If it happens that ongoing developments encourage a rethink among some of those people who consider themselves egalitarian, a move to a more biblical understanding by former egalitarians will be aided by two main gestures by complementarians.
First, good arguments. Complementarians need to do more than show that the exegesis of the debated texts is brutally against the egalitarian position. This is true, and we need to keep showing this carefully, clearly, and forcefully (and, I would say, winsomely as well). But we need to also show how a complementarian position makes better sense of the Bible’s teaching on authority, love, and equality; and makes better sense of things such as the Trinity, of salvation, of human nature and the like. In short, that the position of the church for two millennia on how human life is ordered, and particularly in the home and the church, makes better sense of life, and life lived by faith in Christ, than this grubby interloper sneaking in waving Enlightenment credentials as though they are a genuine basis for theology or ethics.
We have to show, not just that the Bible says what we claim it does, but that what it is saying is genuinely good to those whose culturally-informed instincts are to see its teaching as evil and who therefore to reject it as not really the teaching of the Bible (because all Christians know that the Bible can’t teach something evil and so will accept any reading, however strained, rather than one that seems genuinely harmful). We need to do what we have been doing, but expand the debate out to show how our views stand behind a whole range of critical components of Christian belief and practice. We need to show that necessary submission arising out of gender-based relationships is good for women, good for men, and good for church. We need to take a stab at showing why God’s commands limiting women’s authority over men are expressions of his goodness.
The other thing will probably be even more important, however. Complementarians will need to do church well. If egalitarianism is substantially wrong (which it is), and has some fundamental connections with theological liberalism, then it will probably lead to limited growth and systemic problems in church life. A correlation will be observed over time between having women in senior leadership positions and the age, gender make-up, and numerical growth of congregations, and the biblical literacy and spiritual formation of their members. Churches with a long history of women in charge will, over time, tend to have older congregations, little new growth through evangelism of the unchurched, a lot more women than men actively involved, decreasing levels of biblical and theological literacy, and produce few new young leaders seeking ordination—that is, much the same demographics as liberal churches.
As always, whether that correlation is also due to causation will be merrily contested ad infinitum, but the correlation should appear, just as it has with evangelicalism’s quarrel with liberalism. And this will lead some egalitarians to reconsider their view and look for a solution. Cue complementarianism waiting in the wings.
But complementarianism can be true and still have those problems, or other ones equally off-putting. Bad theology makes godliness hard but good theology doesn’t make godliness automatic. Timothy was called on to watch his doctrine and life. However, if women thrive in complementarian churches—if non-leading women (and non-leading men) flourish in complementarian, supposedly ‘authoritarian’, churches more than in egalitarian ones; if the churches themselves flourish numerically because more kids grow up to own the faith of their parents, more families are involved in the life of the church, and more unchurched are reached, and if women leaders in those churches are treated with a genuine dignity and honour and not as second-class citizens, most of the criticisms and concerns of egalitarians will be hard to maintain by those who are fair-minded. It’s hard to see all that and still say, “But youse are all misogynists!” (The criticisms still will be maintained, because not all human beings are fair-minded, but you can’t have everything.) If complementarians show by their actions that people are treated with dignity and honour and as equals even though they don’t get to ‘call the shots’, that will make it hard for thoughtful egalitarians to believe that our position really is a form of apartheid. And that will mean some egalitarians will reconsider and move in a more complementarian direction.
So the future of this debate is going to involve some big changes in institutions, and some of those changes will create a ‘teaching moment’ for some of those people who considered themselves favourable to women’s ordination. For those of us who are complementarian, the challenge will be to recognize this and reach out relationally and conceptually to help them move to a more biblical and more edifying way.
I know that you don’t mean this, Mark, but it seems to me that there is also the danger of making complementarianism into a shibboleth – that if you don’t hold to it, then your view of everything must be defective. It’s possible to construe your statement in this fashion.
Whereas, of course, your argument has been that egalitarians have missed the logical connections between fundamental beliefs and gender relations. While our gender may be fairly fundamental to our humanity, I don’t think it’s fundamental to God’s revelation of himself.
Not getting the right level of pith here, I’m afraid. There’s something to be said about first order/second order in revelation and also its implications, but I’ll leave it to someone else to get right!
Hi Anthony,
Very helpful, as always.
If I’ve understood you correctly, I fully agree. I don’t want these issues to be a shibboleth. I’ll concede that in real life, shortcuts have to be taken and they will often function that way for people and institutions, but I want there to be a recognition that there’s a range of views within both egalitarianism and complementarianism, some of which a person will consider, in light of Scripture, more problematic than others.
On a related note, for me this question has to be not entirely collapsed into the practical question: what can women do in public ministry, and not entirely collapsed into the relatively narrow theological question: what is the place of gender in a biblical view?
If that’s all that’s going on in this debate – and you’ll be aware from Simone Richardson’s blog that Michael Jensen and I seem to disagree as to whether we should restrict the debate to this or not – then this debate is indeed over secondary (what can women do) and tertiary (place of gender) questions.
My contention is that egalitarianism, as a whole, is raising much bigger questions than that though, and all of us need to grasp that and give a proper theological response – agreeing with their concerns when we can, disagreeing when we should, and possibly even finding new ways to frame some things so as to neither quite agree or disagree with them on other points.
To make that case, that the questions here are much bigger than just public ministry and gender, is going to take some work next year – I’m going to try and lay out various views on Scripture, and on equality, love, and authority that I think are in this debate – where ever possible, by quoting and analysing the words of people representing positions I disagree with.
I think the gender and women in ministry question is really just the tip of a very important iceberg, however much for many people they only care about those two issues and not the more fundamental questions being raised by the leaders of egalitarianism (those writing books and the like).
Anthony, I interpreted “our views” to be referring to the fundamental axioms that are required for complementarianism to hold – rather than complementarianism itself (hence the plural). One such axiom could be the idea that we can have differing authority without differing intrinsic values. This idea, as Mark implies, comes out in the Trinity, for example – the Son is under the authority of the Father, and the Spirit under the Father and the Son, but all three have equal value. Thus, I’d say that, while complementarianism isn’t fundamental to the doctrine of God, at least one of its axioms is most definitely foundational.
But yes, it could be misconstrued if it wasn’t taken in the full context of all of Mark’s posts.
Helpful as always? Gosh, I try to be frivolous at least half the time!
I think I’m with you on the iceberg metaphor, but wanting to make sure that it’s recognised that an egalitarian-tipped iceberg may not always have an egalitarian bottom, so to speak – it might just be that somebody has a tip that doesn’t match the rest of their iceberg. Some of us, after all, aren’t really that good at iceberg construction
(An edit button, an edit button, my Bible for an edit button!)
Reading Mark’s response, now I’m not sure if I got it right. Any chance a kind person could clarify?
@ Alex – whereas I took ‘stand behind’ differently in order to not misconstrue Mark!
Hmm. I think I now feel justified in waving this particular flag
Hi, Mark,
You wrote this:
‘In short, that the position of the church for two millennia on how human life is ordered, and particularly in the home and the church, makes better sense of life, and life lived by faith in Christ, than this grubby interloper sneaking in waving Enlightenment credentials as though they are a genuine basis for theology or ethics.’
This is taking things pretty far. I’m not used to having my credentials as a reader being held in such low esteem…!
Would you mind, in the interests of fair play, describing what you own credentials are when it comes to reading?
That is to say, what study have you done whose object is, not theology, but the way words work? And how successful was that study? How far did you take it?
It seems to me anyway that the merit of our conclusions on the subject of the meaning of any book depends entirely on our merits as readers; and that we should not expect that our views will be relied on in this, beyond our genuine expertise in the field…
Passing on this kind of information to your readership would, I suggest, be a great help to them in evaluating the general value of your ideas.
Cheers!
Anthony,
I wholeheartedly agree. People can have all sorts of views for all sorts of reasons. And the ‘tip’ could be there (I support women having full access to all the public ministries) for reasonably non-egalitarian reasons (“I just can’t see why not if she’s got the gifts” – that position being said, not as a broad statement of theology, but just a more intuitive conviction).
Alex,
Well, I thought you did a great job of capturing what I am trying to say in your comment. You added in some extra nuances that I tend to pass over.
I suppose that I am increasingly not seeing ‘complementarianism’ as merely a view about gender, but also a view about the meaning of love, equality, and authority.
I’m not trying to expand the importance of the gender debate by that usage, rather it reflects my view that egalitarianism is asking bigger questions than just gender.
So I’m quite happy with your way of putting it – a complementarian view (of gender) has certain fundamental axioms required for it to be coherent and biblical. Those matter in a way that the gender debate per se does not, but the gender debate is calling them into question as well.
Hi David,
Welcome along, I’ve quite enjoyed your contributions, and have been looking forward to interacting with you.
I found this idea quite intriguing when you first launched it, and am hoping (in the midst of dealing with the huge number of comments) to bat it around a bit in the way you put it in the other thread. I find a lot of what you’re saying here I resonate with, but I think that you’re ultimately coming down more with Erasmus in his debate with Luther – in a way with which I think I will have to express some significant disagreements.
As far as calling your credentials as a reader into question, well only by inference – and there’s been a lot of comments by egals on these threads that have done much the same in reverse, so I think that’s fair play.
As to my credentials as a reader? Well, once I began reading fiction obsessively for pleasure around year six, about twelve months later my score in English went into the high ‘A’ range, and stayed there throughout my highschool years. That was driven overwhelmingly by the score in comprehension, as my ability in writing English lagged for some time.
I did a B.A. in history in a good secular university (University of Qld) and did well – again driven more by examiners’ reactions to my understanding of the texts and my ability to evaluate the different kinds of evidence that different historical sources offer for different reconstructions of the past, than my ability to write about it well.
More recently, when I was considering going to the U.S. to do my doctoral studies, I sat for the American GRE exam – which is meant to quantify a person’s capability for postgrad studies in the fields of logical writing, verbal reasoning, and numerical reasoning. The verbal reasoning category in particular is a fairly robust attempt to flush out one’s ability as a reader – one of the most demanding tests I’ve done.
If we take the GRE test results as an indicator of ability as a reader and of basic reasoning ability, it is impossible for there to be anyone on these threads better in those fields than me. They could be as good as me, but they can’t be any better. I maxed out on both fields, getting the highest score possible, which, particularly in the reading area, put me in the top very small percentile of those who undertake postgrad studies – which in itself should be a group of better readers than the average.
Am I an English Lit or linguistics grad? No. But I don’t think that formal training in those fields necessarily is a sign of good reading ability. I have more confidence in something like GRE, to get a handle on such things.
So, I think we can put to rest concerns about my credentials as a reader. I won’t pull rank and wave my GRE results around to justify my readings. And everyone else can refrain from appealing to whatever training they’ve done to justify theirs. We can just read texts (mostly each other’s) and offer arguments.
Hi, Mark,
Thanks for your thoughts; I appreciate you taking the trouble to answer my question.
I should add I didn’t ask it because I had an opinion about your reading, but because I wanted to be in a better position to develop one. I had made no assumptions about it. I was concerned rather to better understand its quality.
What you have achieved is notable, in its way.
