Hi Dave,
You’ve said what egal is not for you, but you haven’t said what it is, now told us why you believe it’s right. Can you expand please?

As for myself, I’m a firm complementarian. It seems there’s a lot of feminist ideology seeping into the church and this is just another way of expressing that. After all, early feminists had no respect for the unpaid work of the housewife, insisting that work is only valid if it earns a wage.

Thanks for the posts Mark, fascinating!
Kathryn

Hi Mark,

I’m afraid find your pessimism about our ability to work, minister and talk together unwarranted. Of course a church has to do something in practice - make a choice one way or the other and do it.

But anyone with a sufficiently humble view of their own understanding of scripture and a sufficiently high view of God’s church can operate within a church that contains practices with which they disagree. The usual process is to listen carefully, to speak your view into the church as a valid contribution to its discernment, accept it if the church is not where you are and get on with gospel ministry.

There are people (both men and women) whom I privately don’t think are really suitable to ordained ministry who nevertheless are in it. But they hold the same licence I do, and therefore I must accept that and treat them as colleagues. It is not my role to usurp the authority of the Archbishop and de-frock people in my mind or actions. I submit to his authority as called to by the scriptures. He will give account for it. Surely that is part of what it means to belong to the church, rather than pretend to be the church.

This rather individualistic view that sees personal integrity compromised by the simple act of belonging to a structure that doesn’t perfectly align with one’s present understanding of everything looks to me like an attack on the unity of God’s church and an elevation of judgement over mercy. You can believe the gospel drives you towards a particular position without believing that your church has ceased to be a valid part of the church catholic because it is not yet perfected.

I am a former complementarian, now an egalitarian. I am an open supporter of the importance of keeping complementarians within the church. I am in regular dialogue of mutual respect with complementarian friends. (I say that because I was bemused by your claims that we no longer talk to one another!)

I appreciate you have tried to be fair, but I still feel very poorly represented by the positions you outline above, which are essentially designed to promote polarisation. I’m not saying that the kind of egalitarianism you described doesn’t exist - it does - but by choosing more polarised positions to describe you have enhanced your case for division in a way that will grieve those on both sides who are more moderate and nuanced and have been successfully partnering together for some time.

I find I have more in common theologically with most gospel-shaped complementarians than the more aggressive egalitarianism you describe. In the end, my gospel call (as theirs) is towards using power to serve one another, not about taking hold of rights to certain positions. I am, however, alarmed when I see people use a law-hermeneutic rather than a gospel-hermeneutic to tread down women and marginalise their gifts in the way they read various New Testament texts. I am unconvinced that Paul (or Jesus!) would do the same.

I am happy to admit that I could be wrong. My position is the one I think most likely, as I don’t find any of them completely watertight. I don’t think the hermeneutical or exegetical questions are simple nor do I think those who come to different conclusions lack integrity, such that I would want to be cut off from them as brothers and sisters working alongside one another for the glory of Jesus Christ.

But my sisters will never find me do either of two things: 1) push them to take on roles in the church that sit uneasily with their conscience; or 2) withhold from them roles of service in the church for which they possess suitable gifts and character on the basis of their gender. That’s the best way I can think of to live out the gospel of servant leadership in practice as I navigate some rather complex questions in theory.

Blessings
Matt

Well, this is generating a lot more intensity than I expected from an opening series that was trying to just ‘set the scene’ of the current political situation for a subsequent look at the substantial issues at stake. I’m a bit daunted as to what we might expect next year when we start looking at the issues themselves.

I’ll pick off the quick responses first.

Hi Kathryn,

You’re welcome for the posts, glad you’re enjoying them.  Thank you for asking the question of Dave - saved me from doing it, and so cut down on the time this taking up.  It’s very appreciated.

Hi Craig,

In paragraph 5, you stated that egals have moved away from exegesis toward hermeneutics and theology. In the context of your argument, that would be seen as a bad thing.

But I seem to recall previously that you’ve argued that evangelicals should actually be making just such a shift toward theology and hermeneutics. This idea of doing theology holistically play a pretty central role in your extended comments on forgiveness (which I recall well!)

Can you please clarify your position on this matter?

Sure, good pick up.

Not just your and my discussion on forgiveness and repentance, but also the series on impassibility, and the recent article in the Briefing (and my contribution to the Interchange in the next issue, of which we you can see a dry run in my comments here: http://paradoxspeak.blogspot.com/2010/09/impassibility.html) I have championed the idea that exegesis is a holistic exercise with theology.

So it would be strange if I was saying ‘egalitarians have been focusing on theology, are trying to establish why the texts that complementarians think are key don’t speak as directly as Jn 3:16, and therefore are doing something disreputable.’ I think that’s entirely valid and proper.

All I was doing was description, not evaluation. The series is generating enough heat with me bending over backwards with trying to be even handed, it just wouldn’t work if I was trying to ‘score points’ as well.

In fact, the person who reads those words in light of my stance in the two previous series on forgiveness and repentance and impassibility might detect just a hint of a critique of how complementarians have been going about this debate, to the degree that I’ve fairly represented them here and they have just been focusing on exegesis.

When the time comes I’ll argue that egalitarians have used a bad theology and a terrible hermeneutic and that that’s the problem with what they’re doing. It’s not enough to be holistic, you’ve actually got to get it right.

But that’s an argument that will require careful attention to substantial issues - more than just saying, “You’re erecting a framework, so it must be wrong.”

Hi Craig,

Absolutely right.

I will, later, argue that the concept of ‘natural sense’ has to be given some weight in this question when assessing egalitarian hermeneutics, but you’ll never (I hope) hear me go, “One side just reads the text the other side uses hermeneutics and that’s bad.” Reading Scripture as Scripture is a holistic exercise - as anyone who has benefited from Goldsworthy’s biblical theology will immediately recognise.

concluding...

Your comment, “For the egalitarian, until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority, then they are not being treated the same as men; and if they are not being treated the same as men then they are not equal to men” reflects your lack of understanding. This is ceretainly not true for me. This also contradicts some of your own comments about how egals view aauthority.

Okay, that’s an important point. Let’s compare that to what you then expand on in response to Kathryn’s question:

I have no desire to see a woman put in any authority (especially the highest authority) just so women can be equal with men. If indeed a woman must be in the highest authority to be equal, then we need to redefine the word equal. I have no egal friends who believe this. Instead, I would like the most gifted person to have the role, whatever that role is.

I think you may have misread my offending quote.  I said, ‘until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority.’  Your complaint seems to be that I said ‘until women must hold the highest position.’ I didn’t say that giving them the role makes them equal.  I said that the role not being open to them is a sign that they are not yet equal.

That is, you seem to be saying that I am saying that egalitarians are determined to get women into those highest positions, irrespective of ability.  I don’t think that’s a good reading of my words, but if that’s what I genuinely implied, I apologise, it wasn’t my intent.

Instead, you say, the egalitarian position is that all positions should be open to women and filling those positions should be based simply on ability, and gender shouldn’t be a factor. It doesn’t matter whether the position has authority or not, is high or low, it should go to the person most qualified, and gender is not a qualification. So the issue for egalitarians is not about giving women authority, but about getting rid of gender as a qualification.
Is that a fair description of your position as you would state it?

I would argue that what I said is the same as that, but focusing on a different issue than what you want to make central to the debate.  I didn’t misrepresent your position, I highlighted one implication that matters to complementarians and that is having a big impact on whether institutions divide on the issue. It wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive statement of egalitarianism’s approach on its own terms.

Some of those roles that you want open to women are roles with inherent authority. You want women to have those roles if they’re the best person for the job. You expect them to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. And when they have the job you want them treated the same as any man would be in the job – everyone submits to their authority.

I abbreviated all the steps, and focused on the outcome, but I think you and I are actually saying the same thing:

Until women can hold every job (especially the high prestige, high authority jobs) when they are the best person for that job (and gender is not a valid factor in determining that) and are treated just like a guy would be in that job, then they aren’t being treated as though they are equal to men.

What I then drew from that, is that position, when enacted in a Christian institution that is more or less a ‘church’, will sooner or later mean that all complementarians, except those with a conscience flexible to be under a women’s authority, will need to leave or do something that they consider to be a sin.

Whether they are right or not in that assessment is a different issue. That’s the situation ‘politically’ and that’s why I’m saying both sides are beginning to divide.

Now I confess, I do not understand everyone who claims to be or is labelled an egal and claim to know what they believe. I must say though that in recent years there has been another development in this area that you have not mentioned. It has mainly been in the US and Canada but it is starting to be seen here in Australia. This development is far from liberal and does not read the Bible through the eyes of the enlightenment.

This intrigues me, possibly not suprisingly, given my *ahem* profound ignorance of egalitarianism.  Would young be willing to float a couple of authors and/or the key features that distinguish this kind of egalitarianism from the kind that is currently dominant in evangelical circles in Australia?

Hi Jereth,

I agree with everything you’re saying about hermeneutics and exegesis. 

The grammatico-historical method is not a hermeneutically neutral method of reading and applying Scripture, it’s a (to use Craig’s term) ‘holistic’ approach that reflects fundamental convictions about the nature of Scripture – as everyone in the 16th Century grasped when the Reformers increasingly championed it against Roman and Anabaptist alternative hermeneutics.

It’s a method that says that hermeneutics is generally unproblematic, most passages speak as directly to us as they did to the original readers, and you should prefer the reading that an ‘average’ reader will get on a thoughtful reading unless there’s very compelling reasons not – readings that need an expert to pull off need a lot of justification.

That last bit is important – it also reflects the Reformer’s conviction of the priesthood of all believers (the traditional Christian view of what it means for Christians to be ‘equal’). The Bible belongs to everyone, so it should be an exception when you need a lot of presuppositions and cultural background knowledge to get the right reading. It’s a method of interpretation that privileges ‘the common life’ and not ‘the magisterium’ – a Reformation distinctive.

I’m a signed up member for all that. But egalitarianism has fundamentally challenged the whole thing – plain sense, a ‘hermeneutic-lite’ approach to hearing the Word of God, and (I’d argue) the place of the priesthood of all believers in our evaluation of rival interpretative approaches. It’s setting up a different view.
I don’t think you get anywhere by saying, ‘exegesis versus hermeneutics’ – unless someone has already gotten the theological framework that means that one should generally prefer ‘hermeneutic lite’ to ‘hermeneutic max’.  You have to argue for the whole set that leads to that conclusion. The understanding that makes that judgement possible has been lost. We have to build it again or people won’t be persuaded by the fact that one set of exegesis is more plausible than the other.

In our common practice - our preaching and teaching - we need to show that we think reading the Bible as the word of God is something very uncomplicated.

In our debates we need to stress exegesis always.

In some debates (like this one) we also need to reassert a classic Protestant doctrine of Scripture and explain why it’s not an easy fit with the basic approach of most egalitarianism.

“Just reading” Scripture is something that was won for us as an approach that rested upon profound theological convictions.  It isn’t some a priori common sense method. It’s an expression of a certain kind of faith about the kind of speaking God we know in Christ.

That’s all up for grabs in this debate - although egalitarians will genuinely feel unfairly slighted that I’ve put it that way. And so we need to argue both exegesis and the theological framework. And this time I’m going to try some framework setting stuff first and see if that works any better than trying to do it through exegesis, which is how it is normally tried, in my experience.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the interaction. Sorry if I offended in my comment about your long comments. It was intended to be humorous…but thank you for the lengthy explanation!

You said, “I think I said that complementarians regularly raise the concern that the theological position of egalitarianism necessarily involves certain assumptions or definitions of key words and even a methodology that is in common with liberalism. I think that’s a fair description of what complementarians regularly state is their concern.”

I have never heard it stated like that (and you seem aware that I have had discussions with comps on my blog and do in everyday life). To be honest I think you may as well have just said you think egals are liberal or heading that way. That I have heard from comps many times. If you had a good look at my blog you would have seen reference to CBMW and the slippery slope. I generally do not find comps speaking like you did just then. I also thought your previous post was speaking about the slippery slope, though you did not use the term.

But, the point is, I did not suggest you were saying egals were liberal. I simply told you a bit of my story.

Sorry that my statement, suggesting that I had found you uninformed, offended. It was not intended to be offensive, nor was it written with any heat. At the same time I do not find it very different from your statements, “You know better than to say this, Dave”, “Too much heat, too little light”, or your suggestions of,  “I think you were wrong when you said…”, “This description here….was inaccurate,” or even “You were wrong when you said….”.
I did not speculate as to whether you were informed, but rather I stated that I had not found you to be informed, a judgement I made in response to what you had written. You may well be informed but failed to prove it to me in what you wrote to a level that I would consider ‘informed’. I might add that I did not speculate on your motives, or your godliness but thank you for reminding us not to go there.

Perhaps, Mark, as I read your later statement (possibly meant in humor?), “my *ahem* profound ignorance” you have imported more into my stating that I find you uninformed than was there? I find you neither profound nor ignorant (joke!).

With regards to your comment, “For the egalitarian, until women can hold the highest position in an institution and all are required to submit to their authority”, I did not misread the “can” but rather read it in light of the second half of the statement, “and all are required to submit to their authority”.

But thanks for your explanation as to what you meant.

You asked, “So the issue for egalitarians is not about giving women authority, but about getting rid of gender as a qualification.
Is that a fair description of your position as you would state it?”

Almost. I cannot speak for all egals, but for me it is about who God qualifies for the job through his Holy Spirit.

You said,“Some of those roles that you want open to women are roles with inherent authority. You want women to have those roles if they’re the best person for the job. You expect them to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. And when they have the job you want them treated the same as any man would be in the job – everyone submits to their authority.”

Sorry, but not sure where all that came from. Let me explain…

Yes I want the person qualified by God for the job.
No, I do not believe that roles in the church have inherent authority, but God, with his authority, works through the people he gifts.
No, I do not expect ‘them’ to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. I am not going to make assumptions as to who the Spirit will work in to do what.
No, I do not want women to be treated the same as men, this is not always socially appropriate or I believe Biblical.
No, I do not believe everyone submits to ‘their’ authority as the authority comes through the Holy Spirit and it is God’s authority.

I understand your thought process as outlined, so thanks for helping me see where you are coming from.

I am glad I have intrigued you with regards to this other type of egalitarinanism that is floating around. You mentioned my blog. You will find one author there who was a contributor to our blog conference on ‘Women in Ministry’ last year.

Hi Mark,

Amen to everything you said about the Bible being easy enough for the common man to understand (and obey), the priesthood of all believers, the Reformation, etc.

A friend of mine told me a story about a Bible college class he was in. They were learning about how to do ethics using William Webb’s “redemptive movement hermeneutic”. At some point in the lecture, somebody in the class said “This is so hard. How can we expect anyone to understand what the Bible is teaching us today?”

The lecturer’s response was: “That’s why people need to come to Bible college.”

In other words, only an elite group of Bible-college educated people can interpret the Scriptures rightly and everyone else must rely on their mediation to understand the truth.

This is mediaeval catholicism all over again!

Jereth

Thanks Jereth. I am very familar with CBMW and the arguments of Piper and Grudem. How about we stick to Bible exegesis though?

I simply do not agree with your final statement. I assume you have not heard every Egal claim.

I appreciate you have tried to be fair, but I still feel very poorly represented by the positions you outline above…by choosing more polarised positions to describe you have enhanced your case for division in a way that will grieve those on both sides who are more moderate…

Yes, you are hardly represented at all.  You appear at the end of post one where I say guys like you aren’t being looked at.
I have selected what to focus on.  But it wasn’t to enhance my case, it was a reflection of what I consider to be the key factors in the outcome I think is likely. I wasn’t hiding guys like you from view to bolster the case, I’ve weighed your likely influence up and have judged that it will only rarely be decisive in the long term when we look at evangelicalism as a whole.

You might make a difference in a couple of isolated instances. The Gen Y factor that Jereth and I have discussed under post 2 might give you a boost that I’ve not factored in correctly (extrapolating into the future is the kind of thing where you’re doing well if you’re wrong only twice as often as you’re right). But my current ‘best guess’ is that the group you represent will usually be irrelevant to the outcome even though you have numbers.  Hence I didn’t even spend time on you (due to the fact that it’s a blog, and so I can’t cover everything in the posts).

That’s not a value judgement – how you described your basic approach, when translated from an egalitarian to a complementarian key, is what I strive for in my personal approach. 

It’s a cold-hearted assessment of what is most likely to happen when move our gaze from the personal to take into account the other factors in play. My reasoning is, briefly, as follows:

1. The moderate group who says, “I’m a x, but the gospel is more important, and so I actively want to create space in the structure for other gospel-minded people and not shut them out,” is, by its nature, a diverse group. Give me 10 moderate egalitarians, and 10 moderate complementarians, and I’ll get somewhere between 15 and 25 distinct positions, each of which has its own idiosyncratic features held by only a small number of people (and possibly only by one, and possibly only on Thursdays).

Moderates, by their nature, aren’t part of a ‘party’ – they come to their convictions independently, they hold them independently, and each bit matters to some degree to them. They are a loose federation at best, not a clear party. They don’t like being party people. They prioritise personal relationships with integrity, and giving everyone room for their own position. It’s hard for them, therefore, to offer a clear substantive position that’s more than something like, “Let’s keep everyone together for the sake of unity/love/epistemic humility/the gospel (and even within that group, they won’t even all agree on why we should all hold together!)

The groups that I’m calling the ‘genuinely convinced x’ or the like, tend to naturally cohere into parties.  Give me 10 ‘convinced’ egalitarians or complementarians, and I’ll have about three distinct positions, at least two of which will find it very easy to work together, and will capture the clear majority within their fold. 

People in these ‘camps’ have social forces on them to hold them in place – they have leaders that they look to, peers whose opinion matters to them, publications or key works that they have on their bookshelves and have read and inwardly digested. Their instincts are to work together, to act and vote as a bloc – the threshold has to be high for them to break ranks. They have a substantive positon to put forward for people.

In the political arena, those two groups on the edge, as long as they aren’t crazy extreme, exert far more influence, and set the terms for the debates, far more than the moderates do. Even if they are crazy extreme, they can have a staggering impact – I’m still flabbergasted at the impact that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had on Australian politics in its brief moment of glory, and I continue to be bemused at the impact of the Greens.

Most punters in denominational power structures (except where liberalism is dominant, then it’s a different story) are not in the parties, but neither are they principled moderates - they are ‘up for grabs’ on a year-by-year, case-by-case basis. As long as the ‘parties’ can position themselves as being reasonably nice – put up spokespeople who smile and don’t scratch themselves in public – and don’t come across as mad-eyed ideologues who’ll burn anyone who isn’t in their party, then they can take from the moderate group the only thing it has to offer the voting majority – their moderateness and saneness – by adding that to the things that they can offer but the moderates can’t.

to be continued...

Dave,

I simply do not agree with your final statement. I assume you have not heard every Egal claim.

Ok, I can’t possibly have heard every egal. claim, but let me assure you I have heard plenty of them. I’ve read Discovering Biblical Equality (the big red book), Beyond Sex Roles by Gilbert Bilezikian, and numerous other articles and essays I have found online by people such as Graham Cole, NT Wright and Rebecca Groothius.

Even Wayne Grudem probably hasn’t heard every egal. claim, but that is probably because a new egal. claim emerges every 6 months. We can’t keep up.

But if 20 years worth of egal. claims have failed to persuade us that the key texts should not be read and obeyed in their plain and obvious sense, how likely is it that some new claim will come along and succeed where all the others have failed?

Thanks Jereth. I am very familar with CBMW and the arguments of Piper and Grudem. How about we stick to Bible exegesis though? wink

For the following reasons I shall turn down your offer
1. This is Mark’s blog, not mine. Going into exegesis will take us away from the agenda he has set
2. I don’t really have the time to engage in a big debate about the texts
3. I’m not too confident of the profitability of a big debate about the texts (if CBMW has not convinced you, then even if someone should rise from the dead… <cheeky grin>)
4. Honestly, there isn’t much point. As I have already said, the complementarian exegesis of the texts is already well laid out in places like RBMW. Nothing has changed. We still read all the texts the same way, our exegesis is the same as it was 20 years ago (for that matter, 1900 years ago). It is the egal side that keeps shifting position.

Regards,
Jereth

Mark,

I regards to your lengthy(!) comments about moderates and ‘truly convinced’ you appear to have tagged me as a truly ocnvinced.

I find this interesting, and wonder why. I am open to scripture and changed from comp to egal because of scripture. I appear to be more flexible than some! Also, my ‘fisking’ of CBMW is in response to their statments that seek to spread negative understandings of the egal understanding and foster a divide. And so, when they have an article about how this is a gospel issue, I respond and say no it is not. When they say egal leads to homosexuality I say no it does not (from the evidence they have provided). Is this not what you are saying the moderates should do? Tell the truly convinced to get back in their box, so to speak…and with love of course!

I work in a denomination very happily that is mainly comp. I instigated the first denominational forum (that I know of) on the issue because comps were trying to stop women becoming elders, even though they were currently allowed (although they are not allowed to be ministers).

It seems like either your categories are more flexible than you have said (which you may well recognise) and/or it is dangerous to place people in one category in a public setting (such as a blog) without first doing your research! After all, it might only serve to create a greater divide than there already is. Hmmm.

Perhaps I have missed something?

I am not sure where you see yourself on your scale. Care to share?

My point is that you are trying to tell me now that I should go and read the opinion of certain people about what scripture says so I can see the light. I would rather let scripture dictate to me what I believe, not Wayne Grudem, not Mark and not you. I hope you would prefer scripture dictate what you believe and not me.

Dave, I’m not “telling you” to go and see the light. You requested exegesis. I responded that complementarian exegesis of the key texts (Gal 3:28, 1 Tim 2:11-14, Eph 5:22, 1 Cor 11:3, Gen 1-3, etc.) is easily available if you look in the appropriate places. I do not have anything to offer in addition to what you will find in these places. I do not wish to reinvent the wheel by starting up a debate here.

I’m not telling you to let Wayne grudem dictate what you should believe. All I’m saying is that his books outline the complementarian exegesis that you are after. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

Just do not expect me to change my view, or any other egal who wants to follow the Bible. This, after all, is where the debate should be, is it not? It almost sounds like you do not have time for the Bible Jareth, though I am sure that is not true (rediculously big stupid and dopey grin).

I don’t expect you to change your view, Dave. You should hold whatever view you think best accords with Scripture. I will do the same. You believe that egalitarianism best accords with SCripture. I disagree. Let’s move on.

Jereth

No problem, Dave.

I understand that it can seem dismissive and condescending to be told “go away and read such and such literature”. I’ve had people do that to me before (egalitarians even!), and felt offended by it, so I apologise if this is how I’ve made you feel.

I don’t want to be dismissive of your genuine search for good exegesis on this issue. But I have already outlined the reasons for why this is not the time and place. Also, as I have kept saying, I do genuinely believe that the complementarian exegesis available at CBMW is of far superior quality and thoroughness than what I could supply you here.

regards,
Jereth

<b>Hi Mark,</b>

Amazing series, although the thing with you and and your series’ is to get in early and follow it all, I missed the train on the repentance one.

Re Moderates;  The Diocese of Tasmania might be a good example.  +John seems to employ a mix of Comps and Egals and card carrying extremists are not promoted to senior positions in the diocese.  However I suspect all this is more due to the frontier nature of ministry as opposed to conscious political decision.

<b>Hey Dave,</b>

This isn’t mean to be rude but It’s spelt Jereth, not Jareth.

Hi Chris,

Turning then to the question that if we limit someone with gifts who can use those gifts if certain requirements are met, then we are treating that gift as ‘unlean’.  I gestured to 1 Tim 3 and said, “You need more than a gift to minister in certain contexts, it’s not enough to say, “They’ve got a gift!”, you have to look at all the requirements mentioned. You replied:

I assume you’re referring to the qualifications for a bishop (again I assume you’re taking that to mean the rector/vicar) in 1 Tim 3. It’s interesting that complementarians want to assume that “husband of one wife” means the Parish leader can only be a man, yet they overlook the fact that that literal interpretation leads to the subsequent requirement that all parish leaders must be married. What does that say about people like John Turner, John Chapman, Peter Adam, Paul Barker, John Stott, to name but a few? If you’re going to use that passage consistently you’d surely have to rule them out as well.

