Marriage: a tale of paired assertions

by Dan Phillips

First: "Husbands should not force their wives to submit to their lawful authority."

Second: "Wives should not force their husbands to be sexually faithful to them."

Let's try two more, slightly different:

Third: "Husbands should not demand that their wives respect them."

Fourth: "Wives should not demand that their husbands love them."

And:

Fifth: "The Bible says that wives should subordinate themselves to and respect their husbands, but..."

Sixth: "The Bible says that husbands should love their wives as themselves, but..."

Then finally:

Seventh: "A husband's authority should never be exercised in an arbitrary or abusive way."

Eighth: "A wife's expectation of love should never be shrewish, excessively demanding, or insatiable."

Now, discuss.

Suggested questions:

• Is each pair of statements equally Biblical? If not, how not?
• Is each element within each pair of statements heard equally frequently? If not, why not?
• Are answers to any of the previous questions diagnostically helpful as to the spirit of the age?

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Forum on female commentators, theologians, writers

by Dan Phillips

Scripture is clear: there is no such thing as a female pastor under Christ's Lordship. Any woman who aspires to leadership over men in the church is eo ipso disqualified, if only on the grounds that she does not bow the knee to Christ as Lord in terms of her sexuality, and this itself is a disqualifying vice.

So what about female seminary professors? Female commentators? Female theologians, academics, writers?

A well-regarded commentary on Peter is by Karen Jobes. Jobes has also written on Esther, among other things. Tyndale OTC volumes on Daniel and 1-2 Samuel  were by Joyce Baldwin. One of the good books on male/female issues was written by Susan Foh.

I'm currently working through a book of devotions on the Greek New Testament, for which I am writing a review. Some of the contributors are female, one of them a hyphenated Notre Dame grad who's a prof in what at least once was an evangelical seminary.

Now, I'll be up-front with you. If I was out of town and visited a church that had a promising name, and a woman stood up to preach posing as a pastor, I'd likely quietly walk out. I wouldn't find it worshipful to sit and watch her shake her fist in Christ's face, and I wouldn't want to harm her by fostering her illusion.

But these are books, and complementarians read and use them. And these are seminary classes in professedly Evangelical institutions. So what's the difference? Is reading a commentary, or sitting under pastoral preparatory classes taught by a woman different from listening to a sermon by a woman? How? Is it because they aren't in church?

Should we care about the agendas of the women who write these books, teach these courses? Should we make it a point to inquire what they are attempting to accomplish in their careers? Should we care whether they are working towards erasing resistance to female pastors? Are we aiding those efforts by using those resources? Are we safe in assuming that all these and other female Christian writers are happy, Godly mothers, who are subordinate to their husbands as to Christ, and wouldn't dream of preaching or teaching a class with men in it?

These aren't meant as "trick" or loaded questions. I don't have an airtight, all-encompassing answer. Worse, I can't think of any substantial discussion I've ever seen on the topic, though at-least-nominally evangelical female writers and professors seem to be proliferating.

When I was at seminary, it was controversial. Our seminary had fairly recently begun admitting women to the MDiv program. An MDiv is generally perceived as a professional degree for pastors. The argument was that these women were pastors' wives and teachers of women; and why shouldn't they have the benefit of the best education?

One of my fellow-profs' off-the-record response was, "That's like handing someone a loaded pistol, and telling him never, ever to shoot it."

I'm wondering what the brain trust thinks about it, or what resources you've found that I haven't yet seen.

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Asking (and answering) the wrong question

by Dan Phillips

Often a lot of good folks' good time is wasted in responding to the wrong question, to no good result.

Among Christians, I see this most frequently and specifically when someone robustly affirms the sufficiency of Scripture with nary a squish. Few things flush out the false paradigms today more surely than really-really believing that God really-really has said all that needs saying for our day.

For instance, if you announce, "I believe Scripture tells us absolutely everything we need to know about the will of God," someone is going to retort "That sounds like deism," or "That leaves out the ministry of the Holy Spirit."

Or if you say, "Prayer is you talking to God. God talking to you is prophecy. Today, God talks to us in the Bible, period," you will hear "How is that a relationship? Where's the Holy Spirit in that?"

And usually, people who aren't me (and there are so many of them! bless their hearts!) will patiently try to respond at interminable length and — here's they key word — will defend the Biblical position, shore up and repair the damage done by the challenger's premise.

As you might have guessed, I have a different sort of response, and it goes something like this: Well, then...

1. If the Bible teaches Deism, then by all means let's all of us be Deists!
2. If the Bible leaves out the Holy Spirit, by all means let's all of us leave out the Holy Spirit!
3. If the Bible tells us we don't have a relationship with God, then by all means let's all of us not have a relationship with God!

Shocking? If any of the questions is cited above resonated with you, I sure hope so. See, in that case, here's your problem: you came up with a paradigm, you applied it to the Bible and to God, and then you demanded that God (and any who try to speak in His name) snap to your paradigm. You forgot who's the Master, and who's the slave.

