This is the third post in Mark Baddeley’s series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.)
We are looking at why various Christian institutions are going to divide over the question of women’s public ministry. In the previous post I argued that the fight over whether women should wield authority over men in the church is a high-stakes debate. It is fundamentally a fight over the question of authority and equality—whether authority and necessary submission must always be linked to genuine inferiority. Those championing women’s ordination generally believe that authority can only exist when one person is inferior to another—a view that I will classify as egalitarianism. Those opposed believe that authority and real equality can coexist—a view that I will classify as complementarianism.
That single difference between the two groups reflects a profound disagreement about ethics and human nature, and it is because it is such a fundamental disagreement that people are generally so hot over the issue, and so prepared to campaign tirelessly for one side or the other.
My claim is that we are now in the place where the two sides will begin to structurally separate from each other into rival/parallel systems of churches, dioceses, denominations, and parachurch organizations.
There are a couple of signs that this is occurring.
First, the two positions have ceased to speak to each other, if they were ever capable of it. My observation of both sides of the debate is that those who participated in the great debates many decades ago have given up on convincing the other side. Complementarians have continued to focus on exegesis, showing with more and more sophistication that the key texts, those that speak directly to the question of women exercising authority in public church settings, state what they have generally been understood to have said for two millennia. Egalitarians have increasingly moved their argument from exegesis, to hermeneutics, to theology (the doctrine of Scripture, as well as the nature of equality and increasingly the doctrine of the Trinity)—increasingly moving from the plain sense of the words of Scripture to establishing interpretive presuppositions. These enable the key texts that speak straight to the debate to be understood in a less directly authoritative way than they would seek for a text like John 3:16, but to do so without having to say, “The Bible is just wrong at this point”.
Increasingly, the books on both sides are being written for the people on their own side—both sides of the debate have, on the whole, ceased speaking to each other, but content themselves with speaking about each other’s arguments to their own ‘side’. And this is true most of all when both sides engage with the other side’s arguments. This is a sign of unofficial structural separation. Both sides are relatively resigned to the fact that the other side is not going to be convinced by argument, and so arguments are not offered to the other side, but merely to catechize and mobilize those already on side, and to win over those who are still ‘up for grabs’. We are in much the same position as Europe was in at the end of the 16th century between Catholics and Protestants. Lots of apologetics was going on to defend positions already established, but neither side had genuine hope that the other could be persuaded to change. I think we can see something similar now.
Secondly, the two positions cannot exist together in the same structure. Egalitarians chafe in institutions that do not allow women to have authority over men. Even if an egalitarian is given freedom of conscience to dissent from the institution’s position, being involved in the institution is, for them, a kind of participation in the structural sin of oppression against women that is practiced by that institution. Egalitarians can only exist in such a structure by accepting some kind of complementarianism in practice—which means only those egalitarians who have a conscience flexible enough to support a structure that practices what they consider to be some kind of apartheid. And complementarians can only function in egalitarian contexts by being prepared to submit to an authority that they believe is disobedient to God. Or unless they are given structural solutions that mean that they can avoid submitting to a woman—a step that then will tend to isolate them from the broader life of that institution and will be an ongoing offense to convinced egalitarians.
As the last few decades to the present have shown, the two positions cannot coexist if the institution tries to give room for both to exist together. At best, an institution seeking to be inclusive has to back one side—either ordain or not ordain women—but then seek to allow some freedom within that institutional stance for dissenters. A diocese that doesn’t ordain women can still license them to preach and/or allow them to function as associate pastors. A diocese that ordains women can avoid having a woman bishop, or can establish requirements that a woman bishop will not have authority over clergy opposed to women’s ordination. Such arrangements are the ‘best’ that is possible if inclusivity is the goal pursued—they offend the consciences of the idealists on both sides (who would rather the institution do what is right than be inclusive of what was wrong), but allow some space for genuine dissent. It allows representatives of the two positions to coexist with varying degrees of tension.
But the two positions can’t both exist in the same institution. An institution has to pick one. It either ordains women, or it doesn’t. There is no third way. A demand for freedom of conscience to allow supporters of women’s ordination to have women priests, becomes in time a demand to enable those women priests to be able to be bishops (or the chair of the presbytery, or the head of the Baptist Union, or whatever the rough equivalent may be), and then becomes a demand that their authority as bishops be treated the same as any man—with no conscientious objection allowed or provisions for alternate oversight. So the desire to enjoy freedom to act on conscience in favour of women’s ordination in time requires a denomination (or diocese) to restrict the freedom of conscience of those who disagree with women’s ordination. It cannot be any other way. For the egalitarian, until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority, then they are not being treated the same as men; and if they are not being treated the same as men then they are not equal to men. For the truly convinced egalitarian, even allowing objectors the freedom to not submit to a woman bishop’s authority results in women still being second class. Any point short of that outcome means that the battle for women’s dignity and equality is not yet truly won.
Hey Mark. I have been reading your posts with interest but I have hesitated at commenting because I fear that for every 10 words I write I will have to read 100 or yours in reply. I do not have time to do this!
I must say that I grew up a comp. I believe the Bible is inspired and authoritative. I am now what people call egal, but not because I have become liberal or because I have chosen to read the Bible in a different way.
I find you to be very uninformed as to what egals actually think. Your comment, “For the egalitarian, until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority, then they are not being treated the same as men; and if they are not being treated the same as men then they are not equal to men” reflects your lack of understanding. This is ceretainly not true for me. This also contradicts some of your own comments about how egals view aauthority.
Now I confess, I do not understand everyone who claims to be or is labelled an egal and claim to know what they believe. I must say though that in recent years there has been another development in this area that you have not mentioned. It has mainly been in the US and Canada but it is starting to be seen here in Australia. This development is far from liberal and does not read the Bible through the eyes of the enlightenment.
Dave
Hi Dave,
You’ve said what egal is not for you, but you haven’t said what it is, now told us why you believe it’s right. Can you expand please?
As for myself, I’m a firm complementarian. It seems there’s a lot of feminist ideology seeping into the church and this is just another way of expressing that. After all, early feminists had no respect for the unpaid work of the housewife, insisting that work is only valid if it earns a wage.
Thanks for the posts Mark, fascinating!
Kathryn
Hi Kathryn! I can expand a bit if it is helpful.
I have no desire to see a woman put in any authority (especially the highest authority) just so women can be equal with men. If indeed a woman must be in the highest authority to be equal, then we need to redefine the word equal. I have no egal friends who believe this. Instead, I would like the most gifted person to have the role, whatever that role is.
I have searched the Bible and cannot find anywhere that it says a husband must have authority over his wife, or that a woman cannot preach sound doctrine in love. So I believe that the job should go to the most gifted, not the most male.
You appear to believe that egals are expressing feminist ideology. It might be helpful for you to define feminist ideology, but this has not been my experience, unless you limit feminist ideology to a man and a woman being equal. Mark seems to think they are equal. He also seems to think that authority over another is still equality so I guess his understanding of feminism (a movement for the equal rights of women)will involve women having authority!
Hi Mark,
I’m afraid find your pessimism about our ability to work, minister and talk together unwarranted. Of course a church has to do something in practice – make a choice one way or the other and do it.
But anyone with a sufficiently humble view of their own understanding of scripture and a sufficiently high view of God’s church can operate within a church that contains practices with which they disagree. The usual process is to listen carefully, to speak your view into the church as a valid contribution to its discernment, accept it if the church is not where you are and get on with gospel ministry.
There are people (both men and women) whom I privately don’t think are really suitable to ordained ministry who nevertheless are in it. But they hold the same licence I do, and therefore I must accept that and treat them as colleagues. It is not my role to usurp the authority of the Archbishop and de-frock people in my mind or actions. I submit to his authority as called to by the scriptures. He will give account for it. Surely that is part of what it means to belong to the church, rather than pretend to be the church.
This rather individualistic view that sees personal integrity compromised by the simple act of belonging to a structure that doesn’t perfectly align with one’s present understanding of everything looks to me like an attack on the unity of God’s church and an elevation of judgement over mercy. You can believe the gospel drives you towards a particular position without believing that your church has ceased to be a valid part of the church catholic because it is not yet perfected.
I am a former complementarian, now an egalitarian. I am an open supporter of the importance of keeping complementarians within the church. I am in regular dialogue of mutual respect with complementarian friends. (I say that because I was bemused by your claims that we no longer talk to one another!)
I appreciate you have tried to be fair, but I still feel very poorly represented by the positions you outline above, which are essentially designed to promote polarisation. I’m not saying that the kind of egalitarianism you described doesn’t exist – it does – but by choosing more polarised positions to describe you have enhanced your case for division in a way that will grieve those on both sides who are more moderate and nuanced and have been successfully partnering together for some time.
I find I have more in common theologically with most gospel-shaped complementarians than the more aggressive egalitarianism you describe. In the end, my gospel call (as theirs) is towards using power to serve one another, not about taking hold of rights to certain positions. I am, however, alarmed when I see people use a law-hermeneutic rather than a gospel-hermeneutic to tread down women and marginalise their gifts in the way they read various New Testament texts. I am unconvinced that Paul (or Jesus!) would do the same.
I am happy to admit that I could be wrong. My position is the one I think most likely, as I don’t find any of them completely watertight. I don’t think the hermeneutical or exegetical questions are simple nor do I think those who come to different conclusions lack integrity, such that I would want to be cut off from them as brothers and sisters working alongside one another for the glory of Jesus Christ.
But my sisters will never find me do either of two things: 1) push them to take on roles in the church that sit uneasily with their conscience; or 2) withhold from them roles of service in the church for which they possess suitable gifts and character on the basis of their gender. That’s the best way I can think of to live out the gospel of servant leadership in practice as I navigate some rather complex questions in theory.
Blessings
Matt
Hi Mark,
For the record, I hold to a complementarian position, but I did want to question one of your comments.
In paragraph 5, you stated that egals have moved away from exegesis toward hermeneutics and theology. In the context of your argument, that would be seen as a bad thing.
But I seem to recall previously that you’ve argued that evangelicals should actually be making just such a shift toward theology and hermeneutics. This idea of doing theology holistically play a pretty central role in your extended comments on forgiveness (which I recall well!)
Can you please clarify your position on this matter?
Well, this is generating a lot more intensity than I expected from an opening series that was trying to just ‘set the scene’ of the current political situation for a subsequent look at the substantial issues at stake. I’m a bit daunted as to what we might expect next year when we start looking at the issues themselves.
I’ll pick off the quick responses first.
Hi Kathryn,
You’re welcome for the posts, glad you’re enjoying them. Thank you for asking the question of Dave – saved me from doing it, and so cut down on the time this taking up. It’s very appreciated.
Hi Craig,
Sure, good pick up.
Not just your and my discussion on forgiveness and repentance, but also the series on impassibility, and the recent article in the Briefing (and my contribution to the Interchange in the next issue, of which we you can see a dry run in my comments here: http://paradoxspeak.blogspot.com/2010/09/impassibility.html) I have championed the idea that exegesis is a holistic exercise with theology.
So it would be strange if I was saying ‘egalitarians have been focusing on theology, are trying to establish why the texts that complementarians think are key don’t speak as directly as Jn 3:16, and therefore are doing something disreputable.’ I think that’s entirely valid and proper.
All I was doing was description, not evaluation. The series is generating enough heat with me bending over backwards with trying to be even handed, it just wouldn’t work if I was trying to ‘score points’ as well.
In fact, the person who reads those words in light of my stance in the two previous series on forgiveness and repentance and impassibility might detect just a hint of a critique of how complementarians have been going about this debate, to the degree that I’ve fairly represented them here and they have just been focusing on exegesis.
When the time comes I’ll argue that egalitarians have used a bad theology and a terrible hermeneutic and that that’s the problem with what they’re doing. It’s not enough to be holistic, you’ve actually got to get it right.
But that’s an argument that will require careful attention to substantial issues – more than just saying, “You’re erecting a framework, so it must be wrong.”
Ok Mark, that’s helpful. Just to spell it out, what you’re *not* saying is, “Those crazy egals are using tricky *hermeneutics*, whereas *we* just read the plain sense of the Bible.”
Hi Craig,
Absolutely right.
I will, later, argue that the concept of ‘natural sense’ has to be given some weight in this question when assessing egalitarian hermeneutics, but you’ll never (I hope) hear me go, “One side just reads the text the other side uses hermeneutics and that’s bad.” Reading Scripture as Scripture is a holistic exercise – as anyone who has benefited from Goldsworthy’s biblical theology will immediately recognise.
Hi Dave,
I’ll keep that in mind, thanks for letting me know, and welcome along. My general advice on that front is: don’t raise multiple issues in the one comment, don’t ask a wideranging and open ended practical question like Jereth did in the previous thread about this issue and Gen Y, and don’t raise an issue that will take me a bunch of words to get an interested but uniformed reader up to speed so that they can follow our discussion.
A lot of the words I use are not for the person I’m responding to, they’re for the ‘ideal reader’ who wants to follow the discussion but might need some help to do so. It’s also designd to keep the light/heat ratio in favour of shedding light by adding nuances and qualifications so that threads don’t become toxic as people heat up. It’s a public discussion, not private, and so I use more words. Keeping that in mind with what you say and how you put it might help not provoke a torrent in response from me.
Okay, as with Chris Appleby, let’s you and I agree that you are not a liberal.
I don’t remember suggesting that egalitarians are liberals, or want to become one and that’s why they became egalitarians.
I think I said that complementarians regularly raise the concern that the theological position of egalitarianism necessarily involves certain assumptions or definitions of key words and even a methodology that is in common with liberalism. I think that’s a fair description of what complementarians regularly state is their concern.
Next year we’ll look at whether that criticism has legs, and whether the other concern that complementarians are chauvinists/oppress women has legs. For the moment, what’s on the table is that both sides have a big concern about the other side that the other side rejects as wrong.
You know better than to say this, Dave, in a thread like this, as shown by your posts on your ryde presbyterian blog. Too much heat, too little light.
Try, “I think you were wrong when you said…”, “This description here….was inaccurate,” or even “You were wrong when you said….”.
Don’t speculate publicly about how informed someone is, their motives, or whether they are godly. Keep it as relationally warm as possible, and as unheated personally as possible.
If my behaviour becomes a problem, call me on it in a way that allows me to save me as much face as possible. That’s the operating rules for any thread I’m ‘chairing’ and I try and model it, and enforce it. And I’ll draw attention to people who I think are modeling it well, as I think their example helps us all.
Always strive to build up relational capital to enable difficult things to be said and heard constructively
That’s the basic motto.
to be concluded…
concluding…
Okay, that’s an important point. Let’s compare that to what you then expand on in response to Kathryn’s question:
I think you may have misread my offending quote. I said, ‘until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority.’ Your complaint seems to be that I said ‘until women must hold the highest position.’ I didn’t say that giving them the role makes them equal. I said that the role not being open to them is a sign that they are not yet equal.
That is, you seem to be saying that I am saying that egalitarians are determined to get women into those highest positions, irrespective of ability. I don’t think that’s a good reading of my words, but if that’s what I genuinely implied, I apologise, it wasn’t my intent.
Instead, you say, the egalitarian position is that all positions should be open to women and filling those positions should be based simply on ability, and gender shouldn’t be a factor. It doesn’t matter whether the position has authority or not, is high or low, it should go to the person most qualified, and gender is not a qualification. So the issue for egalitarians is not about giving women authority, but about getting rid of gender as a qualification.
Is that a fair description of your position as you would state it?
I would argue that what I said is the same as that, but focusing on a different issue than what you want to make central to the debate. I didn’t misrepresent your position, I highlighted one implication that matters to complementarians and that is having a big impact on whether institutions divide on the issue. It wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive statement of egalitarianism’s approach on its own terms.
Some of those roles that you want open to women are roles with inherent authority. You want women to have those roles if they’re the best person for the job. You expect them to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. And when they have the job you want them treated the same as any man would be in the job – everyone submits to their authority.
I abbreviated all the steps, and focused on the outcome, but I think you and I are actually saying the same thing:
Until women can hold every job (especially the high prestige, high authority jobs) when they are the best person for that job (and gender is not a valid factor in determining that) and are treated just like a guy would be in that job, then they aren’t being treated as though they are equal to men.
What I then drew from that, is that position, when enacted in a Christian institution that is more or less a ‘church’, will sooner or later mean that all complementarians, except those with a conscience flexible to be under a women’s authority, will need to leave or do something that they consider to be a sin.
Whether they are right or not in that assessment is a different issue. That’s the situation ‘politically’ and that’s why I’m saying both sides are beginning to divide.
This intrigues me, possibly not suprisingly, given my *ahem* profound ignorance of egalitarianism. Would young be willing to float a couple of authors and/or the key features that distinguish this kind of egalitarianism from the kind that is currently dominant in evangelical circles in Australia?
Just a quick note, Mark.
I agree that a full answer to an issue like this requries not just exegesis, but a range of other angles. (Hence my commendation in the other thread of RBMW, and our interesting discussion about sociology!)
