come to learn praying for people, in some spiritual communities is a power control issue,

    Great insight. I have never thought of that!

  54. The Nightowl wrote:

    I was then told they gave out numbered envelopes to track what members gave, so they could “budget” and that they considered I still owed them money. My membership was terminated that day upon my request. I have not been an “official” member of a church since.

    Good for you! Do you mind me asking what denomination that church was in?

  55. Gus wrote:

    But then again, Hanlon’s razor usually applies.

    For our readers, Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
    Love it!

  56. Ken wrote:

    People are not ‘equal’, some use their ‘talents’ to very different effect, and deserve different rewards. Some shoulder greater responsibility than others.

    Most egalitarians would say that this should be the definition. We all have talents and we should use them. The problems comes in when a woman has a talent that a man does not but is not allowed to use that talent in a church because of her gender.

    Also, given that definition, since only men can be pastors in many churches, the pastor shoulders the greatest responsibility and will receive the greater reward while a woman can never have that opportunity.

  57. Ken wrote:

    The greatest levellers of all are our worthlessness as guilty sinners before God, the grace that was given us that we might believe and have eternal life, and the death that every one of us will have to face.

    I agree. Then why do many church leaders act as if they are not as worthless as the rest of us?

  58. Mae wrote:

    Our by laws stated the pastor/elders could not access the names and figures of who put what in the plate. Kept all contributors on an equal footing, no special ins or outs,with the leadership.

    I think this is a wonderful policy.

  59. Arce wrote:

    I will recommend to clients to make those bequests conditional on the church treating the elder members like a part of the family to be cherished and visited while alive, and celebrated when they pass on.

    Love that!!!!!!!

  60. Gram3 wrote:

    It is being inconsistent to say that hierarchy between males and females exists only in the church and home. If the argument is made from Creation Order, and it is, then the hierarchy should apply in all spheres. Picking and choosing is not being consistent.

    I am sure you have read as have I loads of stuff about how to think about arguments from creation, and the concepts of the Kingdom restoring God’s original purposes in creation, and even my buddy discussing whether we need an historical Adam or whether the arguments miss the point in leaving out certain issues, etc and on and on. It is all very interesting, but we can end up at very different points of view from all of it. Not that this is necessarily bad, because if one or another POV proves unworkable it needs re-examined, which is all to the good.

    So, along that line of thinking, who has the right to impose its thinking and its values on the other? Do the children of the kingdom form some sort of enforcement mentality and legislate what those not of the kingdom are to do, like the dominion people think? Do the non-believers have the right to impose their standards and behaviors on those who do not agree with that, like we see in some aspects in our country right now? Or do we maintain lines of distinction between “the church” and “the world?”

    Now someone may say that we are all males and females. However, we are not all believing males and females. To what extent does that matter and how should that be lived out? How different should we be, and where would that apply if anywhere?

    But if we maintain lines of distinction there comes a problem, because individuals actually live in both spheres, the church and the world. Now some may say, avoid the world entirely, but I do not see that in the concept of in but not of, nor do I see that in the context of “go…into all the world..”. Some may say integrate as much as possible in thinking and life style with the world, but that is just asking for trouble for the believer nor does it seem biblical. But when some comp people say that some things apply at church and at home (theoretically both being subject to believer life styles and practices), but these same things do not apply to the world–well, of course they do not. I see no reason to say that because we cannot impose some ideas and practices on the world we should give them up, nor any reason to say that because some of the world’s stuff we cannot in good conscience practice that therefore we are wrong to even practice those things ourselves.

    Sure, we are all of the same animal species and that species reproduces sexually, like lots of other animal species. If that is all that theological arguments from creation are about, then that is one thing. On the other hand, if it is far more complex than that as some would argue, then very different conclusions can be drawn. I do not see Paul addressing the surrounding secular gentile culture and telling it how to think and behave as if it were Christian. I see him addressing husbands and wives in one place and the churches in another. I do think the comp people are way off base in that they take Paul’s ideas and expand them to ridiculous extremes, and I think they would impose their thinking by law and custom on everybody and everywhere which I think is wrong. But I do not see that Ken’s approach is wrong. But then, I have been reading some pretty radical thinking in lots of areas.

  61. @ Nancy:

    I do think that there are different spheres, and I’m not a dominionist by any stretch. Makes my skin crawl thinking about dominionism. That’s another story…

    But it is inconsistent to appeal to the Creation Order–male first then female–and then say that does not apply to all spheres. That inconsistency was not necessary when it was culturally assumed that women were less capable. Now, however, it is necessary to retain male privilege in the home and the church.

    They get tied in knots because they want to link 1 Timothy 2:12 with Genesis 1-3 to create a hierarchy, but only in the church and the home. They “man” and “woman” in 1 Timothy 2:12 are generic male and generic female in the church for teaching and authority purposes. Those same words could be translated “wife” and “husband” but then they would not have universal male dominance in the church since it would only apply to the marriage relationship.

    But they have to get hierarchy from 1 Timothy 2:12 and then read that back into Genesis 1-2 to apply to husbands having authority over their wives.

    That is the muddle. They are assigning ontological priority based on the order in which the male and female were created. That idea is not in Genesis unless it is put there by a particular interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12. I don’t see how it is consistent to translate/interpret the words for man/husband and wife/woman from 1 Timothy 2 one way to get universal male priority in the church and another way to get universal male priority in the home.

    Either the temporal order of creation is significant for purposes of establishing authority or it is not. They say that 1 Timothy 2:12 is prescriptive and universal. I say it is descriptive, and Paul is correcting the false teachers of female priority.

    The point is that special pleading exegesis (man/husband, woman/wife) and circular reasoning (1 Timothy 2:12 interprets Genesis 1-3 and Genesis 1-3 informs 1 Timothy 2:12) do not a strong argument or consistent rule make.

  62. @ Nancy:
    the arguments got very interesting when Sarah Palin was running for Vice President. you add into the mixture that she is a professing Christian.

    basically the comp leaders were between a rock and a hard place. she could be vice president as a woman but she could not lead a mixed Bible study with her staff. she would be teaching men. and what would Piper do with his teaching (on cbmw site) on how women in busines. she is not allowed to give him any direct orders as that is not the natural order of things.

    what was really interesting about the whole conversation is that complementarians and the patriarchal types were not even on the same page when they get out of their bubbles.

    Voddie he was interviewed by CNN and he told them she should be home caring for her family. While comp leaders we’re trying to find a polite way to say she is okay to run the country if it comes to that but not to teach men Bible.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing because it only proved how silly both sides are.

  63. @ Nancy:

    I’m arguing from their purported conservative hermeneutic, but obviously someone who rejects the historical Adam and Eve would not have the problem with consistency that the comps do. That, ISTM, is a matter of faith.

    Obviously, I don’t think their hermeneutic is really conservative at all, since they replace the words of Scripture with their own human words and faulty reasoning, contrary to all accepted conservative principles of hermeneutics and logic. Someone who does not subscribe to conservative hermeneutical presuppositions would not be inconsistent because a historical Adam and Eve are not asserted and the details of the creation account are not considered as significant.

  64. @ Gram3:

    Here’s a link describing Grudem/Ware/Piper’s “support” for male authority and priority:

    http://equalitycentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=1152.0

    You can google “grudem ware male headship” for more references. Needless to say, each of the Ten Points of Complementariansism are bogus. But comp math is ten times nothing is really something.

    For the comps reading, you won’t get egalitarian cooties by reading something on an egalitarian site. Just reason through all of the points one by one and think about whether each point is adequately supported by the actual text and plain reason.

  65. Gram3 wrote:

    It is being inconsistent to say that hierarchy between males and females exists only in the church and home. If the argument is made from Creation Order, and it is, then the hierarchy should apply in all spheres. Picking and choosing is not being consistent.

    I agree. And I’ve been on the receiving end of that belief system. In college, I was told by another student that I had to do what he wanted me to do because he was the male.

    He’s a career missionary. I feel sorry for his wife and all women he contacts.

  66. @ Gram3:

    Here is where I disagree. Sure, read Grudem if people want to, sure read egal literature if you want to. But I am saying that there is lots out there between Grudem/hypercomps on the one hand and some of the egal stuff on the other.

    It seems to me that living out kingdom values in relationships is biblical and valuable, but it also seems to me that neither hypercomps nor hyperegals get that done. It seems to me that there is sound evidence in scripture on which to base reasonable church practice, but neither group at its extremes seems to want to be reasonable, or biblical On the one extreme a tyrannical male is not acting like Christ and claiming that he is would be to say something about Christ which is not true. This is huge. On the other hand for some extreme egal female to give the impression that she thinks it is all about her is not even on the chart of what we are told to be (male and female alike.) And no, we do not all have to choose up sides with one extreme or the other, or limit our reading to the propaganda of one side or the other.

  67. @ Janey:

    I disagree with what he was doing, big time. But he was being consistent. So if we are saying that consistency is the thing, then he was that. I am not thinking that consistency is the thing that makes everything right.

  68. Challies’ response to the woman was judgmental and self important. Without unduly burdening himself, he could have agreed to pray for her and done so in a daily prayer that God would help all those who had called the ministry asking for prayer. There is time for that everyday.

    What I think he should have done is talk to her about why she was calling so many churches when she was part of a congregation. He might have found out that she was in a spiritually abusive church that didn’t care about her, for example. He might have found out that her condition was very serious and that she was terrified and trying to relieve her anxiety in this way. Maybe she had no friends or family and wanted the human contact. Perhaps she just had some wrong ideas about prayer. He might have been able to really help her during that one phone call.

  69. Nancy–I agree with you about the fact we don’t have to be pushed to either side, hyperegal or hypercomp. Here in the real world, we don’t have to have the same job to be equals. I agree with the SBC about not ordaining women, but then again I’m not so sure about ordaining anyone. But if we do, I believe scripture forbids the role of preacher to women.

    I don’t believe that is because we are “less than” the way the hypercomps preach it. I disagree with the hyperegals that means the SBC doesn’t treat women as equals.

    I do believe equal status persons can have different jobs in any organization, and I believe that for some reason we may not know this side of glory women’s talents are best used elsewhere in the church.

    Very different from hyper anything.

  70. @ Nancy:

    I am not a big fan of the word “egalitarian” on this issue. It has too much of a French Revolution ring to it.

    I like to think of it as mutualism.

    I am one of those who happens to think that our laws reguarding equality are more in line with Gods intention for His creation. And it took blood and toil to get there.

    I am NOT speaking of equal outcomes. But equal opportunity and worth. A worthy goal.

    In this regard, the church often seems to be lagging behind the world or fighting it.

    I am only speaking on the value of the individual here whether gender or race.

  71. Lydia wrote:

    What is a “role”? o:)

    When I use it I mean this.

    noun: role; plural noun: roles; noun: rôle; plural noun: rôles

    ▪ the function assumed or part played by a person or thing in a particular situation.”she greeted us all in her various roles of mother, friend, and daughter”
    synonyms:
    ▪ capacity, position, job, post, office, duty, responsibility, mantle, place; function, part

    I notice that people question this idea, but I must have missed the first part of the conversation, because I am not sure what is going on here. For myself I stepped out of my role as physician and my identity of Dr. X when I hung up my white coat and went home and pursued my role as wife and mother. I am not sure what people do if they do not do something of the sort in thinking about the various functions they fulfill in life. So, I obviously do not know what is going on here or why role has become a point of dispute.

  72. linda wrote:

    Here in the real world, we don’t have to have the same job to be equals

    I agree with this premise. However, let’s take a look at the real world. Women are generals, CEOs, Secretary of States, leaders of nations, etc. Yes, in the eye of God they are equal to a homeless person in terms of dignity but not in terms of leadership, authority, etc.

    Here is where I struggle, and I do struggle with this. A woman who leads a nation would walk into a church and not be allowed behind the pulpit, to speak in some churches, to teach men or even teen boys.

    Let’s say a church has a class on the role of government and the church. The female leader of that country would not be allowed to authoritatively teach on the subject because, and only because, she is female. Yet she could be the most gifted and versed Christian on the subject. She conceivably be relegated to listening to some man in the church who ran for city council and lost giving his opinion on the role of Christians in government. This does not make sense to me.

    I am left with the uncomfortable tension that a woman can do anything according to most complementarians except give input as an elder and be a pastor.

    Let me make one other observation that deals with equal but separate. Why is it that I never see a trash collector, meter reader, etc. ever put in a position as elder in a *successful* church. They always choose lawyers, financial experts,and socially prominent men. If we are truly all *equal* in the eye of God, then why the discrimination in terms of social status amongst men.?

  73. Janey wrote:

    In college, I was told by another student that I had to do what he wanted me to do because he was the male.

    And you didn’t laugh him out the door?

  74. Great phrase: “a great pride that refuses to yield to humility..” Someone insightful said that today; I will remember it. Thanks

  75. linda wrote:

    I don’t believe that is because we are “less than” the way the hypercomps preach it. I disagree with the hyperegals that means the SBC doesn’t treat women as equals.

    “Separate but equal” is not equal, in the same way that “war is peace” is not, and “freedom is slavery” is not.

    Lydia wrote:

    I am one of those who happens to think that our laws reguarding equality are more in line with Gods intention for His creation. And it took blood and toil to get there.
    I am NOT speaking of equal outcomes. But equal opportunity and worth. A worthy goal.
    In this regard, the church often seems to be lagging behind the world or fighting it.

    “Equal opportunity and worth” -> what prohibiting the ordination of women preachers is not.

    While it seems like there have been a few times throughout history where the church has led the way, more often than not, these days it seems like secular society is way out in front, and major parts of the church are being dragged along kicking and screaming. (That said, some mainline Protestant churches were working on equality for women and other matters before it was cool, but they seem to be the exception to the rule.)

  76. dee wrote:

    Mae wrote:

    Our by laws stated the pastor/elders could not access the names and figures of who put what in the plate. Kept all contributors on an equal footing, no special ins or outs,with the leadership.

    I think this is a wonderful policy.

    I had a friend who always put cash anonymously into the offering. He also offered his opinion on church matters quite regularly. One certain incident of opining resulted in a choice comment from the church treasurer, “Why are YOU always giving your two cents? You don’t even tithe!” 🙁 😛

  77. Steve Scott wrote:

    I had a friend who always put cash anonymously into the offering.

    A standard reply to those who say they give cash, when the rock from the annual giving sermon hits those dogs, is to say, “Yeah, we don’t take in that much cash…”

    In our tribe, those “cash-only” folks are usually the ones who complain the most about how the money is being spent.

  78. Josh wrote:

    linda wrote:
    I don’t believe that is because we are “less than” the way the hypercomps preach it. I disagree with the hyperegals that means the SBC doesn’t treat women as equals.

    “Separate but equal” is not equal, in the same way that “war is peace” is not, and “freedom is slavery” is not.

    Don’t forget “Fake but Accurate”. Only time that was actually introduced into a court of law (a mortgage dispute during the bubble), it failed most epically.

  79. Lydia wrote:

    the arguments got very interesting when Sarah Palin was running for Vice President. you add into the mixture that she is a professing Christian.

    The argument I heard was to elect McCain, who would then die in office and “God’s Choice Would Be In the White House”. Almost as dumb as the “Choose between God or the N*gg*r” that was reported almost word-for-word from some IFB/KJV-style churches in Ku Klux Kountry.

  80. dee wrote:

    I agree. Then why do many church leaders act as if they are not as worthless as the rest of us?

    Ask Comrade Napoleon of Animal Farm.

  81. @ Nancy:

    I understand that the word role has evolved. I am not so sure that is a good thing. You were a real doctor you did not pretend to be one. You were a real mother you did not pretend to be one or play one. You were a real mother and a real doctor at the same time. You did not stop being a doctor when you were at home you just were not practicing as a doctor while at home.

    The word has its roots in French meaning a scroll from which a actor read from for his part in a play. The closest thing we have in Scripture for that is “hypocrite” to describe acting. The more interesting aspect to me is how we adapted that word for real life.

    I am probably not explaining this well but when we prescribe roles to the body of Christ and marriage, it can become a dangerous road to go down.

    When we get into the definitions of words we can ask if Preacher and Pastor are interchangeable as functions within the body. If they are different then what is the difference and how do we see them functioning in the new testament?

    If women are forbidden from those functions with in the body then what about the poor Philippians and Corinthians who did not get the same memo? The Corinthian women were breaking this new law in the NT. They were preaching.

    Was Deborah pastoral in function? Huldah, preaching in function?

  82. The Nightowl wrote:

    I was then told they gave out numbered envelopes to track what members gave, so they could “budget” and that they considered I still owed them money.

    My church (St Boniface, RCC) sends out numbered envelopes, but the only tracking they do is totaling them up on the Charitable Contributions tax statement they send to us registered members every tax season. That’s it.

    What Nightowl describes is commonly called a SHAKEDOWN.

  83. @ Josh:

    If equal means same, then it is not a good goal to be pursued. What? Think about academic equality, of which there is no such thing. Don’t forget the bell curve. Now to say that poverty or race or gender or such should not determine access to avenues for academic achievement, that is one thing. I am for that, certainly. To say that equal outcomes have to be achieved for all is a dead end–it will not happen on an individual basis because individuals are different from each other.

    Here is my problem with the push for women as senior pastors. I use that term specifically because of the differences in denominations in this area. Let us say that there are women who are gifted and called and motivated in this area. I have no problem with that. But let somebody then come along and say that there must me equal numbers of men and women as senior pastors or else equality has not been achieved, this I am opposed to. It seems to me that there are people pushing women into being and doing some things they may not want to do and/or trying to make them feel guilty if they do not.

    Like Tony Campolo. I heard him reported to have said, that if there was a young woman in a church and she wanted to be a nurse but the church felt that she had the personality and academic motivation to be a doctor, then they should insist that she be a doctor or else she should be subject to (what we now call) church discipline. I have been a nurse and I have been a doctor and I have been a woman. Tony has his head so far up his philosophical fanny that nobody should listen to him. He was never a nurse, never a doctor and is not a woman. What old Tony is saying there is that something is good enough to be considered “equal” only if it is a field primarily populated (at the time) by men. Like saying, you too can be a man and then we will consider that you have fulfilled your calling, and you must do that in your career choice because we have decided what is man’s work and what is woman’s work, and the former is much more to be admired. Women have to listen to that (deleted) a lot. (Sound of gritting teeth.)

    I think this sort of thing is poison and may be at work in the push for women as senior pastors. And I want to say, get the blip off women’s case. No doubt some want to do that, no doubt some may be called to do that, but Tony is wrong, and anybody who thinks that equal means how guys do it or means same or means statistical numerical equality needs to back off. If he does not like women and how they do, and wants women forced into situations whether that is their choice or not (pressured, not forced) then he has some kind of problem that he needs to confront in his own thinking.

  84. Gram3 wrote:

    Here’s a link describing Grudem/Ware/Piper’s “support” for male authority and priority:

    I took a quick butcher’s* at the link. Read a few of the comments as well. I had to smile a bit at one commenter who complained how ‘they’ always ignore 1 Cor 11 v 11, whereas Ware specifically included this verse in point 4 (even if it wasn’t his main reason for quoting it). The moderator even said “If they love God then they are going to have to give men special honor or else God won’t accept them and they’ll die in hell. Sad.”

    What I still don’t get is why this overreaction? It triggers an emotional response I just don’t get. Every grouping has a lunatic fringe. But on this occasion, some of the commentators were reacting to a caricature of Ware’s ideas.

    *Butcher’s hook: look if rhyming slang hasn’t made its way across the Pond.

  85. Marsha wrote:

    Without unduly burdening himself, he could have agreed to pray for her and done so in a daily prayer that God would help all those who had called the ministry asking for prayer.

    Amen! How hard would that have been?? God knows the needs so when we bring the requests before Him, we can trust He will meet them in His time and in His way.

  86. Gram3 wrote:

    What is wrong with these people? Are they so intoxicated by their own arrogance and pride that they can no longer think?

    You nailed it. Doesn’t the Bible say something about those whom the Lord gives over to a depraved mind? Idolatry, whether it be of Great Men or Great Doctrine tends to make one both cruel and stupid.

  87. On Challies.com, commenter Rob asked Tim to explain why he puts out a daily blog (often twice-daily, I notice) for folks outside his church, but won’t pray daily for someone who’s outside his church.
    Sadly, Tim was too busy to reply…..

  88. Gram3 wrote:

    Let’s see if this formatting is a little better.
    In his teaching, Peacock makes the “connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God, which finds its apex in the gospel of Christ,” he told me.
    Peacock Restated: The Gospel of Christ is the apex of the connection between manhood and the authority and glory of God.
    That, my friends, is a blatant example of the Gendered Other Gospel that these people are peddling. It is a disgrace for them to grab the glory of the Eternal Son to glorify and lift themselves up and pretend that the Gospel of Christ is about male authority.

    Technically, they’re symbolically putting themselves ABOVE the Son, because they represent the Father in their theoretical male dominance paradigm based on ESS. This is the halmark of a cult, anything that puts a person as an intermediary between you and Christ or anything that in any way diminishes Christ.

  89. Dave A A wrote:

    On Challies.com, commenter Rob asked Tim to explain why he puts out a daily blog (often twice-daily, I notice) for folks outside his church, but won’t pray daily for someone who’s outside his church.
    Sadly, Tim was too busy to reply…..

    Because the blog promotes his brand.

  90. Ken wrote:

    Gram3 wrote:
    Here’s a link describing Grudem/Ware/Piper’s “support” for male authority and priority:
    I took a quick butcher’s* at the link. Read a few of the comments as well. I had to smile a bit at one commenter who complained how ‘they’ always ignore 1 Cor 11 v 11, whereas Ware specifically included this verse in point 4 (even if it wasn’t his main reason for quoting it). The moderator even said “If they love God then they are going to have to give men special honor or else God won’t accept them and they’ll die in hell. Sad.”
    What I still don’t get is why this overreaction? It triggers an emotional response I just don’t get. Every grouping has a lunatic fringe. But on this occasion, some of the commentators were reacting to a caricature of Ware’s ideas.
    *Butcher’s hook: look if rhyming slang hasn’t made its way across the Pond.

    Ken, The coldest Calculating Nazi was operating off emotion when he herded Jews on the train for transport to the concentration camps. So bringing in what you view as an over emotional response into the picture is a moot point. Why? Ware’s 10 point sermon was written and delivered on pure emotion.

    Not objective scholarship. Had it been objective and unemotional he would have given other scholars interpretations that are even more viable than his on secondary topic that he is trying to make part of the gospel.

    Number 10 is interesting. This is where they start messing with the Trinity.

  91. Lydia wrote:

    You did not stop being a doctor when you were at home you just were not practicing as a doctor while at home.

    Actually, the cut off between work and home (and the word roles as I use it) is somewhat different. Let me illustrate. When I was working as a nurse (long ago) we wore white uniforms and a cap. The cap is the thing here. There were strict rules as to when and where we could wear the cap. Let me illustrate: you put your uniform on at home, but never never never your cap. You carried your cap with you in a box or bag and put it on only when you actually reached your duty station (not the front door of the hospital). Once you put on your cap you became “nurse.” At the close of the shift the last thing you did after you gave the report to the charge nurse who was coming on duty was you took off your cap. Then you were just you again, not “nurse” that is nurse as a role or function. When you were at home you were at home and when you were at work you were at work and you did not let the two run over into each other. We were specifically taught this way of thinking as the way to combine home/family on the one hand and work/career on the other hand.

    Since there are no more caps, and since people go to the mall in scrubs, I assume this thinking has gone by the wayside. But if I had not been able to leave work at work, not been able to refuse to answer the phone if somebody else was on call, stuff like that, I would have burned out of the practice of medicine in a couple of years at most. There is a switch in the brain, and people can learn where that switch is and flip it on and off at will and it is an emotional lifesaver–at least in my experience.

  92. Ok, regarding the GRACE report, BJU may be just as culpable as the pastors in this story. One of the apppendices indicates that they fired an employee for viewing child pornography on the computer, AFTER an incident where “tickling” became waaay inappropriate. And didn’t report it to the police. 🙁 P. 281 Awful.

  93. @ Law Prof:
    Nah… Say it ain’t so!!
    One line in Tim’s article also got me thinking– he refers to an unnamed celebrity pastor with a popular radio show:
    “he understands that some people have disobediently distanced themselves from the local church”

  94. @ Nancy:
    I do understand where you are coming from. If I did not flip off my switch I would go crazy. But in my mind I stop practicing –not stop playing my role.

    As a kind of funny sidenote: A long time pastor friend of ours retired and at dinner my young niece asked him if that meant he stopped going to church, reading the Bible and praying. In her mind that is what a pastor did. and in her mind when he stopped being a pastor he stop doing pastor things.

  95. Nancy wrote:

    It seems to me that there is sound evidence in scripture on which to base reasonable church practice, but neither group at its extremes seems to want to be reasonable, or biblical

    I want to be reasonable, and I don’t think I’m extreme. If you knew me, you might be surprised. I linked to an egalitarian site but that does not mean I am of the Egalitarian Party. There is a discussion there, and the Ten Points are laid out to look at carefully. That’s not an unreasonable thing, I don’t think.

    I don’t think we should just make stuff up. My point about consistency is that, while consistency is not the goal, it can certainly help identify whether a practice is governed by a principle or by a rule. Rules can be arbitrary. Principles, especially Biblical principles, should be applied consistently. Otherwise, we do ad hoc theology and practice.

    I believe in people delivering what they advertise, especially leaders in the church. When they say they are about complementarity and they are really about hierarchy, then I think there is a big problem with both their theology *and* their practice.

    I totally agree with you about living out Kingdom values. That means one-anothering whether male or female, not lording authority over another. It means real humility in service whether male or female, not the faux humility that these guys are teaching. It means not demanding rights over another person whether male or female. It means considering others more important than ourselves whether male or female. That’s what I think of when I think of Kingdom values.

    Their doctrine in itself is prideful in that it asserts that God set one class of humans over another as part of his initial pre-Fall plan. They teach that God ordains one class of humans to be Leaders and another class to be Followers and that the Followers need Leaders. The Followers can *never* be leaders. That kind of thinking has not worked out well and cost a lot of people their lives to start to right it. Those are not Kingdom values, ISTM.

  96. Nancy wrote:

    @ Janey:
    I disagree with what he was doing, big time. But he was being consistent. So if we are saying that consistency is the thing, then he was that. I am not thinking that consistency is the thing that makes everything right.

    One other thought on consistency. The inconsistencies of the comps are intentional. They have designed their system in such a way that the males have the prerogative in a given situation to judge whether it is Biblical or not. They cannot be consistent, for if they were their doctrines would be rejected. They would be denied the benefits of the contributions which women make in the public sphere. It is not consistency resulting from not thinking something through. They know exactly what they are teaching.

  97. linda wrote:

    I do believe equal status persons can have different jobs in any organization, and I believe that for some reason we may not know this side of glory women’s talents are best used elsewhere in the church.

    Female is not a job or a role. Male is not a job or a role. When the gifts of the Spirit are specified, there is not a word about gender being involved in the Spirit’s decision to gift one person rather than another.

    If there is a job in the “real world” that I aspire to do and am prepared and gifted to do it, then in the West I am free to pursue that. So, I think your analogy between a job in the real world and a “role” in the church is flawed. If you are going to assert women’s limitations in the church, you need to find it via rigorous exegesis, and that is what the comps have not done.

    Where do you find “role” mentioned in either the OT or NT with respect to gender?

  98. Nancy wrote:

    The real problem, I am told, is that the church has to remit to the higher-ups certain monies based on membership, and these people cost the church money over the years. I don’t know the figures, but it was discussed as a financial problem the church could not solve.

    I can see what you’re saying and it does follow that churches do need funds (not to be confused with the wealth oriented despotism of the church-industrial-complex) to operate. But I find it despicable that the elderly woman briefly profiled in the main body of the Deeb’s post was denied a funeral based on an entirely worldly metric of ‘belonging’.

    Whatever happened to ‘doing the right thing’ based on one’s own internal moral compass? When the so-called heathen do the right thing and the ‘saved’ feed the mean wolf within, the cognitive dissonance can no longer be explained away with pat theology or the standard ‘Christian world view’ tap dance.

  99. @ Lydia:
    Nancy wrote:

    . So, I obviously do not know what is going on here or why role has become a point of dispute.

