Christian Doctrines

Book Review: “The Uncontrolling Love of God” by Thomas Jay Oord

The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence by Thomas Jay Oord is the kind of book that I would have either intentionally sought out to pick apart or steered clear of a few years ago. Why? Oord unabashedly challenges traditional conceptions of divine providence, especially digging at the wounds of evil to argue that such accounts are insufficient answers to the problem of evil that we face in the real world.

Before turning to evil, though, Oord argues for the establishment of actually random events. That is, events that are not predetermined by anything. This randomness is real, not apparent, and is balanced by laws of nature which are to be read as regularities, not as comprehensive explanations of reality in lawlike terms (43-44). Going along with this, non-predetermined free choice is another factor in the world which must be accounted for in accounts of providence.

A central concept of the book is the notion of “genuine evil.” Oord notes that philosophers tend to distinguish between necessary and gratuitous evils. He essentially labels gratuitous genuine evils. These evils are “events that, all things considered, make the world worse than it might have been” (65). That doesn’t mean there can’t be goods that might come from them; rather, they are events where the actors involved could have chosen something better instead (65-66). Most Christian theological positions are keen to prevent God from being the primary cause of evil or the one predetermining evil, and there are various attempts to avoid doing this. Oord presses the point though, arguing that even having God as a secondary cause for evil, or attempting to portray overriding goods or ultimate goods as somehow overcoming evil is insufficient to adequately respond to genuine evils (chapter 4 on Models of God’s Providence delves into this deeply).

Ultimately, Oord offers an alternate model of providence, which he calls the “essential kenosis model.” As the name implies, this focuses on the notion of kenosis–divine emptying of the divine self or power–for the sake of other. The model holds that God is essentially, not accidentally good. That is, God does not choose good, but rather is good. Along with this, Oord’s position, in contrast with almost every other position of providence, argues that “God cannot unilaterally prevent genuine evil” (167). Such a position, Oord argues, is aligned with views that God cannot do logically impossible actions. On this position, God preventing all genuine evil unilaterally is a logical and actual impossibility. Thus, Oord’s position avoids the difficulty of needing an overriding good for ultimate resolution of good and evil. The palatability of this will vary, but Oord makes a compelling case for his position.

The Uncontrolling Love of God presents a challenge to more traditional conceptions of divine providence. Oord takes the position to the logical extremes, which will likely alienate some readers. For those seeking an alternative to all-controlling views of God and evil, the book will resonate.

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Book Reviews– There are plenty more book reviews to read! Read like crazy! (Scroll down for more, and click at bottom for even more!)

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Two “Historical Studies” chapters in “Women Pastors?” edited by Matthew C. Harrison and John T. Pless -a critical review

I grew up as a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a church body which rejects the ordination of women to the role of pastor. The publishing branch of that denomination, Concordia Publishing House, put out a book entitled Women Pastors? The Ordination of Women in Biblical Lutheran Perspective edited by Matthew C. Harrison and John T. Pless. I have decided to critically review the book, chapter-by-chapter, to show that this teaching is mistaken.

Two “Historical Studies” Chapters

“Liberation Theology in the Leading Ladies of Feminist Theology” by Roland Ziegler

Pless and Harrison’s introduction to this section suggest the chapters included will demonstrate certain claims to be true. Ziegler’s chapter could be intended to support the following-

Claim 2: “Fueled by theological movements that set the charismatic distribution of the Spirit in opposition to an established office, the emerging equalitarianism of the feminist movement, historical criticism’s distrust of the biblical text, and in some cases a pragmatism that saw the ordination of women as a way to alleviate the clergy shortage… many Protestant denominations took steps to ordain women.” (Pless and Harrison, Section II introduction, 107)

Ziegler gives but the briefest historical survey of the origins of feminist theology and liberation theology. The point of the recent-ness is important, because Pless and Harrison claim in their historical section introduction that ordaining women is a novelty in the history of the church. As such, the authors must be at pains not to trace the lineage of ordaining women back too far, lest it not be such a novelty. Unfortunately, the author of the previous chapter already falsified that claim, noting that women were ordained in the earliest times of the church. The internal inconsistency of this collection of essays continues to pile up.

Anyway, Ziegler himself notes the origins of feminist theology reach back into 19th century (138), though he fails to cite any specific examples. Nevertheless, he asserts that feminist theology only “became visible” in the 1970s, thus supporting the “novelty” claims of Harrison and Pless. The 19th century is when we can find the origins of the LCMS itself, though. If novelty is such an argument against the truth of something, would these pastors also argue the LCMS is a “novel” development in the history of the church? Doubtful.

Ziegler moves on, dividing feminist theology into a somewhat arbitrary “radical” and “evangelical” segmentation. Then, over the course of two pages, he traces the “method” of feminist theology (notably, all from just one author). Then, he outlines various alleged beliefs from feminist theology, whether about its doctrine of God or Christology. Again, one author’s work looms large here, though a few others are cited.

The conclusion Ziegler offers is basically just that Confessional Lutheranism cannot accept feminist theology. But none of this supports the claim that the ordination of women directly arose out of the streams of feminist theology he traces. No attempt is even made to show that connection. Liberation theology, briefly referenced and defined at the beginning of the chapter, makes no impact on the rest of the chapter. It’s not clear to me at all why the chapter even attempts to cite both liberation and feminist theology, given the focus is entirely upon the latter. Readers looking for support for Harrison and Pless’s theses will find basically nothing here. It’s just a very limited look at (largely one author’s perspective on) feminist theology and then a rejection thereof.

“Forty Years of Female Pastors” in Scandinavia by Fredrik Sidenvall

Sidenvall asserts that because of women pastors, “it is impossible to proclaim any truth based on Scripture in our church” (154). With rhetorical flourish, he refers to women pastors as a form of “spiritual terrorism” (ibid). Most of this chapter is just that: rhetorical flourish. Sidenvall knows his audience will be people who agree with him, so throwing out one-liners to the crowd for applause takes up a great deal of the chapter.

