When I think about visiting churches, I do like a lot of other people and visit their websites to get a flavor of the churches. I find a variety of characteristics, but the one that is most ubiquitous nowadays is the focus on the person attending or visiting. If their websites are any measure, churches think persons attending are more important than Christ; finding a family or a home or a place where one can have one’s needs met is more important than worshiping and serving Jesus. If I root around a bit in their websites, I often find that the emphasis is right in statements of faith and in vision statements. But a switch is made in the marketing. The motto of one of the two most formative churches in my life, “to know Him and to make Him known,” is replaced with something like “to know oneself and to make oneself whole.”
When I tell people things I’d like to find in a church, a response I’ve gotten fairly often, one that makes me grind my teeth (or want to), is that (quote) there’s no perfect church (close quote). Somehow it doesn’t occur to people who can see my increasingly elderly visage and know I’ve been a Christian a long time that I know there’s no perfect church. Why does desiring certain kinds of attitudes and activities constitute desiring perfection? In none of the things I think should be there do I expect to find perfection. I wonder if that response is a defense mechanism, a way of excusing ignoring important things.
But to return to my first point, one thing I do look for (among others) is a church where Christ is central, not Christians. This isn’t an either/or matter; both must be given due emphases. But if one is to be acknowledged as most important, it is that it’s first of all about Jesus.
About churches that get the emphasis wrong, I wonder how they make the turn from telling potential visitors, in so many words, that their concern is making them comfortable and meeting their needs to telling them they have to take up their cross–to die to themselves–and follow Christ. Or do they make that turn at all?
Talk about bait and switch.
China is now permitting women to have three children. I didn’t understand that this is mandatory, but the reporting made it sound like there is at least pressure on women to have more than the typical one or limit of two). The American journalist said people see in this a challenge to women’s reproductive rights. If it isn’t mandatory, I don’t see a challenge at all.
But apart from that, whence these reproductive rights? Are these rights granted by the government? If rights come from the government, then the Chinese government gets to decide what they are. Do they come from nature? I haven’t studied enough to learn how closely connected or overlapping natural rights and natural law are, but it would seem there must be a strong connection if not an identity. It looks, at least on the surface, that if there is no natural law, then there are no natural rights. And natural law has been rejected in America, at least on the governmental level, but also on the popular level in favor of personal choice. So whence these rights in the realm of reproduction?
A local news story, offered because we have now entered into LGBTQ+ Pride month (the “+” added, I suppose, for any options missed?), was about people claiming to be asexual, meaning that they have no romantic interest in other people. I didn’t think that was new, but I think it was an entrée for the report on a person who claims to be binary, using “they” and “them” as their pronouns.
I know I’m being a party-pooper in saying this, but the person interviewed is either male or female, like it or not, on the biological level. They can believe and say anything they want, but they can’t argue with nature on this one. I think this is a place where we reach the limit of the postmodern belief that reality isn’t fixed and that we can change it by our will and our word. Nature doesn’t care about our philosophies and our politics. It used to be that when people were disconnected from reality, they were thought to have a problem. On such matters as this, we are championed for our boldness. (And isn’t it odd that people on that side of the ethical realm accuse us stodgy old conservatives of being overly fixated on sexuality. If they’d stop coming up with such wild nonsense and insisting we agree with them, we might not have to be so fixated.)
In both of these stories, there is an interesting turn about if not an outright inconsistency. The rights of individuals are so strongly championed that a person can reject nature and declare him or herself as non-binary, and that’s the way it is. But that idea of individual rights doesn’t extend to everyone else, who has to agree with that individual. We backward people have no individual right to reject, at least publicly, that person’s claim to be non-binary. Everyone outside of him/her is captive to his/her choice in the way they speak of and treat him/her.
Now, that seems like the obviously correct way to think to this postmodern generation, given our our disconnection from any fixed reality and the resulting hyper-individualistic freedom of choice. In the postmodern world, metaphysics has been dumped; either there is no fixed reality or we can’t know what reality is, so we (try to) shape it as we want it. And because of our hyper-individualism, I can shape my reality as I desire and you have to go along with it because the individual is supreme. But it isn’t self-evident that this is the correct way to view things. Nature certainly doesn’t always agree (although our attempts to go further than just wrestling the truth out of nature but to actually change it will continue). And if not nature, then it’s simply our choice. Whose choice gets precedence in society?
