Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 8

Recovering the Responsibility of Every Believer is the final section of Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Byrd has been addressing what is wrong, and why it is wrong. Now are her attempts to move the church forward. The first chapter asks the question: Is This the Way It Was Supposed to Be?

Byrd begins with wanting you to put yourself in Martha’s shoes with Jesus coming over for dinner. That Jesus was coming to their home was remarkable in itself. On the streets rabbis and women wouldn’t speak. Mishnah, Aboth 1:5 says: “The wise men say: ‘Who speaks much with a woman draws down misfortune on himself, neglects the words of the law, and finally earns hell.” In other words, not only was it not worth their time, but was seen as a detriment and to be avoided. Women were not part of theological conversations, or political ones.

Having Jesus over violated some of the cultural boundaries that had been established. Jesus didn’t seem to be bound by cultural boundaries; recognizing them for what they were, and were not. While there were no women Apostles, there were women contributing to his ministry and traveling with them at times. But for as bold as Martha was in inviting him over, she kept to the kitchen when Jesus came over. But Mary didn’t. This in a culture when there was opposition to teaching a woman Torah. Some rabbis would teach women enough Torah to know their place, but not all of the Torah. Jesus, on the other hand, told Martha that Mary had chosen the one thing necessary. It was necessary for her to sit and be taught by Jesus. She was a disciple, not merely an interested bystander. Mary, and Martha, had a vested interest in sitting at the feet of Jesus. Women were welcome!

Jesus’ involvement with women reveals that in His kingdom women mattered. He healed women, talked with them in public, and taught them. He traveled with them, and received support from them. This leads to some difficult questions because some churches seem to keep women are arm’s length or only in certain roles.

“Many churches thus limit, in ways they do not limit for laymen, the capacity for laywomen to learn deeply and to teach. … Are the laywomen disciples in your church serving in the same capacity as the laymen?”

Notice what she is saying there. She is talking about laypeople, as distinct from officers. Are men and women able to do the same things in your congregation, or have you decided somethings are for men and some for women?

She returns to the idea of the ezer and the necessary ally. Adam cannot fulfill his mission without Eve, and not just the baby-making part. Women exist for more than bearing and raising children. Since they are members of the church by grace, just like the men, they should be discipled as necessary allies. They are not to be considered “optional, subordinate assistants.” Byrd tries to balance the reality of church offices and the priesthood of believers who get their hands dirty with the work of ministry.

Paul recognized a number of women for their work in the early church. In addition to Phoebe we find Prisca, Chloe, Nympha, Apphia, Lydia, and Junia. This is in addition to the Marys recognized in the Gospels for their role in the earthly ministry of Jesus. Many of them hosted church meetings (I’m not convinced that means leading the church, as Byrd says about Lydia).

We also see that often women were among the first people Paul recognized in his letters. The custom of the day was ordering reflected the status or influence of the individuals. You put the more important people first.

Do we value women like that in our churches? Do we trust women like that in our churches?

The Silence of Women?

1 Corinthians 11-14 give us a glimpse of worship in the early church. What it says about women is important, and part of how Christians today view the participation of women in church life, and the worship service. At the heart of this is 1 Corinthians 14:34 which some people take as absolute and the final and only word on this subject.

As in all the churches of the saints, ³⁴ the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.

This is universal, as indicated by “in all the churches”. But this passage is part of a larger context. That seems to be ignored by many who minimize the role of women in church and worship. Why do I say that? Well, because in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul talks about women prophesying and praying in the corporate worship service. Is this a conflict or contradiction? Not if we understand them in context.

Some argue that in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul is being ironic, and that if they were to pray and prophesy they should wear a head covering. But they don’t actually (the argument goes), as we see in 1 Corinthians 14. If he’d written that they were to be silent before saying they pray and prophesy, I could maybe understand this. Because of this strange way of looking at 1 Corinthians 11-14, Byrd talks about those places in many towns called Spook Hill when it feels like the car is rolling uphill. I lived near one in central FL. Things get “spooky” when we talk about these texts. “The landscape can be deceiving.”