The chapter turns to a short historical overview of how women’s ordination happened in Sweden. It all began, of course, with giving women the right to vote (154). This nefarious practice [my words, but not off tone for the chapter] led to liberalism taking hold. A neo-church movement then arose which led to an orthodox pushback. But then, the state appointed an exegete “who, though far from having any position in the faculties, had the qualifications to produce the answers the politicians wanted” (156). And what did the politicians want!? Women pastors! Or… something. The political pressure put on the church meant the church caved. So goes Sidenvall’s story. The facts he shares speak a slightly different tune, as he complains about the democratic organization of the churches, which thus allowed theology to flow with the times (157).

The rest of this historical survey holds up the tiny confessional remnant as a kind of heroic effort against a liberalizing church, apparently making one of the confessional leaders the “most hated person in Sweden” (162). Again, this rhetorical flourish plays well to those in agreement, but it seems little more than lionizing on the outside. Finally, Sidenvall turns to the impact of ordaining women, which includes stories of “horrifying… psychological torture” happening to those who are against women pastors going to “pastoral institutes of the Church” (165). Sidenvall ends on a hopeful (for him) note: Perhaps there will even come a day when the culture as a whole will find itself in chaos after having experimented with the roles of gender and deconstructing family, and there will be a desperate need for change” (166). This hopeful (he uses the word hope) message is alarming, showing a pastor genuinely hoping for societal chaos, breakdown, and turmoil. Rather than praying for peace, he hopes for destruction.

The chapter, of course, does basically nothing to demonstrate the claims Harrison and Pless said would be shown by the chapters in this section. And this chapter ends the section. My previous post noted how the chapter actually contradicted Harrison and Pless’s claims on a number of points. These two chapters basically do nothing to advance them. And that’s it! There’s nothing left. What we’ve been offered is an oddly terse summary of feminist theology (with the very briefest gloss of liberation theology at the front), and a rhetoric filled look at women pastors in Sweden followed by a hope for societal chaos. How does this support the claim that women pastors aren’t or should not be ordained? I’m unsure. It’s those opposed to them here who are hoping for destruction.

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Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Book Reviews– There are plenty more book reviews to read! Read like crazy! (Scroll down for more, and click at bottom for even more!)

Interpretations and Applications of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35– Those wondering about egalitarian interpretations of this passage can check out this post for brief looks at some of the major interpretations of the passage from an Egalitarian viewpoint.

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Eternal Conscious Torment, Degrees of Suffering, and Infinite Punishment

One argument for affirming Eternal Conscious Torment (hereafter ECT) is that it allegedly makes more sense of divine justice.* So, for example, the argument is that awful dictators like Stalin or Hitler being simply executed by God (such as in some views of Conditionalism) is unjust, but rather their punishment must be much more severe in order to satisfy justice. To rework ECT and allow for a more palatable sense of justice, the concept of degrees of punishment is sometimes introduced, such that those who did not commit great atrocities suffer less than those who did. Another argument for ECT is that because God is infinite and God is the wronged party when creatures sin, those finite creatures must suffer infinite punishment for justice to be served. Below, I’ll argue that these arguments related to ECT fail.

Degrees of Punishment

Intuitively, it seems unjust that someone who say, did not come to belief in Jesus Christ due to not hearing the Gospel proclaimed have the same level of punishment in eternity as someone like Stalin does or someone who intentionally misleads people about Christ. Thus, the argument goes, to preserve that sense of justice, there are degrees of punishment in hell. Instead of debating the merits of that argument, I’d like to highlight a significant problem for the ECT position on this view. Namely, ECT does not, in fact, allow for degrees of punishment on the basis of it being eternal.

Eternity is a long time. It is infinite. Defenders of ECT are adamant: this punishment goes on forever, without end. However, once one introduces the infinite into real life situations, such as eternal conscious torment, some difficulties appear. To explain, examples like Hilbert’s Hotel can help explain some of these situations. In Hilbert’s Hotel, there are infinite rooms which are all full with infinite people. But, alas, a guest would like to check in! No problem, Hilbert just moves every guest down one room, thus making room for another guest! It sounds paradoxical because it is. That’s not how things in the real world seem to work. Nothing truly seems infinite.

For defenders of ECT, hell is infinite. Let’s say we have two people in ECT’s view of hell. One, Jill, has a degree of punishment significantly smaller than that of Joseph Stalin. Let’s say that Jill’s suffering is only 1/1000 that of Stalin. Now, to determine how much suffering any individual suffers, one can multiply the amount of suffering by the amount of time they’re suffering that amount. But infinity multiplied in such a fashion remains infinity. In both Jill and Stalin’s case, that amount of time is infinite. Thus, their total suffering is equal, because the quantitative suffering they receive moment to moment ultimately multiplies to be an equal, infinite amount of suffering. The aggregate suffering which each endures is infinite. All of the unsaved, regardless of who they are or what actions they did in this life, ultimately suffer an equal amount: infinitely.

This means that the argument about degrees of punishment related to ECT fails, because all of the lost suffer the same ultimate fate: infinite suffering.

Different Infinites

It is true that there are different kinds of infinities in math. However, those differences aren’t relevant in this case for a few reasons. One reason is that no individual’s suffering is infinite at any given moment (this is important, as we will see in the next section). That is, we can quantify one’s temporal suffering, say, on a range of 1-1000. Because of that, the calculus of infinites doesn’t change here. Though there are different kinds of infinite, the degrees of punishment being discussed here are not–and cannot–be significant enough to impact that ultimate amount of aggregate suffering in a way that makes the infinites mathematically discernable.

The other problem is that mathematical proof can show that the different type of infinites don’t matter in the case of ECT. See the Appendix below.