A couple of points. 
First, that’s an strange way to treat a passage like this.  On that logic, if I am going to use that passage consistently then I have only two options. Either I treat it as absolute prescription on every point – not even men married to women where the marriage hasn’t produced children qualify. Or I ignore all the requirements – for if it’s inconsistent to have single men as presbyters (and yes, you got the basic way I’m taking the passage and the meaning of ‘bishop’), when I don’t have women presbyters, then it’s inconsistent to not have people who are unable to teach, who are disreputable, who are driven by the love of money, who are harsh, who love fights, who have more than one wife.

I’ll accept that you think I’m only being consistent along these lines if you tell me that for you it’s a straight ‘all or none’ question here and you have either applied every requirement in a woodenly literal way or have decided none apply (and if you’re consistent with that in other areas, and tell me that you’re a Young Earth Creationist who keeps the sabbath – because they usually rest their case on the same logic when it comes to Gen 1-3).

Second, epistemologically I am not an empiricist, like most evangelicals are in my experience. I am in the very, very broad Plato/Aristotle/German Idealism tradition. Most evangelicals read a list like 1 Tim 3 and seem to go, ‘this is defining the boundaries – a person has to tick each box to qualify.’ For them the picture is a black silhouette on a white background – the boundaries of in/out are very clear, but there’s no details or ‘shape’ inside the circle so drawn.

For me, passages like this are drawing a picture of the kind of guy a presbyter should be.  How far off that picture someone can be before they don’t qualify (just how ‘able to teach’ do they have to be? just how ‘gentle’? how much beyond reproach do they have to get before they click over?) is then a matter of wisdom based on a wide range of questions – both theological and context.

So, personally, I’m fine with presbyters who don’t have kids. I’m not fine with presbyters who don’t have kids because they chose not to ‘for the sake of ministry’ (that cuts against the grain of the ‘type’ being set up). I’m okay with single presbyters in light of 1 Cor 7, indeed think everyone should seriously consider it, given Paul’s instructions there, I’m not okay with making that in any sense ‘normative’, given how Paul establishes the type here.

And yes, like Martin Luther, who I think had a similar approach to this (and whose view of the implications of the priesthood of all believers for this question I share), under highly abnormal circumstances I am fine with women presbyters in mixed contexts. How highly abnormal? About as often as I’ll be happy with making someone addicted to much wine or not gentle or driven by a love of money a presbyter. It’s a rare situation, it’s a retrieval ethic. 

And before anyone gets upset that I’ve said ‘making a woman presbyter is as bad as making a drunk presbyter’ it’s not a moral equivalence thing here at all. The nature of an Idealist epistemology is that a list like this draws a picture, and so creates an order between the items in the list as to how quickly the picture distorts when you move off the ‘ideal’. Being a woman is not like being a drunk.  But you’re either a woman or a man, so to switch over there immediately moves you a long way from the picture drawn by the list.  You’ve actually got to move a fair way in the other qualitications to do the same thing in the bit they’re concerned with.

Obviously an egalitarian will struggle with that, despite their rejection of adrogyny, but it is consistent for a complementarian who says that gender has some theological and ethical ‘weight’.

Urgh. It’s even worse than that, I’ve published both comments to Chris on this thread, and the first one has coding in it that I don’t want to have to do a second time. I think we’ll just have to jump my conversation with Chris from thread 2 to here.  And I’ll add the final installment below.

presuming Jereth and Rachel have opted to share the same surname smile

Actually we haven’t <:-)>
Rachel kept her maiden name!

Also, while on the topic of my name, please don’t anyone feel bad about spelling it wrong (Jareth, Jeruth, Jerith, Gerard, ...). I get it all the time!!

Hi Andrew,

And a very warm welcome along. Always good to know you’re around, especially on this vexed issue.

Woah!

Oh, that’s Horrible, Doctor. That’s not a good sound…

Are you about to provide a theology of gender?
Do it, brother, I salute your courage and admire your approach.

See? Now you’re just messing with my head. As soon as anyone says something like ‘I salute your courage’, I flash to Humphrey Appleby saying, “And may I congratulate you, Minister, on taking such a courageous stand.” Now I’m jumping at shadows, looking around for angels hightailing it out of here, because they’re too smart to walk this path.

But yes, I think I will have to try and offer something substantial about what gender is and, to quote the great 20th Century bard, ‘What if feels like to be a woman (and a man).’ I think calling my efforts ‘a theology of gender’ will be outrageous hyperbole, but it will be an attempt to say something theological about gender that I think is important to the question.

And thanks so much for confirming my suspicion that attempting such a thing is, in itself, grounds for being certified.

ISTM that one of the chief advantages of the complementarian approach is that it actually *can* formulate a theology of gender which integrates with a wider Christocentric system. Its appeal is, in large measure, aesthetic.

This bit intrigues me, a lot. I know what I would mean if I said these words, but your mind works along ‘equal but different’ tracks to mine, Andrew, and I hate missing any gold you’re willing to share.

Can you spell out what you’re getting at here with just a couple of more sentences for me? You’re someone whose thinking I pay very close attention to on these matters.

Hi Dave,

Sorry that my statement, suggesting that I had found you uninformed, offended. It was not intended to be offensive, nor was it written with any heat. At the same time I do not find it very different from your statements, “You know better than to say this, Dave”, “Too much heat, too little light”, or your suggestions of,  “I think you were wrong when you said…”, “This description here….was inaccurate,” or even “You were wrong when you said….”.
I did not speculate as to whether you were informed, but rather I stated that I had not found you to be informed, a judgement I made in response to what you had written. You may well be informed but failed to prove it to me in what you wrote to a level that I would consider ‘informed’. I might add that I did not speculate on your motives, or your godliness but thank you for reminding us not to go there.

Okay. Let me try and spell out the distinctions that I’m running with here:

1. Saying ‘I find you uninformed about what egalitarians think’ is definitely better than outright speculation.  But it’s a form of words that can be abused too easily:

“I find you as thick as two planks”

“I find you ungodly”

“I find you to be a Dalek”

“I find you to be motivated by a desire to oppress women”

All can be justified as a true description of how I experience you in the conversation. But we don’t make public everything we experience of another person. And, for any thread I’m presiding in, the ‘norm’ of the conversation is “don’t use forms of words that lend themselves to making personal remarks easily and which can even allow speculation to be passed of as ‘my experience of you’”.

2. “You know better than to say this” and the like.  These are grey areas for me.  They are ‘risky’ relationship building strategies.  They take a chance as they can be misunderstood as a personal attack, but they can also be a sign that the person genuinely thinks someone is generally functioning at a high level, has dropped the ball in this instance (and we all do that), but things are going well so we don’t need to tiptoe around on eggshells.

I think we all need to look carefully at the person we’re talking with, and how they’re taking your words to them, before using forms of words like that.  If you get a bad reaction to one, probably lay off things in this category for a while with that person.

3. “too much heat, too little light”, “you’re wrong”.  Don’t use them too often, but if you need to do more than disagree these are reliably safe. They focus on the actual thing said as a discrete unit, and have minimal explicit ‘collateral damage’ on the speaker of those words.

It enables the other person to ‘save face’ by letting them draw back from their words and say, “Yes, there is a problem with those words, what I should have said is….” 

That’s a lot easier than having to say, “Yes, you’re right I am an idiot/ignorant/ Dalek, and I’ll try and do better.”

Criticising an action is different from criticising a person directly.

to be concluded...

Hi Dave,

Onto the issue of substance that was between us:

Yes I want the person qualified by God for the job.
No, I do not believe that roles in the church have inherent authority, but God, with his authority, works through the people he gifts.
No, I do not expect ‘them’ to be the best person for the job roughly half the time. I am not going to make assumptions as to who the Spirit will work in to do what.
No, I do not want women to be treated the same as men, this is not always socially appropriate or I believe Biblical.
No, I do not believe everyone submits to ‘their’ authority as the authority comes through the Holy Spirit and it is God’s authority.

This was very helpful, thank you. I wrote what I did because I thought I saw a comment under a post on your blog where you said, in a discussion on Heb 13:17, that you believed that leaders do have authority and Christians submit both to them and to the Lord (which surprised me, as I had up until then had you pegged more along the lines of what you’ve said here, but fits with how Calvin sees how God is ultimately the cause of everything, and yet works through created instruments, and so I figured you were following your reformed heritage at that point).  But I probably mixed you up with another egalitarian at that point. 

Okay, so you’ve got a variation on the ‘type one egalitarian’ approach.  There is authority in the Church, but it’s only God’s, leaders channel it, but it’s never, in any sense, ‘theirs’.  Christians never submit to the authority of their leaders or obey them. Thanks for clarifying that, and apologies for the misunderstanding.

I am glad I have intrigued you with regards to this other type of egalitarinanism that is floating around. You mentioned my blog. You will find one author there who was a contributor to our blog conference on ‘Women in Ministry’ last year.

Heh, that wasn’t an invitation for you to go all Yoda on me. I worked through the whole blog conference and couldn’t work out anyone who fit what you seemed to be describing.  You’re going to have give me a name (preferably a couple – triangulation is better than trying to fix an approach by just one representative) and preferably even a bit of a description as to what makes this so different. I’m not going to get there without something substantial from you.

Not trying to ‘score points’ here, but you seemed to be implying in your comment that you agreed that, at least up until recently, pretty well all evangelical egalitarianism is what complementarianism criticises – liberal and enlightenment.  But that there is a new movement that is free of these traits, and that it’s been in America/Canada for a few years and is only just appearing in Oz.  I think that’d be news to a lot of evangelicals who have been egalitarian for some time now. Is that really what you meant to imply? Obviously that idea will help part of my project a bit, but I’m not sure that’s what you intended to suggest…

Your comments that follow, though, do not do justice to the way I view scripture. I do not “Just read”, I hold a classis Protestant doctrine of Scripture, I do not hold an “a priori common sense method”
Your right, “egalitarians will genuinely feel unfairly slighted that I’ve put it that way.” We will.

Yes, that’s why I acknowledged it.  It is going to require some careful discussion next year.

concluding...

4. The outcome of that, if God is gracious and it happens moderately successfully should be that everyone is clearer about what the different positions involve and why.  Some (most?) will reembrace their current position with renewed fervour and clarity, some will see some possible issues and potential problems and start trying to head them off, and some will switch sides (and I expect very few egalitarians who used to be complementarians in that number.  I doubt I’ll be in that number either. That’s not a criticism of anyone. It’s a big deal to convert.  ‘Double conversions’ back to an original belief system that one repudiated is very rare, and almost never occurs as a result of argument or conversation.  Not ‘never’, ‘hardly ever’.) But those who follow our conversation through should have a much better sense about how their view does and does not work in practice and why they hold it.

5. By the time we get to the texts, there could be potentially be not that much reason for big debates.  Once basic grammar, syntax, context, and word range issues have been flagged and the alternatives canvassed, most people should see what the range of issues are that lead people to prefer one interpretation over another.  I’ll go, I think this interpretation is right for these textual reasons and these fundamental theological reasons.  Everyone else will be able to go, “Yes, no, for these reasons.”  And there won’t be much need to fight it out, everyone should have a reasonable sense of where they stand and what the implications of that are.
That’s the method. It’s designed to get people to go, “Am I happy with what’s entailed in my position (complementarian or egalitarian)? What kind of readings of the texts best fit the fundamental convictions I have and what kind of fundamental convictions best fit what the texts seem to be saying? (that one goes both ways).

From there people should see more clearly how to live before God and other people in light of where they stand on this debate. And, for the principled moderates, they should have a better sense of which kind of ‘convinced xers’ they will be able to work with, and which ones go too far from their point of view.

Based on Jareth’s qualities that he has shown in the thread for post 2 I read this as slightly unfortunately worded way of making an observation about egalitarianism as a movement and that when he said, “they’ve lost the exegetical argument and they know it” it was hyperbole and not a description of motive. He was saying, “They know that the case can’t be made simply on a traditional exegetical basis, and so are bringing in other issues to make the case.” 

Yes, Mark, your interpretation of what I said is correct. I was being hyperbolic and I was describing egalitarianism as a movement rather than pointing my finger at specific individuals. In hindsight that was not a kind way to phrase what I was saying, and I apologise for that.

Jereth

Mark, one more thing which might help you with categories which became clear to me just now in the shower(!) I am not here to convince everyone to be egal. Rather I am here to make sure the egal argument is fairly represented. The likes of CBMW do not do this. An article I read recently in the Briefing did not do this IMHO (cannot remember what it was actually about…anyway).

Hi Mark - I have found your posts very interesting and informative. I would like to ask the following question though. How would you repond to someone who is a complementarian and has issues with the occassional service where women are permitted to give a sermon? Is it ok to go along or is it better to stay away but keeping in mind it isn’t good to give up meeting with the saints?

Many thanks

Arnie

Hi Sam,

No doubt Mark will respond to this more adequately when the sun brinks on the land of eternal darkness, but in the meantime I think can quickly point out a few references in response to your challenge:

Augustine:
In his Tractate on John 1:13 (v.14 for him) Augustine produces a (peculiar!) analogy between the order of male and female to spirit and flesh based on Gen 2:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf107.iii.iii.html

Calvin:
See his comments on Gen 2:18 and v. 21
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol01/htm/viii.htm
And 1Cor 11:8
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom39.xviii.i.html

Bunyan:
See exegesis of Gen 3:16
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol01/htm/viii.htm

(I could have added Knox but I won’t.)

I realise this doesn’t prove that everyone, or even most people, took this line. And some, such as Chrysostom, do seem more interested in connecting women’s subordination to the Fall.
But I think these passages do go against the idea that gender roles in marriage and church were *solely* ascribed to the fall before the modern era.

Thanks Andrew. Looking back I was somewhat unclear.

The theology of most modern Complementarians argues that women are <i>not<i> inferior, less capable, or less able - they simply have the subordinate <i>role</i> and men have the role of leading & teaching.

From what I can tell this reading of the aforementioned passages is a modern one, and most traditional commentators understood female subordination as natural & logical, given their supposed inferiority and weakness.

I’ll try and poke into Bunyan & Knox when I get a chance.

Hi Mark

I’ve been lurking, wondering where this series is heading.

I feel like this comment is where you start getting down to business: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5568

And when Andrew asks the hard question about a theology of gender, I feel we’re really getting down to business: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5582

This is the abiding question for me. Who is going to develop a broad and constructive stance that goes beyond the perpetuation of the debate? Whoever manages to articulate and implement a full-orbed Christian vision of gendered humanity will have put the whole thing to rest—be they egalitarian or complementarian.

I reckon there’s one other thing that will finally put this matter to rest: a post-Christian/Christendom West. As our Christian paddock shrinks within the pasture of Western culture, we can keep dividing and sub-dividing, fighting over the ever-diminishing turf.

But I see a more hopeful future. Like Matthew Williams, I don’t follow your prediction of the coming divide. I hail from Adelaide, where the marginalisation of Christianity is more obvious than in the eastern capitals, if only because Adelaide is a smaller city. But this has had the wonderful by-product of encouraging unity between different brands of Christians—and I mean unity in a pretty robust sense, not a wishy-washy, keep-everyone-happy sense. (See http://arthurandtamie.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/adelaide-christian-scene/ )

That ‘moderate third party’ you mentioned seems to be the viable path for Adelaide Christianity—not because moderates have somehow grown elbows, but because a more moderate position is in some sense necessitated by circumstances (without everyone going squishy between the ears!). No one in Adelaide has ‘solved’ the gender issue, and I wouldn’t even say that people have particularly changed their minds about it, but it seems that Christians have come to a more inclusive, ‘centrifugal’ perspective in order get gospel work done.

Once again the wrong thread.

Hopefully this will appear on thread two shortly.

Hi Luke,

Amazing series, although the thing with you and and your series’ is to get in early and follow it all, I missed the train on the repentance one.

Glad you’re appreciating the series, I think ‘amazing’ might be a bit strong for the posts, but if you’re including some of the conversations in the threads then, yeah, I think some of our contributors have been pushing the discussion out into some great areas.

As to missing the train, I can sympathise. I suppose I think some series I do are partly for the person who wants something substantial on that topic. Most blog readers want ‘low cost low reward’ blogging – something easy to read, a good thought or two and move on.  The reward can be very high for the cost, but the cost is so low it puts some boundaries on the gains possible. These series are aiming to be ‘high cost high reward’ – demand more of the reader, but hopefully offer something more as well, if only because of the large amount of words involved.

One of the possibilities there, is that some people might come back and read them later when they want to think about the issue in question and are looking for a resource. My series on creationism a couple of years back on my blog has functioned that way, to my surprise – people in our blogging circles have linked to it in the years since when the question has come up.  Not as having the answer, but as something worth reading, for those who want something to help them think about it theologically more. Reflecting on that has helped shape my ‘get on early or stay out of the way’ approach in these kind of series..

Re Moderates;  The Diocese of Tasmania might be a good example.  +John seems to employ a mix of Comps and Egals and card carrying extremists are not promoted to senior positions in the diocese.  However I suspect all this is more due to the frontier nature of ministry as opposed to conscious political decision.

Could be a good example indeed. Assuming you are right, it might be worth stressing that it is in no way at all being suggested that +John might not be promoting “card carrying extremists” to senior positions as a conscious policy. Anyone considering themselves to have not been promoted appropriately might then want to use such a sentiment as a club to wield on their bishop. You’ve simply made an observation of what has occurred to this point.

However, if a hypothetical bishop was to enact such a policy; that would be an example of the kind of thing to which I was referring.  Under such hypothetical circumstances it would be a policy to create a culture where a common gospel is more important than “the women’s issue”. 

Anyone who shows signs of actually pushing for either side, making waves against the other side, or just causing problems by not coping with women not be released/exercising leadership in Diocesan contexts, is then shut out – if they weren’t screened out in the first place.
In the absence of existing parties on either side, that is a good example of elbows cloaked in very velvet cloth. 
There is nothing that needs to be stamped on, nothing that threatens to overturn the peace, but people who might make those noises have no or minimal platform to do so.

Being a political decision or a frontier ministry context isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive.  In a frontier ministry context you still make decisions to exclude some possibilities that you consider genuinely beyond the pale – Congregationalists perhaps, or people who believe in lay administration, people who promote homosexuality, people who deny the resurrection. You know, the big issues .  That’s a theological decision with political implications.

If things are less frontier, then people may add new issues to the mix that they wouldn’t if things were so extreme as in a frontier situation. You are less concerned with just making sure the basics are in place, and more with trying to erect a structure that reflects the goal that those basics point towards.

Generally, the stronger the church is, the more discriminating theologically it becomes, and the more it should.  Heresies in the Middle Ages usually were a sign that everything was going well and people could start reflecting more deeply about what it was they genuinely believed.

Theological divisions aren’t always a bad thing.  A lack of them isn’t always a bad thing either. The Nicene Creed debate wouldn’t have made a lot of sense during the great persecutions. But not having that debate wouldn’t have made much sense once those persecutions were past… It would have been a deliberate refusal to come to terms with the heart of the Christian faith when it was now possible to do so.

Mr. Baddely, you said this:

“. . . both sides of the debate have, on the whole, ceased speaking to each other, but content themselves with speaking about each other’s arguments to their own ‘side’.”

And just before that you said this:

“Complementarians have continued to focus on exegesis, showing with more and more sophistication that the key texts, those that speak directly to the question of women exercising authority in public church settings, state what they have generally been understood to have said for two millennia. Egalitarians have increasingly moved their argument from exegesis, to hermeneutics, to theology (the doctrine of Scripture, as well as the nature of equality and increasingly the doctrine of the Trinity)—increasingly moving from the plain sense of the words of Scripture to establishing interpretive presuppositions.”

Which is as clear an example of one side (you are clearly complementarian) speaking <i><about</i> the other side as anyone could wish for—and with the kind of misrepresentation as is usual in these cases.

Complementarians and egalitarians are both involved in exegesis based on their respective hermeneutics. It is simply not true that only one side cares what the text actually says!  Further, it was the complementarians who first began to use the doctrine of the Trinity in order to support the “equal-but-” idea of the husband-wife relationship. Egalitarian discussion of the Trinity has largely been in response.

In short, if egals and comps cannot get along, may very well be because of articles like this one, that do not appear to be concerned with an accurate representation of what the other side actually would say about its own position, if asked with respectful dialogue in mind.

<i>”Those championing women’s ordination generally believe that authority can only exist when one person is inferior to another—a view that I will classify as egalitarianism.”</i>

I’ve not heard this before.  Do you have a link to support this assertion.  It has been my understanding that Christians who support the concept of equality do not see authority figures as superior, nor the ones receiving from authority figures as inferior.

Hi Arnie,

This should have appeared before this comment: http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_31/#5603

Not sure why it vanished.

Hi Mark - I have found your posts very interesting and informative.

I’m glad, thanks for letting me know.

I would like to ask the following question though. How would you repond to someone who is a complementarian and has issues with the occassional service where women are permitted to give a sermon? Is it ok to go along or is it better to stay away but keeping in mind it isn’t good to give up meeting with the saints?

In my view it depends on the following kind of factors:
1.  How serious you think the issue is.  If you judge that this is like having an unbeliever, or an immoral person giving a sermon, then that is a very different issue than if you think it’s like listening to someone who you think is wrong on an important issue (say, they think divorce is ok, when you think it’s never ok) but you would still consider them a brother in good standing even so. That’s a spectrum issue, and will have a big bearing on what your conscience permits.
2.  Whether the practice is an expression of egalitarian convictions or of complementarian convictions.  Two churches can both have women regularly preaching to men.  Two churches can both have women irregularly preaching to men.  One might have that out of egalitarian convictions – it’s an expression that women should be able to preach in mixed congregations and lead like men.  One might have it out of complementarian convictions that you disagree with – a woman who is under the authority of a man can exercise patoral authority over men in a church context because she’s not the ultimate human authority in that community; or a woman who preaches occasionally is not exercising a settled authoritative relationship – she’s a teacher, not an elder and it’s okay to teach, just not to be a bishop/elder/presbyter etc.
I think that makes a bigger deal than people often recognise. It’s not just the act, it’s what the act symbolises, expresses, and instantiates that is even more important than the act itself (almost always).  I would have less conscience issues sitting under a woman who taught regularly where everyone saw that as an expression of complementarian convictions than I would in an egalitarian context where women taught once in a blue moon but it was an expression of a completely different understanding. Both would be issues I’d need to nut through, but there’s a difference between a structure who is right on the fundamentals but you judge to be ‘half-reformed’ in its outworkings and a structure who is wrong on the fundamentals but just happens (due to other factors) to do something closer to what you want in practice.
3.  Whether you think the issue of authority is more tied to actions or relationships. For some people it’s the act that matters.  The authority in preaching is tied fundamentally to the act.  Doesn’t matter who preaches – pastor or teenager or visiting speaker, the authority is the same and is due only due to the act of proclaiming the word of God itself.  Women aren’t to teach men in public contexts.  Not regularly, not irregularly - never.

For others it’s the relationship that matters – women aren’t to be in an ongoing authority/teaching relationship over men. But in the same way a church might have a young man preach a sermon but not have him as an elder, it might have a woman preach but not have her as a regular teacher or in a formal authoritative role.

If your view of authority is more to do with act, then preaching itself is the problem. If your view of authority is more to do with relationships then you might consider the odd teaching okay, or at least not as problematic as having a woman join the pastoral team or the like.