It seems that Nietzsche was onto something. If truth (statements purportedly about the way things are) is a “mobile army of metaphors,” then what remains is power (which is a problem on both the political Left and Right these days). Is that really how we want to live? We’ve long rejected the notion that might makes right. Do we really want to make it the basis of our social and political lives? And on the individual level, what security can we have regarding our own identity and value? If it’s just my will and word, other more powerful people might insist that their will and word take precedence.
How to address this in society is a real problem. A band-aid, a way to live with this philosophy, isn’t enough. It is a philosophical issue, and the general public has neither the background nor the stomach to think on this level. If there were ever a time when people were needed to translate for laypeople the work of scholars who are countering objectionable beliefs about important matters, it is now.
Quite awhile ago I started a series on women in church leadership/teaching with the expectation of carrying through a study of the egalitarian position from their own writings to a conclusion, in an effort to reevaluate my own (traditional) understanding. I set that aside as I cared for my wife in the late stages of her illness and her passing into our Lord’s presence last summer (2018). Since then, just getting myself back on an even keel and now turning my attention to the next stage of my life, whatever the Lord has for me, has pushed this series way down in my list of priorities. I do hope to get back to it before long. It’s an important matter.
Last fall I gave a broad introduction to a study I was embarking on regarding women in leadership and teaching ministry in churches. Because of various life circumstances, I have been delayed in moving forward into the study itself. I’ve given the series the catchy title, “Forays into the issue of women in church leadership” (interested readers can find the intro below, labeled “Part 1”). Linked below is a Word document with my response to my first reading, Linda Belleville’s contribution to Two Views on Women in Ministry, edited by Stanley Gundry.
I am not presenting my thoughts to start a debate or to proselytize for a particular position but rather so that I’m forced to think the matter through carefully. It is a kind of accountability for myself. Writing helps me to think, and writing that is being posted for public consumption makes me think harder and (try to) write well.
The first blog was posted here in its entirety. However, because WordPress (or at least the theme I use) is not set up to do much formatting unless one delves into the html code, which I am not prepared to do, I am going to insert a link to the original document (in Word format). Comments may be made here.
Note: In the first blog I listed some books I’ve collected to help me think through this issue. Since then I have added Michelle Lee-Barnewall’s Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian.
Forays into women in leadership pt 2
Last November I started a series on women in church leadership which was necessarily postponed due to life circumstances. The next post in that series should appear soon, however.
This is just a brief comment, without in-depth analysis, on what I think are the worst, or among the worst, TV shows being aired: The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (I thought I had posted a comment on this before, but a search doesn’t bring one up; sorry if I’m repeating myself).
There’s a report on Good Morning America this morning about some woman named Becca who was dumped by a man at the last minute on The Bachelor in favor of some other woman. Isn’t that a clue about how (morally) awful a show that is? Eeny, meeny, mine, mo. I’ll take her. No, I’ll take her. Hurt and embarrass someone, and on national TV? Who cares?
What I’d like to know is why Becca was on the show in the first place. Why does anyone appear on the show? Are they emotional masochists? The artificiality of the program is astonishing. A very important relationship is trivialized and turned into entertainment fit for prime time. Divide one’s time between several people within certain time constraints and pick one’s forever partner, with a huge audience watching and expecting something really juicy to be happy about or be enraged over? It’s all about the emotional experience, isn’t it? And on both sides. On the candidates’ side there’s the experience of the glamour of being on national TV, the anticipation of possibly being chosen over others (like being picked by the coolest guy to be on his sandlot baseball team), and then the experience of being accepted or rejected with the tears whichever way it goes followed by all the hugs and condolences. Don’t the candidates know that the odds are stacked against them, being just one out of how many, twelve or so? And on the viewers’ side, there’s vicariously enjoying the glamour and then the anticipation of watching one’s favorite be accepted or rejected. And then these people who “everyone’s talking about” are forgotten, unless they re-appear on the sibling show (like Becca) or are covered in a tabloid magazine.
Frankly, despite all the swooning on GMA, I think viewers don’t give a damn about the people on the show, even though they pretend to. It’s like the final scene in The Truman Show: Yay, he’s free! What else is on? (The Truman Show is still one of the best films on the [postmodern] state of American society.) What viewers care about is their own entertainment and emotional experience.