Infinite Suffering and the Justice of an Infinite God

Another argument in favor of ECT is that, because one has wronged an infinite being, the punishment must be infinite. If I’m right about the above problem for ECT, ECT succeeds at providing infinite aggregate punishment, but only at cost of undermining any possibility of degrees of punishment. But the fact that it is only aggregately infinite yields another problem: no finite being actually suffers an infinite amount, which undermines another argument for ECT.

Humans are finite–this is a given and indeed is part of the proponent of ECT’s argument for needing an infinite punishment for wronging an infinite God. However, because humans are finite, they are incapable of suffering, at any given moment, an infinite amount. So, while their suffering will be an aggregate or ultimate infinity, given the infinite time of eternity, at no point in time can one say “Stalin has suffered infinitely.” The reason for this is that, at any given moment in eternity, the amount of suffering would still be finite, having not yet reached an infinite amount. For every given moment, t, there is another moment, t +1, that would yield more suffering.

What this means, then, is that no one in hell, at any given moment, has suffered or will have suffered infinitely (excepting the abstract ultimate or aggregate eternity). But if God’s justice can only be served by meting out infinite suffering to finite creatures, then God’s justice is never satisfied, for all such creatures doomed to infinite suffering must continue to suffer without ever reaching the actual infinite amount of suffering. Therefore, the argument in favor of ECT from God’s infinite justice fails.

Addendum: Infinite Life in Christ

Another outcome of my reasoning is that degrees of reward in heaven must ultimately be the same as well. Thus, any view which deems it necessary for there to be varying degrees of eternal bliss faces the same difficulties as ECT does, for all of the saved will experience infinite bliss. Therefore, views of eternal rewards which rely upon infinite rewards fail.

*Interestingly, the opposite is also often held by those who argue for positions apart from ECT.

Appendix: Mathematical Proof and Infinite Suffering

This mathematical proof was made by Jonathan Folkerts, a Physics Doctoral Student.

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Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Down with Millenarianism- Reconstructing Faith

There are theological stances that are worth making standards of faith. Increasingly, one’s view of the “millennium” is becoming one of the stances that schools, seminaries, universities, and church bodies are making a standard of faith. I cannot emphasize this enough: this is a terrible mistake.

When I was getting my graduate degree, I signed off on a doctrinal statement with reservations for the school I was attending. That statement, at the time, allowed one to disagree with the school’s position (premillennial dispensationalism) so long as they were willing to learn about that position. I was and am Lutheran and hadn’t learned much about any endtimes position, so was perfectly willing to agree to learn about their own teachings on the topic. That school’s statement of faith has hardened on eschatology, to the point where it now seems to imply that their own particular brand of premillennialism is one of those make or break, in or out views related to sound Christian teaching. It’s not. 

One thing that immediately struck me as I was learning about the eschatological position of millenarianism more generally (reading some multiple view books, for example, to try to understand the different positions) was that the supposed plain and simple reading of the text I was told led to premillennial dispensationalism strangely yielded an untold number of divergent charts, timelines, and theories about exactly how it would all play out. One author was absolutely certain some events would happen in a seven day period, while another would say it would take place over 7 years, and another would have a timeline showing how the 7 days were correct but that they were not consecutive days. It was bewildering, coming from an outside perspective, trying to even understand the basics of why anyone would hold to such a view. Surely, if one’s view of eschatology and even the timeline of events of Revelation (usually borrowing selectively from parts of the Old Testament to bolster one’s case) is the clear reading of Scripture that anyone who was being honest about the Bible should come to, it shouldn’t be the case that basically every single adherent of the position would have slight or major differences in something as simple as when a major event should occur.

Of course, logically, divergence of opinion does not necessarily entail that a position is wrong or unclear. However, on the face of it, if someone makes a claim that something is clear and simple, and all the evidence at hand suggests that virtually no one can come to agreement on what this clear and simple fact means, then there seems to be very good reason to doubt that the initial claim of clarity is correct. And this, in part, is why I think we need to say “Down with milllenarianism.” Look, I have no problem with someone who wants to read about rapture theories or make some extensive timeline in which they splice a verse from Daniel into a prediction from Isaiah in order to clarify what sort of military hardware might exist in the endtimes. Go for it! But the problem is when people insist that everyone else must also do the same or else they’re rejecting God’s Word–that’s when it needs to be cut off (if not before). Here are some reasons I think we ought to be extremely skeptical of basically any form of millenarianism.

1. Millenarianism is unnecessarily divisive.  The fruit of the Spirit does not seem to include divisiveness. Moreover, it seems like millenarianism is producing “bad fruit” if it means that churches and people are splitting when they need not be.
2. The forms of eschatology united with millenarianism are fairly recent innovations. In one theology class I took (I can’t remember which), the professor would often say that if some aspect of theology is new, it’s probably heretical. While it’s true that theological innovation continues to happen, when an entirely new way of reading portions of Scripture comes onto the scene that insists on being the one true teaching about the end times, we ought to be highly skeptical. While attempts are made to tie premillenialism to early church theology (see the Wikipedia page on premillennialism, for example, which humorously refers to Irenaeus as an “outspoken premillennialist”), these attempts are misguided and tend to read views back onto historical figures that they did not have. Shared theological statements on eschatology does not mean that an historical figure is a premillenialist. Premillennialism is a system of thought that makes numerous claims, and attempting to ground it in early church history either makes one confused or dishonest.
3. Millenarianism reads Scripture poorly. Attempting to go through today’s headlines and find where they might be shoehorned into Scripture is effectively the exact opposite of how we ought to approach applying the Bible to modern times. Any number of books on eschatology, particularly those which attempt to elucidate the exact events of the supposed “Millennium,” do this constantly. Moreover, most forms of Millenarianism insist upon reading prophetic literature “literally,” despite overwhelming evidence that these writings were not intended to be read in that way whatsoever. 