4.  How flexible your conscience is.  Some people have relatively inflexible consciences. They have to do what is right, and that is largely independent of context. This can be a good or bad thing. 
On the one hand you have the Vicar of Brahey, whose ability to blow with the wind and flex to any moral or theological demands in order to not lose his preferment was satirised in the words:

And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

Hello Mark,

”Why do complementarians ‘not believe in equality’ according to egalitarians?  Because they believe that women are necessarily under the authority of men in some contexts and the Son is necessarily under the authority of the Father.”

Are you stating that the Father has an authority that the Son does not have?  It is my understanding that Bruce Ware teaches that.

Hi Dave,

...you appear to have tagged me as a truly ocnvinced.

I find this interesting, and wonder why. I am open to scripture and changed from comp to egal because of scripture. I appear to be more flexible than some! Also, my ‘fisking’ of CBMW is in response to their statments that seek to spread negative understandings of the egal understanding and foster a divide. And so, when they have an article about how this is a gospel issue, I respond and say no it is not. When they say egal leads to homosexuality I say no it does not (from the evidence they have provided). Is this not what you are saying the moderates should do? Tell the truly convinced to get back in their box, so to speak…and with love of course!

Heh.  Everybody wants to be a moderate. I feel like I’m in an inversion of The Life of Brian:

Brian: You are all individuals.

Crown: Yes, we are all individuals.

Lone Voice: I’m not…

Crowd: Shh!

There’s nothing wrong with being a convinced x, or being a moderate.  We’ll find out on Judgement Day what we all should have been and on what issues.  If Belizikian is right and complementarianism is another gospel, then egaltiarian moderates are arguably even more culpable than complementarians by going along with something that they should have known was very evil (at least complementarians are deceived).  Moderates aren’t automatically the good or the bad guys.  Each position has to argue its case on its merits.

Moderates will generally do one of two things.  They’ll link up with a moderate on the other side and show that their common heritage transcends this disagreement by writing stuff together, working together etc.  Or (and this is the important bit), they’ll thump the guys on their own side who are trying to make it into a big issue on which there can be little room for compromise.

A moderate will generally not pick off one of the most ‘out there’ convinced x bodies on the other side (CBMW) and fisk their worst articles.  That, in and of itself, is classic ‘convinced x’ behaviour. 

The other traits that are signposts of a ‘convinced x’: knowing your opponent’s arguments well (or thinking you do), making this issue an issue – blogging about it a lot, joining threads where it is discussed a lot, ready and eager to be an apologist for your view.

People can be ‘convinced x’ and play well with others, be a good citizen of their institution, be flexible, and put the gospel before this issue (Whitfield was a convinced Calvinist but worked with Wesley).  And you can find moderates who can’t do any of those things – they are rebels without a cause and are making a point by not joining any ‘side’, and are insufferably irritating for everyone.

It seems like either your categories are more flexible than you have said (which you may well recognise) and/or it is dangerous to place people in one category in a public setting (such as a blog) without first doing your research! After all, it might only serve to create a greater divide than there already is. Hmmm.
Perhaps I have missed something?
I am not sure where you see yourself on your scale. Care to share?

Well, if you go back to my and Jennie’s series on Self-Knowledge for Godliness and Ministry you will see that we are big fans of categories.  We have a couple of provisos though:

1. The categories aren’t exhaustive.  There are other ways you can categorise people in those boxes and those other ways will shed other light that has its own value.

2. The categories aren’t comprehensive. They’ll always miss something/some people, or they’ll have to be very big and abstract to capture everyone.

So the basic framework of convinced x and moderates is both broad and abstract and covers only some people.  There’s a lot of people that don’t fit there at all.

I don’t really fit that particular categorisation either, in my judgement.  I am definitely ‘convinced’ – I’m writing about it, have thought hard about it, I am very hostile towards egalitarianism as a body of ideas.  But I am very independent in my approach to it all – don’t care whether I’m considered ‘sound’ or not on the subject by others who call themselves complementarian, am not particularly interested in learning what complementarianism involves, and more interested in working it out for myself.

People like me, in secular political discussions, are often called ‘independent conservatives/progressives’.  We usually have much less political clout than others who are part of the ‘party’, we will disagree with our own ‘side’ and offer more criticisms that way than others with similar views might, and we sometimes steer our own path through current debates.  We often care more about the ideas in the debate than the debate itself or who wins the political struggles.

Hi Terri,

I have seven windows up for comments to do with this thread.  Three for the thread to do with the next post.  I jumped ahead to you and Kristen because you were new and your comments seemed to have a bit of ‘energy’ behind them.  But now I’ll be picking things off in a more chronological order, and then will jump to post four so that thread gets some input from me as well.  Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after is all I can say.  I’ve got some other things happening than just the comments. It’s not lack of desire, there’s very human limitations that even the ‘Super Typing Man’ has to work within.

Hi Dave,

With regards to whether or not it is ‘ok’ to say I find you ‘uninformed’ and whether it was ok for you to say ‘You should kow better than this’ etc. I do not want to go on about this, but I feel I should express to you that I felt your original criticism of what I said was pedantic and ‘Father like’. I responded really by suggesting you look at your own words (I guess I saw you as hypocritical). Now I see your explanations as a poor attempt to justify you acting like my Father, by continuing to act like my Father! They are your judgements and my blogging experience does not reflect what you say at all. Perhaps we should just drop it and let me go and work on my ‘Father issues’?!

Well, sure, let’s not keep harping on.  I can understand people getting irked with my approach (sanctimonious is a more common accusation in my experience than paternalistic, but they’re all pointing at the same thing I suspect). I think virtual communities work better if the person taking the lead (doing the posts etc) actively works to establish the norms – functions like the patron of the community rather than just wades into the debates as though they are a ‘private citizen’. 

I wasn’t asking you to agree with me, nor was I justifying myself, nor am I here. I’m spelling out how this sandpit works and the kind of logic behind it. I’m not advocating it as the one right way to run a virtual sandpit. This works better for me at this point in time for what I’m trying to do.  As we seemed to be clashing, I thought I’d sketch in the approach more for you – but there’s no requirement for you to think what I’m doing is anything other than crazy.  Just try and do your best to work with those norms while you’re here.

Thank you for the extra information about your new egalitarian movement. The extra context helps immensely.  You seem to be wanting to say that your kind of evangelical egalitarianism is different because it isn’t liberal egalitarianism. It takes the Bible seriously.

Again, I don’t think most egalitarian evangelicals are liberals.  I don’t think they want to become liberals, I don’t think they are liberal fifth columnists, liberals in disguise, take liberals out on dates, or partner them at the Homecoming Dance. I. Don’t. Think. Egalitarian Evangelicals. Are. Liberals.

I think egalitarianism shares certain presuppositions and some methodology with liberalism. I think that has moved some egalitarian evangelicals over into a more liberal direction that they didn’t want to go in when they became egalitarians. In other cases it hasn’t had that effect.

So I don’t see this feature you’re describing as ‘new’.  I think evangelical egalitarians have always made their case from both the Bible and from the social changes that have occurred in modern society. And while the case has been made from two sources, the Bible has been very important in that case.

I think your ‘new’ evangelical egalitarianism is, at this point, ‘just’ plain old run of the mill evangelical egalitarianism, as opposed to liberal egalitarianism. And my criticisms are aimed at it, not liberalism. Let the dead bury the dead (liberals), my concern is with the living (evangelicals).

Hi Sam,

Welcome along, and thanks for the clarifying question:

In your original post you stated that Complementarian exegesis has been showing the texts to “state what they have generally been understood to have said for two millennia.”
Would you be able to cite some sources for this claim? I’m specifically interested in any commentators prior to the 1800’s.

Which you then sharpened up as:

The theology of most modern Complementarians argues that women are <i>not<i> inferior, less capable, or less able - they simply have the subordinate <i>role</i> and men have the role of leading & teaching.
From what I can tell this reading of the aforementioned passages is a modern one, and most traditional commentators understood female subordination as natural & logical, given their supposed inferiority and weakness.

In terms of the words I used in the post, all I was intending to say was:

1. The texts aren’t expressing culture. (contra one egalitarian claim)

2. The texts are laying out a a pattern of male-female relationship in church and family (at least those contexts, some complementarians will argue for more) where the woman never has authority over the man. (contra another egalitarian claim)

3. The texts give weighty theological reasons often based on explicit or implicit appeals to OT texts for the patterns of male-female relationships they lay out (contra another egalitarian claim)

I was sidestepping the whole, “Are women not as capable” kind of issue and not showing a hand either way on that question – whether there’s been a change there in how the issue is understood.

But on that question, I think my basic answer agrees with Andrew Moody in his response to you.  (Whenever I’m smart I agree with Andrew, anyway.) My impression of the earlier texts is their argument is not purely on the idea that women are less capable then men, but also on the idea that the pattern of creation inherently makes this arrangement more fitting.  The first bit isn’t argued often at the moment by complementarians, but the latter bit seems similar in content (if differently expressed) than what I see in earlier commentators that I’ve looked at.

On top of what Andrew has indicated there’s Martin Luther as another idiosyncratic figure. I haven’t exhaustively looked at Martin Luther on this question but I have dipped into him.  Because of how the priesthood of all believers functions in his theology, it seems that he was regularly challenged as to why women can’t be priests normally.  I haven’t seen anywhere yet where he appeals to lack of ability (be hard to given his take on the priesthood of all believers, but not utterly impossible), I have seen places where he appeals to creation order and telos. He’s an outlier, as almost always, but, as almost always, an important one.

Hi Arthur,

Following up your second great bit of input:

That ‘moderate third party’ you mentioned seems to be the viable path for Adelaide Christianity—not because moderates have somehow grown elbows, but because a more moderate position is in some sense necessitated by circumstances (without everyone going squishy between the ears!).... seems that Christians have come to a more inclusive, ‘centrifugal’ perspective in order get gospel work done.

And you could be right, no skin off my nose if you are. 

But let me try and push a bit for my thesis – not because I think you’re wrong about Adelaide, or because I think Adelaide is bad for going this way or anything like that.

First, the whole of Australia (or all of Anglicanism worldwide) could go the Adelaide route, and that wouldn’t affect my thesis.  My thesis includes the possibilities of exceptions in some circumstances. We’re so small that we could all be an exception.

But look over the first couple of comments on post four.  Are the egalitarians saying, “pfft, of course we’re not doing that!”  No, they’re saying, “Unfair! You guys are doing it too!”  Factor that into your optimism when looking beyond Adelaide.

Second, what you’re describing is very different than what I outlined to Matthew Williams.  If Tasmania and Adelaide are as have been described, then there’s no need for ‘elbows’.  ‘Elbows’ in that kind of context is going to be an exception, not a rule. 

Melbourne has most of the big players in Anglican egalitarianism – evangelical or liberal.  It has a group (probably smaller) that are convinced complementarians.  You can’t use the Adelaide/Tasmania moderate strategy in Melbourne.  Because you’ve got people there for whom the moderate position is unacceptable on both sides.

That’s why my ‘counsel’ to Matthew was so pointed, even down to using highly forceful language (‘thumping around the head’ individuals I named), and proposing radical structural changes like getting rid of bishops.  They were rhetorical devices. (Please don’t go actually thumping anyone around the head, virtual or othewise.  Leave that to Gibbs. He was a marine.)  My point was, once the debate has heated up and you’ve got people who see this as a gospel issue, you are going to have to fight for the moderate position, you can’t get it just by being nice. 

And you have to find a solution that is really a Hegelian ‘third way’ – a synthesis that encompasses both the thesis and the antithesis by reframing the terms of the whole issue on which the debate is being waged.  Until that third way appears, any idea of it seems as bizzare as suggesting the way forward for Episcopalians is to not be episcopalians.

Now, if that’s not your context, if you don’t have people saying, “This is a gospel issue (either way)” then you don’t need elbows.  You can all play nicely and do your thing, and try and make life easy for the guys with other convictions on the question when you meet together.

Third, Adelaide, Melbourne, Tasmania are not islands (well, maybe Tasmania…).  You are part of a system that is bigger than you, and as it changes it will change your culture.  Introduction of women bishops in more dioceses, Sydney going ahead with diaconal administration, the gay debate, something we don’t see yet, evangelicals elsewhere dividing on this issue – all will change things and shape that culture on which your hopes lie (if they happen at all.  Obviously Sydney won’t be introducing Diaconal Administration, but maybe the others might happen ).  Not saying you won’t be proved right.  But we’ve seen culture change a lot over the last year on the basis of structural changes whose effect everyone thought would be trumped by culture at the time.

Fourth, if the solution is a centrifugal structure – of looser ties – then that has its own features.  That’s a ‘low cost low reward’ structure.  It’s like Baptist churches – I remember one Baptist minister saying to me that he had complete independence to run things how he wanted, and absolutely no support from the denomination.  The two go together.  He can work alongside anyone as best he and they can. But there’s nothing there beyond those voluntary ties to group them together into a body that is more than the sum of the parts.  When one has to survive then that’s one of a couple of solutions.  But sometimes Christians want to function as something big, as a movement.  ‘Live and let live’ starts to come under more strain then.

You could well prove me wrong.  But at the moment I’m not convinced that Adelaide’s experience will be the paradigm for the whole, or that it will necessarily weather the changes that occur elsewhere and put new stresses on its solution.

There can be many bad/wrong reasons to be egal or comp.  If one is something for a bad/wrong reason it can easily be on the path to truth and Truth to reject the belief along with the wrong reasons, even if the belief is correct.

I used to be a hierarchalist as that was all I had heard from teachers I respected and it seemed to be what the Bible said (I did not even know the word comp).  Once I studied both sides in their own words, I became egal.

Both comps and egals continue to put out papers and books and they are not rehashes of old arguments.  Payne’s new (egal) book have the very best explanations of some Bible texts I have seen, altho I do not agree with everything he writes.

BTW the name is Teri.  :^)

”I’m happy to say that the Son is under the Father’s authority.  But the authority he is under is in a sense ‘his’ as well.”

In your estimation then since YHWH is under the Father’s authority, but has that same authority, is the Father then under His own authority.  Is the Father then sometimes under that same authority in His Son.

”Complementarians don’t always (in my experience) say the second sentence clearly enough to clearly articulate that their position is Trinitarian and not tritheistic. Egalitarians flatly deny the first”

Are you saying that egalitarians deny that the Son is under the Father’s authority?  If so, you compressed their beliefs beyond recognition.  To my understanding Christians who believe in Biblical equality hold to the Nicene and Athenasian Creeds which state that in the economy of the Trinity none is before or after the other, and all have the same Divine Will.  Thus it is impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will because their will is always the same.  And because God never changes, that never changed. 

What did change is that God ‘sent’  the Messiah through the birth of a baby boy name Jesus who shared pure ‘seed’ from God, while also sharing seed from the human woman Mary.  Thus, the Messiah being both divine and human was a unique miracle.  In him there was opportunity, which never came to fruition thankfully, to go against the Divine Will of the Trinity.  Thus Jesus prayed to the Father, your will not mine.  He lived the perfect example of humanity submitted to God.  In the Godhead, however, there is no your will and my will for then we would indeed have tritheism.

Hi Kristen,

You say you believe the egalitarians have the Trinity wrong.  Do you believe in the eternal subordination of the Son?

Blah, I’m doing postgrad study on the doctrine of the Trinity in Athanasius.  Here is my take on how utterly non-transparent the term subordination is on the issue of the Trinity:
http://solapanel.org/article/complementarianism_and_egalitarianism_part_1/#5419

Take out the word ‘subordination’ and give me a sentence or two that that word symbolises for you and I can have a chance of answering you.

  Because it is my understanding that this is the new, heterodox doctrine, and that egalitarianism takes its stance from the Nicene Creed, that the Father, Son and Spirit are one in being and essence.

Well your understanding is wrong, it’s regrettably common, but it’s wrong. 

Don’t take my word for it.  Miroslav Volf is a highly respected egalitarian evangelical theologian, he has a top class mind.  His After Our Likeness is dedicated in the first half to unpacking how Ratzinger, the current Vicar of Christ and so arguably the most reliable interpreter of Catholic teaching, and Zizzolous, arguably the most influential Greek Orthodox theologian for Protestants and Catholics, link the structure of the Church and the relationships between the persons in the Godhead.

He shows how both Ratzinger and Zizoulas argue that the bishop’s relationship to the congregation is an analogy to the Father’s relationship to the Son – a relationship that, in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy and most definitely includes authority. He goes on to disagree with them and articulate a new ecclessiology based on a different understanding of the Trinity in its operations, but he shows what they think first.

Now, sure, the Catholics, the Orthodox, who don’t have a fight over women’s ordination going on, and the complementarian evangelicals, who do, could all have introduced this new, heterodox doctrine independently of each other (and for no apparent reason in the case of Catholicism and the Orthodox – but they’re bad guys so they probably did it just because they’re bad). 

But maybe its just a bit more probable that the egalitarians – many of whom like Millard Erickson also reject the Father’s eternal begetting of the Son, which is pretty darn central to the Nicene Creed – are the ones who moved.

I can point you to an article by an orthodox theologian in St Vladimir’s journal where they discuss the gender question and you’d swear that most of what he says about the relationship of Father and Son and man and woman was written by a complementarian evangelical.  And none of it is compatible with egalitarianism.  Doesn’t mean any of us are right, but I think it’s more likely egalitarianism moved on this question, just like it did on its view of gender relations, then that Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and complementarian evangelicals all independently moved in seeing authority in the human sphere being an analogy to something within the Godhead.

  Before the Son took on human flesh, authority and subordination were without meaning, for Father, Son and Spirit were One in Will and Purpose.  The Father did not desire to send the Son more than the Son wished to come.  In the eternal divinity of the Godhead, two or more Wills/Purposes would mean two or more different beings.  But Father, Son and Spirit are One Being in three Persons. The Will of the Son and the Father did not and could not diverge until the Son took on human nature, which then was capable of being at odds with the Divine Will.
This, as I understand it, is orthodox Trinitarian doctrine.

Yes, and it’s all true as far as it goes.  But the fact that the Son is not simply ‘God’ but is ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God, of one being with the Father’ adds some extra aspects to how that one will exists in the Father and the Son.

And I can show multiple passages (which I’ll do next year) where Athanasius happily talks about the Son before the incarnation doing the Father’s will as a way of capturing how that all fits together. 

The Son does not obey the Father as though he is meeting a will that comes to him from outside himself as is our experience of obedience.  But neither is it a ‘vote’ between the three persons, or one will that exists in exactly the same way in all three persons.  The operations of the Godhead have an order – from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. And egalitarianism does not yet seem to have come to terms with that aspect of the Nicene Creed’s doctrine of the Godhead and its implications for what is possible for human experiences of authority.

Mark, thanks for clarifying that you really really do not think egals are liberals.

You said, “I think evangelical egalitarians have always made their case from both the Bible and from the social changes that have occurred in modern society”.

I do not (nor does Don Johnson I believe) build my case as an egal from social changes in modern society. If you think that my ‘new’ egal movement is the same as th eold, but you think it does this, then you have not yet understood that there is a new movement.

Grump.  You realise that’s mud that’s going to stick, don’t you?  Years from now, someone’s going to address me as ‘Super Typing Man’. 

What’s not to like about a superhero moniker? Just remember not to use it with the definite article (as you did above). That just sounds like Nietzsche ;-}

My Dr Horrible Sing-Along-Blog references are withering in shame.

Not at all! I had one too, but it was too brief (there’s a surprise!)

“So, after tonight I am in the Evil League of Evil if all goes according to plan, which it will, because I hold a PhD in horribleness. See you at the aftermath.”

There was also an even more marginally recognisable Buffy quote in the “to the amount of ten” AND I was going to try a Dollhouse reference but I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. So, see what you’ve started?

BTW you were absolutely correct about Veronica Mars. Great stuff.

But my question was about how you described the egalitarian case – how their view of gender beautifully fits with their Christology.  I know what I would by that (and have those posts sketched out in my head), but what do you mean by that? I want to make sure I haven’t missed something you’ve seen.

Hmmm, well this might be a genuine rorschach moment. My intent was more that a biblical (complementarian) view of marriage connects closely in typological terms to Christ’s relationship with the church his body. I am sure egalitarians would partly agree with this: they too would regard Christ’s model of loving self-surrender as a model for marriage. But ISTM this comes in a more generalised form; both the man and the woman lay down their lives for each other (cf. Jn 15:13). Fair enough, but I am suggesting that there is a particular obligation for men to play this part which arises out of the a deep, creational, Christ-anticipating typology of marriage (phew).

However, although this wasn’t what I had in mind, I might be able to say something that more in line with your musings: ISTM that Christocentrism *is* a problem for egalitarianism. If the persons of the Trinity are “peers” then we are going to end up with a zero-sum doxology: it was *the Son* who came down to die for me *and not* the Father or Spirit. While orthodox theology preserves an order of subsistence and operation which allows us to see how the Father and Spirit *also* save us (eg. the Father sends by initiating and sending), egalitarianism undermines this by allowing no genuine priority to the Father. This makes it difficult to see how the Father saves us at all: he doesn’t send in any real sense; he doesn’t come down and die - what *does* he do?

I suspect if theology heads in this direction then it will end up drifting either toward modalism (where the Son is just “God” in the context of his dealing with the world – cf. Barth/McCormack) or a quasi-Nestorianism where “Christ” is effectively considered as a separate person cut-off from the immanent Trinity. In either case, the motivation will be to keep “Christ” from being one person of the Godhead who gets special treatment at the expense of the others.

Whereas I (and, I suspect, you) believe that Christocentrism is the design of God the Father. He, as the initiator of divine decree, instigates a world, history and people who will be for his Son (cf. Heb 1:2; Eph 1:10). Paternal priority produces Christocentrism - which is a time-space expression of Filiocentrism. Simultaneously, honour directed toward Christ is also “to the glory of the Father” because the Son is his living image and the mission is the Father’s initiative.

Back to the Trinity! Déja vu all over again.

...their view of gender beautifully fits with their Christology.  I know what I would by that (and have those posts sketched out in my head).

So when do we get to find out about this? :-}

Hi Don,

Change of mode here, I’m a bit stroppy on this issue, but it’s for other ‘hot button’ issues for me than the comp/egal debate.

I am one that actually believes in the sufficiency of Scripture and so am non-creedal.  Arguing what Greeks thought in the 4th century or later about God might be interesting but does not define my faith, which is based on Scripture as illuminated by the Spirit.

Okay.  Several things here.

1. Don’t comment on someone else’s conversation on these threads and use a form of words that implies, “Your conversation is a complete waste of time because I actually believe something important about Scripture which you guys clearly don’t or you wouldn’t be having this debate.”  That conversation doesn’t interest you?  Fine.  Move along then, nothing to see here. But don’t imply to anybody on this thread, me, or anyone else, comp or egal, that their discussion suggests that they don’t take the Bible seriously.
2. You are one who actually believes (loved the ‘actually’) in the sufficiency of Scripture and therefore are non-creedal.  Good for you.  So Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, Melancthon, Bullinger, Zwingli, Bucer – you know, the Reformers who actually articulated the doctrine of sola scriptura didn’t actually believe in it? Only the Anabaptists actually believed in the sufficiency of Scripture? (and I’m not entirely sure even all of them were non-creedal). 

So, you don’t believe in churches ever having any creeds, any statement of faith, any declaration of what the faith once for all delivered is?  All of that is a rejection of the sufficiency of Scripture.  Every possible theological and ethical question needs to be kept open? You believe in nothing other than the exercise of reading the Bible and seeking the truth that, if it is briefly glimpsed, can’t be written down and stated, because doing that would then deny the sufficiency of Scripture?

3. You encourage me to read the latest books published by comps and egals because they keep coming up with new arguments – arguments completely untested by generations of believers, arguments that have no ‘life’ apart from their existence in a book published by the Next Big Thing.  You suggest that I should care about it, be open to what they say, that it isn’t just interesting but might help define my faith by helping me read the Bible better.