The issue has to be resolved by examining the context of 1 Corinthians 14:34 which is the evaluation of the prophecies. Byrd follows an number of people including the other Keller, Kathy, as well as Stephen Um (a PCA pastor) and Ben Witherington in seeing the silence limited to the judging of the prophesies which is the exercise of authority (in keeping with 1 Tim. 2:12). They were not exercising teaching authority. They were not to speak when that was happening. But they could pray and prophesy while wearing the sign of authority. This implies that whatever the prophecy was, it was not authoritative and needed to be examined by the elders to see if it was consistent with the Scripture and teaching they had.

As Christians all contribute to the worship service (not just the men), they are to act in love (1 Cor. 13 is the hub of all this). Every Christian gets spiritual gifts, having been baptized by the Spirit (1 Cor. 12) and they are not distributed by sex. Don’t confuse gifts with office. All Christians were encourage to sing, to pray, to prophesy or speak in tongues (assuming there was an interpreter). When it came time for the prophecies to be judged, the women were to be silent. The silence was tied to a particular time in the service for the exercise of authority.

“Upholding the proper order of worship, respecting the officers of the church, and refraining from noninspired speech that disrupts worship all fall short under the command all fall under the command of the Lord to love- the very thing Christians should be known for. And these are lasting principles for the church today.”

Consequences for Worshiping Together

The church is the household of God. We should treat fellow members with affection and respect. That they did this was misinterpreted by many critics of the church. The early church was accused of incest, among other things. The imaginations of unbelievers had run wild. But instead of following the cultural practices of their culture, the Christians treated each other as brother and sister, with a pure affection for one another rather than avoidance or keeping a proper social distance.

This was a function of their identity in Christ, in whom there is neither male nor female. They are equal in His eyes, and equally sons and heirs of salvation. None are second class citizens. The shared a heavenly citizenship that shaped their social interactions. This is what led to some of the persecution they experienced.

Peel and Reveal

Byrd returns to the question of what men and women can do in a worship service. “Have we properly retrieved what the early church has passed down?” She wonders if there is something particularly masculine about collecting the offering. You might say that’s for the deacons, and in the PCA you’d be wrong. It is their responsibility to plan and organize it, but they don’t have to execute it (BCO 9-2). Women can technically be asked to help with it. We sometimes use unordained men to help if there aren’t enough deacons. We could, theoretically, as laywomen to help too. Then again, maybe they don’t want to be bothered.

Remember, Paul encouraged full member participation in most of the worship service. Whether or not our worship services reflect this matters in terms of how we are seen by the world. In the early church the participation of women was seen as scandalous by the world. Today the lack of participation of women in some churches is seen as scandalous by the world.

“Whatever our stance is on ordination, these are the questions we should be asking. And yet for some reason, even when we discuss the contributions of laypeople, the church is still stuck on this problem of women and where to draw the line. As one article published in CBMW News put it, “But What Should Women Do in the Church?”

This article by Grudem is mis-titled, in my opinion. “Should” isn’t the same as “can”, and this should be about what they “can” do. Grudem proceeds to list 83 different types of service in the church and evaluate them with guidance from the Danvers Statement. His personal lines are even stricter (at that time anyway). He discusses hierarchies of authority and influence. In this view, women shouldn’t have authority or influence over men. How exactly should a woman ask a men to set up a table for a pot lock, I wonder. Must she go to her husband and ask her to tell the man to put in a particular place? Is that actually authority? Does the man have to do it or face church discipline?

“We would define authority in general as the right and power and responsibility to give directions to another.” Piper and Grudem

In this way they separate laymen from laywomen ontologically and allow laymen to exercise authority in the church but not women except over kids, and maybe other women. This would all imply that no one is under the authority of the Session and being asked by them to fulfill that task or function. Any authority is delegated authority or responsibility. My wife has plenty of delegated authority at home.

Peeling Back Yellow Fractions

Byrd argues that these lists of hierarchy fall into a similar error as the egalitarians. These lines can be quite arbitrary and not reflective of Scripture, just as the egalitarian lines are not reflective of Scripture. The CBMW reveals a fractional complementarianism, broken down by what women can and cannot do. Most of this section is a series of questions. She plays the interrogator instead of providing the answers. She wants us to work through it.