I think I could probably continue this list for quite a while, and each of these points will probably be endlessly debated, but this is the core of my objection. Millenarianism is divisive, a poor reading of Scripture, and suspect given its theological history. 

I’ve written before about how I’m reconstructing faith. For me, a complete rejection of millenarianism is part of that. It is important to take God’s word seriously, and I think it’s time to take it seriously enough to reject the poor readings that most forms of millenarianism require. Insisting on reading the Bible in a way that it was never intended is to do damage to the word of God. 

Links

Reconstructing Faith– Read other posts as I search for truth and navigate the messiness that is faith.

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The Billy Graham Rule is a Capitulation to Secular Society

Put most succinctly, the “Billy Graham Rule” is a practice for Christian men in which they live by the moral stricture of never being alone with a woman who is not their wife. This means that Christian men who hold to this rule will not, for example, give a woman a ride home from a meeting. Many interpret the rule in such a way as to mean any one-on-one meeting between a man and woman. This interpretation would even preclude the possibility of a man meeting a woman for coffee in a public space.

The Billy Graham Rule has been criticized for many reasons. Some have argued that the Billy Graham Rule unnecessarily targets women as being universally “seductresses.” Others have argued it objectifies women, making them nothing more than a foil for men. Still others argue that the rule is inherently sexist because it targets women specifically for exclusion. Distressingly, many have pointed out that the Rule makes certain work relationships impossible, because one-on-one meetings can be required between supervisors and subordinates. While I think each of these arguments has value, I want to make my own argument against the rule. Namely, the problem with the Billy Graham Rule is that those who practice it are, in the name of alleged Christian values, in fact giving in to a complete capitulation to non-Christian thought patterns.

The message that is given in our culture is one which pushes the necessity of male-female relations being inherently sexual. On television shows, time and again, men and women who are “just friends” end up together. People who are dating other people start hanging out, they discover a rapport, and the message that is delivered is something akin to “Hey, they’re so good together because they can talk about X, Y, and Z! So now they’re dating.” The same thing plays out in many, many books. Men and women who start as friends inevitably start to wonder about the possibility of dating and often end up together. The message is pushed time and again: men and women can’t be just friends. Even the sitcom entitled Friends features these relationships happening. Secular society states the message loud and clear: men and women who get together one-on-one or who are friends will end up dating or at least one of them will develop feelings for the other.

The Billy Graham Rule presents an attempt to counter to this non-Christian message. It does so by undercutting the scenarios presented by simply making it impossible for a simple one-on-one chat over coffee or a ride home because it’s raining to develop into romantic or sexual feelings. But in doing so, it presents a solution to a problem that itself is what Christians ought to be confronting. Thus, among other possible problems with the Billy Graham Rule, it must be challenged on the front that it cedes to non-Christian society the possibility of male-female relations that remain Godly outside of marriage.

Rather than giving in to the message in secular society that men and women cannot hang out one-on-one without developing romantic or sexual feelings, Christians can offer a better way, a way that embraces the full humanity of both male and female. Men and women are told to submit to each other out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21). This mutual submission is paired with a radical equality in which there is no male and female in the body of Christ (Galatians 3:28). The very Word of God calls us to challenge the secular message that undercuts male-female relations and reduces them to mere sexual/romantic endeavors. Instead, we are to acknowledge our mutuality and our equality.

So go ahead men, give your women colleagues rides home after meetings. Go out for coffee to talk over a tough time. Do these things as a challenge to secular society and as a witness to the goodness of God–a God who calls us to mutuality in ways that only Christ can demand.

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Book Review: “Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts” by Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett’s Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts is a major study on the question of how women and men are to relate to each other according to the Bible. Bartlett approaches the question from a more judicial approach, using his experience as an arbitrator as well as his background in theology to shed light on the biblical texts.

The book is more than 400 pages of text and it is filled to the brim with exegetical insights. The first chapter is about tradition and unity; the second explores 1 Corinthians 7’s implications for marriage and male-female relations; the third interprets Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5; the fourth focuses more closely on Ephesians 5; the fifth examines what Genesis 1-3 has to tell us about men and women; the sixth looks at 1 Peter; the seventh through the eighth focus on 1 Corinthians 11; the ninth and tenth look at the meaning of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and its place in Scripture; the eleventh through the thirteenth are about 1 TImothy 2; the fourteenth surveys the biblical evidence for women leaders; the fifteenth asks about women elders in light of 1 Timothy 3; the sixteenth and final chapter brings the conclusions together and offers a way forward. Appendices explore methods of biblical interpretation, arguments against mutual submission, uses of the Greek word authenteo, the structure of 1 Timothy 2:12, interpretations of 1 Timothy 2:15, shortcomings in complementarian readings of 1 Timothy 2, and translation issues.

Bartlett begins with a chapter on “revising tradition, seeking unity” in which he looks into how these issues have become as divisive as they are alongside the development of various views. Here it is particularly of interest that Bartlett spends some time arguing that the “complementarian” view is not the traditional view of the church. It is demonstrably the case that complementarianism is not, in fact, that traditional view, despite many of its proponents claiming that title. Bartlett shows that the traditional view, in fact, viewed women as ontologically inferior to men. Woman, on that view, was by nature inferior. By contrast, Jesus explicitly went against his cultural conventions and elevated women throughout the NT. Additionally, modern complementarianism at least claims to support the equality of men and women, itself a direct contradiction to the traditional view.

1 Corinthians 7 is extremely important to the questions related to male-female relations. Bartlett notes that this chapter gives the only explicit details about how decisions are to be made in marriage. Despite the clear importance of this passage to the questions at hand, then, it is curious that so few complementarians offer thorough exegesis of the text. Bartlett notes the various qualities of male-female relations brought to the front in this text, including that they have equal duties in the marriage bed, equal authority to the other partner, the same advice to both widowers and widows, same restrictions on divorce, same rule about unbelievers for men and women, the spiritual impact of the spouses on each toher, the same advice for engaged persons of either sex, the same advice for married/unmarried persons of either sex, and more (25-26).