But I just want pass on to you what a friend of mine keeps stressing to me: that we (complementarians) must hold our ground on the exegesis. The only fair assessment of the situation is that complementarians have prevailed over egalitarians in the historical-grammatical exegesis of the key biblical texts (eg. Gen 1-3, Eph 5:22ff., 1 Cor 11:3ff., 1 Tim 2:11-14). Complementarians have been able to refute countless egalitarian re-interpretations of these texts over the last 20-30 years, and our fundamental position that these texts all convey their face-value meaning has not been even slightly dented.
We shouldn’t give in to the egalitarian impulse to move the emphasis away from the exegesis to hermeneutics and theology. They want us to do that because they’ve lost the exegetical argument and they know it. William Webb’s theories about “movement hermeneutics” are getting so popular among evangelical egalitarians precisely because Webb allows all the texts to mean what they say to the original readers, and yet mean something different to us.
Jereth
Hi Jereth,
I agree with everything you’re saying about hermeneutics and exegesis.
The grammatico-historical method is not a hermeneutically neutral method of reading and applying Scripture, it’s a (to use Craig’s term) ‘holistic’ approach that reflects fundamental convictions about the nature of Scripture – as everyone in the 16th Century grasped when the Reformers increasingly championed it against Roman and Anabaptist alternative hermeneutics.
It’s a method that says that hermeneutics is generally unproblematic, most passages speak as directly to us as they did to the original readers, and you should prefer the reading that an ‘average’ reader will get on a thoughtful reading unless there’s very compelling reasons not – readings that need an expert to pull off need a lot of justification.
That last bit is important – it also reflects the Reformer’s conviction of the priesthood of all believers (the traditional Christian view of what it means for Christians to be ‘equal’). The Bible belongs to everyone, so it should be an exception when you need a lot of presuppositions and cultural background knowledge to get the right reading. It’s a method of interpretation that privileges ‘the common life’ and not ‘the magisterium’ – a Reformation distinctive.
I’m a signed up member for all that. But egalitarianism has fundamentally challenged the whole thing – plain sense, a ‘hermeneutic-lite’ approach to hearing the Word of God, and (I’d argue) the place of the priesthood of all believers in our evaluation of rival interpretative approaches. It’s setting up a different view.
I don’t think you get anywhere by saying, ‘exegesis versus hermeneutics’ – unless someone has already gotten the theological framework that means that one should generally prefer ‘hermeneutic lite’ to ‘hermeneutic max’. You have to argue for the whole set that leads to that conclusion. The understanding that makes that judgement possible has been lost. We have to build it again or people won’t be persuaded by the fact that one set of exegesis is more plausible than the other.
In our common practice – our preaching and teaching – we need to show that we think reading the Bible as the word of God is something very uncomplicated.
In our debates we need to stress exegesis always.
In some debates (like this one) we also need to reassert a classic Protestant doctrine of Scripture and explain why it’s not an easy fit with the basic approach of most egalitarianism.
“Just reading” Scripture is something that was won for us as an approach that rested upon profound theological convictions. It isn’t some a priori common sense method. It’s an expression of a certain kind of faith about the kind of speaking God we know in Christ.
That’s all up for grabs in this debate – although egalitarians will genuinely feel unfairly slighted that I’ve put it that way. And so we need to argue both exegesis and the theological framework. And this time I’m going to try some framework setting stuff first and see if that works any better than trying to do it through exegesis, which is how it is normally tried, in my experience.
Woah!
Are you about to provide a theology of gender?
Do it, brother, I salute your courage and admire your approach. ISTM that one of the chief advantages of the complementarian approach is that it actually *can* formulate a theology of gender which integrates with a wider Christocentric system. Its appeal is, in large measure, aesthetic.
Of course you might have something else in mind…
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the interaction. Sorry if I offended in my comment about your long comments. It was intended to be humorous…but thank you for the lengthy explanation!
You said, “I think I said that complementarians regularly raise the concern that the theological position of egalitarianism necessarily involves certain assumptions or definitions of key words and even a methodology that is in common with liberalism. I think that’s a fair description of what complementarians regularly state is their concern.”
I have never heard it stated like that (and you seem aware that I have had discussions with comps on my blog and do in everyday life). To be honest I think you may as well have just said you think egals are liberal or heading that way. That I have heard from comps many times. If you had a good look at my blog you would have seen reference to CBMW and the slippery slope. I generally do not find comps speaking like you did just then. I also thought your previous post was speaking about the slippery slope, though you did not use the term.
But, the point is, I did not suggest you were saying egals were liberal. I simply told you a bit of my story.
Sorry that my statement, suggesting that I had found you uninformed, offended. It was not intended to be offensive, nor was it written with any heat. At the same time I do not find it very different from your statements, “You know better than to say this, Dave”, “Too much heat, too little light”, or your suggestions of, “I think you were wrong when you said…”, “This description here….was inaccurate,” or even “You were wrong when you said….”.
I did not speculate as to whether you were informed, but rather I stated that I had not found you to be informed, a judgement I made in response to what you had written. You may well be informed but failed to prove it to me in what you wrote to a level that I would consider ‘informed’. I might add that I did not speculate on your motives, or your godliness but thank you for reminding us not to go there.
Perhaps, Mark, as I read your later statement (possibly meant in humor?), “my *ahem* profound ignorance” you have imported more into my stating that I find you uninformed than was there? I find you neither profound nor ignorant (joke!).
With regards to your comment, “For the egalitarian, until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority”, I did not misread the “can” but rather read it in light of the second half of the statement, “and all are required to submit to their authority”.
But thanks for your explanation as to what you meant.
You asked, “So the issue for egalitarians is not about giving women authority, but about getting rid of gender as a qualification.
Is that a fair description of your position as you would state it?”
Almost. I cannot speak for all egals, but for me it is about who God qualifies for the job through his Holy Spirit.
You said,“Some of those roles that you want open to women are roles with inherent authority. You want women to have those roles if they’re the best person for the job. You expect them to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. And when they have the job you want them treated the same as any man would be in the job – everyone submits to their authority.”
Sorry, but not sure where all that came from. Let me explain…
Yes I want the person qualified by God for the job.
No, I do not believe that roles in the church have inherent authority, but God, with his authority, works through the people he gifts.
No, I do not expect ‘them’ to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. I am not going to make assumptions as to who the Spirit will work in to do what.
No, I do not want women to be treated the same as men, this is not always socially appropriate or I believe Biblical.
No, I do not believe everyone submits to ‘their’ authority as the authority comes through the Holy Spirit and it is God’s authority.
I understand your thought process as outlined, so thanks for helping me see where you are coming from.
I am glad I have intrigued you with regards to this other type of egalitarinanism that is floating around. You mentioned my blog. You will find one author there who was a contributor to our blog conference on ‘Women in Ministry’ last year.
As I read comments like that of Jareth who says, “We shouldn’t give in to the egalitarian impulse to move the emphasis away from the exegesis to hermeneutics and theology. They want us to do that because they’ve lost the exegetical argument and they know it” I can only assume that this is a different egalitarianism to the one that I know. I might add that this is a loaded, heated statement which involves suggesting motive, and as an egal, was it directed at me? Turn up the light, not the heat boys! Mark, do you really want to sign up for ALL that?
Mark, I want to say that as an egal I want to ‘Amen’ you statements, “In our common practice – our preaching and teaching – we need to show that we think reading the Bible as the word of God is something very uncomplicated.
In our debates we need to stress exegesis always.”
Your comments that follow, though, do not do justice to the way I view scripture. I do not “Just read”, I hold a classis Protestant doctrine of Scripture, I do not hold an “a priori common sense method”
Your right, “egalitarians will genuinely feel unfairly slighted that I’ve put it that way.” We will.
I cannot wait for you to actually do some exegesis, and for the life of me cannot work out why that is not where you started. I have been through this conversation before in the order you are doing it and all it achieved was to firmly polarise both parties before they even opened the Bible. Any way, I will continue to watch with interest and comment as time allows.
Hi Mark,
Amen to everything you said about the Bible being easy enough for the common man to understand (and obey), the priesthood of all believers, the Reformation, etc.
A friend of mine told me a story about a Bible college class he was in. They were learning about how to do ethics using William Webb’s “redemptive movement hermeneutic”. At some point in the lecture, somebody in the class said “This is so hard. How can we expect anyone to understand what the Bible is teaching us today?”
The lecturer’s response was: “That’s why people need to come to Bible college.”
In other words, only an elite group of Bible-college educated people can interpret the Scriptures rightly and everyone else must rely on their mediation to understand the truth.
This is mediaeval catholicism all over again!
Jereth
Hi Dave,
I cannot speak for Mark—he’s got his own reasons for doing things his way. But if it is exegesis that you are after, you don’t have to look far. You just need to look at the major complementarian works by people like John Piper and Wayne Grudem. A lot of it is available online at CBMW. The best resource I can recomend is
http://www.cbmw.org/Online-Books/Evangelical-Feminism-and-Biblical-Truth/Evangelical-Feminism-and-Biblical-Truth
You’ll find it all there—the meaning of kephale, whether Eph 5:21 teaches “mutual submission”, the interpretation of 1 Tim 2, the meaning of Gal 3:28, Junia, Deborah, etc. etc. etc.
Every single egalitarian claim about the meaning of the Bible texts has been met by a competent complementarian response and found wanting.
regards,
Jereth
Thanks Jereth. I am very familar with CBMW and the arguments of Piper and Grudem. How about we stick to Bible exegesis though?
I simply do not agree with your final statement. I assume you have not heard every Egal claim.
Hi Matt,
Welcome along and thank you for such a reflective and thoughtful dissenting contribution to the main thesis of the series. I’ve waited to respond to it as I wanted to be able to do it fresh. Tony Payne’s just emailed me to request I turn this all into something for the Briefing, and, as I’ve reflected on what you’ve written here, I think the issue you raise will probably need to be a section in the article/an article in the series all on its own. This will be long, as I think what you’re asking me to do is essentially add another couple of posts to this series.
I think I’m basically on the same page with everything you’ve said up to this paragraph. You’ve consistently said things that I say “Amen” to, and you’ve said them really well. Thank you for it.
I suspect that, like me, you’ll have some way of not having this as an absolute principle – you will ‘mentally defrock’ an ordained person who bluntly rejects cardinal doctrines – say Don Cupitt, or Bishop Spong. It’s one thing for a structure to not ‘perfectly align with one’s present understanding of everything’, but it’d be another thing entirely for it to endorse a practice or belief that you thought was a denial of the gospel. Let me know if I’ve read you wrong there, what I say next is partly premised on the assumption that you and I are very much on the same page here. I think you’ll find me attempting to expound the same principle in the other thread here:
http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_2/#5440
http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_2/#5422
Even if you don’t agree with how I’ve applied it to this debate.
‘Sides’ is not quite the same thing as ‘individuals on other side of the debate’. I’m pointing to CBMW, and Dave Woolcott’s fisking of CBMW on his blog, Wayne Grudem’s books, and Muriel Porter’s and Kevin Giles. The movements are more than the some of their parts, and the public face of the movements tends to be dominated by the people I’ve called ‘truly convinced’ or words to that effect.
I also have friends who are egalitarian, I’ve worked with and for Christian leaders I would judge to be egalitarian, I personally know several egalitarian leaders who I consider quite senior to me (in the honour I should hold them in) for whom I have enormous respect. My comments aren’t focusing on that dimension of the issue; as my supervisor would say, “It’s a lacuna in the discussion”. (No really, he would.) It’s something you put your finger on in the next bit I quote:
to be continued…
Yes, you are hardly represented at all. You appear at the end of post one where I say guys like you aren’t being looked at.
I have selected what to focus on. But it wasn’t to enhance my case, it was a reflection of what I consider to be the key factors in the outcome I think is likely. I wasn’t hiding guys like you from view to bolster the case, I’ve weighed your likely influence up and have judged that it will only rarely be decisive in the long term when we look at evangelicalism as a whole.
You might make a difference in a couple of isolated instances. The Gen Y factor that Jereth and I have discussed under post 2 might give you a boost that I’ve not factored in correctly (extrapolating into the future is the kind of thing where you’re doing well if you’re wrong only twice as often as you’re right). But my current ‘best guess’ is that the group you represent will usually be irrelevant to the outcome even though you have numbers. Hence I didn’t even spend time on you (due to the fact that it’s a blog, and so I can’t cover everything in the posts).
That’s not a value judgement – how you described your basic approach, when translated from an egalitarian to a complementarian key, is what I strive for in my personal approach.
It’s a cold-hearted assessment of what is most likely to happen when move our gaze from the personal to take into account the other factors in play. My reasoning is, briefly, as follows:
1. The moderate group who says, “I’m a x, but the gospel is more important, and so I actively want to create space in the structure for other gospel-minded people and not shut them out,” is, by its nature, a diverse group. Give me 10 moderate egalitarians, and 10 moderate complementarians, and I’ll get somewhere between 15 and 25 distinct positions, each of which has its own idiosyncratic features held by only a small number of people (and possibly only by one, and possibly only on Thursdays).
Moderates, by their nature, aren’t part of a ‘party’ – they come to their convictions independently, they hold them independently, and each bit matters to some degree to them. They are a loose federation at best, not a clear party. They don’t like being party people. They prioritise personal relationships with integrity, and giving everyone room for their own position. It’s hard for them, therefore, to offer a clear substantive position that’s more than something like, “Let’s keep everyone together for the sake of unity/love/epistemic humility/the gospel (and even within that group, they won’t even all agree on why we should all hold together!)
The groups that I’m calling the ‘genuinely convinced x’ or the like, tend to naturally cohere into parties. Give me 10 ‘convinced’ egalitarians or complementarians, and I’ll have about three distinct positions, at least two of which will find it very easy to work together, and will capture the clear majority within their fold.
People in these ‘camps’ have social forces on them to hold them in place – they have leaders that they look to, peers whose opinion matters to them, publications or key works that they have on their bookshelves and have read and inwardly digested. Their instincts are to work together, to act and vote as a bloc – the threshold has to be high for them to break ranks. They have a substantive positon to put forward for people.
In the political arena, those two groups on the edge, as long as they aren’t crazy extreme, exert far more influence, and set the terms for the debates, far more than the moderates do. Even if they are crazy extreme, they can have a staggering impact – I’m still flabbergasted at the impact that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had on Australian politics in its brief moment of glory, and I continue to be bemused at the impact of the Greens.
Most punters in denominational power structures (except where liberalism is dominant, then it’s a different story) are not in the parties, but neither are they principled moderates – they are ‘up for grabs’ on a year-by-year, case-by-case basis. As long as the ‘parties’ can position themselves as being reasonably nice – put up spokespeople who smile and don’t scratch themselves in public – and don’t come across as mad-eyed ideologues who’ll burn anyone who isn’t in their party, then they can take from the moderate group the only thing it has to offer the voting majority – their moderateness and saneness – by adding that to the things that they can offer but the moderates can’t.
to be continued…
concluding
2. The moderate position, as you outline it here, is a genuine third way. It’s a way that says, ‘Being evangelical trumps everything else’ The only condition should be a common adherence to the one gospel and the one experience of being justified freely by his grace, received through faith.
But to make that work politically, the moderates have to form a third party. The complementarians and egalitarians have to find a way to give genuine expression to that by doing two things.
1. Articulate a vision for the institution with substantial practical content – not just a plea that we stay together. So take Melbourne, since these threads seem to have become a virtual colony of that Diocese. The egalitarians have had their conference this year. The complementarians are going to have theirs. Where’s the conference by the principled middle that says, “Forget gender, and forget forgetting gender. ‘Gifts and godliness, not gender’ is no better a way forward for us than ‘Gifts, godliness, and gender’. Here’s the way to go’”? Until that happens, the middle is a non-starter.
2. (this is the killer in my view) By playing hardball publicly with the guys on their own side in the debate. The egalitarian moderates have to stand up and publicly take on the ‘convinced egalitarians’. The complementarian moderates have to stand up and publicly take on the ‘convinced complementarians’.
The egalitarians need to slap Kevin Giles publicly around the head when he publishes his x+1 book on the topic, and slap Charles Sherlock publicly around the head when he launches Muriel Porter’s x+1 book on the topic. The complementarian moderates need to publicly take on the ACL or Equal But Different when it says something on the topic. The complementarian moderates probably need to stand up publicly and say that they are aghast that places like Sydney don’t allow women’s ordination and genuinely campaign to make it happen. The egalitarian moderates probably need to say, “Under no circumstances can we have women bishops – it’ll just put too much strain on things”.
Both sides on the moderate party might even offer something that is genuinely radical creative solution for Anglicans – get rid of Bishops, because the women’s ordination question could far more navigate the demands of staying together for the gospel if there wasn’t a ‘chief shepherd’ in the institution. They have to be more than fighting for the status quo.
The kind of moderates that have a big political impact are the ones who, in Jim Hacker’s words, ‘have elbows’ – they will take down people who share their convictions on a question but who want a more pure expression of it. John Calvin had great influence because of that. Similarly Thomas Cranmer – although there were a lot of players involved – was prepared to imprison John Hooper for holding that clerical vestments were inherently popish, even though he wanted Hooper for a Bishop’s position. Those kind of moderates are able to function as true statesmen, and offer a leadership that is more than just “let’s overcome our differences”: they can fight for a position that, in their context, is a plausble ‘thick’ description of what the institution can be.
