My best guess on God’s heart on this issue:
Here’s what I feel is the proper response to this. It’s who God is and how he functions that determines this issue for me.
The Trinity
Regarding the Trinity, Scripture teaches that God is three separate persons, each person is fully God, and yet there is only one God. God does not express himself as three separate persons, at three separate times. He can express himself as three separate persons at the same time. They are one. They are different, do different things, yet are equal. The Father is begotten of no one and is the eternal Father the Lord Jesus Christ who is the author of our salvation. Jesus Christ is the son of Father. He is fully God and fully human and the second member of the Trinity.
His Character
I believe that God’s character tells us that God is advocating for us. God is not a God who inflicts evil, sickness and suffering for some sick sadistic enjoyment. He is here to give us a life to the full. He has plans to give us a hope and future. It is God’s kindness and goodness to us that lead us back into right relationship with him. I believe that God is for us and therefore we shouldn’t worry about who or what can stand against us. While it is true God loves his own glory, I believe His glory leads to our good and therefore an examination of God’s character revels to us that we can trust God because He is good!
God is Love. God’s love means that He has a strong intimate and affectionate devotion first to His name and to His creation. God loves himself. God loves his creation. He saved us for many reasons, to show his justice, for his name sake, but he also saved us because he delighted in us. I’m of the opinion that everything about God stems from God’s love of his name and his people. God’s anger, jealously, wrath, justice, even Hell itself is an expression of God’s great love for us.
This love of God means that God eternally gives himself for others. This love for us is unselfish. God self initiated this love for us. It was not motivated by our prior love for him (for he loved us even when we where his enemies) nor was it moved by anything superior we have done. His love is not motivated by a desire to get something from us. If He needs something, He’ll do it himself. He simply loves. God’s love is the epitome of genuine intimate affection and devotion. The greatest display of that love was when God chose not to consider equality with himself something to be grasped but lowered himself and made himself nothing taking on the nature of servant and made in human likeness became obedient to death in the place of humanity.
God’ love for his name and for his people cause him have an intense feeling of displeasure that stems from wrongdoing against Him and those He loves. This is otherwise known as anger. God is slow to anger, so when he is angry it must be something worth getting angry about.
He is perfectly within his right to be wrathful and angry. When a wife is crying because her husband spent hours looking at adult material instead of her, God is angered because of his love for her and He is grieved at the pain that sin is causing. When a socially isolated person comes to God’s house and is treated with disrespect, God is angered because of He loves the outcast. When God sees a child that covered their ears to drown out his father's physical abuse of his mother, God is angered because he loves this child. When people do acts of sin in God’s name, God is angered because He loves his name and desires people to trust Him.
God’s Love means that He is righteous and just. God always does that which is correct and free from error in relation to what he has degreed ethical and moral. God always acts in a way that is appropriate for the, condition, occasion and purpose. Love demands justice. You cannot have a loving God withou having a just and righteous God, because a correct and fair response communicates a measure of concern, affection and devotion for His name and His people. No response from God, would communicate God's lack of interest in the cause of the victim. Therefore when God condemns humanity, He is perfectly loving and fair in doing so.
Even though God is perfectly fair and just in his dealings with us, God has chosen to act favorably upon us. God has chosen not to stay angry forever. God is a God that is full of grace. God deals with us not on the basis of what we deserve - God is simply gracious to us because He is. God’s love for us is not based on our skill. Yet Egalitarianism claims that we are not equal unless we do the same things, but God himself did not function that way and yet all members are equal. The Holy Spirit did not die for me yet he is equal. Consider what Paul says on the issue:
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Do you know what it says here? Right from the outset value is not determined by our function or job in the church but some how the Complementary position is shunned because it says men and women are equal but have different roles to play, just like the hand and eye do. It’s kind of weird to me to say your value isn’t determined by what job you do in a genderless topic like gifts but as soon as a penis or vagina is involved all of sudden our value is determined by what we can do - even though the Bible says the opposite. What ever happened to there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, we are one in Christ? Seems like we do judge how important we are on what we do… Weird, and a bit of a logical fallacy, It’s okay here for the this reason but not okay here for the same reason, weird.
Any doctrine we come up with Egalitarian or otherwise must best reflect these things so that our worth is not based on what we do. The trinity and spiritual gifts show us the differing roles do not equal value.