1 Peter finds that husbands are to give honor in the same way as wives are to do so. English translations may obfuscate the mutuality of the relevant passages, but in 1 Peter 3:7 there is a clear wording that parallels Peter’s other use of the same notion, thus leading to the conclusion that the honor/respect that many complementarians so often attribute only to the male side of the relationship is mistaken. Bartlett challenges egalitarians to see that there are specific biblical obligations for husbands to wives that he says are “asymmetrical” and thus not something wives must do. Specifically, the concept of self-sacrifice, argues Bartlett, is something husbands are called to do in marriage (62-64). His argument here is indeed challenging, but one might counter that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence–having “asymmetry” in this specific instances does not imply asymmetry in function with certainty.

Bartlett’s careful exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 deserves a thorough read. Essentially, he notes the various unjustified conclusions from word studies people have drawn from this text. Additionally, he notes problems with Trinitarian theology as taken from the text. The question of what exactly is the “veil/symbol of authority/etc.” looms large, and Bartlett makes a convincing case for reading these passages as referencing sources and hairstyles (143-148). Additionally, he argues that the reading of “a woman ought to have authority over her head” is to be preferred because it avoids major pitfalls of rival views (148ff). It both goes along with Paul’s context in which he specifically mentions women praying and prophesying and also fits in with the concepts related to “source” in the passages.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is one of the best known passages in this debate, and Bartlett makes a convincing case, going along with several other scholars, that this text is, in fact, an interpolation that was not in the original text. This is due to both internal and external evidence, such as preserving the unity of thought in the letter, questions about what the verses are supposed to be referencing, and numerous textual evidences related to the floating of the text in different locations as well as marks that indicate it is likely an interpolation.

1 Timothy 2 is another major section of the book, and Bartlett does a service by laying out the context of the text in great detail. There is little doubt that 1 Timothy was written to discuss false teachings and false teachers, with numerous mentions throughout the letter as well as in 2 Timothy of these problems. Bartlett, however, goes more deeply into the context and uses primary sources to note that it appears as though the letter is referencing astrology specifically in numerous places and that the false teaching is related to sorcery/astrology. This puts 1 Timothy 2:9-12 contextually in a discussion of wealthy women with ungodly conduct who should learn to do good works and learn in full submission to God. The nature of the letter as a periodical sent for a specific purpose must not be ignored.

A survey of women church leaders leads to numerous examples of women in various leadership roles in the church. This leads into a discussion of 1 Timothy 3 and whether women may be elders. English translations have mangled these verses in a number of ways, adding male pronouns prolifically where there are none. Additionally, interpreters have failed to take into account that the list of qualifications parallels qualifications Paul explicitly gives for women throughout the letter as well (318-319).

Bartlett ends the book with a call for Christian unity in spite of sharp disagreements on the place of men and women in the church and alongside each other.

If there is one point of critique of I have for Bartlett’s work, it is the occasional uncritical acceptance of anecdotal evidence in questions of modern application. Nowhere is this more clear than in Bartlett’s discussion of the alleged inherent differences of men and women on pages 82-83. Here, Bartlett chides egalitarians for being “sometimes shy of acknowledging innate differences between men and women” (82). What evidence does Bartlett offer for his own perspective, that some differences beyond child-bearing are “innate”? He offers a journalist’s comment from a game show in the UK, who, in trying to offer a good reason why two all-male teams should be the best representatives for a quiz show, offered the example of her husband who arranges his books in alphabetical and chronological order, and whose “proudest boast is that while on holiday in North Wales in 1974, he won a hubcap identification competition. Who could compete with that? Who would want to?” (82-83). It is honestly difficult to fathom how this single anecdote can be taken seriously as an example of alleged innate differences between the sexes. [Edit: The author contacted me and let me know this was intended as a joke–a possible cultural miss on my part not understanding the joke. I’ve made a correction in the rest of this paragraph.] He also offers a footnote referencing a study that argues for hard-wired differences in how male/female brains have differences. I haven’t read that study, so I can’t comment on it specifically. Again, this is a minor complaint in a massive text, but it seemed out of place and worth commenting on.

Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts is a monumental achievement. It sets standards for rigor as well as for Bartlett’s attempt to find unity in Christ among such hotly contested issues. Anyone who is truly interested in engaging in the questions related to women in the church and home from a Christian perspective will find this book a must read. Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of the book for review by the publisher. I was not required to give any specific kind of feedback whatsoever.

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Book Reviews– There are plenty more book reviews to read! Read like crazy! (Scroll down for more, and click at bottom for even more!)

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Bible Verses Edited for Eternal Conscious Punishment

The Bible has a lot to say about the final end of both the redeemed and the lost. It’s often said that the Bible is extremely clear on eternal conscious punishment–as though this is just read of the pages of Scripture and delivered as a whole doctrine to us. I have taken the liberty here of looking at a number of well-loved and well-known passages (and some lesser loved and known) through the lens of eternal conscious punishment, editing them as needed to actually support the allegedly biblical doctrine of eternal conscious punishment. Edits to the verses are in italics, to make it clear where editing has occurred.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believed in him should not have eternal life[the bad kind], but have eternal life [good kind].

Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is eternal life [bad kind], but the gift of God is eternal life.

Matthew 10:28

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot make eternal the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can make eternal both soul and body in hell.

Revelation 20:13-14

The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is eternal life.

Psalm 9:17

The wicked go down to eternal life, all the nations that forget God.

Matthew 25:46 (The Sheep and the Goats)

“Then they will go away to eternal life, but the righteous to eternal life.”