Simply because of how people are treated, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, in my opinion, are right at or near the top of the most wretched shows on TV (not far behind them is that show What Would You Do?). I don’t know that it’s deliberate. I doubt producers decided they really needed to create shows where they could treat people like commodities and dehumanize them before a big viewing audience. Maybe it’s all just a reflection of the way people already view all such intimate relationships. It’s almost entirely emotions and a sense of one’s own self-fulfillment. I thought you could fulfill my needs, but you can’t. So, bye. Tough luck, Becca. But you have the opportunity to do the same thing to someone else on The Bachelorette, right?
Recognizing this emaciated understanding of a loving relationship should be a good reminder to Christians of what the love of God is really like (and it’s a very attractive thing) and of what romantic and marital love between two people can and should be; namely, primarily a commitment to the well-being of the other person. And it’s a reminder that we have something that people really do want that we can model. This isn’t a point of pride on our part. We love because He first loved us. Just imagine the difference. On the one hand, two people looking first of all after their own needs with some benefit accruing to the other. On the other, two people looking first of all after the other person’s needs, with some benefit accruing to themselves. A covenant of commitment. Christians need to model this, not only for their own good but for the benefit of a society with such a shrunken view.
I’ve heard that a key theme of the new Rosanne show is that families can learn to get along together despite serious differences or a “political divide,” as they put it. Which translated means either that there is nothing truly right or wrong about any of these issues except that believing makes it so (it’s all a matter of perspective, and you have to respect mine) or that knowledge of the truth about such things is impossible to obtain, so let’s all just get along together. Which, on a deeper level, means that our beliefs about such things aren’t really respected as serious attempts to get at the truth; they are subjective preferences.
Except that certain “progressive” beliefs are deemed to be the right ones and they are going to be normalized by hook or by crook.* Which is why they call it a political divide and not a moral divide. It is settled by power in one form or another, not in terms of a moral standard (beyond, perhaps, the moral obligation to live and let live–which applies to “progressive” beliefs, of course, and not the beliefs of, say, bakers whose choice is to refuse to bake a cake for your same-sex wedding).
We all know there are some things (there have to be) that really are either right or wrong and we shouldn’t have to “get along” over them. People doing wrong need to stop. The problem is knowing which ones they are. When there is no shared standard, then some people (apparently) get to be the arbiters of what is acceptable or unacceptable for everyone. The irony is, of course, that the same people who want to fit us into their molds now complained loud and long years ago about conservatives (especially those dastardly Christian fundamentalists) doing the same thing. Americans have been brainwashed or shamed into going along with this “there is no moral truth but you have to respect mine as the right one” nonsense because the political** muscle is on the “progressive” side.
And the beat goes on.
*James Hitchcock gives an interesting account of how this has occurred in the media since the 1970s in his What Is Secular Humanism?
**By “political” I’m not referring to party politics but to the activities involved in the governance of a people, much of which takes place on the social level.
Several Scriptures are used as support for and instruction in Christian apologetics, but none is more common than 1 Peter 3:15: “In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” From the beginning of my experience with apologetics in 1985, that has been the go-to verse for telling Christians that they need to learn apologetics. I have used it myself many times.
I now think that’s a mistake. It isn’t that what Peter’s talking about has nothing to do with apologetics. The problem is equating defense in the New Testament with apologetics.
Think about Peter’s concern. Because Christians were starting to experience persecution, Peter wrote to give instructions about how to respond. In chapter 3 he tells readers how to respond to verbal challenges. This shouldn’t be understood first of all as a situation where people were inquiring about the intellectual basis for the faith. There are several pictures of that in the book of Acts. It was first of all about charges brought by officials who objected to or just wanted to find out about what the apostles and other Christians were talking about. But that surely extended to neighbors who would want to know why Christians were no longer appeasing the civic deities by offering sacrifice and participating in public rituals. The message of Christ was causing quite an uproar (see, e.g., Acts 19:23ff). Jewish officials found it offensive and objectionable, and Roman officials were concerned about anything that disturbed the peace in the realm. Think of Acts 5:27-32 when Peter and the apostles were brought before the high priest, of Paul making a public defense in Jerusalem (Acts 22) and a private defense before King Agrippa (Acts 25-26). In the latter two Paul gave his testimony, and he called it his “defense” (from ἀpologίa and ἀpologéomai respectively).”