It must be God's image and his character since God made us in image.
Here’s also what I know
● God created men and women… so women are good!
● God Created men and women in his imagine so that must mean God created women to reflect his image in a different way then in men. This also means that there is something in women that God values different than he does in men. The same is true in reverse.
And that is BEFORE THE FALL. If this is not true, why didn’t God not create two women? He could have done that... So there must be something unique in both. This is also the reason I think marriage should be between men and women because if it is same sex, you don’t get the full image of God and marriage was meant to reflect the image of God. I think this is fair of me to argue because we also argue that murder is wrong because we were made in the image of God, at least that’s what God said to Noah after the Flood.
● I also know that the Bible says, “This is both bones and bones and flesh of my flesh… for this reason a man shall leave his parents and be one”
● The whole Biblical idea is that we work as one. Just like God, each member unique and yet one. Egalitarianism only focuses on the one but dismisses the uniqueness in the name of equality therefore in my mind it does not best represent the oneness and uniqueness of God.
● Men were leaders. By that definition they provided, they produced they protected, for whatever area of life there were in. God held Adam more responsible than Eve for the fall. It was to Adam that God demanded an accounting, it was to Adam that God cursed all humanity and creation.
● Women lead and taught in the Bible – Like Esther. Women taught in the new NT. Women were prophets
● Elders were mostly men
● Paul taught Prisicilla who taught Apollos
● Men must serve there wives
● Women must submit to their husbands
● Women served as deacons
● The Bible does say that men should be the primary leaders in at least two passages in the NT both of which have been dismissed as cultural.
I don’t agree with this 1) If it were true I doubt very much that should culture ever return today to this situation Egalitarians would be ready to give up the “right” to preach. This goes against God’s character since GoD did not consider equality with himself something to hold on to. So I cannot support a culture even a Christian one that would find it difficult to give up rights, even for the greater good. I don’t think the heresy argument is enough, since there is no clear statement that women were actually teaching false doctrines. 1 Tim 5:13 mentions women gossiping but does not mention false doctrine. I know we mentioned what was going on in the city of the time but to me even if we were correct it is still not strong enough. I could use that reasoning to justify everything, “ When Peter was writing to children to obey parents it was because kids were disobeying the parents in that city. Now we are well behaved kids, so kids don’t need to obey their parents” See what I mean? I know this statement is ridiculous yet we use it for this women in ministry thing because its such controversial issue. We can’t justify what we believe because we want to avoid being hurt. Some may object because they said women were not educated enough.I find the argument weak especially when it comes to Priscilla... “....... Paul was writing to Ephesus, which was the home church of Priscilla. It was in this very church that she knew the Scripture well and taught Apollos. She probably learned it from Paul himself. Although they later went to Rome, we find her back in Ephesus at the end of Paul’s life. Therefore it is likely that they were in Ephesus in 65 AD about the time Paul wrote 1 Timothy. Yet Paul does not even allow well educated Priscilla or any other women at Ephesus to teach men in the public Assembly of the church. In order to establish the order of creation God established between men and women” (Grudem 939)
The best model - the best guess I have on God’s heart:
We therefore need a model that shows equality and diversity as one. We need a model were the image of God of women and men is celebrated because it's different, not the same. The Trinity is the best model equality and diversity celebrated. Uniformity is a no. We need a model that expresess both the male and female images of God - for men this would mean we need model where men can protect, fight for and produce for the church just as God is fighting for us, protecting us, and providing for us. Egalitarianism is insufficient because it does not define the uniqueness of the image of God in both sexes.
God created men and women in his own image so they must be seen as equal worth. The fact they were created differently means we must celebrate the differences and find ways in church to put men and women in places they excel at. Like I said earlier, as a youth pastor with no kid's I’m not the best to teach Dad’s how to deal with the terrible twos. Godliness is the defining line between who can lead and who can’t, not a vagina - not a penis. If the woman was more mature than me, I would submit to her leadership.
That said we see throughout the Bible that God still holds men more accountable in the areas of producing, protecting, and providing therefore we need to put men in places within the church where they can do that. That means eldership. Men should lead if a) they are godly 2) there is a need
Under the authority of a godly men we should allow godly women to preach and teach.
