God’s Accommodation
ADDED at 10:00 a.m.: Thanks to someone for mentioning in the comments that the Oprah show with my sister-in-law, Pam Cope, and her work in Ghana is going to be repeated today. It’s a powerful story.
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Stackhouse argues that gender distrinctions “are a result of sin in fallen human society, not divinely ordered human relations.” Nothing about the creation or redemption threads of scripture would lead you to believe that men have a privileged place with leadership.
“How did I come to that sort of conclusion?” he asks. “Why do I think the Holy Spirit counts patriarchy as a sinful, oppressive structure to which he nonetheless accommodated himself and the church until such time as both church and society could do away with it? Because that is what I think the Holy Spirit has already done in one extremely important case: slavery.”
Christians have a consensus opinion today that the social conservatism in the NT regarding slavery was just such a case.
“Preachers on both sides of the slavery controversy marshaled powerful, Bible-based arguments that convinced millions of believers. Some fair-minded observers have concluded that the proslavery forces had the better of this debate, since a straightforward interpretation of the passages regarding slavery conveys no obvious condemnation of the institution and seems instead to encourage Christians in both roles, master and slave, to stay right where they are and simply to behave properly. Yet there is no important Christian leader anywhere in the modern world today who defends slavery. Not one.”
Again and again, Stackhouse shows that many passages in scripture — about polygamy, slavery, patriarchalism — are “God’s accomodation to something he does not like.” But imbedded in the gospel story is an eschatological vision of justice and equality that is already breaking in all around us.
He notes that not all that very long ago in the West patriarchy resonated with people because women were assumed to be fundamentally inferior in areas of leadership — more emotional, less rational, etc. “Thus, it made sense for men to dominate and women to submit, just as it made the same sort of sense for white people to dominate everyone else if everyone else was understood to be inferior and even subhuman.”
But — thankfully! — such reasoning is, for the most part, behind us.
“The complementarian position has become incoherent. Thanks be to God that many complementarians are not sexists who believe that women are inferior to men. (In regard to those who maintain that women really are inferior in these important respects, I will not pause to say much, except that the Bible, reason, and experience are against you. All you have on your side, from a Christian point of view, are misogynist texts scattered here and there in the tradition from the patristic period to our own.) To the complementarians who do believe that women are equal and yet see the Bible as restricting leadership to men, let me respectfully and fraternally ask, Why would God mandate that pattern forever? May I invite you to consider the Bible in the way I am suggesting, which does, I think, make better sense of the elements of both patriarchy and equality that many egalitarians and complementarians agree are present.
“My fundamental practical question therefore is this: What are Christians supposed to do when society itself shifts to egalitarianism? There is no longer a rationale for the woman to remain in the culturally expected role of dependence and submission, just as there is no rationale for the grown-up child to act as if he requires his parents’ direction as he did when he was young. When, under the providence of God and the ongoing, spreading influence of kingdom values, society opens up to the abolition of slavery or the emancipation of women, then Christians can rejoice and be in the vanguard of such change — as we have been in both causes. The irony remains precisely in Christians lagging behind society and still requiring a submissive role for women, a posture that now is a mirror image of the scandal that egalitarianism would have caused in the patriarchal first century.”
I agree, for the most part, with Stackhouse’s paradigm. It’s not a position I came to easily years ago. I entered kicking and screaming. It was frightening. It seemed to fly in the face of a couple “obvious” passages.
But I could finally no longer hold to patriarchal/complementarian thinking. It didn’t fit the gospel. I finally had to own up to my baptismal vows: that in Christ there is no Hutu or Tutsi, no Easterner or Westerner, no black or white, no male or female, no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free.
(And NOW . . . I’ll move onto other topics . . . for a while.)
Wow!
If we apply the rationale from slavery to gender roles, why stop there? Why not apply the same thing to adultery? The argument would be similar: God didn’t really oppose sex between unmarried people who love each other, but because society did oppose it, he accomodated… Now it is accepted by society for a man and a woman to cohabitate without marriage… etc.
Why not also to prohibition of homosexuality?
Or why not apply it to John 14:6. Maybe it was only necessary to take this narrow approach in the infancy of the church. But 2000 years later, the church is well established, and can accomodate Hindu’s, Budhists, etc.
Where does this rationale stop? And what is the objective principle that stops it from unravelling the entire fabric of Christianity?