But my observation is that, at the moment, very few moderates are like that. That’s not a criticism – not everyone wants ‘blood on their hands’, least of all that of people that they fundamentally agree with. But politics will generally be driven by those who grasp the truth within The Pirate King’s hyperbole:
And most moderates don’t want to be the kind of guy who manges to get through more dirty work than a Pirate king – no matter how glorious being a Pirate king might be (arrr!).
And that’s fine, I don’t want to be that kind of guy either. I’ve had to be him a few times and muddled through, but it’s not my ‘preferred future’. But the kind of leadership we’re talking about at the level of these posts, involves some of this.
These posts aren’t a prescription, they aren’t my preferred future, they are a sober evaluation of things in light of how the issue has gone down in the CoE. For guys like you, I’d suggest the way to treat what I’m saying is as a throwing down of the gauntlet. I’m the ghost of Christmas Future, and the ball is in your court if you think that under God another future is not only desirable, but possible. These are the factors you have to digest and be sober minded about in trying to overcome.
Dave,
Ok, I can’t possibly have heard every egal. claim, but let me assure you I have heard plenty of them. I’ve read Discovering Biblical Equality (the big red book), Beyond Sex Roles by Gilbert Bilezikian, and numerous other articles and essays I have found online by people such as Graham Cole, NT Wright and Rebecca Groothius.
Even Wayne Grudem probably hasn’t heard every egal. claim, but that is probably because a new egal. claim emerges every 6 months. We can’t keep up.
But if 20 years worth of egal. claims have failed to persuade us that the key texts should not be read and obeyed in their plain and obvious sense, how likely is it that some new claim will come along and succeed where all the others have failed?
For the following reasons I shall turn down your offer
1. This is Mark’s blog, not mine. Going into exegesis will take us away from the agenda he has set
2. I don’t really have the time to engage in a big debate about the texts
3. I’m not too confident of the profitability of a big debate about the texts (if CBMW has not convinced you, then even if someone should rise from the dead… <cheeky grin>)
4. Honestly, there isn’t much point. As I have already said, the complementarian exegesis of the texts is already well laid out in places like RBMW. Nothing has changed. We still read all the texts the same way, our exegesis is the same as it was 20 years ago (for that matter, 1900 years ago). It is the egal side that keeps shifting position.
Regards,
Jereth
Jareth, my point about us sticking to Biblical exegesis was not to try and take over Mark’s blog, but rather go with what he has outlined. He said that next year we will go into the exegesis.
My point is that you are trying to tell me now that I should go and read the opinion of certain people about what scripture says so I can see the light. I would rather let scripture dictate to me what I believe, not Wayne Grudem, not Mark and not you. I hope you would prefer scripture dictate what you believe and not me.
If you do not have the time (when it happens) to engage in a big debate about the texts, then fine. Just do not expect me to change my view, or any other egal who wants to follow the Bible. This, after all, is where the debate should be, is it not? It almost sounds like you do not have time for the Bible Jareth, though I am sure that is not true (rediculously big stupid and dopey grin).
You said, “But if 20 years worth of egal. claims have failed to persuade us that the key texts should not be read and obeyed in their plain and obvious sense, how likely is it that some new claim will come along and succeed where all the others have failed?”
Sorry, but they might not have persuaded you, but they have persuaded others, myself included. People are learning all the time that an egal position is Biblical and can reflect sound exegesis. I should add that I have not heard a new Egal claim in the last 6 months.
Mark,
I regards to your lengthy(!) comments about moderates and ‘truly convinced’ you appear to have tagged me as a truly ocnvinced.
I find this interesting, and wonder why. I am open to scripture and changed from comp to egal because of scripture. I appear to be more flexible than some! Also, my ‘fisking’ of CBMW is in response to their statments that seek to spread negative understandings of the egal understanding and foster a divide. And so, when they have an article about how this is a gospel issue, I respond and say no it is not. When they say egal leads to homosexuality I say no it does not (from the evidence they have provided). Is this not what you are saying the moderates should do? Tell the truly convinced to get back in their box, so to speak…and with love of course!
I work in a denomination very happily that is mainly comp. I instigated the first denominational forum (that I know of) on the issue because comps were trying to stop women becoming elders, even though they were currently allowed (although they are not allowed to be ministers).
It seems like either your categories are more flexible than you have said (which you may well recognise) and/or it is dangerous to place people in one category in a public setting (such as a blog) without first doing your research! After all, it might only serve to create a greater divide than there already is. Hmmm.
Perhaps I have missed something?
I am not sure where you see yourself on your scale. Care to share?
Thanks Mark, considering we have just had “Beyond Sex Roles” thrust under our noses. Was particularly appreciative given Bilezikian’s comment on pg 162 about women who “have been beateb down into a mental state of subjection to the point of taking pride in hiding their light under a bushel and burying their talent in obedince to A FALSE GOSPEL presented to them as truth” (Emphasis mine). From the context I think the false gospel in question is the complementarian one.
Dave, I’m not “telling you” to go and see the light. You requested exegesis. I responded that complementarian exegesis of the key texts (Gal 3:28, 1 Tim 2:11-14, Eph 5:22, 1 Cor 11:3, Gen 1-3, etc.) is easily available if you look in the appropriate places. I do not have anything to offer in addition to what you will find in these places. I do not wish to reinvent the wheel by starting up a debate here.
I’m not telling you to let Wayne grudem dictate what you should believe. All I’m saying is that his books outline the complementarian exegesis that you are after. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
I don’t expect you to change your view, Dave. You should hold whatever view you think best accords with Scripture. I will do the same. You believe that egalitarianism best accords with SCripture. I disagree. Let’s move on.
Jereth
Jareth, thanks for your last paragraph. It is good to agree on something!
Perhaps I misunderstood your reason for supplying info about CBMW etc, as it was not at all what I ‘requested’. Thankyou for graciously supplying them none the less.
No problem, Dave.
I understand that it can seem dismissive and condescending to be told “go away and read such and such literature”. I’ve had people do that to me before (egalitarians even!), and felt offended by it, so I apologise if this is how I’ve made you feel.
I don’t want to be dismissive of your genuine search for good exegesis on this issue. But I have already outlined the reasons for why this is not the time and place. Also, as I have kept saying, I do genuinely believe that the complementarian exegesis available at CBMW is of far superior quality and thoroughness than what I could supply you here.
regards,
Jereth
No worries Jareth. Just so as to be very clear, I never asked you to supply exegesis. I said, “Why don’t we stick to exegesis?” (which, as I explained, Mark will eventually get to, according to him). I actually said this AFTER you had already directed me to CBMW etc the first time. My point was simply that telling me what others had written about what they think the Bible says does not do it for me like some one saying, “The Bible says this…how are you going to respond?”
I understand now that you think CBMW does a good job. Like you said, we should probably move on!
<b>Hi Mark,</b>
Amazing series, although the thing with you and and your series’ is to get in early and follow it all, I missed the train on the repentance one.
Re Moderates; The Diocese of Tasmania might be a good example. +John seems to employ a mix of Comps and Egals and card carrying extremists are not promoted to senior positions in the diocese. However I suspect all this is more due to the frontier nature of ministry as opposed to conscious political decision.
<b>Hey Dave,</b>
This isn’t mean to be rude but It’s spelt Jereth, not Jareth.
Hi Chris,
Picking up your questions to me, and with apologies for how long it is taking me to get to people like you on the three active threads I’m involved with,
I think you’ll see the direction of my answer here. I don’t separate the two, but I have a position that favours ‘hermeneutic lite’ or ‘just the read the text’ that I think was the Reformers’ position, sometimes called the ‘grammatico-historical method’. That’s a view that I have to argue for, and will discuss the issue next year.
Agreed, I’m holding back on that, and will for a while. Look at my response to Dave on that question in the thread for post three that I’ll (hopefully) be writing today my time, if you want another explanation on that front that complements the ones I’ve already given on that issue in this thread. There’s a lot of reasons for the decision.
Agreed. My comment wasn’t a passive-aggressive way of pretending to talk about a recurrent feature of egalitarianism as a whole but really taking a pot shot at the specific egalitarian who has been willing to serve everyone by publishing public comments on a thread ‘chaired’ by a complementarian. It was a comment about a feature of egalitarianism’s approach as a whole to the Bible – not a comment about what you’ve done in these threads. One of the reasons why I want everyone to bend over backwards to treat each other well, is so that we can make comments about a movement (either way – your ‘side’ or mine) without it necessarily being read as a comment about the individuals in the conversation we’re having. That requires an atmosphere fairly free of narkiness.
Hi Chris,
Turning then to the question that if we limit someone with gifts who can use those gifts if certain requirements are met, then we are treating that gift as ‘unlean’. I gestured to 1 Tim 3 and said, “You need more than a gift to minister in certain contexts, it’s not enough to say, “They’ve got a gift!”, you have to look at all the requirements mentioned. You replied:
A couple of points.
First, that’s an strange way to treat a passage like this. On that logic, if I am going to use that passage consistently then I have only two options. Either I treat it as absolute prescription on every point – not even men married to women where the marriage hasn’t produced children qualify. Or I ignore all the requirements – for if it’s inconsistent to have single men as presbyters (and yes, you got the basic way I’m taking the passage and the meaning of ‘bishop’), when I don’t have women presbyters, then it’s inconsistent to not have people who are unable to teach, who are disreputable, who are driven by the love of money, who are harsh, who love fights, who have more than one wife.
I’ll accept that you think I’m only being consistent along these lines if you tell me that for you it’s a straight ‘all or none’ question here and you have either applied every requirement in a woodenly literal way or have decided none apply (and if you’re consistent with that in other areas, and tell me that you’re a Young Earth Creationist who keeps the sabbath – because they usually rest their case on the same logic when it comes to Gen 1-3).
Second, epistemologically I am not an empiricist, like most evangelicals are in my experience. I am in the very, very broad Plato/Aristotle/German Idealism tradition. Most evangelicals read a list like 1 Tim 3 and seem to go, ‘this is defining the boundaries – a person has to tick each box to qualify.’ For them the picture is a black silhouette on a white background – the boundaries of in/out are very clear, but there’s no details or ‘shape’ inside the circle so drawn.
For me, passages like this are drawing a picture of the kind of guy a presbyter should be. How far off that picture someone can be before they don’t qualify (just how ‘able to teach’ do they have to be? just how ‘gentle’? how much beyond reproach do they have to get before they click over?) is then a matter of wisdom based on a wide range of questions – both theological and context.
So, personally, I’m fine with presbyters who don’t have kids. I’m not fine with presbyters who don’t have kids because they chose not to ‘for the sake of ministry’ (that cuts against the grain of the ‘type’ being set up). I’m okay with single presbyters in light of 1 Cor 7, indeed think everyone should seriously consider it, given Paul’s instructions there, I’m not okay with making that in any sense ‘normative’, given how Paul establishes the type here.
And yes, like Martin Luther, who I think had a similar approach to this (and whose view of the implications of the priesthood of all believers for this question I share), under highly abnormal circumstances I am fine with women presbyters in mixed contexts. How highly abnormal? About as often as I’ll be happy with making someone addicted to much wine or not gentle or driven by a love of money a presbyter. It’s a rare situation, it’s a retrieval ethic.
And before anyone gets upset that I’ve said ‘making a woman presbyter is as bad as making a drunk presbyter’ it’s not a moral equivalence thing here at all. The nature of an Idealist epistemology is that a list like this draws a picture, and so creates an order between the items in the list as to how quickly the picture distorts when you move off the ‘ideal’. Being a woman is not like being a drunk. But you’re either a woman or a man, so to switch over there immediately moves you a long way from the picture drawn by the list. You’ve actually got to move a fair way in the other qualitications to do the same thing in the bit they’re concerned with.
Obviously an egalitarian will struggle with that, despite their rejection of adrogyny, but it is consistent for a complementarian who says that gender has some theological and ethical ‘weight’.
*Sigh*, knew this was gonna happen. This is a comment for the thread under post 2. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Urgh. It’s even worse than that, I’ve published both comments to Chris on this thread, and the first one has coding in it that I don’t want to have to do a second time. I think we’ll just have to jump my conversation with Chris from thread 2 to here. And I’ll add the final installment below.
Hi Chris,
Moving then to the question of whether an egalitarian woman not being allowed to minister publicly to both men and women is of the same moral order as a complementarian man (and some complementarian women) being required to submit to a woman in a church-like context:
And you then offer three points. 1 A person with teaching gifts should still be doing some teaching ministry somewhere. 2. They should plant a church 3. There’s an awful lot of room for churchplanting in Oz so why not let women do that?
It’s a set of three questions which naturally moves into the substantial conversation that has since ensued between you, Dave, and Mr and Mrs Lotherington (presuming Jereth and Rachel have opted to share the same surname
).
But I would gently suggest that your comments here have lost sight of the issue that you and I were chewing over. I want to say, “Being required to submit when you think that’s wrong is a bigger moral problem than being required not to exercise your gifts when you think you are qualified to do so.” – a Type 2 egalitarian verdict, they ‘aren’t equal’. You have said, “No they are different questions but of the same basic moral nature” – they’re ‘equal but different’ ethical problems of living in an institution.
You’re offering a set of practical solutions. Ironically enough, ones similar to the ones that Jereth is offering you in the later debate – use the gifts in a more restricted context (you, by size – lead a Bible study; him by gender and age of the group).
But apart from saying that my analogy is an example that confuses the issue, you haven’t addressed the issue we were debating.
If I say, “Worship Baal”, or “Strike your wife” then that is one kind of moral problem for you to handle. I’m wrong to require it, but if you obey me you are doing something wrong too.
If I say, “We won’t allow you to take your rightful place of serving the community for reasons you consider to be bad (I’m jealous of you, it’s a mega-church with one senior preacher and mega churches are just bad, you’re a woman, you’re a black, you’re a gay).” Then, if your judgement is right, I’m wrong to limit you, but if you obey me in being so restricted you are not doing anything wrong. You might need to stand up and say ‘This stance is wrong’ but you are not morally obliged to engage in civil disobedience every time you are faced with this issue.
I’ve tried a couple of times to put this to you, if you don’t like the mega church example, then maybe this time around will bring the issues out better.
Actually we haven’t <:-)>
Rachel kept her maiden name!
Also, while on the topic of my name, please don’t anyone feel bad about spelling it wrong (Jareth, Jeruth, Jerith, Gerard, …). I get it all the time!!
Hi Jereth,
I love it. I was weighing that up myself before Jennie and I married, as I was thoroughly disgruntled at the way that issue (which is so a cultural thing) often got treated as though it was an obvious biblical practice. As it turned out, Jennie wanted to take on the name ‘Baddeley’ (which, I suppose doesn’t make any less sense then wanting to take me on), so my ruminations on the matter never had any practical expression.
But do congratulate your wife on my behalf for striking a blow for Christian freedom. Those of us who value the liberty that Christ has given us are in the debt of women (and men) like her.
Hi Andrew,
And a very warm welcome along. Always good to know you’re around, especially on this vexed issue.
Oh, that’s Horrible, Doctor. That’s not a good sound…
See? Now you’re just messing with my head. As soon as anyone says something like ‘I salute your courage’, I flash to Humphrey Appleby saying, “And may I congratulate you, Minister, on taking such a courageous stand.” Now I’m jumping at shadows, looking around for angels hightailing it out of here, because they’re too smart to walk this path.
But yes, I think I will have to try and offer something substantial about what gender is and, to quote the great 20th Century bard, ‘What if feels like to be a woman (and a man).’ I think calling my efforts ‘a theology of gender’ will be outrageous hyperbole, but it will be an attempt to say something theological about gender that I think is important to the question.
And thanks so much for confirming my suspicion that attempting such a thing is, in itself, grounds for being certified.
This bit intrigues me, a lot. I know what I would mean if I said these words, but your mind works along ‘equal but different’ tracks to mine, Andrew, and I hate missing any gold you’re willing to share.
Can you spell out what you’re getting at here with just a couple of more sentences for me? You’re someone whose thinking I pay very close attention to on these matters.
Hi Dave,
Well, it’s been a day or two since I’ve gotten back to you, and there’s a number of issues you’ve asked me to respond to, one or two that will take a bit of explaining to do justice to. Here goes.
No offence. I didn’t see the joke you intended, partly because I know there are slabs of potential readers who go, “It’s Mark, it might be good, but I can’t afford the time.” So I assumed it was a serious concern, and offered the best advice I could.
Yars, this will bear upon the question you ask below of where I fit in the taxonomy of ‘principled moderate’ and ‘convinced x’. You won’t hear me saying, ‘slippery slope’. When I hear someone on my side say that a little piece of me dies inside, and then I say to myself, “He’s just speaking in very general terms, he’s just trying to find a quick way of saying, ‘shares certain presuppositions and methodologies and that will often cause problems long term’ without sounding as academic and pretentious as that.” It’s a charitable assumption I make of those who share my position but use a different rhetorical mode.
Just adopting presuppositions and even some methodology that is inherent to liberalism does not mean you are liberal, that you will ever become one, or that those you teach will. There’s a lot of other factors involved, not least of which how gracious God is to you. “Slippery slope” is just too mechanistic a description of how ideas and presuppositions work at the level of individuals.
