Have you heard of mission creep? If not, it’s when a mission starts out with one objective, but, over time, other objectives get added. I wonder how many of you have noticed that some mission creep has occurred on this blog. Have you been a part of this blog community long enough to remember what our first mission statement was? It was “Working to be a safe place for all sides to share.” When we moved to the WordPress blogging platform, we got a new blog template which has a pleasant scene with a bridge on it, above this post. And I upped the ante for our mission statement, which is now “Building bridges between complegalitarians and egalitarians.”
What are some differences between trying to have a safe place for discussion and debate to occur and bridge building between complegalitarians and egalitarians? Since I’m the one who “creeped” the mission, I have some ideas about what some of those difference might be. But I thought it would be interesting to hear your answers to what those differences might be. Perhaps some of you have been involved with bridge building of various kinds in the past and you can share from that experience what is involved in building bridges between parties that disagree.
OK, what do you think could be some differences between (1) trying to have a safe place for discussion between complegalitarians and egalitarians and debate to occur and (2) bridge building between complegalitarians and egalitarians? Which is more difficult? Are there differences in the goals of discussion between (1) and (2)?
Having not followed the blog for very long, I’m actually somewhat confused by what you mean by wanting to have a “safe” place for mutual discussion. Safe from what? Biased moderators & censorship? Accusations of bigotry and sexism? A place to share stories of abuse? Fill me in here.
Hmmm…great questions.
1. Safe Place for Conversations:
We’re trying to hear each other, seeking to be respectful as we communicate our position.
2. Bridge-Building:
We’re seeking to find the things we *do* agree on, focusing more on those things we agree on than on the things we *don’t* agree on.
Is that right…wrong…? If it’s right, it’s occuring to me that I find 1. awesome. That was why I happily joined this blog in the first place. But, er, I’m not sure I can be a part of 2… ?
I am happy to report that I believe comps and egals are both Christians, working to see God’s glory made manifest. In that sense, there are bridges between us. Yay!
But I can’t “agree to disagree” in a smiling cheerful sort of way about something that has been a very painful part of my life, directly hitting into my own relationships in childhood and marriage, as well as my own sense of personal calling in the church at large.
I can’t pretend that the results of an egal and comp interpretation are similar. They are fairly similar in the very soft-comp type of world, yes (and I could probably agree to disagree there, even with a bit of a cheerful smile) but I don’t think that soft-comp is an accurate reflection of the comp-at-large position [ie, soft comp is not what the main-line well known comps are teaching]. So I can’t smile and say that the more firm comp position is okay. So I’m not sure I’m someone who is a good fit for a blog seeking to build bridges (if I’m understanding bridge-building accurately, that is).
???
Hi Bridget. You ask tough questions. And that’s a good thing. We need to deal with them.
My dream for this blog was to have a place where both complegalitarians and egalitarians who freely post their ideas and beliefs without anyone putting them down for it, without either side saying that the other was unbiblical or unspiritual or unwilling to stop abuse or submit to authority, etc.
Safe from biased moderators and censorship? Hmm, that hadn’t crossed my mind but them I have blind spots so maybe we moderators have been biased sometimes. I know that I have tried with every bit of will and wisdom that I have to be absolutely fair in moderating this blog. I suspect that others who have had moderation privileges have tried the same. Yet, in spite of our efforts, we have been accused of siding with one party or the other, or of allowing one side to create an unsafe atmosphere here for others. I don’t know if getting criticism from all sides is a good sign or not. Some people take it as a sign that they must be doing something right.
One never knows exactly how any new enterprise will develop when it is started. And that is so true of this blog. I have had joys as well as many frustrations. I consider the sharing of beliefs to be a positive contribution that this blog has made. There are very few places on the Internet where there is truly an attempt to have a safe place for both comps and egals to discuss their differences. Some blogs do not allow for any public discussion at all. Of course, many blogs only post beliefs on either the egal or comp position. There is nothing wrong with making the choice not to have public discussion or having just one viewpoint. But it doesn’t bring healing and often doesn’t lessen the mistrust that has developed between comps and egals. Of course, discussing our differences does not, in itself, lessen mistrust either. But sometimes when we try to talk civilly to each other, we do develop some respect for the other side, even though we may continue to strong disagree with them.
Some have disagreed with allowing stories of abuse to appear on this blog. Personally, I am fairly laid back when it comes to what is allowed for sharing on a forum, as long as we treat each other civilly. Others have a different opinion and feel that a blog should be more focused on certain aspects of a debate.
I myself have seen much abuse. I have observed ministers or other church officials not sufficiently involved in the lives of their parishioners so that they are aware of abuse and try to do something about it. I have also not heard enough preaching about how spouses abuse each other and what we should do about it so that we can have healthier marriages. I have not been bothered by any of the sharing of abuse which has taken place on this blog, just as I would not be bothered by anyone rejoicing in how one of the ideological systems, comp or egal, has broughter greater joy or stability or freedom, etc. to their lives. The stories of abuse which have appeared on this blog have often, if not always, been in the context of some kind of connection to an ideological framework that purported to be biblical, but which is a gross distortion of anything biblical.
I hope this helps.
Molly, you are ever the honest one. I’ve always appreciated that about you. Well, given your story, I’m sure you would say that you haven’t always been honest, at least about pain in your life, but I haven’t known you from any dishonest stage of your life, even though (I am happy to say, to those who are listening in) we are cousins. (My wife hardly knows some of her cousins, so it’s not that unusual to be related but not know what’s going on in each others’ lives.)
I hadn’t thought specifically about whether bridge building focuses on points of agreement or disagreement. I’m not sure that either needs to be a focus, but I suspect that both will occur some during bridge building.
I do think that bridge building does not involve trying to change the position of the other. A change of beliefs may occur during discussion, but I don’t think that it should be a goal of bridge building.
To my mind, bridge building focuses on building understanding of what each position is. Often it can include a sense something like: “OK, I understand now how and why you believe as you do and I thank you for helping me with that.”
I can say that that occurred for me, someone who grew up in a Baptist church, after I began attending a church which practiced infant baptism and believed strongly that infant baptism was the sign of the covenant God has with his church. I came to understand how infant baptism fits into the system of what is called Covenant Theology. I now understand the biblical support that Covenant Theologians consider the foundation for their theology. I even came to the point, when my wife and I applied for church membership, of telling the church elders, as I had studied the books they gave me, as required, that I would be willing for my wife and me to have our baby children baptized. I had built a bridge of understanding to another system of theology, different from my own. I came to understand its logic and biblical basis. Unfortunately, my willingness was not enough for the elders. They required that I had to be convinced that infant baptism was the correct way to baptize. That hurt, just as it hurts people today when their views of complegalitarianism or egalitarianism are rejected by the other side. But I was being honest and I believe that honesty is a big part of bridge building. Perhaps hurt is also, although I wish it weren’t. But differences, and especially what we do about them, can create deep hurt.
Just some thoughts off the top of my head, and as you probably have noticed when we’ve been able to visit, I don’t have a lot to spare when giving up something from the top of my head
Wayne, when you first started mentioning bridge-building, I got a picture in my head of a rickety rope bridge strung across a deep canyon, he he.
To me “bridge-building” really just meant having a mechanism for talking with and understanding the other side, as well as being understood.
Having a forum like this where both sides are generally trying very hard to choose their words carefully DOES make a difference. Even if I never change my mind or change anyone else’s mind, I find that this blog has lent itself to anger-subduing rather than to flame-fanning.
I think bridge building is possible in some senses and not possible in others.
It is possible to better understand how someone who differs from you in this area can:
1. Be diligently seeking God’s will.
2. Glorify God in their marriage.
3. Better understand how the other gets to their understanding.
and similar.
It does seem unlikely that a committed comp or egal will actually cross a bridge and become the other due to this forum.
I have changed my thoughts in this area due mainly to this forum and I thank Wayne for this.
A bridge suggests crossing over to the other side, or meeting in the middle. Bridge-building thus suggests to me an effort to find or forge a “middle way” or “common ground.” As these discussions have shown, though, and as responses to the Imago Dei statement seemed to indicate, there is no middle ground between non-hierarchical complementarians (NHC) and hierarchical complementarians (HC). The “roles” or functions that HCs may allow women to inhabit or express may vary, hence there are “hard” HCs and “soft” HCs and HCs in between. But the question of whether or not a woman can be a pastor or can preach the Scriptures from the pulpit to mixed-sex assemblies apart from being under a male’s authority (whether the senior pastor’s, an elder’s or her own husband’s) is like binary math or a light switch – i.e., it’s either a 1 or a 0 or it’s either on or off. As I think Bridget responded re: this, either you let a woman have full or equal authority to teach and pastor or you don’t, which is why I don’t think Imago Dei’s stance is a middle one or a bridge between HCs and NHCs, but is kind of an equivocating form of HC.
Wow, Wayne and Molly, I didn’t know you guys were cousins! That’s so cool!
Regarding blog conversation, as long as it is civil and not radically OT, I see no need to censor it. Attempts to over-control a discussion merely serve to stifle it.
Regarding bridge-building, I don’t know. It may happen, or not…it seems legitimate and reasonable for people to come to a discussion to share thoughts and learn and interact with others whose views may agree or disagree, without an expectation that friendship — or bridges — will be either built or lost. All should be conducted in Christian love, however, with civility as a basic expectation.
I really appreciate your efforts here, Wayne…I would never consider you a “mission creep!” (sorry, couldn’t resist)
I’ve left a response to Eric on the Trinity thread and don’t want it to be lost.
It includes a link in reference to the the culture/historical influences thought occuring over there that I wouldn’t mind others seeing as well.
Sorry to put this here.
Not sure what else to do.
Aw, Wayne, but that balding head of yours is so cute!!!
Thanks. Okay, good, I guess I can stay then. I can do that kind of bridge-building. *smiles*
Man, that’s nuts about the baptism thing. (“We don’t just want your actions, we want every last drop of your MIND, muhahahaha”)…
Eric, hey, is that the new term you’re going to coin (HC and NHC)? Nice…
It makes me curious, though, and if there is a comp who would like to sate my curiousity, I would be most obliged. I wonder, is “hierarchal” a word that a cbmw-type comp would find offensive, or is it a non-offensive descriptor?
Molly: “Man, that’s nuts about the baptism thing. (”We don’t just want your actions, we want every last drop of your MIND, muhahahaha”)… ”
What’s so weird for me is that I watched the first part of 1984 on youtube last night cause I was looking to see which sci-fis they have. It’s the first time in a long time that I’d heard the term “Thought crime”.
Guess those infant baptism people didn’t want you to commit some thought crime. I’m sure they thought they were proctecting you and themselves.
Molleth:
Re: HC and NHC:
Perhaps “Egalitarian Complementarians” (EC) and “Non-Egalitarian Complementarians” (NEC) or “Egalitarians” (E) and “Non-Egalitarians” (NE). IMO, to call just one side complementarian is incorrect, because both sides view male and female as complementary.
However, when it comes to church roles and functions, the so-called “complementarians” are non-egalitarian, for a male can do everything a female can do, but the reverse is not true – i.e., females are not equal to males in authority and ability to exercise a church gift or function. This in a sense makes them NON-complementarian when it comes to the church, for they don’t view the female as fully complementing the male; rather, the female is subordinate to the male, and males can run and rule a church perfectly fine females to complement or complete their role or function or gifting.
On the other hand, when it comes to church roles and functions the so-called “egalitarians” are truly that, for they believe that any church position or role a male can hold or perform can also be held or performed by a female. Or so I understand.
So perhaps better terms would be patriarchalists (or hierarchalists) and egalitarians. I.e., the word “complementarian” shouldn’t be used for the reasons that it 1) can be used of both groups, so it’s unnecessary, and 2) it ascribes to the patriarchalists a behavior or philosophy that they in fact do not have or hold.
Or so it seems to me. “Complementarians” on this forum are free to express their agreement or disagreement with my thoughts here about the proper descriptive names.
Wayne, thanks for clarifying. I asked about biased moderation not because I suspect that’s a problem here, but I’ve been posting on LDS discussion boards off and on for a decade now, and I’ve seen extreme bias from both pro-LDS and anti-LDS sources. Fact is that if one side does not feel like it’s being treated fairly by the moderation team, they stop posting and the discussion dries up, so even-handed moderation is important for any topic that can get heated.
Ooops! I left out the word “withouth”:
Molleth:
Re: HC and NHC:
Perhaps “Egalitarian Complementarians” (EC) and “Non-Egalitarian Complementarians” (NEC) or “Egalitarians” (E) and “Non-Egalitarians” (NE). IMO, to call just one side complementarian is incorrect, because both sides view male and female as complementary.
However, when it comes to church roles and functions, the so-called “complementarians” are non-egalitarian, for a male can do everything a female can do, but the reverse is not true – i.e., females are not equal to males in authority and ability to exercise a church gift or function. This in a sense makes them NON-complementarian when it comes to the church, for they don’t view the female as fully complementing the male; rather, the female is subordinate to the male, and males can run and rule a church perfectly fine WITHOUT females to complement or complete their role or function or gifting.
On the other hand, when it comes to church roles and functions the so-called “egalitarians” are truly that, for they believe that any church position or role a male can hold or perform can also be held or performed by a female. Or so I understand.
So perhaps better terms would be Patriarchalists (P) (or hierarchalists) and Egalitarians (E). I.e., the word “complementarian” shouldn’t be used for the reasons that it 1) can be used of both groups, so it’s unnecessary, and 2) it ascribes to the Patriarchalists a behavior or philosophy that they in fact do not have or hold.
Or so it seems to me. “Complementarians” on this forum are free to express their agreement or disagreement with my thoughts here about the proper descriptive names.
EricW ~ However, when it comes to church roles and functions, the so-called “complementarians” are non-egalitarian, for a male can do everything a female can do, but the reverse is not true – i.e., females are not equal to males in authority and ability to exercise a church gift or function. This in a sense makes them NON-complementarian when it comes to the church, for they don’t view the female as fully complementing the male; rather, the female is subordinate to the male, and males can run and rule a church perfectly fine WITHOUT females to complement or complete their role or function or gifting.
You’ve hit on my biggest complaint with complementarianism, Eric. Women are absolutely restricted from holding certain roles; which roles are men restricted from holding? Where’s the “complement” part? I get that women are encouraged to lead women’s ministries and raise the children, but men can technically fulfill any role traditionally held by women if the need arises.
This is also a problem that I see with the LDS church. Technically men can be ordained to every office in the church if the need arises, even the offices usually held by women such as Relief Society president, Young Women president, and Primary President. Women can’t hold any of the male offices, not even if the local church has very few men and lots and lots of women, which has been a problem in some LDS wards.
I’m okay with the idea that God primarily calls men to lead and women to support roles. I think men are more naturally suited to lead, men tend to be more assertive and aggressive, people respond better to the male voice as authoritative in preaching while babies respond better to the high-pitched female voice. I’ve attended three different egalitarian denominations which allowed women to be pastors and yet I’ve never had a female pastor. Even when the door is open, not a lot of women walk through it.
Nevertheless, there are women out there who are incredibly gifted speakers and show great aptitude for leadership. Why should they have their gifts restricted or be made to feel like those gifts are part of some rebellious spirit within them? Why should they be told that they can only use those gifts leading other women and speaking in a limited capacity?
It’s not the idea that men and women typically have complementary gifts that I object to in complementarianism; it’s the exclusion that bothers me.
Sometimes, I lose sight of the bridge building intent and just focus on talking about the issues. On this blog I am more careful and gentle in what I say to those who say what I consider offensive things. That is mostly because I am at least conscious that if one feeds a fire it will grow and if one gives gentle words back, it does help put out the steam in the other person’s eyes. Which all promotes further discussion instead of stopping it.
On some other blogs I am not quite as intent on ‘keeping the peace’ and sometimes speak my sense of firmness which I’m told isn’t all that bad in comparison to many, but which I avoid doing here. Mostly I guess I’m pretty laid back. And I seldom get angry even when I’m speaking ‘firmly’ on other blogs.
On my forum I have tried to keep the intent that we will hear everyone and temper our responses. I think we have achieved tempering our responses to specific individuals. However, it is so important for people to be able to voice their deep concerns as egals (there are so few places we can talk freely) that I often let slide the fact that some are talking about other blogs disparagingly. Frankly, I don’t know how that can be helped.
So bridge building is good and I am very thankful for this Blog. Sometimes bridge building can be achieved by noting the places where we do agree. And sometimes it means we cannot really talk about what we have problems with. And if we don’t talk about the difficult areas, then even though we note where we do agree and achieve fellowship, we have not helped the disagreements. So I think we need all the different kinds of blogs and forums to achieve all the goals.
Hi molleth. I didn’t even know “hierarchal” was a word, but looking up my New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary tells me that “hierarch” means high priest in Greek and that in English it means a person who has authority in sacred matters, an ecclesiastical ruler, archbishop, archangel, Christ as the commander of the celestial hierarchy, etc.
I don’t like the word at all. I think hierarchal comes across as a put-down, even if it is intended to be descriptive.
I think that many “Complementarians” have egalitarian aspirations and views in many areas of life and that many “Egalitarians” are complementary in their lives in many ways.
The terms are not especially helpful.
I think a short statement about each view is probably better, but I wonder if we could agree on such a short statement?
David:
The first definition in my dictionary (Random House Webster’s College) for “hierarchy” (and the meaning I meant when I wrote about “hierarchical complementarians” versus “non-hierarchical complementarians” as a better description than “complementarians” versus “egalitarians”) is:
1. any system of persons or things ranked one above another.
The word’s etymology (i.e., that it comes from a word meaning head or high priest – in fact, it’s basically a transliteration of that word) is not really germane to my intended meaning.
I also chose it because the subtitle of the “egalitarian” book Discovering Biblical Equality is “Complementarity Without Hierarchy.” I.e., “egalitarians” recognize that a main way they distinguish themselves from “complementarians” is that they reject the idea or practice of men being “over” women in the church.
I think
1. Patriarchalists (i.e., from patriarchy: an institution or organlzation in which power is held by and transferred through males) or Hierarchicalists
and
2. Egalitarians
might be the best and most accurate terms to describe the two opposing camps re: whether or not women and men have full and equal authority in church matters, roles, functions and gifts.
“I think that many “Complementarians” have egalitarian aspirations and views in many areas of life and that many “Egalitarians” are complementary in their lives in many ways.”
Actually, I would say that all Christian egals are complementary in possibly all areas of their lives, if we go by the dictionary meaning. We used the word and meaning before CBMW used it to replace patriarchy.
Otherwise, your statement is a good one.
I don’t recall the term patriarchy being used about family relationships prior to Complementarianism. But I don’t recall much discussion on these matters at all.
However, I know that Complementarianism was preferred over Traditional, because it was thought that a biblical position is not the same as the status quo.
Speaking of bridge-building, has discussion here brought you closer to the other side’s position, or has it reinforced what you already believed?
When CBMW was forming, they decided to reject all existing possible words that might be used to describe their position, due to negative connotations. The best non-pejorative term I have found for what they believe is “masculinism” = the belief that males are to be leaders (in their case in home and church).
“I don’t recall the term patriarchy being used about family relationships prior to Complementarianism. But I don’t recall much discussion on these matters at all.”
It wasn’t used that much. More often “traditional” was used. But the meanings were pretty much the same. I happened to be around online and on the lists where some of the original leaders of CBMW discussed the choice of new terms to replace patriarchy or traditional terms. They coined the term ‘complementarian’ for its positive connotations. And then by adding the “equal but different”, they managed to remake the religious meaning into representing hierarchical concepts, which is actually contrary to the dictionary meaning of complementarity.
Academic but interesting!
“Speaking of bridge-building, has discussion here brought you closer to the other side’s position, or has it reinforced what you already believed?”
Good question, David.
For me, it has helped me to respect my comp brethren more. As Wayne has inferred at different times, the purpose here is not to convince either side to change their doctrinal positions. It is more in line with uniting us as brethren. We are not united by our doctrine (although that is our carnal nature to do so). We are united by the Messiah and God’s presence in our lives.
Masculinism is not non-pejorative, Don
David:
But can there be an accurate and non-pejorative term for a Biblical theology that relegates women to less-than-equal status vis-a-vis men when it comes to a believer’s freedom and standing and authority in the Gospel? I.e., if the term or label is to be accurate in describing how so-called “complementarianism” differs from Egalitarianism, it is going to have negative connotations, assuming egalitarianism is viewed as a good thing. It’s not like calling one blue and the other red, because the relationship and comparison between the one and the other is not like that between primary colors.
David,
If Grudem can say egals are “Evangelical Feminists” (and I do not think he was being pejorative), then CBMW and similar can be termed “Evagelical Masculinists” and it not be pejorative. In this case, what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.