2 Thessalonians 1:9

They will be punished with everlasting life and shut out from the presence of the LORD and from the glory of his might…

Jude 1:7

In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They still stand today because they were not destroyed and serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

Psalm 37:8-11

Conclusion

Eternal conscious punishment is not a “literal” reading of Scripture, nor is it simply read off the pages of scripture. To affirm it, one has to effectively redefine the meaning of “death” and other words constantly throughout the Bible. Generally, this requires the one teaching eternal conscious punishment to turn the word “death” into “eternal life,” for they believe that the lost are given eternal life, just a kind that involves punishment.

 

“Women in the History of the Church” by William Weinrich in “Women Pastors?” edited by Matthew C. Harrison and John T. Pless -a critical review

I grew up as a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a church body which rejects the ordination of women to the role of pastor. The publishing branch of that denomination, Concordia Publishing House, put out a book entitled Women Pastors? The Ordination of Women in Biblical Lutheran Perspective edited by Matthew C. Harrison (who is the current President of the LCMS) and John T. Pless. I have decided to take the book on, chapter-by-chapter, for two reasons. 1) I am frequently asked why I support women pastors by friends, family, and people online who do not share my position, and I hope to show that the best arguments my former denomination can bring forward against women pastors fail. 2) I believe the position of the LCMS and other groups like it is deeply mistaken on this, and so it warrants interaction to show that they are wrong. I will, as I said, be tackling this book chapter-by-chapter, sometimes dividing chapters into multiple posts. Finally, I should note I am reviewing the first edition published in 2008. I have been informed that at least some changes were made shortly thereafter, including in particular the section on the Trinity which is, in the edition I own, disturbingly mistaken. I will continue with the edition I have at hand because, frankly, I don’t have a lot of money to use to get another edition. Yes, I’m aware the picture I used is for the third edition.

“Women in the History of the Church: Learned and Holy, But Not Pastors” by William Weinrich

First, the subtitle of this chapter leads us to some expectations. Minimally, I expect Weinrich to offer a definition of “pastor” that can be established from the Bible. Second, I expect Weinrich to firmly establish that the many, many, many women in church history and the Bible who occupied several roles in leadership did not occupy that office that he ought to define: the pastor. This means we need a very clear definition of what it is to be a pastor so that we can say person A is a pastor, and person B is clearly not. So, for example, if “pastor” means “someone who preaches sermons in worship,” I expect the author to establish that definition in the Bible, and show that women did not do that and that men did. I want to reiterate the section introduction for this and following chapters made a number of far-reaching claims about women, pastors, and church history. I have written on those claims here, so we can evaluate whether this and other chapters establish them.

After a very brief survey of a few books about women in church history, Weinrich starts the chapter off by going through different things women did do in the church. He offers a brief look at the ministry of deaconess which developed over time, especially in the east (110-112). The deaconess was “an ordained member of the clergy” (112). A few individuals are surveyed as well. In more modern times, he notes that Deaconesses operated in a number of functions, especially in the Anglican church (113-114). Then, Weinrich offers a short look at women’s contributions to the intellectual and literary heritage of the church. This section includes a look at the hymnody of the church and how women have written much of them. “Christian women have exercised spiritual power in many ways,” notes Weinrich in the next section, noting women as martyrs and their prayerful power in church history. He notes prophetic figures in the early church (121-122) and through the Middle Ages. Here is one of the few parts in these sections where Weinrich makes an effort to show that though these women did all these wonderful things, they weren’t fully included in leadership. He writes, “…it is doubtful whether one can speak meaningfully of the ‘egalitarianism of the double monasteries’…” apparently because “the abbesses had no espicopal power and no power to excommunicate or to administer the sacraments” (123). Protestantism has a rich history of women of faith as well, including women preaching and being involved in outreach, making colleges for the training of pastors, and the like (see esp. his discussion of the Wesleyan tradition on 125).

It is not until the next section of the chapter that Weinrich turns his argument around. Having noted that women were involved in services of prayer, charity, pastoral roles such as helping the widows or even having the “office” of widow, that women have deeply influenced and shaped the theology of the church through their writings of both theological treatises and their hymns that continue to teach the laity and guide worship, that women were involved in religious orders in extraordinary ways and that their spiritual power and administration is to be lauded, he now decides that women, though, ought not to be pastors. Why the turnabout? Well, Weinrich puts it: “until the very recent past, the ‘office’ of teaching and of the sacramental ministry, with the jurisdictional powers this implies, has been reserved for men.” The snarky side of me here would like to quote Rev Tevye “Fiddler on the Roof” and say we have now found the reason: “Tradition!” Indeed, Weinrich even notes “anomalies” throughout church history in which women did occupy these roles, but they’re relegated to “anomalies” apparently because they don’t match the tradition Weinrich prefers to enforce.

Weinrich goes on, quoting people in church history who used 1 Timothy 2:12 to restrict women from teaching. He also once again allows the ugly head of Gnosticism to take over, arguing that it is because of the Gnostics (here, as in the chapter on Gnosticism, apparently categorized as a single, holistic unit despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that women were originally allowed to be teachers or ministers. Weinrich then surveys a number of other instances throughout church history in which women did serve in sacramental ministry or teach with an eye for showing how often it was decried by others in the church. Once again, the echoing cry of “Tradition!” appears to be the response to whether women may be allowed in this function. He ends with a note that “It has been only in the last half of the twentieth century that the major Protestant church bodies have begun to accept women as regular preachers and pastors” (134-135). Again, apparently because this does not match with the traditions in the church, we are to accept on face value that women ought not to occupy these roles.

At the beginning, we asked whether Weinrich would define the role of pastor. The closest he gets is to say that it is the “office” of teaching and of the sacramental ministry. The definition is vague enough so as to be effectively useless, particularly when he has already noted that women served in prophetic roles, as teachers through hymns and theological treatises, occasionally as serving the sacraments (though this was denounced–tradition must get its say), caring for the poor, founding colleges that trained pastors, becoming martyrs, and many, many more active duties related to the church.