    It’s because another perfectly good word, “role,” has been corrupted by people with an agenda. The roles you cited are perfectly valid uses of that word. The problem is that “Female” is not a role or function. “Male” is not a role or function. George Knight had to make up the idea of gender roles assigned by God to get around the obvious problem with saying that women are equal but not exactly equal. It is strictly an artificial distinction.

    “Leader” is a role. “Follower” is a role. When only one of those roles or functions can be filled by a given gender, and necessarily so, then that role ceases to be a role and becomes part of one’s being. Therefor, there is not real equality of being. It’s an equivocation on a word, and it is deceptive the way they use it.

  100. Dave A A wrote:

    @ Law Prof:
    Nah… Say it ain’t so!!
    One line in Tim’s article also got me thinking– he refers to an unnamed celebrity pastor with a popular radio show:
    “he understands that some people have disobediently distanced themselves from the local church”

    As I said to one young man recently: “Not local church, rather local sphere of cultic control”. It used to be that local church just meant the church nearby, the one you attended. Now that phrase has been packed with so much extrabiblical and frankly evil meaning that I can hardly say it without my stomach churning.

  101. Muff Potter wrote:

    Nancy wrote:
    Whatever happened to ‘doing the right thing’ based on one’s own internal moral compass?

    Some people lack an internal moral compass. It has been seared to the point of being nonfunctional.

  102. Gram3 wrote:

    The inconsistencies of the comps are intentional.

    Absolutely. I see nothing honest about what they are doing. Their reasoning is poor, their motives are hung out on the line for all to see, and everywhere I look I see a streak of bullying. The leadership for sure, but I do not personally know that many people who bought into the comp theology in practice. I have known a bunch of mean people, male and female, but not based on any particular theology.

  103. Ken wrote:

    I took a quick butcher’s* at the link. Read a few of the comments as well. I had to smile a bit at one commenter who complained how ‘they’ always ignore 1 Cor 11 v 11, whereas Ware specifically included this verse in point 4 (even if it wasn’t his main reason for quoting it). The moderator even said “If they love God then they are going to have to give men special honor or else God won’t accept them and they’ll die in hell. Sad.”

    I don’t vouch for what any particular commenter says even here at TWW. I’m curious as to why you focused your comment on a comment on the thread rather than on the substance of the Ten Points of Hierarchy. I suppose I should have linked to RBMW where Grudem lists them, but I was too lazy to look up the page #. It seems as though the content, by a “complementarian” is somehow compromised by the source where the content is found.

    Actually, point 4 is a good illustration of the problem. Ware merely asserts what Paul’s “interpretation” is Paul interprets his own argument in the very same chapter, but Ware ignores that because what Paul says his argument is does not serve what Ware’s interpretation of “head” demands. Therefore, Paul must yield to Ware. That is not exegesis nor responsible theology.

    Would you like to have Another Conversation about the weight and validity of the Ten Points of Hierarchy? Which one do you think bears weight and why? I see Cotton Candy for Comps, not anything serious or substantive.

  104. @ Law Prof:
    I now think of it as *localchurch*. Can you imagine a disclaimer at Challies.com, “Do not read this blog! Read only content produced by your *localchurch*! Or the radio preacher beginning each show, “Warning! Listening to this show is disobedient! Listen to your *localchurch* pastor! And whatever you do, don’t send me any gifts.”
    Meanwhile, I’d hazard to guess that both Challies and Radio Preacher have churches and people very nearby, from whom they’ve disobediently distanced themselves.

  105. Muff Potter wrote:

    Whatever happened to ‘doing the right thing’ based on one’s own internal moral compass?

    There used to be a thing that was taught, that one could not rely on one’s own conscience because the conscience has been corrupted and could not be trusted on its own. We were told that the only thing to do was train the conscience (formation some churches call it) and practice doing the right thing regardless of how we felt at the moment and hopefully the disparity between what one relied on for an internal compass and what was required would become less with time. There is something to be said for that thinking, but of course there are pitfalls along that road also.

  106. Ken wrote:

    What I still don’t get is why this overreaction? It triggers an emotional response I just don’t get.

    Why would an assignment of an inferior rank solely due to one’s DNA not trigger an emotional response in a rational human being subjected to it? Why is this so difficult for you to understand? It seems that it should be obvious that God did not create one human to rule over another human. It is an assault on the dignity of the human being ruled over, and words cannot paste over that. I don’t believe in Kings, even in the home or church, except for the one King.

  107. dee wrote:

    A woman who leads a nation would walk into a church and not be allowed behind the pulpit, to speak in some churches, to teach men or even teen boys.

    The hierarchical order established by God, in my understanding of it, is as follows mainly, but not entirely with 1 Cor 11 in mind:

    God, then Christ, then angels (and demons) as spiritual beings, man and then woman. Below mankind are the animals. There is a divine order in the universe. Rank. Satan fell when he tried to make himself like God. God’s worst judgment occurred in Gen 6 when the angels left their proper position and dwelling. Sin meant breaking this divine order.

    When it comes to the church and redeemed believers, this order still needs to be visibly expressed, which is the ‘covering’ in the case of women. The reason this is visibly expressed – the covering being a sign of authority – is because of the angels. There is a spiritual realm present during Christian worship and they need to see good order, in particular redeemed women showing they acknowledge the need for God’s authority to pray and prophesy. That’s the positive reason.

    Negatively if you like, the 1 Tim restrictions are also grounded in spiritual warfare and the need to keep ‘in order’. I’ve re-awoken to this reality more recently. Any activity in church has to be authorised by God, and he can and does restrict who can do what, both for men, and women. This is especially true of who can implement the word of God in pastoring and teaching. If this order is disregarded, it makes the church vulnerable to spiritual attack and deception. This is nothing to do with anyone being superior, nor to do with educational achievement, nor thinking that natural talents and abilities may automatically be exercised in church. It applies equally to both men and women.

    Now I haven’t personally thought through exactly how this works out (if at all) in the world around us at any length. But when a female CEO or whatever enters the church, she and all of us are under God’s authority and the authority of his apostles and their words in the NT. Whatever we do in the world by way of occupation is not as such a spiritual ministry.

    Any wrongful exercise of authority does damage, whether it be patriarchs and shepherds forgetting just who their ‘head’ really is, or women venturing across the barrier God has set up as a safeguard.

    Satan particularly attacks this doctrine by pushing believers to extremes, either silencing women where God has authorised them to speak and contribute, or telling them unless they can do everything in church they are inferior and their ‘rights’ have been infringed. One is adding to the word of God, and the other is taking away from it.

  108. Gram3 wrote:

    “Leader” is a role. “Follower” is a role. When only one of those roles or functions can be filled by a given gender, and necessarily so, then that role ceases to be a role and becomes part of one’s being. Therefor, there is not real equality of being. It’s an equivocation on a word, and it is deceptive the way they use it.

    My Dear Wormwood,
    Remember my previous epistle regarding semantics?
    Specifically, redefinition of words into their “diabolical meanings”?
    Your Ravenously Affectionate Uncle,
    Screwtape

  109. Haven’t read the comments, so maybe someone else has had the same insight, but I have to point out that all of these stories have a common denominator and that is the sin of pride. Some theologians say that it is the original sin, and certainly it’s a strong continuing one.

    Pride makes people unable to set aside their ego and their self-interest, and it is this that leads to distancing, a lack of compassion or empathy, and even contempt for others. It stops the flow of grace. It makes asking for forgiveness unthinkable.

    These stories are horrible examples of what stubborn pride can do. They remind me to keep my own prideful impulses in check. I’m not that important. My business and schedule don’t trump someone else’s hurt and needs. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

  110. Ken wrote:

    Whatever we do in the world by way of occupation is not as such a spiritual ministry.

    I don’t know, but maybe some of it is. I am thinking of women in chaplaincy at institutions who would not be allowed to pastor a church. Or Dr. Levine at Vanderbilt, professor of NT and an orthodox Jew in a tradition that does not have women rabbis. And I am thinking catholic women teaching theology and philosophy in universities in a religious tradition that does not have women priests. I don’t think that ministry, including teaching ministry, begins or ends with the doors of the church or any official papers issued by the church.

  111. Gram3 wrote:

    It’s because another perfectly good word, “role,” has been corrupted by people with an agenda. The roles you cited are perfectly valid uses of that word. The problem is that “Female” is not a role or function. “Male” is not a role or function. George Knight had to make up the idea of gender roles assigned by God to get around the obvious problem with saying that women are equal but not exactly equal. It is strictly an artificial distinction.

    Much better explanation.

  112. Ken wrote:

    the 1 Tim restrictions are also grounded in spiritual warfare and the need to keep ‘in order’. I’ve re-awoken to this reality more recently. Any activity in church has to be authorised by God, and he can and does restrict who can do what, both for men, and women. This is especially true of who can implement the word of God in pastoring and teaching. If this order is disregarded, it makes the church vulnerable to spiritual attack and deception. This is nothing to do with anyone being superior, nor to do with educational achievement, nor thinking that natural talents and abilities may automatically be exercised in church. It applies equally to both men and women.

    Really! How does this apply equally to men and women when men are free to do what women are told they cannot do?

    “Especially true of who can implement the Word of God?” This makes scripture seem like a mystical chant that only some (male) high priest can speak.

    “Mis-ordering makes the church vulnerable to spiritual attack?” Sorry to say, but this sounds like cult thinking.

    Your comment leaves me with the heebbie-jeebbies.

  113. Ken wrote:

    or women venturing across the barrier God has set up as a safeguard.

    Where did God set up an authority for women as a safeguard?

  114. Ken wrote:

    . The reason this is visibly expressed – the covering being a sign of authority – is because of the angels. There is a spiritual realm present during Christian worship and they need to see good order, in particular redeemed women showing they acknowledge the need for God’s authority to pray and prophesy. That’s the positive reason.

    You might want to check chapter 6 if you are referring to what Paul means about judging the angels. you might also want to check the Greek when you are quoting the “symbol of” authority on her head. “Symbol of” wss added by translators. this chapter is all about a cultural situation concerning head coverings.

    one reason why the order of creation is not working here is because it is not listed in hierarchical order in first Corinthians. the author would have put it in hierarchical order if that was what was being communicated.

    the other problem with this passage for hierarchy and creation order is that Genesis 1 is creation of the “human” and Genesis 2 is the “forming”.

    so if you are referring to the forming of Eve then cows are more important than Eve in the hierarchical order. they were formed before Eve.

    I don’t really read Genesis in that sort of literal detail but many do and when they do it still does not line up with what they believe and teach concerning creation order and hierarchy

  115. Ken wrote:

    This is especially true of who can implement the word of God in pastoring and teaching. If this order is disregarded, it makes the church vulnerable to spiritual attack and deception.

    did not seem to work very well for Mars Hill and SGM. frankly there are both male and female false teachers so I am not sure why the male would be any less inclined to be a false teacher than a female.

    why would it be chaotic and out of order to have a female teacher? if you are referring to 1st Corinthians 14 there is another explanation that makes much more sense since the women are not totally silent anyway. the way that passages often interpreted makes paul speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

  116. Ken wrote:

    Negatively if you like, the 1 Tim restrictions are also grounded in spiritual warfare and the need to keep ‘in order’. I’ve re-awoken to this reality more recently. Any activity in church has to be authorised by God, and he can and does restrict who can do what, both for men, and women.

    There is nothing in 1 Timothy 2 about “spiritual warfare.” Paul writes a lot about church order, but he doesn’t write about gender ordering. He writes about considering others more important than ourselves. It seems that you want to accuse women who desire the same freedom you claim for yourself of being rebellious and jealous for our own position. Do you not see the double standard? Women are presumed to be rebellious and grasping for authority. But men are just doing what God has “ordered.”

    There are no ranks among humans in the Kingdom, and you will be hard-pressed to demonstrate that conclusively with scripture. Your interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 takes no account of what the meaning of head coverings were in that culture. You are imposing your own cultural presuppositions on the text if you don’t acknowledge what Paul was addressing in the first place and why it was even important. He clearly says what the point of his entire discourse in chapter 11 is at the end of his argument in his summation in verse 12.

    To ignore that salient part of the chapter is to miss his point entirely. His point is that woman came from man, man comes from woman, and all come from God. That is what “head” means. Not some artificial meaning of “headship” made up by self-important males who desire preeminence.

    Do you intend to follow Bruce Ware down the path of females bearing only a derivative image of God because the first woman came from the first man? That is unavoidable if you buy into his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11. Do you think that the purpose of a woman’s creation is to promote the agency of a man while denying her own agency? How is that equal in any rational sense of the term?

  117. @ Lydia:

    Quite so. If hierarchy is demonstrated in the chronology of creation as cited in the Genesis stories, then humans are at the very bottom of the food chain. Since nobody believes that, then is it not evident that we may have misunderstood certain passages of scripture.

  118. Ken wrote:

    Any wrongful exercise of authority does damage, whether it be patriarchs and shepherds forgetting just who their ‘head’ really is, or women venturing across the barrier God has set up as a safeguard.

    Yes, and the men who are using their authority to take the authority which rightfully belongs to women are wrongfully using their authority. And it does damage women and men by denying their rightful place in the Body, as equals under one Head. There are not a bunch of little self-appointed “heads” in the Kingdom, at least not that we know of from the actual texts.

    What is this barrier you speak of that women are transgressing? Is it not remotely conceivable that these men are transgressing on a woman’s rightful position in Christ and robbing her of the benefits which he bought for her?

    Really, is the Holy Spirit so incompetent that he requires a human male to be the spiritual guardian of a woman? Where is that in the Bible?

  119. @ Ken:

    I have a comment to you in moderation regarding your play of the “emotional overreaction” card. That is insulting to those of us who are using reasoned arguments from the text using sound hermeneutical methods. You must be aware that is a silencing technique frequently used against women.

  120. Regarding the elderly woman and tithing, it is very sad that we forget that people are not valuable because of what they “contribute.” They are valuable because they are image-bearers. We have no idea how God’s economy actually works, but we certainly know how fallen human economies work, and that is what this looks like.

  121. Anonymous wrote:

    A linguistic question.
    Aren’t all words invented?

    No, not really. Most new words come into use organically over time as custom and language usage develop them to meet a need to communicate. I’d say that is something very different from someone fabricating a new term consciously and trying mightily to get people to use it to describe their particular (if ill-defined) belief.

  122. Gram3 wrote:

    play of the “emotional overreaction” card

    Why do people do that? It makes them look like they are saying that they are so fragile that they can’t deal with emotion. Or that the subject matter is too inconsequential to be worth emotion. Or that they have nothing of substance to say and are scraping the barrel bottom. It is pretty much one sign that people are pushed to the edges of an argument and running out of anything worth saying.

  123. Ken wrote:

    When it comes to the church and redeemed believers, this order still needs to be visibly expressed, which is the ‘covering’ in the case of women. The reason this is visibly expressed – the covering being a sign of authority – is because of the angels. There is a spiritual realm present during Christian worship and they need to see good order, in particular redeemed women showing they acknowledge the need for God’s authority to pray and prophesy. That’s the positive reason.

    That is a narrative imposed on the text. Women covered their hair, and still do in traditional cultures, because a woman’s hair is a sexual object just like b*easts are in Western culture. If a woman wears a top cut down to her navel and a skirt cut up to her thigh, she is behaving as a woman who uncovers her head would have been doing.

    There is nothing in the actual words of the text about angels (assuming we are talking about the supernatural ones) desiring to observe order in the church, much less that the order they want to see is male authority. They want to see men and women conducting themselves as redeemed men and women and not worldlings.

    Peter writes that the angels desire to look into the things pertaining to salvation. Since they are not redeemable, it seems reasonable that they would marvel at what God the Holy Spirit can do among a group of sinful humans. That’s something worth pondering for the angels. I think the angels have better things to do than be the authority cops making sure that every woman is properly deferential to every man. I think they are amazed that sinful humans defer to one another rather than jockeying for advantage and control, as Satan did.

  124. There is a place in Tennessee called “Do help me holler (hollow).”
    Also, “Butter and Eggs Road.”

  125. Dave A A wrote:

    Sadly, Tim was too busy to reply…..

    There are others in his social set who have said that they will not conduct funerals or visit people in the hospital because they are just too busy doing more important things.

  126. Ken wrote:

    which is the ‘covering’ in the case of women. The reason this is visibly expressed – the covering being a sign of authority – is because of the angels. There is a spiritual realm present during Christian worship and they need to see good order, in particular redeemed women showing they acknowledge the need for God’s authority to pray and prophesy. That’s the positive reason.

    Well, i must admit, I never knew the angels needed to see me *covered* because…Huh?Because why? And, do men need to acknowledge they need God’s authority to pray and prophesy or just females?

    Ken wrote:

    But when a female CEO or whatever enters the church, she and all of us are under God’s authority and the authority of his apostles and their words in the NT. Whatever we do in the world by way of occupation is not as such a spiritual ministry.

    It’s not? Boy, have i messed up things in my life!!! i have always thought that there is a deep spiritual element to my day to day life. Now, I should realize that as soon as I walk over a particular threshold in a physical building, then i am entering into the spiritual. Back to the “Now you are a Christian” course.

    And this is why I say that complementarianism makes no sense to me.

  127. John wrote:

    . My business and schedule don’t trump someone else’s hurt and needs. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

    Well said.

  128. @ Ken:

    God, then Christ, then angels (and demons) as spiritual beings, man and then woman. Below mankind are the animals.

    Curious, how do you get around that at each change in rank on that ladder, there is an essential change in nature? – i.e., angels do not have the nature of God, humans do not have the nature of angels, and animals do not have the nature of humans. If that logic were to hold true, then women should have an fundamentally and completely different nature than men. Except that directly contradicts the fact that both sexes are created equally in the image of God. This rank men supposedly hold also seems to be pretty loose/non-binding when we’re expressly told in 1 Cor. 7 that wives have authority over their husband’s bodies.

    I also probably don’t need to add that this would make life extremely confusing for an intersex person who, through no fault of their own, was born genetically/physically some mixture of male and female and has no assignable sex. Where do they rank on this ladder? These are real people made in the image of God, so there must be some definable place for them in this system. And if the church really is laid open to spiritual attack/deception by Satan if we assign them the wrong rank/job, then this would seem like a really important question to answer. I know I harp on this here a lot, but it seems to me to be a pretty serious problem for comp theology if it can’t even account for recognized medical conditions.

  129. @ Ken:

    Whatever we do in the world by way of occupation is not as such a spiritual ministry.

    Well this runs directly counter to the teaching of my Lutheran church (which is officially comp, BTW), but okay. Vocation is a thing where I come from.

  130. Gram3 wrote:

    Why would an assignment of an inferior rank solely due to one’s DNA not trigger an emotional response in a rational human being subjected to it? Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

    I’d wager if the circumstances were such that an inferior rank was assigned to the male, an emotional response would be understood. Experience is a great teacher!

  131. @ Ken:

    What I still don’t get is why this overreaction? It triggers an emotional response I just don’t get.

    Probably because, as a man, you will never be on the receiving end of the blanket gender-wide (allegedly) divinely mandated shut-out order (and frankly you never quite know exactly which jobs will be included in that shut-out order because it changes with every comp you talk to), will never be told that you have to submit to someone’s abuse just because you have a vagina, will never be told that you are ontologically inferior to the other half of the human race, etc. Don’t read me wrong, I totally get why you wouldn’t get it, because you probably never have been, are not currently, and never will be put in that situation. Try putting yourself in the other half’s shoes for a bit.

    And the thing about being ontologically inferior? For me it doesn’t derive from ESS (I think it’s completely inappropriate for anybody comp or egal to drag the Trinity into a gender roles debate). It derives from the fact that CBMW published a paper trying to defend the idea that women will continue to submit in heaven. Except that that drags submission out of the “functional role” space and into “essential ontological nature” space, which makes women inherently inferior to men on the nature level.

    And FWIW, I have seen even comps express distaste for how Ware expressed his thoughts on the whole “derivative image” thing. I think that’s treading a pretty dangerous road because, even if Ware didn’t mean that as ontological subordination, a lot of people will think he did. With egals, all that will do is make them mad. But with comps, it will result in men teaching women that they are congenitally inferior to them. Just like whites used to teach blacks. Which is wrong.

  132. Hester wrote:

    Probably because, as a man, you will never be on the receiving end of the blanket gender-wide (allegedly) divinely mandated shut-out order (and frankly you never quite know exactly which jobs will be included in that shut-out order because it changes with every comp you talk to),

    For example, one young woman filled in for the absent young adults Bible study leader. One Type A (for arrogant) male in the group, sent everyone emails asking if they felt uncomfortable listening to a woman because he did.

  133. To our readers
    I am walking through the 200+page report from GRACE and will review it here tomorrow. This is truly an historic event in the history of the IFB as well as evangelicalism.

  134. Let’s have some fun.

    Where did Eve get her female DNA and her mitochondrial DNA if she was only derived from Adam, a male. If she was only derived from Adam then she would be a clone and obviously a male, which is not what the story says. Well, maybe Adam was both male and female at the same time and God actually separated him into two persons? This has been suggested. Only that would mean that Eve was actually created at the same time and as a part of Adam-which is not what the story says or what Paul says. The idea of Adam created first would fall apart. Or maybe Eve’s formation was both derivative (the rib thing) and also de novo created (the DNA thing) but that would certainly play havoc with some theological theories which require that Eve was only derivative and not separately created. Or maybe Eve was zapped into existence, but again that is not the story. It looks like there is no way around saying that Eve could not have been solely derived from Adam; there has to be more to the story. Or else we have to understand some elements of the story differently.

    I will omit the question of where did Jesus get his male DNA if he got his body and his human nature from Mary and his divine nature from the Father? The thing is, though, surely nobody is saying that Jesus is derived from Mary, and surely nobody is ruling out more to the story of the incarnation than that. Of course, the Son is not created but rather begotten, so we do not say this was a creative event but rather an incarnational event, so where did the DNA come from? We have ruled out a human father and we have ruled out a creation event, so where does that leave us? It is an interesting question.

    Hey, guys. I am a believer. I just don’t think we have to hide from all the questions.

  135. dee wrote:

    For example, one young woman filled in for the absent young adults Bible study leader. One Type A (for arrogant) male in the group, sent everyone emails asking if they felt uncomfortable listening to a woman because he did.

    Well, a couple of times Gramp3 was really sick while he was teaching an ongoing SS class. I wrote the lessons for him because he was too ill to prepare them. It seems to me that is what being a “helper” is or should be. Just like he “helps” me all the time with all kinds of things. But if the Gospel Glitterati fanboys at my former church knew I had written the lessons, they would have seizures and probably want to fumigate the room for XX cooties or possibly exorcise the XX influence I had as a female indirectly teaching men. Not sure if that is a real violation according to the Grudem acceptable roles list, but…

  136. Piper discerns that the language used to describe God speaking was figurative. Gee, I wonder what his criteria were!!!!!

  137. Nancy wrote:

    The idea of Adam created first would fall apart. Or maybe Eve’s formation was both derivative (the rib thing) and also de novo created (the DNA thing) but that would certainly play havoc with some theological theories which require that Eve was only derivative and not separately created.

    Well, if Eve was a derivative creation of Adam, then Adam was a derivative creation of dust. Adam had no more to do with Eve’s creation that he did his own or, for that matter, than dust did with Adam’s creation, despite the pontifications and speculations of any of the “complementarians.” Adam had precisely zero to do with Eve’s creation from his “side part.” But the comps must always and ever make a male the hero of the story rather than keeping the male Seed of the Woman the Hero of the Story.

    It seems to me that by the traditional reading, Adam and Eve were both de novo ensouled creations. Now, if the comps want to say that Adam is derived from dust while Eve is derived from formed dust (Adam) then, OK, but so what? Don’t see how that helps their case. The textual narrative leaves a lot of holes, but those holes are not left there for us to speculatively fill, ISTM.

    The DNA question is an interesting one, though I don’t think we can know how the Incarnation happened or even precisely what happened. When it comes to the Incarnation, I just don’t try to understand but accept. By faith.

    As Hester (I think) pointed out, the question of persons whose genetic inheritance does not fit their neat little pink and blue boxes is a Comp Stumper. Tried that with a couple of them. Awkward… A reasonable person would stop and think about the implications of what they so confidently assert and the limits of their understanding, but no, that did not happen.

  138. This is kind of off topic, but not really. Can someone help me out?

    I read a great analysis that discussed how the restrictions on women in the church were formerly justified by arguing that women were in fact inferior to men (with plenty of quotes from church fathers to prove it) and that modern day complementarians have invented a whole new set of justifications because the old ones just won’t fly. It went on to show that this means that modern comp teaching has no basis in tradition, because it’s a completely different argument, even if the end result is the same.

    Much to my chagrin, I lost the bookmark and have since been unable to locate the article with Google (oh, how hard it is to search for something obscure for which you don’t have super-specific terminology). Does this ring a bell with anyone here?

    (Of course, as we’ve been discussing here, the women being inferior / weak minded / too emotional thing does creep back into the argumentation, as Ken has so helpfully illustrated. But that’s beyond the scope of the article in question, at least as I remember it…)

  139. Gram3 wrote:

    As Hester (I think) pointed out, the question of persons whose genetic inheritance does not fit their neat little pink and blue boxes is a Comp Stumper. Tried that with a couple of them. Awkward… A reasonable person would stop and think about the implications of what they so confidently assert and the limits of their understanding, but no, that did not happen.

    Yep. When I’ve brought up intersex people, my opposites in the comp debate attacked me for defending marriage equality. It’s hard to have a discussion when they can’t even keep their arguments straight (no pun intended, well, ok, maybe it was…).

  140. @ Ken:
    I cannot believe that you keep clinging to a notion of “order” that simply isn’t there. You’re trying to make a book that was never, ever meant to be an instruction manual of procedural and moral protocol into exactly that.

    There is no divine hierarchy, and Christ is NOT eternally subordinate to the Father. Ehst you’re propoding sounds much closer to mainstream Mormon belief than you realise. How sad.

  141. We are having a similar controversy over women preachers in my own Church of Christ denomination. A young woman has been hired as a preaching intern at a Church of Christ, and many Church of Christers–including a close friend of mine–have said flat out that she is violating Scripture by doing so.

    I don’t know what to think. I am SO TIRED of all of the bickering and fighting going on in Christendom. I have said before that it seems like everyone believes they are right and can “prove” it by Scripture . . .and if we are supposed to base our lives on Scripture, how do we know if the people using Scripture are lying or telling the truth?

  142. Nancy wrote:

    There used to be a thing that was taught, that one could not rely on one’s own conscience because the conscience has been corrupted and could not be trusted on its own.

    I’m well aware. Standard Reformed doctrine. Luther was no slouch either with the concept of total corruption in his book Bondage of the Will). Personally, I think that Erasmus refuted Luther quite handily in his diatribes.
    As you can well guess, I believe in no such thing as total depravity.

  143. @ numo:
    Oh, and…what you claim is a divinely-appointed hierarchical system is an invention by one Bill Gothard, created ex nihilom (almost) from his own imagination and assorted dust motes that just hsppened to be floating around in the air on the dat he had his Great Revelation of god’s Chain of Command. Notice that i didn’t capitalize thd G in “god.” I think his god is is own vadtly ovetinflated sense of self-importance, based at least partly on his physical attributes.

  144. Hester wrote:

    I have family in Mechanicsville / Lisbon / Mt. Vernon / Cedar Rapids going back to about the 1860s.

    Small world. I grew up in that area. Lived there until 1981. Now a cheese head. Cheers!

  145. @ Josh:

    When I’ve brought up intersex people, my opposites in the comp debate attacked me for defending marriage equality.

    Which just goes to show that they don’t understand the basic question at issue at all.

  146. @ Doug:

    I grew up in that area.

    I’ve only visited (my grandma moved to southern MN and my family now lives in CT). If this wasn’t a public forum I’d ask your last name, because now I’m really curious to know if you’re related to me (since as you know the towns around there are not real big).

  147. Muff Potter wrote:

    As you can well guess, I believe in no such thing as total depravity.

    No. Me neither. Though I have know a few people that made me wonder….(kidding!)

  148. Regarding:

    Apparently men have been redeemed to live in such a way that they will reflect God’s authority in the home, workplace and church. It looks like women in the workplace do not need unifying relationships in order to reflect the authority and glory of God. This is just a guy thing.