This site has helped me see there are many flavors of non-egalism and that CBMW does not speak for many non-egals (esp. those here), just some of them.
It would be nice to find terms that are accurate descriptors that can be agreed on by *both* sides.
While I suspect that both sides would agree on Egalitarian for the one side, both because it’s accurate and because it has no negative connotations, I think the main problem is finding a term for the other side that is not negative, yet accurately and not euphemistically reflects how it differs from Egalitarianism. But can an accurate term for a stance whose distinction vis-a-vis Egalitarianism is that it limits vis-a-vis men what women can do or puts women simply because they are women under a man’s authority omit this characteristic in the term?
P.S. to Molly – I sent you an email.
Egalism and Non-egalism?
“Egalism and Non-egalism?”
Well that is only relevant to egals, and keeps us from using terms that comps might not like. But I would think that hierarchalism would be reasonable and more accurate than complementarianism.
Dictionary.com gives “elitist” as the antonym of “egalitarian”. I suppose that wouldn’t fly.
The problem is, the opposite of a positive word is necessarily a negative.
Thus the cleverly conceived term “pro-choice”. It sounds better than “anti-life”.
Sorta on topic, but I encountered this blogsite that is not in the blogroll:
http://www.energionpubs.com/wordpress/category/women-in-ministry/
(the above link is to a list of posts that the author tagged with a “women in ministry” label; you can go to the homepage from there, though)
by an Egalitarian, and I can see from the comments that people who’ve commented here have commented there as well.
Technically, according to the dictionary the word is heirarchicalism, not hierarchalism (a mistake I made in an earlier post), unlike patriarchalism that doesn’t have the “ic.” I.e., hier+arch+ic+alism and patri+arch+alism.
I’m not sure why that is, though. Maybe it’s just the way English developed.
Eric, you write as if Egalitarianism is the default position.
It is not true that women are less than equal to men in Complementarianism. No Complementarian writer or speaker that I know of says this.
All Complementarians I have heard or read believe we are completely equal before God and that male and female are made in the image of God.
Over and over on this blog, the Complementarian position is misrepresented.
”It is not true that women are less than equal to men in Complementarianism. No Complementarian writer or speaker that I know of says this.”
Well, David, its not that easy. The logic of equal but different thereby needing different roles doesn’t fit. We are equal because we are human. But then those who believe in hierarchy say women are unequal to men because they are women. The different roles (restrictions to women) because of inherent design (gender) cancels out the equality of being equally human.
David,
Would it be fair to say that comps believe men and women are equal image bearers (equal, spiritually), but are to operate on earth in a hierarchy that is not equal?
Not true, believer3. Those who say that men and women are “equal but different” [which is a quote from a women's group, I think] do not say that women are unequal to men.
It is a feminist, not Christian idea that people cannot be equal if they have different roles.
No, I don’t consider it the default position anymore than you consider Complementarianism to be the default position.
In a city near me, and in which I used to live (so did Molly), they used to have separate drinking fountains on the square for “whites” and “coloreds” (i.e., Blacks). Whereas the whites could drink from either fountain, the coloreds could only drink from the coloreds’ fountain. Since they “equally” had fountains, the civic leaders could say that “it is not true that coloreds are less equal to whites in” water-fountain drinking. However, whereas whites could, if they chose, drink from the coloreds’ fountain, the coloreds couldn’t drink from the whites’ fountain. In actuality the whites could do everything the coloreds could do but the coloreds could not do everything the whites could do.
Why is the above not analogous to the Complementarianism that says that men and women “are completely equal before God” but when it comes to church practice restricts the things that women can do and the roles and offices and giftings they can function in?
You say that over and over on this blog the Complementarian position is misrepresented. Does the above misrepresent the Complementarian position? If so, how?
Note that I do not say that the Complementarian position is not based on what the Bible can be read to say, whereas I believe you have said that the Egalitarian position is based more on societal influence than the Scriptures. Am I wrong in this statement?
But David…
Different roles is one thing. Two people can be equal and one can be a police officer and one a teacher: those are two different roles in society, but two equal members of that society. Same thing in a play—-two actors can play different roles, yes.
But complementarianism is doing something different when it uses the word, “role.” It’s saying that men have the “role” of being the leaders and women have the “role” of being the followers—from birth to death. This seems markedly different from different “roles” in a play or different roles in society via careers.
There is no “trying out” for the complementarian role, there is no choice involved (whereas the police officer goes to police academy, the teacher gets an education degree, the actor gets to decide whether or not to try out for a part)…
For the complementarian, the woman’s role is the submissive follower, regardless of her own personal giftings, regardless of whether she is more equipped to lead, regardless of whether or not she wants to follow—-and this is her life from birth all the way until she draws her final breath.
It might not be such a bad life, if she has good male leaders, and especially if she has the kind of personality that makes for a natural follower (which won’t be attributed to her natural personality, but to her level of spiritual maturity). But it can be hell if she doesn’t have good male leaders. It can also be hell if her personality tends towards gifts of leadership, adminstration, teaching, etc.
But it doesn’t matter what her personality is like or what the male leaders in her life are like: it’s her “role” to be a submissive follower, a role that she has to accept, period, until she passes away from this earth.
And THAT is why I have a real problem with the use of the word, “role.” It confuses the issue, because it makes it seem like the comp position is the SAME thing as actors playing different roles in a movie, or with people taking on different societal roles via their careers. But it’s NOT the same thing. Complementarianism’s “role” for women is a completely different animal from the usual meaning attributed to the word, “role.”
So…I guess just as you object to the word, “masculinist,” etc, I object to the word “role” being used to explain complementarian teacing on women. I don’t think it’s an accurate definition of what’s being taught.
The difficulty is that in the church men are not prohibited from caring for toddlers or from cooking. No one is actually telling men that they are not allowed to cook. No one asks the wife as she puts down the casserole if it has not been touched by male hands.
Therefore, in the church, women are not assigned different but equal roles to men. Women are assigned fewer roles than men are. Lets not compare these roles, lets just agree that a man can work in the toddler room, and supposedly this is encouraged, and women cannot stgand in the pulpit.
How do men and women fill complementary roles in the church?
It is a feminist, not Christian idea that people cannot be equal if they have different roles.
I would say that the idea that women and men are confined to distinctive and unequal roles is an idea born of millennia of patriarchy; it’s not a Christian idea.
Complementarians do not make the old idea more Christian by claiming that women really are equal with their “different” roles.
In compism, women’s roles remain inferior. The logic problem doesn’t go away.
The Bible never uses the word “role”. It does not define “roles” for anyone. Please, please, please show me the verses. Every attempt at explaining or describing how these different “roles” should look, that I’ve seen, has been extra-biblical at the very least.
I have to agree with Molly that the word “role” has taken on a new meaning in this debate. Or, rather, I think it’s been chosen as a euphemism. Maybe “status” would be a more accurate choice.
Molly, what about the type of complementarian teaching that says women are to have a subordinate role in the home and church but are not assinged by God such a role in society?
Now that would be ‘put on’, ‘take off’, ‘put on’, ‘take off’, role playing. Perhaps because we live in an egal society is why the use of the word ‘role’ has worked so well…!
I wasn’t intending to focus on the word “role” and I’m uncertain how to express myself without it. I’ll have to think about this.
The Bible may not use the word “role” or “trinity” or many other words, but we use them to express what it is saying.
I was a minister in the Churches of Christ for a few years, and was taught that we should “use Bible words for Bible things.”
But to show what you think someone means, you often have to reword it, and use different language, or you could be merely parroting without understanding.
My point was that people can be equal, but different.
It is Egalitarians who say that when people do different things, it creates inferiority. Complementarians are not saying this.
If Egalitarians are correct in saying that a follower is inferior to a leader, doesn’t this contradict the New Testament?
I look up to my pastor, but I don’t think God wants me to think I’m inferior to him.
I looked up to my mother, but I don’t think God wanted me to see myself as inferior to her when I submitted [most of the time] to her.
Yesterday was the centenary of my father’s birth. [28th Feb] I continue to look up to dad. There is much to admire, but I don’t feel inferior to him.
I don’t know how else to say this, but in our family I had the role of child and Mum and Dad had their own respective roles. I don’t think it is being unfaithful to the Bible to say it this way.
The idea that men and women are equal but different is clearly in the Bible. The idea that some leadership [not all] in the family and church is restricted to men is unambiguous in both Old and New Testaments.
Thirty years ago, people used to remark “That’s only what Paul said” and argue that we need to adjust the way we read his letters, in the light of society today. Others pointed out that most of the teaching about men and women came from the Pastorals, and argued Paul didn’t write them anyway.
But it seems strange that Egalitarians today say that he wasn’t saying what he clearly said [which is also echoed in Peter's writings].
”Those who say that men and women are “equal but different” [which is a quote from a women's group, I think] do not say that women are unequal to men.”
David, you are correct. They do not say that. But what they describe is indeed inequality. The roles are ranked differently. The roles that are ascribed for men are more encompassing, holding more responsibility, more freedoms, more privileges and only limited by the men’s skills and aspirations. The roles that are ascribed to women are ranked below men, less encompassing, less responsibility, restricted, less privileges and limited in spite of women’s skills and aspirations. This is not a description of equality. It is not a matter of women only being equal if they can do the same things as men. But even when women CAN do the same things as men, they are restricted from doing so by the hierarchical model.
You cannot explain this away with terminology.
”I look up to my pastor, but I don’t think God wants me to think I’m inferior to him.”
Of course. But if you felt a call from God to seek to serve as a pastor, you could do that. Whereas under the hierarchical model, even if a woman feels a call, she is restricted from doing so, and sometimes even told that God would not ever call a woman into such a role as it is reserved for men. This is much like when African Americans were told that they could not ever sit in the front seats because they were reserved for white Americans. It is not that they could not achieve the action of sitting in the seats, it is that because of something about them (their skin color) others choose to restrict them from doing something they were capable of doing.
”I don’t know how else to say this, but in our family I had the role of child and Mum and Dad had their own respective roles.”
In logic that is not an equal comparison. Mothers cannot be fathers, and fathers cannot be mothers because of their different physical endowments. But leadership, preaching, thinking, comprehending, wisdom, studying Scripture and teaching it, and so on do not take special physical endowments. One need only be human, for the Holy Spirit is the equipper, not our bodies.
David:
The “role” that men and women have in the church is the “role” of “Christian,” not the sex-distinguished roles of “female Christian” and “male Christian.”
believer3, too, seems to think that how Blacks were treated in America under “separate but equal” laws is a similar analogy for the kind of “equality” that Complementarians say they view men and women as having. (See my earlier reply of March 1, 2009 at 2:24 am in which I give as examples the separate drinking water fountains in Texas: http://complegalitarian.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/bridge-building/#comment-9249 )
As I asked then: Why is this not analogous to the Complementarianism that says that men and women “are completely equal before God” but when it comes to church practice restricts the things that women can do and the roles and offices and giftings they can function in?
You wrote: “Over and over on this blog, the Complementarian position is misrepresented.” Do my water-fountain example and believer3’s bus seat example misrepresent the Complementarian position? If so, how?
David, regarding adam go to this interlinear and view verse 26 and 27. You will see that it means human. It is unfortunate that more translators did not use ‘human’ instead of ‘man’ since ‘man’ is so confusing in that it is both inclusive and non inclusive.
http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/OTpdf/gen1.pdf
The word adam is used throughout the whole OT meaning human/humanity.
http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/OTpdf/gen5.pdf
Here you see that for clarity God says He has called the first
two humans by the name of adam = human!
”He doesn’t call the woman on her own ADAM.”
That would be an argument from silence. IOW we do not know that because we do not have a recording of all conversations. And we also make assumptions that every time God says “Human!” that He is addressing the male. Personally, I am not convinced of that. However, we do have Gen. 5:1-2 that clearly says God called their name, Adam/Human!
I am kind of wondering why that is a big deal for you though??
”In addressing a group of women recently, John Piper said, “This is most remarkable that I would be given the privilege to address the most influential people in the world… I distinguish between authority and influence. A woman on her knees sways more in this nation than a thousand three-piece suited Wall Street jerks. There is massive power in this room…”
http://www.truewoman.com/?id=336
This is flattery. Can’t men pray, too?””
Thank you for this quote Zhouya (BTW what does that mean?)
This is not just flattery but gross flattery, painted on thickly. It is making way too much of ordinary things that all Christians are commanded to do (pray for one another) so that these women will believe it is sufficient and will be guilted into not desiring more.
I remember when a self described prophet came through our town and to a meeting where he was praying over everyone supposedly giving prophetic prayer. Later we realized he was pretty much praying from his knowledge and assumptions of the people. Nice prayers mostly but not prophetic.
Anyway, as he went around with his ‘assumption’, he prayed over me as his picture of an older woman retired and slightly handicapped and praised me for being a mighty prayer warriar. It was OK because I do pray alot. But what was missing was the fact that I am a well appreciated gifted teacher of God’s Word and that is my primary gifting. But he prayed as if prayer was my primary gifting. To make matters worse he prayed for my friend who is not nearly gifted as I am in teaching, but who happened to be male and looked scholarly, as one who was ever so anointed in teaching the Word. I felt like he drove a stake through my heart. I had to go to the Lord and seek healing and forgiveness toward the man.
Constrictive restrictive assumptions hurt when they in fact restrict people from being who they are in the Lord.
It is Egalitarians who say that when people do different things, it creates inferiority. Complementarians are not saying this.
Actually, as has been stated, egalitarians say that “different roles” are not the same as “subordinate roles”.
Complementarians are saying that women are subordinate yet equal. Am I right?
I think at one time I was convinced that this worked, because comps are right in affirming the high value of the things that women generally do (i.e. “the high calling of wife and mother”). But as I have continued to ponder over the years and combined those ponderings with life experience, I’ve become more and more unconvinced that we can have it both ways. Different roles aside, subordinate is subordinate. I don’t have a problem so much with having different roles/tasks (except to remember the fact that the Bible doesn’t actually define them), neither with society having varying positions of authority, but there’s no getting past the illogic of the “equal but subordinate” and “equal but above” assertions.
In addressing a group of women recently, John Piper said, “This is most remarkable that I would be given the privilege to address the most influential people in the world… I distinguish between authority and influence. A woman on her knees sways more in this nation than a thousand three-piece suited Wall Street jerks. There is massive power in this room…”
http://www.truewoman.com/?id=336
I’m puzzled. Don’t men pray, too?
Eric, Complementarianism is about the Bible’s teaching on men and women, not about racism.
Totally, David (and other comps reading). I think that the reason Eric and others are using the segregation analogies is because (it seems to me, a former comp and current egal) they are closer to what comps do with men and women than the analogies about career roles or acting roles.
Comps are claiming equality, but also claiming that men and women must occupy *lifelong* roles where one gender is dominant and the other subordinate.
I affirm and appreciate that almost all comps vehemently attest to a belief that men and women are equal in God’s sight. I really do.
But that equality sometimes seems like it’s meant for heaven only, because the way it plays out on earth bears a resemblance to the black-white segregation of the American South. In other words, one group is “more equal” than others, in actual tangible practicalities. One group is markedly restricted, while the other group is not. This is not functional equality, by any means, and this is what is being protested.
David McKay wrote:
Eric, Complementarianism is about the Bible’s teaching on men and women, not about racism.
So is Egalitarianism.
David McKay wrote:
Eric, Complementarianism is about the Bible’s teaching on men and women, not about racism.
Okay. But instead of simply making this statement, how do you specifically respond to my questions so that you can specifically tell us how and why the Complementarian position is being misrepresented.
You wrote: “Over and over on this blog, the Complementarian position is misrepresented.”
As I asked: Why is this [the "separate-but-equal-yet-subordinate" treatment of Blacks in America] not analogous to the Complementarianism that says that men and women “are completely equal before God” but when it comes to church practice restricts the things that women can do and the roles and offices and giftings they can function in?
I.e.:
1. Do my water-fountain example and believer3’s bus seat example misrepresent the Complementarian position?
2. If so, why and how?
Some comps believe subordination of women is eternal.
Mark David Walton, writing in CBMW’s journal, makes this argument:
http://www.cbmw.org/images/jbmw_pdf/11_1/relationships_and_roles.pdf
Grudem has said the same (though he admits this is not a clear cut case in Scripture, but just his opinion).
Hi Eric. So how are your racism points relevant?
I wonder if Grudem is aware that Mormons also teach that women’s subordination and dependency on men is eternal. They have it all outlined for the men’s benefit. Women get to be eternal wombs to populate their husband’s planet. :^0
Allegory can be carried too far, but it certainly has its place in illustrating a point. Comps use it all the time; specifically when they say that the head/subordinate relationships within the Trinity are a model for marriage.
I think the bus and drinking fountain examples work even better in this case. They are great examples of a practice in which there was “equality” in one way and “inequality” in another.
The bus example is especially fitting, since it reminds me of the question raised in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood on whether it would be appropriate for a woman to be a bus driver because she would have an element of authority over men. Such a role “might stretch appropriate expressions of femininity beyond the breaking point.”
The book discusses the sticky issue of “where to draw the line” at length. The section on The Meaning of Femininity begins on page 39.
http://www.desiringgod.org/media/pdf/books_bbmw/bbmw.pdf
on March 2, 2009 at 12:53 am | Reply David McKay
Hi Eric. So how are your racism points relevant?
Hi David. So how does this response answer my questions?
http://complegalitarian.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/bridge-building/#comment-9274
From what you’ve presented of Complementarianism, I have seen nothing to convince me that its “separate but equal and subordinate” view of women is much different from the racism points and examples I (and believer3) have presented and asked you to explain why they misrepresent Complementarianism.
So, do they? If so, why and how?
Maybe this exchange illustrates Wayne’s difficulty as expressed in the original post
. It can be hard for one side to accurately hear what the other is saying, much less seriously address a question, when presuppositions cloud perceptions. I’ve sometimes been frustrated when I’ve felt that egal statements were dismissed because they didn’t fit someone’s paradigm (e.g., objections to Sumner’s ct article were viewed as unwillingness to admit fault rather than errors on Sumner’s part, errors explained by more than one egal), or when debated positions are treated as self-evident truth, which not only undermines dialogue but casts doubt on the integrity and/or competence of those with whom one disagrees. I’m saddened when stereotypes re: egals are clung to despite evidence to the contrary. As one whose fellowship has mainly been w/comps, I’m also concerned when they are shut down or their positions caricatured. I’m encouraged by the grace of those on both sides here – some very good discussion at times 
I don’t know about building bridges, and unfortunately a “safe place” may be largely subjective, particularly where such a charged topic is concerned. Maybe “seeking common ground” would be a good start … *creeps back to the shadows, missionarily*
I think I mean “analogy”?
I have some serious questions about the claims of the RBMW book regarding their view of women.
They believe that the path to freedom for women is to seek for leadership from men. It seems to me that the path to freedom for every Christian is to develop a closer relationship with God through the Messiah. Their aiming of women toward men is so precise and almost desparate that it borders on encouraging worship of men IMO.
Yes, I agree. The emphasis on where women should focus seems skewed. Even though they affirm that women are to glorify God etc., etc., Piper does say that “Men take their cues from Christ as the head, and women take their cues from the church.” It seems they do mean for there a different focus and a different kind of spiritual life for women. (What does that statement mean, anyway?)
That quote can be found here: http://www.truewoman.com/?id=336
Another thing that bothers me is the heavy burden placed on women to make men “feel” like they are leading. Women must walk ever so carefully so as to make sure the men feel like real men. It seems that “biblical womanhood” is defined as manufacturing feelings in men.
If “leading” is an action, why is it the responsibility of the “follower” to make it happen?
Hi Eric
I thought I had already said this, but I’ll have another try.
The Bible teaches us that all Christians are one in Christ. There should be no racism or sexism.
It also assigns different roles on some occasions to men and women.
To say that this is demeaning to women is to argue with the Bible itself, which is quite clear on this issue. In fact, it is much clearer than on some other topics, I think.
The only problem is that we don’t like what it says.
I say again that I don’t think it is demeaning to fill the role God has given, whether that role is to lead or to serve.
Hi, David,
While you may have the above before, what you have said, both before and again now, still does not specifically answer my questions.
I asked you two questions, and even numbered them 1. and 2. the last (third?) time I asked them of you. I don’t know how I can ask them more plainly or more clearly.
1. Do my water-fountain example and believer3’s bus seat example misrepresent the Complementarian position?
2. If so, why and how?
As for your comment that “The only problem is that we don’t like what [the Bible] says,” I hope by “we” you mean yourself, because the Egalitarians on this site, as far as I can tell, like what the Bible says. From what they’ve written, it seems that the Bible guides their lives, orders their steps, enlightens and renews their minds, and helps them grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. In fact, it seems that seeing the Egalitarian position in the Bible is what set a number of them free to love and grow and be fruitful in ways they had not been able to before.