This wasn’t a new thing for Peter and the apostles, an unexpected reality they had to deal with. Surely Peter was remembering what Jesus told his disciples:
And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. (Luke 12:11-12)
Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness. Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer [from ἀpologéomai), for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” Luke 21:10-15
Like (on a quite different scale) a mother catching her child doing something wrong and demanding, “Explain yourself!”, the officials, whether Roman or Jewish, wanted an explanation. And if they weren’t satisfied, they didn’t smile at their own intellectual victory; they punished the apostles.
Am I making a brief against Christian apologetics? Not at all. Apologetics provides an important resource for the church. But apologetics isn’t to be made first in general (except, of course, for people who are developing and teaching arguments and evidences and methods). Even if, because of the circumstances, one recognizes the need to go right for arguments and evidences, that isn’t an end in itself; it is for the purpose of bearing witness for Christ. Defense in the New Testament is witness bearing in light of a challenge. As I wrote elsewhere,
New Testament witness bearing and defense are not just confined to merely seeking a verdict about particular claims like the resurrection or Messiahship of Jesus or the fulfillment of particular prophecies. It points to Jesus, and it calls for a decision. The gospel message isn’t just a set of truths to be expounded or defended but a declaration of a person, Jesus Christ, which demands a response. Κηρύσσειν (to proclaim), one of three important New Testament terms having to do with the proclamation of the gospel, also includes the goal of persuasion, but being a witness brings in the idea of reaching a verdict. Is this true or not? And if it is true, it ought to be believed in. When Jesus’ followers are called upon to defend themselves because of their faith in and obedience to Christ, they are to turn those occasions into opportunities to bear witness of Jesus. (“Faithful Witness: Defense in the Context of the New Testament,” available on this site)
Readers might wonder why I am making an issue of this. It might seem to be too fine a point to quibble about. I don’t think it is for this two-sided reason. On the one hand, claiming that Peter is saying we have to learn apologetics (as it is typically understood) can lay an unreasonable burden on Christians to learn more than they need to or are able to. On the other hand, it can make such Christians think they are off the hook with respect what Peter really was after: faithful witness bearing. There are many Christians who won’t have any interest in the discipline of apologetics, nor should they, to any great extent anyway. Sure, it’s good to learn some basic arguments and evidences. It’s like learning first aid. One needn’t learn all or much of the detail of physiology that a physician must know, but some would help. But also there are Christians who aren’t at all intellectually oriented and shouldn’t be made to feel like becoming so is necessary to fulfill the requirements of 1 Peter 3:15. If that were necessary, the church would have died early on. Sure, there are difficult challenges to be faced today, but most Christians don’t encounter them—or few of them, anyway. And there were plenty of challenges in the early centuries too; not only intellectual challenges, but threats to their very lives. But on the other hand, for such believers to skip past the demands of 1 Peter because of their lack of need or ability, they may think they are of the hook with respect to what it really is about. We are not to fear people who challenge us (not only their arguments but they themselves) but are to speak up and say why we have this hope. I take that to be either our objective hope (eternal life in Christ) or our subjective sense of hopefulness. And the reason for our hope is Jesus, not first of all the answers to intellectual challenges. Our duty is to bear witness of him, as Jesus commanded in Acts 1:8. That might be bearing witness on our own initiative, as we reach out to people with the good news. Or it might be in response to someone challenging us about what we’re doing and saying.
So, yes, Christians should learn some basic apologetics just as they should learn at least basic theology (and there are plenty of resources; Lee Strobel’s books are especially good for lay Christians). But they should not feel like they necessarily have to learn apologetics to be faithful witnesses for Christ. In fact, looked at from another direction, I think it’s possible to do a poor job of bearing witness for Jesus by indulging ourselves in a lot of sophisticated arguments and losing sight of him in the process. It can become about the arguments and the apologist more than about Jesus.
To sum up: If in our own contexts we face challenging questions about the faith, we would do well to learn what we can in order to give an answer if we are really interested in reaching the challenger for Christ (and if we think his or her objections or challenges are serious and not just smokescreens). Or at least we can bring someone else in who can answer them, whether in writing or in person (what I suspect Barnabas was doing when he brought Paul to Antioch to address the challenges of the Hellenistic Jews [Acts 11:19-26]). But we must not cause faithful Christians to stumble over Peter’s exhortation to speak up for Christ by laying an unreasonable burden on them. This isn’t just to relieve them of an unnecessary burden. It’s also to remind us that all of us bear the burden of bearing witness regardless of our knowledge of or interest in apologetics. None of us is off the hook.