You would I imagine be prepared to concede, though, that there is a difference between success in the GRE test and having the ability and training to, say, make an original contribution to our understanding of the way language works.
I’m guessing you would also concede that having the ability to do well in that test is not quite the same thing as having a professional scholarly knowledge of the subject of language comprehension.
Given your education, there would be many things to do with, say, the logical aspects of language that, unless you have tackled them privately in some detail, you will not know.
(My point here is simply that you can in fact go much further in the study of these things than you have. You write at times as though you have done as much as a scholar whose job it is to comprehend and teach the meaning of a difficult book can go in that direction.)
I’m not sure I agree when you say we should refrain from appealing to our qualifications in order to justify our readings. Or I should say, rather, I agree if you think this, as it reads. On the other hand it is basic to reputable scholarship that we let people know, in one way or other, what are actually qualified to speak or write confidently about.
If you write (and mean in writing) that in order to reject the traditional doctrines concerning women a person has to be a ‘grubby interloper’ with ‘Enlightenment credentials’, you portray yourself in doing so as someone with a really spectacular understanding of language comprehension, and a very good grasp of Enlightenment philosophy as it pertains to language. That is, you put yourself forward as someone with a high degree of understanding of these things, when you might in fact be outrun by the subject on which you write, seeing that your field of scholarly expertise is not in fact language comprehension. Now, it seems to me, in such a case as that what a person is qualified to say is extremely important.
We should let others know what we are qualified to say, not to justify our views, but in order to allow them to assess the merits of our conclusions in the light of the labour we have expended in formulating them. If in saying we should refrain from mentioning our qualifications, you meant that we should not do this, I couldn’t disagree more.
In closing, I wanted to give a short explanation of my reasons for following the discussion here. (Being mindful of the limitations we all face, I don’t raise these points for discussion; I mention them for the sake of background.) As it happens, I am by nature an out and out scholar (which might help to explain your reference to Erasmus), and my field is language comprehension. Over the years I have become more and more disappointed by the irresponsibility with which conservative theologians and ministers read. While they confine themselves to the analysis of Greek grammar or semantics, etc., all goes well; but in my own experience as soon as they turn to the question of language’s nature, they are prepared, more or less, to make their views up. At their worst (and their worst seems common) they unwittingly commit fallacies in reading that have been universally thought by experts on the subject to be errors—not for a few years, or a few decades, but for two and a half thousand years.
Enough, in my opinion, is enough. It is an utter disaster for the Church that an intelligent eighteen year old girl can sit in an undergraduate class in literature, logic or linguistics and find out her conservative minister commits over and over the most elementary fallacies in his reading, and does so with the zest of a lemming rushing towards the brink.
It is likewise an utter disaster for the Church that people like me—scholars whose field is good reading—are usually tarred as liberals when we happen to mention basic facts from our own sphere, but which Christian teachers have never taken the trouble to learn. Or worse, never even heard of.
More of a disaster, perhaps, is the sheer enthusiasm with which so many of our conservative teachers paint themselves as responsible readers. If these teachers referred to their abilities and knowledge on the subject with a modesty that was consonant with what they really knew, then no-one could complain. As it is, because of the noisy pride they take in the correctness with which they read, they make this whole area of the conservative Protestant church’s life an out and out scandal.
As I say, enough is enough. So here I am…!
Mark, you said:
So far I have not met a complementarian who has succeeded in “showing” this at all. No matter how much care, clearness, forcefulness or winsomeness (usually those last two terms are mutually exclusive) someone uses to present a position, if the position itself appears to the listener/reader to be patently untrue (that the exegesis of the debated texts is “brutally against” egalitarianism), they are not going to be convinced. Most of the time complementarians spend so much time “forcefully” declaring their position on the debated texts that they appear to ignore what the whole counsel of Scripture says on the subject. I find the whole counsel of Scripture to be overwhelmingly in favor of the full, functional equality of women—if one doesn’t insist on pulling the cultures in which the Bible was written, part-and-parcel into the the principles the Bible is teaching.
Complementarians certainly have not succeeded in showing how their version of Christianity constitutes “good news” for women. In general (and particularly here in the US), the contrary is so often true that we egalitarians often find ourselves trying to salvage people’s shipwrecked faith by showing them that God really isn’t what they have been taught He is.
If complementarianism can move towards more dignity and real equality for women, that would be wonderful to see. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to convince me that complementarianism readings of the Scriptures are true.
Oh dear Mark, this post was equal parts flawed logic, condescension, and land grab.
– Flawed logic is the old church health = rightness, i.e. liberal churches are weak, conservative churches are (supposedly) strong, ergo demonstrating their rightness. Throw in catholicism and pentecostalism—heck, throw in Islam—and the flaws are pretty darn obvious here, but when it suits you I guess the correlation is too strong to resist.
– The line about ““But youse are all misogynists!” (The criticisms still will be maintained, because not all human beings are fair-minded, but you can’t have everything” in the context of showing how complementarians treat everyone with dignity and respect was particularly regrettable.
– Land grab – you’re coming dangerously close to saying you can’t understand Christianity properly without accepting the modern invention that is current complementarianism (which certainly hasn’t been around for two millenia). So egalitarians are second-class Christians who can’t fully appreciate “authority, love, and equality; and makes better sense of things such as the Trinity, of salvation, of human nature and the like”? Give me a break, and see point two.
Mark I’m genuinely sad to see you seem to have adopted the worst habits of these sorts of ideological debates, it really is a shame.
So much irony, so few sentences!
Seems to me that Mark is writing for complementarians here. It’s his advice on how, if you hold such a position, one should proceed in the future. In that case, surely, he’s entitled to describe things in the way that his complementarian audience see them! I’m sure he doesn’t mind egalitarians reading over his shoulder, as it were, but to expect him to address them at the same time is anatomically impossible.
As to the charge of flawed logic – well, it depends on the timescale, doesn’t it? Come eternity, the principle will work. In the meantime, Mark was only claiming to see connections between egalitarianism and liberalism, and therefore presuming that the growth dynamic of the former might well match the latter.
@David – as a minister, I’m pretty interested in being alerted to the basic errors I’m probably making this weekend. Could you give me some examples, or something? Point me to a hyperlink?
@Mark – the funny thing is, of all the faculty I studied under, you were among the most lit-aware!
Actually, if I were complementarian, I’d find this series a little embarrassing.
It’s easy to write ideological fiction that sounds compelling on paper, and confuse that for accuracy. However these grandiose theories, while fun to write I’m sure, rarely survive contact with reality. Perhaps it’s evidence of spending too much time in one’s ideological bubble—you start believing your own hype a little too much.
More broadly, unfortunately I think this reflects an unhealthy way of thinking about the world that is encouraged with regards to how we read the bible. It’s ‘join the dots’ thinking, that is, if I can search hard enough and join the right dots in the right way in the scriptures, I’ll find some universal truth about God/the universe/ourselves (gender, in this case, on either side—join the dots you want to join to make your case).
If that’s a valid way of finding truth, then why not do the same with current and future real world events? Join the dots, make the right assumptions, and hey presto, you’ve got a pretty effective crystal ball. The flawed nature of this approach in the latter case should give pause for thought…
There you have it, Mark: you should be telling complementarians to sit on their hands, because it’s embarrassing to suggest anyone should attempt to act as if they believed their own position.
Yes Anthony,
Your response to Luke is much the same in essence is what mine would have been. Thanks for being prepared to do that – it certainly helps me get to some of the comments that are raising substantive issues when some of those that are more down the ‘collapsing under the weight of their own irony’ are taken care of for me.
I mean, seriously, we have both Andrew Stagg and Richard Bath say in different ways that my analysis rings true of their experience in Melbourne, and yet guys like Luke just claim that it’s ‘ideological fiction’ that won’t survive contact with reality. We have two people saying, “Yes, that is reality” – even one (Richard) who would consider himself an egalitarian (I think) and who doesn’t find his commitment to egalitarianism shaken by these dynamics even though he can see them (and I never claimed that everyone would) – but because Luke disagrees with the ideas therefore it isn’t reality, it’s fiction. That’s about an ideological take on reality as one could get – just ignore the people saying, “This captures something I’m seeing”.
Ironies abound.
Err, hi, feel free to actually engage with me! Or is this the “more biblical and more edifying way”?
My point above was that crystal ball gazing—through a very ideological crystal ball, whatever position you take—it almost always going to be an exercise in fiction. It’s the “We’ll be greeted as liberators” school of thinking.
My disagreement with the ideas also doesn’t change the condescension in the post above. Swap comp or egal, it’s still condescending. Mark if you really think those poor dopey egalitarians are going to come crawling back when you evidently hold that much contempt for them, well I think my comments vis a vis fiction were on the mark!
You raise a couple of examples—and the one egalitarian you mention hasn’t (apparently) changed their convictions on the matter. This raises an interesting question: do you actually know of any significant move back to complementarianism in the way you describe? Honest question—is there any actual evidence that can back up your claims?
Don’t get me wrong, crystal ball gazing is fun, but without any evidence (or, I would argue, coherent logic), and with an unabashedly ideological agenda, I think it’s fair enough to label it fiction until proven otherwise.
In any case, is it really too much to ask that you spare us the condescension and the sanctimony?
Hi Luke,
Normally I’d rule this as classic ad hominem, but, come on, Luke, you are asking that of anyone?
Have you read your own comments? Do you show even an ounce of respect for complementarians? The closest you came was when you withdrew your initial analogy comparing complementarianism to apartheid:
So, when you say complementarianism ‘is kinda dumb’ but its proponents at least have good intentions (which, of course, pave the way to hell) that’s not condescending?
You have been the very model of ‘condescending and sanctimonious’, Luke – not at all what I expected from our interaction on my blog last time. It doesn’t surprise me that you therefore see it all through my stuff. People who are, are usually hypersensitive to it in others.
There is no contempt there for egals as a group. There is implacable hostility to egalitarianism as a body of ideas, but I have lots of respect for egals on a case by case basis (much the same with comps in reverse – I have lots of contempt for comps on a case by case basis).
You’re reading into it things that aren’t there. Whether that’s reasonable or not, given what I wrote, well that’s an interesting question.
And, no, I wouldn’t go giving this series of posts to an egal to convince them to leave – despite what Melinda seems to think with her ‘Jesuitical’ assement. It’s an analysis for comps to orientate them to what I think may happen.
Despite how embarrassed that seems to make you, I think that’s an entirely legitimate series of posts to write. It’s a free world, I’m not going to publish it secretly and label it ‘Ultra Top Secret’ – people who aren’t comp now are free to read along and take from it whatever they find useful.
I have no problems with egals talking to other egals and assuming that egalitarianism is true, Luke. And so I have no problems talking to comps and assuming that complementarianism is true. I don’t have to write everything on this topic thinking, “Oh dear, the egals won’t like what I’m saying here.”
Hi Mark,
Oh dear, we seem to be thinking the same things about each other—I actually dived in here because I thought you could have a robust but good natured debate as per last time (which is why I came in with both barrels
), and your response to me is pretty much what I was going to write to you, so I guess we got off on the wrong foot this time!
I wanted to push back against this idea of inevitable turn back to complementarianism, and my main point was that it is complementarianism which has (imo) been in retreat for decades now, and I’m sorry we never actually got to debate that point.