But presuppositions and methodology will tend to trump other factors that are important at the individual level when it comes to looking at the issue at the level of a movement. Movements tend (and the ‘tend’, rather than ‘absolutely always will’, is important) to move towards internal consistency and more and more ‘radical’ embracing of the implications of the working assumptions over decades and generations.
That distinction and nuancing is pretty important. If someone means all that by saying ‘slippery slope’ then I’m happy to use the term.
Hi Dave,
Okay. Let me try and spell out the distinctions that I’m running with here:
1. Saying ‘I find you uninformed about what egalitarians think’ is definitely better than outright speculation. But it’s a form of words that can be abused too easily:
“I find you as thick as two planks”
“I find you ungodly”
“I find you to be a Dalek”
“I find you to be motivated by a desire to oppress women”
All can be justified as a true description of how I experience you in the conversation. But we don’t make public everything we experience of another person. And, for any thread I’m presiding in, the ‘norm’ of the conversation is “don’t use forms of words that lend themselves to making personal remarks easily and which can even allow speculation to be passed of as ‘my experience of you’”.
2. “You know better than to say this” and the like. These are grey areas for me. They are ‘risky’ relationship building strategies. They take a chance as they can be misunderstood as a personal attack, but they can also be a sign that the person genuinely thinks someone is generally functioning at a high level, has dropped the ball in this instance (and we all do that), but things are going well so we don’t need to tiptoe around on eggshells.
I think we all need to look carefully at the person we’re talking with, and how they’re taking your words to them, before using forms of words like that. If you get a bad reaction to one, probably lay off things in this category for a while with that person.
3. “too much heat, too little light”, “you’re wrong”. Don’t use them too often, but if you need to do more than disagree these are reliably safe. They focus on the actual thing said as a discrete unit, and have minimal explicit ‘collateral damage’ on the speaker of those words.
It enables the other person to ‘save face’ by letting them draw back from their words and say, “Yes, there is a problem with those words, what I should have said is….”
That’s a lot easier than having to say, “Yes, you’re right I am an idiot/ignorant/ Dalek, and I’ll try and do better.”
Criticising an action is different from criticising a person directly.
to be concluded…
concluding…
4.
This was a line-ball, and a classic example of why I want the personal interactions to be ‘above reproach’.
Based on Jareth’s qualities that he has shown in the thread for post 2 I read this as slightly unfortunately worded way of making an observation about egalitarianism as a movement and that when he said, “they’ve lost the exegetical argument and they know it” it was hyperbole and not a description of motive. He was saying, “They know that the case can’t be made simply on a traditional exegetical basis, and so are bringing in other issues to make the case.”
That’s an evaluation, and Jereth obviously considers that culpable. But it’s not a priori wrong to do that (so it isn’t an insult), he (and I) will have to make that case, even if our analysis of what has been happening is right. The wording needs some charity applied to it (which is why I want this to be a place where charity reigns at the personal level – ‘cause most of the contributors will probably need some charity from the rest of us at some stage). But I’m not going to be a traffic cop and jump on every unfortunately worded comment.
If I had gotten a whiff that he was making that comment at somebody, then I would have, at a minimum defended them (and so implicitly rebuked him), or, at a maximum, rebuked him for the statement.
And if it was said as the first thing by a new contributor, I would have little choice but to jump on it. Someone who starts off by using risky lineball shots over the net probably needs some help to fire more in the middle and building up some trust first.
If he had added something like ‘those stupid/liberal/unbelieving egalitarians, then that would have crossed the line as well.
Hope that helps fill in the method behind my conversational norms madness.
Hi Dave,
Onto the issue of substance that was between us:
This was very helpful, thank you. I wrote what I did because I thought I saw a comment under a post on your blog where you said, in a discussion on Heb 13:17, that you believed that leaders do have authority and Christians submit both to them and to the Lord (which surprised me, as I had up until then had you pegged more along the lines of what you’ve said here, but fits with how Calvin sees how God is ultimately the cause of everything, and yet works through created instruments, and so I figured you were following your reformed heritage at that point). But I probably mixed you up with another egalitarian at that point.
Okay, so you’ve got a variation on the ‘type one egalitarian’ approach. There is authority in the Church, but it’s only God’s, leaders channel it, but it’s never, in any sense, ‘theirs’. Christians never submit to the authority of their leaders or obey them. Thanks for clarifying that, and apologies for the misunderstanding.
Heh, that wasn’t an invitation for you to go all Yoda on me. I worked through the whole blog conference and couldn’t work out anyone who fit what you seemed to be describing. You’re going to have give me a name (preferably a couple – triangulation is better than trying to fix an approach by just one representative) and preferably even a bit of a description as to what makes this so different. I’m not going to get there without something substantial from you.
Not trying to ‘score points’ here, but you seemed to be implying in your comment that you agreed that, at least up until recently, pretty well all evangelical egalitarianism is what complementarianism criticises – liberal and enlightenment. But that there is a new movement that is free of these traits, and that it’s been in America/Canada for a few years and is only just appearing in Oz. I think that’d be news to a lot of evangelicals who have been egalitarian for some time now. Is that really what you meant to imply? Obviously that idea will help part of my project a bit, but I’m not sure that’s what you intended to suggest…
Yes, that’s why I acknowledged it. It is going to require some careful discussion next year.
Hi Dave,
Finally, you kind of query the whole approach:
You will be waiting for a while, I’ll put that up front.
Here’s at least part of the reasons for putting exegesis last:
1. The sides are polarised, and there is a ‘dance’ that everyone has learned – which passages, which issues, what arguments are likely, what evidence will counter them. See here for an example of that expressed on the thread. It’s ceased to be a genuine conversation (my point in this post), it’s ‘just’ a contest of the debating skills and supporting knowledge and exegetical ability of the participants. All you really can be sure of at the end of following a debate is who had the best arguments on the day. You can see signs of it with Chris and Jereth (and you just now on thread two) just itching to get their ‘talking points’ and ‘key texts’ down. That’s a job that needs to be done. But it gets done a lot, and I don’t want to invest significant time into doing it again. (I’ve focused on Jereth for the examples as he’s on my ‘side’, and these aren’t really criticisms anyway).
So I’m disrupting the dance as best as I can. I won’t play the role I’m ‘supposed’ to, and will subvert people on either side who try and push the conversation in threads into that mould. If you guys need to lock horns feel free, but if it gets in my way I’ll shut the conversation down.
We’ll cover the talking points, we’ll get to the texts. But we’ll do it in a way that breaks up the ‘dance’ and so encourages us to talk to each other, and reflect. Too much polarisation means that one only talks to vindicate one position and defeat another. I’m more than happy for both sides to live that way, but in this little part of cyberspace I want us to do something a bit more reflective for a little while before we go off and fight the good fight once again.
2. The debate is out of the hands of the average punter. They can’t adjudicate what is the best meaning for ‘kephale’, they don’t know the social context of the 1st century. The level of knowledge that the specialists who have boned up on the controversy bring to the table ‘pulls rank’ on the average punter who then just has to play ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ and pick whichever expert looks/smells attractive enough. People know what ‘side’ they’re on, but they a bit hazy about why, and often find it hard to know what it means in practice except for the big issues like “don’t/do have a woman teach men”.
So we’re going to skill them up. We’re going to start by trying to sketch out what the issues are for the different sides and the reasons they gives for having those issues. I’m a complementarian, so I will have a take on that that is already flagged here in these opening posts – I will structure the debate more around the issues of equality, authority, love and gender than the question of gifting and service. We’ll approach the latter through the former, not vice versa. But hopefully most egalitarians won’t see what I’ve done as unfair. We’ll look at the doctrine of Scripture and the place of teachers (experts) and the priesthood of all believers in interpretation, the issue of cultural context and hermeneutics.
I’m going to pick off the issues that I think are what the debate is really over – it’s not really about women’s roles at all, that’s just its concrete form – and try and give everyone the tools to be able to place arguments and appeals in their broader context of ideas.
3. To do that properly, I have to not play the magician, ‘pick any card’ but slanting it so you pick mine. I’ll put the two or three major egalitarian cases as best as I can, in representatives’ own words as much as I can. I’ll point out what’s being said and why. I’ll then put down what I think and why alongside. But I won’t be trying to persuade people into my position directly. It’ll be an indirect attempt to persuade, where it looks like what I’m actually doing is giving them every resource they need to justify going to a different view. And I will be giving people lots of freedom to stand back from me and weigh up what I’m saying and make their own judgement.
to be concluded…
concluding…
4. The outcome of that, if God is gracious and it happens moderately successfully should be that everyone is clearer about what the different positions involve and why. Some (most?) will reembrace their current position with renewed fervour and clarity, some will see some possible issues and potential problems and start trying to head them off, and some will switch sides (and I expect very few egalitarians who used to be complementarians in that number. I doubt I’ll be in that number either. That’s not a criticism of anyone. It’s a big deal to convert. ‘Double conversions’ back to an original belief system that one repudiated is very rare, and almost never occurs as a result of argument or conversation. Not ‘never’, ‘hardly ever’.) But those who follow our conversation through should have a much better sense about how their view does and does not work in practice and why they hold it.
5. By the time we get to the texts, there could be potentially be not that much reason for big debates. Once basic grammar, syntax, context, and word range issues have been flagged and the alternatives canvassed, most people should see what the range of issues are that lead people to prefer one interpretation over another. I’ll go, I think this interpretation is right for these textual reasons and these fundamental theological reasons. Everyone else will be able to go, “Yes, no, for these reasons.” And there won’t be much need to fight it out, everyone should have a reasonable sense of where they stand and what the implications of that are.
That’s the method. It’s designed to get people to go, “Am I happy with what’s entailed in my position (complementarian or egalitarian)? What kind of readings of the texts best fit the fundamental convictions I have and what kind of fundamental convictions best fit what the texts seem to be saying? (that one goes both ways).
From there people should see more clearly how to live before God and other people in light of where they stand on this debate. And, for the principled moderates, they should have a better sense of which kind of ‘convinced xers’ they will be able to work with, and which ones go too far from their point of view.
Mark,
On the maiden name thing…
We have been somewhat counter cultural on this!
In the end I think it was something of an aesthetic matter. I’m of Chinese descent and have a rather boring one-syllable surname. Rachel is of Anglo descent and has a very elegant sounding 4-syllable surname. If her maiden name had been “Smith” I suspect she would have been much more inclined to take on my name!!!
I’ve made it fairly clear, of course, that when/if we have kids I want them to have my surname. I think that would be the complementarian thing to do <grin>
Jereth
Yes, Mark, your interpretation of what I said is correct. I was being hyperbolic and I was describing egalitarianism as a movement rather than pointing my finger at specific individuals. In hindsight that was not a kind way to phrase what I was saying, and I apologise for that.
Jereth
Thanks for your interraction Mark.
With regards to whether or not it is ‘ok’ to say I find you ‘uninformed’ and whether it was ok for you to say ‘You should kow better than this’ etc. I do not want to go on about this, but I feel I should express to you that I felt your original criticism of what I said was pedantic and ‘Father like’. I responded really by suggesting you look at your own words (I guess I saw you as hypocritical). Now I see your explanations as a poor attempt to justify you acting like my Father, by continuing to act like my Father! They are your judgements and my blogging experience does not reflect what you say at all. Perhaps we should just drop it and let me go and work on my ‘Father issues’?!
I think I probably need to explain this new movement. For me it partly fits in with your own dance interruption technique. Jereth is an example of how I see the dance, from one side. His points for authority in Genesis outlined on thread II with his conclusions on that comment along with other comments like the ‘lineball’ one above (for which Jereth apologised…cheers Jereth) are examples of how I see the dance. At the PTC where I studied for ministry if you believed women could preach, you were liberal. I sat in a lecture where a guest lecturer (female) told us that if we believed women could preach then she had no respect for us because we had obviously not read our Bible. Hmmm, confused!
Last year in our NSW General Assembly (like your Synod) we had people speak to the motion regarding no longer ordaining women elders. In my whole denomination (for NSW) there were only two sides who spoke. Those who continually quoted 1 Tim 2 (incorrectly I might add) and those who did not have a BIblical argument, i.e. those we would consider liberal.
Persoanlly I believe the movement I speak of has always been around. There is evidence of it long before the feminist movement. But for me in my denomination and for many Sydney Anglicans (where I grew up) this is totally new, that there would be egals who believe and interpret the Bible well. My experience has been that there are more of them in the States and they are growing over there. There are some here, and in the last few months I have watched one Pressie/Sydney Anglican who had always been comp become one too.
When I speak of a new movement I hope that the dance will stop long enough for people to listen. Thanks for listening!
Cheryl Schatz who was a guest contributor on our blog is one example. I would recommend her blog to you if you would like to express the egal view from an egal perspective. She is very thorough, a great language scholar and raises some great points. She has also answered almost every comp point and claim from CBMW etc.
Finally, thanks for outlining a bit of where you are going. I will have to read it several more times perhaps to understand it. If you have read our Blog Conference you might have worked out that not all the comments are there (we changed the blog format and seemed to have lost some!). We saw the sides in our denomination as polorised. As I suggested before, we did not sit comfortably with either side, as neither were using the Bible or using it well, IMHO. What we wanted to do was build up information about both side so the other side could see that we were all human, and that we all had convictions for certain reasons. So, we had equal comp and egal presenters. We had a moderator who was (and still is grrr!) not decided on the issue who introduced and wound up the conference.
Not sure if we went anyway towards helping us come together, but people certainly had opportunity to be informed. The reason I bring all this up is we essentially started with the exegesis, the guts of it. Because the exegesis presented by the egals was NOT what the comps expected, I felt we ended up with more conversation and more informed people.
I think CBMW, who pump out info with a very inaccurate view of the egal argument and do not allow comment or interraction are working against any chance of unity and working together. They almost demonise egals (perhaps that is a bit strong…but not far off!) and make the egal movement out to be stupid.
I have gone on enough. I will be interested to see how your series goes Mark and wish you all the best with it!
Mark, one more thing which might help you with categories which became clear to me just now in the shower(!) I am not here to convince everyone to be egal. Rather I am here to make sure the egal argument is fairly represented. The likes of CBMW do not do this. An article I read recently in the Briefing did not do this IMHO (cannot remember what it was actually about…anyway).
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the warm welcome. It is always a pleasure to visit Super Typing Man’s fortress of solatude.
Yes, and that’s even before I have gained my PhD in horribleness.
Hey don’t mind me, I’m certain to the amount of ten that you’ll do a great job.
And what an important thing to attempt. It is worth doing because everyone – egalitarians and complementarians – say they believe that men and women are different. But egalitarians have a great deal of difficulty supplying normative biblical data (prove me wrong, brothers and sisters!) and complementarians often don’t work hard enough at *developing* a positive model. This means that a lot of biblical gender discussion happens along dreary negative lines: “God didn’t make Adam and Steve”; “The Bible says women mustn’t/can’t…”
But the Bible gives us more than texts to command and constrain us, it gives us both an aetiology and (at least an implied) telos of gender. The human story begins and is consummated with a marriage – with the second marriage occasioning the end of the first (Lk 20:35), and apparently being its true meaning (Eph 5:32). This has to say profound things about what it means to be a man or a woman…
Now you’re trying to trick *me* into being courageous with your flatterin’ ways. Don’t you know that my policy is to be brief and allusive as possible and let you project your genius onto the rorschach of my vaguery
. But seriously, what you say is very kind and it is totally cool that we agree so much with regard to these things.
Anyway. What I am getting at is that the biblical story of gender is beautiful. It is beautiful because of the first marriage on which it is based, and the way that “being taken from” and “being completed by” dynamic explains why men and women belong together and like and need each other. I think it is also beautiful because it is a little story (man and woman) that tells and anticipates the big and true story (between Christ and the church) – thus it is “aesthetic” in a more technical sense (cf. Balthasar): a created sign (“natural sacrament”?) of Christ, in whom everything – in creation and redemption – finds its deepest meaning.
Is that what you think too?
What I am not so sure about – and this is where your courage comes in – are these questions:
(1) What are the specific points of connection between the type and the reality. Paul in Eph 5 focuses on headship, submission and self-surrender. Can we unpack this more? Does the church “complete” the incarnate Christ (not as Logos)? Is the abstraction and return of Eve’s creation a sign of the bodily sacrifice and union of Christ with his bride? Is the leaving of the father (Gen 2:24 cf. Eph 5:31) significant?
Our forebears (sometimes even the reformers) highlighted these things – were they onto something or is this dodgy allegorising?
(2) How do gendered relations work outside marriage? eg.: What does being feminine mean for a single woman? How do Christian brothers and sisters appreciate each other’s gendered identity?
(3) How does the typology of gender and marriage relate to motherhood?
(4) What is the relationship between the God-Israel marriage simile of the OT and the Christ-Church typology of the NT (telegraphing my suspicion here)?
And there are some others. But that will do for now.
Over to you, Pirate King. I wait with baited breath!