    This is pertinent and may be of interest:

    Why are Working Women Starting to Unplug from Their Churches?
    http://blog.tifwe.org/working-women-unplugging-from-church/

    A quote or two:

    “We [church-going Christians] may not realize that half of the women in the church are working women, because they are camouflaged.

    “And what about the single women who don’t get married until later in life? They don’t fit into the different affinity groups: “moms”, “married”, “divorced.” And the “singles” are often college-aged/recent graduates that don’t relate to them either.

    … “Barna and others say as many as 27% of professional Christian women are starting to choose to unplug from church all together. Why is that?

    [the rest of their page cites several reasons why women, especially singles and/or working women are leaving church]

  149. numo wrote:

    You’re trying to make a book that was never, ever meant to be an instruction manual of procedural and moral protocol into exactly that.

    Please read this as a mixture of sarcasm and non-sarcasm.

    But numo, if we cannot trust ourselves at all, and we cannot trust God for sure, what are we to do? I have an idea, let’s find some way to concoct an elaborate set of rules and understandings and traditions and such and then we can feel if not really safe at least less afraid. Oops, back to the old fear thing. But I guess fear is not so bad if you use it to control people and get rich in the process. What a mess. Makes me want to apologize to God for how people do.

  150. XianJaneway wrote:

    he first time I saw Piper speak in person, he pronounced w/ grave authority that God does NOT ever speak audibly to people, because “God does not have vocal chords.”

    God spoke to some false prophet through a donkey, and to Moses through a burning bush, and he was always sending angels to talk to people.

    When some kid (Samuel?) was a kid living around the Temple, he heard God call his name at night. The kid didn’t know at first it was God until an older guy told him it was God.

    I’m not sure why Piper finds it relevant if God has vocal cords or not, since God (as recorded in Scripture) yaks to people in other ways. I mean, lack of physical vocal cords didn’t prevent him from communicating with people in the Old Testament.

  151. Hester wrote:

    I’m really curious to know if you’re related to me

    I am almost certainly not, since I was not born there but moved there from Des Moines (a.k.a. Sin City) as a small child. But hey, it’s nice to know someone who knows the area. 🙂

  152. @ The Nightowl:

    😯 Wow. WOW. What that church/preacher did to you was tacky to a point I don’t even know what to say. And how entitled they feel.

    Your story is either a tie, or close second, IMO, to the original post about the church that refused to bury the deceased elderly lady who had been to the same church her whole life and had not tithed enough to the satisfaction of the preacher so they refused to provide her a funeral.

  153. Nancy wrote:

    Muff Potter wrote:
    As you can well guess, I believe in no such thing as total depravity.
    No. Me neither. Though I have know a few people that made me wonder….(kidding!)

    As does anyone who has had a teenage boy living under their roof… (No offense C.M.)

  154. Ken wrote:

    I don’t like it if it is used to follow the unisex culture around us, as though male and female are synonyms

    That’s not how Christian gender egalitarians use the term egaliarian.

    However, that fact doesn’t stop some complementarians from creating a strawman argument and saying that egalitarians think men and women are totally identical in every way (which is not what they believe).

  155. Gram3 wrote:

    If the argument is made from Creation Order, and it is, then the hierarchy should apply in all spheres. Picking and choosing is not being consistent.

    I’ve noticed that some of the complmentarians don’t even follow their own interpretation on other points.

    For example, they like to point to the verse in Ephesians that talks about wives submitting to husbands.

    There is a verse one or two before that which speaks in general terms of all believers submitting to all other believers (complementarians tend to ignore that verse).

    I am past 40 and have never married. There is no specific verse saying never-married (single) women must submit to married men, but some complementarians think even single women should find a man to submit to (another woman’s husband or a church elder).

    You have other complementarians, even real staunch ones like Mark Driscoll, who say no, a woman is only supposed to submit to her personal husband, not to another woman’s husband.

    They can’t even agree on this.

    And even though the Bible does not have a specific mention of single women submitting to any man, they make it up and say single women have to submit to men, and they pick and choose which man (church elder, trusted family friend, preacher, whomever).

  156. Nancy wrote:

    Where did Eve get her female DNA and her mitochondrial DNA if she was only derived from Adam, a male. If she was only derived from Adam then she would be a clone and obviously a male, which is not what the story says.

    i love the questions that you are asking. You sound exactly like me.

  157. Daisy wrote:

    I am past 40 and have never married. There is no specific verse saying never-married (single) women must submit to married men, but some complementarians think even single women should find a man to submit to (another woman’s husband or a church elder)

    My husband is available for a small love offering. 🙂

  158. @ dee:
    This was a Lutheran church – not the type you’d think would sink to such tactics. In the years since I’ve attended the full theological spectrum of churches, had the regular sermons from all on giving to the church, but nothing so bold as that.

  159. My grandmother was 89 when she died. You can imagine how the buying power of her fixed income had shrunk over the years since her retirement. She continued contributing to the church, but the pastor took her aside and told her that the church did not expect their senior members to go on contributing indefinitely. He wanted to make sure she could afford to meet her basic needs. When she became bedridden, he visited her regularly. When she died, he did a wonderful job with the service.

  160. Marsha wrote:

    He wanted to make sure she could afford to meet her basic needs. When she became bedridden, he visited her regularly. When she died, he did a wonderful job with the service.

    I’m guessing this wasn’t a ‘megachurch’, ‘led’ by a ‘celebrity pastor’.

  161. @ Daisy:

    Piper says that all women should exhibit proper deference to all males. Let that sink in for a moment. Deference is due because of a particular physical configuration, not due to character or virtue or achievement or anything noble. Just because he is male, a male is entitled to deference from all females.

    Try plugging a few inconvenient values into the expression Y>X and see if it makes any sense when the Y value is not virtuous and the X value is virtuous.

    The system is absurd, ad hoc, made up, imaginary wishful thinking and projection. And Piper talks about mature masculinity and mature femininity. The Bible, on the other hand, talks about maturing into the the likeness of Christ. Piper is a master manipulator of emotion and exploiter of good intentions. I hope you are right that people are waking up.

  162. Doug wrote:

    Muff Potter wrote:
    As you can well guess, I believe in no such thing as total depravity.
    No. Me neither. Though I have know a few people that made me wonder….(kidding!)

    As does anyone who has had a teenage boy living under their roof… (No offense C.M.)

    For your information, my mom has repeatedly said that I was the easiest to raise out of her 4 kids. 🙂

  163. Gram3 wrote:

    Piper is a master manipulator of emotion and exploiter of good intentions.

    As popular as Piper is, he would’ve been even more famous if he’d decided to become an actor instead of a pastor.

  164. Daisy wrote:

    I’m not sure why Piper finds it relevant if God has vocal cords or not, since God (as recorded in Scripture) yaks to people in other ways. I mean, lack of physical vocal cords didn’t prevent him from communicating with people in the Old Testament.

    I’m thinking it’s an outgrowth of the excessively literal thinking found in some sectors of evangelical Protestantism. For me, if God is God, God can use all sorts of methods to speak to people and isn’t limited to vocal cords.

  165. dee wrote:

    Let me make one other observation that deals with equal but separate. Why is it that I never see a trash collector, meter reader, etc. ever put in a position as elder in a *successful* church. They always choose lawyers, financial experts,and socially prominent men. If we are truly all *equal* in the eye of God, then why the discrimination in terms of social status amongst men.?

    Actually, one of the elders at my church really is a trash collector! He is also a very gifted preacher. But alas, we are not a “successful” church. lol

  166. Janey wrote:

    In college, I was told by another student that I had to do what he wanted me to do because he was the male.

    The Bible doesn’t teach unilateral male authority over all women. That is bizarre he feels that way.

    Besides that, I wonder, do these types of guys ever consider that a lot of women (and men), don’t share their views? You have Non Christian (and some Christian) people who don’t share their “man should be in charge of every women” stance.

    What does this guy you were talking about do when confronted with say, an atheist, Hindu, or Muslim woman who doesn’t give a flying leap what a Christian gender complementarian believes about men/women?

    Or even a Christian woman who doesn’t believe in complementarianism? None of these women are going to go along with what he says just because he thinks the Bible teaches it.

  167. @ The Nightowl:
    What synod, if you don’t mind my asking?

    The LCA church (now ELCA) sends outnumbered offering envelopes to members evety year, but the system is intended to help individual members keep track of their giving, for tax purposes and the like. That some church or other has twisted this into what you describe is, to ssy the leadt, extremely disturbing.

  168. Hester wrote:

    @ Nancy:
    There is a road in Mechanicsville, IA called No Name Street.

    There are 3 towns in my neck of the woods: No Name, Parachute and Silt. They are all withing 40 miles of each other. Then, going south a ways from me, there is Sawpit. And a little further, the town of Telluride, which is a condensed version of the original name, To Hell You Ride.

  169. Hester wrote:

    If that logic were to hold true, then women should have an fundamentally and completely different nature than men. Except that directly contradicts the fact that both sexes are created equally in the image of God. T

    That is exactly what comps want you to believe. That women have a different nature than men.

    the irony of God putting men in charge of women and making it a spiritual creation order thing is that Adam,when we read the literal sense of Genesis, blamed God and Eve for his disobedience.

    Eve admitted that she was deceived. So, if we must have a hierarchy why would the person who was blaming God and the other human, be considered the best for leadership material? (Wink)

    the answer is–there is no creation order for hierarchy. We must remember the animals came before Eve if we are going for the literal reading and want to go down the creation order road.

    They were to be a one flesh union in dominion. where is hierarchy in that? Carolyn Custis James has some excellent scholarship on the word “Ezer” which would be instructive in this conversation.

    Patriarchy is nothing less than a result of sin.

  170. @ Steve Scott:

    Was James Chapter 2 not it their Bibles:

    Ch 2 / 1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.
    2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.
    3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,”
    4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

  171. @ Nancy:

    Nancy, your questions also wreck havoc with the doctrine of imputed guilt. Mary would have inherited the “sin gene” passed down from Adam. And our holy God in the flesh swam around in that sin goo for 9 months?

    Like you, I don’t think questioning thimgs that are taught is bad. :o)

  172. @ Nancy:

    I don’t think most of the people here, or gender egalitarians in general, are arguing what you think they’re arguing.

    I’ve never been one to insist that a woman should be shoved into the role of doctor if she’d rather be a nurse, nor do I believe that roles that have stereotypically been considered “male” are necessarily more important than the ones deemed female.

    What bothers me are situations where a woman has the talent, skill, interest and/or says she has been called by God to do “X” in the church, but the gender comps say, “Your skills, interest and calling are irrelevant, because we feel God prohibits women from doing X in any and all cases, times, and circumstances.”

    I think most people are talking about equality of opportunity, not enforced equality –

    Like where both Little League teams get gold trophies, when one team had a higher score than the other team, but the adults involved didn’t want to hurt the self esteem of the lesser-point team, so both teams get blue ribbons.

    I don’t think that’s what most on this thread are going for. I’m not.

    It would be more apropos in that analogy to say Little League Team A would not allow black children to be on their team on the basis of skin color alone, or Team B would not allow little girls on the team on basis of gender alone, and we’re saying if a black child or girl has the talent or interest to be on the team, they should be allowed to attend try outs with everyone else.

    I’ve also never seen “hyper egalitarianism,” not from Christians, yet I see the same two or three people occasionally make this claim in threads on this blog (that both comps and egalitarians have extremists).
    I’d be interested in seeing concrete examples, and maybe with links to examples, because I’ve honestly never seen any far out there kook egalitarian arguments or points.

  173. Dave A A wrote:

    On Challies.com, commenter Rob asked Tim to explain why he puts out a daily blog (often twice-daily, I notice) for folks outside his church, but won’t pray daily for someone who’s outside his church.
    Sadly, Tim was too busy to reply…..

    That is a good point. Wasn’t Mr Challies also writing quite a number of book reviews? He was writing so many book reviews, people were wondering how and where he had the time to write them all.

  174. Lydia wrote:

    Eve admitted that she was deceived

    I have a theory about how Eve was deceived. Scripture says there are 2 trees in the midst of the garden; the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. When Eve told satan that if they ate from the tree of knowledge, he pointed to the tree of life and said, “surely you will not die.”

    That made perfect sense to her. The question is…is deception a deliberate sin? In other words, does anyone choose to be deceived or is it unintentional?

    She was deceived. She confessed. It was unintentional, not deliberate. She is warned in a prophetic word that if she turns toward Adam, he will rule over her. She receives the promise of the redeemer from her seed.

    Adam’s sin, OTOH is a deliberate, intentional disobedience to God’s command. So as a result of that disobedience, he is “rewarded” with authority??? Makes no sense whatever.

  175. Gram3 wrote:

    They teach that God ordains one class of humans to be Leaders and another class to be Followers and that the Followers need Leaders. The Followers can *never* be leaders.

    Some gender comps extend this to the afterlife. There was an article about it on CBMW site.

    Even though Jesus says there is no marriage in afterlife, some comps teach there is, and they teach women will be under male authority in eternity, or at least the married ladies to whomever their husbands are/were (what do divorced women do, how do they submit to all ex husbands at the same time?). It’s very Mormon-ish.

  176. Nancy wrote:

    The leadership for sure, but I do not personally know that many people who bought into the comp theology in practice. I have known a bunch of mean people, male and female, but not based on any particular theology.

    I think there are lots of Christians who have bought into it, and they are nice people, not mean, like my mother, though I don’t know if they are aware of the phrase “gender complementarian.”

    My mother was taught that the Bible teaches a male over female authority perspective. My mom thought it was unbiblical or inappropriate or unseemly for a woman to be a leader in politics, on the job, or in a marriage.

    I was certainly encouraged by her to view life, world, and gender the same way. I tried to, and it’s one reason of a few my life is messed up. I’m having to unlearn a lot of the things my well meaning (yet wrong) mother taught me to believe.

    Some Christians – who are warm, fuzzy loving types, like my mother – just believe that men should be in charge. People like my mother are uncomfortable with even the ideal of female leadership in churches, jobs, politics, marriage, let alone in actual practice.

    I used to run into these types of people at various Bible churches I attended or visited. They were not mean, horrible people, but sincerely believed God designed men to be in charge and women to be sweet, cookie baking, June Cleaver, house wives.

    Then there are other types of Christians who I think do have nefarious motives, who are deliberately using gender comp teachings to keep women out of positions of influence, because they are power hungry (mean) people.

  177. P.S.
    I wrote,

    “I think there are lots of Christians who have bought into it, and they are nice people, not mean, like my mother,”

    That came out kind of wrong.

    What I meant to say is that my mother was a very nice, loving, sweet, traditional woman, she was the opposite of mean, but my wording may sound like the opposite.

  178. __

    Hey Nancy ,

    Mary could have simply been a biological ‘host’

    The Almighty has His own purpses.

    yep.

    i am sure He got it right however He chose.

    (grin)

    Sopy

  179. __

    Hey Nancy ,

    He (the Almighty) did say that the ‘seed’ of the woman woulld bruise his (the serpent’s) head.

    hope that helps.

  180. Daisy wrote:

    Some gender comps extend this to the afterlife. There was an article about it on CBMW site.

    Right. But here’s the game they play with stuff like that and Ware’s derivative image teaching. They say, “Well, I certainly don’t believe that” but they never separate from the movement, so I think it is legitimate to tag them with the wacky stuff, too.

    They want no responsibility for the fringe teachings or for certain persons who have become impolite to mention in their circles. But they *do* want the benefits of being the ones in the *in* crowd and those who get to ride the Gospel Glitterati Gravy Train to Glory. Personal courage and initiative is not in great supply, I’ve found. Going along while pretending not to support the wackies means that you really are supporting the wackies for all practical purposes.

  181.   __

    Conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ?

    hmmm…

    Datz what da good book sayz.

    What say ye?

  182. Dave A A wrote:

    Can you imagine a disclaimer at Challies.com, “Do not read this blog! Read only content produced by your *localchurch*!

    At Julie Anne’s blog, she had a post or two months ago about a gender complementarian (I think it was Tony Miano?) who said on one of his blogs, facebook posts, or radio shows, that women, Christian bloggers should clearly identify themselves as being a woman on their blog.

    He feels that is necessary so that men Christian readers would not inadvertently be giving credence to what a woman blogger is writing, they might be mistakenly or ignorantly submitting to a woman’s authority if they didn’t know the blogger is a woman.

  183. @ Ken:

    I don’t think God is wanting humans to be so concerned about what human has rank over whatever other human.

    Some of this is permanent anyhow: the Bible says in the NT that humans shall judge the angels one day, that humanity has only temporarily been made lower than the angels.

  184. My post above:
    I meant to say, Some of this stuff is NOT permanent.
    I left out the word “not”

  185.   __

    I support da Wartburg Watch wacky blog Queens for all practical purposes.

    (grin)

    Lead, follow, or get outa da way…

    Bump.

    —> their ‘eye’ is upon the victims of sexual abuse.

    Yep.

    To bind their wounds, to tell their stories, and to cry for justice. (among other things…) 🙂

    Does such a thngy (justice) exist?

    hmmm…

    Where is the Calvary?

    …they (TWW) are helping us ta find out,

    ATB

    Sopy
    __
    “Questions”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_cqy_V1SlQ

    ;~)

  186. dee wrote:

    For example, one young woman filled in for the absent young adults Bible study leader. One Type A (for arrogant) male in the group, sent everyone emails asking if they felt uncomfortable listening to a woman because he did.

    Ya know, type ‘A’ can also stand for the exit chute at the lower end of the alimentary canal, which in some cases, is a better descriptor. I had a run-in with such a type A male in one of the last churches I attended after I came out as a dissident.

  187. @ Daisy:

    I’ve also never seen “hyper egalitarianism,” not from Christians, yet I see the same two or three people occasionally make this claim in threads on this blog (that both comps and egalitarians have extremists). I’d be interested in seeing concrete examples, and maybe with links to examples, because I’ve honestly never seen any far out there kook egalitarian arguments or points.

    Same here. I’ve seen lots of folks claim that egalitarians believe men and women are identical in every way, but I’ve never actually heard an egalitarian say that. Personally I don’t have a problem with men and women being different, as long as we can demonstrate that the difference is actually real, and not just some stereotype cooked up to further someone’s agenda or reinforce an arbitrary social construct. Which means I pretty much demand citations for that kind of thing.

    So if, say, somebody claims that women are better at learning language and they can back it up with study data, great. If they claim that women are better at cooking, and the response I get is “but it’s just common sense, I mean otherwise that wouldn’t be their traditional role and besides my mom made a mean grilled cheese,” that’s just pure anecdata and therefore a pretty bad argument. And if all I get is an appeal to conspiracy (“there REALLY ARE differences but the FEMINAZIS are HIDING THEM FROM US!!!!!” – which BTW was a real argument someone used on me recently), then I’m going to become suspicious of other things they say too, because you usually can’t stoop to that level of flagrant logical fallacy and non-argumentation without it affecting other stuff.

  188. Have not been here for awhile, and thoroughly enjoyed this post and these comments. Gram3, love your contributions!

  189. The 93 year old women who coukdnt receive Christian burial reminds me that we may be heading back to the good old days when people had to pay to have reserve a pew, this is not the same thing as a pew, but it is a parallel. Boston’s Tremont Temple Baptist Church had shops rented within its building to help defray the cost of people sitting in its pews. I don’t know what the story was for burials in the 1800s.

  190. Gram3 wrote:

    As Hester (I think) pointed out, the question of persons whose genetic inheritance does not fit their neat little pink and blue boxes is a Comp Stumper. Tried that with a couple of them.

    Comps generally do not know what to do about never married, childless adults. Never married, childless adults don’t fit the majority of their paradigm.

    Complementarians only see women as being wives and mothers, hence, they are constantly writing blog posts, books, and giving sermons about why and how a woman should submit to her husband. How does that apply to women who never marry? They have nothing to say to such women.

  191. @ Josh:

    I don’t think this is exactly what you’re thinking of, but IMO, it’s somewhat similar:

    “10 reasons why men shouldn’t be ordained”
    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/11/10-reasons-why-men-shouldnt-be-ordained/

    I won’t copy the whole list, but here are a few items:

    5. Some men are handsome, and this will distract women worshipers.

    7. Man was created before woman, obviously as a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

    2. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was betrayed by a man. His lack of faith and ensuing punishment remind us of the subordinated position that all men should take.

  192. @ dee:
    Thank you for the offer (I think?) 🙂

    What does the single woman get in return for the Rent-A-Husband, or Shared-Husband, do they take out the trash on Thursdays, take the car in for an oil change?

    Anyway, some of these complementarian guys are so very hung up that all women everywhere be under a man’s authority, they just make up doctrines to suit their fancy.
    I just do not see any verses that say that single ladies have to be under a man’s authority (outside the early verse in Ephesians that tells everyone to submit to everyone else).

  193. @ mirele:

    There was also a part in the Old Testament where it says a hand – a literal, actual hand belonging to God, I think – appeared out of thin air and wrote on a king’s wall.

    The Bible elsewhere says God is spirit and has no physical body, okay, but apparently God can and does at times take on at least partial physical manifestations (such as the hand on the wall). Did Piper forget that was in the Bible maybe?

    Let me look that up for you. Daniel Chap 5.,
    “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote.”

    The text says King Belteshazzar eventually called Daniel in to translate the text on the wall.

    “But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. 24 Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.”

    Okay, it says “the hand” and not specifically “God’s hand,” but I always understood it to be God himself writing on the wall.

  194. In regards to Tim Challies there are two thoughts I have….

    1. Many evangelicals are masterful of being an epic failures. Only someone like Tim Challies could turn a genuine ministry opportunity into a total failure. He literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Does he realize the opportunity that he missed? Now if the person asking for prayer published a book on humility and hailed from the “happiest place on earth” and published a book about humility…then by all means he’d be drooling at his feet. But in the end the master of discernment cannot even discern a ministry opportunity.

    2. In my story which I published here at TWW I hit bottom in May 2013. It was the darkest and bleakest season of my life as I worked through a challenging situation. I approached about 250/275 (?) churches in California, Montana, and Wisconsin asking for prayer. The bulk of the churches I contacted were in California. Of that only 2 responded to my plea for help. One was the People’s Church..an AOG in Fresno, California whose cared director wrote me a personal email that was stunning and kind. The other was a church in Helena, Montana who had an automated response that kept following up asking if I needed more prayer and asking for an update. While it was automated I felt like someone at least cared. I was disappointed that other places never responded….what a missed ministry opportunity.

  195. Speaking of forgiveness….maybe this can be a plug for my journey of forgiveness! 😀

    http://thewartburgwatch.com/2014/08/11/eagles-story-part-3-how-often-should-you-ask-for-forgiveness-70-x-2/

    I have to share something that is amazing, and one that I want to be remembered for. If I die tomorrow and am killed in an auto accident this is how I want to be remembered. I approached nearly 140 people seeking forgiveness, and owning my part of a mess I made. Plus I also wanted to reach back and make sure that there were no hard feelings from the past lingering.

    Seeking and practicing forgiveness has been so freeing. It’s been amazing and its led to some stunning situations in my life. I have relationships with people today I never thought I’d speak to again. In one case one guy in an Acts 29 church who I decimated with the Problem of Evil and I now talk, text and enjoy each others fellowship. Sometimes in the privacy of my condo I have cried over what has come about due to all this forgiveness and the life that sprung froth. It saddens me that so many Christians can’t practice this and live it out. The life they are missing is incredible.

    But I am still living this out and realizing this in so many ways. This past weekend I traveled from Washington, D.C. to Milwaukee to attend a friend’s wedding. It was a guy I knew, discipled and even at one point set up boundaries with under discipline.
    That was in 2001 or so…. He matured, grew and blossomed into an incredible man and when I heard about how he changed I re-acquainted myself with Mike. We stayed in touch and talked over the years. When he got engaged he I was one of the first people to learn. And from May until December 5, 2014 I longed to watch his wedding knowing all that he has been through. The failed relationships, the heartache, the pain, the phone calls about each girl he met…and now knowing what became of him. So the wedding was in the old Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. I am glad we both practice forgiveness for each other. But it was even deeper, you see everyone who I saw at the wedding except one person I approached and asked for forgiveness from. So I was thrilled to see each person and it was emotionally powerful to re-engage and catch up knowing that each bridge to each person has been mended, and repaired. I also reconciled with one more person which was sweet, so now I am at 137 with about 3-4 people left. I am still working the issues.

    But can you imagine how Christianity would be different if forgiveness were central to the faith? Would evangelicals be known for arrogance, pride, elitism, etc… if they lived and practiced forgiveness?

  196. Hester wrote:

    Probably because, as a man, you will never be on the receiving end of the blanket gender-wide (allegedly) divinely mandated shut-out order (and frankly you never quite know exactly which jobs will be included in that shut-out order … will never be told that you are ontologically inferior to the other half of the human race, …

    I appreciate you answering my question.

    Inequality is endemic in society, this is not just a male/female thing. So whilst I can’t by definition know what it is like to be female, I can and do know what it is like to be ‘unequal’. Some inequality is just, e.g. the lazy don’t deserve to become rich, sometimes it is unjust, your job and livelihood being controlled by the whims of a ‘manager’, or opportunities denied on the basis of ethnicity etc.

    I actually tried (hope I’m not too trying!) to word the post above so as to avoid some of the come-back that followed it. For example, I specifically said regarding the 1 Tim restriction “This is nothing to do with anyone being superior” in order to exclude notions of women or anyone else for that matter being inferior. (Josh please note as well, and don’t put the words ‘weak-minded and too emotional’ in my mouth).

    Let me aske you something: who told you you are inferior if female? I’ll give a clue – he was a liar from the beginning!

    We are agreed, btw, about ESS not being particularly relevant to male/female distinctions in the church and home.

    As for hierarchy and rank: a general and private in the army are equal under the law. They do not, however, have the same rank, nor the same level of responsibility. This is the underyling concept behind the word mostly translated as ‘submit’, and it too does not include the notion of inferiority. The church members submit to the leaders. When all the NT checks and balances are in place, this flat hierarchy is not some kind of cultic authority structure.

  197. @ Sopwith:

    How can it be her “seed” if she was only a surrogate, as you suggested? If it was her “seed” then the catholics may have a point in venerating her, perhaps? If it was only her “seed”, though we do not really know what that means, why was it not female, assuming “seed” means biological offspring. If there was a creative act of God why would we insist that it was not so, and the son was only begotten and not created? I am saying that our current theological explanations do not cover all the questions.

    You also seem to be saying that, since you suggested surrogacy (host) as a possible explanation.

  198. Ken wrote:

    I actually tried (hope I’m not too trying!) to word the post above so as to avoid some of the come-back that followed it.

    Ken, with all due respect, all the flowery words and power structure comparisons designed to (possibly) pacify women, don’t work. The church is not a military organization, a government agency, or a corporation that requires a CEO with levels of authority and/or responsibility.

    The church is an assembly of God’s people who are called to represent the love of God for His people in showing no partiality of gender or ethnicity. We are to reflect our love for one another by honoring each member of the body in such a way that does not marginalize some and elevates others. In doing so, we reflect the ways of the world in it’s desire for power and authority. It’s a sad state we find ourselves in.

    And women are smart enough to see through the flowery words btw.

  199. Marsha wrote:

    My grandmother was 89 when she died. You can imagine how the buying power of her fixed income had shrunk over the years since her retirement. She continued contributing to the church, but the pastor took her aside and told her that the church did not expect their senior members to go on contributing indefinitely. He wanted to make sure she could afford to meet her basic needs. When she became bedridden, he visited her regularly. When she died, he did a wonderful job with the service.

    Marsha….I have got to ask the denomination…..I am willing to bet a dollar they were not SBC….

  200. Ken wrote:

    As for hierarchy and rank: a general and private in the army are equal under the law. They do not, however, have the same rank, nor the same level of responsibility.

    This is applying Western thinking to the first century. Jesus made it clear not to follow the Gentile chain of being structure which was all about rank. There was no voluntary submission.

    Those in the Body are to submit to one another.

  201. Ken wrote:

    As for hierarchy and rank: a general and private in the army are equal under the law. They do not, however, have the same rank, nor the same level of responsibility.