Finally, going back to the questions this section must answer to satisfy the claims of the editors, let’s evaluate this chapter.
Claim 1: “The practice of ordaining women to the pastoral office is a novelty in the history of the church.” (107)

This claim is actually directly falsified because Weinrich notes how very early on women were engaged in this practice, even if he does relegate them to “Gnostics” or other “anomalous” groups.

Claim 2: “Fueled by theological movements that set the charismatic distribution of the Spirit in opposition to an established office, the emerging equalitarianism of the feminist movement, historical criticism’s distrust of the biblical text, and in some cases a pragmatism that saw the ordination of women as a way to alleviate the clergy shortage… many Protestant denominations took steps to ordain women.” (ibid)

This claim may be true, though Weinrich doesn’t do much to support it. For example, he doesn’t blame historical criticism for women pastors and acknowledges that some groups did this practice long before “historical criticism” was a category of thought.

Claim 3: The women who are noted in the history of the church “were holy and learned but never pastors” (referencing an upcoming chapter’s claims).

Falsified by Weinrich’s “anomalies” in the history of the church. “Never” is a universal negative.

Claim 4: “Ordination of women is a monumental turn in the history of the Church.” (107)

It has existed since very early on in the history of the church, as Weinrich notes, though he relegates them to anomalies.

Claim 5: “[Ordination of women] puts those church bodies that practice it on dangerous ground, for it indicates that they are out of step not only with two thousand years of Christian history but with the will of the Lord of the Church.” (Ibid)

It is difficult to see what relevance this chapter even has in regards to this claim.

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Book Reviews– There are plenty more book reviews to read! Read like crazy! (Scroll down for more, and click at bottom for even more!)

Interpretations and Applications of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35– Those wondering about egalitarian interpretations of this passage can check out this post for brief looks at some of the major interpretations of the passage from an Egalitarian viewpoint.

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Junia and Bayesian Epistemology: Philosophical probability trumping Biblical scholarship?

Alexander Pruss is one of the smartest people I’ve encountered. Though I don’t always agree with his conclusions, the sharpness of his intellect and his wit is always fascinating. His blog is frequently a place to flex mental muscles, as he offers small, one-off arguments to spur discussion. Recently, he wrote a post entitled “Junia/Junias and the base rate fallacy” Pruss argued that application of Bayesian analysis to biblical scholarship would help solve the question of whether Junia/Junias was an apostle. Apologies in advance for possible lack of care with terms like “factor,” “probability,” and “odds”; I tried to be careful but I’m tired.

The Argument

The preliminaries are explanations of Bayes’ Theorem and the meaning of the “base rate fallacy,” both of which are easily searched online, but I provided the links here (with all the caveats that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing and Wikipedia articles don’t make anyone an expert). With that information in mind, we approach Pruss’s argument.

Pruss does fudge the numbers some, admitting he hasn’t explored the question on the actual numbers for some of these probabilities. So, for example, he begins by giving a 9:1 factor for Junia:Junias names in the early church. With that, and with the note that to avoid the base rate fallacy, we ought to assign a probability (he gives .9) to the question of whether this person was “among” the apostles, it yields a .19 rate of false positives for people who are not woman apostles to be assigned the notion of being a woman apostle. Moreover, if we say that there are 12 male apostles (the disciples) for every one female apostle (Junia), the probability of an apostle being a woman is now 1/13. Finally, because “not everyone Paul praises is an apostle” we have to assign a probability to whether Paul is praising an apostle here (Pruss gives it .3). This means that “the chance that a randomly chosen person that Paul praises is a female apostle even given the existence of female apostles is only about (1/13)×(1/3) or about three percent.”

Plugging in the .19 we got above for false positives and doing more math (read his post), we now discover that “even assuming that some apostles are female, the probability that Junia/s is a female apostle is at most about 14%, once one takes into account the low base rate of women among apostles and apostles among those mentioned by Paul.”

Pruss immediately notes the numbers are made up and could change the overall results.

Analysis

There are some significant problems with Pruss’s argument here. First, the fact is that there is no extant name “Junias/Junianias” found anywhere in lexical evidence whatsoever. Thus, instead of .9 for Junia being a woman, it should be 1. One comment pointed this out and Pruss pressed the argument that even in this case, the math would still be “significantly less than 50%” for Junia to be a female apostle. Doing the math is too hard for my tired brain, but let’s just say he’s right. The question still remains of why the chances for Junia to be a female apostle would be so low.

Looking at his other percentages, it seems a large part of the argument, once we’ve established Junia is female, turns on whether it is the case that she may not be “among” the apostles. Pruss’s position here falls into the goalpost moving arguments that complementarians have engaged in since the lexical evidence turning her into a man came up dry. Typically, this is how it goes:

Junia was not a man => Okay, Junia was not an apostle => Okay, Junia was not the type of apostle that was authoritative

The third stage above is one that is essentially a theological fiction supported almost entirely by punting to the fallacious importation of the semantic range of a word into a foreign context. When Paul wrote to say that Junia was an apostle, according to this argument, but she was one only in the semantic meaning of the word apostle as witness/sent one/messenger. Never mind that the word is used for an office in the New Testament, including in the writings of Paul (1 Corinthians 12:28). No, because it does not serve the purpose of continuing to prevent women from holding pastoral office, the entire semantic range of meaning for the word “apostle” must be imported in order to reduce Junia in status once again. This fallacious importation of meaning is a demonstration of an ad hoc explanation. (Unfortunately, Pruss himself succumbs to this goalpost moving argument in the comments on this post when he questions whether Junia as an apostle would be an authoritative apostle or not.)