But if you choose not to specifically and directly answer my questions, I’m not going to ask them again, because it’s starting to seem like I’m badgering you, which I’m not. Perhaps we have a Cool Hand Luke and the Captain situation.
Eric, I have no idea who Cool Hand Luke and the Captain are, but am familiar with The Captain and Tennille. I think they did Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody proud. [Think it was Phil, or was it Howard Greenfield?]
I’ll give my answer again. I don’t see how white Americans mistreating African-Americans has anything to do with the Complementarian position, as you call it.
They may be using similar language, but it is obvious that the oppression of certain races in the US by white folk is not the same as following the clear and unambiguous teaching of the Scriptures in selecting church leaders, or in being obedient to the order God has established in his Word for the home.
It is ironic to find the cruel comparison of white American oppression of African Americans with those who seek to humbly accept and obey the Bible’s teaching on men and women in the bridge-building thread.
Cool Hand Luke was a movie starring Paul Newman as a convict and a famous line was IIRC “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”
The reason whites mistreating blacks may be relevant is that Bob Jones and many others used the Bible to justify their racism, which BJU recently repented from. That is, they MISINTERPRETED some Bible texts and the result was racism.
How does one know that this is not a similar thing going on with non-egalism? How do you know you are not simply MISINTERPRETING some Bible texts and ending up with males ruling females ala whites ruling blacks? If “ruling” is not the right word, substitute any other word that conveys the idea that the male/white decides what is best for the female/black in some cases.
And if the “gender” texts are supposedly so clear and unambiguous, why does CBMW and CBE keep publishing their own magazines every season for many years on new arguments for their respective positions? In other words, CBMW by its very actions denies your claims of the text being clear and unambiguous.
David, everyone here seeks to humbly obey the Bible’s teachings. The disagreement is over what is man’s teachings and misinterpretations and what is the real Bible teaching.
I’m fine with agreeing to disagree. Long standing and personal traditions are often too comfortable to want to change, or even to consider another view valid.
But I’m not fine with either side of the disagreement claiming the other side is not humbly seeking to know the truth and obey it.
David,
Good points about the American slavery system. I think clarification is in order, becuase comp doctrine is NOT, not, NOT being compared to the white/black slavery system in America (NOR to it’s horrors) in every and any way, only in one specific way, and that is the seperate-but-equal concept that said “an underlying equality is there, but it’s not equality in function or status due to physical characteristics.”
Btw, I have to submit that you are repeatedly saying that the Bible clearly and unambiguously teaches comp doctrine, which means, er, what about egals… That either we are rebelling against Scripture, or are completely decieved, or not smart enough to figure out the plain meaning of the text, etc. (This is not bridge building, my friend).
It is clear that you feel very strongly that your position is the right one. That is as it should be, no doubt. It’s GREAT, in other words!
I wish there was some way to communicate to you that others have just as much zeal for knowing and showing God, yet see the Scriptures saying something much different. I suppose I’m asking how can we (strongly) disagree in ways that do not challenge the others motives or insult their intelligence?
On the white/black oppression, the analogy can only go so far, absolutely. Comps are not white slave holders. The slavery system in America was atrocious. General comp teaching in NO WAY comes close to the horror that was southern slavery in America.
That said, the “seperate but equal” question seems very appropriate to ask, because it’s founded on a very similar, if not entirely similar, principle.
If I’m wrong here, please help me see more clearly. From what I read, was taught and have studied, comps teach is that women are to be subordinate because of what their body is like…and whites said the same thing to blacks.
David, you were comparing comp teaching to an employee submitting to a boss. But we’ve been trying to communicate that the analogy is not accurate, because this subordination is a birth-to-death subordination that is 100% dependent on physical charactaristics. Hence the “seperate-but-equal” references.
The argument is foundationally the same in this particular way: “Because of physical characteristics, you are to be in subjection. Because of physical characteristics, you are to be in leadership.”
After that point, the analogy between comp teaching and white/black relations in America falls apart. But on that point, the point that physical characteristics (which one has no control over, which do not in any way measure the spiritual giftings, the intelligence, the personality, or the ability of the person) decide a person’s status in the hierarchy, I believe that the analogy is spot-on.
I am thinking of the Gospel here, and it seems very strange, almost antithetical to the gospel, really, if it is true that the New Covenant principle for leadership (a new covenant where life is Spirit-derived and not flesh-derived, where we are to walk by faith and not by sight, where the covenant is not made based on male-only circumcision but on a baptism that is open to all who want it) would be so solidly based on physical characteristics.
Listen via Windows Media Player or other .wav file player:
http://www.twow.com/thumper/failure.wav
Molleth – I don’t think many comps would agree that the command is based on physical characteristics. Past generations have openly related women’s subordination to female inferiority or fault, something that modern comps vehemently deny. What I see them referring to is a creational “essence of womanhood” where submission to male leadership is woven into the fabric of a woman’s being and is essential to her properly serving her created purpose and glorifying God. A woman who does not share this ideal does violence not only to her created nature and that of the men in her life, but to the Gospel itself. Physical differences are simply part of the package. Go back to zhouya’s link to Piper’s “True Woman” sermon and read the whole thing carefully. Much of the sermon is gloriously inspiring, but what he adds to the gospel . . . I must resist.
BTW, I am not suggesting that all comps hold the same views as Piper, though in many circles any difference would be in degree rather than in kind. And Christians have often justified their racism on “biblical” grounds (the “curse of Ham,” commands for Israel to remain seperate and pure, indications that God created different nations by design). Appeals to physical, cultural, and mental differences could be seen as evidence for the core “biblical” grounds, and not all racists would claim that such philosophy implies innate inferiority. “The white man’s burden” – to lead for the benefit of the led.
Sarah, you wrote:
”What I see them referring to is a creational “essence of womanhood” where submission to male leadership is woven into the fabric of a woman’s being and is essential to her properly serving her created purpose and glorifying God. A woman who does not share this ideal does violence not only to her created nature and that of the men in her life, but to the Gospel itself. Physical differences are simply part of the package.”
This is very beautifully stated. But what I hear is different.
It is not that the physical is simply part of the package, it is that the rest becomes what it is because of the package. We’ve only two ‘packages’, either male or female. So they say that because a woman is a woman, then her created purpose is different from a man’s. And part of that difference is that in her essence she was created to serve men, not lead them. She was created to obey and submit to men, not command or direct them. This is why the RBMW book makes such a big deal about how a woman is to give directions to a man. She must do so without challenging his masculinity, and deferring to men always. In fact it’s better to just send him to another man. Thus some hierarchalists have created what I view as a subhuman, a woman, which will serve the fully human, a man.
In my opinion, if it were truly every woman’s created nature to be naturally subservient to men, then we would never have women like Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Jael, Abigail, Anna, Lydia, Phoebe, Junia, or Prisca (and many others in Scripture). And so many other women in history, would not have done the wonderful deeds they did.
You know it’s a pretty picture of a sort. Sort of like the princess and the wonderful strong good knights in shining armor. For some women it will work. I just haven’t found that it has in my life. Although, I do know a lot of good Christian men who lend their strength to support and protect women. I certainly appreciate them. They don’t require subservience in return, though.
Most importantly to me, I haven’t seen this idea of female subservience to men as a demand in Scripture. Certainly, there are many women who don’t fit that picture.
I spent some time this week in the south, in a church which participated in the apology of the Episcopal church for its complicity in the slave trade. I watched a film made by the descendants of a white northern US slave trading family. There was no doubt that Christians who believed they were humbly obeying the scriptures teaching were associated with the slave trade.
The movie was Traces of the Trade if anyone is interested. I have often asked why it is appropriate to discuss the subordination of women in front of subordinated women, when we would not take on the topic of slavery in Paul as a possible alternative practice with the Black community.
It was refreshing to see that the congregation I was in, was willing to openly discuss the recent segration laws in their town and how accepted they had been by church members.
Let me take a stab at this.
You’ve heard the phrase, “your mileage may vary”? (ymmv)
Well, it appears to me that groups of differing opinions get different mileage from different verses.
Comps get incredible amounts of mileage from Ephesians 5:22 Wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
(Way more mileage than the legal limit in my personal opinion.)
Whereas Egals prefer to get much more mileage from Ephesians 5:21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Comps get vast amounts of mileage from I Timothy 2:13.
While Egals prefer to get their best mileage from Galatians 3:23
And so on and so forth.
My response to I Timothy 2:13 is Joel 2:28 & 29 and Acts 2:17 & 18.
In the presence of two or three witnesses a matter is established. If God wanted women to be silent in the church and in the church age He would not have spoken through the prophet Joel that they were to prophesy. Nor would He have confirmed it at the birth of the Church through the actions of the women present and through the words of Peter.
You say the Bible is very clear on this.
I say, yes, if you specifically go looking for it, you will find it. Especially if you give the verses that appear to agree with you much weight and ignore the verses that appear to disagree.
It is very hard to come to the Bible without preconceived ideas. Probably no one really can.
But it doesn’t hurt to ask God to open our eyes to what His Spirit is saying and to ask if it differs with what we have been taught. I’m speaking to both comp and egal.
Perhaps the truth does lie somewhere in the middle ground or in the middle of a bridge.
Perhaps the truth does lie somewhere in the middle ground or in the middle of a bridge.
I wish I had written that, Mara. It’s good, wise. So is your entire comment. It is interesting how we use the Bible to proof text our own positions. The church my wife and I attend now does not favor proof-texting. Instead, they favor looking at the overall witness of Scripture. They do not neglect individual verses. But individual verses, taken in isolation, often sound out of harmony with the rest of Scripture. We need to build our doctrines on the full witness of Scripture. Individual verses need to be understood within the overall context of all of Scripture, as well as careful assessment of the historical and cultural context in which a verse, or verses, was originally written.
I think that every doctrinal position has Scriptural support, or at least that individual verses can be found to support it.
Thanks for your helpful comments. I appreciate, also, that you addressed them to each side in the debate. I think that is one way to build bridges.
Mara, your approach seems to be to shoot down some Scripture with other Scriptures.
But how do you know which Scriptures shoot down which?
But if the whole of Scripture is from God, we have to find a way in which the different seemingly contradictory verses fit together.
believer – I hope I didn’t imply that comp theorists such as Piper view physical characteristics as just incidental to masculinity or femininity. Rather, my take is that they don’t accept the notion that it is simply the nature of a woman’s body that leads to her submission. It goes deeper. I agree that there are many wonderful complementary aspects to the way women and men relate to each other. I disagree that these differences imply an overall difference in authority or responsibility. The knight in shining armor could sacrifice for the good of those over whom he was responsible by virtue of authority – those of lesser political status or defensive capability. Or he could give his life to protect his sovereign, whose authority, resources, and even combat skills might be greater, but whose status and value made a prime target for enemy attack. Or he might die defending a brother in arms, an equal, whose immediate task might not lend itself to active defense, say, writing a message of vital interest.
Perhaps the truth does lie somewhere in the middle ground or in the middle of a bridge.
While the truth many lie somewhere in the middle, when it comes to applying the Scriptures, it seems to me that some things don’t allow for a middle ground. E.g:
You either let a woman teach or preach to a mixed-sex adult audience, or you don’t. And if you do, she does it either on her own authority and/or an authority equal to the men in the church who do the same thing, or under a male elder’s/pastor’s “covering” or “authority” (versus those men who do the same without being under such “authority”).
You either let women prophesy during the assembly gathering or you don’t.
You either let women be elders or you don’t. And if you do, they do it either on equal authority with men elders, or under the male elders’ authority.
You either let women officiate over communion and/or baptisms or you don’t. And if you do, they either do it with an authority equal to men who do the same, or they do it with less authority.
In other words, you either make womens’ sex a factor in determining what they can and cannot do, and how they can and cannot do it, or you don’t.
Correction: I meant to write “may,” not “many,” in my first sentence.
And I would say that it is wrong to call those who “don’t” allow the things I listed above “Complementarians.” For the women in such situations are not in a complementary position, but in a subordinate position. Thus, “Subordinationists” would be a more accurate term. Or perhaps “Sub-ordinarians” since the women are treated or regarded in a less-than-ordinary way.
ordinary: 3. of common quality, rank, or ability. After all, if believers are to have all things in κοινον
But I digress….
“Rather, my take is that they don’t accept the notion that it is simply the nature of a woman’s body that leads to her submission. It goes deeper.”
Sarah,
Thank you for bringing that out. You are totally correct. I forgot about that.
When I was a comp, I did not believe I was in subjection because of outward female characteristics. I believed I was in subjection because those outward female characteristics meant that inwardly, by created design, I was fashioned to need (and to find fulfilment in following) male leadership.
Thank you for the correction.
For me, as with all of us (comps and egals alike), it’s not “shoot down,” but more like, “help interpret.” If I choose to interpret Eph. 5 in a comp fashion and say that male-leading-female is a heavenly decree, then I will interpret seemingly contradictory passages (like Deborah in Judges, 1 Cor. 7’s equal marital authority, etc), through the grid of what I see as a heavenly law. “It can’t mean women can lead men, therefore it *has* to mean…”
Some satisfactory answers can be come up with that way, some not so satisfactory. For example, I’ve heard all sorts of claims about Deborah. God wasn’t able to raise up a man, so He had to call a woman, etc. (Does that mean that God isn’t powerful enough to raise up a man…? He planned Jeremiah before He was born, He planned Esther for “such a time as this,” so to say that He had to use Deborah because He couldn’t find any men seems strange). But I digress. The point is that satisfactory answers, even if some have to stretch, can be found to explain passages that seem to contradict. This is true for both sides.
For an example, as an egal, if I see Ephesians 5 as speaking to people in a specific culture where wifely obedience was law and Paul upheld that law while being extremely subversive about it, then I will interpret Deborah and 1 Cor. 7 from that grid, and I will also interpret 1 Peter 3 and Titus 2, etc, from that grid.
So it’s not really about “shooting some Scripture down.” It’s about assuming a heavenly way of operating and then interpreting Scripture in that light. This is what both camps do. It’s about gauging from Scripture what seems to be God’s modus operandi—-and then working to see that fulfilled in the earth (“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”).
When I began dissecting comp-ism, it was with much fear and trembling. But I did it anyway, because I realized that I was interpreting all other Scriptures in light of what I, as a comp, was assuming God meant in Ephesians 5. So I went back to Genesis 1-3 *without* running it through a comp grid (for the first time in my life). It felt like my brain was being twisted into a pretzel from the strain of trying to see it WITHOUT first running it through a comp grid. Seriously.
It was like looking into one of those visual puzzles where you have to focus beyond the page in order to see the image hiding behind all the dots. You know those? Once you get used to them, you can see the images in a matter of seconds, but that first time…it takes a LONG time and you usually get a big head-ache. In like fashion, I was SO used to seeing through the comp grid, that my spiritual eyes weren’t trained to see any other way…it took some straining at first, but once I saw it, I started seeing it everywhere.
So after, what, a month or more in Genesis, studying it upside and down, I saw the egal position and then…I don’t know, basically, I was SHOCKED. Shocked at how much it made sense. It was devastating and liberating, at the same time, and was the start of a thorough Biblical journey through a ton of verses that then had to be re-examined to see if they, too, could make sense when viewed outside of the comp grid.
It is my opinion that both grids can be used, that a thoroughly “Biblical” (meaning, full of Scriptures) book could be written to support either side. I spent a year or two reading and researching and underlining my Bible to death and finally realized that. There was ample support for both. So that was where figuring out God’s modus operandi came in.
What is God’s way? How does His kingdom work? Is the Spirit’s way a top to bottom kind of thing, emphasis on hierarchal ordering? Is God’s New Covenant about putting only Levites into the priesthood (or only men into leadership) or was that old covenant thinking? Is God’s new way about following the world’s way of thinking with those on top seeking to stay on top, or is it about a revolutionary “mountains brought low, valleys brought up (ie, the playing floor is leveled, equal) way of thinking?
There are so many questions beyond those, and I suppose each person must come to their own conclusions, really, between ourselves and our God. For me, after realizing that both views could be amply backed up by Scripture, I spent a long time in the gospels, studying Jesus (including the way He treated women, and the way He dealt with hierarchy, power, authority…). I came out of that place a bonafide egalitarian and haven’t looked back since.
When I began dissecting comp-ism, it was with much fear and trembling.
According to Dr. Ann Nyland, the Biblical phrase “fear and trembling” does not, in fact, mean “fear and trembling” as the term is used and understood in English. Rather, it means “with earnestness and concern” (she refers the reader to Guelzow, Christentum und Sklaverei in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Bonn: Habelt, 1969, p. 65). If she is correct, I wonder how many Christians have consequently misinterpreted and misapplied 1 Corinthians 2:3 and Philippians 2:12?
I can testify to a similar experience as Molleth’s. All I had been taught was non-egalism, and it seems as obvious as the nose on my face. Until I studied more and discovered there were other ways to understand the “gender” verses; that things that SEEMED so clear were actually not that clear at all.
And I had already learned that I could make a major botch in trying to understand the “divorce” verses due to the insights of Instone-Brewer; since I knew I could (innocently) botch the “divorce” verses, I know I might be botching other verses.
According to Paul and Jesus, the Jews misread the Scriptures for hundreds of years. Maybe Egalitarians are simply showing “Traditionalists” that they, too, have misread the Scriptures.
I mean, it’s certainly possible – i.e., that the “Traditionalists” have indeed misread and misinterpreted the Scriptures, and that the Egalitarians are recovering and restoring the Full Gospel. It’s interesting that the Egalitarian testimonies here liken seeing the Egalitarian position in the Scriptures as an “opening of their eyes” and a “falling off of scales from their eyes” and a “revelation.”
That, or, heh, a great deception.
*wincing grin*
That’s what I was sure it was, back then, anyway. Still am not entirely certain. (I’m not sure you can ever be entirely certain again, after having BEEN entirely certain and then discovering you were wrong. I think I’ll always walk with a limp now, in that wrestling-with-God sort of sense, but I think the limp is a good thing…I think)…
The bottom line is that we all have to do the best we can with the information/light we are given, seeking to prayerfully and humbly walk in the Spirit. I can just imagine both comps and egals standing before Christ and Him saying, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Maybe, when all is said and done, what we think is vitally important isn’t as important as we think it is. “If I have not love, I am nothing,” and all that.
David: “Mara, your approach seems to be to shoot down some Scripture with other Scriptures.
“But how do you know which Scriptures shoot down which?
“But if the whole of Scripture is from God, we have to find a way in which the different seemingly contradictory verses fit together.”
I didn’t say shoot down. I said mileage and weight. I may get into the difference later. But for now…
The term I tend to use for shoot down is cancel out, a leftover from my college calculus and physics days.
And it was seeing comps cancel out scripture that made me re-examine my own view of scripture.
You, not being female, may never understand what it is to realize that neither God nor the Bible EVER said that God picked Deborah because there were no men available at that time. I will not go into the feeling of anger and betrayal I felt as a woman when I realized how people I trusted twisted scripture to fit it into their world view thereby putting me in my place as defined by them.
From my experience, Comps have worked very hard to cancel out Deborah because she simply doesn’t jive with what scripture “clearly teaches” in their opinion. They do the same with Phoebe and Junia.
My point to you is not that egals don’t pull the cancel out trick. They may also. Some, if not all, probably do.
My point is that comps have been doing it all along. They just refuse to see or acknowledge it. And by so doing they have become “the pot calling the kettle black”.
Eric, does “complementing” involve each person being spoken of participating equally? [Can't think of another word than "equally" and I can hear the screams already...]
In the creation of a child, I would have thought that a man and woman are undeniably complementary, but that the woman has a much greater role than the man.
It is complementary, and it can’t happen without both, so they are equally important, but the woman inevitably has more involvement in the process.
Just thought of an example.
My wife and I complement one another in doing cryptic crosswords. And when we finish, we compliment each other, too.
But Joan does about 90% of the work, because I need a lot of help to be able to understand the clues.
However, sometimes, and only sometimes, she needs me to fill in a couple of answers.
She does most of the work, but we do complement each other in the task, sometimes…
I am not arguing that this is the way things ought to be between men and women, but just discussing your use of language.
David McKay wrote:
David:
My dictionary includes among its definitions of “complement”:
My objection to calling”Complementarians” those who do not give women an equal voice or equal authority/autonomy in church activities, roles or practices is that they do not need the women in order to function as a church (i.e., to “complete the whole”)
I.e., if all the members, pastors, elders, teachers, etc., were men, they would consider themselves to have all that’s necessary to be a church and to do what the church is supposed to do.