I read years ago that cynicism is fundamentally arrogant, and I think that’s right. Cynicism says, There’s a problem and I can see it. I can see through all the smoke and bluff and cover-up to what’s really going on. All you people who think everything is fine need to listen to me.
In a Facebook post years ago, I made this brief comment:
Without the (unpopular) doctrine of the judgment of God, ultimate meaning is ripped out of all the “good” things one can do, for there is no good; there is only the likable, the unlikable, and the insignificant.
Notice that I said that there is no ultimate meaning. In an email exchange with an atheist years ago, she acknowledged that there is no ultimate meaning in what we do, but she was happy to live with the immediate, here-and-now meanings that we see in things today; in other words, with what we as individuals count as meaningful (meanings which we may or may not share with others). But if these meanings aren’t connected to transcendent values–ones which are above us, rooted in what is permanent–then at best they are matters of emotion. I don’t mean to trivialize this by labeling it “emotion.” My atheist interlocutor spoke about spending time with her daughter, watching her grow and enjoying their relationship. This kind of thing is more than simply a happy feeling; it can affect one’s entire life and the lives of others. Nonetheless, another less honorable mother might find nothing meaningful, nothing satisfying and worthy of personal investment, in her child. This is an internal matter, internal to the person or persons involved. If nothing eternal is involved, how can anyone criticize the harsher mother? There is no ultimate value to the daughter or mother or their relationship. There is just niceness and kindness now. Granted, these aren’t things to be gainsaid, but they still are limited to the temporal; they are fleeting and will end. This internalism or subjectivity easily devolves into mere feelings or emotions. How is it shared with others? My ideas or beliefs have no hold on others beyond my ability to persuade them to belief them, too. But I can share them as feelings because (perhaps connected to the influence of Romanticism) feelings are what count; they connect with people because they have feelings, too. I don’t feel the same as you do about something, but I know what it is to feel. Maybe this is why what people feel about things is what really matters today. Think about interviews with people after momentous events: the interviewer will almost always get around to (or spend most of his her her time on) how the person feels about what happened. Or think of the how the emotions displayed at certain events are often mentioned. And, by extension, this may be why dissing or offending someone is the great sin of the day. Making someone feel bad is simply not allowed. No one can say that what I choose to do is really wrong in itself; if I count something in my life or some belief as meaningful and valuable, then no one else has the right to criticize me for it. To do so is to be a offensive. Either affirm me or be quiet.
But what if there is ultimate meaning in what we do and say? If there is, then we can connect the things we do in the here-and-now with eternal things; this meaningfulness points to purpose that transcends us. We don’t need to flit from one thing to another, as Americans are wont to do, to chase after the latest “in” thing in search of something that really counts. C.S. Lewis said that maybe we are not able to find the complete joy that we long for in life because we were made for something bigger than this world. I don’t know that the pursuit of joy that is unattainable here proves that an ultimate joy truly exists, but it makes sense of the claim that it does. I would suggest that meaning is on that same level. Even while we deny eternal, ultimate meaning, we chase after it, and maybe that chasing is a clue that there is a meaning that is beyond us. At least it makes sense of the belief that it does.
Long ago, the apostle Peter said that we should be willing to tell people why we have the hope that we do. This isn’t a cross-your-fingers kind of hope. One of my professors long ago told us that hope is to the future what faith is to today. The hope Christians have is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus. We know there is something beyond us, something that makes our hopes in the here-and-now truly meaningful. With that knowledge, we can be people at rest, at peace, not given to chasing after one thing after another in order to find real satisfaction, true contentment; and there is no need to get panicky over the turbulence of our day. We really should be people of hope in our speech and in our lives on the personal and corporate level (in our churches) because there is a true hope that makes sense of all of this, that makes all of this count.
So a mother can find meaning in raising her child beyond how it makes her feel and even beyond the longer term meaning their interaction can have for her child in this life. But to be brutally honest, such meaning will completely die with the death of the universe (if not long before then) if there is nothing transcendent, nothing eternal that will not fade away. If there is something transcendent and eternal, what we put into others’ lives can contribute to their lives and to what they in turn can put into still others’ lives, all working toward becoming conformed to the likeness of Jesus–the one who has life in himself, who is eternal–and to being prepared for whatever lies head of us when death is no more.