    However, that private, given the right circumstances, could be a general one day. A woman can never be a pastor or an elder. You are comparing two things which are not equal.

    Ken wrote:

    who told you you are inferior if female? I’ll give a clue – he was a liar from the beginning!

    By relegating women to the planning potlucks and not allowing them to participate in the planning of the direction of the church, the church male leadership is telling women they are inferior.

  202. Normally don’t care for Challies but I get what his point is. The “demand” for ministry services on church staff can be pretty high. And believe me, people can be demanding. At some point you gotta be able to say no and be at peace with the fact you can’t do everything for everyone.

    However you can’t draw a line at “local church member” and then refuse to serve anyone beyond that. That is legalistic. In all things we must be sensitive to what God may be doing, including random people calling the office. I think that’s the part Challies left out and is rubbing people the wrong way.

  203. Hester wrote:

    LOL

    That nickname is actually shorted from “Sin City of the Prairie”, which refers to Des Moines famous (or infamous) Center Street, and the ubiquitous jazz joints and key clubs which were open all night in the 1960’s.

    Key clubs were bars where patrons could store their own hard liquor in a lock box, only to be opened after 2:00 AM. They became very popular with touring jazz musicians who liked the late night (or early morning) jam sessions.

    Maybe that’s why I am partial to jazz. It must be in my DNA. 🙂

  204. @ Gram3:
    Let me say that in talking about an ’emotional overreaction’, I was specifically refering to the comments on the link you sent, giving an example from there, not anyone commenting here. I like the people here! 🙂

    For your own thinking, can I try to illustrate why I see an element of spiritual warfare in the gender roles in church debate? It’s one of the reasons I am so stubborn about the subject.

    The angelic realm needs to visibly see women not trying to be men and vice versa. “For this reason a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” Worrying about the word symbol is to get sidetracked; the important thing is women are authorised, as recipients of the outpoured Holy Spirit along with men, to pray and prophesy.

    The 1 Tim 2 verses. Not being teachers of men but learning, not having authority but in ‘full submission’. To prevent mini-Gen 3’s happening again. Who did Satan in the form of the serpent go for? The pagan idolatry of the surrounding culture is a specific example of this principle still at work.

    There then comes the general warning about “giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons”.

    Later, discussing widows Paul says “So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, rule their households, and give the enemy no occasion to revile us. For some have already strayed after Satan.”

    In Titus Paul says ” Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited.” The last phrase is noteworthy.

    I know there are balancing commands for men; Paul’s very practical instructions, especially in the last two references, are part of the warfare against spiritual attack and deception, and help explain the meaning of women ‘being saved through child-bearing’.

    Compare this with the attitude of the secular culture around us (at least in the UK). There is a denigration of responsible fatherhood, and a devaluing of family life, and especially of women who give up work to look after children. This is seen as second best, and the very thought of having children rather than a high-flying career is anathema to some feminists.

  205. Ken wrote:

    the very thought of having children rather than a high-flying career is anathema to some feminists.

    I do not see things like you do in most of what you say, but on this issue there is much division in attitude in some areas on which I would like to comment. And, of course, I think that everybody (except me of course) is wrong on this point.

    The hyper-comps are wrong in a lot of ways. For example, they sometimes get into quiverfull (as many children as biologically possible regardless of the circumstances) and home school (merely to isolate and indoctrinate not necessarily for a better academic opportunity) and levels of “submission” which put the lie to something in one of your quotes (“rule their households.”) The fact that this plunges some families into both poverty and ignorance and all that goes with that is immaterial to their hyper-comp arguments. And their disdain for people who do not or can not follow this model is inexcusable in christians.

    Or else people think that the high-flying career, using your terminology, is the the most worthy goal even if it means never marry but especially if it means no (or as few as possible) children. Now this is a particularly hot issue with me. For these people not just any career is good enough. It has to be something really big, like CEO of something or superior court judge or such. So in their thinking only the very few (male or female) have achieved this pinnacle of success and all the rest of the population has somehow fallen short. And they are willing to urge women to sacrifice all (marriage, kids, career of choice, even the proverbial 40 hour week with time left over for a life of choice) if it enables the top few percent to get some really top (read money and power) job. I cannot remotely tolerate this elitist attitude. I think they are willing to sacrifice the many for the sake of seeing their so-called ideal achieved by the very few. And I think this is an idolatrous worship of money and power and prestige.

  206. Ken wrote:

    Let me say that in talking about an ‘emotional overreaction’, I was specifically refering to the comments on the link you sent,

    I don’t remember any emotional overreaction in those comments. There was commentary about how ridiculous Ware’s points are. They are misinterpretations, bare assertions, eisegesis, and “proofs” that are refuted by the actions of God himself. If you find that sort of thinking persuasive, then I don’t know what to say. I and the people there are the ones who are trying to soberly reason from scripture alone.

    The angelic realm needs to visibly see women not trying to be men and vice versa. “For this reason a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” Worrying about the word symbol is to get sidetracked;

    You need to back up your interpretation of what the angels need to see with some scripture. That *may* be what Paul is talking about, but it may not be. It is the narrative put out by the comps. I must disagree regarding worrying about “symbol of” being added to the text. Those words are not there in the text. They were put there deliberately by the translators and kept there deliberately by Grudem as editor at the ESV. They were inserted into the text by a human because the words that God inspired did not make “sense” within a patriarchal fallen human system. Thus the words were added so that the words of the Holy Spirit agreed with the fallen human system. Doing things like that to the text may be fine to you and may be a “distraction” but I don’t think we have any authority as humans to add to God’s word or to take away from it. I think that adulterating God’s words is not an unimportant “distraction” but is rather more important than that.

    The 1 Tim 2 verses. Not being teachers of men but learning, not having authority but in ‘full submission’. To prevent mini-Gen 3’s happening again. Who did Satan in the form of the serpent go for? The pagan idolatry of the surrounding culture is a specific example of this principle still at work.

    Why don’t you quote the actual text? Paul commands that women be allowed to learn. He tells them to learn quietly and submissively before their teachers. Should men be rowdy and disruptive or should they learn quietly and submissively from teachers as well? The point is that women, contrary to historical practice, were being not only permitted by commanded to learn! That is noteworthy.

    Your speculation about what happened in Genesis 3 is not in the text. I do not know and neither do you why the serpent approached Eve first. There are multiple speculations, all of which must not matter since God did not reveal that information. You are implying that the Fall occurred because Eve “taught” Adam. That is not what the text tells us. The text tells us that Eve was deceived by the serpent. The text tells us that Adam listened to his wife rather than to God’s words to him. The point is not that Adam sinned by listening to his wife but that he sinned by listening to someone (angelic or human) other than God himself. Let me just say here that all who listen to the words of humans rather than God’s words are the ones who are putting themselves in a “mini-Genesis 3” situation. ISTM that Grudem’s brazen additions to the text might fit your scenario.

    The pagan idolatry is a manifestation of this phenomenon: humans seeking to make gods in their own images for their own purposes. Paganism has nothing to do in itself with men being in authority over women or women over men. You are confusing different issues. The paganism of Ephesus, which I believe Paul references in 1 Timothy, was one of female supremacy and disparagement of males and marriage and childbearing.

    None of these pagan teachings is consistent with the Christian faith, and Paul instructs Timothy to silence those false female teachers at Ephesus. He restates the actual events of creation that contradict the pagan Artemis religion. Those false teachers, like all false teachers, are teaching doctrines of demons. I think that patriarchy is a doctrine of demons because it sets one human above another. A woman teaching or being in authority over a man is not a doctrine of demons. If you want to make that kind of accusation, you need to back it up with some textual evidence.

    Obviously, some of the women at Ephesus *had* strayed after Satan by teaching the indigenous religion of Artemis. That’s why they were teaching false doctrines. There is nothing magical or mystical here, nor is this is difficult to understand. Paul is making a straightforward point. Don’t listen to Satan, listen to sound teaching. That is the lesson from the Fall, not “don’t listen to women.”

    Were women the cause of the other false teaching in the Bible? If there were male false teachers, then why are men not barred from being teachers of women? They are straying after Satan and pursuing doctrines of demons. Let’s be consistent with our application or else let’s just be frank about teaching that women are inferior and must not be listened to.

    In Titus Paul says ” Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited.” The last phrase is noteworthy.

    I agree that the last phrase is noteworthy. That is the point: Don’t bring shame on the name of Christ by the way we conduct ourselves. That is the point in 1 Corinthians 11 with respect to personal conduct and exercise of the spiritual gifts and practice at the table. Are men not to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive in the Kingdom? For some reason, you do not want to take account of shame and honor cultures. If you would, a lot of things would make sense without twisting the text like the comps do to make it fit Western (Greek) presuppositions about male and female.

    I know there are balancing commands for men; Paul’s very practical instructions, especially in the last two references, are part of the warfare against spiritual attack and deception, and help explain the meaning of women ‘being saved through child-bearing’.

    I have no idea what you mean by this. It sounds like you are going in the direction of Kostenberger and Schreiner. Their argument is a gigantic circular argument cloaked in pious theological academic-speak. “Woman, don’t get uppity. Stay in your place or you are going to let Satan in the door.” That is superstition, even if they do have Ph.D. after their names. That is not Kingdom thinking.

    There is a denigration of responsible fatherhood, and a devaluing of family life, and especially of women who give up work to look after children. This is seen as second best, and the very thought of having children rather than a high-flying career is anathema to some feminists.

    I agree that cultural conditions do not favor responsible fatherhood or responsibility of any kind. I disagree that the state of society is the result of women being able to pursue careers. I am not an apologist for “some feminists.” I don’t believe that staying at home is second best. I have had a very traditional life and a very good life. Not all women are as privileged as I have been.

    It is a serious error to conflate “some feminists” who believe “having children rather than a high-flying career is anathema” with women like me who want recognition of our full rights as sons which were bought by the blood of Christ. I believe you need to think through that a bit more and be a bit more chaste regarding how you make connections between various female viewpoints and the assumptions you make regarding why various females hold their views.

  207. Nancy wrote:

    . I cannot remotely tolerate this elitist attitude. I think they are willing to sacrifice the many for the sake of seeing their so-called ideal achieved by the very few. And I think this is an idolatrous worship of money and power and prestige.

    And that is what a lot of bad things have in common: promotion of one’s own prestige and wealth and power. That is the essence of worldliness, and ironically that is exactly what the patriarchs and comps and pagans and secular elitists all do. It’s just that the churchy elitists are careful to conceal their worldliness with proper churchy and pious words.

    I had a discussion with one of my Arab friends about this very thing two days ago. In their culture, it is all about maintaining “face” by various means. We realized in our discussion that Western materialism is not that dissimilar in the real goal being pursued. Elitism seems to be a human issue.

  208. @ Ken:

    who told you you are inferior if female? I’ll give a clue – he was a liar from the beginning!

    Well yes, I do know that. 😉 But that doesn’t change the fact that the figurehead comp organization (CBMW) is teaching that women continue to submit in heaven, i.e., that roles are not functional, they are ontological and women are in the inferior position.

    We are agreed, btw, about ESS not being particularly relevant to male/female distinctions in the church and home.

    Good. But you do realize that you disagree with the major voices in compdom if you believe that?

    As for hierarchy and rank: a general and private in the army are equal under the law. They do not, however, have the same rank, nor the same level of responsibility. This is the underyling concept behind the word mostly translated as ‘submit’, and it too does not include the notion of inferiority.

    Here’s where that falls flat, though. The rank ladder you outlined above, with the exception of men and women, is made up of fundamentally different kinds of creatures. As I said in my original comment, angels do not = humans, and God does not = angels. So it sound to me like special pleading to break the logical rules of your own ladder for this one special rung, which is on the one hand portrayed as just like all the other rungs but turns out to be fundamentally different when pressed. And to be consistent, shouldn’t you be saying that all men are higher in rank than all women? But you’re not; you’re limiting it to the church and home. So this can’t be a nature difference, just a job difference. But then all the other rungs of the ladder are nature differences. Can you see how you’re contradicting yourself?

    This also doesn’t address my point that in marriage Paul explicitly says that wives have authority over their husbands’ bodies. And that word for authority is the “plain meaning” one, not an obscure one where we don’t quite know it’s meaning like the word in 1 Tim. So how does that coexist with the tidy ladder of authority in which men are always over women?

    Also I think you’re reading quite a bit into the little phrase “because of the angels.” You can’t get all that from just that one clause without quite a bit of background, and I’m not sure where you’re getting that background. The folks at CBMW never quite explained it either, at least not to my ear.

  209. @ numo:
    Apart from the 1 Cor 11 verse, Eph 3 : 10 sheds a bit more light on this:

    “… that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.”

    Dee has rightly reminded us of C S Lewis’ dictum about this, but apart from some fringe charismatics, most of the church in the west today seems to have lost this aspect of NT teaching in unbelief and apathy.

  210. Daisy wrote:

    Wasn’t Mr Challies also writing quite a number of book reviews? He was writing so many book reviews, people were wondering how and where he had the time to write them all.

    Plus writing books himself, publishing books, reporting on conferences… Let’s hope he doesn’t follow the Driscoll method by putting his name on the *content* of others!

  211. Put together teachings about male dominance, and eternal marriage with submissive women in heaven, and ideas about angels, emphasis on the lesser-ness of Christ in the trinity and if I did not know we were talking about neo-cal comp-ism I would think we were talking about LDS faith and practice.

  212. Nancy wrote:

    I think they are willing to sacrifice the many for the sake of seeing their so-called ideal achieved by the very few.

    As long as THEY are one of “the very few” whose Edifice stands upon the bodies of the many.

    Citizen Robespierre’s Republique of Perfect Virtue, Comrade Lenin’s True Communist Utopia — all beckon from the other side of the “regrettable but necessary” Reign of Terror.

  213. Nancy wrote:

    Put together teachings about male dominance, and eternal marriage with submissive women in heaven, and ideas about angels, emphasis on the lesser-ness of Christ in the trinity and if I did not know we were talking about neo-cal comp-ism I would think we were talking about LDS faith and practice.

    So far, attitudes on “plural marriage” is the only difference.
    (And as others have pointed out, that may be changing in the future.)

  214. Dave A A wrote:

    Daisy wrote:

    Wasn’t Mr Challies also writing quite a number of book reviews? He was writing so many book reviews, people were wondering how and where he had the time to write them all.

    Plus writing books himself, publishing books, reporting on conferences… Let’s hope he doesn’t follow the Driscoll method by putting his name on the *content* of others!

    Does he have $200 grand in Tithes per book to juice them onto the Best-Seller List?

  215. numo wrote:

    I would love to know where you get these ideas about “the angelic realm.”

    Tatted Todd and his pet Angel Emma?
    “ANGELS! ANGELS! ANGELS! SHEEKA BOOM BAH! BAM!!!”

  216. Daisy wrote:

    @ Ken:
    I don’t think God is wanting humans to be so concerned about what human has rank over whatever other human.

    “Hell is a thoroughly nasty bureaucracy or business enterprise where everyone is perpetually concerned with his own advancement.”
    — Preface to Screwtape Letters (from memory)

  217. Nancy wrote:

    Where did Eve get her female DNA and her mitochondrial DNA if she was only derived from Adam, a male. If she was only derived from Adam then she would be a clone and obviously a male, which is not what the story says.

    “Clone, Clone of my own
    With the Y Chromosome changed to X;
    Everyday you see,
    My Clone and me
    Will think about nothing but SEX…”
    — filksong attributed to Isaac Asimov

  218. @ dee:
    Just for clarification, the army general and private comparsion was to say it is possible to have equal status in one area, but different rank in another. But that’s it, nothing more should be inferred!

    The ‘relagating women to potlucks … telling them they are inferior’ illustrates the difference in thinking between us. The restriction I believe is apostolic and still mandatory is limited to pastoring and office of teaching as far as women are concerned. This will be seen when the church meets, but remember in Kenville the goal is body ministry with everybody contributing as gifted. Most church fellowship life occurs outside of church services, where this restriction hardly applies, and it only applies for a limited time when the church is gathered. Having a clergy/laity divide where the former ‘do’ the ministry from the ‘front’ is a far greater limitation on the use of gifts and talents in the body than Paul’s restrictions. Trying to get rid of this thinking is extremely difficult! I would even say it takes a miracle to shift it.

    Finally for now, you said complementariamism doesn’t make sense to you. I have the opposite problem! Egalitarianism doesn’t work. Take marriage. The egalitarian view is that submission is mutual, derived from Eph 5 ‘submit to one another’. So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible. One way out might be to get the pastor or someone else to help, but this in effect would be making this third-party the head of the household whenever this situation arises. Unless you decide on an EU-style rotating presidency where they take it in turns to be the ‘head’, someone has got to be the head, you can’t have two heads. Paul lumbers hubby with this role.

    @ Gram3:

    Gram – thanks for the long post, I’d like to come back on a couple of points, but there’s only one of me, and I can only take so much of this topic at any one time!

  219. Off topic here a bit. I see where they are saying that Pope Francis believes animals have souls and that we will all see our pets in heaven, or words to that effect. Now generally I tend to be as close to a fan as one can be when it comes to the present pope. But: I had this terror of a chihuahua once who literally climbed up on the couch and snuck? sneaked? across the top of the back only to take a lunge at the neck of a guest sitting the couch. Obvious intent was to inflict severe bodily harm. I really don’t want to have to deal with that for eternity, don’t you know. Maybe the pope can flesh out his theology there a bit to handle such situations?

  220. Nancy wrote:

    Off topic here a bit. I see where they are saying that Pope Francis believes animals have souls and that we will all see our pets in heaven, or words to that effect. Now generally I tend to be as close to a fan as one can be when it comes to the present pope. But: I had this terror of a chihuahua once who literally climbed up on the couch and snuck? sneaked? across the top of the back only to take a lunge at the neck of a guest sitting the couch. Obvious intent was to inflict severe bodily harm. I really don’t want to have to deal with that for eternity, don’t you know. Maybe the pope can flesh out his theology there a bit to handle such situations?

    ….I’ve had dogs I also have liked and dogs so contrary I really do not care to see again….just like you….If I see the contrary dog, I’ll think I didn’t make it into the ” Pearly Gates.”

  221. Ken wrote:

    Unless you decide on an EU-style rotating presidency where they take it in turns to be the ‘head’, someone has got to be the head, you can’t have two heads.

    Hmmm. In some cases the one who knows the most about the subject could be the deciding vote, or the one who really cares about it while the other may not so much could make the call. Or people could get more information about whatever it is and maybe that would break the log jam. Or maybe the decision could be postponed until they could agree–this latter in my experience often being a really good idea. And if all else fails, then yes, mediation might be a good idea, depending of course on the seriousness of the question. But all these things of course require time and humility and require that both parties care how the other person feels, which may not be the case at all.

    The question may be, which do I want more, to be the one who makes the decision or do I more want to work out something that works for everybody. Mutual compromise is not a sin, last time I checked.

  222. Ken wrote:

    Egalitarianism doesn’t work.

    My husband, Bill, will be astonished to hear that our marriage of decades doesn’t work!

  223. Ken wrote:

    The angelic realm needs to visibly see women not trying to be men and vice versa.

    Really? So angels and demons need to make visibly sure to be able to discern gender or is there some other visual marker they’re looking for? I had never heard such a thing before, thanks for sharing it Ken.

  224. Ken wrote:

    Take marriage. The egalitarian view is that submission is mutual, derived from Eph 5 ‘submit to one another’. So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible.

    How about taking a course in problem solving together? Or both deciding on the basis of the one who feels most strongly about the issue or has the more reasonable solution that will satisfy both wife and husband with some concession on the part of both.

    Or one party may defer to the other without hard feelings. But saying that deferring must always be one the part of the wife simply isn’t scriptural and leads one to think more highly of himself than he ought.

  225. -/-/-/-/

    Nancy wrote:

    @ Sopwith:

    How can it be her “seed” if she was only a surrogate, as you suggested? If it was her “seed” then the catholics may have a point in venerating her, perhaps? If it was only her “seed”, though we do not really know what that means, why was it not female, assuming “seed” means biological offspring. If there was a creative act of God why would we insist that it was not so, and the son was only begotten and not created? I am saying that our current theological explanations do not cover all the questions.
    You also seem to be saying that, since you suggested surrogacy (host) as a possible explanation.

    __

    internal, external seed , (bump) you started a discussion then you slammed the door.

    hahahahahahahahaha

    pretty funny.

    my point being, (bump) —> I am sure ‘The Almighty’ found a way.

    He raised His Son from the dead, for our sakes…

    SKreeeeeeeeeeeeetch !

    God getz ta do neat stuff.

    stick with Him long enough, n’ we get ta do neat stuff too.

    🙂

    the woman ‘seed’ bruised ole slewfoot’ ‘head’ all da same…

    YaHooooooooooooooo!

    ATB

    Sopy

  226. @ Sopwith:

    No doubt God finds ways. Now if only our theology would either find what that way was (not likely) or else quit pontificating about these things.

  227. Eagle wrote:

    But can you imagine how Christianity would be different if forgiveness were central to the faith? Would evangelicals be known for arrogance, pride, elitism, etc… if they lived and practiced forgiveness?

    Imagine too, the result, if Christianity also panned its focus to a shared and common humanity rather than perfectly parsed theology.

  228. __

    Hey Nancy,

    It would appear that God’s carpenter ‘assembles’ ; Man ‘disassembles’…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ul7X5js1vE

    ***

     Listen now, is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of my God as well? 

    (bump)

    Therefore the Lord Himself gave you a sign: 

    He said:

    Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name ‘Immanuel’.

    [ datz being (tr.) : “God Wit Us” ]

    I am very, very, very glad He did.

    Arn’t you?

    🙂

    “joy to da world…”

    hum, hum, hum…

    (grin)

    Sopy

  229. Gram3 wrote:

    Now, if the comps want to say that Adam is derived from dust while Eve is derived from formed dust (Adam) then, OK, but so what? Don’t see how that helps their case.

    It’s probably never occurred to them that from a materials science standpoint, stuff made from refined components has in many cases, qualities superior to unrefined materials.

  230. Ken wrote:

    @ numo:
    Apart from the 1 Cor 11 verse, Eph 3 : 10 sheds a bit more light on this:
    “… that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.”

    That has nothing to do with the angels needing to see male authority in the church. Unless you want to say that the manifold wisdom of God is made known through male authority. That strikes me as being a bit human-male-centric.

  231. Ken wrote:

    someone has got to be the head, you can’t have two heads. Paul lumbers hubby with this role.

    @ Gram3:

    Gram – thanks for the long post, I’d like to come back on a couple of points, but there’s only one of me, and I can only take so much of this topic at any one time!

    If a husband and wife cannot reach a decision by mutual submission to their mutual Head through the power of their mutually indwelling Spirit, then they have bigger issues than whatever it is that they disagree about. Why wouldn’t it be just as efficient for the wife to always be the deciding vote? Have Christian husbands and wives been so defeated by the enemy that they need an artificial system (to apply Paul’s exasperation with the Corinthians to your example.)

    You have still not cited the comment from the post I linked which you say is emotional overreaction. If you did, perhaps we might discuss our differing perceptions on that point. I think your comment was an emotional reaction, because there is reasoning in the comment thread on that post, not emotional irrationality.

    I had to write a long post to respond to your long post that had assertions and conclusions based on speculation and eisegesis. I would love to hear an explanation from the texts and not from “complementarian” talking points and their narratives.

  232. Muff Potter wrote:

    Gram3 wrote:
    Now, if the comps want to say that Adam is derived from dust while Eve is derived from formed dust (Adam) then, OK, but so what? Don’t see how that helps their case.
    It’s probably never occurred to them that from a materials science standpoint, stuff made from refined components has in many cases, qualities superior to unrefined materials.

    I think it way overestimates the actual life experience that these people have to even think they might have some knowledge of materials science or engineering or… They live in a bubble-wrapped ivory towered cocoon where everyone happily agrees with everyone else and all of the barbarian rational thinkers and analysts are safely outside the fortified walls of their institutions. If it weren’t for groupthink they’d have no thoughts at all.

  233. Victorious wrote:

    Adam’s sin, OTOH is a deliberate, intentional disobedience to God’s command. So as a result of that disobedience, he is “rewarded” with authority??? Makes no sense whatever.

    It’s easy to parse the ancient tale as simply a black-and-white morality play as is often done. But I’m not so sure. I think that Adam did it for love, Eve was after all the love of his life. What man will not do anything for the love of a special woman?. The other part of your thesis is compelling though, why would the Almighty then impose a hierarchy based on gender after the fact?

  234. LKen wrote:

    @

    Finally for now, you said complementariamism doesn’t make sense to you. I have the opposite problem! Egalitarianism doesn’t work. Take marriage. The egalitarian view is that submission is mutual, derived from Eph 5 ‘submit to one another’. So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible. One way out might be to get the pastor or someone else to help, but this in effect would be making this third-party the head of the household whenever this situation arises. Unless you decide on an EU-style rotating presidency where they take it in turns to be the ‘head’, someone has got to be the head, you can’t have two heads. Paul lumbers hubby with this role.

    No, he doesn’t.

    Just because you can not or will not make an egalitarian marriage work, it doesn’t mean that other people can’t.

    I don’t even know anyone personally who doesn’t have an egalitarian marriage. My husband and I are very, very happy. We are both intelligent, educated people who share the same values and we want to please each other. We almost always agree on major decisions. On minor ones, we usually go with the person who feels the strongest. If my husband really wants to eat at the Mexican restaurant or I am anxious to see the latest Harry Potter movie, then that’s what we do. Otherwise we will alternate, ie if I picked the restaurant or movie last time, he will pick it this time.

    If we disagree on a major decision, then thst is a clear sign that we need to talk it out and weigh the options and if necessary, table it for awhile. After we think about it, one of us will come over to the other person’s point of view. The very idea of one person making a unilateral decision would mean that we have short circuited a valuable process. I think my husband has good ideas and good judgment and he thinks the same about me.

    Seriously, do you actually say to your wife, “I am the man and God says that what I want goes”?

  235. Muff Potter wrote:

    why would the Almighty then impose a hierarchy based on gender after the fact?

    “Complementarians” say that the hierarchy precedes the Fall. They say that the man ruling over the woman after the Fall is just a corrupted version of God’s Good and Beautiful Plan. Of course, they can only point to “whispers” of it and “hints” and some other terms Ortlund uses about this purported Creational Hierarchy in Genesis 1 and 2.

    I think that what we can say from the data we have is that the Man listened to someone, his wife, who is not God. The Woman listened to the serpent and was deceived.

    Interestingly, contra the assertions of the Comps, God never says that the Woman sinned by “stepping out from under the Man’s authority.” And God never says that the Man sinned by not “exercising his authority over the Woman.” They both disobeyed God because they chose to disregard what God had said in favor of what seemed good to them. That is just more made-up narrative imposed on the actual text.

    I cannot understand why this simple observation escapes those who read Comp promoters who themselves are the ones saying stuff that God has not said, just like the serpent. And people listen to them instead of to God’s actual words. The mind boggles at the mental contortions necessary to buy into this.

  236. @ Gram3:

    And another simple observation is that the woman’s supposed “usurping” of her husband’s authority would have been the first sin, not disobeying God by eating the fruit. We have no record of God establishing the hierarchy which the Woman supposedly violated by “stepping out from under the Man’s authority.” More nonsense that some find plausible for some reason that escapes me.

  237. @ Gram3:
    And here is another simple observation

    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

  238. @ Gram3:

    @ Gram3:

    Yes. When I read the plain text of Genesis I don’t come to the conclusions that the comps come to at all. The comps have to paste a variety of scriptures together (all taken out of the context they were originally written in) to come to their conclusions. This process of interpreting scripture is why I don’t care for systematic theology books. either.

  239. Ken wrote:

    Most church fellowship life occurs outside of church services, where this restriction hardly applies, and it only applies for a limited time when the church is gathered.

    This is kind of like saying that denying the vote for women only involved those few minutes in the voting booth. They could still go to the picnic on the courthouse lawn afterwards. They even got to bring the food.

  240. Ken wrote:

    the principalities and powers in the heavenly places

    Which is never elaborated on in the NT, any more than the enigmatic statement about “baptism for the dead” is explained.

    There are quite a few odd bits and fragments like that, and it is foolish in the extreme to build any kind of doctrine or dogma on what is literally no more than a passing mention of something that might have been extremely local and time-limited.