What are you afraid of?
“Wait a minute, that still makes me subject to men therefore not an equal.” Umm Yes and no. Yes in that you have to submit to someone (but really we all do), no in that you are not equal. Jesus submitted to the Father and YET he was equal. Are you greater in Jesus in this way? And plus when you let guys lead in this way, you take guys natural tendency to do this out of the video game world... Where marketers exploit this trait to sell games, and bring it in the church. Is there a chance that women can be oppressed? Yes, but only when men live outside submitting their lives to Jesus. When men lead godly lives the result is protecting women, giving them a safe church to lead in, providing them the means and ability to serve, and producing godly men and women. Wouldn’t you just love to work in a place like that without having to worry about protecting yourself? That’s the Biblical ideal. That’s why I don’t think you can blame abuse on the doctrine because when you articulate it like this men must encourage and bless women. So when its not being followed, its not the doctrine, it’s the individual, warping something that was meant to protect women into something that can hurt them. Label this whatever you want, it’s not Egalitarianism, because men still lead primarily, but it doesn’t suppress women either. So I will label it moderate Complementarianism... or maybe its better just to call it the view that attempts to try to get at the heart of the issue.
Here’s what I feel is the proper response to this. It’s who God is and how he functions that determines this issue for me.
The Trinity
Regarding the Trinity, Scripture teaches that God is three separate persons, each person is fully God, and yet there is only one God. God does not express himself as three separate persons, at three separate times. He can express himself as three separate persons at the same time. They are one. They are different, do different things, yet are equal. The Father is begotten of no one and is the eternal Father the Lord Jesus Christ who is the author of our salvation. Jesus Christ is the son of Father. He is fully God and fully human and the second member of the Trinity.
His Character
I believe that God’s character tells us that God is advocating for us. God is not a God who inflicts evil, sickness and suffering for some sick sadistic enjoyment. He is here to give us a life to the full. He has plans to give us a hope and future. It is God’s kindness and goodness to us that lead us back into right relationship with him. I believe that God is for us and therefore we shouldn’t worry about who or what can stand against us. While it is true God loves his own glory, I believe His glory leads to our good and therefore an examination of God’s character revels to us that we can trust God because He is good!
God is Love. God’s love means that He has a strong intimate and affectionate devotion first to His name and to His creation. God loves himself. God loves his creation. He saved us for many reasons, to show his justice, for his name sake, but he also saved us because he delighted in us. I’m of the opinion that everything about God stems from God’s love of his name and his people. God’s anger, jealously, wrath, justice, even Hell itself is an expression of God’s great love for us.
This love of God means that God eternally gives himself for others. This love for us is unselfish. God self initiated this love for us. It was not motivated by our prior love for him (for he loved us even when we where his enemies) nor was it moved by anything superior we have done. His love is not motivated by a desire to get something from us. If He needs something, He’ll do it himself. He simply loves. God’s love is the epitome of genuine intimate affection and devotion. The greatest display of that love was when God chose not to consider equality with himself something to be grasped but lowered himself and made himself nothing taking on the nature of servant and made in human likeness became obedient to death in the place of humanity.
God’ love for his name and for his people cause him have an intense feeling of displeasure that stems from wrongdoing against Him and those He loves. This is otherwise known as anger. God is slow to anger, so when he is angry it must be something worth getting angry about.
He is perfectly within his right to be wrathful and angry. When a wife is crying because her husband spent hours looking at adult material instead of her, God is angered because of his love for her and He is grieved at the pain that sin is causing. When a socially isolated person comes to God’s house and is treated with disrespect, God is angered because of He loves the outcast. When God sees a child that covered their ears to drown out his father's physical abuse of his mother, God is angered because he loves this child. When people do acts of sin in God’s name, God is angered because He loves his name and desires people to trust Him.
God’s Love means that He is righteous and just. God always does that which is correct and free from error in relation to what he has degreed ethical and moral. God always acts in a way that is appropriate for the, condition, occasion and purpose. Love demands justice. You cannot have a loving God withou having a just and righteous God, because a correct and fair response communicates a measure of concern, affection and devotion for His name and His people. No response from God, would communicate God's lack of interest in the cause of the victim. Therefore when God condemns humanity, He is perfectly loving and fair in doing so.