This gets back to how one views women. In 1 Corinthians 11 a wife is her husband’s glory. In terms of creation she came from Adam’s side just as the Church comes from Christ’s wounded side. Together Adam and Eve were to fulfill the creation mandates. There was no division of labor based on gender. In heaven there will be no such division of labor either.

“Now let’s return to CBMW’s definition of authority … Is authorization (authority?) an ontological right that belongs to a particular sex, a power bestowed on men to always have the say-so in all things? … While church officers have a distinct authorization in teaching and ruling, brothers and sisters who hear the Word of our Groom are authorized as a priesthood under this ministry to testify to Jesus to one another.”

Time for a story. During a pastoral transition I applied for a job with a national insurance company. I was called for a series of interviews in another city. I brought CavWife and we enjoyed some time without the 2 kids. In my first interview I discovered that I had uploaded the wrong resume. I had uploaded the one for church positions which mentioned male headship in home and church. The woman interviewing me wanted to know if I could work for a woman boss. Well, I’ve worked for a number of them in the past (and would in the future as well) and never had an issue submitting to a woman in school or the workplace. If I struggled it was about what they asked me to do, not due to their gender. Women can exercise authority over men, and we need to stop arguing that they can’t. That is NOT biblical manhood and womanhood. That is closer to the oppression of women in the past.

The question we need to be asking is what are only ordained officers allowed to do. The rest would be left open to laypeople at the discretion of the Session (elders). Convictions produce practices, and our practices reveal our convictions.

I’ll give Aimee Byrd the final word today.

“What corresponding strength do your women have to offer? Rather than bury and hide what the Lord has given under an imaginary line on a hierarchical list, how can your church be counter-culturally capable as opposed to some of the accepted teachings of so-called biblical manhood and womanhood in evangelicalism? Why is this necessary?”

 

 

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 7

Aimee Byrd’s 6th chapter, The Great Divorce That You Didn’t See Coming, addresses the problem of parachurch ministries and the discipleship being farmed out to them. This should not be be taken to mean that she is against parachurch ministries, but that she is advocating for the centrality of the church and its mission.

Parachurch ministries are intended to work alongside (para) and supplement the church, not to replace or supplant the church. When churches fail to do their job, people often turn to parachurch ministries to fill the gaps. As someone who used to work in a parachurch ministry, I understand this and lament that so many churches aren’t engaging and serving their people well. In our consumeristic age, many affiliate with parachurch ministries that are more visible and dynamic than the local church. A study a few years ago explained this in terms of people who were parts of parachurch ministries in high school and college still wanting similar ministry instead of the style employed by local congregations.

Byrd discusses a conversation with a friend who attends a local congregation but doesn’t think she needs it in light of the availability of her favorite celebrity pastor’s sermons. This problem has grown with the advent of the live streaming era thanks to Covid-19. It is great that those sermons are available to edify us and others but many rely on them or put a higher priority on them than their local pastor. In other words there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Christian life. This indicates a breakdown in discipleship.

Others women she knows talk about discipling people who don’t go to their church. I understand if there is a pre-existing relationship but generally agree with Byrd’s concerns.

She is building on the previous chapter and points to the disconnect among many church members. She notes we should be friends, but not lovers, with the parachurch ministry (an odd metaphor). Many come to faith through parachurch ministries. Some have turned to them to be discipled. There is plenty of bad ecclesiology in our midst. Byrd notes that she knows leaders in parachurch ministries who are not members of a local church.

“But the popular mind-set is that while church is still recognized as important, the real ministry is taking place outside the church.”

Why Discipleship Is Leaving the Church

Byrd shifts to the reasons for this shift. She mentions the couple that splits when everyone thinks the marriage was strong. The couple has put on a happy face, but behind closed doors they have drifted apart or become combative. In congregations, people can feel forgotten and neglected so they begin to look for fellowship and opportunities to grow elsewhere. Others feel unneeded by their congregations, and want a way to serve but can’t find one. Some of these people change churches, but others stay and look to a parachurch ministry to meet this need.

So, these are two groups. There are those who seek from parachurch ministries the investment and growth that should be given from the local church. There are those who develop their own ministries to others disconnected from the local church.