    Come to think of it, you comp types never seem to cite the *first* creation account in Genesis, which simply says that God created humankind male and female, with no mention of what could be presumed as a “hierarchy” based on either who was created first and/or physical sex. Of course, everybody just skims right past the weird little geography and economics lesson in Genesis 2 (vs. 10-14), because if you read *that* literally – as in, applicable to the here and now – there are serious conflicts with both geography and cartography as we know them. Think of what imposing those coordinates on Google Earth would do! (I’m joking, but *not really.*)

    People pick and choose verses – i.e., they proof-text – and spin these wild tales out of thin air. Which, imo, is exactly the kind of thing you’ve been talking about here, except that you see it as graven in stone. As they said back in the 90s, NOT.

  241. Ken wrote:

    The angelic realm needs to visibly see women not trying to be men and vice versa. “For this reason a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” Worrying about the word symbol is to get sidetracked; the important thing is women are authorised, as recipients of the outpoured Holy Spirit along with men, to pray and prophesy.

    Please check out 1 Corin 6. this is a letter and should be read in its entire context. In Chapter 11 when Paul mentions the Angels he is referring back to what he said in chapter 6. it is actually the opposite of what you are claiming it is. we will be judging the angels.

    adding the words “symbol of” is very important and changes the meaning of passage. there is no “symbol of” authority just for women. . women have authority over their own literal heads.

    Paul sums the whole thing up with “man coming from woman” communicating that we are interdependent.

  242. @ Nancy:
    yep, as has been stated several times a bit upthread. interesting that so many commenters have the same impression, isn’t it?

  243. Gram3 wrote:

    God never says that the Woman sinned by “stepping out from under the Man’s authority

    Exactly. He did not. And if the act of listening to one’s wife is de facto wrong, why did God tell Abraham to listen to the voice of his wife (Sarah) in the Hagar and Ishmael incident. It was not about that. It was about God saying I already told you what I wanted and you disobeyed me in that you listened to what somebody else had to say rather than what I had said.

    And I am thinking that people who listen to what false teachers have to say instead of listening to what God has said are doing the same thing. Perhaps some are deceived and perhaps some are not, but either way they need to be very careful about who they listen to.

  244. Nancy wrote:

    Put together teachings about male dominance, and eternal marriage with submissive women in heaven, and ideas about angels, emphasis on the lesser-ness of Christ in the trinity and if I did not know we were talking about neo-cal comp-ism I would think we were talking about LDS faith and practice.

    that was the conclusion Cheryl Schatz came to. she recognized all of this early on because she has a ministry to those coming out of the cults of Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses. she was astonished to hear this coming out of evangelical Christianity. she made a couple of DVDs dealing with these issues.

  245. @ Muff Potter:
    the thing i wonder about is, how long had they been in existence when this came up? Thy’re presented as just having been made, and we have no idea how much time elapsed (if any) before the talking reptile or whatever it was comes into the picture. I mean, would you expect someone who was 48 hours old to be capable of making informed decisions, especially if they literally had little-n life experience?

  246. Ken wrote:

    @ dee:
    Just for clarification, the army general and private comparsion was to say it is possible to have equal status in one area, but different rank in another. But that’s it, nothing more should be inferred!

    The ‘relagating women to potlucks … telling them they are inferior’ illustrates the difference in thinking between us. The restriction I believe is apostolic and still mandatory is limited to pastoring and office of teaching as far as women are concerned. This will be seen when the church meets, but remember in Kenville the goal is body ministry with everybody contributing as gifted. Most church fellowship life occurs outside of church services, where this restriction hardly applies, and it only applies for a limited time when the church is gathered. Having a clergy/laity divide where the former ‘do’ the ministry from the ‘front’ is a far greater limitation on the use of gifts and talents in the body than Paul’s restrictions. Trying to get rid of this thinking is extremely difficult! I would even say it takes a miracle to shift it.

    Finally for now, you said complementariamism doesn’t make sense to you. I have the opposite problem! Egalitarianism doesn’t work. Take marriage. The egalitarian view is that submission is mutual, derived from Eph 5 ‘submit to one another’. So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible. One way out might be to get the pastor or someone else to help, but this in effect would be making this third-party the head of the household whenever this situation arises. Unless you decide on an EU-style rotating presidency where they take it in turns to be the ‘head’, someone has got to be the head, you can’t have two heads. Paul lumbers hubby with this re

    </blockquonKen wrote:

    @ dee:
    Just for clarification, the army general and private comparsion was to say it is possible to have equal status in one area, but different rank in another. But that’s it, nothing more should be inferred!

    The ‘relagating women to potlucks … telling them they are inferior’ illustrates the difference in thinking between us. The restriction I believe is apostolic and still mandatory is limited to pastoring and office of teaching as far as women are concerned. This will be seen when the church meets, but remember in Kenville the goal is body ministry with everybody contributing as gifted. Most church fellowship life occurs outside of church services, where this restriction hardly applies, and it only applies for a limited time when the church is gathered. Having a clergy/laity divide where the former ‘do’ the ministry from the ‘front’ is a far greater limitation on the use of gifts and talents in the body than Paul’s restrictions. Trying to get rid of this thinking is extremely difficult! I would even say it takes a miracle to shift it.

    Finally for now, you said complementariamism doesn’t make sense to you. I have the opposite problem! Egalitarianism doesn’t work. Take marriage. The egalitarian view is that submission is mutual, derived from Eph 5 ‘submit to one another’. So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible. One way out might be to get the pastor or someone else to help, but this in effect would be making this third-party the head of the household whenever this situation arises. Unless you decide on an EU-style rotating presidency where they take it in turns to be the ‘head’, someone has got to be the head, you can’t have two heads. Paul lumbers hubby with this role.

    @ Gram3:

    Gram – thanks for the long post, I’d like to come back on a couple of points, but there’s only one of me, and I can only take so much of this topic at any one time!

    If you are your wife’s “head” using your definition of kephale, then she does have 2 “heads”. You and King Jesus.

  247. @ Nancy:
    i suspect that all animals – and humans – who were abused, suffered from physical or mental illness, were born with congenital illnesses etc. will be entirely whole in the next life.

    if this is true – of course, it’s just conjecture – then that dog is well and happy and friendly. who knows – it might be on hand to greet you, with happy barks and a playful, friendly attitude!

  248. Gavin White wrote:

    @ Gram3:
    And here is another simple observation

    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

    Prescriptive or descriptive? God’s intention? Or a result of teshuqa…Eve “turning” to Adam instead of God?

  249. @ numo:

    There isn’t enough room on the planet for every life form that has ever been. The theory breaks down at some level.

  250. Gavin White wrote:

    And here is another simple observation
    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

    It was a prophetic word, not a command. Otherwise all males would need to be farmers, till the soil, and sweat by their brow as likewise commanded. Right?

  251. Victorious wrote:

    Otherwise all males would need to be farmers, till the soil, and sweat by their brow as likewise commanded. Right?

    So…the Amish are right after all…? I thank thee.

  252. @ Ken:

    The egalitarian view is that submission is mutual, derived from Eph 5 ‘submit to one another’. So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible.

    The definition of “mutual submission” I always came away with was that “mutual” meant that submission could be done by anybody, not that both people necessarily did it at the same time. Though I think that could work too – say the couple went with the bulk of the husband’s position (she deferred to him), but on certain points they modified it to fit with hers (he deferred to her). Mutuality.

    Here’s another question: in the comp view, wives must submit/defer to their husbands in everything. How did that work in past centuries when division of labor fell along strict gender lines, i.e. boys/men were apprenticed out to do their profession as opposed to learning all the spinning and homemaking skills that women did. How did a wife defer to her husband about how to spin when he literally could have known nothing about it? Or, an even better example, midwifery. You bet your life the midwife’s husband deferred to her about childbirth. But according to compism, this would be wrong because Christ must never submit to the church.

    As others pointed out above, people still do this today. It’s referred to as a “domain-based hierarchy” and is based on expertise, and yes, comp marriages have these and yes, the wife is often on top and the husbands know it AND LIKE IT. Heck, comps routinely make jokes about these! (Insert joke here about wife being better at cooking, laundry, childcare, etc.) But seriously, this really doesn’t work with comp’s insistence that husbands never submit/defer to their wives. If any husband really never defers to his wife about anything, that marriage is not only unhealthy but probably abusive too.

  253. Lydia wrote:

    Prescriptive or descriptive? God’s intention? Or a result of teshuqa…Eve “turning” to Adam instead of God?

    Agreed. And has anyone speculated why God felt that prophetic warning was necessary? Had Adam already begun to exhibit the tendency to usurp authority not afforded him? I often wondered why God, after noting that there was not a suitable/comparable partner, delayed the creation of Eve to watch what Adam named the animals. Could the names Adam chose reflect a attitude that signaled the need to warn Eve? Possible?

  254. Doug wrote:

    So…the Amish are right after all…? I thank thee.

    I don’t know…do they allow thorns and thistles to grow in their gardens?

    Gen 3:18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you…”

  255. Gavin White wrote:

    @ Gram3:
    And here is another simple observation

    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

    Well I’m completely sure that this lovely text (laid out here alone away from its context like a sad little proof-text meant for beating women into submission with)is a complete shock to Gram3! I know it was to me. I must now rethink my entire position because you just showed me, the silly woman that I am.
    All joking aside Gavin, are you seriously going to throw a single ‘proof’ text onto a discussion with the academic weight & depth shown in this thread? So disrespectful.

  256. Gavin White wrote:

    @ Gram3:
    And here is another simple observation
    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

    And God’s prophetic words have certainly been demonstrated to be true historically, have they not?

    Or are you saying that 3:16 is God’s curse on the Woman and that Man is directed to rule over women? Because if that’s what you are saying, then you are going to need some evidence for that.

  257. Lydia wrote:

    Gavin White wrote:
    @ Gram3:
    And here is another simple observation
    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

    Prescriptive or descriptive? God’s intention? Or a result of teshuqa…Eve “turning” to Adam instead of God?

    Yes, the idea of “turning” is very important. Solomon’s wives “turned” him away from God. The desire to be like the nations “turned” Israel away from God and toward a human king. The serpent “turned” the Woman away from what God had said and toward what seemed good to her. None of these “turnings” worked out very well. Now, many have turned or inclined their ears to the Comps. Same thing. Sounds good, but isn’t.

  258. Victorious wrote:

    It was a prophetic word, not a command. Otherwise all males would need to be farmers, till the soil, and sweat by their brow as likewise commanded. Right?

    No fertilizer. No weed killer. No sweat from animals. Nada except sweat from his brow. Thought experiment: Imagine depending on Owen (not John) or any other of the Effete Corps of Complementarian Snobs (thank you to Agnew) to bring forth enough food from the ground by the sweat of his brow to feed himself and his family.

  259. Hester wrote:

    this really doesn’t work with comp’s insistence that husbands never submit/defer to their wives. If any husband really never defers to his wife about anything,

    I think that Piper and Grudem would say that it’s OK for a man to “delegate” to his wife but not to defer to her. When a man appears to be deferring to his wife, he is actually demonstrating leadership over her by exercising his right to delegate. He retains the option at all times, and she never has the option or agency. It takes a very special kind of reasoning to get to that…

  260. Victorious wrote:

    Gen 3:18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you…”

    From what I know of the Amish, they know how to deal with thorns and make good use of the thistles! I doubt that they are allowed in the garden, they tend to have absolute dominion there. Plus, I think some of them have been known to use thorn bushes as protective hedges against animals. So…

  261. Beakerj wrote:

    All joking aside Gavin, are you seriously going to throw a single ‘proof’ text onto a discussion with the academic weight & depth shown in this thread? So disrespectful.

    Yeah, I was completely blindsided by that one. It would be so refreshing if one of those upholding male priority and authority would do it using a standard conservative methodology. The fact that Gavin did not address the actual observations I made about the text in question is mildly interesting.

  262. @ Gram3:

    And, for the record, I should say that Gramp3 is a huge failure on this point if “ruling over” is a commandment rather than a prophecy. He simply has not felt it necessary to rule over me nor I over him. I guess our long-term happy marriage makes God sad.

  263. @ Gram3:

    When a man appears to be deferring to his wife, he is actually demonstrating leadership over her by exercising his right to delegate.

    They’re slapping a different name on the exact same act. Like so:

    Wife goes along with her husband’s idea about a car purchase. She “submitted” to him.
    Husband goes along with his wife’s idea about a furniture purchase. He “delegated his authority over the finances” to her.

    I don’t think this will ever make sense to me. It just seems to be a way to “sanctify” an obviously mutual relationship by shoehorning it into completely artificial leader-follower terms. And actually, I think most patriocentrists would agree with me, which is where you get derogatory terms like “functional egalitarianism” and calls to replace the above model with something truly non-mutual and one-sided. Which as I said before, is terrifying and abusive when you actually see it in practice.

  264. I don’t know what this makes us, but I often defer to my wife. She is smarter about a lot of things than I am, and I would be an idiot not to defer. She has just as much right to direct our path as I do. She is the one who led us to our current church family.

    Honestly, I cannot imagine taking on the responsibility and the stress of having to be the final authority on everything. We were taught that both the husband and the wife are to be seeking Christ-likeness and that will bring them together.

    In a practical sense, sometimes she bears 100% of the load and sometimes I bear 100% of the load. We try to bear one another’s burdens and no one keeps score.

    I find a lot of what I read hear troubling and can’t believe (I believe it, but don’t understand why anyone would want to live that way) how some men mistreat their wives. As far as I am concerned, she is a gift from God and that includes all of her.

    Being her helper is a privilege and an honor. Off to date night! Be blessed.

  265. Hester wrote:

    I don’t think this will ever make sense to me. It just seems to be a way to “sanctify” an obviously mutual relationship by shoehorning it into completely artificial leader-follower terms

    Words are reality to these folks. Heck, that’s all they know how to do. Manipulate words and emotions. Do not ever make the mistake of trying to get them to reason from the texts.

    Their theology and exegesis is fake but accurate, I suppose.

  266. numo wrote:

    i believe that animals have souls, btw.

    I believe this too. The only place where we might disagree is that I also believe that body and soul are an integral unit and that you can’t have one without the other. In other words I believe as the pre-Hellenist Jews did, there is no such thing as a disembodied ‘soul’ existing apart from the body.

  267. Gram3 wrote:

    Gavin White wrote:

    @ Gram3:
    And here is another simple observation
    Genesis 3:16 ends with the words ” and he shall rule over thee”

    And God’s prophetic words have certainly been demonstrated to be true historically, have they not?

    Or are you saying that 3:16 is God’s curse on the Woman and that Man is directed to rule over women? Because if that’s what you are saying, then you are going to need some evidence for that.

    And just for grins where do the cross/resurrection come into their prescriptive hermeneutic for women? So, women need a male mediator and they define that mediator as a male head. Totally ignoring 1st Century context for kephale.

    So,can women be Christ-like since our Savior came as a male?

  268. Gram3 wrote:

    Words are reality to these folks. Heck, that’s all they know how to do. Manipulate words and emotions. Do not ever make the mistake of trying to get them to reason from the texts.

    this is why the charge of emotional comments on your link brought a smile to my face. having heard Bruce Ware preach these bizarre concepts several times, It is my opinion he was working off emotion when he developed of the sermon and when he delivered them.

    as to emotion, is there any more emotive comp preacher than John Piper? Flowery verbosity, arm waving, alliteration and tears are his standing operating procedure.

  269. Lydia wrote:

    So,can women be Christ-like since our Savior came as a male?

    Sure. Women are to be like Christ the submissive, suffering servant and men are to be like Christ the conquering and ruling King of Kings. See how easy theology is when you can go all ad hoc and creative and not be bound by pesky hermeneutical rules and the constraints of sound reasoning?

  270. Gram3 wrote:

    You have still not cited the comment from the post I linked which you say is emotional overreaction. If you did, perhaps we might discuss our differing perceptions on that point.

    I see this one is still going.

    I’m afraid I did cite an example in the very post dealing with this: “The moderator even said “If they love God then they are going to have to give men special honor or else God won’t accept them and they’ll die in hell. Sad.”” What a ridiculous thing to say. It would mean salvation by works. This is not a salvation issue unless a blank refusal to submit is a manifestation of unbelief.

    It does get a bit wearing if you qualify something in order not to be misunderstood, and then half a dozen posts follow as though you had never said it. The idea of inferiority was a classic on this.

    If I have any strong feelings on this, it because this issue has proved to be a good litmus test as to how seriously a church takes the bible. I have seen examples of the damage that can be done when it is ignored. I have, believe it or not, been willing to reconsider my understanding of this. The church we don’t go to here is affiliated with Willow Creek, whose influence is militantly egalitarian – not believing 1 Tim 2 is a requirement of membership. In spending more hours than I should reading up on Willow, in particular the input from their best sellers lists which was very revealing, I concluded there is too much gross religious error and deception going on there, and this tended to confirm my traditional understanding of the topic was reasonably correct. I know experience shouldn’t determine doctrine, but where women are allowed to teach and exercise authority over men, certain areas of deception seem almost inevitably to follow in their wake. So Paul’s reasoning on this based on the OT still rings true for me, and it is safer to stick with the traditional understanding.

    Perhaps this adds a bit more to where I am coming from on this one. And I might add, my thinking on this has not primarily been derived from American evangelicals, who seem unable to avoid lurching from one extreme to the other on this topic.

  271. numo wrote:

    Come to think of it, you comp types never seem to cite the *first* creation account in Genesis, which simply says that God created humankind male and female, with no mention of what could be presumed as a “hierarchy” based on either who was created first and/or physical sex

    I’m quite happy to cite Gen 1! It establishes neither a hierarchy nor equality. The details become apparent in the supplimentary material in Gen 2.

  272. Ken wrote:

    What a ridiculous thing to say. It would mean salvation by works. This is not a salvation issue unless a blank refusal to submit is a manifestation of unbelief.

    It may well be ridiculous, but that does not mean that it is an emotional overreaction. You might read some of Bill Mouser’s stuff and see an emotional overreaction to “feminism.” See, that card can be played by both sides but it accomplishes nothing and does not further the discussion.

    It is the “complementarians” who have made gender hierarchy a gospel issue, not those of us who believe in non-hierarchical complementarity. They say we are denying the Fatherhood of God if we deny hierarchy in the Trinity and between male and female. And that is because they define Fatherhood *only* as ruling and being in authority over the children. Not in loving the children. Not in protecting the children. Not in providing and caring for the children. Fatherhood equals ruling over. Talk about ridiculous and a caricature! My human father was not like that, and my husband was not a father like that.

  273. Ken wrote:

    If I have any strong feelings on this, it because this issue has proved to be a good litmus test as to how seriously a church takes the bible. I have seen examples of the damage that can be done when it is ignored. I have, believe it or not, been willing to reconsider my understanding of this. The church we don’t go to here is affiliated with Willow Creek, whose influence is militantly egalitarian – not believing 1 Tim 2 is a requirement of membership.

    So, you reject the possibility that “complementarianism” is wrong because a particular church which espouses egalitarianism in a way that you regard as militant? Is it a mark of militance that one rejects a particular interpretation? Why is your reaction against Willow Creek’s teaching not an overreaction but a commenter’s response to “Father” Bill Mouser is? I don’t get what the criteria are for an overreaction, much less an emotional one.

    I do know that my reasoned arguments from the actual texts have been dismissed as “emotional” by some guys who can’t muster a logical or textual response. So they resorted to ad hominem attacks on me. Women are presumed guilty of all manner of things based on nothing more than eisegesis about what happened at the Fall. Why should we not be angry about that? Are you quite sanguine when falsely accused?

  274. Ken wrote:

    I’m quite happy to cite Gen 1! It establishes neither a hierarchy nor equality. The details become apparent in the supplimentary material in Gen 2.

    What details in Genesis 2 reverse or modify the explicit equality ordained and spoken by God himself over the Man and the Woman in Genesis 1:26-28? That is not an emotional question; it is a straightforward question regarding the actual textual data rather than Grudem’s and Piper’s and Ware’s and Ortlund’s interpretation of the blank spaces on the pages of Genesis 1-3.

  275. Ken wrote:

    I know experience shouldn’t determine doctrine, but where women are allowed to teach and exercise authority over men, certain areas of deception seem almost inevitably to follow in their wake.

    What areas of deception seem almost inevitably to follow in the wake of women teaching men as opposed to women teaching women or women teaching children?

    Why was Satan able to take over Mars Hill Church and Sovereign Grace Ministries? The Mormons? The Pharisees? The Moonies? The Applegate cult?

    How is this not superstitious or magical thinking? Women teaching means deception ensues, but males teaching is a Truth Talisman? Please cite one place in Scripture where God has said that females teaching males leads to a greater likelihood of deception than males teaching males or females.

  276. Ken wrote:

    it is safer to stick with the traditional understanding.

    Whether that understanding is correct or not? That was not the view of the Reformers, certainly, nor was it the view of the first Christians who rejected the “traditional understanding” of the Messiah. The ones who followed the traditional understanding were the ones who were wrong if Christians have the correct understanding.

    Maybe the English should stick with the traditional understanding of the monarchy and African-Americans should be content with the traditional understanding of the racial order. But I don’t think that is the right way to approach a problem.

  277. @ Ken:

    It does get a bit wearing if you qualify something in order not to be misunderstood, and then half a dozen posts follow as though you had never said it. The idea of inferiority was a classic on this.

    Just wanted to make it clear here that I don’t actually think you think women are inferior to men. There are some egalitarians who assume that all comps really do believe women are inferior (I know most comps I’ve met on the ground don’t), but be careful you’re not mishearing an egalitarian saying “But if we take X to its logical conclusion, shouldn’t it mean nasty thing Y” for “You must believe nasty thing Y you terrible terrible person.”

    Personally, I’m not in the comp-egal argument because of women’s ordination. I’m in it because of abuses of marriage. I think comp on paper tries to provide safeguards against abuse, but the way comp is preached in practice (at least in American evangelicalism) provides basically zero protections at all. That’s a problem. I’ve also heard many comps claim that men and women were not created equal, which I think is one of the points at which comp has been carried too far and has become toxic and unsafe (for both men and women). Another would be equivocation about/failure to recommend police involvement in abuse (though to be fair that usually derives more from people’s views of church discipline than comp per se).

  278. Gram3 wrote:

    I was under the impression that “teaching” was one of the gifts. Are the gifts for men only? Were the scriptures that describe the gifts clarified with a clause that the gifts are only for men? Someone might need to make a new bible translation — one that shows the scriptures for men and another one showing the scriptures for women 😉 (Then again, I wouldn’t want to give anyone ideas.)

    @ Ken:

  279. Ken wrote:

    As for hierarchy and rank: a general and private in the army are equal under the law. They do not, however, have the same rank, nor the same level of responsibility.

    Your analogy does not fit because from the start a woman can never be the equivalent to a general in the Christian church due to her having been born female.

    It’s not right to refuse to even consider someone for a position based on in-born traits alone, such as gender or skin color. Choosing who should perform what duty or be in whatever rank should be done on basis of skill, education, things that can be changed, learned, improved upon.

    The Bible does not say that the Holy Spirit gives only certain gifts to men and certain gifts to women.

  280. Hester wrote:

    ust wanted to make it clear here that I don’t actually think you think women are inferior to men. There are some egalitarians who assume that all comps really do believe women are inferior

    I don’t see a reasonable way to disclaim the implications of a doctrine just because those implications are inconvenient to the acceptance of the doctrine. Comps say that women are equal yet they also say that females *by God’s Good and Beautiful Design* do not have full agency, or at the very least a female’s agency is subordinate to a male’s. I don’t see how a male with full personal agency is equal to a female without full personal agency. They are trying to say two completely contradictory things and masking it with language.

  281. @ Ken:
    Aaaannnd… some of us are still single but had wanted to marry (such as me). I followed biblical teachings not to have pre-marital sex and remain a virgin past 40.

    Because so many Christians over-emphasize marriage and child bearing for women, women such as me who never marry, never have sex, or never had a kid are either (depending on which church or denomination)
    1. ignored 2. treated as garbage 3. treated with suspicion 4. treated as failures – and sometimes, a mixture or two or more of those four points.

    I thought I would’ve been married by my mid thirties at least, but I never meet a suitable partner. But many Christians incorrectly assume women like me intentionally chose to stay single, and/or that we blew off marriage to excel at career.

    Some of the secular feminists hype singleness and career for women way too much, but I find that Christians hype marriage and procreation for women way too much. I don’t feel totally at home in either group, as a result.

  282. Gram3 wrote:

    They are trying to say two completely contradictory things and masking it with language.

    Agreed. I think they’re underestimating our intelligence if they think we don’t see their contradictions!

  283. Victorious wrote:

    Gram3 wrote:
    They are trying to say two completely contradictory things and masking it with language.
    Agreed. I think they’re underestimating our intelligence if they think we don’t see their contradictions!

    Honestly, I don’t think they care a bit whether we are intelligent or whether what they teach is in accord with the Bible or whether it is logically coherent. They don’t feel any obligation to respond to any who dare to disagree with them. As long as they have the power, they will continue to domineer and accuse and blame. It’s not about being Biblical. It’s about power.

  284. Gram3 wrote:

    It may well be ridiculous

    should be “may well be ridiculous *to you.* Sorry for the confusion. Bill Mouser is the one who is ridiculous because God is not a male.

  285. Ken wrote:

    So we have wife and hubby mutually submitted. So far so good. If they cannot agree on an important decision, they must mutually submit, which of course means no decision is ever possible. One way out might be to get the pastor or someone else to help, but this in effect would be making this third-party the head of the household whenever this situation arises

    So allow the woman have any and all final decision-making say-so in marriages. Problem solved.

  286. Nancy wrote:

    There isn’t enough room on the planet for every life form that has ever been.

    You mean not enough room in the afterlife to fit all the animals who have ever lived? I don’t think Heaven has physical limits. And God being God could add more square footage if he so chose.

  287. Lydia wrote:

    as to emotion, is there any more emotive comp preacher than John Piper? Flowery verbosity, arm waving, alliteration and tears are his standing operating procedure.

    Did anyone read the list I linked? (Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not be Ordained Clergy)

    One of the things on it was,
    6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

  288. Ken wrote:

    I have seen examples of the damage that can be done when it is ignored

    My mother followed traditional gender roles and raised me to follow them – to always defer to men, blah blah blah.

    The views you support in regards to gender roles (called “complementarianism”) did a lot of damage to me personally.

    What you believe to be a biblical description of how women should be and how they should act (Christian gender complementariansm) is actually identical to codependency (also known as people pleasing).

    I am now having to un-learn complementarianism (codependency) and all it entailed and start from scratch, because I found that living that way (being the stereotypical compliant, passive, sweet “biblical” woman) left me wide open to being taken advantage of by men (and women).

    Men in romantic relationships exploited me, as did men in various jobs I held. Not until I stood up for myself and learned I am their equal, and that it’s okay to have boundaries did my life improve.

    Complementarianism (aka codependency) does not work, Ken. It hurts women.

  289. @ Gram3:

    I’ve never understood complementarian reasoning behind this anyway.

    If you believe women teaching men is bad and leads to falsehood, why would you entrust other women or children to their teaching?

    By saying they are okay with women teaching kids and other women, but not with teaching men, they are inadvertently saying that men are somehow more important than women or kids.

    They don’t mind if those deceitful women mess with the heads of other women and kids but don’t want them coming near adult men.

    And where is the cut off age for what is construed as an adult male in a Christian church, is it 12, 18, or 21? And is this particular age consistent across other comp churches?

    (I’ve read of complementarian churches allowing women to teach mixed gender classes up to 18 years of age, while other churches, the cut off age is 12. Why is it 18 at one comp church but 12 at another?)

    Some of these comp groups permit women to teach people in other nations, on missions trips. So. They are more concerned with American women not teaching American adult males but don’t care if those same women teach adult males in some other country.

    So, would they be fine with say, an adult Chinese Christian woman teaching American adult males? Or, how about adult Canadian, Russian, Australian women teaching American men?