And at the same time you say that looking at how our forefathers in the faith, whose conclusions on the Scripture’s teaching on a weighty matter of doctrine was hammered out over a century or more of intense debate and has stood the test of time for one and half thousand years such that to believe the theology of the Nicene Creed has been a test of whether someone is considered a Christian and orthodox or a heretic for over a millenia – all of that is just ‘interesting’ and doesn’t ‘define your faith’ by helping you read the Bible better?

Can you see where I have a problem with that?  And it’s got nothing to do with comp/egal. And, in my view, it’s got even less to do with you being the only one out you, Kristen, and I who believes in the sufficiency of Scripture.

Hi Teri,

BTW the name is Teri.  :^)

Gack.  I’m sorry.  I’m very bad with names.  My wife and I were married for ten years before I finally stopped forgetting her name in conversations.  Even more embarrassingly, I somehow managed to get my own name wrong last year and blurted out ‘Matthew’ when asked.  Teri it is.  Teri, Teri, Teri.

In your estimation then since YHWH is under the Father’s authority, but has that same authority, is the Father then under His own authority.  Is the Father then sometimes under that same authority in His Son.

No.  And as far as I can judge, if I put that to most patristic scholars that I’ve interacted with here in the UK in their non-confessional university theological departments, I think most would say that no-one thought that among the important figures in the early church. 

T.F. Torrance might be an exception and might be prepared to say that about the patristic understanding. I base that purely on the way he glosses the Son being begotten from the being of the Godhead rather than from the being of the Father and so seems to be implying that the Godhead (which includes the Son) is the Arche of the Son, and not only the Father.  But I was surprised when I got over here what low regard T.F. Torrance is held in among patristic scholars for his writings on patristic theology, given how influential he’s been on systematics in that field. So he’d be an outlier in scholarship.

Are you saying that egalitarians deny that the Son is under the Father’s authority? 

Yes, eternally, except (in some cases – there’s some important differences at this point among egalitarians) for the Incarnation and/or the earthly ministry of Jesus. Some egalitarians seem to say that the Son wasn’t under the Father’s authority even in the Incarnation – he was as a man, but not as touching his divinity.  Some say he was while on earth but isn’t upon his glorification.  Others seem to say that he will always be under the authority of the Father for as long as he remains truly man as well as truly God – and then that group seems to be divided into those who say that he will divest himself of his humanity in the New Creation, and those who say that he will be eternally subordinated to the Father.  I think I’ve seen all those views argued by egalitarians, and each one really troubles me in light of my patristic studies.

“the Son is not under the Father’s authority” was getting at what seems to be held at in common among egals – that for eternity ‘past’ the Son was not under the authority of the Father, and never would have been except for the Incarnation.

If so, you compressed their beliefs beyond recognition.  To my understanding Christians who believe in Biblical equality hold to the Nicene and Athenasian Creeds which state that in the economy of the Trinity none is before or after the other, and all have the same Divine Will.  Thus it is impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will because their will is always the same.  And because God never changes, that never changed.

Okay, I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong here.  It’s impossible for one in the Trinity to be ‘in authority’ over the other’s will because their will is always the same and that never changes. I think that’s what you’ve said.  How does saying ‘egals deny that the Son is under the Father’s authority’ compress that beyond recognition? Is it because I didn’t have an extra sentence or two acknowledging that some/most egalitarians consider the Son to be under the Father’s authority in the Incarnation?

I’m probably getting twitchy because of Kristen’s accusations.  If that’s the ‘compress beyond belief’ it’s because that wasn’t germane to the narrow issue you and I were discussing, not because I wanted to make egalitarians look like they were all saying that the Son doesn’t submit to the Father while on earth. We were talking about what happens eternally.

”I’m going to take a stab that you’re filling out Dave’s statement that
your position in no way has been shaped by the changes that have taken place
in broader society.

Most Christians who believe in Biblical equality found that equality in Scripture and in their relationship with the Lord not in flawed society.  In my case I came to the Lord entrenched in traditional views of gender and social relationships. It was purely God and His Word that changed my views and took me where I happily am today on this subject.

”are you saying that the Church’s debate on women’s ordination <em>preceded the changes in society and, to some degree, drove those changes?</em>

The ‘debate’ on what should women be allowed to do has been an ongoing debate since before the time of Jesus walking on earth, but mostly in the background. There were always women somewhere who managed to get out of the shackles that people put on them and do the works of God anyway.  One has to do more diligent research to find them because most of history centers more on what men have done, but they can be found.

sorry about the messed up tags, just waking up here…. 

Hi Kristen,

you essentially said the complementarians are the only ones practicing honest exegesis.  You may or may not have intended to say that, but that is impact of your words.  You continue to present complementarian ideas with nuanced and sophisticated language, and egalitarian arguments with language that makes egalitarianism—and egalitarians—look unreasonable and combative.  Like here:

<i>Complementarians say: “You can be genuinely equal and yet once person has authority over another and the other has to compulsorily submit to the first.”
Egalitarians say: “Absolute nonsense.  If women have to submit to men, then they are inferior to men.” </i>

Okay, you’ve got two items.  One where I made it very clear when I was questioned that the words were a description only, and any criticism of egalitarianism on the basis would need to be argued – something that is entirely consistent with what regular Sola readers (the intended audience) would be familiar from me. Even you seem to admit that even on your reading it was nothing more than an unintended meaning of my words – incompetency in communication on my part.

The other item, yes I can see how you took it that way.  It’s why I never tried it with you, but with Teri. Jokes are always risky and person specific. Andrew Moody and I will goof around.  With others I never joke. I got a sense from early on with Teri’s comments that we could probably exchange some more light hearted phrasings – an impression reinforced by her recent dig in my direction on thread one.

But let’s grant both.  My hostility to the body of ideas was ‘cooking the books’ in those two instances.

Is that really the whole story? I carefully distinguished between three kinds of approaches on authority among egalitarians, looked at different understandings of the Son’s relationship to the Father in the Incarnation, rejected the idea that egalitarians are liberals, rejected the idea that egalitarianism necessarily leads to liberalism while indicating concerns about shared assumptions and method, rejected that there is necessarily anything wrong with an egalitarian woman leaving a complementarian structure to find a wider use for her gifts, argued that egalitarians aren’t trying to shut complementarians out by enacting their convictions – it’s a side effect of a fundamentally positive step in their minds, even compared egalitarians to the Reformers (my heroes) and complementarians to the Catholic church. You might disagree with some of those, but are they all painting egalitarians as unreasonable and combative?

Even if you conclude I’m getting it culpably wrong in a couple of instances,  in light of other evidence I think your judgement here could be questioned:

I don’t trust that your acknowledged hostility to my position will not continue to result in this kind of one-sided treatment, that one side deserves to get its position articulated fairly, and the other doesn’t.

Coming from someone who began her contribution to this thread by saying:

it was the complementarians who first began to use the doctrine of the Trinity in order to support the “equal-but-” idea of the husband-wife relationship. Egalitarian discussion of the Trinity has largely been in response.

Which hardly seems to be evidencing a concern to bend over backwards to present the complementarian case in a way that complementarians themselves would agree with. And then followed that up in your next comment with:

Do you believe in the eternal subordination of the Son?  Because it is my understanding that this is the new, heterodox doctrine

Which is also a highly polemical way of articulating the complementarian position.

One might even describe it as “I don’t trust that your acknowledged hostility to my position will not continue to result in this kind of one-sided treatment, that one side deserves to get its position articulated fairly, and the other doesn’t.” Seriously Kristen, is there even one piece of evidence you can point to where you have kept the high standards that you are condemning me on?

So I’ll sign off now.  I’ve probably just proved your point that egals and comps can’t talk. Under these circumstances, I don’t think we can.

Okay, that’s probably for the best.  A genuine thank you for coming.  Despite the relational issues between us, I think you made one of the most important contributions so far – you zeroed in on what looked like a shared view between us of what were the key issues. Anyone who followed where you were beginning to take us and could get a glimpse of how you were beginning to set things up is in your debt, in my opinion.  Thank you.

And yes, this interaction has indeed strengthened the thesis, whichever of us what at fault, and to what degree.  Ironies everywhere. Grace be with you.

Mark, I admit my tone was hostile, out of a perception that yours was, too.  I apologize for that.

I do have a sense of humor, too—when I’m not being all indignant!

Thank you for your words of peace.  Grace be with you too.

I cannot seem to find the comment here addressed to me from Andrew Moody that I received in my email notification, so I’ll just go ahead and respond to it…

”Can I encourage you to pay careful attention to what Mark writes on the
Trinity. He won’t point this out for himself, but he’s at Oxford studying
a doctorate under a major scholar on this very area.”

Yes, that’s somewhat impressive.  I’ve had friends from many years ago in the doctorate process so I’m familiar with the intense studying and all.  It’s interesting what people presume without a face. 

”You aren’t talking to someone who has just breezed through Giles, Erickson, Ware and Grudem and now feels ready to hold forth. “

I really wouldn’t call studying any doctrine in Scripture a thing of breezing through, but I’ve been hanging in there studying and teaching for the last 41 years. However, I talk to everyone.  I’ve conversed with lots of learned and historically informed Christian minds. We’re all on the same level ground at the foot of the cross.  Any bits of truths that God so graciously puts in my understanding or anyone else’s is all to His glory.

”The trouble here, as I see it, is that “will” can mean at least three
things and you are kind of running those things together.”

IMO the only distinctions that need to be noted are the Divine Will in which all the Trinity share equally, and The Messiah who is a miracle of having within grasp the Divine Will and the human will.
Those who wish to claim a priority of one in the Trinity having more authority than the others, necessarily make the other members of the Trinity lessor.  It’s about more than equality.  Equality in the Trinity just is because they are echad, a perfect union.  And because they are echad it is unthinkable that they would disagree.  And what they are (ieue or YHWH) is all of everything that is, the beginning and the ending, the I AM.  Eloheim is whom we subject ourselves to. There is no need for subjection within the great I AM.  They are echad – Eloheim.  The great I AM does not change; there is no shadow of turning. He is immutable, stable and unchanging in nature.  The miracle is that this perfection of the essence of life (all life comes from God) performed another miracle and took something of Himself and caused a young woman to bring forth a son, a human son, born from the seed of I AM. This son was 100% human and 100% divine.  When you see Jesus, you see the Father.  It is my understanding that though God sent something of Himself, Eloheim did not change the nature of Eloheim, the great I AM.

IMO we make grave error when we try to mirror back to God the ways of humans and insert them into our view of YHWH/Eloheim.  God isn’t like us, even though we were created in His image.  The Trinity is the I AM.  We are always in the process of trying to figure out who we are in our innermost being. God is complete in who He is.

As for this miracle of The Messiah, I suspect that we do disservice to God in trying to dissect this miracle and make The Son of God likened unto a human son and God likened unto a human father.  Jesus took the form of a slave and clothed Himself with human flesh and all it’s frailties, and learned obedience through this imperfect human flesh. He did this for us.  He did many things for us that He didn’t need to do.

In all honesty, I’ve been studying this and many other things about God for 41 years, and though I’ve learned a lot I cannot say that I fully understand God or the Trinity. But I am convinced that the Light of All in the Trinity shines the same, with no shadow between them.

But I’m OK with you disagreeing with that Andrew Moody.

Hi Teri

That’s weird about my post. And I can’t find yours either! Maybe God doesn’t either of our words preserved :-}

Anyway I’ll leave it there. I assure you that I don’t intend that the persons of the Trinity are separated Lights, just like I’m sure you don’t intend modalism.

God bless.
AM

It seems to me that Authority is just a role thing. Jesus/God the Son Submitted and was under authority to his fathers plan because that was his role, just the same as I am under authority of my Boss at work, because their role has the responsibility, the same Idea with husband/Adam having authority - he has the responsibility of the two and is accountable.

It does not seem to be an equality issue, or shouldn’t be, but a role issue. And these do not seem to be indefinite. Marriage is no longer in heaven, you are only under parents authority for a time, Jesus submitted to the Father whilst on earth, because as Jesus he was under his fathers authority as a man and submitted until death, but once he rose he was given “all authority in heaven and on earth..”. We know that The father son and spirit are all one yet Jesus still says “Yet not my will but yours”.

Just some thoughts zipping through my head as i read these blogs.

Okay I think the various conversations are at a point at the moment where I can take a much needed rest. 

Breaking the limit on comments that Matthias thought was a ‘no-one is going to be going over that’ highball figure is probably not a cause for shame, but does reflect my tiredness – keeping up with the comments and trying to do justice to people’s time in reading and commenting has been intense.  I’m going to take a day or two off – once I make two brief comments, to Kristen, and on something Andrew’s said. After that I’ll be ‘offline’ until sometime over the weekend or Monday, my time.

Okay, about this piece of hyperbole from a good friend and ally,

Can I encourage you to pay careful attention to what Mark writes on the Trinity. He won’t point this out for himself, but he’s at Oxford studying a doctorate under a major scholar on this very area. Let me assure you that he knows that “this is difficult to understand” and he is not “most Christians [who] don’t have a handle on it”. You aren’t talking to someone who has just breezed through Giles, Erickson, Ware and Grudem and now feels ready to hold forth.

I don’t say this because I think you need to agree with him because he’s a big-gun (oooh Oxford), but because you are getting the most learned and historically-informed opinion you can currently get in the world today on these questions. So read him carefully.

All false modesty aside, I think Andrew’s been a bit too strong in his praise here (putting it mildly).  My opinion is not the most learned and historically-informed opinion you can currently get in the world today on these questions.  There are patristic scholars around who would tie me in knots in seconds when it came to their familiarity with the primary sources and their understanding of them.  There are systematicians (Robet Letham jumps to mind) whose grasp of the whole history of the topic is far more comprehensive than mind.  I don’t even know latin, which cuts me off from a direct engagement of an awful lot of important western texts from Augustine on.

I’m not an idiot, I’ve performed well in theological scholarly contexts – you don’t get accepted into the Oxford postgrad program otherwise, am comfortable with the fields of systematic and historical theology, biblical studies, ethics, philosophy, history and cross-fertilizing them. 

I have only one published article – a review article of a book on the topic of the Trinity and the gender debate published by an egalitarian.  The couple of times I’ve seen the article referenced in scholarly contexts the usual descriptions of it have been along the lines of ‘very fair’ and ‘devastating’.

I have put a lot of work into trying to come to terms with the doctrine of the Trinity – especially the Nicene Creed, which means especially Athanasius – as I think that’s were the two different accounts of ‘equality’ in the debate come home to bite for our doctrine of God. On those issues, I’m prepared to back my views and argue what I’ve seen in the texts and the issues against any ‘name’ systematic theologian. (And that means I’m not in danger of being overly modest).  But there’s a lot of relevant issues that I’ve left for after the doctorate.

Overall, my take on the Trinity issue and the gender debate is the same as this recent article: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GsU6EaWwr80J:rdtwot.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/sanders_the-state-of-the-doctrine-of-the-trinity.pdf+“mark+baddeley”+egalitarianism&cd=29&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

A third trend in evangelical trinitarian thought is the way the ongoing discussion about gender has shown a recurring tendency to become enmeshed in the doctrine of God, with mixed results. Observers of the debate know that evangelical complementarians and evangelical egalitarians have been vying with each other about the nature of the relationships between men and women in the family, the church, and society. For some time now, both sides have been appealing to the doctrine of the Trinity in various ways. One side argues that a certain relationship of either subordination or equality of woman to man should be maintained because of the eternal relationship of the Son to the Father. The other side replies by accusing its opponent of intentionally constructing a doctrine of God for social reasons, projecting a particular view of inner-trinitarian relations simply in order to underwrite a particular view of male-female relations. The rhetoric in this discussion has tended to heat up pretty quickly. Without even considering the merits of either the egalitarian or complementarian cases, it is easy to draw the conclusion that many evangelical theologians have a tendency to use the biggest guns available when disagreeing with each other: this conversation has been filled with charges of heresy, idolatry, ideological projection, “hermeneutical bungee-jumping”34 (whatever that may be), “tampering with the Trinity,” and of trading Christian orthodoxy for “the split-level stratifications of a pagan pantheon.” One observer has pointed out that terms like these ought to be “reserved for sects that genuinely subvert biblical Christology such as Jehovah‟s Witnesses or Mormons.”

My opinion is not the most learned and historically-informed opinion you can currently get in the world today on these questions.

Yeah, but what would you know?
Oh, wait. No.
...Only the true expert denies his authority!

Sorry to embarras you, Mark. I could explain this a little more but it won’t make it any better. :-}

Suffice to say, I meant this:

there’s good reasons to listen to me and weigh the evidence and arguments I offer

Put a “very” in there and we’re peachy.

Mark, you are ver gracious.  To be frank, I am simply not used to be treated so respectfully, as an egalitarian woman, by a complementarian.  There is usually an undertone in the conversation of, “you should know your place and stay in it; why are you challenging me instead of cooking dinner and looking after your children? Go submit to your husband and be quiet!”

So I’d be the first to admit that an assumption of “good faith” is usually lacking when I talk to complementarians on their own blogs.  Hard experience has taught me that I am usually going to be treated like a rebel who needs to repent and couldn’t possibly have anything substantive to say that a man should consider; after all, am I not restricted by my “easily deceived” nature from ever authoritatively teaching a man?

I thought perhaps that explaining this might help you understand some of the barriers to communication that need to be overcome in order for egalitarian women to hear your words “in good faith”—for your consideration in future posts on this topic.

3. As a complementarian guy, I have experienced ‘bullying’ from comp women and egal women.  Women who know how to ‘game the system’ can use the norms of how a group of Christians relate to each other, especially across the genders, to put a guy in his place, and to do so in a way whereby he looses face, and can’t really either justify himself (nothing was ever said, just implied) or even really address the point of substance.  It’s an adult version of a girl assaulting a boy in the playground because she knows that, no matter the provocation, his life will be hell if he ever hits a girl.

More importantly, every complementarian woman I know well has a story to tell of how she was treated as though she was mentally and spiritually defective by an egalitarian man.  Here is an example: http://katierae.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/you-want-to-be-ordained-in-sydney/

I’ve heard similar stories from complementarian women at the hands of egalitarian non-Christian men, Christian men, and even reporting back conversations they have had with well-known egalitarian Christian authors (men who’d likely be recognised if I mentioned them here). Women have told me about how they’ve been made to feel like ‘a little girl’, told they were in bondage to an oppressive system, have Stockholm’s Syndrome, and been generally made to feel that they don’t have a right to their opinion unless they believe what the egal man thinks.

My own suspicion is that these issues are not really connected to the debate. Chauvinism is ubiquitous among men – not all men are, but most of us have to work on it. Men are often unsettled by female strength and intelligence when it is in areas that are important to their own self-identity (Jennie and I lost count of how many times other women asked her if she was deliberately getting lower marks than me in College), they are often intolerant of weakness or neediness. Women also have ‘natural’ dynamics in their relationships with men that are problematic and are ubiquitous, whatever the ideology on paper is. 

But for many egal men, their becoming an egal is usually part of them coming to recognise that they were, up until then, chavinists, and repudiating that. The problem with that is that, in some cases, it seems that being an egal is then identified with treating women well – a kind of self-righteousness.  “I’m not in danger of chauvinism – I’m an egal.” That’s nonsense if the behaviour is a matter of the heart, and not simply of ideology.  Thinking that a different ideology solves the problem actually makes you more susceptible.  Col 2:20-24 territory. And that heart problem manifests most clearly when the egal man is confronted with a comp woman – someone who doesn’t agree with him about something that really matters to him.  That’s when some egal men demonstrate that they haven’t dealt with their chauvinism after all.

continuing...

The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite. So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord…

‘to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord’. 

Jesus isn’t just 100% divine and yet ‘something of God’ – he is all that the Father is.  There is one God, one Lord, one infinite, one almighty – and that ‘one’ is Jesus Christ, just as much as he is the Father.  All the fullness of the deity dwells bodily in Christ.  Col 1:19.  God didn’t send ‘something of himself’, he sent someone who was himself, who didn’t just have similar attributes, but the very same attributes, the very same being that God has.

This has nothing to do with the gender debate as such.  What you’ve written, unless you are prepared to move off your claim that the only two things that matter are the one will in the Godhead and the two wills in Christ, and be prepared to start to talk about the persons and whether they can have real personal relationships with each other, unless you’re prepared to do that, what you’ve written simply is modalism – Andrew (as is usually the case) was being nice.

Let’s focus then on where you do have something to say about the relationship of the persons:

Those who wish to claim a priority of one in the Trinity having more authority than the others, necessarily make the other members of the Trinity lessor.  It’s about more than equality.  Equality in the Trinity just is because they are echad, a perfect union.  And because they are echad it is unthinkable that they would disagree.  And what they are (ieue or YHWH) is all of everything that is, the beginning and the ending, the I AM.  Eloheim is whom we subject ourselves to. There is no need for subjection within the great I AM.

This reads like one fairly normal egalitarian strand of thinking about the interpersonal relationships in the Godhead and our relationship to the Father through Christ.  There can’t be any authority, or even ‘a priority’ of one in the Trinity because that would make the other persons lesser; there is no ‘need’ for subjection within the great I AM.  That is a classic expression of the egalitarian conviction that authority has to be linked to real inferiority. 

We see it expressed the other way when you observe that we subject ourselves to Eloheim – something quite appropriate because we are genuinely inferior to God. Authority, indeed any priority at all, can only exist where there is real inferiority between persons. We are inferior to God and so we subject ourselves to him. 

But the persons are not inferior to each other, and so there cannot be any authority or primacy.

And we see the other element that often appears here too. It is unthinkable that the persons would disagree with each other for they are echad.  There is only will in the Godhead.

to be concluded

Hi Callan,
Thanks for your reflections, and welcome along. I enjoyed your thoughts, I think you managed to neatly endorse a key point of each side of the debate that would upset most people on the other side.

It seems to me that Authority is just a role thing. Jesus/God the Son Submitted and was under authority to his fathers plan because that was his role, just the same as I am under authority of my Boss at work, because their role has the responsibility, the same Idea with husband/Adam having authority - he has the responsibility of the two and is accountable.

This is a clear kind of complementarian position.  ‘Role’ is one of the disputed categories.  Egalitarians claim that no-one spoke in terms of ‘role’ until the 60’s/70’s – it’s how complementarianism is no more ‘traditional’ in their eyes than their egalitarianism. I think some egalitarians would be happy with the idea that you can compare the Son voluntarily submitting himself to the Father’s authority for a specific context – our salvation, with being under the authority of a boss at work.

I think few would be happy that either of those can be compared to a husband having authority over his wife – that would be seen as something more essential and permanent, not limited and possibly exchangable (you could get promoted over your boss’s head, maybe the Father could have been the one to be sent to be incarnated – a question we’ll be looking at next year).

It does not seem to be an equality issue, or shouldn’t be, but a role issue. And these do not seem to be indefinite. Marriage is no longer in heaven, you are only under parents authority for a time, Jesus submitted to the Father whilst on earth, because as Jesus he was under his fathers authority as a man and submitted until death, but once he rose he was given “all authority in heaven and on earth..”. We know that The father son and spirit are all one yet Jesus still says “Yet not my will but yours”.

Here you’ve clearly backed the egalitarian side.  Authority is okay as long as it doesn’t last forever – if it did, then we wouldn’t be equal, but as long as it stops sometime then it doesn’t indicate any essential inferiority.

I think many/most complementarians would take issue with that and say, “The length of time doesn’t matter, it’s either a sign of inferiority or it isn’t.”

Not wanting to try and ‘solve’ any of that for you.  Thought I’d just ‘map’ it onto the broader debate and hand it back to keep you thinking.

Thanks for feeding into the thread some of where your thinking is up to. That’s as useful as what’s happening with those of us with already existing substantial positions.