We do need to be careful. Some parachurch ministries exist to help people serve in the local church. They really view themselves as coming alongside, being partners with the local church. Some, sadly, are people who have been hurt by the local church and don’t see themselves as partners so much as substitutes.

She mentions IF-Gatherings ministries which says “Discipleship is what we’re about.” This ministry has reached over a million women. Thousands of women attend their conferences. In some cases they take the place of discipleship in the local church, and for other people they supplement and assist local church ministry. The problem isn’t the ministry but how people utilize them.

“Church leaders, laypeople, and parachurch ministries need to stop and ask what our responsibilities are and how God’s people are discipled.”

Byrd thinks there needs to be an RDT or DTR (depending where you are from): a talk to define the relationship. This is not simply to chastise parachurch ministries, but also to prompt church officers to be more engaged. We need to engage the Word together and make sure people are providing and looking for discipleship in all the right places.

The Problem of Biblicism

She brings up the Biblicist method of teaching Scripture. I’m not sure how true that is, but in the case of CBMW many of the leaders do use such a method. I’m surprised this didn’t come up earlier, particularly when she was addressing ESS. As I noted in an earlier post, Matthew Emerson provides a fairly lengthy critique of Grudem’s Biblicist method of interpretation that leads him to some faulty conclusions (He Decended to the Dead, pp. 5-17, 67-74). ESS would be one of them, as well as denying that Jesus descended to the dead. But Byrd does address this here because Piper and Grudem are not the only ones who use this kind of method to interpret the Bible.

“Biblicists rightly uphold the authority of Scripture but often read the Bible with a narrow, flat lense of interpretation, zooming in on the words in the texts themselves while missing the history, context, and confessing tradition of the faith. Biblicists emphasize proof texting over a comprehensive biblical theology. What often happens unintentionally is that the Biblicist readers become their own authority, since they often don’t notice they are also looking through their own lens of preconceived theological assumptions.”

Sorry for the lengthy quote there, but Byrd briefly discusses what is wrong with such a method (ignoring historical context, theological context as well as the interpretive history) and the end result of becoming one’s own authority. Your interpretation becomes THE interpretation with no one to correct you. We see this, in my opinion, with Piper’s permanent marriage view, as well as ESS. Byrd brings it back to ESS as well. “Biblicists employ a fundamentalist approach to God’s Word that doesn’t take into account how the church and the Scriptures go hand in hand.” She warns that “Biblicist doesn’t mean biblical.”

Many parachurch ministries are vulnerable to this precisely because they don’t have confessions of faith, or if they do it is minimal and lowest common denominator in nature. It becomes an interpretive community of 1 or 20, rather than the whole church through time.

Byrd is concerned that they mimic the church despite not having the same ecclesiastical offices. They have a board, typically following a business model. Yet they have “worship services” in their conferences. They sing songs, but there is generally no call to worship, confession of sin or faith, no sacraments etc. Some don’t allow women to speak even though they aren’t the church. As a result there are exclusively women’s parachurch ministries where gifted women get to contribute.

The Covenantal Context of Discipleship

Byrd advocates for the covenantal context of discipleship. The visible church is a covenant community. We’ve made promises to teach all as Christ commanded.

This is what makes some of the criticism she’s received from Reformed leaders confusing. She affirms qualified male elders in the church. She wants women to be discipled too. And she sees this in a covenantal context. This is all good, man. It seems an area of disagreement is maximized and the many areas of agreement are minimized.

She continues to bring out the Swain and Vanhoozer as she affirms that reading, and interpretation, is a communal exercise. I don’t just read the Bible with Jesus. We see the extremes here. Some think they don’t need to learn how to interpret the Bible, just pray. Others think it is so hard they won’t even try. Often the quiet time becomes a strange mystical experience utterly divorced from confessional boundaries, teachers of the present and past, as well as biblical theology. She advocates for more dogmatics, or systematic theology, to be taught to women. This is a common theme in her books.

Peel and Reveal

Rather than affirm historic confessions (like say, Ligonier did), many ministries form their own statements of faith. The CBMW did this with the Danvers Statement (which includes ESS). These statements, she argues, often further their own agenda and existence. This is true when you look at the introduction to the Danvers Statement.