  290. Gender complementarians might have people believe that women should be at the top of this list. 🙂

    It’s official – men are idiots! Analysis of the Darwin Awards for stupid deaths reveals the ‘winners’ are overwhelmingly male

    -Darwin Awards is an annual review of most foolish way people have died
    -Scientists were surprised to discover 90% of award ‘winners’ were male
    -Worthy candidates include a terrorist who opened his own letter bomb

    If you’d like to read more of that:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2870374/Darwin-Awards-winners-overwhelmingly-male-analysis-reveals.html

  291. Daisy wrote:

    Did anyone read the list I linked? (Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not be Ordained Clergy)
    One of the things on it was,
    6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

    I love that list! My favorite is

    7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

    On the other hand,

    5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.

    this isn’t a problem I’d have. Oh well… 😮

  292. @ Ken:
    They are not necessarily a continuous thing; they are two very different stories. There is no hierarchy – i know you believe there is, but you’re reading into the text.

    Ken, this is getting wearisome. You seem to think you can convert us to your beliefs, and it’s just not going to happen.

  293. Daisy wrote:

    @ Steve Scott:

    Was James Chapter 2 not it their Bibles:

    Ch 2 / 1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.
    2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.
    3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,”
    4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

    Daisy, I think it had more to do with the idea that anybody who was a Wise Steward (TM) of their finances would certainly tithe by writing a check or attaching their name to an envelope full of cash so that they could receive a year-end statement. This would allow them to get a tax deduction. Somebody who gave anonymously would not get a deduction, the sign of an Unwise Steward (TM). Since the treasurer never had to prepare a year-end statement for my friend, it was assumed that he never tithed at all.

  294. @ Daisy:

    I read “Life After Life After Death” by NT Wright in which he argues that the scriptural idea of the afterlife is not “heaven” as something else entirely but rather the idea of the new heavens and new earth, as in this material planet made new post-resurrection. He thinks that “heaven” as understood in the popular thinking is an intermediate state prior to the resurrection and the very redemption of “all creation.” He pulls together a lot of what is said in scripture into a single process of redemption and restoration which occurs in stages. I find that this approach does tie up some loose ends in thinking about the issue.

  295. Ken wrote:

    If I have any strong feelings on this, it because this issue has proved to be a good litmus test as to how seriously a church takes the bible. I have seen examples of the damage that can be done when it is ignored. I have, believe it or not, been willing to reconsider my understanding of this. Th

    I could spend lots of ink on the damage and deception I have seen caused by comp doctrines.and I could throw in quite a bit of ink on those i have seen make a fortune off of this doctrine back in the 90’s. it was most definitely an industry.

  296. @ Steve Scott:

    Not all of us get that deduction, not when the mortgage is paid off and the unreimbursed medical costs do not exceed the floor, and there are no allowable professional costs to deduct, etc etc. In NC they used to allow a credit for charitable contributions for those who took standard deduction on their federal taxes (after doing the math on that it was rarely worth the time it took to figure it out) but now they have eliminated that (while increasing the standard deduction.)

    So, there is nothing at all in it for me to allow anybody to record or monitor what I give or do not give. It has nothing at all to do with being a responsible steward. It is all about do the math, and determine what level of privacy you want, balance those two variables and then go for it. This is not a spiritual issue for me or others who take standard deduction.

    But I do write checks (and run off a copy before I release it) mostly because I do not trust anybody, church finance people included. I want solid proof of everything. It is not about stewardship, it is about having a margin of safety for when SHTF.

  297. @ Gram3:

    People don’t follow their beliefs to their logical conclusions all the time. Or they hold two conflicting ideas in cognitive dissonance for their entire lives and never reconcile them. I don’t think I’ve ever met a (non-abusive) comp man IRL who consciously looked at his wife and thought, “She is my ontological inferior and I have a divine right to override her decisions.” That’s the only logical implication of the doctrine I can see, but they sincerely believe they’re protecting and valuing women.

    In other words, I don’t think it’s helpful to attribute ill will and a conscious desire to control and oppress to every comp I meet, because most of them I’ve met don’t have it. I just think they’re honestly mistaken. And the comps I did meet who had those desires consciously, were abusers and would have had them anyway.

  298. Addendum @ Gram3:

    Though I will add, I have met a number of comp women who came pretty close to consciously believing they were their husbands’ inferiors, and they weren’t all being abused either.

  299. Gram3 wrote:

    Their doctrine in itself is prideful in that it asserts that God set one class of humans over another as part of his initial pre-Fall plan. They teach that God ordains one class of humans to be Leaders and another class to be Followers and that the Followers need Leaders. The Followers can *never* be leaders. That kind of thinking has not worked out well and cost a lot of people their lives to start to right it. Those are not Kingdom values, ISTM.

    Actually, those are the values of every 20th Century dictator whose name I can recall.
    It’s come to a fine pass. when people who name the Name of Christ go around espousing the value system of Adolf, Josef, et al.

  300. numo wrote:

    They are not necessarily a continuous thing; they are two very different stories. There is no hierarchy – i know you believe there is, but you’re reading into the text.
    Ken, this is getting wearisome. You seem to think you can convert us to your beliefs, and it’s just not going to happen.

    Agreed. I’m convinced Ken simply wants to believe in a hierarchy and male privilege and nothing will change his mind. It’s as though repeating the same erroneous interpretations over and over will eventually make them true.

  301. Nancy wrote:

    @ Lydia:

    Quite so. If hierarchy is demonstrated in the chronology of creation as cited in the Genesis stories, then humans are at the very bottom of the food chain. Since nobody believes that, then is it not evident that we may have misunderstood certain passages of scripture.

    My mother,confronted with the notion of male supremacy, used to observe, “Funny, I never read that the birds of the air & the fish of the sea were superior to men because they were created before Adam. What version of the Bible are you reading”?

  302. Hester wrote:

    , I don’t think it’s helpful to attribute ill will and a conscious desire to control and oppress to every comp I meet, because most of them I’ve met don’t have it.

    I agree with that if we are talking about a pewpeon who is uninformed on the exegetical and theological and logical problems with “Complementarianism.” But when I have tried to engage teachers, they simply did not care. They are so arrogant that they will not even look at the evidence. They are steeped in the System which rewards them well.

    The pewpeons I’ve tried to engage are more fearful than anything. Most of the ones I know *are* well-intentioned, but that does not mean that they escape accountability for the implications of the system. And the reason the pewpeons are fearful is that fear is used as the motivator to adhere to the Rules and the System. They cannot see beyond their fear to see that they are being enslaved by a human system and are holding others in bondage as well.

  303.   __

    “The Religion Blame Game?”

    hmmm…

    Wartburg, is a ‘feminist’ mob forming within the hallowed halls of this TWW comment section?

    (bump)

    —> The scriptures are quite clear on how ‘both’ women and men are to treat “one another” and ‘conduct themselves’ when they gather in Jesus’ name.

    Apparently, abuses on both sides of the 501(c)3 church isle are becoming common place.

    …are folks ‘here’ gathering in some other ‘name’?

  304. @ Hester:

    Another thing that is implicit in comp teaching is their warped view of men. Do they really think that a man who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit would not serve his wife and children unless he is the anointed “Leader and Ruler?” That is demeaning to the character of men, but they don’t seem to notice that.

    My father was and my husband is a servant who served without having to be the Leader and Ruler. Would all of the well-meaning male comps stop serving if they found out they were not actually ordained by God as the Leader? I think they would respond to Paul’s instruction to serve one another in love if they truly are only interested in taking responsibility and serving.

    If we love enough and walk in the Spirit, we don’t need rules or Rulers in the church or the Christian home. However, I think the teachers of this doctrine use “servant” and “taking responsibility” as sugar-coatings on the bitter pill of lording it over others.

  305. If this is a feminist mob, count me in. I refuse to disavow my beliefs based on name calling.

  306. @ Marsha:

    It could be due to a misunderstanding, to some degree. I think that Ken’s comment about “emotional overreaction” generated a visceral response due to some of us being accused of that before. In fairness to Ken, I think he is probably not aware of Bill Mouser like those of us with Dallas ties or patriarchy ties are.

    What Ken interpreted as an overreaction was actually a response to Mouser’s claim that God is male (not merely that the Incarnate Son is male) and Mouser’s claim that denying that is denying the gospel. If someone doesn’t know about Mouser, the comment which triggered Ken might not make sense without that context and might seem to be over-the-top when it is actually Mouser and his buddies at the Bayly Brothers Circus who are over-the-top.

  307. Marsha wrote:

    If this is a feminist mob, count me in. I refuse to disavow my beliefs based on name calling.

    Yes. Can men be members of a feminist mob? As a happily married man, husband and father, please, count me in.

    Gram3 wrote:

    Another thing that is implicit in comp teaching is their warped view of men.

    It is all so strange. I definitely do not feel at home in the picture they paint of men. And I definitely would not recognise myself in the “Dude who can beat up people” and “break their noses” as per Driscoll.

    I think those complementarians are all just little boys who are scared in the dark, scared of the girls who are stronger than them. They are afraid of strong and independent women. And the only relationship that they understand is one of domination and submission. They have no idea of what healthy human relationships look like. And they don’t want to know.

    I once read an article about Grudem where he complained that even many christian couples who say that they agree with complementarian theory, even many of those couples lead – in practical reality, in their daily lives – egalitarian lives, where the men did not lead strongly enough, the women do not submit to that leadership enough.

    Why that should be a problem for him I do not know – if the couples are happy with it, and it isn’t damaging to anyone, or clearly sinful, why should it be any of his business? It’s a clear case where the ideology is more important than real lives of real people.

  308. Gus wrote:

    I once read an article about Grudem where he complained that even many christian couples who say that they agree with complementarian theory, even many of those couples lead – in practical reality, in their daily lives – egalitarian lives, where the men did not lead strongly enough, the women do not submit to that leadership enough.

    I read some comments by russell moore on this, that people were claiming to be comp but were living lives more like egals. His point was that comp is not the right word and he favors the word patriarchy. At least he is not hiding what he thinks.

  309. Nancy wrote:

    I read some comments by russell moore on this

    IIRC, he presented a paper at ETS some years ago where he declared that what the “complementarians” are really talking about is patriarchy. I believe he used the words “father rule” and complained about men not taking charge of their families. I remember being shocked at that admission, which seemed to me to be an instance of accidentally telling the real truth.

    He’s a Mohler clone, so what should we expect?

  310. @ Nancy:
    I understand, but at the same time, we don’t know anything about the physics of the new heavens/earth, any more than we have much of anything to go by on what the immediate afterlife is like -apart from Jesus’ “many mansions” comments, which serm to = plenty of room for all, with the Father and with him. I don’t think Revelation can be taken as anything resembling a literal description of heaven, as it is suffused with OT and apocalyptic imagery that is, at best, extremely dense and difficult. Add to that a need to somehow present the visions in a wsy that is even semi-comprehensible, and you’ve got trouble – at least, insofar as literal reading is concerned. And even those who claim to hold to a literal readingmof the book are very selective about their literalism, imo.

  311. @ numo:
    Kust admit that i have great difticulty imagining a place where there literally is no night, among other things! It goes completely against the grain, since everyone on this planet has to deal with day/night, waking/sleeping, activity/rest etc.

  312. Gram3 wrote:

    IIRC, he presented a paper at ETS some years ago where he declared that what the “complementarians” are really talking about is patriarchy.

    Russel Moore: “I hate the term ‘complementarian’…”
    http://baylyblog.com/blog/2008/05/russel-moore-i-hate-term-complementarian

    Russell Moore: Gender identity and complementarianism… I hate ….the word ‘complementarian’, I prefer the word ‘patriarchy’…

    ———–
    Also, if Ken is still reading this thread, I’d ask him to scroll back up and find my post directed at him.

    Complementarianism hurt me personally. To find freedom, I had to ditch it. It created all sorts of problems for me from youth and in my adult years, too.

  313. I recently came across this article and believe parts of it are pertinent to this thread, I think it can apply to churches or Christian discussion about gender.

    Women At Work: A Guide For Men
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/women-at-work-a-guide-for-men-1418418595?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_Top

    This is a huge issue for women—one that few men can understand because they haven’t experienced it.

    “It’s not that women want respect more than men.

    It’s that men start out with more,” says Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of the Energy Project, a consulting firm. As a man, “you’re the privileged one. You just don’t realize you’re privileged.”

  314. Nancy wrote:

    @ Steve Scott:

    Not all of us get that deduction…

    Nancy, yes you are correct. Once upon a time I did the math, too. It doesn’t stop religious organizations, charities and churches from advertising a tax deduction, though. And it doesn’t stop many people from thinking that taking a deduction is the way to be a good steward. Sad, but true.

  315. Daily wrote: “Complementarianism hurt me personally. To find freedom, I had to ditch it. It created all sorts of problems for me from youth and in my adult years, too.”

    Completely understandable and I, too, have been damaged by this destructive, unbiblical doctrine.

    I call it a doctrine only because that is what some have developed it into, using the Trinity to base it upon. And because these “Complementarians” believe without question in this “divine order” of theirs, they then go about constructing ways men and women are to act and think, all the while assuming a “consistency” can be authoritively established for their nonsense. It just goes to show what happens when people use the Bible as the basis for their prejudices: they turn it into doctrines in which they use to distort the Word of God but remain blind to the fact they’ve simply built a tower to house their self-righteousness in. Which is why we’re told to search the scriptures and test what we’re being taught.

    Naturally, complementarians make liberal use of hierarchies and authority structures. How else are they going to subjugate you and make you their servants? They must first convince you of your positional inferiority compared to them, albeit your femaleness and it’s naturally weaker & submissive role in relation to men, or your spiritual inferiority regardless of your gender in which you are to submit your life to the authority of the church and its officials.

    And this of course is where there can be found no biblical basis within the New Testament to construct their tower upon because, of course, for the Christian, no one besides the Lord Jesus Christ has any authority over our lives. That is, unless they came down from heaven, she’d their blood, and died to redeem us. Which they haven’t, so yeah. They can turn all that super spiritual authority they think they have down a notch.

    But in terms of consistency, I don’t find the lack of it among complementarians disconcerting because they’re all Players anyway. One can expect them to be masters of manipulation, especially as regards women. Where the inconsistencies bother me is among those who denounce complementarianism, who hold the males involved in its promulgation responsible and denounce them, but who then turn defend the women who are equally responsible for its pernicious presence in the church. It’s the same old double standard: blame the men because they’re stronger and the victimizers but have sympathy on the women because they’re weaker and the victims.

    I agree with you Daisy. Complementarianism is hurtful and harmful. It takes people captive and doesn’t have the power, or the truth, on its side to set people free. It harms men and women equally, and both the men and the women who promote it should be held equally responsible without assigning victimhood status to the women who are complicit in endorsing it because they’re the problem, too. You and I both know it’s the churches that adopt it, but its the women, primarily, who teach, model, and enforce it within the ranks.  

     

  316. Paula Rice wrote:

    You and I both know it’s the churches that adopt it, but its the women, primarily, who teach, model, and enforce it within the ranks.

    In my entire life time of not fitting the pattern of societal expectations for women I have had maybe a handful of men who had anything bad to say about it, and maybe two or three who thought they were actually going to cause trouble. But I have taken more mess off of women that I can even begin to remember, at church mostly and sometimes in the community, but never in the hospital. It is the women who were my adversaries, not the men. The idea that it is all the men who create the problems has soooooo not been my experience.

  317. @ Nancy:
    Exactly Nancy. But of course the women are just submitting, doing what they’re told. These Complementarian women aren’t as responsible as their male counterparts because it’s not their job to preach, to teach, or to formulate doctrine, right? Their job is to quietly comply, and then to support the men in leadership positions so as not to cause any grief like those feminist Jezebels who want nothing more than to usurp and overthrow male authority. Those worldly women who have the audacity to think they have equal authority to the men in the church, and to their husband’s within their marriages.

    And when men in the church come under scrutiny for the things their wives knew about and supported, they find it convenient to retreat to the quiet corner where they can pretend ignorance and uninvolved entry because, of course, it’s not their fault anything happened. After all, they were focused exclusively on what goes on inside their own houses and had nothing to do with what happened within the “sphere” of the men’s world. And surely God would not hold them responsible either for anything because it was never their “role” to say or do anything but to be submissive helpers to their husbands.

    Said Sapphira.

  318. Nancy wrote:

    In my entire life time of not fitting the pattern of societal expectations for women I have had maybe a handful of men who had anything bad to say about it, and maybe two or three who thought they were actually going to cause trouble. But I have taken more mess off of women that I can even begin to remember, at church mostly and sometimes in the community, but never in the hospital. It is the women who were my adversaries, not the men. The idea that it is all the men who create the problems has soooooo not been my experience.

    This has been my experience in my career which included traveling all over and working with many corporations and organizations over the years. I always preferred working with men because of my experiences. Still do.

    At church, the comp women were the worst in my experience. They bought into the rules and formulas spoken from stages by those with Christianese titles and tended to watch to see if everyone else was living within them.

    My experience with women in several mega groups boiled down to 2 types of comp women and both made life miserable for those who did not fit into the types: Those waiting around (and always lamenting) for their husband to “be the “leader God wanted him to be” and those who played the comp role well at church but lived egal in the world and never saw the disconnect. (Dorothy Patterson is one example of this) They loved to talk about it. My favorite line being, “I must honor my husband” over every tiny issue that came down the pike. I always wondered if Sapphira was “honoring her husband”. (wink)

    Divorced or single women were almost impossible for them to assimilate into their world. It came down to the fact the marriage was their Christianity. It was weird as I look back on it.

    But then, I also realized where they were getting their comp doctrine. If they had been taught they had NO mediator between them and Jesus Christ, they would not have gone down those roads. But they sure made life miserable for anyone who dared bring in another interpretive grid.

  319. Thinking out loud here. In your experience, how many women who are in comp churches agree with the doctrines and actively promote them, and how many are passively going along to get along? Or going along so they or their husband is not shamed by others. How many women, especially middle-aged or older, are aware of ESS and hard comp/patriarchy and how it has infiltrated churches?

    I agree that it is most obnoxious when women promote it and deny their sisters their freedom in Christ. A few in a comp church have quietly told me they appreciate me speaking up. Others I have observed in awkward and uncomfortable silence when it is discussed in a church class. Still others just look really, really unhappy and without joy, though they talk about joy a lot. And finally there are those who I would describe as somewhat ascetic in that the more they “give up” of themselves as persons, the better they seem to feel about themselves.

    The whole idea of women supporting patriarchy is strange to me.

  320. Lydia wrote:

    Those waiting around (and always lamenting) for their husband to “be the “leader God wanted him to be” and those who played the comp role well at church but lived egal in the world and never saw the disconnect.

    And usually the “leader God wanted him to be” was the leader she wanted him to be. Why must this be so difficult between mature men and women who are both in Christ?

    Dorothy Patterson and the other females in the Gospel Glitterati their conference circus are a class unto themselves, ISTM. They enjoy great privileges and acclaim because of their advocacy of putting other women in their subjugated place. That takes a special kind of personality, I think.

  321. Paula Rice wrote:

    those feminist Jezebels who want nothing more than to usurp and overthrow male authority.

    Don’t you just love how women are characterized as Jezebels, or as having the “Jezebel spirit?” When is the last time a you heard a male in the church called an Ahab, if ever?

  322. Paula Rice wrote:

    And when men in the church come under scrutiny for the things their wives knew about and supported, they find it convenient to retreat to the quiet corner where they can pretend ignorance and uninvolved entry because, of course, it’s not their fault anything happened.

    That’s the desire to be a child with no responsibility rather than a maturing woman who is growing up into Christ, her Head, and who has a duty to be a Berean and to contribute to the body in *whatever* way God has gifted her.

  323. Gram3 wrote:

    Thinking out loud here. In your experience, how many women who are in comp churches agree with the doctrines and actively promote them, and how many are passively going along to get along?

    Great question. Those actively promoting it were always getting “something” from it. Whether it was some sort of leadership to women or as an excuse not to mature in Christ. Then there was a whole class of women who wanted no responsibility–in certain life areas too many to list here.

    I even saw young college educated women work hard to get married and pregnant right away so they would not have to work. Because godly women stay home with their kids. (those situations have not always worked out real well, btw, because of the economy. So they view working outside the home as not honoring their husbands and God)

    I also base this on all the sold out comp marriage seminars back then. And the women’s ministry seminars were very popular. From what I can tell, that has really slacked off from it’s hey day in the 90’s and turn of the century. This doctrinal stance was a huge money maker for many mega’s. I think the sex angle to this doctrine really helped sell it. Christianized sex was all the rage. As if for thousands of years people were not doing it right or something. Who doesn’t want a great marriage honoring to God? You can position things in a way that people buy it. French Vanilla as compared to plain old vanilla, you know.

    So there is the group think aspect of it. Women getting caught up in it because they are in that particular tribe and it seems so godly. The smart guy on stage says so. Can all these thousands of people be wrong? Can Beth Moore be wrong? She agrees with (lots of verbal gymnastics) it and look at her! People literally scalped Beth Moore tickets!

    There was a lot of that sort of tribal thinking.

    I am guessing that CBMW is really trying to revive what was once a huge money maker because it has been dying in certain evangelical circles compared to a few years back. Think of it. Money AND power in one doctrinal stance. Secular marketers are jealous.

  324. Lydia wrote:

    CBMW is really trying to revive what was once a huge money maker because it has been dying in certain evangelical circles compared to a few years back.

    Oh, I hope this is true, for the sake of the young men and women coming up. Where is it dying off? It seems to be like kudzu in the SBC.

  325. @ Gram3:

    What I see at SBC mega here is somewhat different from what Lydia has seen. From the reputation they have in town and from what I see they are not so much into look how righteous I am but rather look how affluent I am. The long time preacher who basically built the church headed it in that direction about 30 years ago, and that direction has sort of a comp look, but really it is married, fertile, affluent, three or more kids, presentable husband who will show his face at church, blond pony tail, relatively new minivan, tight jeans when possible, simple but not shaggy look, stickers on the van if any are some local children’s sports activity or gym and they act and look almost like they think they were still in college. Of course they try not to work outside the home but mostly because they don’t have to having married “well” don’t you know..Yes to Beth Moore. Yes to marking up the bible with colored pencils. Read the approved books from the church library and have the approved opinions and mostly act like they are a mile wide and two inches deep. They remind me of people trying to look and act much younger than the actually are. On Sunday there is way too much exposure of some flesh that really is the worse for wear and would look better not seen.

    So I said to my resident advisor on such things: I don’t get it what is going on here. And she said that in her opinion the last time these women ever had any actual power was when they were in college, and that was sexual power, and now that they are middle aged or getting there fast they don’t know anything to do but still pretend that they still are what they used to be. Affluently of course. And sweetly.

    Now I have been around a while and seen some stats and notice some evidences, and I suspect that there is a liberal use of prescription mood modifying meds and a number seem to have had boob jobs or else have discovered some anti-aging secret the rest of us do not know.

    On the other hand, this is just a description of the “in crowd.” This church does a lot of good stuff with some population groups here in town, and that is a different story. One of the campuses, for example, is Spanish speaking. So, the church is a mixed bag. The comp-ish ladies are the ones that I have described.

  326. Gram3 wrote:

    and to contribute to the body in *whatever* way God has gifted her.

    I hear it said this way from time to time, and there is something that is bothersome to me. Let us say that somebody is gifted in some specific way. Does that giftedness necessarily mean that it should be used in the church? I am not talking about restrictive rules, I am talking about analyzing someone’s responsibility. Case in point. The story went around that a president of the former Carver school had a student who was apparently serious leadership potential, but instead of pursuing this path she got engaged to one of the seminary students which meant, at that time, that the levels of leadership they thought she was gifted for would not happen. Allegedly the president of the school commented that it was such a pity that the woman chose what she did, and allegedly this comment got her into serious trouble with the seminary president at the time. I do not vouch for the accuracy of this tale; it is just what was told.

    So, was she right? Was it a pity? How much obligation goes along with being gifted in some area that potentially could be of use to the church? Where does perceiving a call or leading in a certain direction come into play?

    Or what if the church just does not want to utilize someone’s giftedness, does not want to go in that direction of ministry let’s say. Does the church have to modify its goals and create a place for the gifted person in order to accommodate the giftedness of one of it’s people?

    What I think is that this is a difficult area and I am glad up to my eyebrows that I never felt gifted in anything related to the church. But some people do, and it is a legitimate set of questions.

  327. @ Nancy:

    I was thinking in terms of the spiritual gifts which are given for the edification of the body. Don’t know if it was a pity or not. If she chose not to use her gift and went in another direction, then I suppose it was a pity. If she chose to use her gift elsewhere or in a different way, then I suppose it wasn’t. The main thing is that I think the benefits to the body of everyone serving are important to maintain by not hindering people.

    That doesn’t mean that everyone gets to do whatever they feel “called” to do or that there is some entitlement to a position. We have way too many young seminary grads ready to remake churches. Mostly I think it means serving one another in whatever way we can and not placing arbitrary restrictions on people. Obviously, you want someone who is prepared for whatever service is rendered, but we have to encourage people to serve and not discourage them. I also think it means not always emphasizing the showy up-front things.

    Is that what you meant?

  328. @ Nancy:

    That is an interesting thought by your resident expert. I have a few of those cultural interpreters, too. The whole sexual power thing may be on target. I wouldn’t know since that was not a particularly strong area for me. 😉

    Wouldn’t it be great if we used the strengths and power that we have to benefit others instead of using it to use others for our own purposes?

  329. Gram3 wrote:

    Lydia wrote:

    CBMW is really trying to revive what was once a huge money maker because it has been dying in certain evangelical circles compared to a few years back.

    Oh, I hope this is true, for the sake of the young men and women coming up. Where is it dying off? It seems to be like kudzu in the SBC.

    keep in mind I am comparing it to its heyday. I am loosely following this and not seeing the glut of conferences and books published on this doctrine as there was even 7 years ago. Why?. so much of this stuff in Christendom is driven by money and “hit it while the irons are hot” mentality. Where is the Purpose Driven Life?

    the rise of the blogosphere initially helps such movements but then can actually hurt them over time. these things don’t work as well with out the bubble wrapped ghetto.

    I am NOT looking at it from the point of view of who is preaching it. That wont change. But at one time, Comp doctrine was its own sub industry.

    If it were a big money maker and prestigious, do you think CBMW would be turned over to Owen? they are in a pickle compared to the heyday. they couldn’t let it die (the money has been dwindling for a while) and no one with any gravitas behind their name wanted it. And SBTS is into nepotism and finding positions for such. And who knows…perhaps Owen can make a name for himself and be rewarded like Burk was.

  330. Lydia wrote:

    If it were a big money maker and prestigious, do you think CBMW would be turned over to Owen? they are in a pickle compared to the heyday. they couldn’t let it die (the money has been dwindling for a while) and no one with any gravitas behind their name wanted it. And SBTS is into nepotism and finding positions for such.

    That’s an interesting point you make about Owen (not John) being chosen Director of CBMW. Here’s another thought. It seems obvious to me that the organization is not viable without support from SBTS. The revenues simply are not there. So, does anyone know how much subsidy the SBC provides to CBMW? I”m thinking not just about rent but about time compensated by SBTS but used for CBMW purposes.

    The economics of the movement do not seem to be sustainable. Where are all of these young and zealous graduates going to find positions? Nepotism and cronyism certainly seems to be the way things work in the SBTS/9Marks/TgC/T4g world. “Interns” seem to be all the rage, but the “intern” programs can be viewed as indoctrination programs for loyalists who will be rewarded. Several men have been pushed out of their positions at my former church to make room for interns with connections up the chain. I guess that may be why I’m missing the bigger picture.

  331.   __

    “Club New Calvinism”

    Now You See It, Now You Don’t?

    hmmm…

    As I have said before, Comp stuff is a false theological argument designed to keep ‘feminism’ out of ‘Club’ New Calvinism 501(c)3 churches. 

    Complementarianism = Patriarchy. (‘They’ said so…) Plain N’ simple.

    As you may recall, ‘They’ pushed ‘free will’ out of their ‘churches’ quite some time ago…

    Even told everyone God no longer ‘speeks’ but through the Bible, – effectively muting The Almighty’s ‘Voice’…

    Then they ‘said’ God no longer ‘performs’ Miracles cuz da bible’s finished.

    hmmm…

    Then ‘They’ apparently sought ta control da bible interpretation just like certain religious hierarchies once did in the days of old…

    Same ole, same ole, huh?