Alan – There is a real shortage of pro-adultery passages in the gospel story. My suggestion is to get ahold of William Webb’s Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals. There is an insightful, extended discussion of the questions you’ve raised.
Stackhouse is not trying to take the pulse of society and say that that is the canon for the behavior of Christ-followers. Both Stackhouse and Webb explain why that would apply in one case (patriarchy) but not another (homosexuality).
Mike,
Thanks for the book recommendation.
I think it would be important to explain the limits of the accommodation principal here. That would be helpful in two ways. First, as you can tell from the previous discussion threads, people tend to take these ideas and run with them, sometimes into dangerous territory. Second, an assurance that we will not go that far might help some of us who are afraid that is where this is headed.
My response to Stackhouse is that God has a design that has nothing to do with accomodation. It is His word that says because of creation and the fall that men should provide the leadership and woman is not to have authority over the man.( I TIM . 2 : 11 – 13 ) . No , not the message of oppression but the Lord has a design for what is His way in His kingdom , not the world and current culture. When men and women submit to Kingdom rule and minister according to His pattern then the church will be effective in reaching out to a confused and disorderly world. We will be able to proclaim a gospel that sets people free and brings joy and peace and compassion. To do otherwise will add to the chaos in the world.
Mike:
I must admit that I am still at the kicking and screaming point, but I try to always be open to learn. I am also glad to see that this forum is not one sided, and on the whole people seem to respect one another even when defending a particular position. On another point, everyone might be interested in knowing that the Oprah show is repeating the story about your sister-in-law and the slave children today. I know that many people did not get to see it the first time around.
RC
Mike,
Thank you so much for discussing this in this venue. As a woman I have struggled with my “place” in worship and how Jesus treats women in his day. They don’t jive. What you have written here just makes so much sense to me. I am eager to get this book and read it for myself as well as bring it to my church leaders for discussion there.
It is such an important discussion right now in so many churches. Alan’s words of concern are what have stopped the discussion dead in so many places. I appreciate his desire to share in the discussion and also his concern. Change is hard. I pray God’s blessings on him as he struggles with his concerns.
I pray God’s blessings on you as you continue to bring the hard issues to us for contemplation.
Another observation: We don’t find passages advocating slavery–just passages telling how to behave in the context of slavery. However, the passages about gender roles go beyond merely telling how to behave in that context. These passages actually offer justification for differing gender roles. That justification is based on things like the order of creation and the role of Eve in the fall from Eden. There is nothing comparable on the subject of slavery.
Alan,
“We don’t find passages advocating slavery” Really?
“As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness. (Lev. 25:44-46)
For those who contend for the involatility of divine command on women’s roles, you have to account for the very clear fact that God’s commands (what he endorses, demands, expects) vary markedly across biblical history. Which leaves us with one of two conclusions:
Conclusion 1: God’s preferences are changing.
Conclusion 2: God’s preferences are steady, but the cultural manifestation/expresson of God’s Will varies (and will continue to vary) due to cultural context.
(Just for completeness sake, let’s add one more for Leland and his fans, which I count myself among…
Conclusion 3: The biblical/human account has never been reliably in touch with God’s Will. It might make, upon occasion, contact with His Will (e.g., “love your neighbor as yourself”), but it is largely an expression of shortsighted attempts to co-opt God for human ends (e.g., religious justification for the genocide in the Promised Land).)
A moment’s reflection on ANY of these conclusions completely dismantles any strong notion that Paul’s particular commands about women (a clear cultural rather than gospel issue) are involatile across time and space.
Pec,
Mike had said “Alan – There is a real shortage of pro-adultery passages in the gospel story”. My response was that there is no pro-slavery teaching in the gospel story either.
Regardless, the passage you cited does not offer any justification for slavery. That is in contrast to the passages about gender roles, which do offer justification,
Richard,
How about 4) God decided to “change the rules” for his own reasons without telling us what those reasons are.
If I understand you correctly, your argument leaves man trying to determine which scriptures still apply and which do not. I cannot go there in good conscience.
I think you are on shaky ground in thinking that that passage doesn’t advocate slavery. It advocates slavery as much as any passage in the Bible advocates homosexuality or the subordination of women.