Even though God is perfectly fair and just in his dealings with us, God has chosen to act favorably upon us. God has chosen not to stay angry forever. God is a God that is full of grace. God deals with us not on the basis of what we deserve - God is simply gracious to us because He is. God’s love for us is not based on our skill. Yet Egalitarianism claims that we are not equal unless we do the same things, but God himself did not function that way and yet all members are equal. The Holy Spirit did not die for me yet he is equal. Consider what Paul says on the issue:
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Do you know what it says here? Right from the outset value is not determined by our function or job in the church but some how the Complementary position is shunned because it says men and women are equal but have different roles to play, just like the hand and eye do. It’s kind of weird to me to say your value isn’t determined by what job you do in a genderless topic like gifts but as soon as a penis or vagina is involved all of sudden our value is determined by what we can do - even though the Bible says the opposite. What ever happened to there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, we are one in Christ? Seems like we do judge how important we are on what we do… Weird, and a bit of a logical fallacy, It’s okay here for the this reason but not okay here for the same reason, weird.
Any doctrine we come up with Egalitarian or otherwise must best reflect these things so that our worth is not based on what we do. The trinity and spiritual gifts show us the differing roles do not equal value.
It must be God's image and his character since God made us in image.
Here’s also what I know
● God created men and women… so women are good!
● God Created men and women in his imagine so that must mean God created women to reflect his image in a different way then in men. This also means that there is something in women that God values different than he does in men. The same is true in reverse.
And that is BEFORE THE FALL. If this is not true, why didn’t God not create two women? He could have done that... So there must be something unique in both. This is also the reason I think marriage should be between men and women because if it is same sex, you don’t get the full image of God and marriage was meant to reflect the image of God. I think this is fair of me to argue because we also argue that murder is wrong because we were made in the image of God, at least that’s what God said to Noah after the Flood.
● I also know that the Bible says, “This is both bones and bones and flesh of my flesh… for this reason a man shall leave his parents and be one”
● The whole Biblical idea is that we work as one. Just like God, each member unique and yet one. Egalitarianism only focuses on the one but dismisses the uniqueness in the name of equality therefore in my mind it does not best represent the oneness and uniqueness of God.
● Men were leaders. By that definition they provided, they produced they protected, for whatever area of life there were in. God held Adam more responsible than Eve for the fall. It was to Adam that God demanded an accounting, it was to Adam that God cursed all humanity and creation.
● Women lead and taught in the Bible – Like Esther. Women taught in the new NT. Women were prophets
● Elders were mostly men
● Paul taught Prisicilla who taught Apollos
● Men must serve there wives
● Women must submit to their husbands
● Women served as deacons
● The Bible does say that men should be the primary leaders in at least two passages in the NT both of which have been dismissed as cultural.
I don’t agree with this 1) If it were true I doubt very much that should culture ever return today to this situation Egalitarians would be ready to give up the “right” to preach. This goes against God’s character since GoD did not consider equality with himself something to hold on to. So I cannot support a culture even a Christian one that would find it difficult to give up rights, even for the greater good. I don’t think the heresy argument is enough, since there is no clear statement that women were actually teaching false doctrines. 1 Tim 5:13 mentions women gossiping but does not mention false doctrine. I know we mentioned what was going on in the city of the time but to me even if we were correct it is still not strong enough. I could use that reasoning to justify everything, “ When Peter was writing to children to obey parents it was because kids were disobeying the parents in that city. Now we are well behaved kids, so kids don’t need to obey their parents” See what I mean? I know this statement is ridiculous yet we use it for this women in ministry thing because its such controversial issue. We can’t justify what we believe because we want to avoid being hurt. Some may object because they said women were not educated enough.I find the argument weak especially when it comes to Priscilla... “....... Paul was writing to Ephesus, which was the home church of Priscilla. It was in this very church that she knew the Scripture well and taught Apollos. She probably learned it from Paul himself. Although they later went to Rome, we find her back in Ephesus at the end of Paul’s life. Therefore it is likely that they were in Ephesus in 65 AD about the time Paul wrote 1 Timothy. Yet Paul does not even allow well educated Priscilla or any other women at Ephesus to teach men in the public Assembly of the church. In order to establish the order of creation God established between men and women” (Grudem 939)
The best model - the best guess I have on God’s heart:
We therefore need a model that shows equality and diversity as one. We need a model were the image of God of women and men is celebrated because it's different, not the same. The Trinity is the best model equality and diversity celebrated. Uniformity is a no. We need a model that expresess both the male and female images of God - for men this would mean we need model where men can protect, fight for and produce for the church just as God is fighting for us, protecting us, and providing for us. Egalitarianism is insufficient because it does not define the uniqueness of the image of God in both sexes.