Hi Mark – I have found your posts very interesting and informative. I would like to ask the following question though. How would you repond to someone who is a complementarian and has issues with the occassional service where women are permitted to give a sermon? Is it ok to go along or is it better to stay away but keeping in mind it isn’t good to give up meeting with the saints?
Many thanks
Arnie
Hi Mark,
In your original post you stated that Complementarian exegesis has been showing the texts to “state what they have generally been understood to have said for two millennia.”
Would you be able to cite some sources for this claim? I’m specifically interested in any commentators prior to the 1800’s.
I ask because you’ve made a claim about exegesis here, not practice. I’m happy with the claim that Complementarians have tradition to back them up on the <i>practice</i> of restricting women from teaching.
But it’s my understanding that the current Complementarian theology, which argues for pre-fall “roles”, is entirely new and a recent creation over the last few centuries, but particularly in the last 50 years. In other words, just as new and novel as Egalitarianism.
I’d be quite interested therefore if you could reference any commentators or writers prior to the 1800s who read Gen 1-3, 1Tim 2 & 1Cor 11 the way modern Complementarians do.
Cheers,
Sam.
Hi Sam,
No doubt Mark will respond to this more adequately when the sun brinks on the land of eternal darkness, but in the meantime I think can quickly point out a few references in response to your challenge:
Augustine:
In his Tractate on John 1:13 (v.14 for him) Augustine produces a (peculiar!) analogy between the order of male and female to spirit and flesh based on Gen 2:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107.iii.iii.html
Calvin:
See his comments on Gen 2:18 and v. 21
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol01/htm/viii.htm
And 1Cor 11:8
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom39.xviii.i.html
Bunyan:
See exegesis of Gen 3:16
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol01/htm/viii.htm
(I could have added Knox but I won’t.)
I realise this doesn’t prove that everyone, or even most people, took this line. And some, such as Chrysostom, do seem more interested in connecting women’s subordination to the Fall.
But I think these passages do go against the idea that gender roles in marriage and church were *solely* ascribed to the fall before the modern era.
“sun brinks on the land of eternal darkness”
What the hey? That means never!
As if there weren’t enough paradoxes without idjuts conjuring them out of thin air!
Thanks Andrew. Looking back I was somewhat unclear.
The theology of most modern Complementarians argues that women are <i>not<i> inferior, less capable, or less able – they simply have the subordinate <i>role</i> and men have the role of leading & teaching.
From what I can tell this reading of the aforementioned passages is a modern one, and most traditional commentators understood female subordination as natural & logical, given their supposed inferiority and weakness.
I’ll try and poke into Bunyan & Knox when I get a chance.
Thanks for that clairification Sam.
Probably I was being unclear too, however.
What I was trying to highlight was that, for the writers I cited, subordination could be seen as a product of the <i>way</i> woman is created (ie. from the man).
Again, this is not to deny that they might not <i>also</i> look to female weakness, just as they might <i>also</i> see female subordination as arising from the Fall.
Nevertheless, when they use the order and structure of human creation as the explanator (as they do), then they are using an aetiological argument that <i>is</i> in-line with modern complentarianism. This argument, in and of itself, relies neither on the supposition of female incompetence, nor on factors associated with the Fall.
Hi Mark
I’ve been lurking, wondering where this series is heading.
I feel like this comment is where you start getting down to business: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5568
And when Andrew asks the hard question about a theology of gender, I feel we’re really getting down to business: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5582
This is the abiding question for me. Who is going to develop a broad and constructive stance that goes beyond the perpetuation of the debate? Whoever manages to articulate and implement a full-orbed Christian vision of gendered humanity will have put the whole thing to rest—be they egalitarian or complementarian.
I reckon there’s one other thing that will finally put this matter to rest: a post-Christian/Christendom West. As our Christian paddock shrinks within the pasture of Western culture, we can keep dividing and sub-dividing, fighting over the ever-diminishing turf.
But I see a more hopeful future. Like Matthew Williams, I don’t follow your prediction of the coming divide. I hail from Adelaide, where the marginalisation of Christianity is more obvious than in the eastern capitals, if only because Adelaide is a smaller city. But this has had the wonderful by-product of encouraging unity between different brands of Christians—and I mean unity in a pretty robust sense, not a wishy-washy, keep-everyone-happy sense. (See http://arthurandtamie.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/adelaide-christian-scene/ )
That ‘moderate third party’ you mentioned seems to be the viable path for Adelaide Christianity—not because moderates have somehow grown elbows, but because a more moderate position is in some sense necessitated by circumstances (without everyone going squishy between the ears!). No one in Adelaide has ‘solved’ the gender issue, and I wouldn’t even say that people have particularly changed their minds about it, but it seems that Christians have come to a more inclusive, ‘centrifugal’ perspective in order get gospel work done.
Hi Steven,
Great question, as always. Hopefully by now you’ll have read the interaction between Andrew Moody and I and will have seen that this is on the agenda for the discussion next year. I lack Andrew’s confidence that what will be offered will be the answer, but I am hopeful that it might at least be a building block towards it – wrong in such a way that it helps someone else articulate something genuinely edifying.
I agree with the general concerns you are raising, and will try to both articulate some of the key questions/issues that any position needs to address, as well as offer my substantial take on it.
My own view is that we will have to revisit some of the assumptions and terminology of the debate, particularly the concept of ‘equal’.
Take the debate on this thread between Chris, Jereth, Rachel and Dave over whether women only ministering to women is the equivalent to putting talents in the bank and drawing interest off them.
Chris seems to be arguing a version of what I’ve called a ‘type 2’ egalitarian evaluation – a fairly simple hierarchy of value of ministries (with some important qualifications and nuances once the debate got under way). Ministering to men and women is higher than specialised ministry.
But Jereth’s response isn’t my kind of complementarian evaluation, from my stance it is more of a ‘type 1’ egalitarian evaluation – there’s no better or worse if you minister to few or many, a subgroup or the whole, it’s all the same in its value, honor, strategic worth.
But that doesn’t square with either my sense of ‘the real world’ – the senior, ‘jack of all trades’, minister is simply the most strategic and basic ministry in any church. Specialist ministries (including one absolutely rarefied and so inbred they can only exist in carefully created institutions – like theological lecturers) all depend on that basic ministry being done well enough under God to make all other specialist ministries possible. If a church has to downsize, there are certain ministries whose employed staff it will let go before others.
And that expresses something I think I see in Scripture, particularly 1 Cor 12:21-26.
Different parts of the body have different inherent levels of honor, but we treat those with less inherent levels of honor with more. The ‘equality’ is not found in some flat, this is the same as that, kind of interchangeability. Older have more honor than younger, the big public preacher more than the person who mows the lawn.
But those with more honor rely on those with less, and are to use their honored status to give a special dignity to those who don’t have it automatically. So the outcome is that every part is honored, and all rejoice when any part is honored.
The outcome is similar, but some receive their honor more or less directly from how the Spirit has gifted them (at least in terms of how that is set up in 1 Cor 12), and others receive it, still ultimately from God, but mediated through others.
It seems closely similar to Paul’s treatment of giving in 2 Cor 8-9 where it appears that God intentionally gives differing levels of wealth to different groups of Christians so that the wealth can be redistributed by generosity. (2 Cor 8:13-15, and particularly 8:15 in light of the Wilderness is key here – what was true in the OT simply by the act of God: all got what they needed – now becomes true by an extra step, those with more give to those with less). The end of 2 Cor 9 indicates the outcome of this arrangement is that it knits people more closely to God and each other. People don’t end up with the same wealth – some poor people give beyond what they could afford, some rich people give only a bit – but all should receive ‘enough’.
This kind of approach is hard to map onto most contemporary discussion of equality. Our view of equality is very mathematical. Equals means same – same ability, same opportunities (if you’re egalitarian) or same honor, same dignity, same value (if you’re complementarian). I think the NT might be setting up something more foreign still, where there is deliberate inequality in order to engender a certain kind of equal community.
Once again the wrong thread.
Hopefully this will appear on thread two shortly.
Hi David,
You’re welcome, David.
It’s the kind of sentiment I’m gesturing at in the post. Whether it’s Kevin Giles arguing that complementarianism leads to a kind of Arianism, Charles Sherlock launching a book, written by one of Oz’s most high profile liberals, that is attacking a mostly evangelical Diocese or quotes like this, there’s different ‘signs’ that this is a gospel issue for key leaders in the evangelical egalitarian movement.
They’re beginning to use language and take public actions that are even more decisive than saying ‘egalitarianism is a slippery slope to liberalism’ in indicating that they struggle to see complementarians as fellow servants of the gospel.
It’s important to ‘get’ that, to understand what’s going on in the debate now. It’s not the whole story, but it’s pretty darn important. These guys aren’t loony radicals, they’re respected mainstream leaders. So what they’re saying reflects the (or at least ‘a’) mainstream view of those who are taking a public lead in favor of egalitarianism.
Hi Luke,
Glad you’re appreciating the series, I think ‘amazing’ might be a bit strong for the posts, but if you’re including some of the conversations in the threads then, yeah, I think some of our contributors have been pushing the discussion out into some great areas.
As to missing the train, I can sympathise. I suppose I think some series I do are partly for the person who wants something substantial on that topic. Most blog readers want ‘low cost low reward’ blogging – something easy to read, a good thought or two and move on. The reward can be very high for the cost, but the cost is so low it puts some boundaries on the gains possible. These series are aiming to be ‘high cost high reward’ – demand more of the reader, but hopefully offer something more as well, if only because of the large amount of words involved.
One of the possibilities there, is that some people might come back and read them later when they want to think about the issue in question and are looking for a resource. My series on creationism a couple of years back on my blog has functioned that way, to my surprise – people in our blogging circles have linked to it in the years since when the question has come up. Not as having the answer, but as something worth reading, for those who want something to help them think about it theologically more. Reflecting on that has helped shape my ‘get on early or stay out of the way’ approach in these kind of series..
Could be a good example indeed. Assuming you are right, it might be worth stressing that it is in no way at all being suggested that +John might not be promoting “card carrying extremists” to senior positions as a conscious policy. Anyone considering themselves to have not been promoted appropriately might then want to use such a sentiment as a club to wield on their bishop. You’ve simply made an observation of what has occurred to this point.
However, if a hypothetical bishop was to enact such a policy; that would be an example of the kind of thing to which I was referring. Under such hypothetical circumstances it would be a policy to create a culture where a common gospel is more important than “the women’s issue”.
Anyone who shows signs of actually pushing for either side, making waves against the other side, or just causing problems by not coping with women not be released/exercising leadership in Diocesan contexts, is then shut out – if they weren’t screened out in the first place.
In the absence of existing parties on either side, that is a good example of elbows cloaked in very velvet cloth.
There is nothing that needs to be stamped on, nothing that threatens to overturn the peace, but people who might make those noises have no or minimal platform to do so.
Being a political decision or a frontier ministry context isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive. In a frontier ministry context you still make decisions to exclude some possibilities that you consider genuinely beyond the pale – Congregationalists perhaps, or people who believe in lay administration, people who promote homosexuality, people who deny the resurrection. You know, the big issues
. That’s a theological decision with political implications.
If things are less frontier, then people may add new issues to the mix that they wouldn’t if things were so extreme as in a frontier situation. You are less concerned with just making sure the basics are in place, and more with trying to erect a structure that reflects the goal that those basics point towards.
Generally, the stronger the church is, the more discriminating theologically it becomes, and the more it should. Heresies in the Middle Ages usually were a sign that everything was going well and people could start reflecting more deeply about what it was they genuinely believed.
Theological divisions aren’t always a bad thing. A lack of them isn’t always a bad thing either. The Nicene Creed debate wouldn’t have made a lot of sense during the great persecutions. But not having that debate wouldn’t have made much sense once those persecutions were past… It would have been a deliberate refusal to come to terms with the heart of the Christian faith when it was now possible to do so.
concluding
On the other you have the first generation Reformers in the 16th Century who continued, not just attending, but actually presiding at the Mass long after (years after!) they and their inner circle had come to grasp that it was blasphemy and idolatry – until the Magistrates calculated that the city as a whole was ready to renounce the Mass. They actively did something they considered blasphemy and idolatry so as to give the gospel a chance to bring people to a better mind.
That is a flexibility of conscience that was utterly vital for the gospel to go forward in the 16th Century, but would be hard to find among evangelicals today. We aren’t reformers at heart, we’re conservatives, and so we tend to see that as unprincipled ‘ends justifies the means’, not as a principled flexibility.
Of those four issues, I can only really speak to three – you have to assess before God what your conscience is like and how that stands before him.
1. For my money, this issue is serious, not so much in itself, but because of the arguments offered in support of it. Women having authority is a deal, but there’s lots of deals in the church. Egalitarianism is a very big deal. As much as I have a problem with women preaching and leading, I’d put a woman in every pulpit and rectory in Christendom if that was the price tag for getting rid of egalitarianism. Women in this role is disobedience and that’s not good, but I regularly have to cope with disobediences in church life. Egalitarianism – the beliefs behind the practice is something else again.
2. I would cope much more with a practice that I think is highly problematic when it is an expression of complementarianism (like a woman regularly preaching in a mixed context because she’s under a rector’s authority), than one I consider much less problematic (a woman preaching four times a year to a mixed context) that was an expression of egalitarianism.
3. For me authority is more about relationships than acts. But some acts are constitutive of relationships. Teaching is constitutive of being an elder. So women teaching is a transgression of the relevant strictures for me, not just whether they are in a role – the strictures focus on the relationship, but from there extend to acts. Consequently, women teaching in the odd instance is far more tolerable than them having a permanent role. And saying, “she’s doing it under the authority of a man” is a non-starter for me. I recognise that as a complementarian position, I just think it’s fundamentally wrong.
So I’m happy to be present when my wife preaches to women. I was happy to be attend Mary Andrew College’s 1st year subject on women’s ministry in my first year at Moore College – even though that meant I was there when women taught the Bible to address the issue of women’s ministry. I never saw either as transgressing the point of the strictures. These were women teaching to women contexts where I was allowed to sit in and take from it what I thought was beneficial for my ministry as someone who would supervise women’s ministry but where I wasn’t under the authority of the person. Similarly when men make a point of sitting in on a woman when she teaches other women I generally encourage her to ignore him and move on – you’re not establishing an authority relationship there (but that counsel will give way to what her conscience dictates).
I have been part of a church where a woman preached a couple of times a year, I have been part of a church where women were lay elders of congregations but never taught. None of those were terrific, but I was okay with doing it. And I could certainly flex further still given the right circumstances.
Hope that helps – it’s not a ‘thou shalt’ but a ‘here are the issues and here’s a worked example’.
Mr. Baddely, you said this:
“. . . both sides of the debate have, on the whole, ceased speaking to each other, but content themselves with speaking about each other’s arguments to their own ‘side’.”
And just before that you said this:
“Complementarians have continued to focus on exegesis, showing with more and more sophistication that the key texts, those that speak directly to the question of women exercising authority in public church settings, state what they have generally been understood to have said for two millennia. Egalitarians have increasingly moved their argument from exegesis, to hermeneutics, to theology (the doctrine of Scripture, as well as the nature of equality and increasingly the doctrine of the Trinity)—increasingly moving from the plain sense of the words of Scripture to establishing interpretive presuppositions.”
Which is as clear an example of one side (you are clearly complementarian) speaking <i><about</i> the other side as anyone could wish for—and with the kind of misrepresentation as is usual in these cases.
Complementarians and egalitarians are both involved in exegesis based on their respective hermeneutics. It is simply not true that only one side cares what the text actually says! Further, it was the complementarians who first began to use the doctrine of the Trinity in order to support the “equal-but-” idea of the husband-wife relationship. Egalitarian discussion of the Trinity has largely been in response.
In short, if egals and comps cannot get along, may very well be because of articles like this one, that do not appear to be concerned with an accurate representation of what the other side actually would say about its own position, if asked with respectful dialogue in mind.
Hi Kristen,
Welcome along, and thanks for raising the concerns.
In terms of the judgements I have on the observations I describe in the post, you might find it helpful to read Craig’s querying of my offending words and my response in the four comments starting here:
http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5478
And then Jereth’s challenging of me for my answer to Craig and my response to him starting here:
http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5495
I am complementarian, and yes, the irony of me speaking about egalitarianism in light of my analysis that that’s what both sides tend to do now did give me more than a couple of wry chuckles, but while your take on my words is understandable, it’s not as simple as it looks on first glance.
I am willing to grant you that for the sake of argument. I’ve never been willing to spend the time trying to work out who wins the ‘gotcha’ on the question of ‘who started it’. I don’t care who started it, as I think the question is legit anyway.
But I’ll stand by what I said. I think egalitarianism has put more energy into tracking the implications of its view of authority for its view of the Trinity. I think complementarianism, as it sees itself as upholding a traditional position, has put less energy into tracking the implications – it tends to just appeal in a less self-reflective way. And in my circles, several complementarians don’t like appealing to the Trinity at all anyway.
I don’t think what I said about egalitarianism is necessarily a bad thing. I think doctrine is interlinked and developments in an area should generate new insights in others. I’m not criticising egalitarianism here, simply observing that it has worked harder on the Trinity issue.