So, when someone affirmed the Bible's teaching, and the Bible's teaching clashed with your paradigm (which you may or may not have cadged from the Bible), you smacked the Bible's teaching with the implications of your paradigm. It didn't fit your ideas, your model; so it had to change.

That's a serious problem. Don't you see that? No? Ask yourself: what does the Bible call it when we fashion an image of God (literal or conceptual) and worship that image? "Ohhh," you say. Yep: that's a step in the direction of idolatry.

Let me try to be even pointeder. You said, in effect, "I know what a relationship is: one person talks straight into the other person's ear, then the other person responds straight into the first person's ear. The other person doesn't just write stuff down and say 'There, look at that, it'll tell you what you need to know.' I know that is what a relationship is. Therefore, that must be what it's like to have a relationship with God!"

And there you went. No matter what the Bible teaches about having a relationship with God.

Or you said, "I know what 'spirit' is, it's a mystical ineffable Something that mysteriously moves in a fluttery, non-rational manner, in our feelings and hunches and such. So that's what the Holy Spirit must be like. And since it is the Holy Spirit who gives feelings and hunches and low-grade semi-revelations and ineffable senses of God's nearness, to deny any of that is to deny the work of the Spirit."

And there you went. No matter what the Bible teaches about the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

Or you said, "Deism is where God isn't giving some kind of constant flow of direct personal kinda-revelation anymore. Deism is bad. Therefore, denying that God gives some kind of direct personal kinda-revelation is Deism, and it's bad."

And there you went. No matter what the Bible teaches about the power and life and majesty and completeness and perfection of the Word of God, and its role in the believer's life.

The problem here, then, is asking the wrong question because of a mistaken premise. So we answer the question, but do not address the premise — and we just end up playing Whack-a-Mole. What we need to do is to roll grenade into one of those holes and bring the whole thing down, so God's truth can replace it.

So with this latter example, above. The premise is, "Unless God dribbles mumbly semi-revelation directly into my quivering ear, He's dead and inactive and we don't have a relationship." Rather than defensively try to answer such questions, instead we should say "Where is your authority for that understanding of 'relationship'? Specifically, where is your Biblical authority for that model of our normal relationship with God?"

To take another popular area of faithlessness that enjoys more respect than it should: "I know what dignity means, and I know that for women to have dignity, they must be able to do A, B and C." So we take that premise to the Bible, and (depending on what formalities of faith remain) come up with a rationale for either disregarding or disfiguring the parts that don't fit our premise. The problem, once again, is the premise, and a Genesis 3-like unwillingness to allow God to define what is and is not feminine dignity.

With all such misbased, badly-premised challenges to Biblical faith and life, we should take the premise to the Bible and brutalize it (and its adherents) for non-compliance. Remember: faith is embracing God's Word (Gen. 15:1, 6; Rom. 10:17), lack of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23), and sin is to be put to howling, shrieking death (Rom. 8:13) — not negotiated with and treated as an honored guest.

Because anyone who studies God's Word with any seriousness soon sees that the Bible has a higher view of the Holy Spirit than these leaky canoneers have. The Bible represents that He did a simply boffo job in providing a perfectly adequate, dynamic, living and sufficient revelation in Scripture. And He expects us to study, learn, understand, believe, and live it. And He thinks that will keep us plenty busy.

And if we don't want to be prayerless Deists who quench the Spirit and have no relationship to God, we will believe Him.

(PS — for related thoughts, I warned over a half-decade ago about the Delight and de danger of de metaphor.)

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Two radically different ways of thinking, and their cause

by Dan Phillips

Albert Mohler wrote yesterday about a lady (Anne Eggebroten) who contributed a piece for Sojourner (a magazine for liberals who still want to call themselves "evangelicals"). Mrs. Eggebroten was shocked! shocked! to find men leading at John MacArthur's Grace Community Church.

(I know what you're thinking: "Alert the media!")

Eggebroten provides a horror-struck narrative, in an alien-sociologist tone, about this odd group of pre-Pleistocene throwbacks who think (in agreement with God) that men should lead in the home and in the church. Then, as if thousands of devastating responses hadn't already been launched against Paul Jewett's lame reach for Galatians 3:28 in the last 30+ years, and as if it has anything whatever to do with function, Eggebroten trots it out again. We are all one in Christ. Therefore women can be pastors and needn't subordinate themselves to their husbands.

What of the Pastorals? No problem; they have to be recategorized as sub-Pauline. Other passages? They don't mean what they say, or they're interpolations. Galatians 3:28 — out of context — is Eggebroten's canon. In fact, you could call it The Eggebrotenian Canon.

(Eggebroten doesn't actually cite Jewett, by the way; instead, she reaches for lesbian "Christian" feminist Virginia Mollenkott and a few other Usual Suspects instead. None of which is actually an upgrade.)

What comes through loud and clear is that Eggebroten reveals no doubts that she should be allowed to do what she wants. Eggebroten is insistent on her rights, getting her way; appalled at any talk of submission, subordination, or even "helping." No actual on-the-scene authorities should stand over Eggebroten's wants, her wishes, her desires.  They are all presumed to be holy and good. She is sure of them. So sure, in fact, that she is willing actually to snip out part of the Word of God to accommodate them. Her desires, and her judgment, are superior to the Word of God.