God created men and women in his own image so they must be seen as equal worth. The fact they were created differently means we must celebrate the differences and find ways in church to put men and women in places they excel at. Like I said earlier, as a youth pastor with no kid's I’m not the best to teach Dad’s how to deal with the terrible twos. Godliness is the defining line between who can lead and who can’t, not a vagina - not a penis. If the woman was more mature than me, I would submit to her leadership.
That said we see throughout the Bible that God still holds men more accountable in the areas of producing, protecting, and providing therefore we need to put men in places within the church where they can do that. That means eldership. Men should lead if a) they are godly 2) there is a need
Under the authority of a godly men we should allow godly women to preach and teach.
What are you afraid of?
“Wait a minute, that still makes me subject to men therefore not an equal.” Umm Yes and no. Yes in that you have to submit to someone (but really we all do), no in that you are not equal. Jesus submitted to the Father and YET he was equal. Are you greater in Jesus in this way? And plus when you let guys lead in this way, you take guys natural tendency to do this out of the video game world... Where marketers exploit this trait to sell games, and bring it in the church. Is there a chance that women can be oppressed? Yes, but only when men live outside submitting their lives to Jesus. When men lead godly lives the result is protecting women, giving them a safe church to lead in, providing them the means and ability to serve, and producing godly men and women. Wouldn’t you just love to work in a place like that without having to worry about protecting yourself? That’s the Biblical ideal. That’s why I don’t think you can blame abuse on the doctrine because when you articulate it like this men must encourage and bless women. So when its not being followed, its not the doctrine, it’s the individual, warping something that was meant to protect women into something that can hurt them. Label this whatever you want, it’s not Egalitarianism, because men still lead primarily, but it doesn’t suppress women either. So I will label it moderate Complementarianism... or maybe its better just to call it the view that attempts to try to get at the heart of the issue.
That was quite the post, and I disagreed at almost every turn. Whether an assumed logical step or presupposition of historical theology, I could not agree with where you went. I will attempt to articulate.
ReplyDeleteYour frequent reference to God’s love for his own Name, I know you are using Biblical language but I guess that what you mean by it differs from how I am hearing it. Name was to invoke God to act, part of a mutual (and often seemingly equal) relationship with God (think Abraham bargaining with God). But I hear you using it to show God as self sufficient, something the biblical text does not do, as God ALWAYS acts with humans, never apart.
Second, you assume things are good because God decrees it to be so, rather than understanding God to be stating that things that are good are good. To do this you must be interpreting Gen 1:1 as part of the story, rather than a Title. I have become convinced by the text that it is primarily a title.
You then list your major theological presuppositions, which I think is a very honest way of going about the topic. But, we must consider that all of these hold the bias of male dominated church leadership for the past 2000 years, a note that make hesitant to rely heavily on these when arguing a position that might subvert (and Jesus was all about subversion) the position of power the males who developed these theologies hold.
When you talk boldly about hell and God’s love in condemnation I question whether you are stating a biblical view of justice, or one moulded by the prevalent culture. In short, is biblical justice punitive like the American justice system or is it restorative?
You state God to be fair. I disagree; I see the biblical text revealing God as having a disposition toward the poor and oppressed, rather than being unbiasedly fair. I understand the reasoning behind this to be God acting as a dialectical and equal response to a world that has a disposition to favouring the rich and the powerful (the males in this topic).
I believe you also paint egalitarianism with too broad a brush stroke. Stating that we must all do the same things is not inherently egalitarian as I understand it. But to be egalitarian is to enable opportunity for all to act in the total freedom gained through Christ, that would include the opportunity to follow any direction the gifts God has given an individual. Thus, if a women if gifted in teaching she should act as her unique gift enable her to do, she should teach all who will hear.