Peter’s exhortation to be ready to give an account for the hope that is in us should not cause us to be afraid of such questions, fearing that we won’t remember all those apologetics answers we heard or read. Most people aren’t going to challenge us with the criticisms that apologists deal with.* We have this hope–both subjective and objective hope–because the God of the Bible really exists and because Jesus really rose from the dead and promised that we will too. Hope is rooted in reality, and it can reside deeply in our hearts.
Life here truly matters; it really means something, something greater than us. We can grieve over the circumstances of our day, but not as they do who have no hope. It is all in the hands of a God who is both sovereign and good.
*A real problem for me as someone who was immersed in apologetics for many years was that, because I heard or read these challenges over and over and over, I feared that they would be brought up in any conversation with an unbeliever, and that inclined me to hold back from talking about matters of the spirit with them. On the opposite side, apologists can easily be so focused on challenges that we make them issues when they aren’t for a given person. I still like what my apologetics professor said about this years ago. We should start with the cross and “back into” apologetics; that is, back up and answer questions when posed, and then move back up to the gospel. It should be emphasized with people apologists instruct that the first order of business is the proclamation of the gospel. There’s no need to start trouble by raising doubts in people’s minds through our own fascination with arguments and evidences.
I don’t recall any discussions about the possibility of women being pastors when I was growing up. Either I was too young to be aware, or it was a non-issue for most people in the conservative evangelical sub-culture in which I grew up in the ’60s. I was just breaking into my teens when scenes of women burning their bras appeared on TV. Because I stopped going to church in the mid-70s, the subject was a total non-issue for me until I returned after coming back to the Lord in May, 1980. Even then I only heard scattered comments about it (disapproving, in my circle) until I got to Bible college in the fall of 1982. The regnant view there was disapproving, but at least it was being addressed. Among my many readings in college was Susan Foh’s Women and the Word of God. Her position was that women could certainly be involved in church ministry although not as senior pastors, and always under the leadership of men. I took it as significant support for the traditional view that a woman held it (maybe that was why it was the book assigned on the subject).
Things have changed significantly in evangelicalism since then, so much so that I have expressed here an inclination to stop using the label myself. This isn’t a simple matter, though, since there are aspects of evangelicalism that I still embrace. One of the major changes has been in thinking about the role of women in pastoral ministry (in no churches I’ve ever attended have women not played significant non-pastoral roles in church ministry). A few generations have now graced the earth since my Baby Boomer generation blessed the world with our presence. Beliefs about women in ministry in evangelicalism have changed so much by now that I would bet that most Millennial Christians think it is perfectly acceptable for women to take their places next to men in all aspects of ministry without needing to have male oversight. Attitudes have changed so much that some people on the “pro” side in this debate have adapted the attitude of the victorious. Of course, there is to be no distinction of roles! Overtones of “where have you been?!” and “NObody believes that anymore except for people like John Piper!” are occasionally detected.
What complicates the matter for me–and a significant prompt for beginning this study–is how puzzling I find the traditional position to be (I understand there to be a difference between traditional and complementarian views, but in this post I will use traditional as a label for one side of the debate). There are people (including myself) who read Christian women writers with profit and with a clear conscience but start squirming when a woman ascends the pulpit. And as things stand now, I could not be part of a church with a woman in a position of pastoral leadership. But clearly women can teach men things. I also have no reason to believe that women can’t be good leaders in general. It’s important to interject here a distinction between women teaching and preaching and women being pastors, the spiritual leaders of churches. For on the conservative side there is the position that, while women can’t be pastors, they can teach, but only under the authority of men (I’ll have to delineate the various positions later). So if I look only at the level of human abilities, I don’t know why women can’t be pastors–both teachers/preachers and leaders. But at the same time I have to remind myself (and everyone should agree with this) that God at times requires things I don’t understand and even things I think make no sense. My acceptance of or rejection of a position are not authoritative. And the traditional side seems to have the clear teaching of Scripture on its side. That is why I think egalitarian arguments focused on the abilities of women aren’t at all persuasive. If God has said no, then no it is. The question for me is, what does God say?