So-called “Complementarians,” by denying women the right to preach the Scriptures to the church and/or to administer the sacraments in the church with the same authority as a man has to do these things do not regard women as “complements” to the men. Rather, they regard them as subordinate to the men, and unnecessary for there to be a “church.” For the men can do and be and have a “church” as they define what “a church” or “the church” is, whereas women – solely because they are women, no matter how educated, knowledgeable, experienced, qualified, holy, gifted, etc., they are – cannot do or be and have a church, as “a church” or “the church” is defined by these people as being.
And that is why I find the term “complementarian” for such persons to be, frankly, disingenuous. Not just because they don’t regard the women as equal, but because they don’t regard the women as complementary in terms of being necessary for the Body of Christ to be the Body of Christ.
In an earlier post, you wrote that “Over and over on this blog, the Complementarian position is misrepresented.” http://complegalitarian.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/bridge-building/#comment-9244
Does what I wrote here misrepresent the Complementarian position? If so, why and how?
David: “But how do you know which Scriptures shoot down which?
“But if the whole of Scripture is from God, we have to find a way in which the different seemingly contradictory verses fit together.”
How do I know which scriptures shoot down which.
Well, you can say “shoot down” but what I prefer to say define.
Which scriptures define which scriptures.
Or perhaps another way to look at it as which scriptures are foundational vs which scriptures build upon the foundation.
To me, foundational scriptures are based more on actual quotes from God/Jesus (words in red, anybody?)
What God in the OT and Jesus in NT said and did carry far more weight than, say, historical documenting and the opinions and actions of prophets and apostles.
Not that what prophets and apostles have to say need to be discarded. May that never be.
But rather I interpret or define the words of apostles and prophets by what God said and NOT the other way around.
The ten commandments and the words in red carry a lot of weight.
Paul’s words are wonderful, and uplifting and do a lot for me. But when things conflict, I HAVE to refer back to Jesus for clarification.
Paul himself said, if he or an angel comes and preaches a different gospel, can’t remember what he said exactly but it went along the lines of — it’s bad, don’t believe it.
Paul also had trouble with people coming in right after him to mess with his words and add to the simple milk of the gospel.
It is the glory of God to hide a matter.
It is the glory of kings to search it out.
We are a royal priesthood.
On the other hand, my argument/definition above wouldn’t allow either side to use the term “Complementarian,” for even “Egalitarians” don’t need a mix of men and women to have “a/the church.”
Where “Egalitarians” and “Complementarians” (as the terms are used on this blog) differ, per my argument/definition, is that whereas for “Complementarians” a/the church could meet and fully function if it was made up solely of men, it could not do so if it was made up solely of women, whereas for “Egalitarians” a/the church could meet and fully function no matter what the number and mix of men and women, whether all men, all women, or both.
Guess I’d like to give an example of someone using the words of Paul for a foundation rather than the words of Jesus that just rubbed me the wrong way.
I heard a preacher, one time, on the radio that I normally like.
But unfortunately he was preaching on the Proverbs Woman and I about never like the way preachers preach on that, male or female.
The reason I don’t like it is because they use the words of Paul instead of the words of Jesus as the foundational or defining words for the Proverbs Woman.
I think, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your strength, a love your neigbor as yourself.” Makes a better foundation than, “Wives submit.”
It might not have been so bad if he hadn’t referred back to Ephesians sooo many times as he preached Proverbs 31.
After a while, it felt like I was being beaten with it.
“Now, don’t forget ladies, you must always make sure you submit…”
Did he need to insert that every two or three verses of Proverbs 31:10-31?
Why did he need to?
Was is fear?
Are some men afraid of strong women and can’t teach Pr. 31 w/o over playing the female submission card?
Are they obsessed with their positon as lord of the manor?
Sorry, my work is in social services and unfortunately that sets me up for wondering about motivation. We wonder all the time why people do the things they do. “What were you thinking?”
Really, better defining verses would have been, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “if you would be great in God’s kingdom then learn to be servant of all”. These words teach submission just as much as Paul’s without beating in the idea of who’s boss around here anyway.
Jesus’s words also feel a firmer foundation than Paul’s to me.
And if asked, I think Paul would agree.
Eric,
Romans 8:29-30 (King James Version)
29For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Scripture says that all Christians are to become conformed to the image of His Son. Jesus said that we all are to seek to do the works that He did and more.
Paul says that we are a Priesthood of Believers.
I echo your concerns about the term ‘complementary’ because often it has been my experience that hierarchalists and traditionalists seem to think that those thoughts are only toward men and do not include women. If we as women are not to become conformed to the image of The Messiah and empowered by the HS to do the works that He did and more, then what are we to do and whose image are we to be conformed to. According to some non egals, it seems women are not to mature spiritually but are to be satisfied being women and aspire to no more.
Sadly, it often feels like this is a laughing matter to some comps, that women would aspire to do works that they feel are reserved for men. I have no qualms with non egals. I pray for all Christians of all denominational persuasions to become all they can become in Christ Jesus. And yet, they would pray for me to not seek to become or do anything beyond being womanly, that to do so would be aspiring to be manly. Now isn’t that strange.
Though I suppose “Complementarians” could have an all-woman church meet and function as a/the church IF the women that “did” church (i.e., preached/taught and/or administered the sacraments) were under a male or male elder’s/elders’ authority/covering. “Egalitarians,” though, wouldn’t need such a woman’s church to be under a man’s or men’s authority to “do church.”
Mara asked: “Was it fear”?
With tongue only partly planted in cheek, I suspect that the “castration anxiety” that some men have in the presence of strong and independent women is greater and more real than any “penis envy” that women supposedly have.
See Freud for more details.
Eric and TL (aren’t you known as someone else here, TL? I can’t remember who)
You both make good points about using the term complementary.
I guess black/white drinking fountains would not be complementary, but Male/Female restrooms might be, because ideally men don’t go into the women’s and women don’t go into the men’s?
LOL Mara,
yes, male female restrooms would be considered complementary I think. That would be respecting our differences as men and women, needing different levels of privacy. I’ve often pondered the way men stand in a line next to each other, sometimes talking while urinating. Cannot imagine women all sitting together talking while going.
LOL
Hope I didn’t violate any protocols there.
I’m also Believer3 when I manage to sign in. I’m on the run again today.
Analogies are never perfect, hence they’re analogies. I think one could argue that black/white drinking fountains and bus seats are comparable to male/female restrooms. My reason for the “whites/coloreds” drinking fountains example was more of a counter to David McKay’s point about how Complementarians view men and women as being equal, though occupying different “roles.” A better restroom example, IMO, would be “whites/coloreds” men’s restrooms and “whites/coloreds” women’s restrooms in which white men could use either men’s room and white women could use either women’s room, but coloreds could only use the “coloreds.” “Equal”? Well, sort of. “Superordinate and subordinate”? Definitely.
David: “Mara, your approach seems to be to shoot down some Scripture with other Scriptures.
“But how do you know which Scriptures shoot down which?
“But if the whole of Scripture is from God, we have to find a way in which the different seemingly contradictory verses fit together.”
David,
I’m not trying to beat a dead horse nor am I trying to convert you to egal.
I’m trying to help you understand the way I think and why I don’t think comp is nearly as “clear” in the Bible as you think.
I’m going to draw on my pretrib, posttrib experience.
I mentioned that I’m sick of that argument and that I now hate charts and graphs and time lines and the groupings of proof texts used for both sides of the arguement.
I also mention that I still read Revelation.
I read Rev because:
Rev 1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.
I also read it because the first verse calls Rev the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
And I want Jesus Christ revealed to me.
I read Revelation and the rest of the Bible looking for Jesus. I don’t read looking for pretrib or posttrib.
If I look for one or the other, I will find it.
But it is more important that I find Jesus.
I’d like to say that I always read the Bible looking for Jesus and never look for egal.
However, I cannot honestly say that yet and here’s why.
I have been taught, on and off, from a comp slant.
Because God abhors a false balance and differing measures I’m looking for the egal version and comparing it to the comp version and the Bible as a whole.
Are women not suppose to be domineering of men as stated in I Tim 2?
Not a problem with me since Jesus spoke to the disciples and said that NO ONE is to be lording over ANYONE like the gentiles do. Not women over men. Not men over women. Just about a no-brainer to me. Except I think comps get more mileage out of that verse than they should and make it say more than it does to uphold their argument.
Are women to be silent in church? All the time?**
How does this work with the Joel 2 prophecy and the Acts 2 fulfillment?
How does this work with Jesus’s sharp rebuke of the disciples for not listening to the women about His resurrection?
How does it work with the fact that He revealed Himself to the women first to begin with?
Was He making a statement by sending the women to witness to the men and not the other way around?
Just some things to think about.
** I know our Greek scholars here have given their understanding of some of these things and I appreciate it.
But just in case someone doesn’t trust their thoughts on Greek words or culture, I’m going more along the line of scripture interpreting scripture, here.
TL, it is interesting for you to say that “complementarian” replaced the word “patriarchy.” I believe that the complementarian view is patriarchal.
I would also like to point out that “egalitarian” replaced the word “feminism.”
In secular terms, the debate has been feminism vs. patriarichy. Among Christians we seem to feel a need to avoid those words and tend to use the softer ones “egalitarian” and “complementarian.”
I can understand why in a way. However, it is a bit dishonest on both sides, IMO.
Actually, St. John Chrysosotom used the word “complement” to describe the marriage relationship long before any of us were born – and he was certainly in the patriarchal camp. The idea of equality of being, yet differences in assigned roles has always been called “complementary.”
I agree with you, David. Calling the complementarian position “masculinism” is certainly a put-down. It is used that way often in discussions with egalitarians.
The proper terms are complementarian or patriarchal vs. egalitarian or feminism. Since both “patriarchal” and “feminism” seem to cause offense, we use the more polite terms.
I would not mind at all if those seeking to build bridges use the correct terms. It does not good to grouse about who used the terms first.
Well, my story of abuse is much different from the typical. Online bullying and relational aggression are real. Some will go to great lengths to hurt another person, trying to destroy their reputation. I was almost a victim of such abuse, until I took back control from those who were dehumanizing me. I no longer believe the things that were said about me. That is a most empowering concept – don’t believe the lies said about yourself. God’s opinion of me is really the only one that matters. If He has declared me clean, then I must not allow anyone to call me unclean.
You know, that’s one thing I learned from the egalitarians. A woman has a right to defend herself. She should never be told that she has caused her own abuse. I thank the egals for that teaching, even though I am staunchly and proudly a Complementarian Patriarchalist Traditionalist.
I personally address the complementarian vs. egalitarian issue mainly from the church perspective. I haven’t yet given much thought to the nature of the marriage/home relationship in terms of egalitarianism vs. patriarchy vs. feminism, etc. In fact, in one of my early posts here, I wondered if the Complementarians were improperly importing into, and imposing on, the church the husband-wife relationship. The church is the bride of Christ; all its members are in that sense “female” in relationship to Christ, who is “male.” While perhaps the marriage relationship should mirror the relationship between Christ and his church, I am not sure that the way men and women are to act and relate to each other in the church is also to have that kind of male-vs.-female aspect to it. I.e., in the church, is it necessary that only males do certain things, and only females do certain other things? If so, why?
Perhaps I am only addressing half the issue by doing this, but at this point, it’s the only aspect that I have an interest in. The problem does look a bit different if you only deal with this one aspect instead of both.
Webfoot:
If you’ve read some of my responses here, you know the reasons I think “Complementarianism” is an incorrect term.
Initially I thought it was wrong to call Patriarchalists “Complementarians,” but lately I’ve wondered if it’s wrong to call either side “Complementarian,” even if one calls one “Hierarchical Complementarianism” and the other “Non-Hierarchical Complementarianism.”
For when it comes to church authority, structure, practice, function, etc., Patriarchalism does not view women as completing men, but as subordinate to and less autonomous than men.
Egalitarianism likewise does not view men as completing women or vice-versa, but views both as being equal in worth, authority and ability in the church.
I don’t think it’s as important that we use or find terms that don’t cause either side offense as it is that the terms be accurate. And I believe Patriarchal and Egalitarian are the correct and most accurate terms.
As I said earlier, my comments are pretty much limited to male-female relationships and roles and functions and practices in the church, not in marriage and in the home.
But you probably already knew that.
BTW, Wayne, I think that you are doing a good job moderating this blog. It’s not easy, I am sure.
Thank you, and God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
Eric:
If you’ve read some of my responses here, you know the reasons I think “Complementarianism” is an incorrect term.>>>>
Webfoot:
No, Eric, I have not read much of what you have written. No offense. You are free to believe what you wish about the word “complementarianism”.
Eric:
I don’t think it’s as important that we use or find terms that don’t cause either side offense as it is that the terms be accurate. And I believe Patriarchal and Egalitarian are the correct and most accurate terms.>>>
Webfoot:
Actually, I am in agreement with Dr. Stackhouse. IMO, and that of the good Dr., the correct terms are “patriarchal” and “feminist” or “complementarian” and “egalitarian.” On that basis, he declared himself to be “finally feminist.” After reading his book, I declared myself to be “finally patriarchal.”
Eric:
As I said earlier, my comments are pretty much limited to male-female relationships and roles and functions and practices in the church, not in marriage and in the home.>>>>
Webfoot:
Okay.
Eric:
But you probably already knew that.>>>>
Webfoot:
No, actually.
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
Mrs. Webfoot:
I am not an “angry egalitarian.” Nor am I seeking revenge against anyone.
I used to accept the “traditional” interpretation of passages like 1 Timothy 2 – or maybe I should say I didn’t question it, since it seemed to be “Biblical.”
I’ve met Andreas Kostenberger. I’ve met Wayne Grudem. I’ve read their books and essays.
I got on the Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) mailing list when I attended an Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) conferences, but only because it was free and I was being “polite.” Though I respected theologians like Gordon Fee and Craig Keener, I assumed the material was “feminist” and “liberal.”
While I think there may be some difficult passages for both sides, I have come to believe that the Egalitarian position, at least as far as church practices and authority and male-female relations is concerned, is the more Biblical and Christian one. I came over here to Complegalitarian, not because I had bridges (or effigies) to burn, or revenge to seek, but because of some posts that my long-time friend Molleth wrote.
Some of the discussions/exchanges have gotten heated, and there have been persons who have refused to dialogue, but have chosen instead to argue or simply state their point or make their accusation and refuse to elaborate when challenged or questioned.
Can bridges be built between Egalitarians and Patriarchalists? I don’t know. I’m sure they can be built outside the church service, but when it comes to actually meeting together as a body, I’m not sure that there can be a “middle way” when it comes to a church’s authority structure and worship mode/practice. Either a woman’s sex affects and impacts and allows or limits the kinds of things she can do in the church and the roles or positions she can perform or hold, or it doesn’t.
Again, I’m at present personally only focusing on church matters, not the marriage/home relationship between men and women.
Mrs. Webfoot:
I think that this is the bridge we can build between us: You are free, and I am free. If we can accept our mutual freedom, then we can have a relationship.
Eric:
Can bridges be built between Egalitarians and Patriarchalists? >>>>
Webfoot:
Hmmm. I don’t mind being called a Patriarchalist, but really, for a bridge-building group like this, you should use the term “Complementarian.”
Webfoot:
Let me ask you a question, if you wouldn’t mind answering. If I were to ask, “Can bridges be built between Feminists and Complementarians?,” how would you react? What feelings would you have? Would you feel like dialoguing with me?
Webfoot:
I would ask you to think about it.
Webfoot:
There are groups where one side or the other in these great debates are stated and defended. As far as I understand Wayne’s intentions for this group, he wants it to be safe for all and he wants to see some bridges built. May I suggest that using the terms “egalitarian” and “complementarian” is one way of achieving that?
Webfoot:
My impression is that your side is angry about the CBMW using the word “complementarian”. If you’re not angry, then why all the carping about it?
Eric:
Either a woman’s sex affects and impacts and allows or limits the kinds of things she can do in the church and the roles or positions she can perform or hold, or it doesn’t.>>>>
Mrs. Webfoot:
A woman’s sex absolutely does limit her. A man’s sex limits him, too. We are defined by our sex, according to Genesis 1. “Male and female created He them.”
Mrs. Webfoot:
God created a husband and father as well as a wife and mother. I don’t want to be “unlimited” myself. I like who and what I am.
Webfoot:
Hmmm. I don’t mind being called a Patriarchalist, but really, for a bridge-building group like this, you should use the term “Complementarian.”
The problem for me with that, as I’ve stated before, is that both “Egalitarians” and “Patriarchalists” are complementarians – i.e., they both view male and female as complementing each other. To call one side “Complementarian” and the other side “Egalitarian,” as if to imply or suggest that “Egalitarians” do not believe that the sexes are complementary, is, IMO, an inaccurate choice of terms and only confuses the real issue, which is: Does a woman’s sex affect and limit the authority and positions and roles and actions she can have or do in church vis-a-vis what a man can have or do? Patriarchalists by dictionary definition answer “yes” and Egalitarians by dictionary definition answer “no.”
Webfoot:
My impression is that your side is angry about the CBMW using the word “complementarian”. If you’re not angry, then why all the carping about it?
I’m not angry about it. I came to this blog and this issue long after CBMW appropriated the term “Complementarian” for itself. They didn’t take the term from me. Frankly, I don’t know why they took it, because it does not distinguish them from “Egalitarians” who, as I’ve said here and elsewhere, are also complementarians.
Nor am I “carping” about it. I’m just one who regards the term as useless for distinguishing Patriarchalists from Egalitarians in light of the dictionary definitions for “complementary,” “patriarchal,” and “egalitarian.”
Genesis 1:27c. “Male and female created he them.” In the LXX, the Scriptures that the Christians, including the Apostles and authors of the NT, most often quoted from, the phrase is rendered as “arsen kai thêlu.” Interestingly, in Galatians 3:28 Paul switches from using “oude” (“nor”) to separate his contrastive pairs to “kai” (“and”) when he says “there is not male and female” such that he ends up exactly quoting LXX Genesis 1:27c. Something about the New Creation in Christ has affected the Old Creation, including the pre-Fall Creation. F. F. Bruce seems to agree that a change has occurred in Christ:
οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ. There is a slight change of construction here (with no substantial change in meaning): Paul does not say, following the precedent of the two companion clauses, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν οὐδὲ θῆλυ. The reason for the change is probably the influence of Gn. 1:27, ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτοῦς, ‘he made them male and female’ (cf. Mk. 10:6). In Christ, on the contrary, ‘there is no “male and female”.’ Paul’s statement was echoed later in those gnostic circles which held that, in the new age, man would no longer be separated into ‘male and female’ but would revert to a (supposedly) pristine androgynous state (cf. Gos. Egy., quoted by Clem. Alex., Strom. 3:45, 63ff., 91, where Jesus is recorded as foretelling the day ‘when the two become one and the male with the female neither male nor female’). W. A. Meeks, ‘The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity’, History of Religions 13 (1973–74), 165–208 (cited favourably by H. D. Betz, Galatians, 196 n. 122), thinks that Paul is here quoting a ‘baptismal reunification formula’ which envisaged the restoration of a pristine androgynous image. But Paul himself is not concerned with any such fantasy; he is concerned with practical church life in which men and women (like Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free persons) are here and now fellow-members. It is not their distinctiveness, but their inequality of religious role, that is abolished ‘in Christ Jesus’. [my emphasis]
Whereas Paul’s ban on discrimination on racial or social grounds had been fairly widely accepted au pied de la lettre, there has been a tendency to restrict the degree to which ‘there is no “male and female” ’. Thus it has been argued that these words relate only to the common access of men and women to baptism, with its introduction to their new existence ‘in Christ’. True, Paul may have had in mind that circumcision involved a form of discrimination between men and women which was removed when circumcision was demoted from its position as religious law, whereas baptism was open to both sexes indiscriminately. But the denial of discrimination which is sacramentally affirmed in baptism holds good for the new existence ‘in Christ’ in its entirety. No more restriction is implied in Paul’s equalizing of the status of male and female in Christ than in his equalizing of the status of Jew and Gentile, or of slave and free person. If in ordinary life existence in Christ is manifested openly in church fellowship, then, if a Gentile may exercise spiritual leadership in church as freely as Jew, or a slave as freely as a citizen, why not a woman as freely as a man? [my emphasis]
Gos. Gospel of the Egyptians
Clem. Clement of Alexandria
Strom. Stromata (Stromateis) (Clement of Alexandria)
Bruce, F. F. (1982). The Epistle to the Galatians : A commentary on the Greek text. Includes indexes. (189). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.
Eric:
The problem for me with that, as I’ve stated before, is that both “Egalitarians” and “Patriarchalists” are complementarians – i.e., they both view male and female as complementing each other. >>>>
Webfoot:
Well, that ends the bridge-building, then.