I find it interesting you quote the no Jew or Greek, slave or free, but leave out the male or female, that is included in Galatians 3:28. I see that as arguing both for and against your position. Apparently male and female is not to be a big issue, maybe that is the way the Spirit speaks two thousand years later in a time where gender is anything but an either/or question.
You also state that there is value or importance tied with teaching; this is not what I would argue. I would relate it back to the body verses you quote, which precisely relates to gifting, and all gifting as valid and valued. So unless the Spirit never gives the gift of teaching to women (which is obviously not true having heard from gifted women teachers earlier this week) the gifting out to be utilized to its fullest potential.
ReplyDeleteYou also assume that the gender in Genesis reflects different aspects of God. I would encourage you to go back and look at the text and seriously consider what the image of God means (is it the universal message to both men and women to tend and care for the garden? Or is there some different aspect mentioned I am missing that occurs before the fall?).
Your continued gender argument is just to narrow for me to buy into. As a male that does not yearn everyday to be married, I fit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of identity and orientation. We must consider effeminate males when speaking of males, as well as women that do not fit the typical stereotype of what it is to be ladylike. Or have we bought into the propaganda of a culture that states to be male is to be mocho, protective, and provider, and a dainty submissive (culturally defined not biblical submission that is to enable) Victorian women as the defining factor of femaleness?
You also seem to imply that uniqueness is done away with in egalitarianism. Yes and no, the unique cultural gender roles are done away with, but only to provide room for the more diverse and inspired uniqueness that only the person of the Spirit can create and dream up. So is the uniqueness of gender roles worth hindering the uniqueness brought by the Spirit?
I also push back strongly when there is a position of power that is being defended. Not that you are defending you position explicitly, but as a male you have something to loose if this position is not upheld. So I implore you to use extra moderation in defending such a position, where you have actual or perceived power to loose.
Silas
ReplyDeleteThose are some very honest and hard push backs its great that pushed back like you did. I am only skimming it so I will respond in kind when I have weighed what you have said cause there is a lot of value in what you said. My responses will shorter and more concise I promise. I will just say this in relation to God's character, when I wrote what I did I tried to artiucale it the best way I thought reprented what I thought the Bible to say and i tried my very best to word it free from theological buzz words that imply a certain doctrincal camp. ( I know it's impossible to get rid of bias entirely) Even though it may sound reformed, it was not written with that intent. So when I say God loves his own name, don't read to much into that. I mean God loves himself, the same way you or I would love ourselves, or have a healthy self esteem. That is all. God likes himself. Nothing more than that No more than you or I would like ourselves When I wrote the doctrine, I tried to ask myself, " If never read the bible before with no Christians telling me what it said what would it say? " I know that impossible since that didn't happen in my life, but this was my best attempt at it
I look forward to the response. Here I have spent a few hours reading your work, it must have taken a lot of time to compile your thought. I truely appreciate your willingness to defend an alternative position.
ReplyDeleteAs for the spin or the theological buzz, there is no escape from our subjective state. But you truely took the honest approach by laying out many of your presuppositions in an attempt to be fully truthful in what you stated, and for that I applaud you.
Here's just a small comment. I would suggest that there are more egalitarians submitting in Complementary churches than the other way round. As an egalitarian (and particularly a man) its easy for me to attend a church with a complementary position. I feel very free to attend church anywhere God calls. A person with a complementary position will inherently be less likely to attend an egalitarian church with a female lead pastor because most complementarians believe this is a Biblical issue... You address this both as Biblical one and a practical one with seemingly equal weight... I will save our address of the text for an actual post.
ReplyDeleteThe practical side of submission I think can come up in missions in particular, in both directions in some very interesting ways. I just want to clarify that I feel very free and am willing to submit to different styles or even doctrines where cultural realities dictate differently than ideals. But it is important in my own mind and the abstraction of the intertubes to keep practical sacrifices and biblical ideals distinct.