Anyway, I would like to hear some discussion on Richard’s comment. Personally, I’m a fan of #3. This is especially attractive when you consider the circumstances in which the majority of the OT is thought to be written–during a time of religious renewal in the reign of Josiah. This would lead one to expect exactly the kind of passages where: “God has been on our side,” we just need to recapture that earlier devotion we had–that the OT is full of.
Alan,
“If I understand you correctly, your argument leaves man trying to determine which scriptures still apply and which do not.”
Are you kidding me? Have you ever read church history? About the Protestant Reformation? Or American Restoration Movement? Or simply flipped through the Yellow Pages under “Churches”? Alan, that is the situation on the ground and there is no way to avoid it:
Alan chooses which Scriptures apply and which do not.
But that’s no shame. Welcome to the world!
Alan says:
“If I understand you correctly, your argument leaves man trying to determine which scriptures still apply and which do not. I cannot go there in good conscience.”
Help me out here: Don’t we do this all the time? (Determine which scriptures still apply and which do not.) I don’t understand how you can think you do not.
Everyone, I just want to say thanks for discussing this topic with so much fervor while respecting one another. It is rare that church folks can talk about difficult/controversial issues without condemning those with opposing points of view.
With that said, I think there is another good book that would add to this discussion. “Velvit Elvis,” by Rob Bell. In the book he discusses how the church’s views of scripture and christian practice evolve over time as genuine, Spirit filled disciples “bind and loose” certain understandings of what being a Christ-follower looks like.
For those advocating a sort of “there it is in black and white” point of view, it would be worth thinking about tons of things throughout scripture that are there in clear black and white that we would find absurd today. For instance there are prohibitions on serving certain widows, wearing certain clothes in church gatherings, certain hair cuts, etc etc. All of them as plain as day in black and white, but I hear the same people who argue for this traditional way of viewing women, readily throwing these passages out by cleverly exegetting them in a way that they can explain them away as culture or contextual. If you choose to take the scripture as “black and white” then please be consistent and do it with all passages.
Richard,
The tone of conversation has taken an unfortunate turn.
Pecs,
Perhaps we are not understanding each other. I’ve done my best to communicate but something is not getting across.
The last thing in the world I want is to stir up animosity over an issue like this. Anyway, maybe I’ve used up enough of Mike’s bandwidth on this topic.
Hmm. My comment looks a bit redundant. In my own defense, Richard’s comment was not there when I posted mine. (And, I did not intend mine to have the same tone as his does, though I do agree with his premise.) In any case, we must’ve been posting at cross-hairs or something.
Oh, and I am genuinely curious about how one can think one does not do this.
Alan,
I’m sorry about any perceived tone. I’m just trying to make the point salient in as few words as possible which inevitably juices up the “tone.”
But the reason I specified your name in
Alan chooses which Scriptures apply and which do not.
is that it is very conceit that in the under consideration. It is an inescapable fact that you are interpreting Scripture and making choices. Proceeding from here, your options are these:
Choice 1: Ignore this fact, treating your hermeneutical situation as privileged in an untenable way (i.e., other people pick and choose Scripture but Alan does not).
Choice 2: Accept the fact that your are interpreting Scripture (i.e., participating the the long history of picking and choosing Scripture).
If you adopt #2, and I hope you will, you become a much better student of yourself, Scripture, and Church tradition.
Isaiah 55 8-11
Comes to mind. The continuing journey of man to try and understand God’s wisdom.
Matthew 7 :12
Think about this real hard.
Matthew 19: 8
God lets man have the reigns sometimes, but it is not what He wants.
Matthew 5: 38-42
People who follow the Lord, mirror the Lord and don’t fight back.
Love this blog.
Ahh, the complexity of the blogging medium. No way to see expressions and hand gestures or hear voice inflections and tone. I took Richard’s comment to be more about insisting that we pick and choose which scriptures apply, not an attack on Alan or anyone else. This medium is difficult for those kinds of vehement statements, as people almost always have to err on the side of egg shell-walking when commenting on blogs. But I sincerely believe Richard meant no harm in his statement, Alan.
Richard, need a PR guy? I’m your man. =)
Mike, get us off of this discussion and lead us to something less divisive…………like “politics, Christians, and the election”.
DU
Right or wrong, how many of you have ever tried to listen to a woman preach? Give me a break!