We can go no farther.
Hi Eric and Webfoot. Keep talking around me. I find it very interesting.
But I’m going to continue with my monologue on verses defining other verses.
It sort of ties into Molly’s ‘this is the comp I knew’ thread but not enough to put it there. It flows better with the series of posts I put here.
And I don’t care so much if this gets lost on this thread.
I mentioned earlier that I do not feel that Ephesians five has the strength to be the foundational verse for Proverbs 31.
But I do think that having an understanding of the Proverbs 31 woman is foundational and should define Ephesians 5:21-33. I have two reasons for thinking this way.
The first reason is that it came first. Yep, it has the position of first mention. And since the words of Jesus don’t trump it or define it to be less, I feel it stands.
The second reason is that since Paul is Hebrew, he intended his letters to build on OT Scripture and the words of Jesus. I love Paul’s writings because it is ‘rubber meets the road’ practical advice on how to live Christianity in this fallen world. In his case, the Roman Empire.
Where I feel Comps overplay their hand is that they make verses like Ephesians 5:22-33 (yes, I left out 21 there), I Tim 2, and other similiar verses THE foundational verses, THE defining verses for the way things should be concerning gender in church and home.
The problem is, these verses are not foundational enough to take that position and cause more problems than they solve when taken that way.
Molly’s post about the boundless thread and her testimony that their “practical submission” post isn’t practical at all speaks not only for her, but for many women who have been chewed up and spit out by this version of submission.
When the words of Jesus are given their foundational position and the appropriate OT verses are given their place, then Paul’s words fit quite nicely on top of those, not defining the verses below his, but being defined by them.
In other words a preacher might say…
“Now husbands, just because Paul instructs the wives to submit, this does not give you dominion over them. If you want an excellent wife, then you must trust her that she will do you good and not evil all the days of your lives. If you stand over her and micromanage her you give her no space to do you good and you have taken the place of God in her world. Plus, you would not want someone standing over you and micromanaging you. Stand back and let her be who and what God made her to be, just as you would want space to be who and what God made you to be.
“And since we are to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, both husband and wife are to carefully consider the bigger decisions and how they affect each party.”
“For example, will bearing more children hurt the wife physically or emotionally? Then don’t bear more children. Will bearing more children put a strain on the husband for providing more? Then don’t bear more children. Come into agreement for the benefit of both, not one over the other. Placing one over the other like that flies in the face of the words of Jesus who said we are not to lord over one another. So husbands, as your wives work out what submission looks like in your relationship, you work out what nourishing and cherishing looks like. Don’t assume you know. His ways are higher than our ways. Find out from Jesus and the Bible what that looks like…”
etc…….
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Giving the husband a trump card over the wife sure can mess with things.
IMO if Jesus didn’t give husbands the trump card, and Proverbs 31 didn’t give them the trump card, then Paul in Ephesians sure as heck does not give the husband that trump card.
That is something read into it by well meaning but misguided comps who do not take into account the sin nature of both men and women.
Webfoot,
I don’t understand. How does it end bridge-building to say that egals believe that males and females are to be complementary to each other?
on March 8, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Webfoot
Webfoot:
Well, that ends the bridge-building, then.
We can go no farther.
Webfoot:
This is not my blog.
I didn’t create it, I only read it and post comments here.
I never said that bridges can’t be built (at least not in my replies to you).
I explained why I prefer not to use the term “Complementarian” when referring to Patriarchalists or when contrasting them with “Egalitarians.”
Others, though, including the authors/moderators of this blog – which they created to build such bridges – seem to have no problem with using the term.
So if by “Well, that ends the bridge-building, then. We can go no farther” you are referring to bridge-building between you and me, you may be right. I don’t think so, but you have to decide that for yourself.
But if your “We” means there can be no bridge-building between any or all of the Complementarians and Egalitarians who post at Complegalitarian, then I think you may be incorrect.
But that’s for y’all to decide or determine, methinks.
Mrs. Webfoot:
To clarify: While I didn’t say that bridges can’t be built between the two sides, I did say that “I don’t know” if bridge could be built between them. I think that depends on what kind of bridges are trying to be built.
A similar example might be the statement from “Evangelicals and Catholics Together”
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9405/articles/mission.html
and the purpose of books like Rereading Paul Together: Protestant and Catholic Perspectives on Justification (David E. Aune, Editor).
I don’t think either side in the above discussion will give up what distinguishes it from the other side, but both sides can probably help expand the areas of what they mutually understand re: the faith, the church, justification, etc., as well as clarify what the other side believes, and why.
Another example might be the schism between the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the so-called “Oriental” Orthodox Churches (I say “so-called” because the word “Oriental” means “Eastern”) over the Chalcedon Statement and the meanings of monophysitism and miaphysitism.
Also the schism between the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church over the Filioque clause in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
Some of these “differences” and causes of schism are semantic in nature, so there can be bridge-building in terms of the two sides getting a better understanding of what each means, and thus perhaps realize that they aren’t as far apart from, or as opposed to, each other as they have historically and theologically supposed or assumed themselves to be.
Can that kind of bridge-building occur between the Comps and the Egals?
Again, I don’t know.
Excellent post, Mara.
Don’t let it get lost in the sea of replies!
Eric:
I explained why I prefer not to use the term “Complementarian” when referring to Patriarchalists or when contrasting them with “Egalitarians.”>>>>
Eric, I tried as best I could to explain to you why, in my opinion, that probably is not adequate for bridge building.
It may be adequate for you as an individual.
Mara:
Where I feel Comps overplay their hand is that they make verses like Ephesians 5:22-33 (yes, I left out 21 there), I Tim 2, and other similiar verses THE foundational verses, THE defining verses for the way things should be concerning gender in church and home.>>>>
Mrs. Webfoot:
Actually, I think that most complementarians would say that Genesis 1-3 is foundational. Paul appeals to the creation order to establish male headship in the church and in the home.
Mrs. Webfoot:
Our being created male or female in the image of God is foundational. God did not create two androgynous human beings. He made a man from the dust of the earth. He made a woman from the man’s rib.
Madame when you wrote, “Don’t let it get lost in the sea of replies!”, I first read it as , ‘don’t let it get lost in the sea of recipes‘.
Had to do a double take to read it correctly. But I still like “recipes” in place of responses. 
And Mara, your combining of Prov. 31 as foundational to Pauls words on marriage is awesome and wise. Well done. I love what you said there.
Webfoot:
I looked up the dictionary definition of “feminist.”
If one doesn’t impose negative connotations on the terms, I think “Patriarchalism” and “Feminism,” at least as my dictionary (Random House Webster’s College Dictionary) defines the terms, are valid and non-pejorative terms for the two sides on this issue.
How about naming the two sides the Crips and the Bloods?
Most Christians would say that Gen. is foundational. But the problem lies in interpreting 1 Tim. 2 to be meaning that Genesis established male headship over women. In order for that to have happened in Genesis, then we need to actually see something in Genesis that states or even implies that.
What verses do you see in Genesis where God has given men leadership over women in marriage and in church ministry?
But to somewhat retract my last comment: Whereas feminism advocates that women should have rights equal to those that men have, Egalitarians believe that women already do have the same rights and freedoms as men in terms of what they can do or what role or function they can perform or occupy in the church. So maybe Egalitarian is more proper after all, since Egalitarians stopped being feminists when they started having church without sexual distinctions or gender-based subordinations and superordinations.
Words. Gotta love ‘em!
Mrs. Webfoot:
‘Actually, I think that most complementarians would say that Genesis 1-3 is foundational. Paul appeals to the creation order to establish male headship in the church and in the home.’
I don’t see kephale in 1 Tim 2.
I do see kephale in 1 Co 11 but Paul there doesn’t speak of creation order.
I’ve always wondered how or why the two concepts have been tied together in comp theology when yet they are never written about together in Paul.
Mrs. Webfoot:
‘Paul appeals to the creation order to establish male headship in the church and in the home.’
I forgot to add that I also don’t see creation order tied to kephale in the home anywhere in Paul. I do see the woman’s origin (origin and creation order are different concepts) written of in Paul in Ehp 5 and 1 Co 11, but not creation order.
Hmmm. Crips and Bloods may be the way to go.
OTOH, how about just Complementarian and Egalitarian, at least for this group?
I really think that if we want to help Wayne with his goals – and I do if at all possible – for the purposes of this group, we should use Complementarian and Egalitarian. Or, if you prefer, Egalitarian and Complementarian. Those two terms are not dehumanizing. After all, I believe in equality, and you believe in complementarity.
TL:
Most Christians would say that Gen. is foundational. But the problem lies in interpreting 1 Tim. 2 to be meaning that Genesis established male headship over women.>>>>
Webfoot:
That may be a problem for you, but it is not for me.
TL;
In order for that to have happened in Genesis, then we need to actually see something in Genesis that states or even implies that.>>>>
Webfoot:
Yes, and Paul confirms that male headship was from before the fall. In his epistles, he appeals to the creation order. Woman was made for man, and not man for woman, after all.
TL:
What verses do you see in Genesis where God has given men leadership over women in marriage and in church ministry?>>>>
Webfoot:
My question to you would be how can you miss it? It has been the teaching of the church for 2,000 years. It was the pattern in the OT. It is the pattern in the NT. It has been the pattern throughout church history. That’s good enough for me. Your position is the new kid on the block.
Webfoot:
Besides, it is the husband who has authority over his wife, not men over women. Then, not all men are leaders in the church, only some men, and so forth.
Actually, it hasn’t. Tradition had it that it was understood that women were inferior. And the reason there was male dominance was because of female inferiority and male superiority. Only recently, have Americans come away from that belief. I’m not certain when it was believed that Gen. 3:16 was a curse upon women to be ruled by men, because of her inferior inclination to be deceived (easily deceived) but it was held as a reason for male dominance of women for quite a long time.
Perhaps some of our historians can give us some light on that.
However, my question to you is for you to provide the Scriptures in Genesis to support your claim. Apparently, I am still missing them.
Yes, apparently you are missing them.
I agree with Believer3 that there is no hiearchy taught in Genesis1-3.
I too see Genesis as foundational.
There is no hierarchy taught.
The order doesn’t teach it. The prophecies to the man and the woman don’t teach it.
The man was alone in the garden and needed someone so that he didn’t have to be alone. It does not say that he needed someone to rule. He needed someone to bond to. To love. Love does not seek to rule (I Cor 13:5).
Even as foundational as the words and actions of Moses may be… (and they are pretty foundational)…, the words and actions of Jesus are more foundational still.
Back to the original post that started this thread, I’ll attempt to respond to Wayne’s two questions:
I would guess that (1) would probably result in (2) to some extent. On the other hand, if the discussion makes it obvious that the differences are insurmountable, then the “walls” that one perhaps hoped might be turned into “bridges” may become even stronger walls. That doesn’t necessarily mean the discussion increased the hostilities; it could be because the discussion forced both sides to clarify their positions, and as the positions became clearer, it became more obvious that there can be no rapprochement or bridge-building between the two, at least not in the areas where they differ or disagree.
My question to Wayne or anyone here is: What does it mean for opposing parties in a conflict to “build bridges”? E.g., can pro-choice and pro-life groups build bridges with each other on the abortion issue? Should they?
Or can bridges between opposing parties only be built in areas of agreement or in areas other than the one that divides them, as when nations come together and “build bridges” with each other in wartime against a common enemy? E.g., the U.S. stayed committed to capitalism and the U.S.S.R. stayed committed to communism, but they built bridges with each other to oppose Nazi Germany during WW II. There was no bridge-building between capitalism and communism, but there was bridge-building between the two nations with respect to a concern on which they agreed, and building the bridge did not require them to give up their capitalism or communism.
Per this illustration, the bridge-building did not directly affect or impact the areas in which the two countries disagreed or opposed each other. So what does it mean to “build bridges” between opposing parties IN THE AREAS OF DISAGREEMENT/OPPOSITION ? Is that what Complegalitarian is trying to do – i.e., “build bridges” in the areas of women’s authority and rights in the church and in marriage? Or is it trying to build bridges between the opposing groups in other areas while leaving their opposing positions and practices and beliefs intact? If so, what are those other areas?
So, Wayne: what are your ideas and answers to the two questions you asked?
Webfoot, could you please post the verses from Genesis here that clearly express the male (or husband) lead/woman (or wife) submit hierarchy?
Pondering the last few posts, re: bridge building and the ability/inability to provide scriptural support for our views, I’m reminding of a favorite verse (I think one of Don’s favorite verses, too?!), Acts 17:11.
Perhaps part of bridge building is having the attitude the Bereans had : they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
Whatever our position, does our eagerness to examine and understand the whole of Scripture surpass our eagerness to defend our paradigm? If we share the same goal (the honest examination of Scripture, possibly even doing that together), maybe that’s a tiny bridge anyway.
Bridget:
Fact is that if one side does not feel like it’s being treated fairly by the moderation team, they stop posting and the discussion dries up, so even-handed moderation is important for any topic that can get heated.>>>>
Yup. Seems like Complementarians have gotten bored with being called names, told that they are abusive and in the same category as rapists, slave traders, and Communists. Oh, yes, it’s indirect, and not stated outright so that posters can cover their hind ends if necessary, saying, “I never said Complementarians are abusive!”
So, I’m suggesting that there be a thread called Bridge Over the River Kwai.
I doubt that this post will be accepted, but it makes me “feel” better. I am sure that I will be told I don’t have my rage under contro and I’m too much of an idealoguel. My “rage” is just fine if I avoid egalitarians, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual.
Hi Webfoot. I don’t know if you saw my question upthread directly to you, so I’ll repost it here:
Webfoot, could you please post the verses from Genesis here that clearly express the male (or husband) lead/woman (or wife) submit hierarchy?
Light, it has been pointed out that when Complementarians express their sincerely held beliefs, the words sting. I am sorry about that, Light. I don’t know how to take the sting out of words that are not meant to hurt you.
I do not wish to offend you by my answer. You are free to believe what you wish.
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
PS
Thank you, Light, for taking the time to ask me the question, though.
Light wrote: “Webfoot, could you please post the verses from Genesis here that clearly express the male (or husband) lead/woman (or wife) submit hierarchy?”
Webfoot responded: “I do not wish to offend you by my answer. You are free to believe what you wish.”
Webfoot, you are not going to offend anyone by your answer. We would simply like to know upon what foundation in Genesis you base your beliefs. This is just dialogue and discussion. Nothing to be afraid of.
Webfoot, the words of scripture never sting, for they are the Truth and are for the building up of the body. That is why I have asked for the words from Genesis that you think clearly express the design of male leadership/female subordination.
I am just asking for scripture from Genesis. I am not asking for a scholar’s commentary on it, your opinion on it, or even what Paul in the NT has to say about it. Just the words from Genesis. That way, we can all be Bereans and look to the Holy Spirit to illuminate our study and understanding of the verses.
Light, did you misunderstand me? I choose not to respond to your question.
Help me out, here. If I respond, you will be offended, because I will have to say that it is self-evident. If I don’t respond, you will continue to ask the question until I answer, and then you will tell me that I am wrong, and it will never end.
So, what am I supposed to do? I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.
If I shared, and then you said, “I respectfully disagree and this is what I think. ”
I would then say, “that’s fine. You are free.” That would be okay. Can we do that?
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
‘Just the words from Genesis.’
I love hearing that.
Mrs. Wedfoot wrote:
Help me out, here. If I respond, you will be offended, because I will have to say that it is self-evident.
Yes, that would be an offensive answer. My suggestion for bridge-building is that we answer something along the lines of: “Here is a Bible passage which I believe is relevant to the discussion. Here is how I understand what it means.”
If I don’t respond, you will continue to ask the question until I answer, and then you will tell me that I am wrong, and it will never end.
Yes, that is how that particular cycle goes. I have seen it often, including on this blog. But we don’t need to continue in those kinds of communicative patterns. We can try new patterns which are more constructive for understanding each other and demonstrating love and respect. I’m talking to all of us now, myself included.
So, what am I supposed to do? I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.
Yes, we are in that dilemma if we choose to tell others that something is “self-evident” or “unambiguously clear” and they feel the same way about their position. But if we choose to word what we say in I-terms (“This is what the text means to me” or “This is what I understand the text to mean.” We can even add, “And here are some reasons why I understand the text to mean that.”)
If I shared, and then you said, “I respectfully disagree and this is what I think. ”
I would then say, “that’s fine. You are free.” That would be okay.
It sure would. That is one positive way we can approach differences.
Can we do that?
Go for it. And now, all you egals, PLEASE, don’t pile on when she gives her understanding of the Bible passage. I’ve seen too much piling on here on this blog. Let’s let people believe as they wish. It’s OK for us to say, “Well, thanks for sharing that. I can see from the verses how a person could get that interpretation. I understand them differently, as meaning … and here are some reasons why I come to that conclusion. Thanks for helping me see that my interpretation is not the only one possible.”
If we would all learn to use positive communication techniques instead of communication stoppers, I think we would have fewer people getting upset and leaving this blog. We are, after all, one of the few, if not the only, blog on the Internet where are *are* trying to speak to each other over these contentious issues.
Let’s all remember that what is so clear to us is often not so clear to someone else, and having a difference of opinion does not mean that there is necessarily any spiritual, mental, or moral deficiency that keeps someone from agreeing with us.
Yes, I know, many of us carry hurts from how we have been treated on other blogs or discussion lists. I myself carry some of those hurts. I have been banned from some blogs for telling what I consider to be the truth. And I thought I was telling it kindly. But regardless of what has happened elsewhere, this is a different place and a different time, and we ourselves, as individuals, can choose, with God’s help to show grace and love toward those with whom we differ.
You know what’s gonna happen doncha Wayne.
You’re gonna get us all trained.
Then a bunch a newbies are gonna come in with no respect for coffee, popcorn, casasta or anything and make things all topsy-turvy again.
Thanks Wayne, for the 10:15 post.
Thank goodness God isn’t finished with any of us yet. There is hope.
Hmmm. So, that’s that, then. I knew I wasn’t safe.
I wasn’t going to comment much on it, but as an after thought I was wondering if what I put in the quotes would bother a soft comp.
If you take away the parts outside the quote that talk about comps overplaying their hand and just leave it as… you can use prov 31 as a base to define Eph 5, if a soft comp can agree at least in part.
Mara, if you take away the parts that talk about comps overplaying their hand , as you suggest, then I think it comes out as a very positive way to approach it.
No, none of us are safe. And we often are not safe for others, even if we don’t want to be that way. Jesus never promised us safety. But he did promise always to be with us.
How easy it is for me to say this to others; how hard it is for me to really live it out, especially during difficult, tense times.
I personally think that one of the healthiest things for us to do on this blog is share our own stories of struggle. Our stories often has something to do with gender issues, or distortions of biblical teachings about gender and giftings and ministry. I’m not suggesting that this blog should turn into a recovery group. But I do think that something special occurs when we tell our own stories. It is easier to abuse others with our understanding of “the truth” when we stay “cognitive” and just talk doctrine or ideology. We can beat each other up with our own understandings of what is biblical. But when we tell how God has worked in our own lives, to move us from pain to greater dependence on him, something special occurs. Special bonding takes place. Walls fall down. Maybe some bridge-building takes place. We don’t necessarily change our beliefs, but our beliefs take on a different perspective when we share our stories of redemption and recovery.
God’s design for us never included abuse or control. It is not God’s design that we control spouses or congregations or anyone through unspiritual means. Biblical Complementarians and Biblical Egalitarians agree that love must be central to relationships and that lording it over others is not a sign of love, nor is it God’s plan.
It is *distortions* of God’s truth found in the biblical foundations of each side of the gender debate that causes pain in relationships, churches, and sometimes in dialogue which we attempt to have on forums such as this blog.
Light:
I am just asking for scripture from Genesis. I am not asking for a scholar’s commentary on it, your opinion on it, or even what Paul in the NT has to say about it. Just the words from Genesis. That way, we can all be Bereans and look to the Holy Spirit to illuminate our study and understanding of the verses.>>>>>
Webfoot:
Paul’s commentary on the creation of woman is significant. He is speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, after all, and he is telling us how to view this part of Genesis.
So, Paul in the NT, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says that woman was made for man, and not man for woman. You don’t want me to interpret the words of Scripture, if I understand you correctly, so I won’t. I’ll just state it.
1 Corinthians 11
9neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
Webfoot:
So, read Genesis 2 with Paul’s words in mind. Read the whole chapter with those words in mind. By the way you phrased the question, that is all I can say. So, that’s the best I can do given the limitations you put on the answer I am allowed to give. I assume that in any response you give, you will hold yourself to the same rules you set down for me.