“Parachurch often reinforces bad gender tropes, outfitting and amplifying many of the divisions between men and women in the church.”

In this context she returns to the use of “roles” by the CBMW. Yes, it should not be applied to “an ontological creational norm that women are subordinate to men.” As I noted, I don’t agree with her isolation of one meaning of the word, but I agree with Byrd that they fill their books, conferences, Bible studies and resources with erroneous stereotypes of men and women.

The problem didn’t stay limited to the CBMW. She notes that Southern Seminary has adopted the Danvers Statement to which employees must subscribe. Sadly, contrary to my vote, the PCA also adopted the Nashville Statement as if our own confessional material was insufficient. Yes, it does include the new terminology of recent days, but I think it clearly lacks the precision of the Westminster Standards. It affirms but does not define gender differences in Article 4. However, this is still written while affirming ESS as the basis for subordination.

“I belong to a church that already subscribes to historically faithful orthodox confessions. I am thankful that I don’t need to worry over signing additional statements with questionable theology.”

From here Byrd shifts to revealing who is exhorted to church. She brings up a number of “one another” texts that encourage Christians (not separated by sex) to exhort and teach one another. She notes “Laywomen in the Scriptures are not addressed as subordinate to laymen.” This is the view that riles up some people who embrace the CBMW view of men and women in terms of authority and submission rooted in ontology. These many verses she lists do not have qualifiers to limit the teaching of women. She then claims “It would be disobedient to Scripture to withhold women from teaching.” She certainly points out a theological oddity, not to be confused with a geographical oddity. As we apply the analogy of Scripture (WCF, I)the clear passages interpret the unclear, not the other way around. She will get to 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 in the next chapter. Even if you want to say a woman should be silent in the church, the context is the corporate worship service. That would not prohibit a woman from acting like any other lay person in a Bible study or Sunday School class.

She then shifts her attention back to parachurch ministries in general.

“We should not confuse the authority given to church officers with the authority of board members. We should not confuse the worship service, where God promises to bless us in Christ, with the classroom or the conference stage.”

She reminds us it is “helpful to distinguish between primary doctrinal issues, secondary issues, and even third-order issues of differences.” Oddly she footnotes an Al Mohler, of the aforementioned Southern Seminary, article from 2005 called “A Call for Theological Triage and Christian Maturity”. There is also a book by Gavin Ortlund called Finding the Right Hill to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage on this subject. She doesn’t say it, but most of what we discuss as differences between men and women would fall under third-order issues since they are not covered in ecumenical confessions of faith. As a result, we should allow one another latitude on that which is not clearly defined in Scripture (like the office of elder is). Parachurch ministries shouldn’t be organized around such third-order issues. It seems like straining at the gnat.

Parachurch ministries can come alongside the local church to help it fulfill its mission, rather than seek to fulfill that mission for it. What is drawing her ire is the later.

This chapter does advance her overall argument. It does point out some of the serious issues people should have with the CBMW, and some other parachurch ministries. Not everyone will agree with her statements. The question is, are those differences biblical or cultural? Are we sure?

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 6

Aimee Byrd begins What the Church Is For, the 5th chapter of Recovering from Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, with a story. This is a story that many parents can relate to. She began to bake a pizza for dinner but had to walk her son to the bus stop. So she called her daughter to ask her to remove the pizza when it was done. She was 14, but like Moses by the burning bush she came up with a series of excuses about why she couldn’t. It was just too intimidating for her. She hadn’t done this before. So her friend, whose parents were divorced, took it out.

“I stood there at the bus stop with a terrifying thought. My oldest child might be out of the house and away at college in three-and-a-half years, and she still couldn’t take a pizza out of the oven.”

This reminded Aimee that her job was to prepare her daughter to leave the home, and not be dependent on take out. She tells this as a metaphor for the church. Many churches are filled with perpetual adolescents spiritually. They don’t really know how to read and interpret the Bible. They don’t know how to serve. “The pizza revelation helped me to step back and recalibrate my parenting according to the big picture.” Many churches have forgotten why the exist.