Interesting comment, Chris. Not sure exactly what your point is though. I’ve heard lots of women preach. Some have been better than others. I can say exactly the same thing about the men I’ve heard preach.
Chris – Some of the best preaching I’ve heard in my life has been by women. The homiletics profs at ACU tell me that some of the best preachers they have coming through are young women.
In much the same way that this generation of Christians view the arguments for slavery as inconceivable, the younger generation of Christians will view the idea of God wanting to silence half of his created image equally unimaginable. Young people are smart and perceptive and the articulations made by Stackhouse and many others concerning women and their place in the church will be easily internalized and adopted by them. These young people want to know why society adheres to an ideal of equality and the church doesn’t. This in spite of the Bible articulating that ideal in both word and spirit. The traditional answers we have given won’t hold much longer and the more we use them, the more we stand to loose this next generation of young people.
I appreciate so much the things that Mike and people like Tom Robinson are doing to help articulate the very important theological foundation for equity and justice. That foundation will help future church leaders open up the church to women more and more. And advances the Kingdom of God forward even more.
Actually, I have been impressed by the reasonably cordial and courteous tone of the comments. And I do appreciate Alan for his sincerity and his persistence, as well his demonstrated tolerance. I suspect part of that appreciation is due to the fact that I once shared very similar views — and it was not so very long ago that I’ve forgotten. Alan’s concern (at least as I perceive it) is a legitimate one. It is far too easy for any of us to slip from trying to understand and apply what we find in scripture into using scripture to support our conclusions. Vanity lurks behind every vested interest we develop. But having said that, the problem remains. We have no choice. We must seek to understand/interpret and apply what we understand.
I recognize it over-simplifies Alan’s paradigm somewhat to frame it as a concern that acceptance of Stackhouse’s Paradigm will result in disregard for guidance from scripture and virtually total reliance on subjective human experience and human reasoning. I may be wrong, but I sense he sincerely fears the loss of what he considers a “secure” anchor for faith and practice, and a return to the situation described in the time of the judges — where everyone does what is right in one’s own eyes. And there is validity in that fear. But having said that, the problem remains. We have no choice. We HAVE to make distinctions, and we need to do so on some principled basis.
Developing SOME paradigm for understanding and applying scripture is inevitable. We can’t do otherwise. Declaring particular parts of scripture “clear” or “plain” demonstrates the point, rather than refuting it. Those designations are expressions of opinion. By what standard are they “clear” or “plain?” Are all simple sentences contained in scripture that contain less than 15 words and a single subject and predicate and object the ones that are “clear?” It does disturb me that many folks who SEE certain passages as “plain” assume at once that anyone who does not share their opinion, by definition, lacks the same reverence for scripture they possess. They find it so hard to see their own “clear” distinctions as conclusions, apparently considering them “givens” in the equation.
I am convinced of this much. Due to our culture and heritage, the vast majority (if not all) of the egalitarians among us (male or female) have experienced something like what Mike described. We have been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting a different paradigm. Most of us have done it in spite of serious obstacles and enormous pressures from our peers to maintain a former understanding. I am also convinced that such change has been driven by a deep desire to better understand God’s revealed will, not to disregard it.
The whole premise of Stackhouse’s Paradigm is to honestly confront what he acknowledges as a difficult and complex situation. It is not an easy thing to do. It is confusing. I applaud this means Mike provides for sharing and reflecting on the matter. I trust God is honored by the attention and devotion we invest here. I also trust the Spirit will continue to work in our hearts and lives — and that His work will produce change. It seems trite, but growth requires change. And I think we all want to grow. Peace.
Hi ReJoyce,
I do not claim to be free from picking and choosing among scriptures. I wish I could claim that. However I believe it to be wrong to do so. Where God has made His will known, my obligation is to obey.
Terry,
I agree that we are called to learn what pleases God. It is a process that takes time and effort. One thing I know is that God wants us to obey. To obey is better than sacrifice.
I also thought about the example of divorce, where God permitted it in the OT because of the hardness of people’s hearts. I think divorce and slavery are both examples of that kind of thing. I’m having a hard time putting gender roles in the same category because the scriptures actually justify different gender roles, as I’ve explained earlier.