If you want my criticisms at this point, it is that complementarianism has to work harder on the Doctrine of the Trinity and step up to do what egalitarianism is doing in this area. And that egalitarianism’s views on the Trinity are wrong. But I’m not sure either of those views I hold are easily seen in my post – it was description, not evaluation, there.
Yars, I made no attempt to say what each side would say about its own side. I decided to have a crack at saying what I thought each side was doing, as neutrally as I could – to be fair, not necessarily to say what they would say if I gave them the virtual microphone.
That isn’t ‘dialogue’, but I don’t think I agree that that necessarily rules out even a concern for accurate representation. Some egalitarians might find it useful to see how a complementarian who at least thought he was trying to be fair describes them, even if it’s not how they’d describe themselves or even whether they’d agree at all points. I certainly value such attempts from egalitarians even if I don’t like some of the things they have to say about me.
<i>”Those championing women’s ordination generally believe that authority can only exist when one person is inferior to another—a view that I will classify as egalitarianism.”</i>
I’ve not heard this before. Do you have a link to support this assertion. It has been my understanding that Christians who support the concept of equality do not see authority figures as superior, nor the ones receiving from authority figures as inferior.
I am egal.
If you wish to discuss what a real egal believes versus what you might think they believe, we can try it.
For example, I am egal as I understand the Bible in context to show that Jesus, Paul, Peter, etc. were egal.
Hi Arnie,
This should have appeared before this comment: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5603
Not sure why it vanished.
I’m glad, thanks for letting me know.
In my view it depends on the following kind of factors:
1. How serious you think the issue is. If you judge that this is like having an unbeliever, or an immoral person giving a sermon, then that is a very different issue than if you think it’s like listening to someone who you think is wrong on an important issue (say, they think divorce is ok, when you think it’s never ok) but you would still consider them a brother in good standing even so. That’s a spectrum issue, and will have a big bearing on what your conscience permits.
2. Whether the practice is an expression of egalitarian convictions or of complementarian convictions. Two churches can both have women regularly preaching to men. Two churches can both have women irregularly preaching to men. One might have that out of egalitarian convictions – it’s an expression that women should be able to preach in mixed congregations and lead like men. One might have it out of complementarian convictions that you disagree with – a woman who is under the authority of a man can exercise patoral authority over men in a church context because she’s not the ultimate human authority in that community; or a woman who preaches occasionally is not exercising a settled authoritative relationship – she’s a teacher, not an elder and it’s okay to teach, just not to be a bishop/elder/presbyter etc.
I think that makes a bigger deal than people often recognise. It’s not just the act, it’s what the act symbolises, expresses, and instantiates that is even more important than the act itself (almost always). I would have less conscience issues sitting under a woman who taught regularly where everyone saw that as an expression of complementarian convictions than I would in an egalitarian context where women taught once in a blue moon but it was an expression of a completely different understanding. Both would be issues I’d need to nut through, but there’s a difference between a structure who is right on the fundamentals but you judge to be ‘half-reformed’ in its outworkings and a structure who is wrong on the fundamentals but just happens (due to other factors) to do something closer to what you want in practice.
3. Whether you think the issue of authority is more tied to actions or relationships. For some people it’s the act that matters. The authority in preaching is tied fundamentally to the act. Doesn’t matter who preaches – pastor or teenager or visiting speaker, the authority is the same and is due only due to the act of proclaiming the word of God itself. Women aren’t to teach men in public contexts. Not regularly, not irregularly – never.
For others it’s the relationship that matters – women aren’t to be in an ongoing authority/teaching relationship over men. But in the same way a church might have a young man preach a sermon but not have him as an elder, it might have a woman preach but not have her as a regular teacher or in a formal authoritative role.
If your view of authority is more to do with act, then preaching itself is the problem. If your view of authority is more to do with relationships then you might consider the odd teaching okay, or at least not as problematic as having a woman join the pastoral team or the like.
4. How flexible your conscience is. Some people have relatively inflexible consciences. They have to do what is right, and that is largely independent of context. This can be a good or bad thing.
On the one hand you have the Vicar of Brahey, whose ability to blow with the wind and flex to any moral or theological demands in order to not lose his preferment was satirised in the words:
Hi Terri,
Welcome along.
I have one or two that I’m saving until next year when we move from politics to theology and exegesis.
But I think my claim here is fairly uncontroversial. Let’s try a couple of standard claims and responses:
1. Complementarian: A woman must always be under the authority of her husband.
Egalitarian: What? You don’t believe she’s equal to her husband? What reason could there be for that? Do you think she can’t be as wise, as intelligent, as judacious, as self-sacrificial and godly as her husband? What kind of inferiority do you think women have that they would need to be under their husband’s authority?
2. Complementarian: Women can’t have authority in the church.
Egalitarian: What?You don’t believe women are equal to men? What reason could there be for that? Do you think women can’t be as wise, as intelligent, as judacious, as self-sacrificial and godly, as gifted at teaching as any man? What kind of inferiority do you think women have that they would need to always be in submission to a man in church?
3. Complementarian: The Son always obeys the Father, always has, always will.
Egalitarian: What? You don’t believe the Son is equal to the Father? What reason could there be for that? Do you think he isn’t as wise, as intelligent, as judacious, as powerful, as omniscient as the Father? Do you think he is less than fully God? What kind of inferiority do you think the Son has that he would need to be under the Father’s authority?
Why do complementarians ‘not believe in equality’ according to egalitarians? Because they believe that women are necessarily under the authority of men in some contexts and the Son is necessarily under the authority of the Father.
I’m not trying to be tricky here. If egalitarians think that leaders and followers are equal, then they wouldn’t say complementarians make women inferior to men (and the Son to the Father) by saying that they are necessarily under authority. That could be true and they could still both be equal – which is a complementarian position normally (in my experience) considered to be logically inconsistent by egalitarians.
Complementarians say: “You can be genuinely equal and yet once person has authority over another and the other has to compulsorily submit to the first.”
Egalitarians say: “Absolute nonsense. If women have to submit to men, then they are inferior to men.”
Hello Mark,
”Why do complementarians ‘not believe in equality’ according to egalitarians? Because they believe that women are necessarily under the authority of men in some contexts and the Son is necessarily under the authority of the Father.”
Are you stating that the Father has an authority that the Son does not have? It is my understanding that Bruce Ware teaches that.
Mark, I think your description of egalitarianism is oversimplified. Egalitarians don’t say that submitting to someone makes you inferior, nor do they say that being under someone’s authority makes you inferior.
Egalitarians say that if being under someone’s authority is unending or eternal, and if it is based on ontological nature rather than skill or qualifications, then it logically and necessarily implies an ontological inferiority (given that any ongoing, unchanging function of a thing or being must be a derivative of their nature).
You say you believe the egalitarians have the Trinity wrong. Do you believe in the eternal subordination of the Son? Because it is my understanding that this is the new, heterodox doctrine, and that egalitarianism takes its stance from the Nicene Creed, that the Father, Son and Spirit are one in being and essence. Before the Son took on human flesh, authority and subordination were without meaning, for Father, Son and Spirit were One in Will and Purpose. The Father did not desire to send the Son more than the Son wished to come. In the eternal divinity of the Godhead, two or more Wills/Purposes would mean two or more different beings. But Father, Son and Spirit are One Being in three Persons. The Will of the Son and the Father did not and could not diverge until the Son took on human nature, which then was capable of being at odds with the Divine Will.
This, as I understand it, is orthodox Trinitarian doctrine.
It seems to me that your position on egalitarianism is based on a number of misunderstandings.
Hi Dave,
Heh. Everybody wants to be a moderate. I feel like I’m in an inversion of The Life of Brian:
Brian: You are all individuals.
Crown: Yes, we are all individuals.
Lone Voice: I’m not…
Crowd: Shh!
There’s nothing wrong with being a convinced x, or being a moderate. We’ll find out on Judgement Day what we all should have been and on what issues. If Belizikian is right and complementarianism is another gospel, then egaltiarian moderates are arguably even more culpable than complementarians by going along with something that they should have known was very evil (at least complementarians are deceived). Moderates aren’t automatically the good or the bad guys. Each position has to argue its case on its merits.
Moderates will generally do one of two things. They’ll link up with a moderate on the other side and show that their common heritage transcends this disagreement by writing stuff together, working together etc. Or (and this is the important bit), they’ll thump the guys on their own side who are trying to make it into a big issue on which there can be little room for compromise.
A moderate will generally not pick off one of the most ‘out there’ convinced x bodies on the other side (CBMW) and fisk their worst articles. That, in and of itself, is classic ‘convinced x’ behaviour.
The other traits that are signposts of a ‘convinced x’: knowing your opponent’s arguments well (or thinking you do), making this issue an issue – blogging about it a lot, joining threads where it is discussed a lot, ready and eager to be an apologist for your view.
People can be ‘convinced x’ and play well with others, be a good citizen of their institution, be flexible, and put the gospel before this issue (Whitfield was a convinced Calvinist but worked with Wesley). And you can find moderates who can’t do any of those things – they are rebels without a cause and are making a point by not joining any ‘side’, and are insufferably irritating for everyone.
Well, if you go back to my and Jennie’s series on Self-Knowledge for Godliness and Ministry you will see that we are big fans of categories. We have a couple of provisos though:
1. The categories aren’t exhaustive. There are other ways you can categorise people in those boxes and those other ways will shed other light that has its own value.
2. The categories aren’t comprehensive. They’ll always miss something/some people, or they’ll have to be very big and abstract to capture everyone.
So the basic framework of convinced x and moderates is both broad and abstract and covers only some people. There’s a lot of people that don’t fit there at all.
I don’t really fit that particular categorisation either, in my judgement. I am definitely ‘convinced’ – I’m writing about it, have thought hard about it, I am very hostile towards egalitarianism as a body of ideas. But I am very independent in my approach to it all – don’t care whether I’m considered ‘sound’ or not on the subject by others who call themselves complementarian, am not particularly interested in learning what complementarianism involves, and more interested in working it out for myself.
People like me, in secular political discussions, are often called ‘independent conservatives/progressives’. We usually have much less political clout than others who are part of the ‘party’, we will disagree with our own ‘side’ and offer more criticisms that way than others with similar views might, and we sometimes steer our own path through current debates. We often care more about the ideas in the debate than the debate itself or who wins the political struggles.
Mark,
I noticed you took the time to respond to Dave’s comment, which is appreciated. Could you also respond to my and Rosser’s questions about your views on the Trinity and eternal subordination. I consider them key to the discussion.
Hi Terri,
I have seven windows up for comments to do with this thread. Three for the thread to do with the next post. I jumped ahead to you and Kristen because you were new and your comments seemed to have a bit of ‘energy’ behind them. But now I’ll be picking things off in a more chronological order, and then will jump to post four so that thread gets some input from me as well. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after is all I can say. I’ve got some other things happening than just the comments. It’s not lack of desire, there’s very human limitations that even the ‘Super Typing Man’ has to work within.
Thank you for your consideration, Mark. Serving in Christian ministries, I’m a busy person as well and understand about dividing up time.
Blessings in Christ ~
Hi Dave,
Well, sure, let’s not keep harping on. I can understand people getting irked with my approach (sanctimonious is a more common accusation in my experience than paternalistic, but they’re all pointing at the same thing I suspect). I think virtual communities work better if the person taking the lead (doing the posts etc) actively works to establish the norms – functions like the patron of the community rather than just wades into the debates as though they are a ‘private citizen’.
I wasn’t asking you to agree with me, nor was I justifying myself, nor am I here. I’m spelling out how this sandpit works and the kind of logic behind it. I’m not advocating it as the one right way to run a virtual sandpit. This works better for me at this point in time for what I’m trying to do. As we seemed to be clashing, I thought I’d sketch in the approach more for you – but there’s no requirement for you to think what I’m doing is anything other than crazy. Just try and do your best to work with those norms while you’re here.
Thank you for the extra information about your new egalitarian movement. The extra context helps immensely. You seem to be wanting to say that your kind of evangelical egalitarianism is different because it isn’t liberal egalitarianism. It takes the Bible seriously.
Again, I don’t think most egalitarian evangelicals are liberals. I don’t think they want to become liberals, I don’t think they are liberal fifth columnists, liberals in disguise, take liberals out on dates, or partner them at the Homecoming Dance. I. Don’t. Think. Egalitarian Evangelicals. Are. Liberals.
I think egalitarianism shares certain presuppositions and some methodology with liberalism. I think that has moved some egalitarian evangelicals over into a more liberal direction that they didn’t want to go in when they became egalitarians. In other cases it hasn’t had that effect.
So I don’t see this feature you’re describing as ‘new’. I think evangelical egalitarians have always made their case from both the Bible and from the social changes that have occurred in modern society. And while the case has been made from two sources, the Bible has been very important in that case.
I think your ‘new’ evangelical egalitarianism is, at this point, ‘just’ plain old run of the mill evangelical egalitarianism, as opposed to liberal egalitarianism. And my criticisms are aimed at it, not liberalism. Let the dead bury the dead (liberals), my concern is with the living (evangelicals).
Hi Andrew,
Grump. You realise that’s mud that’s going to stick, don’t you? Years from now, someone’s going to address me as ‘Super Typing Man’.
So it has become the new catchphrase then.
Gold. I think I’ll need to have an extended email conversation with you before attempting this stupidity, once again we’ve approached the issue from complementary angles (but still fully equal of course…). I’ve been thinking about what gender is from its origin and how it functions. You’ve been tackling it by looking at its telos. Expect a lot of emails from me next year, brother and let’s see if we can hammer something out.
Yes, although that’s not how I’d describe your policy, but, dude, serious geek points for using ‘rorschach’ in a sentence. My Dr Horrible Sing-Along-Blog references are withering in shame.
The stuff that follows this is just great. And I will be chasing it with you in that email conversation. But my question was about how you described the egalitarian case – how their view of gender beautifully fits with their Christology. I know what I would by that (and have those posts sketched out in my head), but what do you mean by that? I want to make sure I haven’t missed something you’ve seen.
‘Tis a glorious thing! Arrrrr!!!
Hi Sam,
Welcome along, and thanks for the clarifying question:
Which you then sharpened up as:
In terms of the words I used in the post, all I was intending to say was:
1. The texts aren’t expressing culture. (contra one egalitarian claim)
2. The texts are laying out a a pattern of male-female relationship in church and family (at least those contexts, some complementarians will argue for more) where the woman never has authority over the man. (contra another egalitarian claim)
3. The texts give weighty theological reasons often based on explicit or implicit appeals to OT texts for the patterns of male-female relationships they lay out (contra another egalitarian claim)
I was sidestepping the whole, “Are women not as capable” kind of issue and not showing a hand either way on that question – whether there’s been a change there in how the issue is understood.
But on that question, I think my basic answer agrees with Andrew Moody in his response to you. (Whenever I’m smart I agree with Andrew, anyway.) My impression of the earlier texts is their argument is not purely on the idea that women are less capable then men, but also on the idea that the pattern of creation inherently makes this arrangement more fitting. The first bit isn’t argued often at the moment by complementarians, but the latter bit seems similar in content (if differently expressed) than what I see in earlier commentators that I’ve looked at.
On top of what Andrew has indicated there’s Martin Luther as another idiosyncratic figure. I haven’t exhaustively looked at Martin Luther on this question but I have dipped into him. Because of how the priesthood of all believers functions in his theology, it seems that he was regularly challenged as to why women can’t be priests normally. I haven’t seen anywhere yet where he appeals to lack of ability (be hard to given his take on the priesthood of all believers, but not utterly impossible), I have seen places where he appeals to creation order and telos. He’s an outlier, as almost always, but, as almost always, an important one.
Hi Arthur,
Welcome along, thanks for your contribution – very thoughtful, certainly helped me reflect in some new directions.
Heh, I feel like I’ve been running from comment to comment and I’m beginning to wonder where this large collection of series is heading if this is any indicator. This was meant to be a light warm up to say, “This is important” to the pragmatists.
I agree. I wish I could do what Andrew thinks I could do. I’ll be content if between him and me we offer something that people go, “There’s something there that we can work with/build on/disassemble and rebuild properly.”
I think this debate is a classic example of how not to have a large theological argument. I don’t think any new light has been shed yet, it’s just ‘the perpetuation of the debate’, just defending fixed positions that have been adopted either from tradition or the enlightenment. The Arian controversy, the Reformation, pretty well anything Augustine ever touched, Irenaeus’ debate with ‘gnosticism’ all generated constructive theology as part of the polemical process. I don’t think evangelicals have done this at all. I’m not sure we’ve even tried.
Next year I’m going to try and sketch out an attempt to take a polemical stance that fundamentally rejects egalitarianism but is trying to do constructive theology. But at best it’ll only be a sketch – a point in a direction that others might decide is worth trying to develop more fully. Until that is done by both sides, then we can’t really see what is entailed by the two positions, what they have to offer the believer in terms of our knowledge of God and how to live in light of it.
So, yeah, Arthur, I’m absolutely with you on this one.
Hi Arthur,
Following up your second great bit of input:
And you could be right, no skin off my nose if you are.
But let me try and push a bit for my thesis – not because I think you’re wrong about Adelaide, or because I think Adelaide is bad for going this way or anything like that.