In any case, your characterization here of egalitarian critique as “But youse are all misogynists!” speaks for itself, and I’m sorry you haven’t engaged with that point either.
As for your ‘hostility to the ideas, respect for the people’ comment, isn’t that more or less less what I said?
Oh well, I’m sorry this time didn’t work out, I still would like to read your follow up to that past discussion if you ever get there, but for now I shall unsubscribe and bow out. Cheers!
Hi Luke,
Well, it’s the blogosphere. Two examples is pretty good, given how few people are prepared to have their thoughts potentially available for others to read and dissect long after they are dead. Most of the time I would kill (yes, that’s not a literal ‘kill’) to have two people saying about a post I wrote, “that fits with my experience”.
I would probably be a third example. I didn’t realise this when I wrote this series way back in January this year, it only dawned on me again over the last couple of days, but both of these two issues I highlight – the homosexual one and the intolerant egalitarian one were factors in softening my conviction that egalitarianism was just obviously right (a view I started the Christian life with).
I watched a staff worker be sacked from the University Christian group I was part of, in part because he would not come to the main meeting when women staff were expounding Scripture. I went to the meeting where the issue was debated and saw the women arguing that their fundamental humanity was cheapened if he was to do that, and it just didn’t sit right with me even though I agreed with them and not him as to whether or not they could do it.
And when I started to look carefully at egalitarian hermeneutics on the women’s passages, there didn’t seem to be any objective ‘controls’. If the interpreter agreed with something in the Bible then that was always the word of God. If they didn’t, then that was cultural. I never found an example of an interpreter saying, “At this point I agree with what this passage is saying, but, when we apply the methodology correctly, we find that it is just cultural.” It was a hermeneutic that only came into play when there was a dissonance between the reader and the text.
Those didn’t drive me out, but I think they softened me up and were contributing factors in my (very unwilling) ‘conversion’ to complementarianism.
And the fourth example is broader – as I’ve followed different blogs (especially, in this case, TitusOneNine, and Stand Firm) which are in a context a bit like Melbourne – The Episcopal Church in the U.S. – which strongly backed women’s ordination and now has essentially changed its view on homosexuality. As I read the comments there I have been intrigued by the number of people who have said something like, “I strongly supported women’s ordination back when it came in, but now I’ve seen where it leads, I think it is a big mistake.” There’s rarely any argument there – they bypass all the texts and debates most of us care about. They’ve changed their view based on reality, not ideology.
Now, how big that movement might be? No idea. I don’t think I said that the movement would necessarily be huge – just that ‘some’ might well be in that position, so, fellow complementarians, make it easy for them to make the move over.
I don’t expect much in the way of ‘double conversions’ – people who were comp, switched to egal and then switch back (just as I’ll be surprised if I switch again). I think in the providence of God double conversions are very rare. And most egals who comment on threads are, in my experience, ex-complementarians, so it doesn’t surprise me that they find what I’m saying highly implausible, but they’re not really the group I’m prognosticating about.
But, finally, the very nature of a prediction is that it predicts. By its very nature there cannot be any evidence for it – otherwise it isn’t a prediction. It is a strange world indeed to call that ‘fiction’, it is actually just ‘prediction’. Once the evidence is there, it’s no longer prediction. I’ve pointed to factors that I think it’s reasonable to think might have this effect on some people. History will tell if I called it right.
Hi Luke,
And that’s the third option – a breakdown in communication and mutual trust, which then renders meaningful conversation impossible.
Yars, again, not claiming it will necessary be everyone, or even most. Just that I think some will have second thoughts and be open to look at these questions again. I’ve seen your point about comps’ retreat on the other thread, and am hoping to finally get to it as I work through the comments, as I think that it’s a bit more complex than you’re acknowledging at the moment.
Yes, I put something in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion, of which the use of ‘youse’ was a subtle indicator. That’s hardly my characteristic approach, but I think some humor is appropriate at times.
Sort of, and I’ll concede that this is partly an eye of the beholder kind of thing. When Suzanne McCarthy says that complementarians are criminals that’s not condescending in any sense IMO (I’d say other things about it, but it isn’t condescending) – it shows a kind of respect for complementarianism; what we’re saying and doing is worth criminal charges. Saying that complementarianism’s ‘kinda daft’ is, to my mind, a bit more condescending.
My comments about egal in this post aren’t intended as condescension – for I take egalitarianism very seriously indeed as a credible system of beliefs, and think that it is very attractive to an intelligent, articulate, idealistic Christian. They are meant simply to indicate my complete hostility to it – that I am increasingly convinced that it’s not just wrong, but it’s fundamental axioms run the risk of unravelling the whole of the Christian faith.
I know that’s a big call, and next year will try and show why I have some of those concerns. Here I was just flagging it.
Well, your call either way. Kristen Rosser and I got to this stage of relational breakdown in the previous series and managed to come back to establish a conversational relationship where I genuinely enjoy talking with her, and look forward to seeing her name appear on the ‘recent comments’ and she’s made noises to that effect in return, so I think it’s possible we could move on from here.
I do think you raised some substantial issues in some of your earlier comments, and I’ll be trying to get around to them in the week ahead, so even if you don’t contribute further, you might like to keep your eye out for that.
As to our previous discussion, yes I have been meaning to apologise for that for a long time. It has been a niggling guilt all this year, but between my other responsibilities in life (of which Sola is one) is one of those things that I’ve had to let slide. In future I’ll try harder not to commit to things unless I’m really confident I can do them. Sorry for that, and maybe this next year might enable a return (I doubt it, but I can hope).
I suspect that means I tried and failed
Hi Mark, thanks for the response. I’ll just say that I find it quite alarming that, in your view, egal/comp is not a side issue on which Christians can happily disagree, but you’re now suggesting to be egalitarian is not just to risk liberalism, but to “run the risk of unravelling the whole of the Christian faith.”
That’s an extraordinary claim that will require some extraordinary evidence, and I’m sorry to see you’re characterizing the debate in such a way that will leave both sides completely intransigent.
I know you know from experience what happens with the YECS debate where any counter-argument or counter-evidence must be resisted for those same reasons—not just because it’s damaging to one’s position, but because it risks unraveling Christianity itself, and therefore any concession is utterly unacceptable. Debate from that point on is more or less meaningless.
To me, that you must draw in all these other factors to raise the stakes of the debate speaks to the inherent weakness of your position—evidently, it can’t stand on its own—but the position here is largely irrelevant. When you frame any debate in such a way, and stack your deck so heavily (‘disagree with me, and you’re picking at the very nature of Christianity’), the future of this debate will be the same as the YECS debates, with you unfortunately taking the YECS role in this case.
All the best, and I honestly hope you reconsider the framing of the debate, at the very least.
Luke, do you really think Mark’s approach to this is drawn from a bad game of Texas Hold ‘Em? Seriously?? That he thinks his position is so weak that he needs to bluff his way out?
He just said he switched sides because he was convinced – disagree with him all you like, but c’mon, let’s not presume that he managed to bluff himself into ‘converting’!
Either Mark’s right about the ‘framing’ of the debate, or he’s not. I really doubt he’s chosen it for aesthetic reasons.
I’d like to point out that I cannot recall anything said on these several threads that would incline someone who believes in Biblical equality and gender mutuality to give it up for the demeaning status and spiritual hindrances of gender hierarchies.
Like Sue, I suffered much abuse under the traditional thinking of women as creatures to be controlled by men. Christ set me free to mature into full personhood. Once having been set free to be oneself as God created you to be and to enjoy a mature relationship with Christ as fellow worker, anything less holds little enticement.
I suspect that is because the complementarianism envisaged entails no ‘demeaning status’, ‘spiritual hindrance’, or even ‘gender hierarchies’ (hierarchy in the usual sense, that is). Why advocate something that you’re not promoting, and that’s unpromotable anyway?!
I’d go further: such complementarianism would advocate both ‘Biblical equality’ and ‘gender mutuality’. It might be conceived differently, but the aim is still that.
Which of course does not deny that there are many who would claim a comp label that are guilty of the type of teaching you describe. If ‘comps’ were all holding a ‘comp’ position perfectly, then advice to ‘comp’ types (like this thread) would be redundant.
But again: Mark’s not trying to persuade you here. He’s trying to persuade ‘comps’ of how to persuade you. For example, I take it that if someone were to show you how complementarianism was really quite good for you, and for everyone else, it would be likely to persuade you (to a degree, at least – you might not be convinced, but you might be less convinced of egalitarism).
”I’d go further: such complementarianism would advocate both ‘Biblical equality’ and ‘gender mutuality’. It might be conceived differently, but the aim is still that.”
I don’t think so, Anthony. I’m not sure if it has actually been stated here that a woman should obey her husband unless he asks her to sin, but those who believe this is correct are not treating wives with equality or mutual respect. As well, those who believe that women are to be prohibited from serving God in teaching, preaching and leading in the Body of Christ are also not advocating true equality between men and women. It could be viewed as double speak to suggest that one aims for mutuality and equality but holds to those two views.
”For example, I take it that if someone were to show you how complementarianism was really quite good for you, and for everyone else, it would be likely to persuade you (to a degree, at least – you might not be convinced, but you might be less convinced of egalitarism).”
Many gender hierarchalists have tried to suggest to women that for them to let the men do all the important spiritual ministry and leadership in the church assemblies is less stress for the women, and similar. Women have been told that if they let the men ‘take care of them’ while they (the women) tend to the home keeping and child rearing, doing as their loving husbands wish, they will be much happier. These suggestions sound pretty patronizing and may assume women to be less intelligent and perhaps even less human (less capable to be a full mature human being in Christ’s example to us) than men IMO.
Teri, I recognise your right to view such language as ‘double speak’ – it certainly could be. But I know that for many (no claims as to %) complementarians, it is not. Sure, their definition of terms will differ from yours, but don’t fall outside the range of the words.
I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of metaphors about each of them and don’t need them rehashed. You most likely think the examples of ‘mutuality’ and ‘equality’ are a poor fit for what the Bible teaches. But that you can use the terms of, say, a cricket team (with its different members with very different roles, abilities, etc) justifies comps using them, without necessarily falling into double speak.
Regarding your second paragraph – well, I can see how you’d find that patronising. I do. But it doesn’t really deal with what you quoted me on. Running a worst(ish)-case scenario just reinforces Mark’s point: namely, if comps want to convince egals to have another look at things, butting heads on exegesis is probably not the way to go. Instead, comps really have to demonstrate how a godly, well-executed comp position really is good for women. That is, not ‘show them how we think this is good’ but ‘show them how they think this is good’.
Nobody gets persuaded by seeing that the persuader finds their own argument persuasive. They have to find the argument persuasive themselves. And I rather suspect that’s why Mark’s pushing for something undeniable as the goal: everyone has a conception of ‘the good’ that’s fairly basic to their worldview.
“But that you can use the terms of, say, a cricket team (with its different members with very different roles, abilities, etc) justifies comps using them, without necessarily falling into double speak.”