She builds on the work of Scott Swain, whom she has referred to a fair bit throughout the book. One criticism of Byrd’s book is that she relies on egalitarians. While she does use work by some egalitarians, there are also plenty of references to people like Scott Swain who is not egalitarian. This may be shocking, but we can learn things from people who are egalitarian. Byrd expresses her dependence on a variety of people both complementarian and egalitarian in this book.

Earlier she used work from Swain (and Michael Allen) to talk about retrieval from Reformed Catholicity. Here she uses Swain’s work on communication and communion, a distinction she will use throughout the rest of the book. Communication is to “make common” between 2 or more persons. Communion is about “sharing, holding in common.” The first is the action that enables the second to be true. This communication and communion comes to us through Christ. She quotes John Owen here, “We are never more like God than when we love his Son through his Spirit.”

As a part of our salvation, Bryd brings us to the covenant of redemption made between the Father and the Son in eternity. In this she brings in Bavinck, another of those non-egalitarians, to help us understand this covenant. We are a gift from the Father to the Son as a reward for procuring our salvation. He doesn’t simply save us, but we become His Bride. Bavinck argues that without Christ there is no Church, and without the Church there is no Christ. This refers to the economy of redemption. It is not that the Son doesn’t exist, but there is no Messiah without a people to be His bride and body. This became Augustine’s hermeneutical key for the Psalms: Christ head and body (the totus Christus).

Our enjoyment of communion with Father and Son by the Spirit does not await the afterlife. Jesus has been restoring God’s household on earth to prepare it to dwell with Him in eternity. The church, as the household of God, exists to prepare us for the eternal state. “We are to communicate, make common, the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that all whom the Father gave to the Son will commune, share, hold in common, with him.” THIS is what the church is for.

Peel and Reveal

This is a short chapter and she gets to the application quickly. She returns to her opening metaphor. We don’t passively wait to be fed, like birds in a nest (my addition). She sees discipleship as foundational to church life; tasting and seeing that the Lord is good so that we are nurtured and equipped to serve Him. Church officers  are responsible to disciple men and women.

She makes the point that we don’t need new revelation but we still need the proclamation of the revelation we received, the Word. Both men and women need to be addressed by the Word.

Here she shifts to the work of Dr. Valerie Hobbs, a lecturer in applied linguistics. Hobbs’ point is that pastors address men more than they address women in the course of their sermons. They refer to men more (illustrations and application). I can understand her big point- pastors should make sure they make application to women and their general circumstances, as well as use illustrations that involve women. This is something Byrd has written and spoken about before. That is not a criticism, but this is a passion for her and something that pastors still need to work on.

Let’s take this out of the context of men and women for a minute. There are children in the worship service. As a pastor my sermons can’t just address the adults. I need to include some illustrations and stories they can understand, as well as some application to them. I do, but not enough. This is what Byrd is getting at.

She also returns to the “poor condition of women’s ministries”. This is not true of every church, but don’t assume it isn’t true of yours without talking to the women. One result of the neglect of women’s ministry by pastors and sessions is the prevalence of bad theology. Sometimes it is simply superficial, and other times it is dangerous. She’s calling us to exercise greater oversight, not less. She’s calling us to be more involved, not less. She wants there to be more theology in women’s ministry, not less.

Peel and Reveal 2

She has a second major peel and reveal in this chapter. Not only are women’s ministries generally neglected, but women are intended to be equipped for ministry. Women are part of the body being equipped in Ephesians 4. She sees the fruit of this in Romans 16. She points particularly to Phoebe whom Paul commends as a sister and servant (or deacon). Calvin, in his commentary, says she had the office. Some of us reject that notion, likely based on our understanding of the diaconate in our congregations and denominations. We aren’t necessarily looking at sources from the early church to see how the deacons functioned, particularly the role of deaconnesses who assisted deacons in serving the women of the congregation. Phoebe is central to her point here. Most people agree that Phoebe was the one who brought the letter to Rome. This was why Paul wanted them to welcome her. He’s establishing her creditials beyond carrying the letter.

Referring to Michael Bird’s work, Byrd believes Phoebe would also explain the letter to the Romans should they have questions. She delivered it, but did she have “his authority” or personal representative to address any questions as Bird and Byrd theorize? I’m not sure. Perhaps this is a stretch, as I wrote in the margin.