Webfoot:
I could ask you, too, where Genesis says that man and woman are equal and there are no assigned roles, which I assume you may believe since I assume you are an egalitarian. I am not asking for your opinion on that subject, as you did not ask me for my opinion. Just give me the specific Scripture and let it speak on its own merits.
Webfoot:
Of course, I would add, ” if you have time and if you feel like it, I would appreciate it if you gave me an answer, but don’t worry if you don’t want to. You don’t have to. You are free.”
God bless, Light,
Mrs. Webfoot
Love this comment!
I think just such “testimony” may be what God means in Rev 12:10-11
In C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (pp. 75-76), Mr. Beaver answers Lucy, about Aslan,
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver…”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
Truth is not always “safe,” but it is always good!
Well, the truth is that I am not safe here, but I am still here. So, I am a risk taker.
I am not afraid of God, but I do deeply reverence Him. In that way – the way of deep reverence for Who He is – I fear Him and should. In Christ, I have been taken right into the Most Holy Place, and have sweet communion with the Father, through the merits of the Son of God and His finished work, in the Holy Spirit.
I am talking about fearing a group of people. Again, I am still here in spite of how I feel.
Eric, I think that a bridge implies freedom. On a good bridge, we are all able to cross, getting to where we are going, without being thrown off the bridge, run over, crashed into, and the rest.
So, I see a bridge as a means of being able to move about freely. I like bridges.
I have some things I’d like to comment on and ask questions about.
In Genesis and 1 Co 11 we can read that woman was created from and for man, and in Genesis we can read the context which provides the reason why woman was made for man which was because it was not good that he was alone and from man the reason being that the two shall become one. These things ARE clearly written in Genesis. Woman, according to Genesis, having been taken from man is the reason why the two become one flesh.
Is it good that some men are alone or must all men marry and none are good alone as it was not good that Adam was alone? (Woman was created for the man because it was not good that he was alone)
Are all men and women to become one flesh like the first man and woman, Adam and Eve or only married couples? (woman was created from man and for that reason the two become one flesh)
What does 1 Co 11 v9 have to do with ‘roles’ for all men and women when womEn were not created for mEn and when the sexes do not become one? Were women created to be subordinated to men (in church) because it is not good that any men be alone? Was woman created from man because all women and men are to marry and become one?
Thoughts, ideas?
I would like to understand why in comp thought the woman’s creation in Genesis and as written of in 1 Co 11 v9 is used to speak of ‘roles’ for women in general rather than at the most just wives? How does the idea of ‘roles’ for women in general come into play based on the creation of Eve who was a wife? She was a woman, but also a wife and not all women are wives.
Why are there discussions anytime, anywhere on ‘women’s roles’ in a context of Eve’s creation when not all women are wives nor should they be according to Paul?
When discussions on ‘roles of men and women’ take place anywhere why are Genesis, 1 Co 11 and Eph 5 brought to the table when they CANNOT be applied to men and women in general or their ‘roles’?
Webfoot,
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind.
And frankly, I’ve never seen you fearful of anyone. My impression of you is that you are a strong minded, strong willed, energetic and passionate woman of God.
Hi, TL,
TL:
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind.>>>>
Webfoot:
That is true, and I thank you for sharing that verse. I appreciate it. We can encourage one another in the Word.
TL:
And frankly, I’ve never seen you fearful of anyone.>>>
Webfoot:
Fidel and Raul scare me a little.
TL:
My impression of you is that you are a strong minded, strong willed, energetic and passionate woman of God.>>>>
Webfoot:
Thank you for your kind words, TL.
I don’t have a lot of energy right now. I’m trying to battle off bronchitis or worse. I guess I breathed too much musty cathedral air when we were in Europe – but it was worth it, believe me.
Let’s see if I can name my fear, and then it will be easier to face.
I’ll start with the kind of silly things. I’m afriad of spiders, though they fascinate me at the same time. They make my scalpe crawl, and I scream like a little girl when I see one.
Hmmm. What else. I used to be afraid of flying, but now I am usually asleep during takeoff. I am afraid of getting put into a middle seat, though.
Sometimes I’m afriad of flight attendants.
What am I afraid of on this blog. I’m afraid of rejection. Yes. That’s the word. Rejection. I’m afraid of abandonment, too.
Rejection and abandonment.
I guess that’s it.
Hi, Eric,
How are you doing? I’ve had my 2008 Chef’s Best, Best Taste Award WinningTaster’s Choice Gourmet Roast for the day, so I’m ready to rumble.
Eric:
I personally address the complementarian vs. egalitarian issue mainly from the church perspective.>>>>
Webfoot:
That’s fair. You mean like can women be ordained as pastors?
Eric:
I haven’t yet given much thought to the nature of the marriage/home relationship in terms of egalitarianism vs. patriarchy vs. feminism, etc. >>>
Webfoot:
Are you married?
Eric:
In fact, in one of my early posts here, I wondered if the Complementarians were improperly importing into, and imposing on, the church the husband-wife relationship. >>>>
Webfoot:
I’ll throw this out and see what response I get if any. I see in the Bible three institutions ordained specificially by God. Well, it’s not my idea originally, but I think it’s a good one.
Webfoot:
God ordained the home, civil government, then the church. How do these three institutions interact?
Webfoot:
The home is one area. The church is another area. Society at large is another area. We have to learn as Christians how to relate in Christlike ways to each area.
Webfoot:
How do you see it? Since the church is made up of individuals, but individuals who belong to families and societies, it gets more than just a little complicated.
Eric:
The church is the bride of Christ; all its members are in that sense “female” in relationship to Christ, who is “male.”>>>>
Webfoot:
Yes. I agree. What is your church background, Eric, if I might ask. I grew up in the Swedish Baptist Church. My husband in the Christian Church, Church of Christ. He jokes that I had to become a Christian in order to marry him. I like our church a lot. I think that we have a good balance – but of course, I am a Complementarian, so I like it just fine. We live in a very small community, so we have people from many different church backgrounds in our church.
Eric:
While perhaps the marriage relationship should mirror the relationship between Christ and his church, I am not sure that the way men and women are to act and relate to each other in the church is also to have that kind of male-vs.-female aspect to it. I.e., in the church, is it necessary that only males do certain things, and only females do certain other things?>>>
Webfoot:
Male vs. female? Hmmm.
Eric:
If so, why?>>>>
Webfoot:
Well, can you be specific. You have probably been specific in other posts, so if you have, and I missed it, I apologize. Still, if you wouldn’t mind repeating yourself, I wouldn’t mind hearing what you have to say.
Eric:
Perhaps I am only addressing half the issue by doing this, but at this point, it’s the only aspect that I have an interest in. The problem does look a bit different if you only deal with this one aspect instead of both.>>>>
Webfoot:
Possibly.
God bless, Eric,
Mrs. Webfoot
Probably can’t address all your questions now (lots of stuff on my plate), but:
1. I’ve been married once; 34th anniversary next month.
2. Raised Jewish, became Christian in my 20s, baptized Disciples of Christ (but only because that’s where we were going at the time; we were novice Christians), then spent the next 25 years or so mostly in non-denominational Charismatic churches or Bible churches, including being in Kansas City when the whole Kansas City Prophets and Vineyard thing was happening (we attended the two primary churches involved as well), and also including an 8-year stint in the somewhat off-kilter “cult” that Molleth and we belonged to, started regularly attending Eastern Orthodox churches a few years ago, became Orthodox after two years of serious reading and attending and catechumenate study, but left it a year or so later when the wheels fell off the wagon for me (so to speak), and am presently unaffiliated, though started again attending a non-denominational home group. In other words, I’m all over the map and have been all over the map. And if all goes well, I’ll be spending this Easter and Passover, as well as my 57th birthday, in Jerusalem – which is one reason I am extremely busy – i.e., getting things ready.
Cheers!
Wayne:
To my mind, bridge building focuses on building understanding of what each position is.>>>>>
That can be a very dangerous endeavor.
Webfoot
Wayne:
To my mind, bridge building focuses on building understanding of what each position is.>>>>>
That can be a very dangerous endeavor.
But “building understanding of what each position is” seems better to me than possibly continuing to misunderstand or misstate or misinterpret what each position is – right?
I wrote:
To my mind, bridge building focuses on building understanding of what each position is.
Mrs. Webfoot replied:
That can be a very dangerous endeavor.
Yes, learning can be dangerous. Relating to others is often dangerous because we are not simply transferring information. There are convictions and feelings involved.
I have seen increasing safety on this blog as we learn to speak to each other in more respectful ways. And that means less danger.
I don’t like danger. I try to run from it. My wife has been helping me learn better ways to word things so that there is greater safety for everyone. It takes me a long time to learn how to learn safely!
PBPGINFWMY
It can lead to being abused, too – and threatened and sworn at. Not everyone wants people to come to their own conclusions.
BTW, thank you for your wise words, Wayne.
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
Eric:
But “building understanding of what each position is” seems better to me than possibly continuing to misunderstand or misstate or misinterpret what each position is – right?>>>>
Yes. I agree.
Eric wrote:
But “building understanding of what each position is” seems better to me than possibly continuing to misunderstand or misstate or misinterpret what each position is – right?
Eric, if you’re asking me (or even it you’re not!), my answer would be an emphatic “yes”. Even though there is the danger of misunderstanding and hurt feelings during any communication, the danger of not communicating or communicating in negative ways is even worse.
I like many of the books and seminars which focus on helping us communicate better. I’ve been trying to suggest some of these communication enhancers on this blog since we often have strong differences and often find it difficult to express our differences in ways that do not hurt others.
One of my strong preferences is to put things in I-terms, rather than as statements of fact. For instance, I am impacted more positively when someone says to me,
“As I have examined the evidence I have concluded …”
It helps even more when they add, “… but having examined the evidence I can see how someone could come to the conclusion you have from it. Thanks for telling me your interpretation of the data/verses.”
Those gracious comments contrast starkly with what I sometimes hear, on this blog or elsewhere:
“The ____ side of this debate has chosen not to believe what the Bible clearly states.”
“I think even you would have to admit that there is only one way of understanding this verse (and it is our way)”.
“Anyone who is serious about studying the Bible (biblical scholarship, whatever) will believe as I do.”
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what Paul was clearly saying about men and women in this verse.”
“Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t even be questioning the unambiguous teaching of this verse. You have obviously been taken in by the spirit of this age.”
“If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Arizona that I want to sell you.”
etc.
ad nauseum
Eric, you have a very interesting background.
My husband is still with his first wife, and I am with my first husband. In July that will be for 29 years.
Hey, have a great trip.
Take care, and God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
Molleth:
I came out of that place a bonafide egalitarian and haven’t looked back since.>>>>
If another person goes through a similar process and comes out complementarian, would you have a problem with that?
I could tell you my story.
BTW, I am sorry that you were hurt in your marriage and in your church situation.
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
kathy
I would like to understand why in comp thought the woman’s creation in Genesis and as written of in 1 Co 11 v9 is used to speak of ‘roles’ for women in general rather than at the most just wives?>>>>
Webfoot:
God made a wife for Adam. I’m not sure why you say “just wives.” The norm is for women to get married and have children. That’s how God planned it. In fact, in all the languages I am familiar with – which isn’t all that many – the words “woman” and “wife” are interchangable. In English we get offended if a man calls his wife his woman, but it is still one of the usages of the word “woman.”
Kathy:
How does the idea of ‘roles’ for women in general come into play based on the creation of Eve who was a wife? She was a woman, but also a wife and not all women are wives. >>>>>
Webfoot:
God wants women to become wives. God doesn’t want a wife to exercise authority over her husband, or anyone else’s husband, either.
Webfoot:
Eve didn’t just happen to be a wife. She was created as a wife.
Webfoot:
Some women stay single. That’s okay, because God is their Husband. They aren’t left to flounder on their own. It can be God’s will that a woman stay single and satisfied. It is generally not God’s will that a woman stay single.
I can’t agree that “God is [single women's] Husband.” God is all-sufficient, yes, but is never portrayed scripturally as an individual woman’s Husband. What I do find in Scripture is that God is Israel’s (betrayed) husband, and Jesus Christ as the Bridegroom of his bride, the church.
I’m very glad for you that you are married, which as you say you consider the normal thing for women to be. But please, take it from a long-single Christian woman: God is not my husband.
And concerning God not wanting women to exercise authority over their husbands, I would heartily agree. Likewise (that scriptural word), I find nothing in Scripture to indicate that God wants husbands to exercise authority over their wives, or anyone else’s wives, either. In fact, I find that Jesus’ admonition to his disciples tells us exactly the opposite: While the gentiles put themselves over other people and revel in the notion that they are authority figures in the worldly sense, it is not to be so among the disciples. That would, I think, include all of us modern-day disciples, male and female, married and single. We are to serve one another, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, loving one another as Christ has loved us.
For me, it’s the “authority over” concept that is wrong. I still can’t figure out what need a one-flesh Christian couple has of a human authority figure (the husband or the wife), when Jesus has been given all authority, yet came not to be served, but to serve. That’s how I see it.
(And yes, I was also married for a number of years. I guess that makes me old…)
Thank you for your thoughts, Mary. What do you think of this verse?
Isaiah 54:5
For your Maker is your husband— the LORD Almighty is his name— the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.
It is talking about Israel and the spiritual relationship she had with God. I don’t think it’s wrong to apply this verse to all believers. Others may think it has no application for the individual believer, or that it applies only to Jews. that’s okay, but I think it is a promise for me, too.
A godly husband protects his wife, provides for her, gives her children, loves her, and cares for her in many ways.
I assume that your husband failed in his responsibilities. I’m sorry about that. I am sure that you have found the Lord to be the One who sustains and provides for you, so you are not left abandoned, except by another imperfect human being.
That’s how I see it.
Then, there is a difference between Christlike authority and a worldly lording it over others. Christ spoke against the world’s way of being great, and told His disciples how one who is great in His kingdom was to be a servant.
Christ is talking about rulers, – those with greater rank and prestige, – either in the world or in His church. If someone wanted a higher rank in the church, he was to take the lowest rank, that of a servant and rule with that attitude.
Matthew 20:25-27 (New International Version)
25Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.
26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,
27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—
President Lincoln was not a leader in the church, but he was a leader who had the reputation of being extremely humble. I heard a message by the late Dr. Kennedy today on Focus on the Family. He was talking about Lincoln and his humility.
It’s interesting to note that he is considered to be the greatest of all our presidents.
Those are my thoughts as a Complementarian.
Thank you, Mary, for sharing, and God bless you,
Mrs. Webfoot
What I think of the Isaiah passage, Mrs. W., is that it must be taken in its larger context. God as husband to the chosen people is a very different concept than imagining that God is a single woman’s husband. As the context shows, the former is consistent with Isaiah’s prophetic (God-authorized) message, while the latter is quite a novel and, to my thinking, eisegetic misapplication of the text. The only circumstances in Christian tradition in which God (specifically, the Second Person, God the Son) is called husband to any woman is in religious communities, when a woman takes final vows. I assure you, however, that I am not a nun. I’m merely a fairly normal Christian woman who is committed to following Jesus Christ. So if you wish to extrapolate a personal promise out of that single verse, you’re free to do so. Please recognize, however, that that is an unorthodox (not bad, but not standard) interpretive leap.
Frankly, you presume far too much when you speculate about what my husband was or was not to me. Further, I think that as someone who is married, you do not qualify very well to tell me or any single woman that God is our husband. God is my God, not my spouse; together with the rest of the church, I am a member of the body and bride of Christ. I believe very firmly that an unchanging God does not serve as a husband one day, then delegate that relationship to a mortal man the next upon marriage. I am troubled by the road your pronouncement must take to its logical conclusion. If God is a spouse to single women, what does that say about single men? Do they not also, in your belief system, lack a spouse and does not God also supply all their needs?
As for me, I trust in God, and God does not fail me. That was true during the time my husband was with me, not only in the years of singleness before our marriage and now that he is gone. I do not need to anthropomorphize God into a husband. God is far, far more to me than that. As for sustenance and providence, it’s a wonderful thing to be in partnership with God, using my gifts and skills to make a decent, God-honoring living and a home for myself. God is the source of them all, but no less so than for anyone else, married or single. All that we have is a gift from God, wouldn’t you say?
Would it not be more accurate to simply address what faith is like tfor you as a married woman? You cannot accurately say that “God wants women to be wives.” God ordained marriage as, in the words of the traditional wedding ceremony, “. . . an honorable estate, instituted by God in the time of man’s innocency . . .,” but marriage is neither mandated nor proclaimed as a universal desire on the part of God for every woman (or man). Thus, I cannot agree with your opinions about “normal” (and, by implication, “abnormal”) as descriptive of married women and single women, respectively, nor about God as husband to us abnormal single women.
Also, there are many married Christian women who cannot bear children. Your list of what a godly husband does for his wife is surely not accurate; is an infertile husband or the husband of an infertile wife somehow less godly? Disabled husbands can neither provide for nor protect their wives, yet they surely are not any less godly for this. As I see it, your list can and, for many couples, does apply to both spouses. Most of the married men I know, for example, are glad for their wives’ participation in the household’s provision (the Proverbs 31 husband was, too), protection (in various ways), children (those who have them), love, and care as well. All of those qualities can be true of godly spouses, not only husbands.
A couple of other points. Christ was talking to the disciples (“It is not to be so among you”), was he not? He must have seen in them the very real potential for them to embrace the world’s ideas about authority being equated with power and necessarily making others subordinate to them. Thus, it was not to be so AMONG THEM. Jesus modeled authority for them: serving them according to God’s calling (proclaiming good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, liberating the oppressed, proclaiming the Day of the Lord. . . and even to dying for the sins of the world), by the power of the Holy Spirit. That same Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul and most of the other Apostles to admonish the earliest believers to serve one another through submission and sacrificial love, each according to the gifts of God within them. True godly authority is the authority to use one’s God-given gifts and power to serve and build up the Body. I am convinced that questions of who is an “authority over” whom are about worldly “authority,” not godly authority. Again, it’s not to be so among Christ’s followers.
Please understand: this in no way is meant to criticize you or your husband or your marriage. That’s one way in which God is blessing you, and I couldn’t be happier for you. Perhaps you could try to be happy for your single sisters (and brothers) as well, since God is also blessing us in our lives. I’m simply outlining the points on which I cannot agree with your statements about marriage, singleness, and speculations about my personal history. I hope that you have not been offended by my writing style; occasionally, people are. And be assured that, except for your presumptions about my husband, I was also not offended by anything you said.
Christ’s peace be with you, Mrs. Webfoot.
Mary, you are free to think what you wish.
Mary…what a fantastic summary. You have expressed, beautifully and succinctly, my own beliefs. Thank you! (Wish I could do that!) I wish I knew you IRL. I think there is much we could talk about.
I was interested in the response that it is eisegesis to claim personally “my Maker is my Husband.” It did not appear to me Mrs. Webfoot was saying that God is only a husband to single women, just that God is a husband to single women. She did not say He ceased being a husband when men and women married. She did not say that God is not a husband to men. I would be interested in her responses, but I seriously doubt she would deny that God is a husband to all the elect.
I do not believe it is eisegesis to claim “my Maker is my Husband,” if I am part of “the Israel of God” (one NT term for the church). God did not save all of national Israel, but He did save His chosen remnant, and has grafted the believing Gentiles in to His body. Not all Gentiles are saved, either. It appears to me Isaiah 54: 5 is speaking to the elect of God, who will not be put to shame, but will be made to forget the shame of their past. This can only happen on account of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That same passage speaks of God as Husband, also being Redeemer, another title God gives himself in that passage from Isaiah.
The issue here is, can you argue from the whole to the part without doing violence to the text? IOW – can a believing individual claim, “My Maker is my Husband.” I think you can. God says, “this one and that one (particular individuals) were born in Zion.” If God is a husband to all of us, then He is a husband to me as well. If He is a Redeemer to all of us, then He is a Redeemer to me as well. I firmly believe this is true.
The other issue is, if you accept this argument, is, how to view God as husband, and in what way does the Bible speak of it so that I may apply the concept properly?
Just as I do not believe it is eisegesis to claim, “My Maker is my Husband,” I have found it is neither a “novel” idea, after some Googling this morning, at least. On ccel.org, there is a good sermon by George Whitefield on this very text, and here is a very tiny quote from his sermon on Isaiah 54:5 -
“But, though the words were originally spoken to the Jews, yet they are undoubtedly applicable to all believers in all ages, and, when enlarged on in a proper manner, will afford us suitable matter of discourse both for sinners and for saints; for such as know God, as well as for such who know him not; and likewise for those, who once walked in the light of his blessed countenance, but are now backslidden from him, have their harps hung upon the willows, and are afraid that their beloved is gone, and will return to their souls no more.”