Thank you for the dialogue. No cricket teams to my knowledge here so I’m not real familiar with how they assign differing roles. However, I doubt that they assign roles on anything other than skill and ability, which is very Biblical and very complementary and very egalitarian to my understanding. Even choosing the top spot for the tallest has to do with ability and skill. The difference being that the tallest for one team is going to be a different height than the tallest for another team. It’s all relevant to ability and skill.
Complementarity is Biblical in my understanding. But complementarianism is not complementarity, unfortunately.
However, I do agree that those comps who choose their marital roles upon mutual agreement (which means they will likely change over the years) are very acceptable to most egals. We do the same. Many comps live like an egal though they speak in gender hierarchic terms.
For some it’s the church ministry that is the biggest divider.
Or is it most egals live like comps?
So, what it boils down to is whether gender alone is a legitimate form of complementarity to give weight to in dealing with particular questions. And while both sides can and do disagree, it’s still possible to recognise that both sides are (or at least, could be) attempting to ‘play by the rules’.
Happily, all the comps I know are aware that Eph 5 contains both v. 21 and v. 22.
Thanks for the replies – you’ve twigged a few new thoughts for me. (Sorry Luke – they add weight to Mark’s thesis…)
“Or is it most egals live like comps? “
Nope. Most egals do not live putting gender chains and controls around their women and men. Egals arrange their marriages according to what seems good, respectful, and honorable to them before God with no concern for anyone having a ‘final decision’ or having to obey the other. Although even Abraham obeyed Sarah when what she said was right. That’s a good ‘rule of thumb’ for everyone. And egals allow God to choose, call, and equip whomsoever God wishes to do whatever ministries and spiritual services He deems good.
Any comp that lives like that is according to CBMW (the founders of complementarianism) living egal.
Teri, you said:
Here is where it was said, by Mark Baddeley to Suzanne:
Emphasis added.
The complementarians here seem to be speaking out of both sides of their mouths. “Obedience” is not part of gender mutuality or gender equality. “Obedience” means doing what you’re told. Having someone “obey” you means you tell them what to do, and they do it. This is different from “submission” in that “submission” can be practiced by one equal yielding to the wishes of another—commands, and being told what to do, are not implied in the term “submission” as I understand it to be used in the Bible.
If you want obedience, you don’t want equality. Equals don’t obey one another.
As for whether a marriage “looks” comp or egal—I think the difference is this. An egal marriage might look comp, because the husband is a natural leader and the wife prefers to follow, and they are comfortable and happy like that—but they understand this as the dynamic of their marriage; they do not say everyone else’s marriage must look the same in order to be “godly.” On the other hand, a comp marriage where the wife is a natural leader and the husband prefers to follow, will be looked on with pity and suspicion by other comps, who will (in general) believe that this couple isn’t “doing marriage” right.
Egal marriages may look comp, but the mental attitude of the two marriage partners is different. They are free to exercise their own preferences and operate their marriage in a way that works for them.
I think comp marriages can exist where husbands feel free to say to wives from time to time, “Whatever you want to do is fine with me. You decide; I’ll abide by it.” My comp marriage frequently looked like that. Now that it’s egal, it still looks like that. The difference is that when we were being complementarian, I always felt vaguely uneasy/guilty about the way my husband sometimes wanted me to take the lead—but I submitted to his wishes anyway and took the lead when he asked me to. Now I can gladly submit to his wishes without guilt.
And yes, when we were complementarian, other complementarians looked at our marriage and judged that my husband was wimpy and I was unsubmissive. Which has never been true. Our marriage just never fit into the cookie-cutter roles very well.
PS. One caveat to what I said above about “equals don’t obey one another.” Jesus obeyed the Father while He was on earth, during the time He was made “a little lower than the angels” according to Hebrews 1. He did it as an example for us—He laid down His equality with God, gave it up, to show us what perfect obedience to God looked like. So this doesn’t work as an example of how a wife can remain equal while obeying her husband. If he can tell her what to do and she must do it, she is not being treated as equal at all. She has laid down her equality and given it up, being told that this is required of her by the Bible. “Equality” at that point is only lip service—her ontological equality remains, but she has laid it down and given it up, and is no longer functioning as an equal at all.
Hi, Anthony,
I’m happy to mention a few basic errors about which I know, and of which a brief mention can be made.
It may be that you make none or all of them; either way, peace be on your head!
I suggest that perhaps the most common errors we make are to do with the three main ways by which we reach our conclusions as we read. These three means of reaching our conclusions are as follows. Firstly, by the claim that something is said explicitly. Secondly, by the claim that something can be deduced. Thirdly, by the claim that something is most probably meant.
It seems very frequently the case that when we claim something is said explicitly, it is not. For something to be said explicitly, it has to say more or less in so many words what we interpret it to mean. If it does not do this, it says something else explicitly.
Again, we seem frequently to use words like implication and deduction in reaching our conclusions, as though this makes a proof—when the operation we are performing is not strictly deduction at all. Something is implied, strictly, and so proven, when its truth is entailed by the truth of something else. However, we seem on all fronts to be willing to claim the support of deduction, and think we have established our conclusions well, even in cases where a deduction of the kind we pretend to isn’t remotely possible.
Lastly,we will quite often say airily as we evaluate what we read: ‘This is the most probable meaning of that’. Yet nearly as often we seem not to be referring to any real form of probability at all. if we evaluate the meaning of sentences and reach a conclusion that is genuinely probable, our claim will have some meaningful basis in the facts to do with the world in which we live. It is as probable if I throw a coin that a head will turn up as it is that a tail will: for a coin has two sides; it will usually land on one of them, rather than its edge; and neither side is favoured as long as the coin is made so there is no trick to its shape and distribution of mass etc.. When we speak of probabilities regarding the meaning of sentences, we are usually, I suggest, dignifying guesses—i.e. we have no basis in any fact whatsoever for our supposedly probable inference; we offer our readers or listeners none; there is none that anyone can discern, no matter how hard they look.
If you ultimately wish to read something in order to develop your comprehension skills, I suggest the best place to start is with a book that deals with the logical aspects of language—for it is in this area that we all seem to have the potential for improvement. There are thousands of these books; finding one that suits you, elementary or difficult depending on your knowledge and abilities, should not be hard.
Having said that, the easiest solutions to any problems we might have in reading are these, I suggest.
(1) On every occasion where we say or presuppose something about the way words work, we should check. That is, if we want to argue the traditional doctrines re women’s roles are implied by 1 Tim 2 in such a way as to prove them, then we should ensure we understand what implication that constitutes proof is. If for some reason we want to say that sentences beginning with ‘the’ refer to all instances whatsoever of the object designated to by the subsequent noun, we should check. We should check faithfully, doggedly, and humbly. If we want to say something is synonymous with something else, we should make sure we know exactly what synonyms are. We should Google the things we do not know, consult reputable websites, and think deeply about their contents. We should consult books that tell us about such things. If we do not check, we will constantly make errors. If we do check, we will avoid at least some mistakes. (This is to my way of thinking perhaps the best advice we can ever receive on this subject; certainly, it is the best piece of advice I ever received myself.)
(2) We should be scrupulously honest with ourselves and others about what we do not know. If we say, ‘I think 1 Tim 2 implies the traditional doctrines re women’s roles, but I can neither state what implication is, nor give examples of it, nor show how I am talking about an instance of it here’, then we make no error, even though we have no clear idea what the operation is to which we are appealing in justifying our position. If we know almost nothing about strict implication, and if we insist 1 Tim 2 implies our conclusions, and so proves them, then…at best we will be right by accident, and at worst what we say will be wrong, and misleading.
I hope this is some help…!
Teri said “Many comps live like an egal though they speak in gender hierarchic terms.
“
Anthony said: “Or is it most egals live like comps
“
(I kept the smilies intact
)
Michael Jensen in his blog post also observed that “Amongst complementarian Christians that I know, marriages are remarkably egalitarian.”
This is perhaps the key issue in this whole debate, and it drives me up the wall, so forgive me for getting a little ranty
The problem with the debate is this: we’ve *all*—comp & egal—walked 100 kilometers in the right direction on gender norms since the NT, and most of that has been in the last 200 years, the last 50 years especially. The debate is more like, after walking 100ks, comps say you’ve walked another 100m too far, egals say you’ve walked 100m back.
So Anthony when you say you need to show how modern comp is good for woman/all involved, imo it’s a bit of a nonsense—you’re assuming 2000 years progress on gender relations as a starting point. There’s simply no such thing as a comp (or egal, or anything) marriage/life/worldview on gender as per NT times. It’s gone. We’ve *all* moved miles away from it.
It’s our (all of us) universal, pervasive ignorance of our own cultural progress, *and* the culture of the Jews and Greeks particularly in the NT, that really does us a huge disservice in these debates.
We forget that now we can happily talk to women we’re not married/related to in public now. We forget that women and men can mix happily at church. We forget women aren’t property owned by men through marriage. We forget that women now *are* seen as intellectual equals. These are all extremely modern things unknown to NT times, and still unknown in some parts of the world.
And in forgetting all these things, our knowledge of the bible is diminished. We don’t realize just how outrageous some of Jesus’ behavior was for the time. Some of the impact of the gospels are lost on us.
We think we can understand the bible without reflecting on the culture of the time (and this has nothing to do w/egal arguments about culture!) and yet it costs us our own understanding of the text! And so we have these artificial exegetical debates in a vacuum completely divorced from the reality of NT times or our modern times.
The fact is we’re debating meters when we’ve moved kilometers. The idea that the comp position is at kilometer 0 of NT times is a construct that can only be held in ignorance of quite a lot of history and culture. We all live more or less egalitarian lives now (with some important, but relatively minor, distinctions remaining).
The idea that in a comp marriage you can defer to your wife on some matters is a modern one. It would have been unthinkable not that long ago. The idea that complementarians can unequivocally endorse women’s rights is a very modern one—such rights are very modern things!
So, in concluding this rant, let’s please all realize just how far we’ve come, and just how little really separates us (though some relatively minor things still do). Christianity is not going to come crashing down by accepting this reality.
Thanks David: I’ll watch my tongue!
Luke – your reading of cultural progress may well be right, but I still think the debate is not about where to place ourselves on a particular spectrum (which, I note, in principle concedes something to the egal position), but which principles should guide how we assess our practice.
That is, it is at least theoretically possible that one might conclude we should roll back all that progress and reestablish caveman mores.
Hi Anthony,
I guess my point is there is no debate about where we are on that spectrum—we’re at the very end, comp or egal!
Certainly, that’s a good point & that’s a major gripe of mine with modern complementarianism—it doesn’t seem to examine those modern assumptions, indeed it just assumes them for itself. It seems to have its cake and eat it too, claiming it’s both very modern (of course women are intellectually equal!) and very traditional (of course we uphold the NT view of gender!), but I would submit that where we are on the gender progress spectrum makes this proposition rather absurd.
I’d also submit that where we _all_ are on the gender progress spectrum makes us all guilty of heinous crimes against Christianity* if indeed egalitarianism in some way undoes the faith itself by diminishing leadership and submission in practice, given how much we have all massively reduced this in almost all spheres of life since biblical times. These modern debates, while certainly not insignificant in and of themselves, relative to historical progress certainly look like squabbling over breadcrumbs.
I imagine our practice would be absolutely unrecognizable to a NT man or woman dropped into our society in the 21st C, and they’d be rather shocked at how socially liberal we all are—the most conservative especially.