Silas,
ReplyDeleteAs I was thinking about how to respond to this, I realized that in order to defend how I think women should lead in church, I'd have defend everypoint of theology and then come back to that issue at hand which I don't have the time to do nor would a blog be a great place to that. I don't have the time - I will respond in brief but understand that when I make the assumptions/ conclusions I do, its going to sound western. It's going to sound traditionally evangelical, a little bit charismatic a little bit reformed. But when I do please understand it's not because I haven't debated/doubted even believed and argued for the same things you do. I spent 5.5 years in Bible College debating all these kinds of things who have with people and profs that would come from a your theological stance. I'm now work in church and while I've had the luxury of staying in a place where I could debate, I no longer do. My job requires that I make hard and fast decisions based upon these like these. College, allows room to debate and think without the consequences. I don't have that luxury I once did.. I have to make a choice, and having heard the arguments and given careful consideration my choice is a more traditionally evangelical view ( but don't mistake that for formal Reformed theology) MY history of Christian Theology prof James Enns, at Prairie Bible - attained his doctorate from OXford told me once,"Colleges and universities are idea-factories, and one expects a lot of them (ideas) to be in circulation - kind of like baseball trading cards. Certain ones will have greater cache than others, but no one mistakes the card for the real thing. When people actually go out and play the game well, that has an altogether different and more compelling kind of appeal."
I have chosen what to believe because overall, i believe that the traditional evangelical theology has played that game well / better than other theologies out there.
you may disagree even call to account the many sins that have been done in the name of this theology but as I stated before you can't blame the theology if people aren't living by it. You blame the people
ReplyDeleteBut I hear you using it to show God as self sufficient, something the biblical text does not do, as God ALWAYS acts with humans, never apart
ReplyDeleteI would really disagree with this. Well not God working with humans part. When I talk about God's self sufficency - I'm talking about God`s ability to exist to love to create without the aid of anything external.God is complete in and of Himself as there is nothing He needs, or ever will need.
Acts 17:24-29 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘ For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
John 5:26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
Furthermore the logic breaks down eventually. How can a man create himself out of nothing, if he didn't exist. Even if you took Gen. in a figurative/moral way - you're left with the question. Did God create man or did Man create God. If you answer the former God did not ALWAYS act with humans. The whole idea of Jesus dying for the sins of the world roots itself in the idea that we are unable to repay God so Jesus paid for us (very western I know - but you know its worked when you consider the alternative can lead to legalism -which kind defeats the idea of grace. NO God is self suffienct. I think you`re confusing self sucffiecntly with something else.
I would agree that God`s primary mode through scripture and even today is working with or partnering with people. but I wouldn`t define that as the line between being depended or idepedant. I liken this to my Dad. My Dad was a tradesman by vocation. When I was a kid he would often let me help - even though he didn`t need my help. He could have done the job faster and better had I not helped. I think God is like that- letting people be involved letting us do a slower maybe even poorer job than he would have had he chosen to include us in his plan
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI think you state a very sad reality about church. That as a Pastor one is often required to be somewhat dogmatic - making hard and fast decisions... and that those decisions are no longer really open for debate...that Pastors are often not free to think or explore ideas open endedly... This is a reality I am sad about and that I see driving intelligent, good hearted, God loving, shalom desiring people away from church and away from church ministry. (not a theoretical statement)
I also am surprised that, while you hold traditional evangelical positions, you consistently appeal to pragmatism as a primary defence. I am surprised because I would understand traditional evangelical positions to claim their authority, traditionally, not in pragmatism but in scripture... I would love for you to comment on this. Is your appeal to pragmatism in addition to assumed authoritative Biblical interpretations?
Second, you assume things are good because God decrees it to be so, rather than understanding God to be stating that things that are good are good. To do this you must be interpreting Gen 1:1 as part of the story, rather than a Title. I have become convinced by the text that it is primarily a title. ```
ReplyDeleteWell I guess I would answer yes to some of this. I would agree that things re good because God decrees it so and I do take Gen 1:1 literally, (but not in a 10,000 creation science scene. Remember in the story it does say the earth was formless... from a literal intrepration it just means it was there.... could have been there for a long time. But do believe its possible for an all powerful God to create the in 6 days despite how ridiculous it sounds but would also be willing to believe that the universe is much older than 10,000 years)
I believe things are good because they are rooted in his character. I also define sin that way too - any action thought or attitude that is contrary to the character of God. I don`t think you can find a single thing in the bible that God has declared God that`s not rooted in who is. Therefore goodébad right wrong is rooted in his character. We are told to be Holy BECAUSE he is Holy. We are told to tell the truth because God is trustworthy we are told to serve because God himself didn`t consider equality with himself something to be grasped but made himself nothing.