It’s a pretty interesting sermon, if you care to go to that site and search for it.
Lynn:
I was interested in the response that it is eisegesis to claim personally “my Maker is my Husband.”>>>>
Yes, I agree, of course. To me, it seems that there is a difference between someone with a more Reformed view as opposed to someone with a more dispensational view.
I know of very staunch Complementarians who are also dispensational who would say that God is Isreal’s husband, but not the Church’s husband. Christ is the Church’s Bridegroom, and she is not yet married to Him.
I don’t see a need to make that distinction especially.
Mary:
I hope that you have not been offended by my writing style; occasionally, people are.>>>>
Shall I be honest, Mary? I assume that you are being sincere in your statement.
Yes, I am offended, FWIW.
Well, I am Premillennial, and probably some kind of Progressive Dispensationalist. I believe in at least four of the five points of TULIP.
So I’m neither fish nor foul. I think Dispies who chop it as fine as you described above are overdoing it.
Mary,
“What I think of the Isaiah passage, Mrs. W., is that it must be taken in its larger context. God as husband to the chosen people is a very different concept than imagining that God is a single woman’s husband. As the context shows, the former is consistent with Isaiah’s prophetic (God-authorized) message”
Thank you for clarifying this so well in your comment. It is unfortunate that the body of Christ in general is not taught to see the difference between the correct contextual reading of Scripture and a personal comforting application. It is comforting for single women to think of God as filling in for the protection and provision that a real live husband would be bringing them. But that is spiritual. God does those same things for every Christian married or not. We all look for his protection and provision, male and female alike.
” I am convinced that questions of who is an “authority over” whom are about worldly “authority,” not godly authority. Again, it’s not to be so among Christ’s followers.”
Those who are used to seeing the world through lenses of authority structures do find it difficult to see godly ministry, leadership, even spiritual ’serving’, as a reversal of top down, to getting under and lifting up. But that is exactly what Christ meant when He said that he came not to be served, but to serve and give His life for the salvation of others. Dying to self for the purpose of helping others grow spiritually, helping them draw closer to God, helping to free them from bondages and wounds in order to become like Christ and doing his works is what spiritual ‘authority’ in the church should be about. That is how I view it.
Mrs. Webfoot wrote:
Shall I be honest, Mary? I assume that you are being sincere in your statement.
Yes, I am offended, FWIW.
Thanks for being direct and concise about that, Mrs. Webfoot. I have found, from exhausting experience in similar dialogues, that when I go into too much detail about how I am impacted, it sometimes adds to the spiral of misunderstanding and offense.
Oh, I should add that I also appreciated the directness of Mary’s comments to you.
Well done to both of you,
Wayne
Mary, that was incredibly good.
I’m a married woman, and I consider Jesus my husband, (and rather enjoy meditating upon HIS loving embrace). I sure hope that my husband considers Jesus his husband too??? (though I imagine it must be slightly more awkward for the males in our midst to embrace their bridal status
)
2 Corinthians 11:2-3 (King James Version)
2For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
2For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
Charis, the “you” here is plural in the original Greek. Paul was speaking to the Corinthian church. We know from other passages that it is the Church which is the Bride of Christ.
I can’t think of any Bible passages which refer to individuals being the Bride of Christ, but my thinker doesn’t remember as well as it did when I was younger, so please help me out here, if you can think of any Bible passage which refers to an individual person being married to Christ, or the bride of Christ.
Charis, the “you” here is plural in the original Greek. Paul was speaking to the Corinthian church. We know from other passages that it is the Church which is the Bride of Christ.
I can’t think of any Bible passages which refer to individuals being the Bride of Christ, but my thinker doesn’t remember as well as it did when I was younger, so please help me out here, if you can think of any Bible passage which refers to an individual person being married to Christ, or the bride of Christ.
Romans 7:4 comes pretty close, although it is speaking collectively to “brothers.” Just as I know this applies to me, even though it says, “brothers,” I also know it applies to each particular case where a person is born again. Romans 7 begins with a marriage illustration, and carries it through to the truth that we died to the law so that we all might be joined (marriage illustration) to Christ.
This kind of death and rebirth and union with Christ happens on an individual basis, so there is no unwarranted application in one individual saying, “I died to the law so that I might be joined (ie- married) to another, so that I might bear fruit to God.”
‘It is comforting for single women to think of God as filling in for the protection and provision that a real live husband would be bringing them. But that is spiritual. God does those same things for every Christian married or not. We all look for his protection and provision, male and female alike.’
I think you pointed out a key here TL with regards to the idea that God is husband to single women specificaly. As you said, ‘God does those same things for every Christian married OR NOT.’ (I had to emphasis)
So really then it’s not about the idea/interpretation of God being husband to SINGLE women. Great point, TL!
‘It is generally not God’s will that a woman stay single.’
Webfoot,
How have you come to know God’s will for most women? If it is generaly not God’s will that a woman stay single then it cannot generally be God’s will that a man stay single. God’s will is that most men should get married?
Why has the emphasis always been in the past on women ’should marry’ vs. men ’should marry’?
I said ‘just wives’ because it hasn’t been proven that certain teachings and passages of scripture (I have Genesis and 1 Co 11 this moment) can be applied to women in general but rather at the most just wives.
You said, ‘Eve didn’t just happen to be a wife. She was created as a wife.’
I think this makes my point, what I just last wrote. Are all women created (like Eve) ‘as wives?’ Here, we can see that this is an example where Genesis cannot be applied to women in general and so out goes the idea of the language usage of ‘women’s roles’.
Is there someone who is going to claim that God creates most women as wives?
Most women are born as wives? Most men are born as husbands?
This is just some of my thoughts and questions…
My relationship with God both extremely intimate as well as passionate, and I feel sorry for those who are unable to personalize the frequent marriage metaphors because of the use of a plural.
Off-hand without researching this, Psalm 63 comes to mind for its intense and personal one to one- intimacy with GOD. Although the marriage metaphor is not employed there, the writer speaks of God present when he is on his bed in the night watches. Nothing whatsoever corporate about it (thank GOD. I don’t think I want “the church” there with me in that setting!)
I think we are to have an intimacy with Christ, but not as with a human husband except in being known and devoted. Christ is our Lord and Savior in a way that a human husband cannot be.
When God/Christ’s relationship with His people/the church is referred to in marital terms, it’s as an exhortation to fidelity and troth, as in 2 Cor. 11 and many places throughout the OT.
I have no idea why protection and provision are gendered. I don’t see it anywhere in scripture and I don’t know where it comes from.
Rahab and Phoebe are protectors. The Proverbs 31 woman was a provider. Women are far more frequently in this role than men in the scripture. I experience this more from other women in my life than from men.
(didn’t mean to single you out, Bonnie)
Intense intimacy and passion with CHRIST, my BRIDEGROOM.
Perhaps my having a difficult marriage has been a blessing in disguise… makes me sad for others who do not seem to be familiar with that one to one garden intimacy- to walk in the cool of the day, side by side, to see HIM face to face…
Beth Moore, CS Lewis, Curtis and Eldredge, Henri Nouwen, etc… ALL wrote about it though, so I know I am not alone
PS personally, I’m having trouble with the nested comments. Unless I get back in time to see a reply linked at the comment bar on the right, I miss seeing the nested replies… and e-mail subscription doesn’t send all the replies to the blog like it used to- I think it only sends the replies to the nested comment? so if I am following something, do I have to go in each separate nested part and post something just to “subscribe”?
Eric got me thinking about GLORY on another thread awhile back and I found out some things about GLORY and hair which seem to me related to the “marriage” relationship with Christ…. As well, I had a revelation experience over the passage in John 20 where the second Adam meets with the Woman and calls her by name (in Mary Magdelene’s sandals…
Wayne, I’m sorry if my initial response sounded harsh. I took your question as if it was condescending, questioning MY EXPERIENCE of one on one intense passionate intimacy with God. I used to be uncomfortable in church with songs like “Draw me close to you. Never let me go. I feel the warmth of your embrace….” because I didn’t FEEL like that, I had some very deep unresolved childhood issues which froze me in some ways. NOW I can sing that and mean it.
Here’s my glory, hair, intimacy thoughts…
The woman who loosed her hair with Jesus was doing something a wife did with her husband. I am not thinking of this in a “sensual” manner, though the Jews clearly considered loosened hair sensuous. I am thinking of the LOVE she had for Him, the intense LOVE. Jesus Himself said of her “she loved much” Luke 7:47 She did not care what people thought, she did not care about her reputation. She had eyes ONLY FOR HIM, she poured herself out for HIM, shamelessly, without modesty, without restraint.
I googled the rabbinic story found it at this Jewish site
http://www.torah.org/learning/ravfrand/5759/toldos.html#
Hi Eric. I had not been aware of this “separate but equal” language as used in American racial segregation until you used it.
I note that someone else uses this same argument on Darrell Bock’s blog to say that we must accept people practising homosexuality in the church.
See http://blog.bible.org/bock/node/447
You know David, there are many issues in Christiandom today in which Christians argue, debate, fight and quibble over to the extent of disassociating.
Such a list would include: mode of baptism, infant baptism, pre-trib vs. post-trib, tongues, continuity of the HS vs. cessationism, styles of worship, church organization, elder led vs. pastor led, deacon responsibilities, male elders vs. male and female, male pastors vs. male or female pastors, plurality of leadership vs. sr. pastor led, missionaries, Calvinism vs. Arminian, Reformed Theology, proper attire for men and women, dancing allowed or not, numerous prohibitions for holiness, ….. and a lot more.
The thing is that everyone says that to disagree with their point of view is to argue with the Bible itself, which is quite clear on these issue. The church argued for hundreds of years in the same way for keeping slavery. The church thought black people were born to be slaves and did not think that blacks should feel it demeaning that they had been born to fill the lifelong role of serving whites. Abolition was thought to be against the order of God.
I would say that obviously it isn’t as clear as some say it is.
Sorry to be so long in responding, Mrs. Webfoot.
If you’re willing to help me understand what you found offensive and possibly why concerning my reply to you, I would really appreciate it. People really can’t avoid offending someone if they don’t understand what the other finds offensive.
If you prefer not to help me understand, that’s certainly your choice. However, I hope that you understand that I responded honestly to you and tried my best to do so in a manner that you would not find offensive. As I said, though, my exact and direct manner of writing sometimes gets read as accusatory, though neither the words nor the intention is meant to accuse at all.
Again, it’s your choice.
Yes, Sue. That is so important to understand. I think that both women and men are diminished when protection and provision, and nearly any other relational virtue, is ascribed to only men or only women. I think that the stereotypes are based on such broad generalizations that there are more exceptions to the rule than actual illustrations of it.
Thanks for focusing on this point.
Thank you for this, Wayne, and most particularly for the edit.
Thanks, Bonnie. I have benefitted from your comments in my non-commenting period of reading. I think perhaps you’re right, that we would get on well in conversation. I’ll pay your blog link a visit.
Thanks very much, Molly.
Charis, I may have misunderstood you, but it seems to me that the above and at least one other of your comments I’ve read, expresses your pity for those of us who do not consider Jesus our husband.
If that is the case, I think you have not considered carefully enough that I enjoy deep intimacy with Jesus. I never said that I don’t have such intimacy, only that Jesus is not my husband.
To illustrate: there is right now a significant outcry across a wide spectrum against “Jesus is my boyfriend” kinds of Christian music. I have a qualified agreement with this perspective. My reason is somewhat different from most of the arguments against the “Jesus Lovesong” phenomenon, however. While I believe there is a time and place for songs, hymns, prayers, and prose exploring the individual’s growing into a deeper and more intimate relationship with Christ, I do not believe that corporate worship is usually such a time or place.
As an American Christian, I see this as one of the rubbing places of culture and faith in my country. Generally speaking, as a society, we worship individualism: individual freedom, individual self-determination, individual truth, and even individual faith. Yet from its very inception and its even more distant roots, the Christian faith is not an individualistic faith. I find it interesting that those places where the church is growing the fastest are places which emphasize the community of faith. Oh, we Americans talk often enough about our churches being “faith families,” but too often they’re all too much like our nuclear and extended families: individuals alone even when under the same roof, and separated geographically and in terms of common values and beliefs.
I think that the current trend of public performance of songs about the individual’s love relationship with Jesus, and the equally prevalent trend of stressing the individual’s personal faith, are a natural result in a society so enamored of the individual. Our personal piety is highly important, but it too often becomes our only piety. Corporate worship is relegated to a weekly obligation to sing personal love songs to “my Jesus,” as build-up to the central act: listening to a sermon consisting largely of self-congratulatory, eisegeted lists of everyone else’s sins, drawn from a snippet here, a verse fragment there, hop-scotched from all over the Bible, proving how good a person is if he or she will just avoid the featured sins of the day. It’s not worship at all. It’s shallow celebration of the self. We have lost both the awe of God and the place of the gathered community in the presence of such a holy God.
No, not everyone, not everywhere, not all the time. But it is a trend, and a disturbing one to me. I recognize my need to worship with my brothers and sisters, who together comprise the body of Christ, our Bridegroom. I’m not saying that it’s especially wrong for someone to consider Jesus her husband, but Jesus is not my husband, and I believe I have ample scriptural support for that. Without exception, God is portrayed scripturally as husband to the community, not the individual. And I continue to be saddened by the absolute nature of the pronouncements by married people, here, to us singles that Jesus IS our husband, and the glibness with which we’re said to be pitied if we do not accept such a pronouncement.
Hmmm.
Well, against my better judgment, I’ll say one thing, and then see what happens. Could you tell me where I said that married women are more godly than unmarried? Can you point out where I used the word “godly” at all?
Take care,
Mrs. Webfoot
Mrs. Webfoot, I quote you: “God wants women to become wives.” If you believe that (and I have no doubt that you, a married woman, do in fact believe that), then you would have to say that God does NOT want women to be single. It is reasonable, taling your quote at face value, to think that you wouuld equate doing what God wants, with being godly. Similarly, NOT doing what you say that God wants, would be less godly than doing what you say God wants.
Again, that seems a very reasonable conclusion to draw from your statement that “God wants women to become wives.” But as I said in the first place, I was simply pointing out where, and for what reasons, I could not agree with what you were stating as fact.
W., I messed up on the nested replies. My response to this question is down at the bottom of the comments.
I’m still hoping that you will help me understand what offended you so from my response to you. No pressure, just a hope to avoid whatever caused the offense in the future, if possible. As it is, I’m afraid it appears to me as though you took offense that I could not agree with what you stated as fact.
“Corporate worship is relegated to a weekly obligation to sing personal love songs to “my Jesus,” as build-up to the central act: listening to a sermon consisting largely of self-congratulatory, eisegeted lists of everyone else’s sins, drawn from a snippet here, a verse fragment there, hop-scotched from all over the Bible, proving how good a person is if he or she will just avoid the featured sins of the day. It’s not worship at all. It’s shallow celebration of the self.”
I think this is an overreaction to what has been said.
The Psalms are chock full of “My God” songs, which refer to God as defender, Rock, Redeemer, focus of meditation on the bed, the initiator of an intimate, face to face relationship, and they are also full of personal pleas to this same God for deliverance and help, and they are meant for corporate consumption, both in singing and in preaching.
When you said, “My Jesus,” followed by your pronouncement against corporate worship, the song I immediately thought of was, “My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine. For thee all the follies of sin I resign. My gracious Redeemer, My Savior art thou. If ever I loved thee my Jesus ’tis now.”
“My Jesus, My Savior, Lord there is none like you. . .”
I think you are creating a false “either/or” in your post above. I think the reasoning of George Whitefield’s sermon I referenced above makes more sense than a sweeping condemnation of much of America’s corporate worship because many people apply Christ as the bridegroom/or God as husband to them on a personal level.
It may be that Charis and Mrs. Webfoot are emphasizing the personal and ignoring the importance of the gathered worship, but that is not clear at all from what they said. That is why I think your response is an overreaction to what they said.
Therefore, as I read the Psalms, its both/and, not either/or. I just cannot believe, especially after a reading of the personal nature of so many of the Psalms, that singing about one’s personal relationship to Jesus in the corporate worship is not Scriptural.
It’s not that what you’ve said isn’t a subject in and of itself, merely I don’t believe, Scripturally speaking from the Psalms, that it is accurate to link a person’s conception that Christ is a bridgroom to him/her personally, or God is a husband to him/her personally, to self-centered hedonistic preaching and singing in the church. For example, I’m not a big fan of some things I’ve experienced in church, namely, breathy female vocalists dressed to accentuate all of their phyical attributes, singing in a manner which looks as though it belongs in the bedroom. I agree there needs to be some kind of standard and balance as to what is allowed in corporate worship.
I will give another link to Whitefield’s sermon. I find it to be very edifying. I believe it puts to rest your claim that Mrs. Webfoot’s idea, and some of Charis’ thoughts, are “novel” “eisegetic applications”:
Christ the Believer’s Husband
by
George Whitefield
(1714-1770)
Isaiah 54:5 – “For thy Maker is thy Husband.”
If you read my comments, maybe you will see that I am saying that a woman does not have to be married at all in order to be related to God in an intimate, personal way. In fact, God calling Himself Israel’s Creator and Husband, and Jesus being our Bridegroom isn’t really talking about physicality at all.
God is analogous to a human husband and bridegroom. Believers are analogous to a human bride. These words are about intimate relationships.
If I can use the word “intimate” without minds going to sexual intercourse, that is.
Maybe I would say, too, that it’s not just women who are brought into close relationship with God – like that of a Husband to a wife – through Jesus Christ. Maybe? Maybe my words were totally misunderstood and misrepresented?
So, I wonder what’s the use in even trying to communicate. What’s in it for me? Maybe something. Maybe nothing.
I can understand that you are outspoken, Mary. That’s fine.
Lynn did seem to understand what I was driving at, though.
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
Hi Mary,
Unfortunately, I think my other comments about Personal Relationship and husbandly intimacy with Jesus were lost in the “nesting”…
I will re-post one of the comments which speaks of the husbandly imagery of Jesus with Mary Magdalene. I sort of gave up continuing the train of thought here because the comment was lost and unread, but as I was meditating some more on the PERSONAL relationship with Christ (which I seem to perceive more intensely than some others here), I thought of Jesus words “come unto me… take my yoke upon you and learn from me… I am gentle and humble…”
A YOKE was for a team of two- me and HIM, not me as a member of some corporate oxen and HIM. Just me and HIM.
re-posting:
Eric got me thinking about GLORY on another thread awhile back and I found out some things about GLORY and hair which seem to me related to the “marriage” relationship with Christ…. As well, I had a revelation experience over the passage in John 20 where the second Adam meets with the Woman and calls her by name (in Mary Magdelene’s sandals…
Wayne, I’m sorry if my initial response sounded harsh. I took your question as if it was condescending, questioning MY EXPERIENCE of one on one intense passionate intimacy with God. I used to be uncomfortable in church with songs like “Draw me close to you. Never let me go. I feel the warmth of your embrace….” because I didn’t FEEL like that, I had some very deep unresolved childhood issues which froze me in some ways. NOW I can sing that and mean it.
Here’s my glory, hair, intimacy thoughts…
The woman who loosed her hair with Jesus was doing something a wife did with her husband. I am not thinking of this in a “sensual” manner, though the Jews clearly considered loosened hair sensuous. I am thinking of the LOVE she had for Him, the intense LOVE. Jesus Himself said of her “she loved much” Luke 7:47 She did not care what people thought, she did not care about her reputation. She had eyes ONLY FOR HIM, she poured herself out for HIM, shamelessly, without modesty, without restraint.
I googled the rabbinic story found it at this Jewish site
http://www.torah.org/learning/ravfrand/5759/toldos.html#
Mary, I’m afraid that I am not really sympathetic with a corporate understanding of intimacy with Christ at this point. After nearly 30 years as an evangelical protestant Christian (12 different denominations), and an additional 14 childhood years practicing Roman Catholicism, I am really hurt about not finding “good news” in the institution. I am de-institutionalized. I meet with some girlfriends for Bible study and the thought of being any more “corporate” than that still makes me sick at the present time. I identified with what you said about the institution NOT functioning as a “family”.
And Mary, I’m afraid that my relationship with my earthly husband is not nearly so satisfying, rewarding, and fulfilling as my PERSONAL relationship with Jesus, so I would consider myself to be robbed of something infinitely priceless to me if I conceded any ground on Jesus being “my husband”. I can and do “let down my hair” with Jesus in a way which I can’t and don’t with my earthly husband. Part of me is quite hidden to my husband- but precious to GOD, as the apostle Peter writes of a wife “the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God” 1 Peter 3:4
Charis, what your post tells me is that each person is different. Those who have counseled spiritual abuse victims understand perfectly that many absolutely cannot even so much as pick up a Bible on account of sexual, verbal, physical, emotional abuse by perpetrators who would show up in church each Sunday, maybe even in leadership, with their Bibles in hand. I’m talking about Christians who can’t even read a Bible on account of the emotional triggering.