At this point I’m really more interested in how we can respect one another’s sincere convictions without belittling each other and without creating or harboring hard feelings. We have a lot in common. We believe in one God who created the universe and who will judge us all. We believe in God’s Son, who died and was raised again to pay the penalty for our sins so that we might inherit eternal life. I want to believe that most if not all of us believe in the scriptures, when properly understood, as the absolute standard for Christian life, the standard by which we will be judged. If we have all that, we have an enormous amount in common.
Beyond that, where we disagree, we need to extend grace and patience and understanding. We need to accommodate different conscientious convictions so that we can have fellowship without violating conscience. We need to control the rhetoric so that we can maintain mutual respect and love.
Thanks for trying to explain, Alan. You do use different words in your explanation from what you said in your original comment. In one you say “trying to determine which still apply” and in the other “picking and choosing”. I don’t really think those two are exactly the same thing. But anyway. I see what you’re saying, and would say I hope that I don’t just pick and choose but don’t really have a problem with saying that we need to study and figure out what was meant for then and what is meant for now.
grace and peace.
Chris,
Loved to hear my mamaw preach. It wasn’t boring at all.
I know your comment was probably made in fun, but I did like hearing her preach.
Alan, I was struck by your earlier comment about the role of Eve in the Fall. What do you think the relationship was between Adam and Eve before God before the Fall? I remember somthing about “let them rule…”
My comment about the role of Eve in the fall was a reference to 1 Tim 2:13-14.
We aren’t given much information about the role of eve prior to the fall– basically, just that Eve was created as a helper suitable for Adam.
After the fall, God told Eve “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Gen 3:16) Obviously, many other scriptures must be taken into account to understand what it means for the husband to “rule over” the wife. But that seems to be what 1 Tim 2:13-14 is referring to.
Well, I kind of think we do know something about Eve’s role before the fall. As I read Genesis 1 and 2 it seems to me that Adam and Eve had the same role: to rule over all the earth and to be fruitful and multiply…to fill the earth and subdue it. And although I have no training in ancient languages, I noticed in Strong’s that the word “helper” used to describe Eve is the same word used abut God Himself in other places. That makes me think that my way of thinking of the word “helper” as a subordinate might be a mistake.
I think it is well known that women are better communicators then men. More of their brain is utilized for this (duh!). This is likely why there are more women teachers, for example (in the real world). You could say that God, in fact, designed them to be better at communicating.
So when is Highland going to get a woman preacher?
As I think and think about this, I find that I am very grateful for the autonomy (at least technically) that exists in our churches. Just as I think good people can come to different conclusions about the same passage, I think the same thing follows that elderships can and do, frequently, come to differing conclusions about things. While it would in fact be wrong to put a woman in a visible worship role at the church where my grandparents attend (ultra-conservative, south TX) because of what it would do to the body, the same act may be benificial to another body of believers. The thing that is happening on this thread is that we all come from churches who have (probably) established what they think about this topic and when we are confronted with others who have opposite viewpoints, we feel the need to convince them of their error and bring them over to our ‘right’ way of thinking. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, our rightness isn’t what saves us anyway. Not that we shouldn’t try to be righteous, but we are reliant on the blood of Christ which is thankfully thick enough to cover our misinterpretations and shortcomings.
I need to quit reading this thread because it has unsettled me. I find myself short-tempered with my kids becuase my brain has been preoccupied with ‘my place’ in the church. Ever since I had my fist child, I have found that the act of parenthood gives fresh insight to God’s heart. No doubt many of you have felt the same. But over the past few days of short-temperedness it seems like they are asking me things they already know; things like ‘how can I go to sleep faster?’ ‘why does he have a bigger piece than I do?’ Why can’t I have 2 toys to play with like she does?’ and just now, as I tried to get my littlest one to sleep, it dawned on me: Is this what we sound like to our Father? Our Father who has graciously given us all that we need and shown us a world who needs His blessings as well. Our Father who wants us to unleash these blessings through the power of his Spirit. How is it that we have this much time to devote to who can unleash blessings, who can encourage, who can do what God has called believers to do? I know I am speaking to myself because I love to talk (obviously) as much as anyone, but I think I need to quit talking about this and devote my time to opening my eyes to who needs my service, and right now, I think that’s my kids.
Peace to you all
Dixie
The irony to me about the use of the I Tim passage on Eve’s role is that Paul has no problem in Romans using Adam for exactly the same thing in his argument about how death came to man through one man, and then use it to “keep down” women in I Tim.