This century/millennia’s unfashionable conservative is last century/millennia’s radical feminist.
In 21st C Australia, we’re all hugely egalitarian in a historical perspective, comp or egal!
*tongue in cheek
I have removed some comments by Suzanne on this thread which were not on topic.
No-one takes any pleasure in removing comments, but we will take down those that are off-topic or that are ungodly (particularly involving personal attacks), and will probably be more pro-active about this in the future if necessary (hopefully it won’t be).
Generally there will be no notice when comments are removed, but I did want to acknowledge it this time as it is the first time we’ve done it for many months.
Hi, Anthony,
You’re welcome…as I say, you may already know such things well.
There was another issue I wanted to mention that might be of general interest; I thought I might as well say something about it.
One of the habitual methods by which we read is to take sentences or passages to fully state a doctrine that they merely hint at, or that they support, but only in a substantial way when they are added to other sentences or passages on the same subject. So for example in a sermon I heard not long ago at my local Anglican church the minister taught on ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’—and he took it to say as it stands, ‘God made all human beings’.
This method of reading is in my experience practically universal—small group leaders seem to do it every week; every sermon seems to contain instances of it; Christian literature seems characterised by it. There may be sterling practical reasons for this kind of thing: but strictly speaking when we do this, we are not reading. It would be more accurate to say we are using passages of the Bible that mention subjects with some relation to our doctrines as the occasion to turn our minds to our general views.
In my opinion (taking into account that I’m neither a minister or a theologian) this is in the long run a very bad thing. Surely in such cases we should have sufficient respect for the Bible, and for facts, to read what the Bible says, rather than to intepret it to be saying at this point or that what we ultimately believe?
One of the most obvious problems that arises from this habitual form of ‘reading’ is that it creates the illusion among us that a sentence need only touch on the subject of a general doctrine in order to be stating the doctrine. This is patently false.
As problems go, this may not matter very much, while we all agree with each other, more or less. But because of it, as soon as we disagree with each other about the meaning of something in the Bible, we will as like as not dig in our heels, fancying the mere mention of women in society, or God’s act of creation, or what have you, takes us more or less all the way to our general conclusions.
If there is any single thing (apart from assured ignorance) that has been a curse afflicting the discussion about women’s roles, it is this, I think. How can people who are accustomed to believing that the mere mention of anything virtually proves general teachings about it have a sensible conversation with anyone who feels more is required? How can people who think more is required take seriously the reading of those who are entirely satisfied with hints, or with statements that are narrow rather than wide?
A problem that is associated with this one, and that arises from the ‘reading’ I’m objecting to, I touched on in my earlier post. Because ‘reading’ according to our belief satisfies, many of us—perhaps by far the majority of us—actually never develop a real understanding of how language of different kinds supports different types of general conclusion. So we have no real idea how it is that the language of the Bible supports our doctrines.
In consequence, when we are put to arguing the precise relation between language and doctrine, we are forced to make things up—what other course can we follow, in such circumstances? And make things up we frequently do, if we are under pressure to justify our opinions. Such and such is a metaphor (when it isn’t even a figure of speech); this and that is an a forteriori argument (when it isn’t an argument at all); so and so is a plain statement of a universal rule (but really it is an enthymeme); something or another is unambiguous (yet it contains the verb ‘to be’, whose ambiguity is notorious, so we might easily be wrong); etc..
How such things might change in the wider Christian culture, I do not know. But it would seem to me better that they should change…
Happy Christmas, one and all!
Thanks David. I agree with you.
Over the last few months as I have been investigating the egal/comp debate, I have been endeavoring to try and read what is actually in the passage of scripture, rather than just see the doctrine that I have been taught is there.
It is not an easy thing to do. I think it can be even be more difficult when we have been Christians for many years. I start to read a passage, and instantly a sermon I have heard, a book I have read, a commentary I have looked up, a comment from a friend comes flooding in to my mind before I have really looked at what the passage says.
But I think it is worth the effort to try and read with fresh glasses and read well. Thanks for your comments to help us all with this.
David, I wonder whether you might find room for what Michael Polanyi called ‘tacit knowledge’ in your account of how we read and then draw conclusions.
I am not a trained philosopher, but I wonder that if in requiring a precision in reading, and then in communicating knowledge claims, you are underplaying the tacit arrangement of evidence that we do not normally (and perhaps cannot always) spell out in such explicit detail.
And so one might be using a combination of what is seen to be commanded or universalised in some places, along with some examples elsewhere of practices that fit a broad pattern. None of the authors may have joined all the dots, especially if they were not writing a systematic exposition of the particular topic we are interested in. But the dots seem eminently connectable.
Especially in preaching, it is not always possible to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. And so the lack of mentioning all the evidence, and sometimes the lack of even mentally systematising all the evidence, may not mean one is making all the errors you have raised as possibilities.
So what place is there for tacit knowledge?
Hi, Sandy,
This is an excellent point; thanks for bringing it up.
It is altogether possible (given my proneness to error, which I admit is as pronounced as anyone’s) that I have over-stated here or there, out of excitement, stupidity or carelessness. Insofar as I have done so, I readily concede it.
However, I didn’t intend to offer opinions that treated intuitive reading as though it had no value, or only little value.
These are my views on intuition; if I have said anything elsewhere which is not consistent with them, please don’t hesitate to take my earlier views to be qualified in the light of these, to the point that these earlier views, and what I write here, are square with each other.
(1) It is I think quite true to say much of our reading is intuitive.
(2) It is also true to say, I think, that frequently we read correctly by intuitions that we cannot explain or justify.
(3) As well, it seems perfectly true to say we can often reach true general conclusions by intuitive reading, even though we can give no account of these intuitions. But,
(4) The cases in which we can read successfully by intuition, including those where we reach true general conclusions, appear to be those cases where the evidence is substantial, and clear. It is not those cases where the language is difficult, and the evidence is ultimately sketchy. (This is I think only to be expected.)
(5) Moreover, if our intuitions are correct, it is possible to show they are correct, by a proper analysis of the language we read, and of this language’s relation to our conclusions about its meaning. We may not be able to do this ourselves; but it should be something that can be done.
(6) In addition, if our reading is largely confined to intuition, our own explicit account of the way we reach our conclusions as we read is likely to be largely wrong. If by such accounts we teach methods of reading, either by precept or example, and other people really adopt them, then their reading might well be made worse than it would have been otherwise. This sort of thing is better avoided.
(7) All this also means for readers who depend largely on intuition, that in cases of disagreement with someone about the import of a passage they have read, they cannot really expect their conclusions to be more widely accepted. For they cannot explicitly justify even their own adoption of them. This does not mean their conclusions are wrong; but it does mean they should discuss them with a high degree of humility.
(8) Part of our reason for humility, if this is where we are as readers, is that we cannot confidently say our intuition is better than anyone else’s—even when ours is right, and someone else’s is wrong.
(9) The last thing we should do, in any appeal we make to intuitive reading, is to sanction the idea that a positive feeling we have about an opinion we reach while reading establishes our opinion’s truth. Positive feelings matter little on this point; facts matter all, or almost all. Facts should be our chief court of appeal.
(10) The fewer facts we know, the more temperate we should be.
(11) These things being said, as you pointed out, we are not necessarily in error if we do not mention all the evidence for our views concerning the meaning of what we read. We are only in error if we make either false assertions or false presuppositions about what we read. If we say, ‘Behind “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” stands the fact that God made the universe’, we state what is true, even though we do not show it. If we claim the same passage says directly, “God made the universe’, our doctrine is right, but our claim is entirely wrong.
I trust this information is clear: I’ve written in haste, in between shopping for relatives, and arm-wrestling with TNT about a trampoline for my children that appears irredeemably lost in transit. Rats!
In closing, I should point out that it appears the cardinal doctrines of Christianity—those that are truly elementary, like the doctrines that God is three yet one, that stealing is wrong, that we are saved by grace through faith—are among those that are supported by linguistic evidence which is substantial and clear.
In other words, apparently our cardinal doctrines are in their basic form susceptible to sound intuitions, even if as readers we can’t distinguish properly between a noun and a verb, should our lives depend on it. The errors I’ve mentioned previously really matter, practically speaking, with respect to the more refined forms of our cardinal doctrines—and with respect to those doctrines that are not elementary to the Faith. For it is with respect to these things that the linguistic evidence appears to be (usually) unclear, and sketchy.
I trust this clarifies rather than confusing…!
Sandy and David,
I would like to give an example of a reading of the text which appears to me to be tacit or intuitive. And then one which appears to be backed up by evidence.
First, the ESV Study Bible says, on page 2528, that women are not to be “usurping male authority” in their marriages. 1 Tim. 2:12 is used as a reference for this phrase. This same comment appears in Grudem’s Systematic Theology. The phrase “usurping authority” is said to come from the text 1 Tim. 2:12.
However, on page 2328, the ESV Study Bible says that authentein does NOT means “to usurp authority” and then there is a reference to a study of 80 examples of the word authentein which establishes that authentein means “to have authority.”
I feel as if the “tacit” reading of scripture is overwhelming the scripture itself. Is it acceptable to create a doctrine of gender from an intuitive reading of the scripture? Thanks.
I should add that scholars like Dr. Kostenberger agree that the 80 examples do NOT establish the meaning of authentein, but I simply intended to write that the ESV mentions these examples as if they are evidence. That is, for women “usurping” authority, this reading seems to be tacit, not derived from evidence. But for “to have authority” there is an attempt to back it up with evidence.
On reflection, I am not sure if either way of reading the scripture is truly successful, but I would appreciate any comments on this example. Thank you.
As far as Sue’s point is concerned, there is also the clear fact that 1 Tim. 2:12 is in the context of how to behave in church gatherings, and marriage is not mentioned at all in the context of this verse. If the ESV Study Bible wants to apply the verse to marriage, it should make it clear that that application cannot be derived directly from that text.
David, I agree very much with your statement that the cardinal doctrines of Christianity are clear and can be understood even by the uneducated. It is part of God’s character that He would not allow that which is necessary for our salvation to be difficult for us to understand. For the rest, however, God appears to want us to think for ourselves and use our reason, and to discuss these things among ourselves, as part of the interdynamics of the community of the faith.
Sorry, Kristen, if this appears a bit flippant, but it’s worth saying that the whole book of 1 Timothy explores the connections between church life and home life. (More could be said here to support my claim, but I suspect that’s a sidetrack from the current discussion) To say ‘that application cannot be derived directly from that text’ imports your conclusion.
That is, you may well be right in your conclusion, but it needs to be a conclusion, not an assertion.
@Suzanne – I think you’ve found a useful example of principle that’s also related to the theme of the thread – nice work!
I have no access to the ESV Study Bible, but wanted to clarify something. The quotation marks around ‘usurping male authority’ are yours (because you’re quoting the ESVSB) rather than theirs (because they’re quoting 1 Tim 2)? Or is it both?
My first guess is it’s the former, and we have here a summarising paraphrase (of the ESV committee’s position) – that while the verb merely means ‘to have authority’, in its context the scope is narrowed (to woman-over-man) and the practice is condemned. Hence, ‘usurp’ for the negative opinion, ‘male’ for the scope, and ‘authority’ from the verb.