It is understandable that if you have been badly hurt by churches, that you would not seek to enter such, especially large groups in special buildings designated for such purposes. We can be glad the church is not a large building, nor does it require a large group.
Now, this is not your testimony, but I think the idea is plausible that there are those out there who have had such abusive husbands, that the thought of thinking of God as such may make them sick, and so they think of God in other means. I am not saying anybody else has made this claim in this discussion, only that it’s a possibility to consider.
Does this make sense?
Sure, Lynn.
Both/and, all of it…
I can sympathize with those who struggle with God as Father, Jesus as husband, AND the corporate church. Not just sympathize…
Empathize! BTDT
Actually, my husband is doing much better these days.
Seems more respectful of my boundaries now that he can no longer “appeal to religion” to shame, guilt, and control me; nor impress me by appeals to the authority of his “allies” from the institution.
Mary:
Mrs. Webfoot, I quote you: “God wants women to become wives.” If you believe that (and I have no doubt that you, a married woman, do in fact believe that), then you would have to say that God does NOT want women to be single.>>>
No, I don’t. I believe that you are setting up a false dilemma.
. . . I would consider myself to be robbed of something infinitely priceless to me if I conceded any ground on Jesus being “my husband”.
Here are a two verses out of two respective hymns by John Newton (who wrote “Amazing Grace”):
By John Newton, circa 1779:
HOW SWEET THE NAME OF JESUS SOUNDS
“Jesus! my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,
O Prophet, Priest and King,
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring.”
SWEETER SOUNDS THAN MUSIC KNOWS
“O my Savior, Shield, and Sun,
Shepherd, Brother, Husband, Friend,
Every precious name in one;
I will love Thee without end.”
I don’t think you need to feel robbed. It appears you are in pretty good company.
Yeah! I like what both Lynn and Charis are saying.
Charis, may I ask you? Are you a Beth Moore fan?
I like her.
I understnad Mary’s concerns, too, and share some of those.
Very interesting discussion, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.
Mary
W., I messed up on the nested replies. My response to this question is down at the bottom of the comments.
I’m still hoping that you will help me understand what offended you so from my response to you. No pressure, just a hope to avoid whatever caused the offense in the future, if possible. As it is, I’m afraid it appears to me as though you took offense that I could not agree with what you stated as fact.>>>
Mary, I was not offended that you disagreed with me, because you didn’t. You disagreed with something you think I said, and used my words as a springboard to state your opinions.
You didn’t seem to take the time to “hear” what I was saying.
That’s all. I don’t mind your expressing your views. I’m not sure why you used my comments to do that, though, since what you said had very little to do with what I said.
That happens a lot in discussion, so not to worry, Mary.
God bless, and thanks for trying to understand,
Mrs. Webfoot
Mrs. Webfoot said:
“Mary, I was not offended that you disagreed with me, because you didn’t. You disagreed with something you think I said, and used my words as a springboard to state your opinions.”
Let me again indicate your own words, with which I disagreed and stated why:
“God wants women to be married.” You gave no qualifications and did not back-pedal on this statement until after it became clear that I took it at face value: This statement has to mean “God always wants” and “all women,” unless you make other statements qualifying it. I cannot read your (or anyone else’s) mind in order to know that you didn’t really mean that God always wants all women to be married. And since I know that God does not want all women to be married, I disagreed with you on that statement. My disagreement had everything to do with the very words you posted. There’s no false dilemma about it. You may have meant to write something else, but you cannot reasonably hold those who read your statements to understand that what you said is not what you meant.
“God is [single women's] husband.” You stated this categorically, as fact. It is not. God as the individual believer’s husband is not an established orthodox Christian belief. As I said, there is nothing necessarily wrong for any believer to say that they believe God is their own husband, it’s merely wrong for you, as a married woman, to declare that God IS husband to all single women. Therefore, I disagreed with that statement.
Those are two instances of your unambiguous statements with which I heartily disagreed. And with the statements themselves, minus your attempts to qualify them to mean something else, I still disagree.
You also said the following:
“You didn’t seem to take the time to ‘hear’ what I was saying.”
That is not accurate. I read the exact words you posted, and I responded to them. I have since read your additions which changed the plain meaning of quite a few of your statements, and I do understand a little better that you did not clearly say what you meant on the first go-rounds. As to what you found offensive, you still have not explained, and I’m more than willing to leave it at that. I’m not going to try to guess what is behind the plain statements you have made, in terms of what you actually meant by them.
Lynn, the fact that Whitefield wrote a sermon, and several hymn writers (with whom I certainly familiar) touched on the metaphor of God as an individual believer’s lover or husband, does not make Donna’s “God is [single women's] husband” statement either true or orthodox. I still believe it’s a novel, eisegeted conclusion to draw from passages in which God is described as Israel’s husband.
I did not say that anyone has to NOT believe that God is his/her husband. That would be ludicrous, just as it is ludicrous to state categorically that God IS husband to single women. Simply because I do not accept that blanket statement as either accurate or true for me, does not mean that I do not enjoy deep intimacy with God. As I said before, I certainly do, and it does not take placing God in the role of a husband to grow in that intimacy. As several here have testified, that works for them. It still appears to me that several of you have wrongly assumed that I am not sufficiently intimate with God. Please stand corrected. Yes, some of the Psalms (with which I am also quite well acquainted) do describe a personal, intimate relationship with God, though none do so utilizing marital metaphor. That does not make “God is [single women's] husband” any more tenable.
My point concerning individual vs. corporate worship apparently was not sufficiently clear. Please note, however, that I did not denounce “My Jesus”-type songs. What I meant, and I think said fairly clearly, is that in self-adoring American society, many churches no longer expect to approach worship in any way except as individuals. They neither sing, nor perhaps even know, any corporate hymns. Now in personal worship, there’s not a thing wrong with that. In corporate worship, however, it is the gathered body of Christ; there is an essential quality of “many in One” that is completely missing, all too often, in worship.
Nothing I said had anything to do with faulting those who have been injured by groups of Christians and are gun-shy about corporate worship. That wasn’t my point and not what my words conveyed. What I said communicated the common problem of distorted focus on self even in worship of God. I was not “overreacting” to anything Charis said. Perhaps, though, you either overreacted or did not read accurately what I did say. Charis, I believe you can see that I responded to you about your repeated expression of pity toward those who do not consider God our husband. You seem to have concluded that we who don’t, don’t have intimacy with God. That’s simply not so. Intimacy is not a “for marriage only” relationship quality. You enjoy considering God your husband — great! I’m glad that you find that a healthy part of your growth into the likeness of Christ. Please try to recognize that accepting that metaphor is not essential to having intimacy with God, nor is that intimacy in any way diminished for those of us who also enjoy a strong, connected bond with a congregation of other Christians.
A final observation, based on something you said, Lynn: I hope you are not concluding that those who don’t consider God our husband, have necessarily had some kind of trauma in our (human) marriages. Plenty of strong, vibrant Christians, including many who are married (to other human beings), do not think of God as their husband. Again, accepting that metaphor is neither essential nor a sign of spiritual maturity — or a sign of spiritual IMmaturity, either, for that matter. I was quite amazed at the heat generated by my simply stating that God is not my husband and that I believe Donna was wrong in her statement about single women having God as our husband.
Excuse me, Mrs. Webfoot. In quoting you, I should have written your statement “God wants women to become wives,” rather than “God wants women to be married.” “. . . be married” may be synonymous with “. . . become wives,” but you wrote the latter, not the former.
Mary:
I’m not going to try to guess what is behind the plain statements you have made, in terms of what you actually meant by them.>>>>
I would appreciate that, Mary. Thank you. Maybe if my words are so confusing, you would do better to ignore them.
You might want to just pass by my words next time.
Mrs. Webfoot
“[T]he fact that Whitefield wrote a sermon, and several hymn writers (with whom I certainly familiar) touched on the metaphor of God as an individual believer’s lover or husband, does not make Donna’s “God is [single women's] husband” statement either true or orthodox.”
Of course. I wasn’t saying that just because George Whitefield, John Newton (whom I quoted), Winthrop and Cotton (whom I did not quote but who also spoke this way), and a few other hymn writers (whom I did not quote) all wrote the way Mrs. Webfoot spoke makes her argument correct. That would be a logical fallacy to say that. In order to demonstrate her’s and Charis’ application is not based on good exegesis (you called it an “eisegetic misapplication”) you need to show where the exegesis has gone south. If you cannot show eisegesis, you have to show how, even though they may have given the correct interpretation of the verse in context, they are misapplying it.
The point I was making is, having found other references from the late 1500s, is that the idea isn’t a novel one, which was your claim.
“My point concerning individual vs. corporate worship apparently was not sufficiently clear. Please note, however, that I did not denounce “My Jesus”-type songs. What I meant, and I think said fairly clearly, is that in self-adoring American society, many churches no longer expect to approach worship in any way except as individuals.”
No, it was sufficiently clear, and I said it is a subject in its own right. What I claimed was it was irrelavent to consideration of Isaiah 54:5, Romans 7, etc., and how believers apply the usage of husband/bridegroom to their lives in their respective relationships with the Lord.
Regarding those who don’t consider Jesus their husband, count me in. I wasn’t saying anything about anybody’s reasons for not doing so, just considering whether the idea has Scriptural merit, and who else down through Church history has thought the same way.
I have to disagree with you, Lynn. I thought I showed sufficiently why saying that the cited passages show the believer to be in a marriage relationship with God to be both eisegetic and a misapplication. The eisegesis is taking the idea that the believer should consider God his or her husband into the reading of the text, and lifting the verse out of the context in which God is being likened to Israel’s or the church’s husband in order to say so. The idea may be of personal comfort, but none of the passages cited can rightly be applied to that comforting idea without disregard for sound contextual reading of the passage from which the verse is lifted.
And Mrs. Webfoot, it does no good to express your own desire not to communicate by wrongly saying that I might “want to give [your] words a pass next time” and that “[I] would do better to ignore [your words].” Please accept that despite my desire to understand better your animosity toward egalitarians and our beliefs, and your particular understanding of what you call complementarianism, you are to this point not willing to converse with me or to listen to why I disagree with certain of your beliefs. If there is no bridge of understanding between you and me, it is not for lack of my trying, repeatedly and respectfully, to build one. I am the only person who can be responsible for my words, just as you are responsible for yours. I really had hoped for better than this. I am going to have to assume that it is you who wants me to ignore your comments and give them a pass next time, since those are not my desires.
Lynn, re: “novel”: Donna did indeed put a new twist onto the not-widely adopted “Jesus as Divine Lover” theme of several centuries back. “Jesus is single women’s husband” is not what Whitefield and a few even earlier writers were claiming. The closest to that theme, as I noted, came quite early in monastic tradition, and that only for those called and vowed to that vocation. I realize that you may not agree, but Donna’s citation of Isaiah 54:5 was, for that text and her statement, decidedly novel.
OK, Lynn, for the “Jesus Lovesong” part of my comment, disregard it if you really think it has nothing to do with individualism in the Christian faith. It doesn’t change the principles of biblical interpretation. I brought up the trend in American evangelical worship because I think it feeds and legitimizes other individualistic practices, to the point that some believers see little or no need for any aspect of corporate worship, ministry, and mission, and encourages unchecked personal interpretations of Scripture without the ballast of study with other believers. You may see no connection and consider my mentioning the trend to be completely off-topic, but if the topic is permitted to be “God is [individuals'] husband,” I don’t believe it’s off-topic at all. The very fact that Whitefield preached on the topic (and he used an out-of-context verse to do so) puts it in a highly corporate setting. Also, hymns from the period were as much for private as for public use; in fact, the “established” bodies in Whitefield’s time made very little use of non-scriptural hymns and considered the Pietistic hymns downright wicked (and not in our contemporary colloquial sense of that word!).
“The eisegesis is taking the idea that the believer should consider God his or her husband into the reading of the text, and lifting the verse out of the context in which God is being likened to Israel’s or the church’s husband in order to say so.”
Nobody did that. At the beginning it was said Isaiah 54 was a promise to Israel, in context. How is that eisegesis? It was then said this promise has application to believers.
We know from the whole counsel of Scripture it is a promise only to the remnant that are saved, and the church is grafted in and experiences the blessings promised to Israel. This is true whether you believe in Covenant theology or Dispensational theology. One would say the Church replaces Israel, the other says the Church experiences the blessings promised to Israel, but both agree with the latter, even though CT would not say Israel and the Church are distinct as DT would.
I think it is just plain wrong to say it is only correct application to say, “our Bridegroom, our Husband, and that it is “eisegetic misapplication” to ever say, “my Bridegroom, my Husband.”
No one can be saved by someone else’s salvation. Does anyone disagree with this? “As many as received him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God” happens on a case by case basis. When Romans 7 says you (plural) died to the law so that you might be joined to another, it is not wrong to understand it to mean “each one of you died to the law so that you might be joined (married) to another.”
It is not wrong to have the understanding “I, along with all my fellow believers, died to the law that I might be married to Christ.” But I’m repeating myself. I already explained why I don’t believe anybody committed eisegesis, or misapplied anything.
I agree much of Protestant is too individualistic, just as I think much of Roman Catholic teaching assumes you’re safe if you’re part of group and were born into it and woodenly go through all the sacraments. There is a balance. But I fail to see the quotes where anybody committed eisegesis, and I don’t believe it’s a false application.
By the way, I don’t understand how Mary think’s it is “great” when a person views God as his/her Bridegroom or Husband, as she said to Charis, when at the same time she also thinks it’s an eisegetic misapplication of the text.
If I think someone hasn’t interpreted Scripture properly and is misapplying it in her life, I would not say “great.”
My understanding is that descriptions of God as husband to Israel is a metaphor and the question is then how is God LIKE a husband and how is God UNLIKE a husband in his relationship with Israel.
For example, God is in COVENANT with Israel and a husband is in COVENANT with his wife. This I see as the primary metaphor of husband.
Hosea is the first prophet to use the metaphor, then Isaiah. Jeremiah and Ezekiel use the metaphor also but since this is after the fall of north Israel splits Israel into the northern tribes (Israel, capital Samaria) and the southern tribes (Judah, capital Jerusalem) and so has God married 2 women. This is a metaphor that is understandable in a polygamous culture.
As with any metaphor, some may see it more expansively and some less so, but one should not take a metaphor beyond its usage, as this gets more problematical.
Yes, Mrs Webfoot, I LOVE Beth Moore! Right now I’m taking her class “Living Beyond Yourself” on the Fruit of the Spirit
And Lynn, your comment here: http://complegalitarian.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/bridge-building/#comment-9825
was very touching. I felt understood. Thank you!
“My understanding is that descriptions of God as husband to Israel is a metaphor and the question is then how is God LIKE a husband and how is God UNLIKE a husband in his relationship with Israel.”
Also, each believer dies to the law so that each might be joined to Christ, and the question then is how Christ is like a husband to believers, ad how he is unlike a husband to believers.
“I realize that you may not agree, but Donna’s citation of Isaiah 54:5 was, for that text and her statement, decidedly novel.”
You’re right, I don’t agree.
Don,
Actually, I’m leaning more and more toward seeing a lot of Paul’s usages of man, woman, childbirth, marriage as metaphorical uses… (more)
Part of what has pushed me in this direction is that the reality of a 27 year marriage to an extremely committed Christian husband bears little to no resemblance to what Paul says about “marriage” in Ephesians 5 and I have decided that expecting it to is foolishness on my part (maybe even IDOLATRY!). And Paul plainly clarifies that he is in fact, *not* speaking of flesh and blood marriage but of the relationship between Christ and the church, “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” Eph 5:32
Charis, I thought you might be involved with her studies. Yes, I really like her, too. We did the Living Beyond Yourself study last year. I’m trying to do the Stepping Up study, but our trip and then my illness has interrupted it.
I tried to do some of my homework while we were travelling, but it was hard. We walked all over Europe it seems. All of our friends wanted to take us to see the sights, so that was nice.
I’m going to miss tomorrow’s study, too, so that’s kind of sad.
Yes, I think that Beth is great.
Hey, thanks, Charis.
God bless,
Mrs. Webfoot
I appreciate Don’s comments and concerns.
However, I don’t think that seeing God as like a Husband to me, and seeing Christ as like a Bridegroom to me is a dangerous or unbiblical way to think.
These self-revelatory titles and metaphors are about covenant and redemption.
God has brought me into covenant with Himself. God has redeemed me in Christ. I am not alone in this, but in a body. I am both redeemed and made part of the covenant as an individual believer and redeemed and made a part of the covenant in a corporate way as part of the body of Christ.
I don’t see that it is wrong or dangerous at all to think of God as my Husband or Christ as my Bridegroom in a personal way, since I have been personally redeemed and personally brought into the covenant of grace.
I am also part of the body that is called the Church. I don’t see myself as exclusively possessing God as my Husband. I do see that I have a close, intimate relationship with Him through the finished work of Christ. He is my Kinsman Redeemer, if you will, which is another marriage metaphor in the Bible that is used to show what covenant and redemption look like.
So, no big deal as far as I’m concerned. Also, no big deal that others see it in a different light.
I absolutely enjoy Beth Moore. She is a serious student of the Word, and a great teacher. And she’s been through horrible trauma in her life as a little girl, and is an overcomer. Although there are a couple things here and there in “Breaking Free” I don’t agree with, it is obvious this woman is delivered and set free, and every time you poke her, she bleeds Bible.
I have enjoyed her study on Daniel, and currently we are doing her second study on the Tabernacle (“A Woman’s Heart”). We just finished the session on the Holy of Holies, and I think her tie in to the book of Hebrews and the ministry of Christ was spot on. Her applications are relevant, and based on the text and related Scriptures.
My opinion is she’s as solid a Bible teacher as anybody, male or female
Lynn, you wrote:
i>By the way, I don’t understand how Mary think’s it is “great” when a person views God as his/her Bridegroom or Husband, as she said to Charis, when at the same time she also thinks it’s an eisegetic misapplication of the text.
If I think someone hasn’t interpreted Scripture properly and is misapplying it in her life, I would not say “great.”
Yes, I can see that you don’t understand what I meant. I referred to the fact that it remains eisegesis and a misapplication of the Isaiah 54 text to use that text to support one’s belief that God is one’s husband. The belief itself is not necessarily a bad one to hold. That is why I said, and meant, that it’s just fine if someone believes that God is his or her personal husband. Proof-texting that belief with Isaiah 54:5, however, doesn’t validate the belief. There is far better scriptural support for such a belief from various passages that refer to the individual believer’s intimacy with God. Poor exegesis does not of necessity make the conclusion drawn from it a false belief.
Please look again. You are the one who misinterpreted my comment about Donna’s eisegetic misapplication of Isaiah 54: 5 as a condemnation of the belief that a believer can consider God his or her husband. I never made such a condemnation. Donna used iher prooftext of that verse to claim that God is single women’s husband. I objected, and still object, to that. In your statement about what you think I meant, you’re attributing to me an inconsistency of your own making. I’d prefer to be asked if you aren’t able to make sense out of something I’ve said. I’m perfectly willing to stand by and explain anything I’ve stated, or I wouldn’t have stated it in the first place.
Mary:
Please accept that despite my desire to understand better your animosity toward egalitarians and our beliefs, and your particular understanding of what you call complementarianism, you are to this point not willing to converse with me or to listen to why I disagree with certain of your beliefs.>>>>
I don’t have animosity toward egalitarians. I don’t believe like you do.
Mary, what can I do for you? You can disagree if you want to. That’s fine.
Do you feel rejected by me personally? I don’t reject you, Mary.
I don’t know what else to say.
I referred to the fact that it remains eisegesis and a misapplication of the Isaiah 54 text to use that text to support one’s belief that God is one’s husband.
For refreshers, this is what Webfoot said:
“Isaiah 54:5
For your Maker is your husband— the LORD Almighty is his name— the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.
It is talking about Israel and the spiritual relationship she had with God. I don’t think it’s wrong to apply this verse to all believers. Others may think it has no application for the individual believer, or that it applies only to Jews. that’s okay, but I think it is a promise for me, too.”
OK, Mary, I’ll just have to leave it at this – you think Webfoot committed eisegesis when she said Isaiah 54:5 was God’s word about Israel’s spiritual relationship to Him, but has application to believers, and I don’t think she did commit eisegesis or misapply the text (already explained why a couple times over), and with that, I think I’m about talked out on this particular subject.