I don’t have an answer for that, but that inconsistency has always bothered me.
Dixie,
That was expressed about as well as anyone could have expressed it and echoes my sentiments. I’ve been reading this blog for about a year and to be honest with you it gives me a headache. It’s important to know what’s going on in the brotherhood particulary in the position I’m in but ultimatly we must work these things out with “fear and trembling”. It reminds me a little of listening to talk radio. All I seem to get out of it is agitation and that carries over to my relationships. This life we’ve chosen is supposed to result in joy-not anxiety and endless discussions over matters where few minds are changed anyway. I got sucked into this discussion, vented a few things and now wish I hadn’t. God bless all of you and farewell.
By the way, does anyone here have a job? Just kidding.
Gender wars have always personally hurt me. I do not believe that I am alone. I have been on the powerful end of the gender wars and on the powerless end as well. It kind of depends who is in the conversation and the context.
When women are painted as incurably irrational or weak, it hurts me. When men are painted as dolts or power hungry, it hurts me. It is in some way personal even when I know that it is not – not to me (OK may be sometimes it is).
I have never seen any good come from finding out which gender is superior.
Bring the Bible and God into it and it gets all the worse. When someone is degraded or demeaned because of something that is not only not their fault, but is not even a deficit. Being female is not a value deficit and neither is being male. Neither is having a level of intelligence or phsycial strength of emotional strength and on and on.
I would like to see a conversation on the excellent contributions women and men have made to the Kingdom of God rather than trying to figure out what women can’t do because of this or that intepretted verse from the Bible.
I wonder why God didn’t incarnate as a woman. Probably an accomodation.
This is the Chris that has been bantering about this subject for the past couple of days. I want to make it clear that the Chris that made the made the statement about women preaching was not me. Thanks.
The old saying from childhood is screaming out…. “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing”. The audible gasping I’ve done while reading through the comments has made me grateful AGAIN for being at Highland where women’s voices in the assembly are really not even an issue anymore AND grateful that some of the comments I haven’t had to hear in person. (I don’t think it would bring out my best Christlike qualities….)
I’m praying protection for my daughter. I hope if God sends a man along someday for her to marry, that that man will think she is as stunning, beautiful,brilliant and holy when she prays aloud as when she washes the dishes.
I’m going to go breathe into a paper sack now….
Does Highland let women preach or be elders, and if not why not? Just curious. For some reason I either read or heard that there weren’t either one.
Again – it just amazes me that we are “so correct” on the women’s role issue – but we sweep the raising holy hands, speaking in tongues, women covering their heads, and a host of other issues (as we see fit I might add) either under the culture rug or the “well we just don’t that because it makes us feel uncomfortable” rug.
Well, I guess we were wrong when we supported slavery and segregation, but we’re right on this gender issue because we can trace that back to the Garden of Eden. Of course, when we supported slavery we were probably a little too myopic to consider Adam might have been a bit darker skinned than our flannel board figurines depicted.
Mike,
Thank you for this forum, and I appreciate all of the posters expressing their opinions and beliefs.
As the father of an incoming ACU ministry major, who is a woman of God, I am also thankful for fellowships that will allow her to use the gifts she has been given.
Kent H.
J-Wild, Loved your comment—especially your unintended one when you said “we’ll LOOSE this next generation, meaning “lose”. Actually, truer words were never spoken, as I feel my sons have been “loosed” from having to rigidly follow a bound set of rules that did NOT come from Our Father or Our Saviour, but our own selves. My son & daughter-in-law prayed together out loud at their congregation’s worship assembly this past Sunday, & I so wished I could’ve been there to hear them. It is something I’ve pondered in my heart all week, & I KNOW God heard his & her prayer, & was PLEASED. No doubt in my mind at all. I’m so thankful to that congregation for loving them & letting them both be who God created them to be. What joys they get to experience together in their worship assemblies that I’ve never had.
Hallelujah for being “loosed”!!
Folks, the reason we need to devote attention and much reflection to this topic is that, perhaps more so than any other time in history, what we teach and practice on this issue is going to have eternal consequences in the lives of SO many people today. Can you spell
R-E-L-E-V-A-N-T? Surely you can see that IF (just for purposes of argument) the gender prohibitions we (institutionally) enforce turn out to be misguided, the church will NOT ONLY lag behind our society, it will produce stumbling-blocks that turn into mill-stones, and that scares me to death. No. This is a serious topic, and exquisitely timely, whether it is a happy one or not.