But it is the second stage that is at question initially, and here, once again, it seems that the importation of complementarian assumptions into the text has occurred, for this reading goes against the earlier known readings from church fathers (see here, for example) which saw Junia as an apostle and did not import the lexical range of the word into “among” either. So, again, the factor needs to be moved from .9 to 1.

The proportion of male:female apostles is made up, as Pruss acknowledges. It’s possible that the reality is 1:1 or 100:1. So it would be possible to move numbers around to make it either extraordinarily likely Junia was a woman apostle or unlikely. It also seems to me the 1/3 possibility that Paul is praising an apostle seems high. So again, this would potentially lower the probability for Junia as a woman apostle. It could raise it, though that seems unlikely given the biblical text. Nevertheless, significant gains were made with “Junia” being established as the name and being among the apostles. And, the question of just how likely something ought to be in order to be epistemically justified in believing it is itself a matter of very hot debate. If, say, the likelihood for Junia being a woman apostle were 33%, would someone be justified in holding that belief? The answer to that question is very messy indeed.

But the most relevant evidence, the most clear counter-point to Pruss wasn’t even considered. That is this: using prior probability to determine the likelihood of an event does not matter if the event has already occurred. That is, if it is the case that Paul does name a woman apostle, then whether or not this was likely or unlikely given any number of other prior probability considerations does not change what Paul does in Romans 16:7. And while Pruss tries to say that his use of Bayesian theorem ought to somehow guide biblical scholars in their reading of this text, what he doesn’t consider is that highly improbable events do occur and that if they do, whether or not the event is improbable does not impact the event’s actually having occurred. Indeed, it is unclear as to why a biblical scholar should take such prior probability into account to begin with (apart from, potentially, taking caution with offering interpretations that are particularly unlikely). Suppose that the name were not Junia but Rebecca and the Greek text were so clear as to make it impossible to take it as anything but “among the authoritative apostles” (despite their being no use of this term in the NT and it being a demand for evidence by complementarians that they cannot meet for people they themselves admit to being apostles). What then? Would a scholar be justified in dismissing the sentence written by Paul that “Rebecca was an authoritative office-holding apostle” simply because of prior probabilities? It seems obvious the answer is no. So then the question is why should the biblical scholar be beholden to prior probabilities in a supposedly less clear case (and again, I by no means grant that it is unclear)? Again, the answer seems to be that the scholar ought not to worry about that, given the relevant data is directly in front of them.

Conclusion

Bayesian reasoning is interesting. I’ve enjoyed reading about it and learning about it from time to time. Whether or not it is helpful to theological questions is a concern for a different time, though it is a fascinating question to ponder (related questions such as how can we fill in sometimes arbitrary probabilities for certain events/people/etc. and still think the theological reasoning is sound would be interesting to explore in depth). In this specific case, though, it seems clear that Pruss’s argument fails for several reasons. All of these center around the actual meaning of the text (the name Junia and the meaning of “among the apostles”) which no amount of external probabilities can alter. Pruss’s argument is a fun mental exercise that need not undermine confidence in the data of the text itself: Junia was a female apostle. Pruss’s claim that biblical theologians ought to use Bayesian reasoning in their exegesis does not seem to be sustained by this example.

Links

A Brief Biblical Proof for Women Pastors– Read why 1 Corinthians 12:28 is an even bigger problem for complementarians, as it effectively guarantees women may hold the same or more authority than that of pastors.

On the Femnization of the Church– It is frequently alleged that the church is being “feminized” and that this is a bad thing. Check out this post, wherein I analyze this notion from a few different angles.

Women in the Ministry: The philosophy of equality and why complementarianism fails– I argue that the position in which women are excluded from church leadership entails inequality of being.

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

Women Prophets, Complementarianism, and Submission

I have seen multiple complementarians recently on Twitter asserting that women prophets in the Bible were in submission to men; particularly to male teachers who were in the role of what we have turned into the modern pastor. Denny Burk, the current President of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, responded to a lengthy series of questions and comments about a post he wrote supporting complementarianism recently. One of the questions was about women who were prophets in the Bible and whether they submitted to men. Burk wrote:

“Right. They [women prophets] would be subject to teachers/preachers AND to other prophets. The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets, except for female prophets. They are to be in subjection, as the Law also says. That’s my understanding.”

Another complementarian, John Carpenter, pastor at a Reformed Church, wrote “…I’m a lax complementarian, believing that women can ‘pray and prophesy’ in church under the authority of all male elders. But I could be wrong. The stricter [complementarians] may be right. I know the egalitarians are wrong.”

The problem with these and related statements is that they actually directly contradict Scripture. This isn’t an issue of interpretation that allows for disagreement. Instead, complementarians, by asserting that women prophets would explicitly be under teachers in the church, are going directly against the Word of God.

1 Corinthians 12:28 quite clearly states “…God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues” (ESV).

So in the church, we find that prophets, in fact, rank above teacher/preachers, though Denny Burk, the President of a major evangelical group that promotes complementarianism, says they do not, and that instead “they are to be in subjection as the Law also says.” We might ask Denny Burk where he finds that verse in the “Law.” Which verse in the Hebrew Scriptures state that women prophets are to be in subjection to teachers/preachers? There is none. But not only that, he and other complementarians who make this argument are going against the very Bible they purport to affirm when they hold to complementarianism.

Links

A Brief Biblical Proof for Women Pastors– Read why 1 Corinthians 12:28 is an even bigger problem for complementarians, as it effectively guarantees women may hold the same or more authority than that of pastors.

On the Femnization of the Church– It is frequently alleged that the church is being “feminized” and that this is a bad thing. Check out this post, wherein I analyze this notion from a few different angles.

Women in the Ministry: The philosophy of equality and why complementarianism fails– I argue that the position in which women are excluded from church leadership entails inequality of being.

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.