Mark, there is, at least on the surface, a certain, shall we say “tension”?—between this statement of yours:

“Love requires two ‘wills’ as well. If the will is absolutely the same in all three persons, then when the Father loves the Son he is not loving someone else – he is loving himself, it is self-love, that is on view, and nothing more. Love for another requires there to be some way whereby the two persons can be distinguished in a substantial way.  And to do that, we have to realise that it’s not as simple as saying ‘one will in the Godhead and that’s all that matters’. Not just authority, but love too requires there to be some kind of I-Thou relationship, some sense in which persons say, “Not my will but yours be done”, some sense in which each person in the relationship puts the other before themselves.”

and this one:

“Jesus isn’t just 100% divine and yet ‘something of God’ – he is all that the Father is.  There is one God, one Lord, one infinite, one almighty – and that ‘one’ is Jesus Christ, just as much as he is the Father.  All the fullness of the deity dwells bodily in Christ.  Col 1:19.  God didn’t send ‘something of himself’, he sent someone who was himself, who didn’t just have similar attributes, but the very same attributes, the very same being that God has.”

I do not deny the “primacy” of the Father in the Trinity, but I also need you to explain exactly what you mean by “three wills.”  I do not think that what They <i>want,</i> in the essence of Their Being, can be divergent in any substantive way, or they would be three gods, not one God.

I still think that “authority” is a meaningless concept in inter-Trinitarian relationships in divine eternity.  “Primacy” is a different concept from “authority.”  Authority must, on some level entail the ability to compel another to do something whether they want to do it or not.  I do not see authority and subordination as being meaningful words to use.  Did not the Son say, even in the moment of His absolute submission to the Father’s will, that He had only to call, and the Father would immediately send twelve legions of angels?

I am in full agreement that a too-close comparison of the husband-wife relationship to the Father-Son relationship is problematic.  We are individual humans.  They are a Trinity, and in a very real way, beyond our full comprehension.

concluding...
Now, I think there is an important difference among complementarians that I’m not sure has been discussed enough yet that bears upon this.  Some comps think that women only submit to men in marriage and church.  Some comps think that women should never have authority over men in any context.  And some comps think that it’s marriage and church and other contexts that might be like marriage and church.

That also bears upon the question you’re asking.  For comps with a ‘marriage and church only’ view then it really is getting close to a ‘role’ concept even in an egalitarian sense.  You aren’t always a wife, and being a wife is only relevant for one specific context. You aren’t always doing church, and being a member of a church is only relevant for church based relationships.  Outside those contexts, those roles come off. 

For ones down the other end of the spectrum, it would seem to be, not so much that gender is linked to certain roles – making some possible, others impossible, with a large group that either gender can take on – but that gender is linked more directly to authority and submission in its own right.

And those of us more in between have elements of both.

So, I think you’re putting your finger on something that really matters, and yes, I am very aware of it.  But I think it is even more complex than is often recognised because it goes to some important conceptual differences between complementarian accounts.

For the moment though, I’ll flag two issues.  Yes ‘being male’ is who you are, it’s not something you can put on or off.  But it is not always relevant. Gender shapes everything we do, but it doesn’t define everything we do.  There’s no male way of doing mathematics – as though we need two names for mathematics.  One for when it is done by men, and one for when it is done by women. There’s no doubt you do mathematics as a man or as a woman, and that shapes your doing of it, but it’s the same fundamental reality on view irrespective of gender. With something like mathematics an egalitarian view of gender complementarity seems a better fit - not what you do, but how you do it.

Second, while some roles might be temporary and limited, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t inherently and irreversibly asymetric. 

Some people are natural followers, and have no leadership ability at all.  Whether men or women, they will never be called on to be a boss or exercise leadership of a group. Their being employees might be limited and temporary but they will never be anything other than an employee whenever enter the workforce.

That’s where I think there needs to be some careful discussion with egals about how far they think this issue goes.  Because my individual qualities are every bit as much about who I am as my gender.  And there’s lots of men who aren’t leaders in terms of their personal qualities.  Does the same logic apply to this? Or is there some reason why it singled out as problematic only if it attaches to gender?

And yes, this does have relevance to the Trinitarian issue – for even among those orthodox theologians of the last millenium and a half who might resist the language of the Son eternally submitting to the Father; most in that group will still say only the Son could be incarnate (or at least, that was highly appropriate) and that his obedience to the Father in his humanity expresses in a human way the priority of the Father in the Godhead. The submission might be temporary and limited, but even for them, it still expresses who he is in his eternal relationship to his Father. And as being the Son differentiates that unique person from the other two persons - it’s not properties of a gendered ‘class’ of persons, but the specific properties of one person, it seems very similar to my issue about individuals who will only ever be followers whenever they are in a certain context.

So, big, big important issue that I’ve flagged as possibly moving the debate on.  I think there might be some fuzzines on both sides here that could do with some careful discussion, and that might open up new possibilities of ways forward - or might reveal just how radically incompatible the two views really are.

Here’s a quick interaction with it.  Feel free to take it further now if you’d like, but it’s something I really want to discuss next year.

concluding...

One analogy I’m working with for this problem is an apparent contradiction that occurs in Athanasius. 

In one place (I think it is contra Arianos he strongly argues that the Father issues no commands to the Son, because the Son is his Word – what the Father speaks.  So Gen 1 is not the Father giving instructions to the Word, but an account of the Word effecting the will of the Father.  Because the Word is the Word, there can be no prior word of God whereby the Father can speak to the Son.  The Son is the Father’s speech, so the Father can’t speak to the Son.

That’s really vital for orthodoxy, and is very similar to the one will because of the one being notion we’re wrestling with.

But, in Contre Gentes 46 we find Athanasius arguing the exact opposite - Gen 1 is an account of the Father speaking to his Word and giving him commands (yes, that is the language Athanasius uses – God isn’t just speaking to the Word in Gen 1, but commanding the Word.  A variation from the προστάσσω word group used five different times.)

I think he’s trying to find ways of navigating the same issue – no God does not speak to the Son in a way that is anything like how he speaks to creatures, for the Son is his speech, is his Word.  But he still speaks to the Son.

No, there are not three wills, or three wants in any way like there are between three persons in the created sphere.  But Father, Son, and Spirit use language in Scripture to describe their interpersonal relationship that indicates that that one will does not exist as a kind of monism among them.  They act on each other, and receive each other’s acts – something that is a bit like a ‘three will’ concept.

For me, that makes more sense now that I’ve abandoned any notion of language for God being univocal, and realised that the language is highly analogical.  That ‘analogical’ principle is very powerful for these sorts of conundrums – it’s like waving a wand and uttering analogiaentissium! in good Harry Potter style, or, to change genres, pulling out the sonic screwdriver.  It almost always does some good when faced with these kind of conundrums. Don’t press all the meaning of the words when you start to see tensions.

I still think that “authority” is a meaningless concept in inter-Trinitarian relationships in divine eternity…  Authority must, on some level entail the ability to compel another to do something whether they want to do it or not. 

Okay, if that’s what authority means in the Godhead I am absolutely with you.  There can be no orthodox sense in which the Father compels the Son to do something that the Son does not want to do. Anyone who won’t budge off such an idea is flirting with heresy - and some complementarians IMO are.

But this is what I mean by my statement that maybe the fourth century might help us recast some of our debate.  They do use authority language – feel free to get your hands on the greek text of contra Gentes 46 to check my reading there, I don’t think I’m pulling any swifties. And yet they reject any notion of one will compelling another.

That might recast our notion of authority is in its essence.  While that sense of external compulsion might be always present in our experience – either because we’re not homoousious the way the Son is with the Father, or because we’re sinful – it might not be an essential aspect of the reality so named. 

And if that’s the case, then there may be some quite profound common ground to be creatively explored between at least some strands of egalitarianism – who don’t reject human authority but who want to strongly tie it to love and service and humility; and some strands of complementarianism – who similarly want to talk about ‘responsibility’ first and foremost rather than ‘power to command’ as their entry point into the gender debate, and authority generally.

Not saying such a utopia might eventuate.  But I think one of the things that needs to happen in this debate is a careful look at what ‘authority’ is and is not.  “Having the casting vote when we disagree” leaves me cold as an explanation of headship.  “The Son can’t be in submission to the Father because the Father would have sent angels if the Son was only to call” leaves me cold as an explanation of submission to another. 

I think we might have better resources to draw on to expound the nature of authority and submission then going straight to the issue of what happens when two parties disagree as the essence of the matter.

”they will see that the Biblical attitude towards slavery is radically different from the Biblical attitude towards male headship.”

The problem Jereth is that the Bible does not speak of male headship. Those who believe in presumed male dominance over women in all or some things, read this into scenarios. But male domiance over women, male preference over women is not found proclaimed in Scripture.

Hi Teri,

Just quickly,

Actually, that’s a pretty big assumption from the small bits of dialogue.  I do see primacy between God as Father of Jesus, the Son.  That is clear in Scripture.  What I do not see are any Scriptures that show that in the Eloheim there is one more primary than the other.  Do you have some Scripture that outside of the necessary father/son relationship of the Messiah and God, that shows there is an eternal primacy that was always there.  I would like to see it.

What I meant by my words is what you’ve said here.  You only see biblical evidence for a primacy of the Father in the context of the incarnation.  I’m pretty sure Kristen disagrees with that, and so she and I have common ground at that point. You, like many egalitarians, see no primacy of the Father in the eternal relations within the Godhead, and so that’s a very important point of difference. Like complementarians, egalitarians have some important differences on some of these questions between themselves.

Is this the way that you see the relationship of husband and wife, man and woman.  The man is the ‘will’, the one who directs, leads, decides; the intellectual creator.  Thus, the wife is the one who accomplishes the tasks that the husband wills.

No.  This is like the Son being the Word of the Father and so the Father cannot speak to the Son.  There’s just nothing like this at all in human to human relationships.

If one is candid, there are some discussions that are more difficult than others and finding truth may be impossible simply because we are human and imperfect, not divine and Holy. Thus, for the one wishing more honest dialogue there should be some leniency on making strong criticisms or judgments.

I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at here Teri, but it seems to be something that matters to you and that’s been building.

Could you unpack this a bit further so we can discuss properly?  I’m not clear enough as to what you mean by this yet to interact with it.

””“One will” is connected to the one being and is focused on the works
of the Godhead – the operation <em>ad extra, how God acts upon
whatever is not God……..one will in which all three persons are different in their expression of
it.”

One will — in which all three persons are different in their expression of it.  OK, I missed the three.  This sounds much more like what I said way back when I said that all in the Trinity have the same will and in unity, echad.

FWIW, Mark, here’s what I see as a potential problem between you and Teri, and that this may be where her comment about “strong criticism or judgments” is coming from.

You said:

“You’ve been studying for 40+ years, and are confident you know your way around the creeds and the heresies.  And you can use a form of words that completely contradicts the theology of the Athanasian creed that you invoked.”

And then you said that egals like Teri “deny any primacy” in the Trinity.

Given your generous admission that two of your own statements about the Trinity may be “incoherent,” I think it would be an important step to agree that discussions about the mysteries of the Godhead are hard to express, and that Teri also may not have meant the exact words she used in the way in which you took them.

A definition of “primacy” might also be helpful.  When I use it of the Father in the Trinity, it is in the sense of “first-ness,” in that the Son and the Spirit “proceed” from the Father.  This is not a chronological “firstness,” however.  Nor need “primacy” mean “greater than” in term of authority (which, as I have said, I consider a meaningless concept when related to the Trinity).

I do not think Teri would disagree that the Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father.

Thanks Mark. You wrote:

Some comps think that women only submit to men in marriage and church.  Some comps think that women should never have authority over men in any context.

Yup, this is a big one. Along with, obviously, trying to define “authority over”.

However, every time I’ve heard a detailed theological explanation from a Sydney Comp they’ve always argued something like this:
1. There is general sort of hierarchy between all men & women
2. This particularly expresses itself in church & marriage.
3. We want to be cautious so we won’t express it beyond those two spheres.

So it feels like it’s never quite <i>just</i> a marriage and church thing. Obviously #3 is where many differ. It also seems to me that the rationale for limiting things to marriage & church is quite weak, and so easily disregarded by other Comp’s. This becomes apparent whenever a Sydney Comp recommends RBMW, but then backtracks and rejects some of the conclusions the book draws about how this gender hierarchy expresses itself.

There’s another Comp difference related to this which I don’t think has come up yet.

Some Comp’s argue that because men & women are fundamentally different in *capability*, men must lead (eg. CBMW). Other Comp’s shy away from this and insist that whilst women are just as capable, men must lead “because God said so” and they have the “role” (eg. most Sydney Comp’s I’ve spoken with).

I reckon further problems spring up from both these positions, but for the moment I’m just flagging it.

You also wrote:

And there’s lots of men who aren’t leaders in terms of their personal qualities.  Does the same logic apply to this? Or is there some reason why it singled out as problematic only if it attaches to gender?

I don’t quite get your argument here, or the problem. Are you trying to draw a paralell between someone who’s personality means they have no leadership ability, and someone who’s gender (under Comp-ism) restricts them from leading?

Hi Kristen,

Turning to the issue of the primacy of the Father:

A definition of “primacy” might also be helpful.  When I use it of the Father in the Trinity, it is in the sense of “first-ness,” in that the Son and the Spirit “proceed” from the Father.  This is not a chronological “firstness,” however.  Nor need “primacy” mean “greater than” in term of authority (which, as I have said, I consider a meaningless concept when related to the Trinity).

I do not think Teri would disagree that the Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father.

I agree with that definition of primacy of the Father, the Father’s primacy is nothing more than that.  The question for me is whether for you and Teri that is a ‘thick’ description or a ‘thin’ description.  Is that all that can be said about the Father’s primacy, or can that primacy then be expounded to discuss the taxis or order in the interpersonal relationships?  A few examples (including one I know you’ve said you consider meaningless) to see where we stand on whether that primacy of the Father has some entailments:

1.  Is the Son homoousious with the Father, or are they homoousious with each other?
2.  Are the operations of the Godhead from the Father through the Son and by (or in) the Spirit?
3.  Could the Father be incarnate, or was the incarnation especially fitting for the Son?
4.  Is Athanasius in error to speak of the Father giving commands to the Word (Son)? (assuming I’ve got him right there of course - a controverted point in the debate. ) Or does that capture something of the Father’s priority as the begettor in a highly analogical use of language?

My answers are:

+Son is homoousious with the Father, not each with the other.

+the operations of the Godhead always work from the Father through the Son by the Spirit

+the Father could not be incarnate, only the Son could (or at least, that was highly fitting)

+Athanasius wasn’t in error at that point.

And for me those are all some of the implications of what the priority of the Father as the begettor means.

Now that I’ve somewhat insulted you (and perhaps misunderstood you) although with a smile, let me add this.

In my thinking, and I think I stated something similar somewhere, any person or group of Christians who thinks they have this whole subject perfectly figured out is just mistaken.  I’ve read Berkhof (who I really appreciate) and others and appreciate their work dearly.  And I surely don’t want to dissuade anyone from seeking deeper understanding.  However, many things we conclude we can argue sound logical by everything we know, but we don’t know everything about how God operates in the Trinity.  And to my knowledge, which is not exhaustive, there simply is not enough in Scripture to guide us perfectly.  In addition our words fail us.  How do we describe what we cannot experience.

Thus, I don’t mind discussing it.  But I do mind anyone claiming they are an authority on knowing all the ins and outs of how the Trinity operates.  The further away from Scripture discussion takes us, the less authority we have IMO. 

Just a thought.

Mark, I will try to give responses to your Trinitarian questions later, but for now I will merely say that asking someone if they are “prepared” to move off a certain point, is probably going to be construed differently by a person who is in agreement with your basic stance towards the main blog subject (i.e., complementarian) than by someone who is in opposition.  “Unless you are prepared to move off your claim” does not sound the same as “I’m not sure you meant what you seemed to be saying.”  It sounds more like “I want you to concede to me.” 

I do believe also that we women tend to “hear” more subtext than a man necessarily intends to communicate.  Hence the necessity of being very clear, and non-confrontational, in word choice in situations where you are aiming for discourse and not confrontation.

Hi Sam,

Sydney Comp they’ve always argued something like this:
1. There is general sort of hierarchy between all men & women
2. This particularly expresses itself in church & marriage.
3. We want to be cautious so we won’t express it beyond those two spheres.

Yars, I think you’ve probably captured what most Sydney Anglican comps are likely to say, and the reasons for it.
For what it’s worth, I think this has little to do with this question on its own.  It’s an expression of a ubiqutous feature of Moore college’s approach. 

Most people who go through Moore take on a kind of ‘confessionalism without a confession’ kind of approach.  They aren’t free wheeling ‘we don’t know what we believe, let’s change from month to month based on what we’ve read in the Bible the last couple of days’, but nor do they trust big systems of thought whose logic and fundamental principles do most of the work, and the Bible is just invoked to provide proof-texts. 

It’s an approach that I think probably started in D.B. Knox’s day and has continued since – identifying with a tradition (evangelical, reformed, anglican, complementarian, whatever) but holding a bit lose to it and suspicious of extrapolating too far from explicit biblical warrants.

It really attracts some people – I talk to some conservative evangelical Anglicans in the 50+ age range in th UK and they’re really grateful for its influence as it helped them be reformed without going down the Truly Reformed road where you hold to a very tight system.  It frustrates others who see it as inconsistent and cherry-picking.

But usually the only system people have much confidence in is Goldsworthy’s Biblical Theology structure – and that’s just a set of tools for reading the Bible better, it doesn’t really say anything about life or doctrine.

On this gender issue, I am prepared to say more and offer a framework that gives a structure for your third point that go beyond just marriage and church. And I’m intending to do that next year.  It’s an approach that is based on points 1&2 but that seeks to find the principles behind why that general sort of hierarchy expresses itself particularly in family and church.

Some Comp’s argue that because men & women are fundamentally different in *capability*, men must lead (eg. CBMW). Other Comp’s shy away from this and insist that whilst women are just as capable, men must lead “because God said so” and they have the “role” (eg. most Sydney Comp’s I’ve spoken with).

Yars, agreed.  Although, again I suspect there’s some fuzziness going on which could do with further reflection. It’s possible that difference isn’t always as strong as it looks.
 
There seem to be some complementarians that say that women can’t teach and can’t lead.  Not just “can’t teach men” or “can’t lead men” but can’t do it full-stop. 

I’ve had comps suggest to me that women’s ability to multi-task makes them great at taking care of children, but that men’s inablity to mult-task actually enables them to just focus on the word which is necessary for sermon prep.  And similar sentiments. I think that can be argued on its merits (I don’t think it has many, but the argument can be run) but that kind of view is better described as ‘chauvinism’ – because on this view, even if men weren’t around, women still shouldn’t be taking up those tasks.  They just don’t have what it takes.

However, if roles are not arbitrary, then there must be something about what it means to be a women and not a man that stands behind the restriction on women exercising authority over men in family and church (and, I think, similar contexts). But that might be hard for us in our gender-confused cultural context to see clearly (Andrew Millar and I will be talking and then having a stab at presenting something on that next year – either under both our names, or just mine).

But what can be said clearly is to reject the alternative I’ve sketched above: women clearly can teach and can lead and can exercise authority.  It’s not a lack of ability to do the tasks considered in the abstract.  I think that’s what the comps who emphasise role are doing.  They’re saying what they’re confident to say, but, aspects of the issue haven’t come into view sufficiently yet to relate role to intrinsic qualities without falling into chauvinism - which they reject.

I reckon further problems spring up from both these positions, but for the moment I’m just flagging it.

Yep, got that – hopefully what I’ve written gives you something to zero in on if you want to take it further.

concluding
In response, I’m saying: 

This argument proves too much, unless you can hermetically seal gender from individuality. 

1. There are lots of people who don’t have the qualities to be leaders, or to teach.  If we’re really saying that saying that someone doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader or a teacher means that we’re saying they are inferior, does it really matter if it is said on the basis of their gender or on the basis of their personal qualities? (The chauvinistic issue)

2. There are lots of people who will never be a boss.  Human beings are made to work. So the voluntary nature of employment is a bit of a modern western illusion – most people had limited choice in their employment, and everyone should work.  But God made everyone to work – not necessarily be employed – but certainly to work.  So working is not as voluntary as it seems. (which means it’s a lot more like marriage than it intuitively seems to us. We’re assuming our cultural experience of employment when we see the two as so profoundly different.)

And some people have qualities that mean that they will never be called on to be the boss.  They’ll always be an employee whenever they are in the workforce.  Does it matter if that’s because of their gender or because of their individual qualities?  And if it does why? (the role issue)

Now, maybe gender and individual qualities are utterly different when it comes to this question.  And so saying ‘all women don’t have what it takes to be leaders’ is saying ‘all women are inferior’ but saying ‘all people (irrespective of their gender) who don’t have what it takes to be leaders don’t have what it takes to be leaders’ is somehow not saying “all people (irrespective of their gender) who don’t have what it takes to be leaders are inferior”.  But I can’t see how that could be at the moment.

And if that’s true for the chauvinist positoin – which I disagree with - it is even more so for the ‘role’ position, which I think links authority and subordination more indirectly to gender.

3. Hence, the only way to truly affirm equality is to say that it doesn’t matter whether you are smart or stupid, wise or foolish, dynamo talented or mediocre, a leader or a follower, having authority or under authority – none of that makes you better or more valuable in your essential humanity.  You are essentially equal whether you truly are one of the ‘beautiful people’ or whether you are utterly underwhelming.

Trying to base equality on saying everyone is equally capable, or everyone can do everything based on abstract notions of ability, means you either deny that some people are ‘natural followers’ or you are implicitily saying that such people are inferior.

That is, a Christian notion of ‘equality’ is not primarily about what people can do, or how talented they are.  It is primarily about how everyone is held in honour and treated wth dignity irrespective of their ability or what they can do. i.e. a radically different notion of equality than is usually canvassed when egalitarianism is on the offense against complementarianism. When egaltiarianism offers its understanding of ‘equality’ that I’ve mentioned in the previous comment, that looks to me like how ‘equality’ was defined in the Enlightenment; and it is not a classical Christian notion of equality.

Hope that might be a bit clearer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes a few goes until I find a way to say it clearly enough for someone else to grasp.

Hi Teri,

Yes, my statement wasn’t exhaustive, merely pointing to where I see an important difference in various accounts. I agree with your add on - God can even take a donkey and give it the power of speech.  And I’d add, God can use people without giving them new abilities as well, using (not just choosing) the weak to shame the strong.

Not sure that I’m only just getting that now though, even if I’ve only said it just now on this thread. But, glad we’re in agreement here.

Hi Teri,

Great!  So then may I assume that you think God won’t use women in certain things like leading and teaching mixed groups.

Well, you can assume that, but you might be wrong. 

God is free to do whatever he wants.  His word does not bind him - his promises do, where he commits himself to us, his statements of the nature of reality do for he speaks the truth.  But his moral instructions are for us, not for him.

God is free to use women to lead and teach. If God has said that they shouldn’t do that under normal circumstances (and that’s part of this debate), then they are doing something wrong.  But their doing something wrong doesn’t limit God. God is still free to use them to do good to his people and for his glory.

What God is able to do is not a good way to get at what we should do.  We should focus on what moral instruction his word gives us. 

Whereas I believe that God will use whomsoever He choses whensoever He chooses and that nothing within our makeup is something that God cannot overcome if we are willing to allow Him. God is able to remake us like God remade Moses in spite of his weaknesses.

I absolutely agree. God can chose whoever he wants whenever he wants. God can change us to give us new abilities and limitations. I don’t think that even depends on us allowing him.

And I’d say God is also able to keep us as we are with our limitations and use us within them.

And whichever God chooses, doesn’t make us better or inferior to the person he uses the other way.  Our lives are hid with Christ in God, and so their value is not attached to what God enables us to do or not do.

We read Scripture, and obey it, trusting the God who is free to arrange things as he chooses and can either change us or work with us as we are.  And whether God assigns us a high lot or a low lot, our value and dignity are unaffected. 