If you argue that good exists outside of God then you run into a couple of problems.
1) Everyone agrees that good can be determined outside of what God has decreed to be but can`t agree what that is. You don`t have that problem here. (same kind of idea happened with the Da Vinci code - everyone agreed that the church had the wrong idea about who Jesus was but they could never agree what that was just the church had it wrong)
2) If Good can be determined by something external or outside of God - should n `t I be following that rather than this God who really doesn`t have it all together- can` firgure it out for himself and who he himself submits to a higher power of ideas or reason. Why should I bother when I can just to the what God submits and worships
Duncan, I`d love to comment on it. I will comment after i respond to Silas. Promise it won`t be 17 pages long either. =)
ReplyDeleteSilas,
When you talk boldly about hell and God’s love in condemnation I question whether you are stating a biblical view of justice, or one moulded by the prevalent culture. In short, is biblical justice punitive like the American justice system or is it restorative?
You state God to be fair. I disagree; I see the biblical text revealing God as having a disposition toward the poor and oppressed, rather than being unbiasedly fair. I understand the reasoning behind this to be God acting as a dialectical and equal response to a world that has a disposition to favouring the rich and the powerful (the males in this topic).
To be fair (pun intended) there is a lots of talk in the Bible contrasting the rich and poor. So I will agree that bible fights for this as you have suggest est. However I would argue that it only seems unfair because to us because we are defining fair by a different set of rules. Maybe fair was the wrong word use what I was trying to get at is I believe God always acts in best possible way for the given situation.
The rich and poor example I would suggest as being flawed. It`s not a person`s finical standing that makes them the oppressor it`s how they use it to opresses that makes it the problem. And at least in this topic its not the concept of male authority that oppresses its men who use it to oppress thats the problem. The fallacy in thinking is`to assume that once we take away what gives them power - the oppression will go away but if what people want is power they will find some other culturally acceptable subistude and work in that way. This is why the i think rich vs poor model fails because the same God that tells us to fight for the poor and to treat them well also makes Solomon rich, gives Abraham riches beyond belief and tells us its the LOVE of money thats the root of all evil not money itself.`If we went back to a barter system - people would still oppresses and if we used communisim everyone would be poor and the government would be rich. You see I think Paul was going much deeper than rich vs poor because he knew that the poor can habour the love of money in their hearts too just as the rich can.
As for Hell and God`s justice - I would suggest that its both restorative and punitive. You see God acting in both through out Scripture. Restorative because he would always punish Israel and then restore them punitive because he killed Herod in Acts for not taking credit to be God and Annaias and Sephrsis for lying. You can`t learn not to that again, when you`re dead.
Duncan!
ReplyDeleteI finally get to your post and its 1:30 am!
My life is crazy busy. I guess the short answer to your question is I see pragamtism as an authority but not the final authority on a given issue.(think wikipeada vs a published work) So I'll use it to argue/debate but only as far is line with what my best guess on the scriptual principal goes. So in other words when my experience/pragamtism disagree with what I believe the Bible to say on an issue. I will assume the Bible is right and do with it. assuming that my the practical outworking will work itself out eventually. Example - Joseph had a dream from God - then he experienced the oppiste for almost a deacde but in the end the dream worked itself out practically as promised)
That said I do not see theology and pragmatism as two seperate relams but different realms that intertwine. More Aristole, Less Plato (as an example don't read into that) So when I look at any given issue. I ask myself what is my best scriptual understanding of this issue. Ill then argue pragamtically to dismantle because I believe that most theology does manafest itself phyiscally - then show my best understanding of the biblical authority on the issue and then try and show how that ideal works itself out pragmatically. At least thats what I hope to do, I don't know if Im any good at it. Someone once told me the best way to argue is to assmue the contrasting view is correct and work backwards. I know there are some holes in that way of thinking but given the options its the best I can come up with
Thanks for the clarification.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little more Plato and less Aristotle meaning I am most concerned with ideals. I find arguing pragmatics almost always less than compelling and certainly disheartening. However, I agree that there is a certain amount of value in being able to demonstrate ideals in reality...
ReplyDelete