    Will ‘They’ soon devise other theological conceptive device(s) to keep ‘other stuff’ out of the ‘Club’ New Calvinist 501(c)3 churches as well?

    (bump)

    It is not bad enough that they demand a Un- New Testament Un-biblical ten percent of the Christ believer’s gross annual take-home pay, 

    “God loves a greedy receiver…”

    -snicker-

    …now they have the gall ta reach in and they wanna proscribe ‘in exacting grueling detail’ how kind folks are to live in ‘their’ own home(s).

    (…and people let um.)

    Datz ‘real’ sick, huh?

    (sadface)

    Proverbial 501(c)3 Religious Thieves & Wolves coming to a neighborhood near you?

    chances are they are ‘here’ already…

    (gump!)

    knock! knock!

    R U testing da spirits?

    Beloved, Brothers and Sisters, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are ‘from’ God, because many proverbial false do-do head 501(c)3 pastors have gone out into da world…

    (tears)

    (you will know um by their fruit…)

    check, check…one two, one two…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGaSX3PG-DE

    🙂

    R U tied per chance to da proverbial 501(c)3 religious whipping post?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6up076lSH8

    Sopy

  332. Paula Rice wrote:

    It’s the same old double standard: blame the men because they’re stronger and the victimizers but have sympathy on the women because they’re weaker and the victims.

    I guess I regard the men as being more responsible, because they are the ones who benefit from it the most. It seems largely the men wanting to uphold and defend it. I think a lot of the women who go along with it, like my mother, sincerely buy into it.

    She got the idea somewhere along the way, not sure if it was from her own understanding of the Bible, from her mother, from some church she went to in youth or some combination that there is supposed to be a male hierarchy.

    As for myself, I was spoonfed this stuff so much from my mother and various Christian literature I read and in sermons, I figured “all these adults must be right.”

    But then as I got older, I kept seeing passages in the Bible that contradicted the gender comp view, and my doubts about gender comp grew and grew.

    So, I was a woman who was a gender comp at one time because I had been taught since I was a kid it was biblical and true. I didn’t know any better. all the adults around me were telling me it was so.

    When I say gender comp hurts men, I don’t want to go into a long list of details, but I mean things like a lot of gender comps tend to define manhood in very extreme ways (such as, a real man has a huge income so his wife can stay at home, a real man loves football, a real man never cries at sad movies).

    So what of men who love poetry, they are sensitive, don’t like football, and can’t afford to pay for a wife to sit at home, they need help from the wife (the wife has to get a job too)?

    Those types of men don’t fit in with many versions of gender comp I’ve read about or heard about, and some preachers shame the men who don’t fit in and call them wimpy from the pulpit.

    There are other ways gender comp can hurt men, that’s just one.

    I see gender comp as largely being foisted upon women by a male hierarchy – the men run the churches and don’t permit women to have much input, so I fee the onus is on most gender comp men for this.

  333. Lydia wrote:

    At church, the comp women were the worst in my experience. They bought into the rules and formulas spoken from stages by those with Christianese titles and tended to watch to see if everyone else was living within them.

    I can see how sometimes girls or women can be an issue. But I don’t think they’re the real culprit.

    If you read about codependency and how most American girls are raised, I can’t at the end of the day totally blame girls (or women) for this behavior. They were conditioned to be this way.

    It’s an overall cultural problem. Many females are taught from a young age (including Non-Christain ones, but Christian ones are fed a double dose of this), that nice, proper girls are submissive, compliant, doormats.

    There have been studies about this, reproduced in books. While parents, teachers, etc, encourage boys to be brave, independent, out spoken and to take risks, girls are usually encouraged and rewarded by authority figures for obeying, following orders, being neat, being quiet.

    Girls are taught to value relationships at all costs and nurturing, while boys are taught to value things like independence and risk taking.

    Girls who do not follow the expected social norms for girls (being quiet, neat, etc) get reprimanded by teachers and other adults.

    (yes, they do – there are studies out there, you can go search them out. I put in links on one old post on here.
    These studies are also summarized and references in books about abuse and codependency, books that explain why women usually end up being victims in domestic abuse situation and not men.
    They discuss how teachers treat female students differently from male students, sometimes they are unaware of their own biases).

    Anyway, the various studies I’ve read summarized in books go on about how once girls enter late grade school or junior high, they start pressuring non-conforming girls to go along with the social norms.

    Girls who are outspoken, opinionated, etc, get ostracized by the main group of girls, or become subjected to catty behavior.

    Another thing too is that because females are taught to be indirect and never to show anger openly, they take anger underground, and it comes out in other ways.

    Girls learn to use passive aggressive means while in childhood and their teen years, and this carries over into adulthood (I also lived it, I know this first hand).

    Girls get this in childhood from parents, teachers, churches… women aren’t supposed to be assertive, show anger. Only men are permitted to do those things or have those traits.

    As a consequence of being taught that women being direct with people is wrong, girls get catty with each other. They never learn to be upfront or how to handle conflict in a healthy manner.

    That is most likely why some gender complementarian women attack other women who refuse to go along with the program.

    It’s like childhood and middle school all over again, ostracize and/or use social pressure to get the non complying women to go along. I see that as being a consequence of sexism, started by men.

    That women may sort of unwillingly being carrying it along is more fall out and they are not the ones who initiated it, IMO.

    I was raised to be a gender comp but didn’t even realize a lot of this gender comp stuff was garbage until I re-read the Bible and read many blogs and books by therapists. I would have defended gender comp myself many years ago, but out of ignorance, because I honestly thought at one time it was biblical.

  334. @ Sopwith:

    That is precisely what they did. Just how do they plan to continue to market their product line (ideas) when they keep dropping individual products until their catalogue is now about two pages think. And some other products do not hold up the first time you run them through the washing machine. Like for instance, all you got is the bible, but much of the bible you ought not believe or practice. Really? When your whole pitiful product line is based on that one popular item?

    I am thinking that one problem they may have right now is the economy. I heard it said from some IFB people decades ago that women should not be employed outside the home even if he family had to go on welfare. Now the rules about who gets welfare and for how long have changed and that won’t work any more. So here is a crashing economy and a family in need. Does mama go get work? She does if she can, and if she has no skills she takes what she can get. Mamas going to work is one of the factors that dropped participation in the pre-school at my church such that the school could no longer be kept open. Does earning your own money change anything? It does. Is daddy happy with this? Don’t know.

    So, bad theology meets reality. Get your tickets here!

  335. FWIW, the “complementarians” with which I last had interaction were OK with women working outside the home. In fact, they used this distinction to differentiate themselves from the bad patriarchists. No, really. My theory about this indulgence is that they needed their wive’s income during seminary/college, so that gets rationalized. The other thing is that they have female pediatricians and ObGyn docs and they need to rationalize that, too. Of course, the present economy also exerts pressure in that direction.

    The problem is when, and if, these women start looking in the mirror and staying, “???” Or possibly when their daughters get to be teens and start thinking outside the very constrained box. They forget, I think, that their kids will be as at home with social media as they are. They’d better make sure they don’t teach their children how to reason or think beyond recalling what to parrot.

  336.   __

    “Courtesy Flush, Please.”

    Intro music:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS8Sd8amxcU

    hmmm… 

    For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because?

    What?

    Calvinestas: “…when you received the word of men which you heard of us, you received [it] not [as] the word of men, but as we would have it…it is in new found truth, the word of God, 

    -snicker-

    which we effectually want working also in those stupid enough to believe these things…”

    (bump)

    Is it ‘convenient’ for these proverbial 501(c)3 ‘pastoral’ men to control over fifty percent of their church population(s), with a couple of bible passages… ?

    SKreeeeeeeeeeeeetch !

    —> while they spiritually enslave women and sexually abuse children and cover it up, and effectively silence the rest…

    oh’ joy?

    (sadface)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEySvBxZiyc

    🙂

    beat to quarters…

    Sopy

  337. Gram3 wrote:

    They’d better make sure they don’t teach their children how to reason or think beyond recalling what to parrot.

    My son, now in his mid 20s, recently told me that one of the best things I did raising him was to be ready to ask himself “why” he was making a choice. He said it hit home when he came home one day after turning 18 and said he had registered to vote and with party XYZ. I asked him why XYZ and pushed hard and he really had no answer other than “of course”. That made him think long and hard about why one party might be better than the other. Or not.

  338. Nancy wrote:

    So, bad theology meets reality. Get your tickets here!

    But Reality cannot be permitted to override Purity of Ideology!
    Ask Comrade Pol Pot!

  339. @ numo:
    I know it’s sad and I should get a life, but wearisome isn’ the word, this thread actually made me ill over the weekend, i.e on top of a grotty week and still too much coffee, it got to me. I don’t usually spend time thinking about threads I hasten to add. I think it was the frustration of trying to communicate and what to me are nuanced and moderate comments being taken to an extreme or someone not really bothering to read what is there before coming back with a comment.

    Normal service has now been resumed, I enjoy the inteaction with those who see things differently, such as gram, and would like to continue as and when, but there is only one of me and I can’t always muster the humph to reply to everyone. It’s too much like multi-tasking …

    This is a rather unusual place for variety of opinion being expressed, and your cmoplaint I am trying to change minds cuts both ways, in that gram and you and others by arguing the way you do are doing the same thing.

  340. @ Ken:

    From time to time we all do get to playing with a one-string guitar, but then the topic will shift and things get interesting again.

  341. @ Hester:
    I really appreciated this post and one below it, not least for dragging the subject back into the real world of what actually goes on amongst those who are not abusers and control freaks, and would be regardless of this debate.

    I haven’t thought that much about this subject for years, not until it came up on here about a year ago. The whole ‘headship’ thing has been exercising my mind, not least because I’m not sure I have been taking the responsibility and initiative (which is what I think it entails) in my own family to the extent I should have done. One day I will have to give an account, and I am getting uneasy about it. Tempting as it is, I’m not going to hide behind the word ‘source’ to let myself off the hook.

    This is not some great guilt trip, but I suspect my discussion of this on here is probably coming at an angle diametrically opposite to what some here assume, namely that I am trying to justify a hierarchy and position of privilege for myself. I don’t see it that way.

    In gender-confused western Europe, there is great pressure for marriage – to the extent it is still believed in – to be between two independent people, rather than the Apostle Paul’s teaching of interdependency, and that for man in any circumstances to put his foot down in a marriage is tantamount to him assuming the role of Attila the Hun. The picture of marriage reflecting Christ and the church is absolutely loathed by the secular culture.

    Yet in Europe there is no patriarchy, and complementarianism doesn’t raise the hackles nor is such a big issue amongst evangelicals, certainly in the UK. I have not once seen it as an occasion for the level of abuse as often described on here. I think there is a cultural thing at work here. The shepherding error was never quite as bad in the UK as what was practiced on the other side of the pond.

  342. @ Ken:
    If i may – when you make sweeping statements, like the one about “gender-confused Western Europe” – you tend to undermine your own arguments. It seems to me that you have a highly polarized view of not only society in general, but of the church. As if things are somehow church vs. godless secular liberalism, or some such.

    It might not be as apparrnt to you as it is to American readefs, but you use a whole lot of Culture Wars code words/phrases that originated over here, which make me suspect that more of this ideology has crept into the evangelical circles you frequent than you and others realize.

  343. Ken wrote:

    The whole ‘headship’ thing has been exercising my mind, not least because I’m not sure I have been taking the responsibility and initiative (which is what I think it entails) in my own family to the extent I should have done. One day I will have to give an account, and I am getting uneasy about it. Tempting as it is, I’m not going to hide behind the word ‘source’ to let myself off the hook.

    You sound like a good man. Would you feel any less responsible to do any of the things you believe a “head” should do if there were not a hierarchy with you over your wife? Somehow, I don’t think that you would. So why the extra baggage of hierarchy? Why not just love, and serve, and honor one another without invoking a hierarchy that is nowhere prescribed and which even the proponents refer to as “hints” and “whispers?”

    I don’t think that the metaphor of “head” can be summed up in one or two words, whether it is “source” or “authority over.” Actually, “head” and “body” are the complete metaphor. You don’t like “source” but what do you think Paul meant when he summed up his argument by saying woman came from man, man now comes from woman, but all come from God? That sounds more originsh or sourceish than it does authorityish. Maybe if you put Grudem’s poisoning of the well aside and just look at Paul’s arguments in context…

    Sorry you had a crummy week, and I hope things are going a bit better for you this week.

  344. Ken wrote:

    In gender-confused western Europe, there is great pressure for marriage – to the extent it is still believed in – to be between two independent people, rather than the Apostle Paul’s teaching of interdependency, and that for man in any circumstances to put his foot down in a marriage is tantamount to him assuming the role of Attila the Hun. The picture of marriage reflecting Christ and the church is absolutely loathed by the secular culture.

    Women being considered equals is not the reason for gender confusion. I know that’s what the propaganda is, but it just is not so. If you think it is, then what is the mechanism by which equality for women causes gender confusion? That connection does not make sense to me, and I knew people who would now be described as “gender-confused” a very, very long time ago. Way before the 1970’s.

    A lot of things are out in the open now that were previously hidden or denied. I doubt that human nature has changed very much. In the Greek culture, women were totally subjugated to males, yet homosexuality flourished, or so I’m told. My Muslim friends tell me that homosexuality exists way underground in their homelands. How come we don’t blame those instances of gender confusion on women’s subjugation? I just don’t see the connection, though it is thrown out along with the “feminism” word to scare people.

    Why would a man or a woman “put their foot down” over the objection of their husband or wife? That doesn’t make sense to me either. Why would either want to do that to the person they are called to love and respect more than any other person in the world? Or do you agree with the “complementarians” that loving is for husbands and respecting is for wives?

    You never answered the question about how women teaching men opens the door to spiritual warfare. Or acknowledged that Bill Mouser is a lunatic misogynist who “does” think that people who reject patriarchy are rejecting the gospel. He had a paper online about it. I hope you understand why those of us who do know about him “emotionally overreact” to that kind of claim.

  345. @ Ken:
    Why is the marriage of independent people a bad thing? I am asking honestly, because i think that if one or the other – or both – parties in a marriage are not emotionally mature enough to be truly independent people, then there’s something off from the get-go. Interdependence, to me, simply does not equal hierwrchy, but the choice of two independent adults to make a life together.

    Also, i am confusef as to why a man would need to “put his foot down”? Frankly, if i ever do marry (not likely; I’m pushing 60) i would *not* want to be with someone who felt a need to do this. It seems born of insecurity, and that is very bad for both spouses. If i am not viewed as equal, then i will not marry, as i do not for one nanosecond believe that God created a hierarchical system of marriage, and i refuse to be “less than.”

    Looking at my last graph… i suspect that’s the main reason I’m not marrief. The churches i was in were all comp, though not nearly as pushy about it as many people are today.

    A suggestion: take some time to read Dorothy L. Sayers’ essay “Are Women Human?” It might help you to understand where some of us are coming from.

  346. @ Gram3:

    Well, I think the answer to why gay people are around is that there have always been gay people in this world. As for Muslim countries, it's not as "underground" as you might think, though certainly, men who are perceived as being effeminate are at risk. Then again, so are a lot of openly gay and lesbian people here in the US. The stories of so-called "'corrective" rapes endured by many lesbians are appalling, and it's a not-infrequent crime.

  347. @ Ken:
    I haven’t had the time to read back all the posts since I was last on this thread. I hope you saw my post to you, I think it was this thread.

    Gender Complementarianism, which you champion, was personally hurtful to me. Gender comp is codependency under another name.

    I’ve had to read books by counselors and blogs by psychiatrists to un-learn gender compism (codependency).

    Gender complementarianism (codependency) was crippling to me, and made it easier for my ex, co workers, family, and other people to use me and take advantage of me.

  348. Ken wrote:

    … at an angle diametrically opposite to what some here assume, namely that I am trying to justify a hierarchy and position of privilege for myself. I don’t see it that way.

    You are a recipient of that privilege whether you intend for it to be so or not, or whether you are explicitly trying to fight to justify why you should have that position or not.

    The fact is, you benefit from that privilege even if you do nothing to argue for it, or fight for it.

    And you are failing to see or perhaps even consider how women are harmed by gender complementarianism, how they are excluded, mistreated, and/or marginalized in churches, Christian culture, marriages, jobs, friendships, by being taught to follow “biblical womanhood” teachings.

    I had to live under gender comp teachings my entire life, until I saw they were false and ditched them a few years ago.

  349.   __

      Apostle Paul’s admonition for orderliness in the worship service by both men and women, has now become a type of authoritarian rule in a ‘general sense’, oppressing women and enforcing a ‘standard’ encompassing christian life ‘way’ beyond the church doors. 

      Once again there are those who would abuse the scriptures for personal gain. 

      This oppressive behavior is apparently now become common practice in many 501(c)3 church assemblies.

  350. @ numo:

    That was my point. People are people, but cultures have different norms and resulting cultural sanctions. As for Muslim/Arab countries, there are lots of things that are open secrets, but the facade of being hidden is maintained in order to maintain face. I have a Muslim friend who cannot see her family. I have others who are more Westernized whose families accept variances from the norm.

  351. @ Daisy:
    Sorry, I’ve not been meaning to ignore you, but time is limited to reply so I haven’t got round to it yet.

    I think any doctrine taken to an extreme can be misused to hurt others, especially in an area where giving someone some responsibility can result in them using it to damage others by being authoritarian. Complementarianism as I understand it should never lead to this. The abuse of it, as far as I can discern on here, is that patriarchal men use ‘wives submit to husbands’ as an excuse to treat their spouse as a child, to subjugate, to lord it over them. imo the husband should be worrying about doing his half of the bargain, which is the love and cherish bit. That ought to guarantee no abuse.

    I don’t see the ‘head’ thing as conferring privilege, more a case if to whom much is given, much is required.

    The willow creek church we currently do not attend were into codependency, and the psychologists they followed on this expressly taught this was the result of following Eph 5, which immediately put the red warning light on for me. I don’t believe following God’s word ever leads to abuse and enslavement, and some of the psychological input to me seemed to trying to make the wife independent of the husband to maintain some sort of personal autonomy. This is inimical to the interdependence that Paul advocated. I’ll try and get back on that for numo, but it’s late and I must hit the sack!

    You’ve mentioned your unwanted single status before, and I’m sorry if churches have neglected you. My sister is in the same position and knows some of the pressures in this regard, especially the erroneous assumption that single people have all the time in the world to do ‘churchy’ things and don’t have a life of their own. I don’t think though she has ever been treated as a second-class citizen, there may be a cultural difference here between Europe and the States.

  352. Ken wrote:

    I think any doctrine taken to an extreme can be misused to hurt others, especially in an area where giving someone some responsibility can result in them using it to damage others by being authoritarian. Complementarianism as I understand it should never lead to this.

    Complementarianism is authoritarian. One party, the male, always has the authority. The other party, the female, never has the authority, even ultimately over herself, because the male retains the right under the system to overrule any decision she makes. If the husband fails to properly exercise his authority prerogative, he is derided as a man-fail. You can read the Russell Moore paper I linked. It is considered sinful to have an egalitarian or mutualist marriage.

    I don’t think you abuse your “headship”, but that is what the system prescribes. It is inherently abusive to say that one person always has authority over another person for no reason other than gender. What is the problem, in your view, with mutual love and respect without hierarchy?

  353. numo wrote:

    Why is the marriage of independent people a bad thing?

    The answer to me is that marriage ends independence for both parties. You know the saying: marriage is the only word that is also a sentence! It means relinquishing a level of freedom, being brought into a covenant that is indissoluble except by death. I took a whole year before finally finding the courage to pop the question, being aware of the ‘cost’ if you like. And irratinally scarred in case she said no! It’s not a contract you can rescind later!

    I think Paul touches on this idea of interdependence in 1 Cor 11 “(Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.)” Whilst not strictly about marriage, I think it still gives the flavour.

    Willow Creek type stuff like codependency and ‘maintaining boundaries’ to me smacks of trying to hedge your bets in case it goes wrong (which sometimes it does). This only deals with the symptoms of problems in a marriage, not the causes. How can you be one flesh and try to keep boundaries? It doesn’t make sense to me.

    This doesn’t mean spouses completely lose their identities or personal interests, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

    Mind you, I still remember just after getting married how she took MY wallet out of MY coat pocket, and relieved it of MY hard-earned cash to go and buy something, smiling and saying ‘What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is me own’. 🙂 You know you are married then, no mistake!

  354. @ Ken:
    While I’m no fan of Willow Creek, co-dependency and boundary issues are very real things, and in abusive marriages, there’s a HUGE amount of co-dependency and lack of respect for the spouse who is being abused (usually the wife).

    I also disagree about “indissoluble except by death.” You do realize that staying in an abusive marriage can be a literal death sentence for a person? (If not physical actual death, then emotional/spiritual, as well as severe repercussions for kids.)

  355. numo wrote:

    I also disagree about “indissoluble except by death.” You do realize that staying in an abusive marriage can be a literal death sentence for a person? (If not physical actual death, then emotional/spiritual, as well as severe repercussions for kids.)

    Agreed. Some of us on another discussion board had a lively debate about when does God see two people are married. What is the criteria for a “legal” marriage in God’s eyes? Is it dependent on a civil contract, a verbal agreement between two people, or only in the presence of witnesses who can confirm the agreement between the two? Scripture has no definite answer as far as I know. It appears that men simply “took” wives with or without their agreement and some scripture notes that a request was made by one and affirmed or accepted by the other.

    With that in mind, one has to ask when the marriage has been broken, abandoned , or dissolved in God’s eyes. Is it dependent on the state to determine? We do see the necessity of a “certificate of divorce” be provided by the offending party to release the other to marry a more suitable partner. It was the document that released one from the marriage and provided the freedom to remarry. (Deut. 23-24).

    Nowhere in scripture does God condone abuse.

  356. Ken wrote:

    How can you be one flesh and try to keep boundaries? It doesn’t make sense to me.

    One flesh obviously refers to a “unit” comprised of two individuals joined by similar dreams, values, and goals with the maturity to work together in harmony. Boundaries in themselves are not wrong as evidenced by the working within one’s conscience and refusal to violate the same. Paul acknowledges the differences between individuals in Romans 15 and concludes each person should be convinced in her/his own mind. Boundaries can be unhealthy to be sure depending on how they are defined between two people. They actually show respect for the wishes of each person.

  357. numo wrote:

    (If not physical actual death, then emotional/spiritual, as well as severe repercussions for kids.)

    No kidding. I know of a situation where the husband and kids are hostages to the wife’s possible mental illness. He is trying to keep it together because of her and because of the kids. She is a second-generation victim who learned very bad ways of thinking. And so now there is a third generation who are showing signs of it. Another situation I’m aware of involving children was a real crazy-maker. They are both nuttier than pecan pralines, and there were two little girls caught up in that.

  358. @ Gram3:
    Firstly, I still think in reality we are more in agreement on this subject than disagreement.

    With Eph 5 in mind, we have the husband as ‘head’ of the wife. That is something he is, not does.

    Then we have the command of husbands to love their wives, the nourish and cherish bit that fleshes out what love means. He is to love his wife as himself, everything he could want for himself he now transfers to wanting for his wife. This command, I’m sure you would agree, rules out abuse providing he actually does it.

    Then of course we can’t avoid the word submit for wives, indeed this applies to ‘everything’. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but your complaint seems to be that patriarchs have taken ‘head’ to mean ‘has authority over’ and wifely submission in everything to mean he has the right and duty to exercise his authority over every single thing in the marriage, every decision. He has to OK it, or he’s not a “real man”.

    Well, what do you do with 1 Tim 5 v 14, where widows marry, have children, and ‘rule their households’?

    I don’t like the word hierarchy but can’t think of an alternative, but I see ‘headship’ as entailing that God has made the husband ultimately responsible for everything that goes on in his family, but this doesn’t mean he is its feudal lord.

    Paul sums this up in telling hubby to love his wife and the wife to respect her husband. The complementing idea in this is that Paul doesn’t here make this reciprocal or mutual. I think he has put a burden on the husband that he does not expect the wife to carry.

    Christ himself expects submission of the wife, and however you try to work this out in practice, it should be taught to the younger by the older ladies in the church.

    My first experience of this issue was the reverse of this, a younger wife saying she has ‘submitted’ a particular decision to her husband (thereby securing his support for what she was doing) and an older one saying she saw no need for this and would do whatever she thought was right. As a young Christian I thought the whole idea of submission sounded cracked, I’d never heard of it, until I saw it in the bible. I still remember the disillusionment at the cavalier way the NT could be disregarded by those who were supposed to be older and more mature Christians.

    If you like I will do a quick list of Willow Creek foibles you asked about, but it will have to wait until tomorrow!

  359. @ Ken:
    I wish you could say something along the lines of “then i guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.” Because you said that this discussion is stressful for you, but then you come right back and keep repeating yourself.

    I have heard it all many times before, long before this blog came into existence, and i cannot and will not accept it.

  360. Ken wrote:

    Then we have the command of husbands to love their wives, the nourish and cherish bit that fleshes out what love means. He is to love his wife as himself, everything he could want for himself he now transfers to wanting for his wife.

    A couple of things. First, there is no command in Ephesians 5:22 for wives to submit. There is no imperative to submit anywhere in Ephesians 5. So, you are going to have to look back a bit in the context to get an accurate interpretation rather than what the English translators thought was the correct view.

    Second, are you saying that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the relationships head/body, husband/wife, Christ/church just because Paul uses that metaphor? I think it is much more likely that Paul is making a broader point. After all, there was no need for Paul to tell either Jewish believers or formerly pagan believers that women need to submit. They already knew that. Well, except for in Ephesus. So why does Paul make the audacious claim that life in the Spirit looks like submitting to one another, mututally, and all of the other participial descriptions of life in the Spirit that he includes in Ephesians 5?

    Paul is making a broader point of unity. We in the church are one Body united to one Head. The metaphor is one of unity, not authority. We as individuals are “in Christ.” Of course Christ is the authority over the church and of every believer. However, it does not follow from that that husbands are in authority over their wives, nor does it follow that authority exhausts the nature of the relationship between Christ and the church.

    That is taking one aspect of the relationship between Christ and the church and imposing it on an entirely different relationship between two humans. That doesn’t make any sense except to those who must get to authority over someone else. Given that Paul himself calls this a mystery, it seems odd to proclaim that the mystery of the relationship between Christ and the church is the exact same as the authoritarian relationship between a pagan man and pagan woman.

    Third, in principal and as a professional translator, do you think it is sound practice to mis-translate and insert your own words into the text which change the original meaning of the text? Would that be acceptable for something as mundane as, say, a contract between an English entity and a German entity?

    Fourth, do you think it is sound to proof-text an issue by taking the texts out of their contexts? That is exactly what the cults do, and CBMW is cult-like in the way they treat the scriptures. Why do you trust people who do things like that to the words of the Holy Spirit? We share a similar view of the authority of scripture, but we do *not* share a similar opinion of the people who misuse the text just as Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Charles Russell. Why is it OK for Grudem and Piper and the others to do that if it is so bad for cults to do it?

    Fifth, for the sake of argument, if there were no hierarchy as you understand it, would you love and care for your wife less than you do? I don’t think you would, so why do you maintain that a hierarchy is necessary? Why do you think that submission cannot be mutual in a Christ-honoring marriage? Why must submission only go one way?

    Sixth, this is your at-least weekly reminder that you have not demonstrated where God changed his ordained and explicitly stated equality of the Man and the Woman in Genesis 1:26-28. If something is a gospel imperative and the Bible is clear about gospel matters, shouldn’t that change to a hierarchy be made as explicit as the original statement of equality by God is? I mean beyond just the “whispers” and “hints” that the Gospel Glitterati find so intellectually compelling. Try taking “whispers” and “hints” before a judge…

  361. ,

      __

    “Shiver Me ‘Religious’ Timbers”

    Hey Gram3

    hmmm…

    The core of what Apostle Paul was admonishing the Ephesian church to do ‘here’ was Jesus’ golden rule…for husbands to love their wives as themselves, and for wives to revere and respect their husbands.

    Simple.

    love shared by both.

    no manipulation, no control, no abuse from ether party.

    It is infered by the text that the congregation of believers was to be better for it; not divided nor hostile.

    No boat anchor here.