The rich man should glory in his humiliation - that he passes like the grass. James 1:10-11.  The person of lowly circumstances should glory in his or her high position.  James 1:9.

That’s much more at the heart of the Christian view of equality than the idea that anyone can do anything if they just submit to God.

But that might be hard for us in our gender-confused cultural context to see clearly (Andrew Millar and I will be talking and then having a stab at presenting something on that next year – either under both our names, or just mine).

Sigh.  I might have mentioned my incompetency with names.  Andrew Moody, not Millar.

A couple of things here.

Mark said:

“God is free to use women to lead and teach. If God has said that they shouldn’t do that under normal circumstances (and that’s part of this debate), then they are doing something wrong.”

In the OT, if God used a woman to lead or teach (i.e., Deborah, Huldah), the people saw that God was using her and let God do it.  There was no law in the Old Covenant against a woman leading or teaching.

But complementarianism reads certain passages in the New Testament like they are laws.  And though they might acknowledge God’s right to make exceptions, what happens in reality is that a woman God has chosen to lead or teach, must do so against the opposition of His followers.  History is full of such women, who preached and led Bible studies and went on the mission field and started and led churches in foreign lands with every evidence of the Spirit’s anointing, while all the while the established male leadership protested and balked and curtailed.

Why would God give His church a law that would cause them to feel justified in opposing His Spirit in such a way?  Is it not possible that they were reading some things as law that were never intended to be?  Why in the age of grace are there supposed to be more restrictive laws on women than there were in the age of Law?

Aargh.  Speaking of what I said earlier about not always meaning what you say in a discussion like this:

By “God and humans are both capable of changing and growing in areas of ability,” I meant “God and humans are both capable of changing and growing HUMAN QUALITIES in areas of ability.”

I did not mean I thought God was growing in abilities, as though He was ever less than He is now!

Getting back to this because I said I would (though I am not doing doctoral work on the Trinity, so I have neither the qualifictions nor the inclination to debate Mark on this—nor, as I have said, do I think it relates in any direct way to the issue of male-female relations):

“1.  Is the Son homoousious with the Father, or are they homoousious with each other?”

If we are defining “homoosious” as “having the same nature,” I would say that if A = B, then B = A.  The Father and Son have the same nature.  However, the nature of the Son is an expression of the Father’s, and not the other way around.

“2.  Are the operations of the Godhead from the Father through the Son and by (or in) the Spirit?”

In general, yes.  Specifically, since the Incarnation/Resurrection, the Father has given the Son authority and judgment over the world.  Though the judgments of the Father and the Son would not be different, it is the Son who will be judging, not the Father through the Son.

“3.  Could the Father be incarnate, or was the incarnation especially fitting for the Son?”

I think the Father is in some sense the transcendent nature of God, while the Son and Spirit represent the immanent nature of God.  So yes, the Incarnation was especially fitting for the Son, as the Son appears to act as an interface (if you will) between the transcendent God and the world, in terms of God acting directly on the world through the Son. (And the transcendent God communicates with the spirits of humans through the Spirit).

“4.  Is Athanasius in error to speak of the Father giving commands to the Word (Son)? (assuming I’ve got him right there of course - a controverted point in the debate. ) Or does that capture something of the Father’s priority as the begettor in a highly analogical use of language?”

I do agree that the language is highly analogical, and also expressed through a fourth-century mindset.  The terminology is therefore much less helpful to me as a 21st-century Christian, and I would have to say that, from my own perspective it is in error.  I view the primacy of the Father more in terms of an organic centrality—an interelationship where the Father is in the *center* of a unity, not *on top* of some hierarchical structure.  In short, it makes no sense to me to think of the Father “commanding” and the Son “obeying.”  The Son does not need to “obey,” as He already wants to do what the Father wants Him to do.  If someone tells me to do something I have already decided to do myself, am I “obeying” them?  I don’t think so. I find this language unhelpful in understanding inter-Trinitarian relations.

I hope that makes it clearer where I’m coming from.

Hi Kristen,

I did not mean I thought God was growing in abilities, as though He was ever less than He is now!

Heh, see that’s where I am charitable. Based on what you’d already said I would be surprised if you thought God undergoes change, so I just took it the way you’ve said it here.

But probably good to nail that for interested readers who are following the discussion.

concluding

“4.  Is Athanasius in error to speak of the Father giving commands to the Word (Son)? (assuming I’ve got him right there of course - a controverted point in the debate. ) Or does that capture something of the Father’s priority as the begettor in a highly analogical use of language?”

I do agree that the language is highly analogical, and also expressed through a fourth-century mindset.  The terminology is therefore much less helpful to me as a 21st-century Christian, and I would have to say that, from my own perspective it is in error.  I view the primacy of the Father more in terms of an organic centrality—an interelationship where the Father is in the *center* of a unity, not *on top* of some hierarchical structure.  In short, it makes no sense to me to think of the Father “commanding” and the Son “obeying.”  The Son does not need to “obey,” as He already wants to do what the Father wants Him to do.  If someone tells me to do something I have already decided to do myself, am I “obeying” them?  I don’t think so. I find this language unhelpful in understanding inter-Trinitarian relations.

And here is where the differences are, not surprisingly.  If you don’t want to chase this further, that’s fine. But here’s a few thoughts to consider:

1) That fourth century mindset gave us the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in the providence of God, just as a sixteenth century mindset gave us justification by grace through faith alone.  Don’t be too quick to back a 21st century concept against fourth century ones when they are expounding the doctrine we learn from them.

2)Yes that’s how you model the Trinity, but, if we think the Nicene Creed is a faithful exposition of Scripture the question is what model is implicit in its teaching. Given Athanasius’ role in interpreting and upholding the Nicene Creed, if we find our model not mapping well onto his, it’s worth looking into that more rather than just backing our model.

3)As I suggested before, maybe we misunderstand the nature of authority, commands and obedience.  We are a very anti-authoratarian culture, we find authority problematic. It’s possible our fundamental insticts as to what it is are wrong.

The fact that Athanasius can use command/obedience language where there is no possibility of disagreement in will means one of two things.  Either he can’t think clearly about his own doctrine. Or we aren’t thinking clearly about what authority has to include.

Here’s another question for you on that front, from a different angle.  Assuming that in the New Creation we are sinless, and have the minds of Christ.  The suggestion of such language is that we will inherently want what God wants, and will what he wills, with no chance of a disagreement.  Are you willing to say that any talk of us submitting to God or obeying him is meaningless in that situation? That because in the new creation anything he’d command of us we want to do anyway, therefore he has no authority over us and we don’t submit to him?

In other words, is it really the case that ‘authority’ only exists when one person is thwarting the will of another person? Or does that not quite capture the concept properly?

I’m not trying to play gotcha here - I genuinely think this is an area where all sides need to be willing to reexamine what authority and submission might entail. I think it’s an area where the debate might be taking a wrong turn.

Hi Mark,

Well, given the perceptiveness of your contribution here, I think you can have a lot of confidence that you are following everything very well, and seeing possible implications – a sure sign of grasping what we’re struggling to say clearly.

Thanks for your encouragement Mark. I feel a bit out of my depth here but I will give it a go. Thanks for the opportunity to be challenged in my thinking.

1. a)Saying a woman who is able to teach can’t lead a mixed Bible study is like saying a person of a certain race, or who is left-handed can’t.  And for you that looks fairly reasonable as a comparison.

Yes

b)How about, saying a person can only marry someone of the opposite gender is like saying a person can only marry someone of the same race, or that left-handed people can’t marry.  Does that look reasonable as a comparison?  Why or why not?

Yes. But as I said above “that’s OK if it is truly God who is doing the bossing. And that comes back to what does the bible actually say.”
Restricting a man from marrying a man is indeed restrictive- based on gender. In this it is similar to restricting a woman from leading a mixed bible study. We have to search the scriptures to see what God actually says. In the case of homosexuality, I believe God has spoken clearly against this. As to women leading…. well that’s what this discussion is all about.
One difference between the two though, is that evangelicals (in my limited experience) can articulate several reasons from scripture why homosexuality is wrong. However, I think you would agree that even amongst the leading evangelical complementarian theologians, there is disagreement and confusion about what God has said and why he has said it about women teaching and leading.

(Concluding)

a) Saying ‘only men can be presbyters’ is like saying ‘only left handed people can be presbyters’.

Yes. Both are intrinsic conditions that can’t be changed. We have to study the scriptures to see what God has said.

b) Saying ‘only men can be fathers (not just biologically, but in terms of raising a child)’ is like saying ‘only left handed people can be fathers’
Fathers and mothers seem to contribute different things to the development of their children.  Take one out, and you can’t compensate by just adding another person of the same gender, no matter what intrinsic qualities they have. 

Yes again.
I agree that Mothers and Fathers are different. Both are to love their children but will do it in different ways. Women and men bring complementary qualities to the marriage and to parenting.
As both are important in parenting, and a child misses out if one is absent or both parents are the same sex, could the church also miss out if women are not allowed to minister in certain ways?

So is being a presbyter more like being a father, or is it more like being a doctor or lawyer or some professional figure?

I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking here.
Do you think that men have some quality that women don’t have, that makes men the only ones suitable to be an elder? Why? If yes, what do you think it is?
Do you think leadership in the church could benefit from the qualities of women, just as marriage and parenting can? Why or why not?

Mark, with regards to this:

“The fact that Athanasius can use command/obedience language where there is no possibility of disagreement in will means one of two things.  Either he can’t think clearly about his own doctrine. Or we aren’t thinking clearly about what authority has to include.”

I do know that fourth-century Christianity was heavily influenced by Aristotle’s idea of a “Great Chain of Being,” in which everything is viewed in terms of heiarchary, from God down to the smallest insect.  I do know that fourth-century Christians did think of some humans as being in their very nature, superior to other humans, who were in turn superior to others.  I think it’s quite likely, given this influence, that Athanasius thought rather more in terms of authority and heirarchy than the New Testament actually upholds.  Jesus and Paul both spoke of the Kingdom of God in terms of brotherhood, with God as the Father and Christ as the Firstborn, and everyone else as siblings.  The relationship of non-firstborn siblings was to all intents and purposes, equal—one of the only such relationships that existed in biblical times.

I understand that the fourth century gave us the doctrine of the Trinity, but that doesn’t mean they were infallible in their understanding of authority and heirarchy. 

As for this:

“Assuming that in the New Creation we are sinless, and have the minds of Christ.  The suggestion of such language is that we will inherently want what God wants, and will what he wills, with no chance of a disagreement.  Are you willing to say that any talk of us submitting to God or obeying him is meaningless in that situation? That because in the new creation anything he’d command of us we want to do anyway, therefore he has no authority over us and we don’t submit to him?”

I do think that the concept of obedience and command as we understand it now, is one of those those things that will pass away.  This is not to say we won’t “obey” God or serve Him, but will we think of it in those terms anymore?  Will it seem like obedience to us?  Or will it seem like something else, something we can now see only “through a glass, darkly?”  Whatever it is, it will be love, pure love, that motivates it, and nothing else.

And about this:

“In other words, is it really the case that ‘authority’ only exists when one person is thwarting the will of another person? Or does that not quite capture the concept properly?”

I never said authority only existed when one person thwarts the will of another.  I did say that it only exists when one has the *right or power* to thwart the other’s will.  And no—I don’t think we can honestly divorce authority from this concept.  This is what “authority” has always meant.  If we’re going to talk about what it will mean in eternity, I really do think we are going to have to come up with another word. 

I understand that there is a place for technical theological terms like “justification” or “atonement.”  But “authority” is a word commonly used in every day speech, and we Christians can’t go about inventing a new meaning for it that no one understands but ourselves, without grave misunderstandings. 

(For this reason, I also think it would be a good idea if we Christians in this era, moved away from that word “submission.”  Non-Christians don’t understand the way we use it, and it causes no end of problems.  “Submission” to them means what a dog does to its master, or a pack of wolves to its alpha male.  I think “yielding,” “giving in” or “deferring to” are much better choices.)

So—I do think that Athanasius’ thinking of the Father speaking to the Son in terms of commands and obedience, brought in connotations that he didn’t intend.  There is no need to command when there is perfect harmony.  And perfect harmony is something that one day even we human creatures will know, even as we are fully known.

continuing...

2 a) Saying a woman who is able to teach can’t lead a mixed Bible study is to impose something on them, because they could do it, but they are being restrained by an external command.
Yes.

No.  And it all depends on what you mean by ‘could do it’.  If all that is going on is a task considered in the abstract, then I agree with you. 

But if being a Bible study leader is to be in a certain kind of relationship with people, then the command is not ‘extrinsic’ but rests upon how a woman can’t really be in that kind of relationship.  A woman cannot be a husband, nor can two wives marry each other.  That’s the kind of analogy for me – it’s not got to do with abilities to do a task, or set of tasks, it’s to do with how gender shapes the kind of relationships you can enter into. 

And hopefully it might become clearer why I say that as we go on. But it’s linked to b) immediately below

b) …Should this prodigy be given leadership of their church?  Should they be preaching regularly?  Should they be leading Bible studies made up of people in their fifties? No one can understand the Bible as well, explain it better, or make decisions better based on what the Bible says.
Again, the answer is “what does God say”? Yes, I do believe that God does give restrictions on church leaders involving their maturity and experience. But it is also interesting that again, these restrictions make sense to the everyday thinking evangelical that I come across. They can understand the deficiencies in maturity and life experience of a thirteen year old that would need to be taken into account in leadership. I am not saying that we always have to understand why God commands us to do certain things, but just raising it as a point of interest.

Well, the answer is always ‘what does God say’.  I’m not contesting that, although I am delaying it until we’ve flushed out these fundamental assumptions first and batted them around a little. 

But the reason for my example, and the way I set it up was to eliminate much of your answer here: it was a mirror for many egal scenarios with competent women.  This prodigy is so gifted by God that he or she is more mature than any adult in their church or surrounding churches. While the prodigy doesn’t have much life experience, that, in itself is only useful for producing maturity and wisdom – which this prodigy has more than any adult around.

So, in that situation, do we think that the restrictions on youth ‘make sense’ only because the vast majority of youths are less wise than their seniors or is there something about youth and age that means that the older should lead the younger even if the younger are wiser and more mature?

I have met families where the wisest and most mature person in the family was not either of the parents.  In one case it was a nine year old girl.  If egalitarianism is right, and it’s all just about ability, then shouldn’t those families be led by the prodigy child?  Or is there something about being a child to a parent, especially a non-adult child, that means that the parents lead even if (as occassionally happens) the child is wiser and more mature?

Again, my point is – is that kind of relationship based purely on ‘ability’ considered in the abstract.  Or does a non-ability factor come into play.

As to the confusion between comps.  I agree.  But there’s ‘confusion’ in the ranks of egals as well on these matters too.  Both sides are actually a wide ranging group of positions united more in what they oppose on the other side than what they have in common with all examples of their label on their side.

And that’s not dissimilar to Protestantism in the 16th Century, or to the pro-Nicenes in the fourth century.  Someone like Apollinarius was a champion for the Nicene Creed, and helped move the Cappadocians out of semi-Arianism into orthodoxy, and yet his Christology was considered ultimately heretical. 

That kind of disagreement sometimes is a sign that an important grouping of theological issues is getting thrashed out, not that the side is wrong.

concluding

While Mother’s regularity, on its own, has scarcely any long-term effect on children’s regularity (except in some circumstances outlined above, a marginally negative one), it does have a positive effect on preventing children from drifting away entirely. Faithful mothers produce irregular attenders rather than regular. Their absence transfers the irregulars into the non-attending sector. But even the beneficial influence really works only in complimentarity to the practice of the father.

In short if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper.

If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers. If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally. A non-practising mother (with a regular father) will see a minimum of two thirds of her children ending up at church. A non-practising father (faithful mother) will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure will rise to 80 per cent!

If the data he’s pointing to is a)accurate and b) applicable in more than this case then it is pointing to something closer to what I mean by talking about ‘roles’ than an egalitarian concept of gender complementarity. 

The father’s influence overwhelmingly dominates in the question of whether or not the children are regular churchgoers.  The mother’s influence is far less, and works with the father’s influence.

The mother’s influence generally prevents children from leaving church involvement altogether - ensuring more are somewhat involved who would otherwise not attend at all.

I don’t think that maps well onto egalitarianism.  I’d suggest that, if the data is right and holds more broadly, the dynamic will generally hold true irrespective of the abilities of either dad or mum – doesn’t matter who is more intelligent, more a natural leader or the like.  It’s got nothing to do with ability.  It has to do with gender, and specifically the role of father and mother.

I don’t care whether it is called ‘primacy’ or ‘authority’ but that’s the kind of dynamic that I think is probably going on in families - two different contributions, not one contribution in two different ways.

In my view, because of the Enlightenment, we have constructed public social life on the basis of liberal political and social philosophy – the modern democractic state, where we strive to make nothing matter except ability considered in the abstract.

But family and church (and some other relationships) can’t be restructured on that basis.  In those consexts gender (and age) is a limiting and enabling condition – even more than ability is. And the only reason why we find all that so very confusing (and we do) is that we believe in liberal political philosophy.  We think it is an eternal, universal truth. 

And so we think God is a democrat.  When we gaze into heaven we imagine that God looks back with kindly, possibly white, but defintely Western, democratic eyes. God is the very best that humankind has to offer.

And so we think that in every sphere of life we can just look at the tasks involved, divorced from the web of relationships in which they occur, and then say, “who can do these tasks the best?” and any other factor is an extrinsic and arbitrary limitation.

But it’s not that way at all.  There are lots of spheres in life where ability is nowhere near as decisive as it is when it comes to passing your bar exam, or meeting the selection criteria for a job vacancy.  Family life, and church life, are the two most obvious candidates for that, in my view.

Hi Teri,

In a similar way I think we can conclude that the caucasion male today holds more influence over governmental affairs than any other nationality or race. People in America prefer to look to a white man than an African or Hispanic or Asian or Indian.  But do we conclude from that, that other men of other nationality should not seek to exercise governmental authority.  Do we conclude as actually has been done in years gone by, that thus only white men are called to roles of government.

I think I will suggest that you have compared apples and oranges.

I have said, “Egalitarianism considers gender to not be a factor in what people can do. I think it is a big factor in the kind of relationships that people can enter into in a family context.  And that that question of what sort of relationship you can enter into is critical for family and church discussions.”

That might be right, might be wrong.

But pointing to patterns of racial involvement in government historically, speculating that people might be more comfortable with white people in those roles now, and just asserting that it’s similar? 

I think all that does is just reinforce my argument that egalitarianism is a symptom of what a strong grip liberal political philosophy has upon us.  We think even families should run the way government and the marketplace does. And an argument from government automatically disproves a claim that families aren’t like government.

Mark, I have to thank you for putting forth an argument for complementarianism that neither diminishes women nor makes God into an arbitrary tyrant.  I still disagree with you, but I appreciate it that you have avoided these two problems.

I agree with you that a father and a mother bring different, complementary things to a family, and that neither is replaceable.  The study you cite about the church attendance of children is certainly a good reason to encourage men to step up and take spiritual leadership of their homes.  However, what the study does not show is that leadership of the home belongs only to fathers, and that mothers cannot/should not be co-leaders along with them.  There is nothing in this study which proves anything at all about husbands’ authority over their wives being a good and desirable thing.  In fact, it seems to me that if he will raise her up to be by his side, leading the home hand-in-hand with him, this is the best possible scenario for the children.

I also agree that churches are like families—but as I said before, both Jesus and Paul preached that God is the Father of this family.  Paul did occasionally make a metaphorical reference to himself as a “father” to certain congregations, but in general, he referred to other Christians as brothers and sisters. Nor did he liken church leaders to fathers. 

Be that as it may, however—does not the comparison you have set up leave something out?  If church leaders realy are like fathers, then where are the mothers?  Whole families have both, and the New Testament consistently shows a plurality of leadership in churches. 

It seems to me that given your family-structure argument, the ideal church should have both “fathers” and “mothers” for its church leaders.  Each would bring to the flock something that the other cannot provide—nor should authority be given only to the one, and not to the other.  Mothers lead their children too.  But ultimately, we are “brothers and sisters” with God as our Father, before all else.

You seem to assume that male authority over women is what is supposed to be, and then from that assumption you conclude that women can’t be church leaders, because they can’t be fathers, and only fathers get to lead.  But what if male authority in the home was not God’s divine plan?  What if God intended redeemed men and women to have authority together in the home, even as He originally gave unfallen humans authority together over the earth and the creatures?

Hi Mark,
Just some specifics regarding things you say that haven’t yet been discussed from the bible (as far as I recall). I am not saying whether I agree or disagree, I’d just like to know why you have come to these conclusions, to help me to evaluate them better. As I said, I will try and be patient if you prefer not to discuss the bible yet.

But if being a Bible study leader is to be in a certain kind of relationship with people, then the command is not ‘extrinsic’ but rests upon how a woman can’t really be in that kind of relationship. 

Do I think men have some quality that women don’t that makes them only suitable to be an elder?  Yes.  What is it? Maleness.

I think church is more like family in this, then it is like being a doctor, or lawyer, or manager in an office, which are contexts where gender and age have minimal direct bearing – ability is really all that counts.

There are lots of spheres in life where ability is nowhere near as decisive as it is when it comes to passing your bar exam, or meeting the selection criteria for a job vacancy.  Family life, and church life, are the two most obvious candidates for that, in my view.

A comment that I agree with, but I am not sure how it fits in with your view.

Often the influential leaders in a group aren’t the ones with the authority. 

So are you then saying that it is OK for women to be the influential leaders in a mixed group but not the ones in authority?

With regard to the research you quoted. If we find that the bible doesn’t actually say the things you say about male leadership, then how much weight should one give to this information? And is this research to do with male “influential leadership” or “male authority”?

Thanks Mark.

Hi Kristen,

“I absolutely agree. God can chose whoever he wants whenever he wants. God can change us to give us new abilities and limitations. I don’t think that even depends on us allowing him.
And I’d say God is also able to keep us as we are with our limitations and use us within them.”

Here, I think, you have put your finger on the nub—why individual gifts and talents are NOT on the same level as gender, when it comes to ontology.
Individual gifts and talents, skills and abilities, are all subject to change.  God can change them; we can change them.  Not everyone is a natural leader—but every human being holds the ability to bear responsibility and be considerate of others—which I would say are probably the two main qualifications for leadership, and things that every good parent insists their child learn.  Not everyone is a star athlete, but anyone can improve their skills at a game.
But though God and humans are both capable of changing and growing in areas of ability—whether they be learned skills or natural talents, I have never, ever heard of God changing a person from a male to a female.  People have sex-change operations, but their X and Y chromosomes do not change.  Gender is an unchangeable aspect of who we are, and to tie restrictions to gender is a very different thing than tying them to ability.

My basic response to this is ‘no’.  I think it is a mistake that people who are attracted to political liberalism regularly make.  The kind of people who are attracted to political liberalism are invariably talented, capable people who can be masters of their destinies as long as life offers a relatively level playing ground.

They usually have more ability than they can realise in one lifetime, and can be good at many things – certainly good enough to do well if there’s a level playing field where they can compete simply on their ability.  They mightn’t be natural leaders, but they almost always have some leadership ability that can be developed.  As you say, they mightn’t be able to be star players but they can improve their skill with the game.

Intelligent, educated, self-driven, often professional, articulate people are natural political liberals whether they are ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ in their immediate political philosophy. And they generally assume that everyone would benefit if we just removed the barriers that prevent people getting ahead on merit, because they think that everyone is basically as talented as they are.

But there are people who are not like that.  They are very, very ordinary people.  Some people are below average intelligence (indeed roughly 50% are below average). Some people have very limited potential. Some people have no leadership potential at all. Can God change that?  Sure.  Do I think he does almost ever? No.  Might he do it just a fraction more than he changes someone’s gender? Sure I’ll concede that – Saul is possibly an example of someone who fits this category.  But even if it happens occasionally, it’s still a miracle; it’s a change to their abiding personal qualities.