So, what’s a Christian who has always held the traditional point of view to do about this? Shall I stick to my gun–guns loaded largely by other people who held to the traditional view and may not have given a fair assessment of the other side? Or shall I out of fear of being considered backward hop aboard the egalitarian bus? I will resist getting swept along with a wave of social change. If the traditional view is not truly biblical but rather comes from misreadings of Scripture and is really just an artifact of an era of improper male domination, then I need to acknowledge it and plant my flag elsewhere (I’m tempted to use the imagery of falling on my sword, but that’s a bit too drastic). If, on the other hand, the egalitarian view doesn’t have a good case from Scripture and sound theology developed by the church over the centuries but rather has been wrongly influenced by a culture not beholden to Christian doctrine, then I will stay where I am. What I can’t be expected to do is to approach this without bias. I wouldn’t expect that from an egalitarian who undertook such a study. One should not easily give up deeply held convictions that one has been convinced have scriptural authority.
One thing I can say for certain (and this is a caution to anyone debating any issue): I will not be swayed by put-downs and comments dripping with condescension nor by the feelings and experiences of people on the egalitarian side. I am not interested in hearing about “stereotyped roles” and “oppression” or even by a woman’s sense that she has been called to ministry. There are plenty of places for people to minister without being in top leadership positions. I have never been in a top leadership position in a church, and even if I wanted such a position, that wouldn’t qualify me to be hold it. Unlike the contemporary American dogma that we can do anything we want to do, there are things we aren’t suited for, and in God’s economy there may well be things we aren’t allowed to do, like it or not. The first book I pulled off my shelf to begin this foray, How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership (ed., Alan Johnson), I put back on the shelf because its primary contribution lies in presenting the personal testimonies of people who changed from the traditional view to the egalitarian view. Even though the testimonies include changed understandings of what Scripture teaches, it also appears to be heavy on the personal experience side. I will read this book eventually since what convinced people I respect (especially NT scholars and theologians) to switch sides interests me and it could help to persuade me one way or the other. But the admixture of personal experiences with biblical considerations can blur the lines between what is authoritative and what is not. I still hold the Bible to be the supreme written authority for the church, interpreted by faithful believers throughout history, so I’m mostly interested in scriptural exegesis and theological reflection.
I am not presenting this and future posts with a view to persuading anyone else in this matter but rather for these reasons: 1) writing helps me to think, and writing for others to read adds a caution to present my thoughts clearly which itself is a prod to thinking well; and 2) my musings might be helpful for others who find all this puzzling but who don’t want to read yet something else arguing one side. I will feel no need to defend my resulting position, nor will I try to persuade anyone else. If I should conclude that the traditional view is correct, some might think I’m just stuck in my paternalistic ways. After all, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks (has anyone ever thought that maybe the proverbial old dog is too smart to learn yet another stupid trick?). If I change my mind, some might think I’ve gone over to the dark side of liberalism or am on my way, tip-toeing on the edge with one foot swinging perilously out over the abyss. But I’ve gotten to the age and to a stage in life where I am beholden on such things to God alone, and I feel no qualms about my ability to follow the arguments and deal with the subject fairly (despite my already confessed bias). I really do want to know the truth of the matter.
Below is a list of the books on my shelf on this subject. This collection may seem rather rag-tag as it consists of books I picked up over the years because I thought this is a subject I really need to address. There may be better books available, but this is what I have to work with. I am sure I won’t read them all, both because I’ll likely become exhausted by the subject before then (it isn’t as though it’s new to me, that I’ve never given it any thought before), and because not being a student with an assigned paper or an exam to take means I can quit when I darn well feel like it. And I’m sure I’ll come across a good deal of repetition. How many (significantly) different things can be said about this?
The list:
M. Lee-Barnewall, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian
B. Clouse and R. Clouse, eds., Women in Ministry: Four Views
S. Foh, Women and the Word of God
R. T. France, Women in the Church’s Ministry
S. Gundry and J. Beck, eds., Two Views on Women in Ministry
E. Howe, Women and Church Leadership
A. Johnson, ed., How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership
R. Kroeger and C. Kroeger, I Suffer Not a Woman
J. Piper and W. Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
I will begin with Gundry and Beck’s Two Views on Women in Ministry. After that, only time will tell.
I hope to post a “part 2” in this series in the near future in which I will give a thumbnail sketch of what I read and my thoughts about it.
For a purpose 