    (grin)

    unless ‘someone’ wants one.

    glug, glug…

    🙂

    Sopy

  362. Sopwith wrote:

    It is infered by the text that the congregation of believers was to be better for it; not divided nor hostile.

    Right, Sopwith. Because nothing makes relationships better like a divinely ordained power structure. Mutual deference is obviously very, very unhelpful in relationships of every kind. And nothing promotes unity between two people quite like making one always superior in authority. Setting up a pecking order is the Kingdom way. The world, OTOH, knows nothing of pecking orders and power plays! The Gospel Glitterati is ohhhhhhh so counter-cultural, right?

  363.  
    .
    __

    “Live ‘joyfully’ with the wife whom ‘you love’ all the days of the life…” ~ Salomon

    🙂

  364. Gram3 wrote:

    Fourth, do you think it is sound to proof-text an issue by taking the texts out of their contexts? That is exactly what the cults do, and CBMW is cult-like in the way they treat the scriptures. Why do you trust people who do things like that to the words of the Holy Spirit? We share a similar view of the authority of scripture, but we do *not* share a similar opinion of the people who misuse the text just as Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Charles Russell. Why is it OK for Grudem and Piper and the others to do that if it is so bad for cults to do it?

    Gram3 I love your comments. One of these days I would love to meet you and have a long, deep discussion about Fundamentalism 2.0. This comment is so insightful. I had some good exposure to Mormonism in college when I lived in Montana. It was horrific, disturbing, and an eye opener. It grew up a 22 year old kid an aged him at least two decades in thinking. Until you have an experience like that you honestly won’t know what its like. But I see Piper and others pick apart scripture and do the same thing Joseph Smith has done. Its very disturbing and its re-inforced by this one common era among modern evangelicals. And that error is this…many evangelicals define Mormonism as being a cult just in the context of adding to scripture. For example adding the Book of Mormon/Doctrine & Covenants/Pearl of Great Price to the Bible makes Mormonism a cult. Now the Mormons also practice love bombing, shunning, and there is a trail of hubris and devastation that they leave in their wake.

    When an orthodox church with “sound doctrine” has “healthy doctrine” but engages in unnecessary discipline, shunning, love bombing, etc…then that is also a trait of cult like organizations like the Mormons. That’s why I look at Mars Hill Seattle and many of their ilk as being cults. Being a cult is more than just slapping on an additional book of scripture. Its also adopting questionable behavior to make people to conform or that harms them in the process.

    If you visit Washington, D.C. can I buy you a beer? 😀

  365.     .

      __

    Hey Gram3,

    Jesus does not ‘force’ anyone to do ‘religion’.

    (bump)

    Husbands can not ‘compel’ their wives to religion.

    Wives can not ‘compel’ their husbands to religion.

    Parents can not ‘compel’ their children to religion.

    No one can ‘force’ you to do ‘religion’.

    But God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, all the same…

    receive or not, that is your ‘choice’.

    Jesus’ blood was shed all the same.

    …that who so ever believes in Jesus will receive eternal life…

    Simple.

    Who is twisting your arm?

    Sopy

  366. I learned last night that a former pastor of a Church of Christ in Altus, Oklahoma was arrested on charges of child sexual assault: http://www.altustimes.com/news/breaking_news/150907912/Former-pastor-arrested-for-child-sexual-assault

    I learned of this on a Facebook group I’m part of, and it caught my attention because I’m part of the Churches of Christ. The person who posted this said, “Pray that this will not hinder the work there.”

    While I understand the poster’s desire for the church not to be “hindered”, and while I think I can understand what a horrible blow this must be to the congregation there, this comment is rubbing me the wrong way. In the statement for the work not to be hindered, where is the concern for the victim?

  367. numo wrote:

    you come right back and keep repeating yourself.

    I am painfully aware of the tendency for this to go round in circles. It is not something I choose to bring up, but when a comment of mine elicits several responses, it is also difficult and rather rude simply to ignore them.

    The charge of repetition applies to both sides on this issue, and you are right, there are times when I get tired of it. (Sometimes I am even getting on my own nerves over this!)

    OTOH, there is something intellectually dishonest in not engaging with those who see things differently, and learning from it.

    Nor is there any harm in re-visiting as theme to make sure you don’t need to amend or change as you grow in grace.

    With the latter in mind, I think your statement “I have heard it all many times before, long before this blog came into existence, and I cannot and will not accept it” is a dangerous road to go down.

    I regularly go to churches with female pastors to musician, so it is not as though this is all academic and I’ve not seen this in the real world. When I was younger, I would probably have quietly walked out on the basis this was blatant disobedience to the revealed will of God. I haven’t done that, but I’m not comfortable with it.

    I’m very aware that as you get older, the temptation is to give in and go with the flow for an easier life. The alternative for me is to commute to a bilingual Calvary Chapel, with double-length sermons as both languages are used. But at least they deal with what the text itself says, which is refreshing, as is the worship not being a concert or sing-along, and prayer being in the expectation that God actually hears and does things in answer. That’s refreshing too, but commuting makes it difficult to actually belong.

  368. @ Ken:
    Look, there’s also such a thing as making a compromise for the sake of harmony, and it’s an honorable path to take. Do you really think you’re going to change anyone’s mind by incessantly preaching at us? It just makes it more difficult to care about the issue at hand, believe me.

    I’m not saying that to be dismissive, but because it’s true and I am just weary of all of this. You never seem to acknowledge any points that any of us make, either, no matter how polite we are, so…’

    I am done with this.

  369. @ Gram3:

    Hello Gram!

    I’m taking my life in my hands with Numo.

    Submit in Eph 5 in v22 is implied from v21, and if you compare the parallel passage in Col you have the statement “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” Even in Eph Paul goes on to say “As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” So submission is enjoined on the wife.

    The Christ/church and husband/wife picture here cannot be pressed too far, as Christ is perfect and sinless, and husbands are not.
    Whilst this limits(sic) the complementarian aspect of it, at the same time it cannot be a picture of an egalitarian marriage of absolute mutual submission. Christ is in no sense submitted to the church, it is all the other way round.

    I certainly don’t think translators should insert words into the target version unless it is unintelligible not to do so. I used to use several versions to get round this problem, having never learnt Greek. Any decent commentary can alert you to problems in translation, and I think it wrong to assume translators are importing their own ideas into the text without good reason, especially when a committee overseas the translation to avoid this very thing.

    Context is vital, but wrenching for example Gal 3 v 28 out of its context allows its misuse; this can apply to any doctrine. The bible wasn’t written in self-contained verses.

    As for hierarchy, in the church you need leadership of some sort to which the members submit, and submission is not mutual, the leaders carry responsibility before God. You can hardly have a hierarchy in marriage as there are only two of you, but I have kept on making the point I see the husband as being required by God to carry the can on this one. It’s not about power, it is about responsibility. I remember good friends of mine, where missus grinning from ear to ear said to her husband over a difficult decision when I was there, ‘you’re the head of the household dear, you decide’! What does that tell you about their marriage?

    I have mentioned Genesis 1 upstream somewhere.

    “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply …”

    Doesn’t mention hierachy. Doesn’t mention gender roles. Doesn’t mention equality. Both carry the divine image.

    It does though sound the death knell to the ‘range of genders being on a continuum’ as taught by some, there is no unisex or ‘mixture’ of the two to be found here.

  370. @ numo:
    As a point of info, I posted the post below yours without seeing this one, it wasn’t I was just ignoring you can carrying on regardless.

    I’m sorry you think I’m being too preachy. That’s not the intention. And I do take account of what others write.

    I’d be happy to continue with this if it comes up again on a specific issue and it seems worthwhile, but like you I’ve got rather sick and tired of it all, and I really would like to give it a rest.

  371. Ken wrote:

    The Christ/church and husband/wife picture here cannot be pressed too far, as Christ is perfect and sinless, and husbands are not.
    Whilst this limits(sic) the complementarian aspect of it, at the same time it cannot be a picture of an egalitarian marriage of absolute mutual submission. Christ is in no sense submitted to the church, it is all the other way round.

    Ephesians speaks of Christ’s sacrificial love for the church in that He gave up His very life. There is no mention of authority of husbands anywhere in scripture except in 1 Cor. 7 where both wife and husband have mutual authority and may exercise it only by mutual agreement.

    Scripture is clear about how believers are to reflect their faith:

    Love one another
    Defer to one another
    Build one another up
    Be of the same mind
    Admonish one another
    Serve one another
    Be kind to one another
    Be tender-hearted toward one another
    Forgive one another
    Bear with one another
    Encourage one another
    Be at peace with one another
    Be hospitable to one another
    Be subject to one another

    There are many more, but you get the point. These behaviors are exhibited mutually between/among believers.

    Surely no one believes these mutual expressions and behaviors change when two believers join one another in marriage.

  372. Ken wrote:

    The Christ/church and husband/wife picture here cannot be pressed too far, as Christ is perfect and sinless, and husbands are not.
    Whilst this limits(sic) the complementarian aspect of it, at the same time it cannot be a picture of an egalitarian marriage of absolute mutual submission.

    But you are assuming that authority is mapped from Christ to the husband. Both Ephesians and Colossians are directed at teaching people how to live “in Christ.” Every one of us must live as “in Christ” in whatever cultural environment we are. If you believe that the command to wives to submit themselves in Colossians 3:18 is timeless and universal, do you believe that the command to slaves to obey their masters in everything (a much stronger word) is a timeless and universal command upholding slavery? Or is it remotely possible that Paul was instructing everyone to be content in whatever circumstances they find themselves and not to give the enemies of Christ and occasion to accuse. There is absolutely no place in the Bible that commands a husband to exercise authority over his wife. Not one place. That is totally made up. The instruction to wives has to do with their attitude in their present circumstance, not an ordination by Paul of the husband’s authority.

    I certainly don’t think translators should insert words into the target version unless it is unintelligible not to do so

    Yet that is precisely what Grudem and the ESV translation team did in 1 Corinthians 11. They inserted words which actually reversed the meaning of the actual text which vests the authority over her own head with the wife. There is nothing in the text about the wife wearing a symbol of her husband’s authority on her head. You say you can’t read Greek, but you can go to Biblehub.com and read the interlinear with Strong’s and total Greek parsing. You can see for yourself that Grudem and the entire team put the lie to your faith in them. They demonstrate utter disrespect for the words God inspired and substitute their own to advance their own agenda. You cannot trust a “translation team” when they are all wearing the same color jersey and get their income from the same sordid and corrupt theology of power.

    Context is vital, but wrenching for example Gal 3 v 28 out of its context allows its misuse; this can apply to any doctrine. The bible wasn’t written in self-contained verses.

    Agreed on the rule but not necessarily on the interpretation of Galatians 3:28. I would be interested in how you get to your certainty that Galatians 3:28 doesn’t mean “what it plainly says.” But then your context rule must also apply to 1 Timothy 2:12 as well, which does not necessarily mean “what it plainly says.”

    So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply …”

    Doesn’t mention hierachy. Doesn’t mention gender roles. Doesn’t mention equality. Both carry the divine image.

    Thank you for the acknowledgement that God does not ordain a hierarchy in Genesis 1. I am interested in your reasoning that gets you from “no hierarchy” to “no equality.” I don’t know how God could have made their equality more plain, particularly given that he spoke the Father’s blessing over *both* of them. That is a noteworthy thing in the text. Daughters did not get the Father’s blessing. God is treating both the Man and the Woman as his children–his “sons” without distinction between them, contra the patriarchal culture into which the scriptures came by the Holy Spirit.

    It escapes me why you are so reluctant to acknowledge the equality that God spoke, but you accept the words that Grudem and the ESV translation team added to the text. I really do not understand how you make interpretive decisions always in the most parsimonious way toward females having agency and in the most generous way toward males having authority over females.

    I’ll ask again. Would you treat your wife any differently if you were convinced that the husband does not have authority over his wife? WRT your friends, I think that the interchange is too bad. It is good that the wife was ready to defer to her husband’s wisher, but the way she did so is creepy, and he should have been equally willing to defer to her wishes, all other things being equal.

    When there is conflict in a marriage or in a church, the solution is not more authority for one over the other but more love from both toward the other. The law of Christ is the law of love, not the law of the love of power and coveting the authority position which only Christ has earned. I don’t mean that you are coveting anything, but that the system is set up for baptizing of that sin by males who do covet the position of Christ.

  373. @ Ken:

    I left off the last part. I don’t know about a continuum of genders. There are actual genetic and/or developmental issues (sorry I don’t know enough to be more specific) that result in persons with ambiguous gender. We can’t just dismiss them as being “less than” because they don’t fit into some neat box. They bear the image of God every bit as much as someone who has XX or XY genes and has unambiguous gender configuration. We need to be very careful with this, I think.

    Also, take a look at Galatians 3-4, taking particular note of the “adoption as sons” part. That means that males and females are *both* equally legal heirs. If you want to talk about parallel passages in Ephesians and Colossians, then I think you might want to consider the strong parallels of contrast between Galatians 3-4 and Genesis 1-3. Specifically, Galatians is revealing how God undid the results of the Fall and fulfilled his promise to the Woman.

    I think there is every reason, excepting ideology, to interpret Galatians 3-4 as being as universal as Genesis 1-3. All relationships are restored and reconciled. The Law of sin and death is the Strong exploiting and ruling the Weak. The Law of Christ is the Strong serving and loving the Weak. In Christ, the Strong make themselves Weak, and the Weak are made Strong in Christ.

    And, of course, one lesson of Galatians is not to impose laws and requirements that exceed God’s. I think that the Gendered Gospel Glitterati have effectively cut Galatians out of their Bibles.

  374. Gram3 wrote:

    Yet that is precisely what Grudem and the ESV translation team did in 1 Corinthians 11. They inserted words which actually reversed the meaning of the actual text which vests the authority over her own head with the wife. There is nothing in the text about the wife wearing a symbol of her husband’s authority on her head.

    You won’t be wanting an ESV as your Christmas present, I take it, 🙂

    The NASB has a similar translation, is that also biased? The RSV uses ‘veil’ instead of the more accurate ‘covering’, but the margin note makes it clear what the literal translation is.

    I’ve twigged with your quote above and Victorius’ post that you are constantly arguing against the notion of a ‘husband having authority over’ as a derivative of ‘head’, and therefore the command for a wife to ‘submit’ which is the other side of this can be kicked into touch.

    I have always seen this as about responsibility rather than power (equally so with pastors and elders), so I think so some extent we are talking at cross purposes, and we tend to go round in circles. But I do think we should all fear God too much to negotiate which bits of it we want to accept and which bits quietly drop.

    I’m off to the Sceptered Isle for Christmas, so I hope you and everyone have a good Christmas. No doubt this subject will not go away, but I’ve been spending time in the infancy narratives recently, and the reality and wonder of it all – often drowned out by Christmas traditions – has been very refreshing. How the big picture is built up out of the different gospels.

  375. Ken wrote:

    The NASB has a similar translation, is that also biased? The RSV uses ‘veil’ instead of the more accurate ‘covering’, but the margin note makes it clear what the literal translation is.

    I’ve twigged with your quote above and Victorius’ post that you are constantly arguing against the notion of a ‘husband having authority over’ as a derivative of ‘head’, and therefore the command for a wife to ‘submit’ which is the other side of this can be kicked into touch.

    Bible translations are based on previous translations. The ESV, which I *do* have, is based on the RSV, and the NASB is based on the ASV. Bad translations, or in this case bad interpositions, get concretized and perpetuated. For fun and edification, here is the interlinear from Biblehub. You will note that the words “symbol of” do not appear.

    http://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_corinthians/11-10.htm

    And here’s the link to the parallel versions where you can see that not every translation has “symbol of” or its equivalent. Even the KJV.

    http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/11-10.htm

    So, I don’t really care what some translator thinks the text should say. I care about what the Holy Spirit actually inspired. Do you?

    You didn’t answer whether you would feel the same responsibility for your wife if God had said, “Male and female are absolutely equal and their is no authority or subordination for either. Never and in no place or circumstance.” I suspect that you would care for her just as much because I suspect that your care for her is based on your love for her and not because Grudem and Piper and the other usurpers of the Holy Spirit say you must.

    You’re going to have to translate the idiom about “twigged,” since I have no idea what that paragraph means. Which is a good illustration of how difficult translating idioms and metaphors can be across different cultures.

  376. their = there, as in “There is a limit beyond which Americans do not mangle their English.”

  377. @ Gram3:
    I twigged something means I realised what you meant.

    I’ll try and get back to your questions, but you will need some patience as I am about to drive across Europe to go home for Christmas. So I will be on my holidays, or as you would say, vacation. 🙂

  378. Ken wrote:

    @ Gram3:
    I twigged something means I realised what you meant.
    I’ll try and get back to your questions, but you will need some patience as I am about to drive across Europe to go home for Christmas. So I will be on my holidays, or as you would say, vacation.

    Thanks for translating from English to American. Perhaps you will come back on the open thread? 🙂

    May you and your family have a lovely trip and enjoy a very blessed Christmas in the Lord!

  379. @ Victorious:

    That is an excellent point! The minute before they are married, a man and a woman are to submit to one another mutually as brother and sister in Christ. But the nanosecond they are married, mutuality must give way to female subordination, and then she must be in subjection to him and submit to his authority or else they are both in sin! It is ridiculous that a man can sin by deferring to his wife like he did before they were married when deferring to her was a good thing and Christlike denial of himself! It might be a sin to reach a mutual decision depending on whether the male crosses the line, wherever it is, in deferring to his wife’s preferences.

    I wonder if there are some magic words in the marriage ceremony that cause that great shift from a two-way mutual relationship to a one-way hierarchy relationship. But then, which words in which ceremony do the magic? Maybe Grudem or Piper has published an authorized list of marriage ceremony words that do the trick somehow. Like Grudem’s famous listing of roles that are OK for women to do.

    Ken, if you are checking in, an instruction given by Person 1 to Person 2 to submit to Person 3 does not mean that Person 3 is “in authority over” Person 2 forever and always in every circumstance. We would need more information to know whether that authority is actually ordained by God rather than merely being claimed by Person 3 who wishes to be in authority over Person 2. Especially if we have explicit information from Person 1 that Person 2 was equal to Person 3.

    Nowhere in the text does God ordain that any human person is in authority over another human person. We do know that *both* males and females are under the authority of Christ. Nowhere does God command males to “exercise authority over” their wives. We know that none of us, including wives, is to abuse our freedom in Christ, and we are to honor one another. Doing that should keep us all busy with no time for the Gendered Gospel nonsense and rules made up by men.

  380. Gram3 wrote:

    Nowhere does God command males to “exercise authority over” their wives.

    This, imo, is the crux of the matter. I have an understanding of Ephesians 5 that I call “Ephesians 5 from the bottom up.” I’ll post it in 2 parts since it’s a bit lengthy. It makes perfect sense to me in understanding Paul’s intent.

  381. “Ephesians 5 from the bottom up” Pt. 1

    This passage becomes clear as to Paul’s intent when we read it as presented; “from the bottom up” rather than the popular “top down” method. I see this as Paul’s appeal to the “stronger” to change their perspective of the “weaker, more vulnerable” and his attempt to “level the playing field” so to speak.

    Let’s first look at the message (from the bottom up) to slaves and masters. 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 (strongers 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.

    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 more 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.

  382. “Ephesians 5 from the bottom up” Pt. 2

    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 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 (1 Tim. 5:14) 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.

    Paul’s closing remarks to wives and husbands clearly compare their relationships to that of Christ to the church. 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.

    Rather than the current, popular reading of this passage from the “top-down,” Paul intended it to be read and understood from the “bottom-up” position as a protective measure for those most vulnerable which was radically different from the “assumed” authority of the times.

    In summary, I see Paul’s words as a “corrective” measure rather than a continuation of an assumed system of unauthorized, harsh authoritative “power grab” being exercised at that time.

    Am I off base?

  383. That is exactly how I see the big picture. And that is how we must read Scripture. Oddly, the gender issue is the one where the conservative “scholars” refuse to use a traditional, conservative hermeneutic.

    For other matters they would look at the immediate context, the book context, the covenantal context, and the canonical context. They would consider the historical context as well to understand what the presuppositions and pre-understandings were of the original human author and the original human audience.

    For this one issue, they exalt proof-texting and their special hermeneutic for those proof-texts is “it means what it plainly says” and context and the flow and structure of the argument made in the text. Their logic and “proofs” are transparently ad hoc.

    You have shown the right way to look at the entirety of the written revelation to determine the most likely meaning. We make a mistake, IMO, if we fail to recognize that the Bible is a living word given to us by the Living Word. Unfortunately, these men are powerful and influential, and they have succeeded in frightening people away from examining the Scriptures and testing the teachings of men. Other women are frightened of being labeled rebellious Jezebels or of being ostracized by their sisters in Christ.

    It is very sad. I’m going to print out your comments for my reference on Ephesians. Thank you so much!

  384. Eagle wrote:

    If you visit Washington, D.C. can I buy you a beer?

    Somehow I missed your comment earlier. My basic rule is to stay as far away from D.C. as I practically can, though I would love to hear your story in person. Don’t drink due to meds that don’t play well with alcohol, but maybe we could have a good cup of coffee!

  385. Sopwith wrote:

    .
    __
    Hey Gram3,
    Soyez soumis les uns aux autres dans la crainte du Christ.

    Precisely. Somehow I missed this part of the comments earlier.

  386. Eagle wrote:

    If you visit Washington, D.C. can I buy you a beer?

    I grew up in D.C. and lived right across from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Used to swim in the pool cause they thought we were “army brats.” 🙂 Went to Nativity School on Georgia Ave. till we moved to Rochester, N.Y.

  387. Gram3 wrote:

    That is exactly how I see the big picture.

    Glad you agree with me, Gram. Paul was never instituting a hierarchical system that would directly contradicting the words of Jesus that “it shall not be so with you.” He was, however, seen as radical I imagine, among the Pharisees and some Jews who believed in (and preferred) the Oral Law and it’s Patriarchal system.

  388. Ken wrote:

    As for hierarchy, in the church you need leadership of some sort to which the members submit, and submission is not mutual, the leaders carry responsibility before God. You can hardly have a hierarchy in marriage as there are only two of you, but I have kept on making the point I see the husband as being required by God to carry the can on this one. It’s not about power, it is about responsibility. I remember good friends of mine, where missus grinning from ear to ear said to her husband over a difficult decision when I was there, ‘you’re the head of the household dear, you decide’! What does that tell you about their marriage?.

    Hierarchy in the Body of Christ is an assumption based on what I see as faulty interpretation/understanding that is too lenghty to get into here.

    But without it, comp doctrinre collapses. ESS collapses. places like Mars Hill could not exist in the first place.

    I do understand the temptation to define hierarchy as responsibility. a sort of benevolent dictatorship position.

    one of the many problems with it in the body and in marriage is the example you shared above. It tends to infantalize wives (husband as daddy) and keeps many in the body from maturing in Jesus Christ.

    Christianity is not to be like the world systems. Discpling a new beliver by serving them is not hierarchy. The goal is they won’t need you can n that capacity for long as they might pastor others.

    this idea that someone has to be in charge of the “adults” is part of the problem in not only the church but the larger culture.

  389. you know there is another aspect to the comp interpretation of Eph 5 that I came across when I was studying ESS. Subtle though it can be.

    The comp interpretation has the husband mapping himself to Christ. This is easy to do when you believe in a hierarchy within the Trinity. Not so easy otherwise.

  390. Lydia wrote:

    you know there is another aspect to the comp interpretation of Eph 5 that I came across when I was studying ESS. Subtle though it can be.
    The comp interpretation has the husband mapping himself to Christ. This is easy to do when you believe in a hierarchy within the Trinity. Not so easy otherwise.

    A deliberate misinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 along with deliberately added words, without italics or a footnote, are the only things holding up the doctrines of hierarchy. It’s not in Genesis, so that cannot be what Paul is referring to in 1 Timothy 2. They just assert that is what Paul meant! It is an interpretation totally devoid of any resemblance to traditional conservative hermeneutic.

    I think you are exactly right that the doctrines of ESS and hierarchy are necessarily entangled and interdependent. The problem I see with the mapping of the husband/male to Christ is that they only want to map the presumed hierarchy that they never demonstrate. It is entirely circular. They never address the mapping problem of human father/human son to Eternal Father/Eternal Son to Husband/Wife. No one ever connects the dots regarding how this is supposed to work. I wonder if people in churches have lost their ability to think clearly and reason well.

    However, the hierchists have won the propaganda war in so many conservative churches because they exploit people’s good will and also their fears which are totally fabricated by the hierarchists. It is a brilliant marketing strategy.

    They are bullies, and I think they know exactly how weak their case is because they accuse anyone who dares to disagree or question or challenge their “interpretation” and additions to the text of being a “feminist” which is pretty much the worst thing you can be in a church.

    Mutualists get accused, without basis, for saying that there are no differences between the sexes. That is an outright lie, at least for me and for every other person who believes as I do. They accuse us of denying Scripture when they are the ones brazen enough to re-write Scripture. The propaganda techniques they use are just unbelievable in the context of the church of Jesus Christ, but they are very, very effective in the world.

  391. @ Gram3:
    I dont believe that critical thinking is welcomed in many churches, or even jn many schools these days, whivh makes it a LOT easier for people to pull a fast one where stuff like this is concerned.

  392. Gram3 wrote:

    They never address the mapping problem of human father/human son to Eternal Father/Eternal Son to Husband/Wife. No one ever connects the dots regarding how this is supposed to work. I wonder if people in churches have lost their ability to think clearly and reason well.

    Exactly. I used to always ask them who the Holy Spirit reports to if it is a hierarchy. I had a whole list of questions from my study that went to the heart of the problem. They don’t connect the dots…ever. They cannot or the jig is up.

    And unless someone was real intent on checking it out they would not even know what questions to ask. They also use Phil 2 in proof texted manner ignoring the fact it communicates that Jesus “gave up” His Glory….

    I have heard Denny Burk and Bruce Ware teach on this several times and I could swear they don’t even believe it. It was so contrived. As if they thought their gravitas would convince people. (Bruce Ware goes as far to edit Athanasius!)

    Another more subtle teaching that I think comes into play with the “mapping” in Eph 5 is the misunderstanding of the “Bride of Christ”. It is not the “church”,so to speak,but the Holy City where we will dwell. The joining of heaven/earth or the redeemed earth:

    Revelation 21:9 – Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”

    We are the guests at this “wedding feast”. The church is not the “New Jerusalem”. That thinking has brought about so many horrors historically. It is too lengthy to get into here but there is both an individual and corporate aspect to our being “guests” at the feast that takes away this idea of hierarchy within the Body as the New Jerusalem.

    This does not help their “mapping” situation in Eph 5 at all.

  393. Lydia wrote:

    I do understand the temptation to define hierarchy as responsibility. a sort of benevolent dictatorship position.
    one of the many problems with it in the body and in marriage is the example you shared above. It tends to infantalize wives (husband as daddy) and keeps many in the body from maturing in Jesus Christ.

    I don’t see why responsibility should be equated with dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise. I don’t particularly like the word hierarchy, but I don’t have the problem with it so many here seem to.

    I don’t think you are gram saw what I was getting at in my friends where missus said ‘you’re the head of the household dear, you decide’. Implied in that was that they had discussed whatever the issue was, and couldn’t reach a decision. This was not being infantlised or subjugated on the part of the wife, nor was the husband lording it like a gentile monarch. Democracy won’t work in a marriage as there are only two votes, so someone has to carry the can and make a decision in the end. Missus was happy in the end to let hubby take responsibility as someone both under the word of God and who will give an account to God.

    My other implied point was why does this subject have to be always taken so seriously? A bit of humour won’t do any harm. Both Christian liberty and obedience are always important, but in trying to get at how this works today in practice, mixing good faith and some humour might direct us away from both taking ourselves too seriously, and obsessing with cases where this whole doctrine has been abused or misapplied.

    I’ve been under an over-authoritarian leadership, and it can indeed breed dependency, but in reaction to this I cannot ditch the NT teaching that there are leaders in the church under various names and the membership needs to submit to them.

  394. Gram3 wrote:

    May you and your family have a lovely trip and enjoy a very blessed Christmas in the Lord!

    Thank you for your kind wishes, and yes, a good Christmas was had with family and friends. I hope you too had a good Cbristmas and will have a happy and blessed New Year. 🙂