I take it that people are aware that comps are in general in favour of the neutral definition (‘to have authority’) over the pejorative (‘to domineer’) precisely because they don’t think 1 Tim 2:12 is there only to exclude seized authority and not ceded/agreed authority. So I rather doubt the ESV team were wanting to imply a specific meaning to the verb, irrespective of its context.
Here is what the ESV Study Bible says,
“the female uses all her God-given abilities while refusing to usurp male authority in her life. Eph. 5:22-23, Col. 3:18, 1 Tim. 2:12, 3:2.”
I don’t see the concept of usurping authority in the other verses, so I thought it was intuitively derived from the King James version of 1 Tim. 2:12, which does have “usurp authority” in it. That is, it seems that certain theology about women “usurping” was developed from 1 Tim. 2:12, and then later the meaning of the verse was reinterpreted to mean “to have authority” but the theology remained that women wish to usurp authority.
Often this expression is used also in relation to teshuqa in Gen. 3:16. This is Grudem, “The fall introduced strain in relationships—sin—tendency for women to try to usurp authority over men, tendency for men to rule harshly and selfishly.” What was once understood as “desire” is not “usurping authority.”
There is, of course, the same difficulty with “to rule.” Sometimes CBMW material says that the husband is to assert his rulership over his wife. But in writing about Gen. 3:16, then the commentator will add “harshly and selfishly” in order to establish that men do have the right to rule a wife, but just not harshly.
I mention this because it appears to me, that many of the things that are written about men having the right to rule, and women wanting to usurp male authority, appear to be tacit. They don’t actually appear to derive from a direct reading of scripture.
One then has to go back to other principles and ask if the overriding message of the Bible is about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, OR is it about affirming rulership of certain classes of people over others. Not that there has to be only one answer … which one do the scriptures say should dominate among Christians?
I meant to write,
“What was once understood as “desire” is now “usurping authority.””
Hi, Craig, thanks for your encouragement, and thoughts…
I agree that keeping past conceptions out of our minds while reading the Bible is very difficult; I frequently hear my father’s voice when I’m reading. (Dad was a Presbyterian minister.)
This is my last for the year: thanks, all, for the opportunity, and for your own thoughts and points of view.
May Christ bless one and all!
David, I am a grubby interloper to this fascinating discussion, so take this comment for what it is worth.
Mark wrote:
David, you have written:
and also:
In the context of a series of posts where Mark has already established that he thinks of egalitarianism as a dangerous idea because of its Enlightenment bases, you have badly misread a parallel between a ‘traditional church’ position and an egalitarian one. Mark has written that egalitarianism is a grubby interloper – which is the sort of language he has urged us not to use on fellow people, egalitarians or complementarians. He has not said that egalitarians are grubby interlopers. He didn’t write it, or (I take it) mean it in writing. A quick way to reach your conclusion is to start off suspecting that he wanted to.
Your spectacular misreading, and your insistence that, because he doesn’t have a degree in reading English, someone trained in history and theology ought to be suspect on his historical-theological assessment of an ideology, is really, really funny.
It is funny, rather than sad, because you have assured us that you can do better. Mark has been astonishingly polite, as he should be because he follows Jesus, but you really ought to go back six days and read the original post again.
My prayers are for a truly joyful Christmas for all my brothers and sisters here on the blog.
Yes, in all the variety of ways that Christians celebrate Christmas may we all give honor and glory to the Messiah whose birth we celebrate. I would love to see from heaven’s view all the people of the world in all their varying cultures and customs celebrating Jesus’s birth. What a view that would be. What a proclamation to the glory of God in His creativity.
”Mark has written that egalitarianism is a grubby interloper – which is the sort of language he has urged us not to use on fellow people, egalitarians or complementarians. He has not said that egalitarians are grubby interlopers. “
Alan,
We’ve already established on another thread that comps feel personally misrepresented when discussion on compism takes a negative turn even when they don’t do the things that represent common compism beliefs. Thus, we know that personally it is a short walk from the ‘ism’ to the people who believe in them.
We also know that many generalities try to be all emcompassing. When comps pass around the popular rumor that egalitarianism says men and women are the same and have no differences, they expect every egal they talk to to be accepting that strawman. IOW its personal. Everyone seems to expect everyone else in the opposing camp to be believing the same things including the strawman beliefs that are rumored but not true. So when we characterize the ‘ism’, we really do indirectly characterize the people who carry the title.
Yes, it’s better than being directly personal.
Hi Mark B,
Thanks for this second series. I think you have correctly identified some of the pressures on egalitarians in parts 7 and 8, that may God willing force a re-think of their theology.
Unless I missed it, you seem to have missed another very important pressure that I think is at least as (if not more) important than the homosexual push. This is the feminisation of God that is prevalent in standard liberal feminist theology and emergent in evangelical egalitarian works. Namely, the denial that God should be called Father, or the claim that we should refer to God as Father and Mother, and similar.
* Rebecca Groothuis, Stanley Grenz, Mary Evans and other egalitarian writers have argued that “Father” is only a cultural metaphor for God; they deny that “Father” is something essential to his divine identity (and likewise “Son”)
* Discovering Biblical Equality (the egalitarian compendium edited by Fee, Groothuis and Pierce) argues that Jesus was incarnate as a male man only because it was culturally necessary; they argue it was not theologically necessary for him to be a man. The book devotes a whole chapter to this question.
* The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary (edited by Catherine Kroeger and Evans) argues that it is justifiable to use “maternal appellations” / “the divine feminine” in our language for the divine beings, and that Jesus gives life to the world as our Mother
* Many egalitarian writers will strictly avoid using the male pronouns (eg. “He”, “Him”) for God and will instead substitute gender neutral alternatives. My wife, who is on the editorial committee of a Christian magazine, has encountered this.
* I was just at a wedding recently (conducted by an Anglican priest) where the final doxology referred to the Trinity as “Creator, Redeemer, and Giver of Life” (instead of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”). I have heard that this kind of language is commonplace in the liberal churches (eg. the Uniting Church) where you will find the argument that praying to “Father God” legitimises wife-battery and child abuse.
It seems to me that many egalitarian friends are unaware that many of their kin have made this theological shift, the re-defining of God’s own revealed identity. I feel that it will be a matter of time before it becomes more clear that when followed through to its philosophical and intellectual conclusion, egalitarianism will undermine not only human fatherhood (the husband-father’s authority in the family), but the very thing upon which human fatherhood is based, divine Fatherhood. As this becomes clearer to egals, I suspect (and hope) that many would recoil from deep abyss to which egalitarianism is leading.
Hi Jereth,
Wasn’t missed so much as not touched on. It wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive bunch of reasons, and this issue is one that I’m already so primed on myself personally (in terms of the issues themselves, but I’m certainly in your debt for naming a couple of egals who had ‘crossed over to the dark side’ on this issue that I wasn’t aware of) and that so many people seem to think is not related to the gender debate, that I thought it was best to leave it out of the series.
My hunch is that it isn’t going to move many people out of egalitarianism anyway, until (and unless) this trend becomes orthodoxy in egalitarian circles, and not just an accepted (minority) position within it.
One of egalitarianism’s strengths in this debate is how many varieties of it there are. So if people are uncomfortable with a “God is not Father, but Godself (not ‘he’) is ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ – all just ways of saying that Godself (not he) is like a parent” then I think there’ll generally be enough representatives of egalitarianism around who reject that and stick closer to the Bible and the Creeds by naming God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as to make that plausible for people.
Generally, evangelicals are more tolerant of theological error and less of moral error. Theological error can always be explained using lots of large words in complex sentences. Moral error involves something someone does, and that can’t really be ‘finessed’ the same way. I think that’s why it took until the ordination of Gene Robinson for the reaction against liberalism in the Anglican Communion to really begin. For the first time something was done publicly that couldn’t be ‘spun’ successfully using words.
I think it’ll be the same here, it won’t be theological drift that moves most egalitarians back (however many will be in that group), it will be the relational issue of seeing complementarians they like/love/respect leave the institution or seeing homosexuality approved or seeing that their churches are emptying of men, and don’t have as many young families, and of those fewer of the children seem to stay when they grow up. If those things happen people are likely to ask questions. But for moderate evangelicals, calling God ‘mother’ – well, that’s more likely to be seen as eccentric and a bit off, I don’t think it will act as a ‘push’ on most. It will work that way on some, but on a very small some, I think. And they’ll be ‘high quality’ transfers, but numerically I don’t think they’ll be many.
Hi Mark,
I think you are right on all these points, but I find this disappointing. Why do we care so much more about gay sex than we do about worshipping the true God correctly? (And surely you cannot worship God correctly if you do not address him correctly by his revealed titles). I think it is a comment on the declining health of the church when Christians feel revulsion about gay sex but not about people denying that God is really “our Father”.
I think that we need to show people that “Mother God” has everything to do with the gender debate. Here is what Groothuis says:
In biblical times, “Father” was a more apt description for God than “Mother”, not merely because a Mother-God would have been confused with the pagan fertility deities of the surrounding cultures, but primarily because fatherhood presented a picture of God as a person with power and authority—which, in ancient patriarchal societies, was possessed almost exclusively by men …
God is called our Father because God is like a father to us in the limited, metaphorical sense of filling many of the cultural roles of a father. (emphasis original)
For historical and cultural reasons, it was necessary that God be incarnated as a male human. But because God is neither male nor female and is imaged in woman and man equally, it was not theologically necessary for God Incarnate to be male.
…
There is no biblical warrant to impute theologically weighty implications to Jesus’ maleness… As Erickson points out, “Jesus’ maleness is accidental to his meaning as Christ. Much in the act by which he saves us can be best described in human terms by the metaphor of childbirth. He suffered in order to give us birth. Nor did his mothering of us end on the cross, for he continues to nurture us.”
…
Scripture has much to say about Jesus, but of his maleness there is no commentary. It simply is not significant.
These arguments are a direct extension of the argument that Paul commanded wives to submit to their husbands because anything else would have been unacceptable in the ancient world.
And we need to point out the theological and intellectual poverty of this. In the evangelical egal literature that I have read, the argument runs: “God is called ‘Father’ entirely as an accommodation to ancient culture. We in enlightened times should not limit ourselves to thinking of God in this way. Nevertheless, the Bible does call him ‘Father’, so we should retain that in our devotional and liturgical language.” This is completely illogical, it is intellectually indefensible. The liberals recognised this long ago and now worship God as Father-Mother-parent.
Always interesting to chat to you!
Jereth
BTW Mark, you said that you weren’t aware of everyone who had crossed over to the dark side but you didn’t say who. FYI, here is some material I have access to. Hope it helps.
(My citations from Groothuis above are from Good News for Women)
‘God is revealed through the vehicle of human language, which, in turn, reflects its cultural context. The cultures of biblical times were patriarchal. The man was the central figure in society, and the husband-father was the authority figure as the family’s primary protector and provider… In ancient times, all these traits were more characteristic of men than of women and were summed up in the traditional father role.
Even as Scripture likens God to various animals…—certainly not because God is an animal but because some animals have characteristics that help humanity better understand God—so to Scripture depicts God in terms of roles or attributes associated with men. This is done not because God is male or essentially masculine in nature but because men in ancient cultures possessed characteristics, including authority, that help portray God’s relationships to his people.