First, the whole of Australia (or all of Anglicanism worldwide) could go the Adelaide route, and that wouldn’t affect my thesis. My thesis includes the possibilities of exceptions in some circumstances. We’re so small that we could all be an exception.
But look over the first couple of comments on post four. Are the egalitarians saying, “pfft, of course we’re not doing that!” No, they’re saying, “Unfair! You guys are doing it too!” Factor that into your optimism when looking beyond Adelaide.
Second, what you’re describing is very different than what I outlined to Matthew Williams. If Tasmania and Adelaide are as have been described, then there’s no need for ‘elbows’. ‘Elbows’ in that kind of context is going to be an exception, not a rule.
Melbourne has most of the big players in Anglican egalitarianism – evangelical or liberal. It has a group (probably smaller) that are convinced complementarians. You can’t use the Adelaide/Tasmania moderate strategy in Melbourne. Because you’ve got people there for whom the moderate position is unacceptable on both sides.
That’s why my ‘counsel’ to Matthew was so pointed, even down to using highly forceful language (‘thumping around the head’ individuals I named), and proposing radical structural changes like getting rid of bishops. They were rhetorical devices. (Please don’t go actually thumping anyone around the head, virtual or othewise. Leave that to Gibbs. He was a marine.) My point was, once the debate has heated up and you’ve got people who see this as a gospel issue, you are going to have to fight for the moderate position, you can’t get it just by being nice.
And you have to find a solution that is really a Hegelian ‘third way’ – a synthesis that encompasses both the thesis and the antithesis by reframing the terms of the whole issue on which the debate is being waged. Until that third way appears, any idea of it seems as bizzare as suggesting the way forward for Episcopalians is to not be episcopalians.
Now, if that’s not your context, if you don’t have people saying, “This is a gospel issue (either way)” then you don’t need elbows. You can all play nicely and do your thing, and try and make life easy for the guys with other convictions on the question when you meet together.
Third, Adelaide, Melbourne, Tasmania are not islands (well, maybe Tasmania…). You are part of a system that is bigger than you, and as it changes it will change your culture. Introduction of women bishops in more dioceses, Sydney going ahead with diaconal administration, the gay debate, something we don’t see yet, evangelicals elsewhere dividing on this issue – all will change things and shape that culture on which your hopes lie (if they happen at all. Obviously Sydney won’t be introducing Diaconal Administration, but maybe the others might happen
). Not saying you won’t be proved right. But we’ve seen culture change a lot over the last year on the basis of structural changes whose effect everyone thought would be trumped by culture at the time.
Fourth, if the solution is a centrifugal structure – of looser ties – then that has its own features. That’s a ‘low cost low reward’ structure. It’s like Baptist churches – I remember one Baptist minister saying to me that he had complete independence to run things how he wanted, and absolutely no support from the denomination. The two go together. He can work alongside anyone as best he and they can. But there’s nothing there beyond those voluntary ties to group them together into a body that is more than the sum of the parts. When one has to survive then that’s one of a couple of solutions. But sometimes Christians want to function as something big, as a movement. ‘Live and let live’ starts to come under more strain then.
You could well prove me wrong. But at the moment I’m not convinced that Adelaide’s experience will be the paradigm for the whole, or that it will necessarily weather the changes that occur elsewhere and put new stresses on its solution.
Hi Don,
Welcome along.
Thank you for the offer. For what it’s worth, I started the Christian life as an egalitarian, and have read reasonably widely in egalitarian literature, and have talked with actual egalitarians. I’m now saying something about what I think egalitarianism is as a result of all that. And, just as importantly from my point of view, what I think complementarianism should be.
If I’m as offbase in my grasp of the basics as you and Kristen seem to think then probably one more private conversation won’t change that. Let’s wait until I start doing more than warm up exercises discussing how the political scene is changing (all I’m doing this year, over two different series), and then you can help me to a better mind once we get under way properly next year.
There can be many bad/wrong reasons to be egal or comp. If one is something for a bad/wrong reason it can easily be on the path to truth and Truth to reject the belief along with the wrong reasons, even if the belief is correct.
I used to be a hierarchalist as that was all I had heard from teachers I respected and it seemed to be what the Bible said (I did not even know the word comp). Once I studied both sides in their own words, I became egal.
Both comps and egals continue to put out papers and books and they are not rehashes of old arguments. Payne’s new (egal) book have the very best explanations of some Bible texts I have seen, altho I do not agree with everything he writes.
Hello Terri,
Well we got here, thanks for waiting.
I have no idea what Bruce Ware teaches on this. But the way you’ve put the question is almost exactly how I would not say it if I could choose almost any other alternative. I’d go more with:
I’m happy to say that the Son is under the Father’s authority. But the authority he is under is in a sense ‘his’ as well.
Complementarians don’t always (in my experience) say the second sentence clearly enough to clearly articulate that their position is Trinitarian and not tritheistic. Egalitarians flatly deny the first, and so, as far as I can see, have a position that no one even conceived of in the patristic sources until at least as far as the Cappadocians (I haven’t traced things further yet).
How those two sentences fit together is connected to the wonder of the Nicene Creed and its exposition by Athanasius. I think that creed, which is ‘the’ doctrine of the Trinity, has captured the Biblical teaching in a reliable way. And that will be an important subject next year.
BTW the name is Teri. :^)
”I’m happy to say that the Son is under the Father’s authority. But the authority he is under is in a sense ‘his’ as well.”
In your estimation then since YHWH is under the Father’s authority, but has that same authority, is the Father then under His own authority. Is the Father then sometimes under that same authority in His Son.
”Complementarians don’t always (in my experience) say the second sentence clearly enough to clearly articulate that their position is Trinitarian and not tritheistic. Egalitarians flatly deny the first”
Are you saying that egalitarians deny that the Son is under the Father’s authority? If so, you compressed their beliefs beyond recognition. To my understanding Christians who believe in Biblical equality hold to the Nicene and Athenasian Creeds which state that in the economy of the Trinity none is before or after the other, and all have the same Divine Will. Thus it is impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will because their will is always the same. And because God never changes, that never changed.
What did change is that God ‘sent’ the Messiah through the birth of a baby boy name Jesus who shared pure ‘seed’ from God, while also sharing seed from the human woman Mary. Thus, the Messiah being both divine and human was a unique miracle. In him there was opportunity, which never came to fruition thankfully, to go against the Divine Will of the Trinity. Thus Jesus prayed to the Father, your will not mine. He lived the perfect example of humanity submitted to God. In the Godhead, however, there is no your will and my will for then we would indeed have tritheism.
Hi Kristen ,
It’s simplified, I’m waiting until next year before I try and show the working more fully. But I’m not saying that that’s what egalitarians say about themselves, I’m saying that that’s what’s entailed in their position.
Okay. So let’s agree that leadership involves being wise, mature, having vision, and intelligence. We don’t want people having authority without those kinds of qualities. Those are the skills and qualifications, there might be more, but those would usually feature in a list of what a leader should have.
So, if complementarians said that women are not wise, mature, don’t have vision, and aren’t intelligent and therefore can’t have authority that would not be an ontological claim, and would in fact be saying that they are equal to men? The problem is simply that complementarians have dropped the idea that women aren’t leadership material?
I suspect you’ll tell me not to be absurd, and that that would make women even more ontologically inferior by saying that. My hunch (and it’ll be interesting to see where I guess wrong about your response – egals differ in which point they challenge) is that you’ll say that as long as these are qualities of individuals and not of a whole gender then they have nothing to do ontology.
But I think that’s nonsense. It doesn’t matter whether I have certain qualities because I’m human, because I’m male, or because I’m Mark. They’re still ‘ontological’ properties in the sense you’ve defined them here – “any ongoing, unchanging function of a thing or being must be a derivative of their nature”. So if my individuality – my personal set of ongoing, unchanging functions that set me apart from other humans and men – includes the fact that I’m as thick as two planks and have the vision of a mole, and the maturity of a guy aged thirteen, and those are settled features of who I am, then I am, on your terms ontologically inferior.
Saying ‘skill and qualifications not ontological nature’ is a false dichotomy in my opinion. Because some people’s individual ontological nature – their ongoing, unchaning functions – includes the fact that they are not ‘leadership material’ – they are natural followers and always will be, they have no capacity to learn the skills and qualifications that egalitarians want leadership to be based upon.
And my evaluation of that is that one big implication of egalitarianism’s view is that it has to try and argue either that everyone is a leader deep down inside, no one has to be a follower if they just exert themselves, or to entail the view that natural followers – whose lack of leadership ability is an expression of their ‘ongoing, unchanging function’ – are essentially inferior to leaders.
Hence my whole ‘type 1/type 2/type 3 egalitarianism’ schema http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_2/#5421
is connected to this. Some egalitarians happily run with the idea that some people are inferior, some say ‘no, we’re all leaders deep down’, others send mixed signals.
Hi Kristen,
Blah, I’m doing postgrad study on the doctrine of the Trinity in Athanasius. Here is my take on how utterly non-transparent the term subordination is on the issue of the Trinity:
http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_1/#5419
Take out the word ‘subordination’ and give me a sentence or two that that word symbolises for you and I can have a chance of answering you.
Well your understanding is wrong, it’s regrettably common, but it’s wrong.
Don’t take my word for it. Miroslav Volf is a highly respected egalitarian evangelical theologian, he has a top class mind. His After Our Likeness is dedicated in the first half to unpacking how Ratzinger, the current Vicar of Christ and so arguably the most reliable interpreter of Catholic teaching, and Zizzolous, arguably the most influential Greek Orthodox theologian for Protestants and Catholics, link the structure of the Church and the relationships between the persons in the Godhead.
He shows how both Ratzinger and Zizoulas argue that the bishop’s relationship to the congregation is an analogy to the Father’s relationship to the Son – a relationship that, in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy and most definitely includes authority. He goes on to disagree with them and articulate a new ecclessiology based on a different understanding of the Trinity in its operations, but he shows what they think first.
Now, sure, the Catholics, the Orthodox, who don’t have a fight over women’s ordination going on, and the complementarian evangelicals, who do, could all have introduced this new, heterodox doctrine independently of each other (and for no apparent reason in the case of Catholicism and the Orthodox – but they’re bad guys so they probably did it just because they’re bad).
But maybe its just a bit more probable that the egalitarians – many of whom like Millard Erickson also reject the Father’s eternal begetting of the Son, which is pretty darn central to the Nicene Creed – are the ones who moved.
I can point you to an article by an orthodox theologian in St Vladimir’s journal where they discuss the gender question and you’d swear that most of what he says about the relationship of Father and Son and man and woman was written by a complementarian evangelical. And none of it is compatible with egalitarianism. Doesn’t mean any of us are right, but I think it’s more likely egalitarianism moved on this question, just like it did on its view of gender relations, then that Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and complementarian evangelicals all independently moved in seeing authority in the human sphere being an analogy to something within the Godhead.
Yes, and it’s all true as far as it goes. But the fact that the Son is not simply ‘God’ but is ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God, of one being with the Father’ adds some extra aspects to how that one will exists in the Father and the Son.
And I can show multiple passages (which I’ll do next year) where Athanasius happily talks about the Son before the incarnation doing the Father’s will as a way of capturing how that all fits together.
The Son does not obey the Father as though he is meeting a will that comes to him from outside himself as is our experience of obedience. But neither is it a ‘vote’ between the three persons, or one will that exists in exactly the same way in all three persons. The operations of the Godhead have an order – from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. And egalitarianism does not yet seem to have come to terms with that aspect of the Nicene Creed’s doctrine of the Godhead and its implications for what is possible for human experiences of authority.
I am one that actually believes in the sufficiency of Scripture and so am non-creedal. Arguing what Greeks thought in the 4th century or later about God might be interesting but does not define my faith, which is based on Scripture as illuminated by the Spirit.
And arguing from what the Roman church teaches might again be interesting, but does not define my faith as I do not accept their premises and I doubt many evangelicals do either. They teach that a priest stands for Christ and so must be male as Christ was male and that this carries forward to the pope who speaks for God when he declares he is doing so. Since the premises are so different from prot permises, I see no value is claiming that the Roman church have arrived as a similar result as some prots, since the process is so very different.
Mark, thanks for clarifying that you really really do not think egals are liberals.
You said, “I think evangelical egalitarians have always made their case from both the Bible and from the social changes that have occurred in modern society”.
I do not (nor does Don Johnson I believe) build my case as an egal from social changes in modern society. If you think that my ‘new’ egal movement is the same as th eold, but you think it does this, then you have not yet understood that there is a new movement.
I see some of the principles of the Kingdom as love, humility, freedom, equality, etc. And believers will influence the culture/society they find themselves in so that these Kingdom principles will be able to manifest themselves more and more over time. It was mainly Christians that worked to end gladiator contests and mainly Christians that worked to end slavery. Much of the freedoms we enjoy in the West are due to the influence of Christians and I am grateful to those that came before me; I am keep a Bible in my home, study it and do my best to interpret it without the church or the state coming down on me, but such was not always so.
Once such “good things” become simply expected in a society it might appear that the society influenced the Christians, but it was mostly the other way around.
What’s not to like about a superhero moniker? Just remember not to use it with the definite article (as you did above). That just sounds like Nietzsche ;-}
Not at all! I had one too, but it was too brief (there’s a surprise!)
“So, after tonight I am in the Evil League of Evil if all goes according to plan, which it will, because I hold a PhD in horribleness. See you at the aftermath.”
There was also an even more marginally recognisable Buffy quote in the “to the amount of ten” AND I was going to try a Dollhouse reference but I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. So, see what you’ve started?
BTW you were absolutely correct about Veronica Mars. Great stuff.
Hmmm, well this might be a genuine rorschach moment. My intent was more that a biblical (complementarian) view of marriage connects closely in typological terms to Christ’s relationship with the church his body. I am sure egalitarians would partly agree with this: they too would regard Christ’s model of loving self-surrender as a model for marriage. But ISTM this comes in a more generalised form; both the man and the woman lay down their lives for each other (cf. Jn 15:13). Fair enough, but I am suggesting that there is a particular obligation for men to play this part which arises out of the a deep, creational, Christ-anticipating typology of marriage (phew).
However, although this wasn’t what I had in mind, I might be able to say something that more in line with your musings: ISTM that Christocentrism *is* a problem for egalitarianism. If the persons of the Trinity are “peers” then we are going to end up with a zero-sum doxology: it was *the Son* who came down to die for me *and not* the Father or Spirit. While orthodox theology preserves an order of subsistence and operation which allows us to see how the Father and Spirit *also* save us (eg. the Father sends by initiating and sending), egalitarianism undermines this by allowing no genuine priority to the Father. This makes it difficult to see how the Father saves us at all: he doesn’t send in any real sense; he doesn’t come down and die – what *does* he do?
I suspect if theology heads in this direction then it will end up drifting either toward modalism (where the Son is just “God” in the context of his dealing with the world – cf. Barth/McCormack) or a quasi-Nestorianism where “Christ” is effectively considered as a separate person cut-off from the immanent Trinity. In either case, the motivation will be to keep “Christ” from being one person of the Godhead who gets special treatment at the expense of the others.
Whereas I (and, I suspect, you) believe that Christocentrism is the design of God the Father. He, as the initiator of divine decree, instigates a world, history and people who will be for his Son (cf. Heb 1:2; Eph 1:10). Paternal priority produces Christocentrism – which is a time-space expression of Filiocentrism. Simultaneously, honour directed toward Christ is also “to the glory of the Father” because the Son is his living image and the mission is the Father’s initiative.
Back to the Trinity! Déja vu all over again.
Mark, you and I are definitely defining “ontology” differently, as well as “equality.” I have debated with myself whether I want to go into all this with you—and the fact is that I don’t. And it’s not just because I’m a convinced egalitarian and you’re a convinced complementarian. It’s because of the whole reason I posted here in the first place—which has nothing to do with trying to convince you of my position, and everything to do with protesting the way you are presenting the egalitarian position.
I thought at first you were simply unaware of what egalitarians actually believe. But now that I have questioned you on it, I see that you do have more of an understanding of the egalitarian position than your earlier comments let on—and that disturbs me even more.
I originally protested because you essentially said the complementarians are the only ones practicing honest exegesis. You may or may not have intended to say that, but that is impact of your words. You continue to present complementarian ideas with nuanced and sophisticated language, and egalitarian arguments with language that makes egalitarianism—and egalitarians—look unreasonable and combative. Like here:
<i>Complementarians say: “You can be genuinely equal and yet once person has authority over another and the other has to compulsorily submit to the first.”
Egalitarians say: “Absolute nonsense. If women have to submit to men, then they are inferior to men.” </i>
In short, when you say, “I am very hostile towards egalitarianism as a body of ideas”—it shows.
I posted here because I thought that if you were going to talk about how the two sides could not get along, you might be open to the idea that being more fair to what the egalitarian position actually says, might help egalitarians and complementarians dialogue. But I really don’t want to get into a prolonged discussion with you—because I don’t trust that your acknowledged hostility to my position will not continue to result in this kind of one-sided treatment, that one side deserves to get its position articulated fairly, and the other doesn’t.