So I am fairly committed to this position at this point in time.  Not as much as others – I could be convinced off this, but at the moment I think this whole “if I have to submit because I’m dumb then that’s not ontological inferiority, but if I have to submit because I’m a woman then that is ontological inferiority” strains credulity to the breaking point. And that conviction has been growing the more I’ve tried to reflect on it and follow people’s arguments on the subject.

I think some people were made very capable, some people were made capable, some people were made very mediocre and limited, and some people were made mentally challenged. And, for all intents in purposes, that range of ability is fixed and an abiding personal attribute. 

Most Christians who read books, comment on blogs, and the like are in the second category – they are capable.  They aren’t instantly brilliant at anything, but can develop their potential at almost anything with effort.  And they naturally assume that everyone else is like that if they aren’t naturally brilliant or mentally challenged.  But I am pretty confident that’s wrong, there’s another group that has little potential, and no leadership capacity.

So intrinsic potential is not as different from gender as I think egalitarians often claim. I think potential is fairly fixed, and some people don’t have much. And I think they too are in the image of God, are equal to the beautiful people, and are worthy of dignity and honour. Even though they’ll never be leaders.

”So intrinsic potential is not as different from gender as I think egalitarians often claim”

Could you please clarify and be more specific what you mean by this.

”It seems strange to me (and seems a weakness of egalitarianism generally) to say that the man (or woman) at the top has to be more capable than everyone they lead.”

yes, that would be an incorrect view and one I’ve not encountered in those who believe in gender equality.  I’m guessing that you’ve mistakenly read it into something some have said.  I think those who lead must be capable in the thing they are leading in.  In other words if you’re teaching scuba diving you’d better know what you’re teaching.  But it doesn’t mean that some in your class could not be better swimmers, or better at holding their breath, or stronger physically, etc.

Mark,

How is intrinsic potential like gender?  Where does gender determine intrinsic potential IYO.  And can you cite any Scriptures to support your view.

Hi Kristen,

I do know that fourth-century Christianity was heavily influenced by Aristotle’s idea of a “Great Chain of Being,” in which everything is viewed in terms of heiarchary, from God down to the smallest insect.  I do know that fourth-century Christians did think of some humans as being in their very nature, superior to other humans, who were in turn superior to others.  I think it’s quite likely, given this influence, that Athanasius thought rather more in terms of authority and heirarchy than the New Testament actually upholds.  Jesus and Paul both spoke of the Kingdom of God in terms of brotherhood, with God as the Father and Christ as the Firstborn, and everyone else as siblings.  The relationship of non-firstborn siblings was to all intents and purposes, equal—one of the only such relationships that existed in biblical times.

Okay, I can see where you’re coming from. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that.  I think moderns have the same view about the natural superiority of some over others – we just call it ability or talent, but we’ve restructured the whole of society (that liberal political philosophy again) in light of that conviction.

And while they relied on force far more than we do, I think far less power was centralised into governments or church leadership than is possible now – no-one could have even attempted in the fourth century to define marriage through the lawcourts, laws just didn’t have that kind of power.  So I don’t think they were more into authority and hierarchy than we are.

I think we are staggeringly naïve (and that’s not aimed at you) about authority and hierarchy in our democracies and tell ourselves a lot of myths.  No government ever had so much power over its citizens as our modern democracies do, and the fact that they do is one reason why they have to rely on violent force so rarely to keep the peace. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but our societies aren’t less hierarchial and authoritarian, they’re just differently so.

I do think that the concept of obedience and command as we understand it now, is one of those those things that will pass away.  This is not to say we won’t “obey” God or serve Him, but will we think of it in those terms anymore?  Will it seem like obedience to us?  Or will it seem like something else, something we can now see only “through a glass, darkly?”  Whatever it is, it will be love, pure love, that motivates it, and nothing else.

Heh, you say that authority has to have certain ideas in the concept, then you say that in the new creation the reality will be there (we’ll still ‘obey’ and serve) but so transformed that it mightn’t seem like it to us, and that it’ll be based on love. How is that not the kind of transforming of the concept that I am speaking about? You’ve transformed the concept here – you haven’t bluntly said, “No. That language makes no sense when applied to the New Creation.”

”Inasmuch as making necessary submission in a certain kind of relationship based on actualised potential (ability) is as much ‘personal’ or ‘ontological’ subordination for those with very limited or no potential as making it based on gender. Either both are expressions of essential inferiority or possibly neither are.”

Having or not having potential or abilities is indicative of an inferiority in the abilities in question.  This however has potential for change.  One can if one desires learn and gain those abilities, thus raising oneself from necessary subordination to leadership.  Thus, there can never be anything akin to ontological inferiority when speaking of areas that involve learning.  However, subordination based on something that cannot be changed such as race or gender would indeed be ontological inferiority.

Saying that some people cannot learn certain things therefore they are inferior to those who can has an element of pride in it that I wouldn’t want to touch.  Everyone, even the brainiest has something that they just are not good at.  But we don’t separate them out as the followers of society.  Facts are that intelligence is only one of the requirements for good leadership, not the only one.  Humans are complex beings. Depending on the job at hand, anyone can apply and depending on their skills overall sometimes great knowledge is not the most important skill for the job.

It would not surprise me that you might like to dance around that idea and see if you can build a theory that could cloud the concept of ontological inferiority so that it could be exercised but not recognized. IMO that is exactly what CBMW, the Shepherding Movement, patriarchy, etc. have been doing.

Hi Kristen,

It really is a joy chewing these things over with you.  Loved this:

Can someone have the “right or power” to do something that can’t be done because it has no meaning?  Does God have the right or power to smell next Tuesday, but just doesn’t exercise it?  Does God have the right or power to make the sound of one hand clapping?

To mind mind, God having the right or power to command when the concept “command” has become meaningless, is that kind of question.

It’s a nicely played argument, and is one of the (very few) times I wish I put more energy into philosophical theology.

My strong suspicion is that your argument here trades on two different kinds of ‘impossibility’ that haven’t been identified in your response. 

I suspect it relates to a Reformation debate over whether the bones of Christ could be broken.  Due to Psalm 34:20 everyone agreed that it was impossible for Christ’s bones to have been broken.

But what kind of impossible?

Luther took your kind of angle - utterly/literally/absolutely (not sure what the right term is) impossible.  Hit Jesus’ body with a planet moving at lightspeed and not a bone would break.  Breaking a bone in his body would be like smelling Thursday - it’s a meaningless sentence. His bones were literally unbreakable.

Others said, “No, not that kind of impossible.  The bones were breakable, they had that potential but God would ensure it was never realised.” Hit the body of Jesus with a planet etc and his bones would break.  But God would ensure such a thing never happened.

Map that onto your answer.

The question of whether there can be a disagreement in will is not like smelling Thursday, clapping one hand, or hearing the number three. 

You believe that once the Incarnation occured then the Son does obey the Father - which means that for you it is possible for the Son to have a different will.  As you are an orthodox believer in the Chalcedonian Creed you won’t believe that the Son’s divine nature underwent change in the Incarnation, something was added (human nature) but nothing eternally there was changed.  So if the Son could have a different will in the Incarnation that was always possible, but would never eventuate. It’s not the ‘absolute impossibility’ we’re speaking of here, but the more chartered version. If it was absolute, and the Son’s divinity wasn’t lessened by the Incarnation, then ‘obedience’ is meaningless in the Incarnation as well.

Similarly, human beings qua human beings clearly have a different will from God. So it’s not an absolute impossibility.

And that seems sensible to me.  The Bible never says anything like, “God does not make married bachelors, create rocks he cannot lit, smell days of the week” or the like. They are impossible, but of the absolute sense, and the Bible never deigns to recognise their existence. Because they’re just word games.

But the Bible does say, “God is not tempted by evil” - which suggests that it is not an absolute impossibility. The sentence makes sense, God is a moral being who does good. So it is intelligible to say he isn’t tempted by evil, that it’s impossible for him to do evil, or lie.  It’s impossible, but not the ‘smell Wednesday’ kind of impossible.

Loved the answer, but I think it doesn’t work, unless you have some interesting wrinkles in your take on Chalcedon.

Ok, Mark—going back a bit now an unpacking the implications of some of what you’ve said:

“But there are people who are not like that.  They are very, very ordinary people.  Some people are below average intelligence (indeed roughly 50% are below average). Some people have very limited potential. Some people have no leadership potential at all. Can God change that?  Sure.  Do I think he does almost ever? No.  Might he do it just a fraction more than he changes someone’s gender? Sure I’ll concede that – Saul is possibly an example of someone who fits this category.  But even if it happens occasionally, it’s still a miracle; it’s a change to their abiding personal qualities. . . .

I think some people were made very capable, some people were made capable, some people were made very mediocre and limited, and some people were made mentally challenged. And, for all intents in purposes, that range of ability is fixed and an abiding personal attribute. . . . But I am pretty confident that’s wrong, there’s another group that has little potential, and no leadership capacity.

So intrinsic potential is not as different from gender as I think egalitarians often claim. I think potential is fairly fixed, and some people don’t have much. And I think they too are in the image of God, are equal to the beautiful people, and are worthy of dignity and honour. Even though they’ll never be leaders.”

So what you are saying is that some people are born with no potential at all to be leaders.  Let’s talk for a minute about those who are merely “mediocre”—who don’t have any mental handicap.  And let’s talk about parenthood. 

Clearly, there are some mentally handicapped people who are actually incapable of taking care of children or leading a family—but I tend to regard such handicaps as being things that, like lameness or blindness, will no longer exist in heaven.  These things aren’t intrinsic to a handicapped human being as a human baing, but are limitations of one particular physical body or brain—limitations that will pass away.  But people who are merely “very ordinary,” very “mediocre, are considered able to be parents.  And parenting, which requires leadership, is apparently an intrinsic part of what it means to be human.  It would be a huge mistake to say that those who are barren, are unable to have children because God has determined they are incapable of leading a family.  Barrenness, as I understand it, has nothing to do with lack of parenting ability. 

So are you saying that God has given some “ordinary” human beings a role that they are inherently incapable of fulfilling?  That it would be better for these “mediocre” folks if, instead of trying to teach them parenting skills, we just took their kids away from them?

I think it’s much more likely that the ability to parent (and that would entail some form of ability to lead) is intrinsic to all humanity; that none of us (without some physical defect) are “hard-wired” to be incapable of learning the proper skills to lead and guide our children. This would mean that there is really no such thing as a non-handicapped person who is completely incapable of any kind of leadership.  Obviously some people are going to be better at parenting than others—but leading children is something we all have some capability of doing, and therefore there is no such thing as a non-handicapped person with no leadership ability whatsoever.

Thinking aloud, now, considering more about the implications of all this:

Having authority or leadership is not indicative of superiority, and lacking authority or leadership is not indicative of inferiority.

Having a lack of ability or potential for leadership, is therefore also not indicative of inferiority. 

BUT being denied leadership or authority in spite of ability and potential, based on some other factor that seems unrelated to the issue at all—would seem to indicate one of two things:

1) either there is something in the person being denied, that renders them unfit for leadership or authority despite their clear ability (which most people—including the church as a whole—have historically interpreted either as ontological inferiority, or moral culpability, or both) or

2) there is an injustice occurring. 

Since God is supposed to be the author of the whole idea, the idea of injustice doesn’t compute; therefore, the problem has historically been interpreted as an inferiority in women, or as a punishment to women for the sins of Eve, or both.  There is a reason for this, and it’s not just Enlightenment thinking, or we wouldn’t encounter this “women have got to be either inferior or morall culpable in a way men aren’t” throughout church thought (at least until the middle of the last century).

You propose instead that the whole matter relates to whether one’s nature allows one to be a mother, or a father.  And that’s fine, as far as it goes.  There is nothing intrinsically superior or inferior about one or the other.  But in granting authority only to the father role and not the mother, both in marriage and in church, you have diminished the mother role.  It may not make women inferior, but it does disempower them.  And the question is why, and is the cause just.

Hi Kristen,

Mark, I have to thank you for putting forth an argument for complementarianism that neither diminishes women nor makes God into an arbitrary tyrant.  I still disagree with you, but I appreciate it that you have avoided these two problems.

Well, I’ve finally caught up and have the chance to say it.  This is a simply staggeringly gracious thing for a thought-through and convinced egalitarian to say.  It reflects amazingly well upon you.

And thank you for your assessment – I had thought that my take on this does that, but it’s good to hear that from a ‘noble opponent’ .  I won’t take advantage of that – I understand that it could still be guilty of that when we keep scratching beyond the surface, and wrong anyway, but still good to see my self-evaluation echoed.

In terms of where you go next in this comment:

The study you cite about the church attendance of children is certainly a good reason to encourage men to step up and take spiritual leadership of their homes.  However, what the study does not show is that leadership of the home belongs only to fathers, and that mothers cannot/should not be co-leaders along with them.  There is nothing in this study which proves anything at all about husbands’ authority over their wives being a good and desirable thing.  In fact, it seems to me that if he will raise her up to be by his side, leading the home hand-in-hand with him, this is the best possible scenario for the children.

Yes the study doesn’t give any grounds for husbands giving orders to wives. I wasn’t trying to point to it for that directly, just trying to help us see something that suggests a way in which gender based roles (or offices) do seem to have hugely different effects – nothing remotely like 50/50.

It was more about trying to show how gender might be a factor in family life that seems strange to us (certainly the study continues to leave me staggered – if I had the time I’d reduplicate the work to see if it could be trusted) with our views about ability.

I’m also not saying that fathers should go it alone, and not have the mothers as fully involved and exercising leadership in the family with them. I suspect that where that doesn’t happen a different study could bring out the effects on children by that lack. I work hard not to derive more from a study than what it can offer. I’m strongly in favour of women leadership in partnership with male leadership (and I suppose under male authority, once that term is better understood).

I also agree that churches are like families—but as I said before, both Jesus and Paul preached that God is the Father of this family.  Paul did occasionally make a metaphorical reference to himself as a “father” to certain congregations, but in general, he referred to other Christians as brothers and sisters. Nor did he liken church leaders to fathers.

That is impressive. From just a few clues you’ve correctly intuited where I’m going to be going – I think elders/presbyters etc are a kind of father in the church (not actual fathers, but their role or office is my like that of a father than anything else).  There’s no text to prove that – but I think I can make the case by looking at a range of Scriptural evidence.  I think presbyters are more like fathers than they are like CEOs or professional teachers or magistrates or bosses. 

Given that the church is fundamentally familial in nature, once we move on from our fundamental brother/sisterhood relationship, then any authority in the church is going to have a familial kind of structure to it. So, yes, when the time comes to make my case – demonstrating some link between fathers and elders from Scripture is going to be critical step.

Hi Kristen,

So what you are saying is that some people are born with no potential at all to be leaders.  Let’s talk for a minute about those who are merely “mediocre”—who don’t have any mental handicap.  And let’s talk about parenthood.

Yes, and yes – you’ve got me right, and you’ve (no surprises here) zeroed in on a key issue for my theory – parenthood. 

Clearly, there are some mentally handicapped people who are actually incapable of taking care of children or leading a family—but I tend to regard such handicaps as being things that, like lameness or blindness, will no longer exist in heaven.  These things aren’t intrinsic to a handicapped human being as a human baing, but are limitations of one particular physical body or brain—limitations that will pass away.

Agreed. I have no evidence for that – it is possible that in the New Creation they will still be like that, as I think God is far less enamoured of human abilities than we are (he after all, gives them to us, so he’s not as impressed by his own gifts). But I think it’s probably a safe deduction to make.

  But people who are merely “very ordinary,” very “mediocre, are considered able to be parents.  And parenting, which requires leadership, is apparently an intrinsic part of what it means to be human.  It would be a huge mistake to say that those who are barren, are unable to have children because God has determined they are incapable of leading a family.  Barrenness, as I understand it, has nothing to do with lack of parenting ability.

Agreed.  I do not believe that barrenness exists because that couple can’t function as parents.  Otherwise God would discourage adoption.  Barrenness is something that is a serious grief for couples – I suspect it is probably at least as bad as losing a child. But it’s not a sign of some defect.

Ok, with regards to the whole issue of the meaning of the word “authority.”  I’m going to try to get at what I’m trying to say in a way that communicates it better.

You said, Mark:

“The fact of the perfect harmony is irrelevant to the question of their right and power, and ‘command’ is an expression of that right and power.”

I disagree.  In fact, I think the issue of “harmony” is illustrative of what I’m actually trying to say.  You said you thought the idea of “authority” as meaningless in the Godhead or in eternity was a “non-absolute impossibility.”  You talked about how having the power to command, or to override someone’s will, is not meaningless even if there’s no need to command, and no difference in wills to override, as long as it’s not “absolutely impossible.”

So here’s my problem.  I strongly suspect that the way we look at authority is very much earth-bound, and bound within our own human natures; that in actual fact we are incapable of understanding the dynamics of interpersonal relationships in eternity, without that earth-boundness. I think there may be a very real sense in which “authority” between the eternal, divine Father and Son is meaningless, and that it has no meaning in eternity.  The possibility of authority entered NOT because the Son’s divine nature changed when He was incarnated, but simply because He became earth-bound.

I used the meaninglessness of word-play to try to make the point, but I’m actually trying to get at something deeper.  I’m not talking about authority as being “absolutely iimpossible,” I’m talking about real meaninglessness.  I think that when we enter eternity, and become “like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,” the words “obey” and “command” and “authority” will seem like something dreamlike, something we vaguely remember but that has no bearing on our eternal lives at all. That is what the harmony will do.  “Authority” will be like the sound of one hand clapping.

And here’s the rub.  You say we need to redefine “authority” to try to reflect “authority” of the Father over the Son—but we are incapable of actually grasping, with our earthbound minds, that eternal relationship dynamic.  We say there’s “authority,” but it’s kind of like a two-year-old child talking about high finance.  “Money” to him means the quarter Mommy gave him yesterday.  He doesn’t even yet know that the quarter could buy him something—it’s just hard and shiny, and he likes it. When he says “money,” he means “bright-shiny round thing”—and “money” in that sense is not something that exists within high finance at all.

And I’m afraid that this concern that Teri raised could be very real:

” . . . a theory that could cloud the concept of ontological inferiority so that it could be exercised but not recognized.”

She is talking about a use of terms that clouds the issue that what is really being talked about has not changed—just the way we talk about it.  Simply saying there is no inferiority doesn’t mean no one is being treated as an inferior.

If we start redefining authority in terms of eternity—in which there will be a harmony that we are as of yet incapable of conceiving of (as if that kind of harmony were even possible for us to practice here and now), it could just be a way of pretending that the word “authority” as we understand it, here and now, can actually look like that.

Quiverfull does this.  It defines a wife’s submission as “joyful” in the abnegation of her will and being, in favor of her husband’s.  In this kind of thinking, marriage really does make two people one—but that one is HIM.  She slowly disappears. 

I’m afraid that saying “let’s redefine authority so it looks more like the relationship between the Father and Son” will end up meaning “let’s ignore the fact that we married human beings are two separate individuals with separate wills, desiring unity in marriage but not at the cost of our individuality.  Let’s pretend a husband and wife can be in harmony the way the Trinity is.  Let’s pretend they only have one will—and that will gets to be the husband’s.”

Do you see the problem?  Am I making myself more clear?

Hi Kristen,

Yes, I’m not sure which of those two I think.  I think one or the other is right (or some other option that has the same outcomes), not your view.

My semi-Idealist epistemology means that I think we often see things in an unclear way first and can kind of point to it, and then over time can start to nail down more clearly why that’s right and how it fits together.

It’s a different epistemology to the evidentialism that is more common in evangelicalism and especially biblical studies where getting the source and methodology is utterly necessary first, and then if you just use them correctly you can get to the answer by an unbreakable chain of proofs.

My view is more like Barry Webb’s (former head of OT at Moore and the Zen Master of exegesis) - ‘the trained eye sees’, so the big task in exegesis is not getting a perfect methodology but to train the eye to see what is actually in front of it.  I think most of thinking and learning is like that.

I think, at this point in time, my view is that parenting does not require leadership in any sense that is applicable to the kind of contexts that we normally think of when we use that terminology.  I think that’s because it is a form of authority that doesn’t involve leadership.  But it might be that it involves a kind of leadership that doesn’t form the basis for the more normal kind.  I don’t think fathers and mothers need to learn to be leaders of their children.  I think they just need to learn to love them and, being parents, that will automatically involve authority.

So my hunch at this stage is leadership abilities could enable the parents to do some other things (like teach the kids to be leaders as they grow up) but isn’t essential to parenting.

But I think we’ve pushed my thinking on this as far as its gone and a bit beyond - I could have revised this a lot in a few years time. (Or even after your next response ).

Briefly, because I don’t have a lot of time right now:

Mark, I adhere to the creeds, but what you’re saying seems to exalt them over the Scriptures.  God has said that His name is “I Am.”  He did not say His name was “Father.”  And anyway,  “God” is not just “Father.”  “God” is “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

Now, with regards to this, Mark:

A God who is not a Father, whose nature was not of the kind to necessarily be productive and creative and produce someone in all ways the same, except for being Father, would be a god whose nature was not to be creative.  The creation of the world is grounded in the eternal begetting of the Son.  A monadic god could not be a creator.

In other words, God’s relationship with creation is not just an exercise in arbitrary power detached from who God is, or actualising potentiality never realised in eternity (that last clause is worth reflecting on).  It is grounded in, at every point the relationship that exists between Father, Son, and Spirit.

Which means that if there is no authority at all in the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, then there can be no authority in God’s relationship to creation.  If authority is foreign and alien to God’s personal relationships within the Godhead, as egalitariansim claims, then authority has no ground in God himself.  It is fundamentally ungodlike, an aberration for God, because who God is is fundamentally defined by the interpersonal relationships, not by his relationship with Creation – the later can only be a particular expression of the former, and must be grounded on it.

I am coming around to your view that “authority” means more than just “power to command”—but this comes from looking into the etymology of that word, “authority”—and what I’m seeing there still means that God the Father in eternity past, did not have a relationship of “authority” with the Son or the Spirit.

“Authority” is apparently based on the Latin word “auctor” which means “producer, maker, owner by virtue of having made” and from which we get our word “author.”  God’s “authority,” then, would be grounded in His being the “auctor” of the Creation.  He owns it because He created it—and from that ownership comes His authority.

When you described God causing things to be just by speaking, and called that “authority,” I agree with you in that we are there seeing the moment in which God became “Author.” 

But the Son is not created.  The Son is eternal and uncreated.  The Father is not the Author of the Son, the Father is the Begetter of the Son.  As you said, the Son arises eternally from the Father, God begetting God, and what is begotten is also God.  It is through the Son that God became Author of the Creation.

Authority, therefore, did not actually exist until that moment when God spoke and said, “Let there be.”  There is no authorship without a work being authored, something that is a creative expression of the author but which is not the author. 

Human authority comes from God’s authority—God owns everything, and God can give His creatures stewardship over what God owns.  Even human creative works are God’s because God created the human from wence they came.  But there is also a very real sense in which anything a human creatively “authors,” whether it’s a book, a piece of furniture, a child’s drawing, belongs to that human in a way nothing else does.  Our children do not belong to us in this way.  We beget them, we do not author them.  But all authority is ultimately from God.

Therefore I hold that “authority” became possible at the moment of Creation, and not before.  The Father’s eternal begetting of the Son is not a relationship of “authority.”  I will agree that Self-expression as part of the nature of God is what makes Him “Father” (and also “Mother,” though you will not agree).  And that self-expressive nature is why God is Father, Son and Spirit—and it also resulted in God authoring the Creation.  But the self-expression of the Father in eternally begetting the Son, is different from the self-expression of the Father, through the Son and by the Spirit, creating something other than Himself.  And THAT is “authorship,” before which there was no “authority.”