From Discovering Biblical Equality pages 290-291
To Jesus’ mother and to the believer (the symbolic mother, the one who bears fruit for God), Jesus is also saying [in John 19:25-27], “Behold your Son—behold me on the cross.” He reinforces this by a command to the disciple, including the reader, to behold his new mother—also Jesus on the cross, about to shed his blood for the new birth of the world.
…
Jesus understood his death, its manner and its effect on the believer in this way (Jn 16:21-22)… The crucifixion is thus presented metaphorically as Jesus’ going away to give birth to
God’s people. Like a woman in labor, he pours out his blood for the life of the world…’
From the IVP Women’s Bible Commentary pages 603-05
If God is not male, why do the biblical writers portray God in male images? … Paul Jewett correctly states, “We construe the masculine language about God analogically, not literally, when we interpret Scripture…” He then draws the obvious conclusion: “Because the language about God is analogical, the personal pronouns used of God—he, his, him,
himself—in Scripture, theology and devotion are to be understood generically, not specifically.
…
Most theologians agree that we ought to avoid understanding Father as designating God as a male deity. Rather, the word is merely the best image available for conveying a
dimension of the divine reality that God wants us to understand…
…
The presence of both maternal and paternal metaphors in the Bible has sparked the use of such imagery in evangelical devotional literature. Hannah Whitall Smith, for example,
writes, “God is not only father. He is mother as well, and we have all of us known mothers… And it is very certain that the God who created them both, and who is Himself father and mother in one, could never have created earthly fathers and mothers who were
more tender and more loving than He is Himself.”
Stanley Grenz, Women in the Church
Am I understanding you correctly? You believe that God is Male? That God, who is a Spirit, has male genitals? Or that somehow maleness is more what God IS than femaleness? Then you don’t believe women are made in God’s image. What you are implying is that women are lesser beings, not fully in the image of the Divine Male.
If not believing God is a big Man up in the sky means I have crossed over to the “dark side,” then I’m glad, and more than glad, to be there. Come on over. We have cookies.
What you are saying also implies that human fatherhood is divine, but human motherhood is merely animal in nature. Even though the Scriptures use motherhood images for God frequently.
I can assure you as a Christian mother, motherhood is more than an animal thing. It partakes of the divine just as much as fatherhood does.
Really, why all this indignation about the supposed heresy of not thinking God is male? That the important thing about the Incarnation was Jesus’ humanity, not His maleness?
Do you believe women are fully human, or not?
1 Peter 2:2 – “As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
This may be lost on us in our modern age of formula and bottles—but God is being depicted here as a breastfeeding mother, and His word as the milk. “Newborn babes” universally obtained their milk from a woman’s breast in those days. And this is just one of many passages that depict God in the act of mothering, giving birth, nursing, and so on.
And yet we falling into a “deep abyss” and “undermining” the nature of fatherhood if we say that motherhood is also part of God’s nature. Do you realize how terribly insulting this is to women, to mothers—and to egalitarians?
Hello again Kristen. Happy new year and all that
I assume that your questions were directed at me?
God (the Father, the pre-incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit) is not a male man.
Jesus however is and always will be a man.
No.
No.
I think that Bruce Ware has addressed this question very helpfully here:
http://www.cbmw.org/Online-Books/Biblical-Foundations-for-Manhood-and-Womanhood/Male-and-Female-Complementarity-and-the-Image-of-God
No, that is not what I said Kristen. The question is not about whether or not God is a male. The question is whether we address him as “Father” or “Mother” (or neither).
It is a heresy to address God as “Mother” instead of “Father”. “Mother God” is not the Christian God, she is another god entirely.
regards
Jereth
Hi Jereth,
Likewise.
Well, I’m inclined to agree, but I am another person who goes around doing what my critics call ‘abstract theologising’ all the time, so of course I would agree.
Look at it this way. To be able to see why an issue about God matters and isn’t just an abstract point for people who like arguing theology requires a lot of work, and some ability, and some knowledge. Not everyone has that, or is in a position to give it that kind of attention. But to spot a problem in morality is more straight forward. I don’t think it is necessarily a sign of the Church’s health that most people can or can’t do the work on the doctrine of God on their own – that is one of the reasons why the Lord Jesus gives the Church teachers, pastors, theologians, writers and the like. The health is whether they do their job in seeing and explaining the issue and whether enough other people listen, learn and act accordingly. It’s partly a gifting issue.
The other way to see it is that it is the weakness of evangelicalism’s strength. Evangelicalism cares about the gospel going forward, and about growing healthy mature Christians and Churces. In the current climate that means it is overwhelmingly more concerned about practical issues than theological, morality than doctine, piety than doctrine. It cares about doctrines when they are either seen to be so fundamental that belief in them is necessary to be a Christian at all, or when they can see practical dimension to that doctrine. That may be (and is) worringly anthropocentric, but it is a weakness that is the flip side of evangelicalism’s desire to actually serve God, and not just talk about him, or even not just focus on perfecting the best worship services of him.
I agree. When I said something like, ‘not in this series’, I meant this four part thing, not the overarching meta-series. We’ll definitely be tackling the issue in some form or other. But the case needs to be made. For every Kristen claiming that all women/mothers/egalitarians are offended by not going down this route, in my experience, I can find two or three egalitarians who will scream ‘slippery slope’ faster than you can say ‘Jimney Cricket picked a peck of pickled peppers, stuck a feather in his hat, and called it supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ three times real fast if you suggest that there is any connection at all between egalitarianism and seeing ‘Father’ as just an attempt to communicate some limited points to a patriarchal culture. As has been claimed elsewhere, people will just say, “That’s like saying the real problem is getting rid of celibacy for priests, let’s just look at each question on its own.” So we’ll get to it, but it seemed like something that we needed to work to, that we couldn’t just start with.
And thanks for the extra quotes. The ones from Groothius don’t surprise me, in light of her article that Kristen linked for me a while back in the first series, but it is disappointing. It looks like I’ll have to do some more fisking of her material when we move to the next phase of this overarching series.
Hi Kristen,
Heh. But our cookies are Triple Chocolate and we get to have them with hot cocoa! Maybe you should come this way?
I am willing to be corrected on this, but I am fairly confident that the mainstream theological tradition has basically held:
1. God is not gendered in any way. Gender has to do with bodies and God is spirit.
2. God is Father and not Mother. ‘Father’ is God’s name, as revealed by Jesus himself who taught us to address God as ‘Father.’
3. God should be addressed as ‘he’ and not ‘she’ or in some way that attempts to avoid grammatical gender, but that that does not imply that ‘he’ is ‘male’ or a ‘man’.
People are free to carp at that as incoherent or to accept it as just some of what happens when God uses human language to reveal himself as they see fit in light of Scripture.
But I think that basically captures the mainstream historical theological practice on this question.
From this, then, maleness is not more than what God is than femaleness, nor are women lesser beings, not fully in the image of the Divine. God’s fatherhood is not gendered in that way.
Further, not all men are fathers, not all men will ever become fathers. And being ‘father’ is something that a man becomes at a point in time, that only shapes who he is in a relatively small network of relationships. Human fatherhood is patterned on God’s, but is a very pale imitation. Athanasius, for example, more readily turns to the relationship of the sun to its light, or a fountain to its stream as a better picture of what God’s Fatherhood means. Among other things, the sun and a fountain have no need of a partner to produce their offspring, human fathers do. To say “God is Father” is to some degree to say that God is the only real Father, human beings are only ‘fathers’ in a fairly shabby and shadowy way.
So this:
Is just wrong, I know of no theologian that has ever said such a thing (not to say one mightn’t be found, but they wouldn’t be representative at all). Everything in human life has its source in God. There is nothing that is ‘merely animal in nature’. Just because God is Father and is not Mother or Parent, does not therefore simply cast motherhood into the outer darkness. Motherhood too has its ground in God, he is the source of everything real and good that we name when we speaking of motherhood or mothers.
Not every aspect of what is good and right in human experience is part of God’s name. That doesn’t therefore mean that it isn’t grounded in God. It’s not such a simple either-or thing as that.
The issue is not to do with thinking that God is not male. It is the denial that God is Father, and changing that to say that what that means is that God is just a little bit like a patriarchal father of the ancient world.
As for saying that important thing about the Incarnation was Jesus’ humanity, not his maleness? Well, we get this problem resurfacing regularly. In the nineteenth century it was the attempt to de-Jewify Jesus and argue that what mattered was his humanity not his Jewishness. This century Jewishness is in, maleness is more suspect, and so that aspect of his particularity is seen to be accidental and not essential, but it’s the same basic problem – abstracting a Jesus from the Bible who isn’t all of who he is in the Biblical texts, he’s just most of it.
concluding
Yes. As did the writers of the Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds, all of whom (more or less), I think, would have classified the things that Jereth quoted as ‘heresy’.
No, I’m very happy to say that motherhood is also part of God’s nature. It has its source in him. What cannot be said is that God is Mother, or God is a Mother, or God isn’t Father, or that calling God ‘Father’ really means saying that ‘God is just a bit like a parent’. “God is Father and is like a Mother (indeed motherhood comes from God)” is quite fine, and captures the biblical data fairly well, I think.
To some? Yes. To all? No. I know women and mothers who take no insult at all in the historic orthodox way of speaking about God, and are among those I know to be most strongly opposed to any feminising of how we speak about God. I remember a friend telling me of how he was talking to a Greek Orthodox women who, like many active educated Orthodox laypeople, was up on a lot of Orthodox and patristic theology, that she was offended by an egalitarian in a recent conference she’d attended trying to diminish in any way at all the idea that God really is the Father. And my friend’s bemusement at her lack of understanding of how evangelicalism works with her impassioned statements that ‘someone has to stop this man from saying such things against God’.
Even among egalitarians, I know of many who are very strong for women’s ordination, who oppose any idea of the Son eternally submitting to the Father, and who will fight for the classic orthodox position on ‘God the Father’ tooth and nail. T.F. Torrance is one of the biggest theological names who would be in that camp. From what I can see Kevin Giles has probably ended up somewhere around here as well.
Those egalitarians I know of who have read in Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers, or at least who have read works of patristic scholars (usually non-evangelicals just explaining the theology of the Arian debates) and digested it, will be absolutely unmovable on this question that God really is ‘Father’ and is not ‘Mother’. And that that, when understood correctly, neither deifies human fatherhood, dishonours human motherhood, or denies the humanity of women or non-father men.
The issue is just more complex than a simple ‘terribly insulting to [all] women, mothers and egalitarians’.
Now, after some consultation with Tony Payne about how these threads have gone in this second series, I am going to do something that is quite foreign to my normal practice but which I think is probably the best way forward for these egal/comp eries. I’m going to rule this conversation ‘off topic’. It’s not what the post was about, and I think the discussions will go better if we tend to stick more closely to what the presenting post was about.
Kristen, feel free to have the last word, as both Jereth and I have said things forcefully in response to your comments. Just try and say it in a way that naturally brings this to an end – focus more on the positives of your position, than what you think may or may not be implied by ours. Just put your take on egalitarianism on this point clearly and we’ll leave this for later for a discussion egendered by some actual posts on the subject.