Alan’s very first post on this topic presented the thesis that 1 Cor 14:33-38 and 1 Tim 2:11-15 “could not be clearer;” finding in them “commands” that seem (to you) “unmistakeable.” You conclude that first post by declaring you cannot condone what you believe those passages “clearly prohibit,” asserting that it is “a question of obedience.”
He later amplified his opinions by stating his beliefs about the general context of both passages, and by concluding that “a woman publicly teaching or giving instructions to the congregation” would constitute disobedience to God’s clear command. Some of us can no longer see the “silence/prohibition” as clearly as that. I’m not sure I now see that part of 1 Tim 2 as being much easier to apply than Paul’s nearly immediate declaration that women will be saved through childbearing. (v. 15) That’s a pretty straightforward statement, too, as are the “prohibitions” against braided hair, gold, pearls, and expensive clothes. Why don’t we “apply” (teach and rigidly enforce) them in the same way?
Alan also suggested “clarity” was enhanced in this instance because Paul articulates “justification” for what Alan interprets as complementarian prohibitions (for differing gender roles, and male-supremacy). But Paul offers his rationale for many other “declarations” he makes in scripture that we completely ignore/reject today. Alan posits that Paul’s “justification is based on things like the order of creation and the role of Eve in the fall from Eden” and thus (“clearly,” I presume)demonstrates the timeless quality of those prohibitions. But others have quickly pointed out problems with using that argument as dispositive.
More recently Alan suggested “God [may have?] decided to ‘change the rules’ for his own reasons without telling us what those reasons are.” I think that, intentionally or not, you get close to a KEY here. Our conclusions likely are driven in large part by our “paradigm” about God himself. If we view him as being capable of arbitrary and perhaps obscure and capricious behavior and attitudes, perhaps we will be more likely to be more concerned about “obedience” to commands and prohibitions we perceive even if they make no sense to us. If we view him as a perfectly beneficent Father, however, we may “interpret” scripture differently.
Some folks worry most about obedience to whatever commands they can comprehend or derive from scripture. Others worry most about getting in touch with the Father’s heart, and joining Him in his endless work of rescue and redemption. IF the “prohibitions” thought to be contained in these two passages turn out not to be as “clear” as they appeared to be, will their continued enforcement cause little ones to stumble? Now, understand, I’m confident that grace can and will cover us whichever error we might make. But I really am worried about those who may well be repelled permanently, and unnecessarily, if we choose to ignore this issue because it makes our heads hurt.
Gary,
For the most part you have summarized my posts accurately, though in a more shrill tone (at least than I intended). But I think you are going too far out on the limb when you speak of the “KEY” and try to discern my view of God from this limited sample of comments. I did not characterize God’s decisions as arbitrary and capricious. I did say he might have reasons he has not revealed to us. I am completely confident that those are excellent reasons however.
I don’t think that pursuing a heart level relationship with God is at odds with being diligent to obey precisely what God has commanded. Jesus said that if we love him we will obey.
We must obey according to our understanding. Since fallible humans won’t always agree, our obedience will differ, but each of us will be following our conscience. Where our consciences are misguided we still might get ourselves in trouble. We need to be merciful to one another because we all need mercy from God.
This is the nice Chris,
Gary, obviously you and Alan are well studied and thorough. The passions have come out in full force. I still have not heard anyone answer a question I have for the past two days. If this teaching does not apply today, what else does not? You used the word “Command” above. This is not a command, it is a pretty reference point given in multiple writings in the NT. I very seriously want to know; no sarcasm, no baiting so I can make a point later, and all kidding aside.
I don’t like the “slippery slope” argument that many give. I am on the side of having a surrendered heart to follow His will, not mine; His direction through inspired writers, not mine. I don’t think less of women, I don’t think usurping is an issue, I just think it it written in there for a reason.
I have a troubled soul when people link this to slavery. How about are we still to not sit at a table with a non-repentant brother or sister that is an adulterer, drunkard and so on? Does that only go to the Corinthians? I think not. I’m struggling with this one everyone!!!
Apparently I am also struggling to type. Sorry for the type-o’s.