That said, I revise my opinion that “authority” will be meaningless to us in eternity future.  God will always be our Author.  But “obey” and “command” will still cease to have meaning when there is no more need for them, and those meanings of “authority” will cease.

Hi Kristen,

I am trying to keep away from the magnetic attraction of this exciting topic. But I have to just make a brief point here: the magisterial Latin Fathers Hilary, Augustine and Aquinasdo use auctoritas as a synonymn for source or begetter without implying that the Father gave rise to the Son contingently in time.

As a side note it is worth also knowing that the Arians rejected any literal understanding of “fatherhood” on the very same grounds as you use here. They argued that “Son” necessarily implied a moment of coming into being. As Mark correctly and helpfully observes here <http://solapanel.org/article/equal_and_complementary_a_review/#6160>, the orthodox recognised this as the key difference: the Son is a true son – and his sonship is not less true than human generation because it is without beginning. Rather the reverse.

Andrew, I don’t think you’re understanding what I just said at all.  I did NOT say the Son had to be begotten in a moment of time.  I specifically said:

But the Son is not created.  The Son is eternal and uncreated.  The Father is not the Author of the Son, the Father is the Begetter of the Son.  As you said, the Son arises eternally from the Father, God begetting God, and what is begotten is also God.

Nor did I say the Sonship of the Son is less than human generation because He was not begotten in a momemt of time.  I agree that it is more.  I’m quite confused, actually—did you read what I said?

So you’re saying that Augustine and the others say “auctoritas” also can refer to the eternal begetting of the Son?  They DO make a distinction between creating and begetting, don’t they?  Where is the distinction?  Do not the creeds say the Son is “begotten, not made?” They were Latin speakers and I am not, but if they could use the word “auctoritas” in both cases, how did they express the distinction?

If I understand Mark correctly, he want to have it that the authority of the Father over the Son is somehow equivalent to the authority the Father has over the Creation.  That makes no sense to me, as it puts the Son on a par with the Creation.  It was the Arians who wanted to make the Son somehow less than the Father.  I am trying to say the opposite.

Andrew, there is a difference between the two “creation categories,” and that is how they are used in Scripture.  The Scriptures make it very plain that Jesus is the Son of God and also equal with God.  “Son” is a term that is used of Christ both on earth and in eternity. If there is a passage that refers to the Father’s relationship to the Son in eternity past or eternity future in terms of “authority,” please reference it.

Philippians 2:6 says Christ in eternity was equal with God, and then in verse 9 that after the Resurrection, God the Father exalted Christ to give Christ “the name which is above every name.”  It is not stated, but we know from things stated elsewhere that “the name above every name” is yet not “above” that of the Father, or that of the triune God, “I Am.”  God has exalted Christ to the “highest place,” but that “highest place is at the Father’s right hand, not above the Father.

But the fact remains that the name of the Son is “above” every name.  This statement is not qualified in any manner in the text.

Again, in Matthew 28:18, Jesus says, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”  “All authority” does not mean that Jesus has authority over the Father—and yet the passage does not state as much.  Could it be that words like “above” and “authority” simply have no application to the divine relationship between the Father and the Son?  That when we’re talking about “all authority” or a name being “above” every name, it is not necessary to mention explicitly that this does not mean “above the Father” because categories like “authority” and positional words like “above” simply don’t apply in the Godhead?

“Authority” as it is used in Matthew 28:18 relates to created things (including heavenly beings or angels).  It does not appear to relate to Christ’s relationship (in His divinity) with the Father.

As to His humanity, Hebrews 2:9 says that Jesus was made “for a little while” lower than the angels.  Verse 8, though, says that God has now put “all things in subjection under His [the Son’s] feet.” 

I think the Scriptures are telling us that it was important that the earth be made subject to the Incarnate One, that His identity as human is pivotal.  It needs to be the Man Christ Jesus who takes authority over and judges the creation.  In 1 Cor. 15:20-28 we see the plan:  That Christ reigns until the last enemy, death, is put under His feet, at which time He “puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.”  This doesn’t say “all authorities and powers,” as if speaking of specific human institutions, but “all authority and power” in and of itself.  (1 Cor. 15:24).  This certainly implies that “rule and authority and power” are products of the Creation that are coming to an end. 

This is the main passage that makes it clear that “when all things are put under Him, it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted (v. 27).  Then it says that when the completion of “all things being made subject” to the Son is accomplished, the Son Himself “will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.” (v. 28)

This implies that at this time, between the Resurrection and the culmination in glory, the Son is not “subject” to the Father.  The passage is about Christ as the “Man” who is the “firstfruits” of this final wrapup in glory.  As the resurrected Man, Christ takes and makes an end to all rule, power and authority, and then as the Son, is subjected to the Father so that “God may be all in all.”  In verse 24 the word “God” is qualified by “the Father,” but here the word “God” is not.  I believe what is being said is that when the Son, who has had all the Creation subjected to Him, is subjected to the Father, that the Godhead once again is “all in all.”

But how can this “subjection” be part of the Father’s supposed “authority” over the Son when “all authority” has been brought to an end?  Is it not rather that the subjection of the Son to the Father is the way in which all of Creation (through Christ, who is both God and, as a man, part of the Creation) is restored to harmony with God?  In the new heaven and the new Earth, there is no more need for “authority,” for it has passed away.

You will say that the Son is still “subjected to” the Father.  Very well.  But “subjection” does not necessitate authority, as is plain in Eph. 5:21 and 1 Peter 5:8, both of which use that word “hupotasso” (submission) in terms of all Christians being “hupotasso” to one another.  I believe that mutual submission characterizes the interrelationships of the Godhead just as it is supposed to characterize our relationships to one another. 

1 Cor. 13:11-12 says that now we are children, knowing only in part, but when the perfect comes, we will put away childish things.  And what will remain is not “authority,” but “faith, hope and love.”

Hi Kristen,

Just some questions from what you’ve said recently:

It seems to me that most of the new testament referring to “powers and authorities” is talking about human things, the powers/authorities rulers, kings etc that God has put in place, can you run me through your thought process in the 1 Cor passage about why Powers/Authorities mean the concept of power and authority?

<blockquote>But “subjection” does not necessitate authority, as is plain in Eph. 5:21 and 1 Peter 5:8, both of which use that word “hupotasso” (submission) in terms of all Christians being “hupotasso” to one another.  I believe that mutual submission characterizes the interrelationships of the Godhead just as it is supposed to characterize our relationships to one another. <Blockquote>

I am also very interested to hear your thoughts on Eph 5:21-25. What does submission without authority look like? Or does this even apply to us today and why/why not?

Thanks!

Callan, I appreciate your questions!

This passages doesn’t say “powers and authorities” (plural).  It says “power, rule and authority” (singular).  It is possible, therefore, that these are collective nouns, referring to the whole thing, not a group of individual things.  It is also possible that it means “every individual power and authority,” but the main reason why I think it means “all power and authority” is that what Christ is going to do is destroy what is being referred to.  If it were individual powers and authorities, and some of them were Christian leaders, would He be “destroying” them?  I think the word “destroy” (also translated “put to an end”) clinches the idea that what we’re talking about is Christ doing away with power and authority itself.

As for submission without authority—that’s easy.  Christ did it when He wrapped a slave’s towel around Himself and washed the disciples’ feet.  He was not placing Himself under the disciple’s authority, but he was acting as a servant to them.  “Submit” means “act as a servant to.”  We are all called to act as servants, as Christ did. Gal. 5:13. “Submit” can also mean “yield, give in, or defer to.”  We are all called to yield and defer to one another—to “each consider others better than ourselves.” Phil. 2:3.

In Eph. 5:21, a careful study of the words “one another” in the original Greek reveals that they mean—“one another.” (grin) Not “some to others,” not “those underneath to those above them,” but “one another.”  So “submit” cannot always mean “be under the authority of,” or “submit to one another” would mean “each person be under every other person’s authority.” 

Let me know if this makes sense to you.

Hi Kristen and Teri,

God has said that His name is “I Am.”  He did not say His name was “Father.”  And anyway,  “God” is not just “Father.”  “God” is “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

I’ll interact with the first two sentences when I respond to Teri’s comment in the next, very long grouping of comments. 

I will say here, that if you are right, then we should be baptising people into the name of ‘I Am’, not the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Seeing God’s name as ‘I Am’ is Jewish, and Jewish in the sense of ‘rejecting Jesus to be Christ and Lord’.  The coming of Jesus Christ disclosed God more fully than he was known in the OT (more on this next).

But the issue of God being “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” is a classic example of a recurring problem with systematic theology and Bible reading. 

I’m pretty sure if you pick up most standard NT theologies, or a standard Pauline theology, you’ll find a discussion that says that the normal way the NT uses the term ‘theos’ is to describe a particular person, who is identified as the Father of Jesus Christ.  “God” in the NT almost always means “the Father”. 

There are a bunch of references – each one controverted among NT scholars – that appear to identify Jesus Christ as God, but they are not the norm.  There’s even fewer for the Holy Spirit.  Normally God is distinguished from both the Son and the Spirit.

And so when you look at the creeds and the history of usage of ‘God’ in the early church you find that right up until the 4th century, Christians stayed very close the NT in how they used the word God and so would distinguish God from the Son and the Spirit, but in various ways would seek to say the Son and the Spirit were equal to God and yet not rival Gods.  Under the attack of what Athanasius called Arianism, in order to exclude the notion that the Son was a creature, the term God began to be applied to the Son as well. 

So in the Nicene Creed you find the biblical usage: “We believe in God, the Father the Almighty.”  Here God is identified as being the Father.
Then you get what was a bit of an innovation in Christian teaching – Jesus Christ is described as being ‘God from God, true God from true God’.  He is given the status of being ‘God’.  But even in the Nicene Creed, this isn’t done for the Holy Spirit, because there’s so little biblical justification for calling the Holy Spirit ‘God’. 

But as the 4th century goes on, and the need to brutally exclude Arianism in any form drives Christian teaching, people increasingly speak of ‘God the Son’ and then ‘God the Spirit’.  But, especially with regards the Holy Spirit, it is very late and very controversial.  Athanasius, as far as I know, never calls the Holy Spirit ‘God’ – even though he is one of those who helped articulate the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that we now recognise as ‘just what the Bible says’.  And even one of the Cappadocians, IIRC never calls the Holy Spirit ‘God’ either.

Saying ‘God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ is now normal usage, and it’s perfectly legitimate.  But it can obscure both our reading of the Bible at times, which doesn’t quite use the word ‘God’ that way, and the teaching of the creeds – it can at times make it look as though they are denying that the Son and the Spirit are fully equal to the Father by not using the term ‘God’ for them. 

It is a typical contemporary approaches to pick out those few texts and try and prove that Jesus is God.  But almost none of those texts were of interest to anyone in the early church.  The early church wasn’t primarily trying to show that the term ‘God’ could be applied to the Son and the Spirit.  They were doing something far more integrated and true to the Bible – showing how the precise relationship that exists between the Son and the Father, and the Spirit and the Father, shows that they are fully equal to the Father, and yet of the same being as the Father.  Just indicating that all three can be called ‘God’ leads either to a tendency to think that there’s a ‘fourth person’ – “God” (or El Shaddai, or Yahweh) who isn’t Father, Son, or Spirit but somehow transcends them, or that “God” is merely referring to an impersonal being held in common by the persons, and is not personal himself.  So I don’t have a problem with the usage we have, but I do appreciate why it was a relatively late development.

continuing
I should significantly pull back on my assertion that Yahweh names God simply in terms of his relation to creation.  I think several early church fathers thought that, but I’d be surprised if it was all. 

I do think a reading of the writings from those centuries can see that they make ‘Father’ (and after a while Son and Spirit) more the fundamental name of God than Yahweh, and the more so the more they reflect on the precise status of Jesus Christ in relation to God. But I think my initial statement was too overstated.

When we move to the NT, we find that there is a contrast set up between the revelation of God in the OT and now through Jesus Christ.  It’s not that the first is problematic, it is that something even greater has been given now.  It’s not just salvation is greater (or the reality), the knowledge of God associated with that redemption has now reached fulfilment as well.  So:

Heb 1:1-3

1Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Here there is a contrast between the various speakings of God by the prophets and the single speaking by his Son.  On its own it is only suggestive, but when the broader theology of Hebrews that comes later is taken into account, I think there is an indication that the speaking of God by his Son is far superior than that which came before.  Prophets, Moses, and angels are all considered to be only servants of God, while the Son is Son, and so of a far higher status (as v2-3 indicate) than they.  And in Hebrews a person’s ministry is connected to their own position – and the ministry of a Son is far greater than the ministry of a servant. 

And this is not limited to the issue of priestly ministry for sacrifices where the many sacrifices at many times are contrasted with the once for all sacrifice of Christ, but also the speaking of God through the Son is contrasted with that that came via angels and Moses in the first few chapters as the ground for not refusing the message heard.

But it is John’s Gospel that really develops this at some length.

Jn 14:7-10

7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

Here the allusion to Ex 33-34 is quite powerful in its effect.  Philip’s request is at least as audacious as Moses’ – if there is a difference between seeing God’s glory and seeing God (and ‘Father’ here has to mean ‘God’ even if you want to argue that ‘God’ means more than Father) then seeing God would have to be even bigger than seeing God’s glory (personally I wouldn’t make any distinction, but if there is, hard to see how God’s glory is bigger than he is). 

And yet the ‘rebuke’ is not like it is in Exodus.  There it was a clear statement that what was asked for could not be given.  Here is that the request is superfluous, Philip already has what he’s asked for – by asking it, he shows an ignorance of both God’s true nature as well as Jesus’.  What Moses was kept from seeing by the hand of God, and only got a glimpse of it from behind, the apostles had every day as they walked with Jesus. 

To see Jesus is to see God, to see the Father, to know God as the Father of the Son.

This incident, I would suggest, explains why the NT doesn’t refer to God under the various titles of the OT, or even as Yahweh, but as Father.  What could not happen and people live in the OT is now on public display for all Christ’s people – God’s glory is seen.  And his glory reveals him to be the Father of Jesus Christ.

to be continued

concluding

34. Therefore it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate. For the latter title, as I have said, does nothing more than signify all the works, individually and collectively, which have come to be at the will of God through the Word; but the title Father has its significance and its bearing only from the Son. And, whereas the Word surpasses things originated, by so much and more doth calling God Father surpass the calling Him Unoriginate. For the latter is unscriptural and suspicious, because it has various senses; so that, when a man is asked concerning it, his mind is carried about to many ideas; but the word Father is simple and scriptural, and more accurate, and only implies the Son. And ‘Unoriginate’ is a word of the Greeks, who know not the Son; but ‘Father’ has been acknowledged and vouchsafed by our Lord. For He, knowing Himself whose Son He was, said, ‘I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me;’ and, ‘He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,’ and ‘I and the Father are One;’ but nowhere is He found to call the Father Unoriginate. Moreover, when He teaches us to pray, He says not, ‘When ye pray, say, O God Unoriginate,’ but rather, ‘When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven.’ And it was His will that the Summary of our faith should have the same bearing, in bidding us be baptized, not into the name of Unoriginate and originate, nor into the name of Creator and creature, but into the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For with such an initiation we too, being numbered among works, are made sons, and using the name of the Father, acknowledge from that name the Word also in the Father Himself.

The basic quarrel is over the Arians’ preference of the term ‘unoriginate’ rather than Father as the basic name for God.  But I think the argument canvasses the issues between us.  Athanasius doesn’t just sideline ‘unoriginate’ for being non-biblical, he accepts it as way of pulling together all the various OT names for God including ‘Almighty’ and ‘Lord of the Powers’, but says that they all only name God in relation to creation – to his works.  But that Father names God in terms of his eternal and internal relationship with his own Son and Word, and so surpasses calling God by any other name.  And he appeals to our baptismal practice, Christian prayer (taught us to pray, “our Father”) and our salvation status as sons of God to show how this is integral to the whole of Christian practice and relating to God.  We enter into our relationship with God by becoming his sons by being joined to Christ’s eternal sonship, we are baptised into the name of Father, Son, and Spirit, and call God ‘Father’ when we pray.

So, here’s a quick take on why I think the theology of the creeds makes ‘Father’ (and Son and Spirit in our usage) absolutely fundamental to who God is, far more than even Yahweh.  And the kind of biblical evidence that I think stands behind that.

“There is a very, very strong limitation on how much God can be known when he reveals himself as Yahweh.”

Understanding that Jesus IS the YHWH of the OT, this is a very strange statement.

Hi Teri,

“There is a very, very strong limitation on how much God can be known when he reveals himself as Yahweh.”

Understanding that Jesus IS the YHWH of the OT, this is a very strange statement.

Well, the issue may have to do with whether you think revelation is progressive in the Bible - some kind of Biblical theology framework.  If you’re running with a more ‘flat’ way of reading the Bible, like dispensationalism, then this would all sound fairly strange I suppose.  But I think the early church had a strongly Christocentric way of reading the Bible, and especially the OT.  They would not see the state of Israel as a fulfilment of OT prophecy, for example (as far as I can see from what I’ve seen in the sources).

Saying ‘Yahweh’ is limited compared to ‘Father’ is no more odd than Ex 33-34 indicating that proclaiming the name of Yahweh is to display all of God’s goodness, such that Moses has to be kept from seeing it or he’d die, when nothing like that is associated with the various names for God associated with the patriarchs, and yet Yahweh clearly identifies himself as being the God of the fathers.

The Bible builds on the revelation that goes before.  That doesn’t make the earlier material wrong, or inadequate.  But sometimes it means that rejecting later revelation in favour of (or subordinating later revelation to) earlier amounts to a rejection of the whole thing.  And both John’s Gospel and the book of Hebrews are clear expressions of that conviction.

You can’t understand Jesus unless you understand him to be Yahweh.  Without the OT the NT is a closed book.  But unless you see the NT as taking us beyond what was given to the OT saints then you haven’t really understood either. Moses couldn’t see God’s glory and live.  The apostles (at least, and I think all of us) saw the Father himself when they knew Jesus. That’s just a straightforward implication from comparing Exodus to John.

That’s certainly my view, I think it’s definitely the Reformers’ view, and I think it’s almost certainly the mainstream view of the early church.

concluding

I note that Athanasius, as you quoted him above, was not arguing against the name YHWH.  He was arguing against a Greek name “Unoriginate” which does not carry the same meaning as “I Am.”  “Unoriginate” may very well refer to God in terms of that which is “originate” (i.e. created), but “I Am” refers to God in terms of Himself and nothing else.  So I’m glad you have backed off claiming that YHWH refers to God in relation to the Creation.

Yes, I think I was mixing Athanasius up with one of the three Cappadocians who claimed that even ‘God’ names God only in relation to creation, only ‘Father’ truly names God in himself.  Athanasius’ take on this can be seen more from this section of his Defence of the Nicene Definition 5.22 (NPNF translation):

But if God be simple, as He is, it follows that in saying ‘God’ and naming ‘Father,’ we name nothing as if about Him, but signify his essence itself. For though to comprehend what the essence of God is be impossible, yet if we only understand that God is, and if Scripture indicates Him by means of these titles, we, with the intention of indicating Him and none else, call Him God and Father and Lord. When then He says, ‘I am that I am,’ and ‘I am the Lord God,’ or when Scripture says, ‘God,’ we understand nothing else by it but the intimation of His incomprehensible essence Itself, and that He Is, who is spoken of.

Athanasius does go for ‘I AM’ indicating God’s incomprehensible essence itself, not just God in relation to creation.  So I misrepresented him.

But that ‘I AM’ is identified as being the same as calling God ‘God’, ‘Lord’, and, importantly, ‘Father’.  They are all ways of signifying God’s essence.  When one says, ‘Father’ ’we name nothing as if about him, but signify his essence itself’.  Nothing about God – like an abstract quality of parenthood - is named, the essence itself is signified.  So to say, ‘Father’ and to say ‘I AM’ is to signify the essence of God.  God’s essence is Father, even as it is ultimately incomprehensible.  So to deny that God’s essence is Father and to see YHWH as more basic, does lead to the kind of conclusions I argued for, I think.  Father signifies God’s essence itself.

That’s radically different from what you and Teri seem to be saying, and I would suggest that Athanasius’ interpretation (or defence) of Nicea at this point has been taken up as the correct understanding, and as quite fundamental to the theology of the creed.  God is Father, Father names God’s essence.  To play that off against YHWH would be seen as either heretical and Greek or heretical and Jewish - depending partly on where they thought the idea came from, and which rhetorical club they wanted to wield that time around.

That’s just the fathers involved in the debates over the deity of the Son and the Spirit and in favour of the Nicea.  As I said, I think many among the “Arians” and “semi-Arians” would strongly resonate with what you and Teri are saying, and why - at least if Athanasius and the Cappadocians represent them roughly accurately.  And there’s a number of contemporary evangelical theologians (Reymond and Erickson both spring to mind) who seem to think the Arians were right in the debate, even if they were wrong about the deity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

continuing

So, only leaders are fully human according to Groothius’ argument, as is particularly clear from these three next paragraphs.

According to the patriarchal paradigm, women do have their own uniquely feminine activities not shared by men—for example, bearing and rearing their young and being submissive and obedient to the master of the home. But note that these activities are not unique to human beings; rather, childbearing and nursing are shared with females of all mammal species, and submission to the household master is shared (albeit in a different sense!) with a wide array of household pets. Certainly, it is a privilege and joy for women to bear and rear children. The point is not to diminish the value of motherhood but to note that while childbearing and nursing are distinctively female capabilities, they are not, in and of themselves, among the distinctively human capabilities (such as high-level rationality).

Patriarchal men, for their part, govern their homes and churches—making decisions, teaching the whole body of believers, ascertaining and making final determinations of God’s will for their families—and women do not. Furthermore, women could bear authority and responsibility for these things equally with men, but they do not because they are not permitted to do so. Men, by contrast, do not bear or nurse children, simply because they are not able to do so. The one is the “can’t” of permission denied; the other is the “can’t” of personal inability. This is not a case of equally dividing different opportunities and abilities between the sexes.

Nonetheless, those who insist that the woman must submit her mind and will to that of the man who is the master of the household also insist that the woman is equal to the man in her humanity and human value. But the full humanity of womanhood is not honored or recognized when what is deemed constitutive of femininity is shared by the lower species while what is deemed constitutive of masculinity is unique to the human species. This delineation of male-female “difference” fails to acknowledge the full humanity of woman. This is not to say that people with less ability in any of the distinctively human functions are somehow less human. However, when all women—purely by virtue of their womanhood—are denied opportunity to fully engage all the uniquely human capacities (to the degree of their ability), this logically implies that womanhood per se is characterized by a deficit of certain distinctively human traits.

Bearing children and raising them are not ‘among the distinctively human capabilities (such as high-level rationality)’.  They are ‘shared with females of all mammal species’.  The sheer hostility that egalitarianism has to motherhood, as expressed here, is simply staggering.  Raising human children and nurturing them: giving them the capability to function rationally and ethically, is no different from a great ape taking care of her children.  It doesn’t involve high-level rationality.  I mean, really?  Raising a child – a human child – is just what animals do?  It doesn’t involve high-level rationality?  How does Groothius think children get those high level human cognitive abilities?  Does she think that if we get a great ape to raise a child they’ll be able to think and reason ethically?  There is no digging her out of this hole – it’s a key plank of her argument repeated over these paragraphs.  She sees human motherhood as nothing distinctly human, simply something held in common with female mammal animals.

We get the same thing with submission.  According to Groothius there are two distinctly feminine activities for complementarians – bearing and raising children and submitting to men: “and submission to the household master is shared (albeit in a different sense!) with a wide array of household pets.” 

And from the final paragraph:
But the full humanity of womanhood is not honored or recognized when what is deemed constitutive of femininity is shared by the lower species while what is deemed constitutive of masculinity is unique to the human species/.
Submitting to human authority is shared by the lower species, and wielding authority is unique to the human species.  And that’s a simply awful moral vision to have.

to be continued