Hi Teri,
The analogy there, if I’ve understood you correctly, isn’t quite right. I think complementarians do get offended when someone says something like, ‘complementarianism always tends to abuse women’ – because that is a statement about actions, and so logically implies that it is saying that most/all complementarians mistreat women.
That is different from criticising a bunch of beliefs, or a theological system. I can say that ‘complementarianism is based on a poor understanding of how language works’ and not necessarily be claiming that any complementarianism is bad at language and how it works. The system and the individuals who believe the system don’t collapse into it each other quite that directly. I could be good at language and still adopt a position that others think is not grounded on a grasp of language’s possibilities and limitations.
This is heading in far too postmodern a direction for me to be comfortable with it as a way of having discussions here. Yes people speak in generalities. Yes exceptions can be found. Yes any system of classification is only a partial truth, and the same data could be organised in other ways. Yes we often simplify complex positions in order to bring out the point of contention – too much nuancing and a conversation looks more like a series of academic essays. That’s just life; try and do it with integrity and ‘a good heart’, apologise and redraft when you get it wrong.
But to say from that that any attempt to venture a generalisation is personal, and is an indirect characterisation of the people who carry the title is to bring an end to any substantial debate about the ideas. It means that the conversation can be little more than only a personal chat – either angry and attacking, or pleasant and affirming; or that we just find ways to play the ‘I’m more hurt by what you’re saying than you are by what I am saying” card. We all try and position ourselves as the greatest victim in this conversation/debate.
I can say that an argument is dumb without saying the person making it is dumb (almost no-one ever ‘gets’ that, so best to avoid it, but it is the case that very smart people can run arguments with a glaring problem in them). I can say that a view is founded on principles that I think are a terrible basis for theology without saying that the people holding that view are denying Christ, don’t have faith etc.
There is some difference between me the person and the ideas that have gripped me and that have convinced me that they are true. My views aren’t simply my creations as though any criticism of them are a criticism of me – I have an existence apart from them, and they have an existence apart from me. And so each can be criticised without it necessarily carrying over to the other.
Seriously, with all the things that people have directly alleged about conservatives being unable to read, or complementarians and the human rights of women, or even Kristen saying that a certain view is terribly insulting to women, mothers and egalitarians (which is certainly a generatlisation), it is stretching it to say that criticism of a belief system is an indirect criticism of the people who hold it. If you are going to maintain this position, Teri, I’d expect you to be far more active in challenging the generalities made about complementarians directly than you have been to date.
But that’s not really necessary, because we just aren’t going this way. Comments about a belief-system are fine, and everyone can just deal with the hurt that causes in the most godly way they can. Complain to a friend, punch a punching bag, pray for the offender. And then keep the hurt out of your response – don’t try and hurt back in an ‘eye for an eye’ kind of way.
Comments about egalitarians or complementarians or about a specific person’s foibles are not okay.
That’s the basic guidline for this sandbox.
Jereth,
First of all, that is a cultic statement akin to the Jehovah Witnesses. It is well advised to drop it.
Where does Scripture say that Father is a revealed title by which God MUST be addressed? To my knowledge the only title that God told anyone to call Him was YHWH, or I AM. God never complained at being called Eloheim, Jehovah Jirah, El Shaddai or any of the numerous titles humans have given God. Followers did not start calling God Father as a practice until Jesus, because Jesus continually called God Father. And as believers we are Christ’s brothers and sisters.
It seems you make too much of a small thing. Calling God Mother or Father has nothing whatsoever to do with the gender debate. God is neither physically a mother or physically a father. I’m not certain if it was Chrysostom or another of the early church fathers, but one of them made a comment that has been well circulated about the all sufficiency of God. To Chrysostom God is both father, mother, brother, sister, housekeeper and everything he needs. I agree. In God we can find every good emotion that humanity has, every good characteristic, every good attribute that will encourage, correct, direct, heal, etc. God is much more than what we relate to as humans. God is the great I AM, all encompassing.
And BTW I’d stay away from Bruce Ware if I were you as he is definitely traveling toward cultic attitudes about God.
Mark I think you missed the forest for the trees.
The point is that saying that egalitarianism is a grubby interloper is a very very short distance from saying that egalitarians are grubby interlopers. This is not really just a comment about a belief system (which is necessary to have a discussion) it is using charged negative adjectives that deride and ridicule.
I’d like to give you an example but facts are that I generally don’t think in those kinds of terms, so I don’t know that I’d be effective. Let’s see, gender hierarchalism is a chicken KKK. Now on our foums both of those would be corrected and such adjectives not allowed.
And yes, comments and criticisms about a belief system of course are allowable, but not in ‘charged’ derisive adjectives. At least that is my opinion. And opinions used to be a dime a dozen.
Mark, in accordance with your wishes, I will make this my last post on this thread. But I really do not see how I can make my point only about the “positivies” of egalitarianism—that I am not to be allowed to address the statements you and Jereth have made. I feel I must wrap this up by stating where the problem lies, since both you and Jereth have categorically denied that the implications of “God is Father; God is not Mother” are not, “God is therefore male.”
(And Jereth, no rudeness was intended in not addressing you directly; I was, in fact, responding to both you and Mark in my last posts.)
So here’s my final rebuttal on this thread:
These are the two truths that you two have both stated unequivocably:
1. God is not male.
2. The very essence and nature of God is Father; God is not Mother.
Logically, what this does is that it divorces fatherhood, in an ontological/spiritual sense, from physical maleness. If God is not male, and the essence of God is Father in a way that defines Fatherhood, then the essence of Fatherhood is not male.
But you also want to say that in humans, fatherhood is absolutely tied to being male; i.e., those humans who are incapable of being fathers because of being physically female, also cannot be spiritual fathers; that only males can be fathers in any sense.
Further, you want to privilege human (male-only) fatherhood such that anyone who denies that the essence and nature of the genderless God is nevertheless Father (and not Mother) are undermining human fatherhood and therefore, in some sense, injuring the male sex (Jereth made this point, and Mark did not disagree.)
And yet you state that human females are ontologically equal to males, even though they can never be fathers in any sense, not even spiritually (and thus are in some sense divorced from the essence and nature of God, which is Father).
Finally, you want to state that those egalitarians who reject the logical inconsistency of this are falling into a “deep abyss” and you hint that such a position is akin to, if not actual, heresy.
And you want to say that none of this is insulting to women, to mothers, or to egalitarians.
I apologize if I am being too blunt, but I am doing my best to address this logically and not emotionally. Those who do not see the above-stated logical inconsistency as I do, will probably also not see the insult, so I do not take offense at the insult.
I hope you all had a nice New Year’s celebration and I wish you the best.
Hi Kristen,
Well, ‘stating the egalitarian case positively’ was perhaps not the most felicitous choice of words, but you certainly did what I was hoping – you put your response in a way that doesn’t leave Jereth or me going “But that is simply a misunderstanding of what I am saying!” and so giving rise to another round of comments.
I think you’ve done a great job of gesturing at where and how big the disagreement is over what Jereth and I said, and its lack of logical coherence from your view – enough so that any reasonable reader can get a sense of the issue from ‘both sides’.
Going further than that is going to take a much bigger discussion that I think would move us too far off this post, and would reduplicate work that we’ll probably do anyway when it is on topic for the post/s in question.
So thanks, it was a good closing statement to the discussion, in my view – a clear, forceful, well stated articulation of the issues from your side. And I could recognise my position in what you said, even though I’d take issue in how you’re putting aspects of it (which is fine and normal).
Hi Teri and everyone else,
Okay, this is the final line from: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_9/#6919
I’ve called the discussion off-topic, except for a right of reply for Kristen (which she’s now taken). That means no more comments on that issue in this thread, at least in anyway leading on from this conversation – if it somehow naturally springs from a reflection on the post again, then we’ll take that as it comes.
I realise this is a big departure from what I normally do, so Teri’s comment can stand. Any others will be deleted as off-topic.
But on another note, I am a bit tired of sweeping statements about ‘name’ theologians or biblical scholars like the one I’ve just excerpted. Jereth has said things similar at times, but it is almost entirely in the context of him taking the time to offer quotes from the person that then form the basis for his conclusion – as much a comment on the texts as the person IMO.
I think we’ll follow that practice. If people want to criticise Bruce Ware, or J I Packer or Groothius, they can offer a passage or two and ground their comments in that quote. If they think that’s characteristic of the person, they can then say something like ‘and so and so has got form in this area’.
No more global statements about people, give us the quotes and make the case from them. Then globalise from there if you think that’s warranted.
Hi Teri,
No, it really isn’t a short distance IMO. And I think I’m being consistent on this. If you cast your eye back over Kay Fezer’s comment at: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_7/#6727
despite the fact that she formally limits the focus to ‘champions’ of complementarianism, the thrust of her comment is about a sociological analysis of complementarianism that argues that the whole thing follows the patterns of social inequality.
It was a well constructed piece of rhetoric (it was more than that, but it wasn’t less) that, by the measures you are using, was ‘charged’ in a way, not so much to cause ridicule and derision, but opprobation of both the system and those who practice it.
And I think it was ‘fair comment’, and, more than that, was one of the more constructive contributions to the discussion this time around.
Both sides feel strongly about the belief system of the other side. Sure, by and large, we need to keep the temperature down so as to talk. But we need to be honest as well and make it clear in what we say and how we say it that we aren’t all friends having a polite disagreement about something that doesn’t matter much to us.
We love each other (I hope) but many of us despise and have contempt for the belief system of the other side – our dearest wish is that it would lose its grip on people. That needs to be expressed in this debate as well, in as constructive a way as possible.
A bit of rhetoric in the final post (the ninth) of the second series was my gesture that way. And I’ve been fine with gestures by egalitarians in return, including yourself, who, by my observation, are reasonably versatile with such rhetoric – characterising Jereth’s statement as close to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Ware as bordering on cultic (which would be ‘fair comment’ if it flows out of a discussion of some quotes from him, as I’ve said).
Thank you to those who contributed to the various discussions on the threads for the two series.
Among the things I am walking away with from those conversations, are two things relevant to my intentions that I have stated at various times.
First, I think I’m even more convinced that this a topic that needs substantial discussion in this kind of format, so my commitment to move ahead is stronger than it was at the start.
Second, that doing so is going to potentially require a lot of time to do justice to the discussions. It may even require me to find other ways to have discussions than the normal post + thread interaction. (One suggestion I’ve been given is to pick out the ‘best’ one or several comments and make my interaction with them a post in its own right – something similar to what I did with Martin Shields’ concerns about impassibility last year.) Whether I do find another way to make the conversations more manageable for me and more profitable to people who don’t want to wade through 70+ comments, I do have to take note of the time commitment.
So, I think it is quite possible that I won’t continue this series in 2011, as I need to make completing the DPhil the top priority, and cannot return to this topic until I’m sure that is all but finished. If I do return to it this year, sometime in the second half would be the earliest likely date.
As I had made various comments indicating an intention to continue this year, I think now’s a good time to indicate that that thinking has changed, and that my expectations have been pushed back. So watch this space, but watch it with a bit of patience…