Then comes Professor of Biblical Studies and BioLogos blogger Kenton Sparks, who writes: "I have no interest in preserving Christianity . . . I believe because, as I understand it, it makes sense of human experience. But if it turns out that Christianity fails to do that, I’ll simply turn elsewhere."

Like Ms. Eggebroten, you see that Professor Sparks has absolute confidence in his moral judgment, his personal powers of reason, his spiritual acumen. He announces that Scripture "stands in need of redemption"; and apparently Sparks himself will step in to do the job.

In the words quoted above, Sparks betrays no doubt whatever that he is up to the task. He seems himself as able to judge rightly; in fact, is in no doubt that his judgment potentially superior both to the Bible and thus to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. The Bible (and Christ) may well be wrong. But Sparks? Never! If the Bible offends Sparks, he'll simply walk away, no big deal. Sparks will follow his own judgment wherever it takes him. It is adequate, sound, whole, sufficient.

It is as Gleason Archer and others warned decades ago: abandon the inerrancy of Scripture, and God's supremacy is replaced by the supremacy of personal human judgment.

In these comments, Mrs. Eggebroten and Professor Sparks together stand over the Word. The Word is in the dock, they are the judges. They will massage, manipulate, torture the parts they don't like (creation, created order). If those parts will not subject themselves to EggeSparks' will, they'll either relegate it to sub-Canonical status (Eggebroten) or call it "broken," and perhaps move on in search of something better (Sparks).

As I have argued elsewhere, the point at which the heart shows itself is that point at which God's will and His truth cross our wills and our biases.

Contrast both of these attitudes with that of men and women on whom the Holy Spirit has effectually done the work of conviction of sin, who have had a glimpse of the living God.

Recall Isaiah 6, the throne room vision. How did the sight of the thrice-holy Yahweh affect Isaiah? Remember: Isaiah was a good man: a holy man, a godly man, an incredibly eloquent man. What did he think of himself, after he saw God?

Did Isaiah say, "Now I really feel empowered! I really have to get after asserting my rights"? Did Isaiah say, "You know, that really wasn't bad — for now. You know, until something better comes along"?

Not so much.

When the Holy Spirit deals with a man, a woman, that person is brought face to face with certain game-changing truths. He sees God in His limitless, vast wisdom and purity, His immensity and holiness, His absoluteness and majesty. And in that same glimpse, he sees himself as he has never before appeared. He feels the depth of the depravity of his own deceptive heart (Jeremiah 17:9). He is overwhelmed with his own puniness and impurity (Isaiah 6:5). He cannot escape the sense of his own inexcusable sin (Luke 5:8), and he repudiates it like a foul and filthy thing (Job 42:5-6). His knowledge no longer looks so impressive (Proverbs 30:1-4). Now, it is God's Word alone that stands out as sure and certain (Proverbs 30:5-6).

This is what the fear of Yahweh means, that fear which is the beginning and sine qua non of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7) and of wisdom (9:10). It is the proper view of God, and of my position before Him.

This is the point at which a man throws himself at Jesus' feet, imploring Him for mercy and life and salvation and forgiveness. This is the point at which a man takes Jesus' yoke on himself (Matthew 11:29-30), counting himself a fool, so that he may become (for the first time) genuinely wise (1 Corinthians 3:18). This is the point at which a man embraces Jesus as Savior and - not partner, not advisor, not sounding-board, but - Lord. It is the issue he settles in principle at conversion, or arguably there has been no conversion.

Make no mistake: sin is not only a moral and spiritual blight. It is a noetic blight, a perversion that effects the way we think and process data (Romans 1:18ff.; Ephesians 4:17-19). That is why we don't need a mere pointer here and there, a bit of advice, and an hour or two with a tutor. No, we need to be done with ourselves and our way of processing information as we were outside of Christ (Ephesians 4:22-24), and become renewed in the spirit of our minds (Romans 12:2).

This is a very different spirit than one sees in the wannabe world-friends, the various compromised "-ists" (evolutionists, feminists). This is the spirit that says something like this:

"Left to my own reasoning and judgment, I will surely go horribly, damnably wrong. I already did! My way of thinking headed me straight away from God and towards Hell. It would do it again in a heartbeat, given the chance. I do not know how to think rightly about anything until God teaches me how to think about it, and He does so through His word alone."

I suggest that it is this realization which utterly parts the two schools of thought. They proceed along lines drawn by two markedly different views of God and of self: that I surely can be wrong, but the God of Scripture cannot; or that the God of Scripture can be wrong, but I surely cannot.

The two views cannot be harmonized.

Don't even try.

Postscript: am I judging the writers' hearts? Of course not. How could I (1 Corinthians 2:11)? All of us say and do things from time to time that do not represent our truest beliefs (Romans 7:14-25). I can only see what they write - and that is what they present to the world for evaluation. Yet these are arguments the writers are making which reveal ways of thinking that, if they are Christians, need to be reconsidered, and repented of. I offer them as cautionary examples.

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