So I’ll sign off now. I’ve probably just proved your point that egals and comps can’t talk. Under these circumstances, I don’t think we can.
So when do we get to find out about this? :-}
Hi Don,
Yes, but having read a number of egal books, and been an egal, and then having done some study in the history of philosphy and ethics so I can map what egals are saying about authority, ontology and equality onto the broader Western intellectual tradition (when I say ‘it’s an enlightenment understanding’ that’s not rhetoric, that’s a sober assessment), and have spent years working on my understanding of the patristic doctrine of the Trinity and so can compare egal claims to primary text evidence that I’m familiar with, it’s unlikely that the latest virtuoso exegetical effort by an egalitarian scholar will convince me that egalitarianism as a whole is correct. The most that’s likely is I’ll tweak my understanding of one or two passages here or there.
It’s not resistance, nor am I closed minded (at least, not self-consciously)– I don’t think my knowledge here is indubitable. I think egalitarianism is based on certain fundamental convictions about key terms, and the exegesis then flows out of that (because it’s a holistic exercise). I think those fundamental convictions are wrong, really, dangerously wrong. It’s why next year I will try and state those convictions fairly first, and in egals’ own words where possible. And then, separately, indicate why I am concerned about them, before we move to the exegesis. So people can look at the fundamental convictions, look at the exegesis and compare and ask both ‘which exegesis is more convincing in light of the convictions I think are likely right’ and ‘which convictions are likely right in light of the exegesis I find mostly convincing’.
Hmmmnnn. Not sure what this is linked to.
I’m going to take a stab that you’re filling out Dave’s statement that your position in no way has been shaped by the changes that have taken place in broader society.
So are you saying that you see feminism and the change of women’s employment patterns in society as expressions of Christians treating women as equal? And the impression that people have that the influence went the other way is mistaken?
So, and I’m not trying to play ‘gotcha’ here, I’m trying to digest your and Dave’s claims that this a radically new approach – are you saying that the Church’s debate on women’s ordination preceded the changes in society and, to some degree, drove those changes?
Hi Don,
Change of mode here, I’m a bit stroppy on this issue, but it’s for other ‘hot button’ issues for me than the comp/egal debate.
Okay. Several things here.
1. Don’t comment on someone else’s conversation on these threads and use a form of words that implies, “Your conversation is a complete waste of time because I actually believe something important about Scripture which you guys clearly don’t or you wouldn’t be having this debate.” That conversation doesn’t interest you? Fine. Move along then, nothing to see here. But don’t imply to anybody on this thread, me, or anyone else, comp or egal, that their discussion suggests that they don’t take the Bible seriously.
2. You are one who actually believes (loved the ‘actually’) in the sufficiency of Scripture and therefore are non-creedal. Good for you. So Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, Melancthon, Bullinger, Zwingli, Bucer – you know, the Reformers who actually articulated the doctrine of sola scriptura didn’t actually believe in it? Only the Anabaptists actually believed in the sufficiency of Scripture? (and I’m not entirely sure even all of them were non-creedal).
So, you don’t believe in churches ever having any creeds, any statement of faith, any declaration of what the faith once for all delivered is? All of that is a rejection of the sufficiency of Scripture. Every possible theological and ethical question needs to be kept open? You believe in nothing other than the exercise of reading the Bible and seeking the truth that, if it is briefly glimpsed, can’t be written down and stated, because doing that would then deny the sufficiency of Scripture?
3. You encourage me to read the latest books published by comps and egals because they keep coming up with new arguments – arguments completely untested by generations of believers, arguments that have no ‘life’ apart from their existence in a book published by the Next Big Thing. You suggest that I should care about it, be open to what they say, that it isn’t just interesting but might help define my faith by helping me read the Bible better.
And at the same time you say that looking at how our forefathers in the faith, whose conclusions on the Scripture’s teaching on a weighty matter of doctrine was hammered out over a century or more of intense debate and has stood the test of time for one and half thousand years such that to believe the theology of the Nicene Creed has been a test of whether someone is considered a Christian and orthodox or a heretic for over a millenia – all of that is just ‘interesting’ and doesn’t ‘define your faith’ by helping you read the Bible better?
Can you see where I have a problem with that? And it’s got nothing to do with comp/egal. And, in my view, it’s got even less to do with you being the only one out you, Kristen, and I who believes in the sufficiency of Scripture.
Hi Don,
Okay, well maybe for you it is just ‘me, the Bible, and the latest books by biblical scholars’. But for some of us, we think that the present stands on the shoulders of the past. We believe in one holy, apostolic and universal church who was founded on the apostles and prophets and whose chief cornerstone is Christ Jesus our Lord. That church has and will continue throughout time since its founding and the gates of Hell will not stand against it.
So for us, the past matters. It is possible, but not likely for the Church to make a serious mistake in doctrine and ethics for more than a thousand years. Councils can and do err. There was one Reformation.
So the question of ‘what did the early Church believe about the Trinity’ is important. Could they be wrong? Certainly. Are fifteen hundred years of Chrsitians likely to be wrong given our convictions about the clarity and sufficiency of Scripture? No. That should be the exception rather than the rule.
So the question of whether comp or egal views of the Trinity better fit with the Nicene Creed is important. Very important. For many of us (like me), that question all on its own settles the whole debate. For others, having to say that fifteen hundred years of Christians – the whole mainstream theological tradition – has been fundamentally wrong about God (and probably heretical given the rhetoric that’s been used in this debate) is something they might be prepared to do, but doing that is a big deal.
Into that question, which you’ve clearly said is nothing more than ‘interesting’ for you, both comps and egals claim that the other side has misunderstood the doctrine of the Trinity as articulated in the Nicene Creed. By saying that, they’re saying that the other side has moved from a position considered orthodoxy for fifteen centuries. Both sides have made claims that it’s happened under the pressure caused by the women’s ordination debate. How do we assess such a claim?
One way is to go through all the texts and try and show how they point. I’ll do some of that next year. Kevin Giles has famously published on this from the other side. Ultimately that’s the only way the question can really be settled – careful look at the texts.
But there is a quick ‘shortcut’ that doesn’t prove anything but is certainly suggestive for the reflective egal or comp. Two sides, one of whom has recently changed the doctrine of the Trinity because of their position in the women’s ordination debate.
But there’s two other branches in Christendom, who aren’t having that debate. Who, for all the legitimate criticisms we evangelicals have of them, have never been accused of denying the historic and orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (well, East and West have made all sorts of accusations – but nothing quite like what evangs are claiming of each other). Where do they stand on this question?
And it’s clear that, while they don’t tend to link the Father-Son issue to gender (although there are some examples here and there as they’ve responded to egalitarianism), they certainly do see it as a relationship where the Father has some kind of ‘authority’ over the Son.
That means that, if comps have recently introduced a new heresy, the Catholics and Orthodox have too. And if comps have done it because of the women’s ordination debate then the Catholics and Orthodox have done it at the same time for a completely different reason. Parallel evolution in three separate strands of Nicea’s descendents.
That’s not impossible. But it is verging on a conspiracy theory in terms of its inherent probabilities.
And for people, not like you, who care about this dimension of the question, it is a quick way to get some light that is strongly suggestive as to who has misunderstood the implications of the Nicene Creed for our debate.
Hi Teri,
Gack. I’m sorry. I’m very bad with names. My wife and I were married for ten years before I finally stopped forgetting her name in conversations. Even more embarrassingly, I somehow managed to get my own name wrong last year and blurted out ‘Matthew’ when asked. Teri it is. Teri, Teri, Teri.
No. And as far as I can judge, if I put that to most patristic scholars that I’ve interacted with here in the UK in their non-confessional university theological departments, I think most would say that no-one thought that among the important figures in the early church.
T.F. Torrance might be an exception and might be prepared to say that about the patristic understanding. I base that purely on the way he glosses the Son being begotten from the being of the Godhead rather than from the being of the Father and so seems to be implying that the Godhead (which includes the Son) is the Arche of the Son, and not only the Father. But I was surprised when I got over here what low regard T.F. Torrance is held in among patristic scholars for his writings on patristic theology, given how influential he’s been on systematics in that field. So he’d be an outlier in scholarship.
Yes, eternally, except (in some cases – there’s some important differences at this point among egalitarians) for the Incarnation and/or the earthly ministry of Jesus. Some egalitarians seem to say that the Son wasn’t under the Father’s authority even in the Incarnation – he was as a man, but not as touching his divinity. Some say he was while on earth but isn’t upon his glorification. Others seem to say that he will always be under the authority of the Father for as long as he remains truly man as well as truly God – and then that group seems to be divided into those who say that he will divest himself of his humanity in the New Creation, and those who say that he will be eternally subordinated to the Father. I think I’ve seen all those views argued by egalitarians, and each one really troubles me in light of my patristic studies.
“the Son is not under the Father’s authority” was getting at what seems to be held at in common among egals – that for eternity ‘past’ the Son was not under the authority of the Father, and never would have been except for the Incarnation.
Okay, I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong here. It’s impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will because their will is always the same and that never changes. I think that’s what you’ve said. How does saying ‘egals deny that the Son is under the Father’s authority’ compress that beyond recognition? Is it because I didn’t have an extra sentence or two acknowledging that some/most egalitarians consider the Son to be under the Father’s authority in the Incarnation?
I’m probably getting twitchy because of Kristen’s accusations. If that’s the ‘compress beyond belief’ it’s because that wasn’t germane to the narrow issue you and I were discussing, not because I wanted to make egalitarians look like they were all saying that the Son doesn’t submit to the Father while on earth. We were talking about what happens eternally.
Hi Teri,
The pedant postgrad that is not just in me but is me is going to have to put some fine tunings into this pair of sentences:
1. The Nicene Creed does not state that in the economy or in eternity none is before or after the other and all have the same Divine Will.
Unless you only mean ‘chronologically before or after’ and then it certainly does state that bit. But I think that the rest of what you are claiming is a natural deduction to be made from what the Creed does say.
2. The Athanasian Creed does not, as far as I can see, limit its clear statement that in the Trinity there is no before or after to just the Economy. It also extends it to say:
And, correctly understood, should indeed be believed just like the Creed says. Incorrectly understood, it causes problems, and that possible misunderstanding is one reason why some Orthodox seem to really not like this ‘creed’.
The Creed doesn’t state there’s only one will, but again that’s a natural deduction.
3. It’s impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will in the way you’ve phrased it here.
But the fathers see the Father as the Arche, source, and cause of the Son and the Spirit. That gives a certain ‘shape’ to how that one will is expressed in the intra-Trinitarian relationships.
Many of fathers (the orthodox ones that is) take ‘the Father is greater than I’ as a statement of the eternal relationship of the Father and the Son, not just true in the Incarnation. Athanasius can talk about the text ‘I always do the Father’s will’ in such a way that the context most likely suggests he’s talking about the eternal relationship, not just the Economy or Incarnation.
I’m intending to go into this at some length next year. What you’re stressing I think many complementarians need to come to grips with. But there’s a complexity in how the fathers treat that ‘one will’ in the Godhead that I don’t think many/most/all (who knows?) egalitarians have grasped yet either.
We can have some of that discussion now if you really, really want to, but if you’re just flagging it – yes, it’s on the ‘to do’ list for next year, with quotes in context and me showing the working as to how I get to the conclusions I derive so that others can challenge them.
Basically agree, and where I agree I think you’ve said it really well. I’d drop the quotes around ‘sent’ – he really did send the Son, but in a way that is appropriate for the Godhead.
I think the early church fathers would be more mixed in their view as to whether there was opportunity for the God-Man to go against the Divine Will of the Trinity.
My current impression is more that they’d say that it wasn’t possible – and that, on that impossibility for human will to go against the Divine Will when it has been united to the Son, rests our hope for our new creation where, having been united to Christ, we too will not have the opportunity to go against the Divine Will. In this way, Jesus is not just the perfect example of humanity submitted to God, but the paradigm for us which we take on when we are grafted into him.
”I’m going to take a stab that you’re filling out Dave’s statement that
your position in no way has been shaped by the changes that have taken place
in broader society.
Most Christians who believe in Biblical equality found that equality in Scripture and in their relationship with the Lord not in flawed society. In my case I came to the Lord entrenched in traditional views of gender and social relationships. It was purely God and His Word that changed my views and took me where I happily am today on this subject.
”are you saying that the Church’s debate on women’s ordination <em>preceded the changes in society and, to some degree, drove those changes?</em>
The ‘debate’ on what should women be allowed to do has been an ongoing debate since before the time of Jesus walking on earth, but mostly in the background. There were always women somewhere who managed to get out of the shackles that people put on them and do the works of God anyway. One has to do more diligent research to find them because most of history centers more on what men have done, but they can be found.
I’ll get back to more later Mark, but just a few thoughts…..
”Is it because I didn’t have an extra sentence or two acknowledging that some/most egalitarians consider the Son to be under the Father’s authority in the Incarnation?”</i>
I don’t know of any Christian whose read some of Scripture, egal or arminian, Calvinist or?? whatever, who doesn’t believe that the Son was under the Father’s authority in the incarnation. And if you agree with me that <em>“It’s impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will because their will is always the same and that never changes”, then you’ve agreed that there is no authority over in the Trinity. They are one in their goals and decisions. I realize this is difficult to understand. And truth is that likely most Christians don’t have a handle on it because there is no section of writings in Scripture devoted to explaining how God works, so we are a bit left on our own trying to figure it out, even though we have clues.
sorry about the messed up tags, just waking up here….
I see the clarity of Scripture claimed in ways the Reformers never intended, they were quite specific that they claimed this against the Roman church which claimed it was needed to get saved, and the Reformers said, No, the Bible gives us enough info in this area, while NOT being clear in other areas.
I am willing to look at ECF and church councils and such as evidence, but not as determinative. What is determinative is Scripture correctly interpreted, which means in context of the original readers, except for perhaps some prophecies.
All prots believe that the Roman church and the Orthodox got some things wrong, the question is what and when did it start to veer off. I think it started to veer off in some cases as early as the 2nd century with the gentilization of the church. If you want evidence, essentially no one understood what we refer to as Mat 19:3 in Jewish context until 1856 when a scholar figured out it was referrinng to Hillel’s “Any Matter” divorce. That is, the 2nd century gentiles had lost the 1st century Jewish context of that verse and ended up botching the interpretation, some of which continues today. So that is over 1700 years of getting something wrong.
Also, by 400 or so the councils were excluding Messianic Jews from the faith when it is clear from Acts that all 120 in the upper room were Messianic Jews, so something went horribly awry by then in a big way. It went from MJs being the only believers to not being believers (acording to the council) in about 400 years.
Hi Kristen,
Okay, you’ve got two items. One where I made it very clear when I was questioned that the words were a description only, and any criticism of egalitarianism on the basis would need to be argued – something that is entirely consistent with what regular Sola readers (the intended audience) would be familiar from me. Even you seem to admit that even on your reading it was nothing more than an unintended meaning of my words – incompetency in communication on my part.
The other item, yes I can see how you took it that way. It’s why I never tried it with you, but with Teri. Jokes are always risky and person specific. Andrew Moody and I will goof around. With others I never joke. I got a sense from early on with Teri’s comments that we could probably exchange some more light hearted phrasings – an impression reinforced by her recent dig in my direction on thread one.
But let’s grant both. My hostility to the body of ideas was ‘cooking the books’ in those two instances.
Is that really the whole story? I carefully distinguished between three kinds of approaches on authority among egalitarians, looked at different understandings of the Son’s relationship to the Father in the Incarnation, rejected the idea that egalitarians are liberals, rejected the idea that egalitarianism necessarily leads to liberalism while indicating concerns about shared assumptions and method, rejected that there is necessarily anything wrong with an egalitarian woman leaving a complementarian structure to find a wider use for her gifts, argued that egalitarians aren’t trying to shut complementarians out by enacting their convictions – it’s a side effect of a fundamentally positive step in their minds, even compared egalitarians to the Reformers (my heroes) and complementarians to the Catholic church. You might disagree with some of those, but are they all painting egalitarians as unreasonable and combative?
Even if you conclude I’m getting it culpably wrong in a couple of instances, in light of other evidence I think your judgement here could be questioned:
Coming from someone who began her contribution to this thread by saying:
Which hardly seems to be evidencing a concern to bend over backwards to present the complementarian case in a way that complementarians themselves would agree with. And then followed that up in your next comment with:
Which is also a highly polemical way of articulating the complementarian position.
One might even describe it as “I don’t trust that your acknowledged hostility to my position will not continue to result in this kind of one-sided treatment, that one side deserves to get its position articulated fairly, and the other doesn’t.” Seriously Kristen, is there even one piece of evidence you can point to where you have kept the high standards that you are condemning me on?
Okay, that’s probably for the best. A genuine thank you for coming. Despite the relational issues between us, I think you made one of the most important contributions so far – you zeroed in on what looked like a shared view between us of what were the key issues. Anyone who followed where you were beginning to take us and could get a glimpse of how you were beginning to set things up is in your debt, in my opinion. Thank you.
And yes, this interaction has indeed strengthened the thesis, whichever of us what at fault, and to what degree. Ironies everywhere. Grace be with you.