Phoebe was a patron of the church, and likely Paul himself at times. She refers to Philip Payne who indicates this is a position not only of wealth but also authority. We do see that women acted as patrons for Jesus’ ministry, but in that case Jesus was not under their authority, they were under his. Such women in Greco-Roman culture had more freedom than the average woman. A patroness “had liberty to exercise her ideas and interests with society’s blessings.”

Let’s separate speaking and teaching from authority. A patroness could speak and teach. She had influence due to the money provided. None of those is the same as authority. Paul didn’t have to do what Phoebe said. When I taught Sunday School as a layperson, I didn’t have authority.

For her to seemingly press authority here creates an unnecessary obstacle for some in recognizing she was more than a source of money or someone who delivered the letter. What Byrd is getting to is women being co-laborers. Phoebe certainly was that, and she was not the only woman who was a co-laborer for the gospel that Paul and Luke mention.

What Byrd wants us to see when we peel back the yellow wall paper is that lay women have a role in communicating the gospel, and that role isn’t necessarily limited to other women and children. In other words, Titus 2 is not a limitation on the teaching ministry of women but is indicated how those groups should interact with one another so Titus doesn’t feel like it is all on him.

“Therefore, we are to communicate, make common, the gospel of Jesus Christ together, so that all whom the Father gave to the Son will commune, share, hold in common with him.”

The church exists to disciple Christians, including women. Christians are not simply disciples but also disciple others. Woman have a role in discipling other Christians. Clearly they disciple other women and children. Byrd wants us to see that even within the context of qualified male leadership there is a place for lay women to communicate the gospel just like lay men. Not everyone will or can accept this premise. She will get back to it again.

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 5

I want to start with a story or two. Two.

Saturday a friend of mine died. Years ago he attended a PCA church in Orlando where a friend of mine was a pastor on staff. This friend raised concerns to me about this PCA pastor based on some lectures he gave on women in the church. At the time I didn’t share his concerns about my other friend. I didn’t think he was moving toward egalitarianism. A few years later this pastor friend moved cross country to serve on the staff of a church that would eventually leave the PCA and fully embrace egalitarianism. My friend did “slide” into egalitarianism, but may have hid it since he credited one of our professors. My late friend was right, and I missed it.

In my first pastorate one of the influential women gave me a book to read. She was on the search committee that called me. She had been auditing courses at RTS Orlando. She led our women’s ministry. The book was Sarah Sumner’s Men and Women in the Church, which is clearly egalitarian. Earlier she’d given me insightful articles from Kenneth Bailey. This book was less than insightful contrary to the positive blurbs by respected men, but it was insightful into this friend’s trajectory. It broke my heart when she and her husband left the church and began to attend a PC(USA) church (now ECO).

Sometimes you can see it coming, and sometimes it is more subtle. Some people claim they see Aimee Byrd well on the road to egalitarian. I’m not so sure. My foresight, obviously, is not perfect including in this area. But the issue may be their adherence to the CBMW formulation of complementarianism.

Cognitive Dissonance

Today we’ll look at the beginning of the Part 2: Recovering Our Mission. The first chapter in this section is Why Our Aim Is Not Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. She begins this with part of her story. She was married a month after graduating from college and began to read books to help her become “the perfect Christian wife.” This was when she read Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood aka the Big Blue Book. She was seeking a “biblical understanding of the sexes.” There were parts that were hard for her to accept, but she trusted the radio shows that spoke well of the book. “That’s what I wanted to be: good and conservative.” She was not comfortable with “some” of the teachings in the book. Not all. Not most. Some. She assumed she’d understand them better as she matured.

“I do want to note that there are plenty of helpful teachings in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, written by authors who have benefited the church in numerous ways.”

Over time, however, “more and more strange teachings on femininity and masculinity have emerged under the rubric of biblical manhood and womanhood.” She is not alone in thinking this. She mentions some of them earlier in this book, and they concerned me when I read them years ago. I thought they were aberrations but now realize my understanding of complementarianism is not on the same side of the spectrum as theirs. I was concerned when Piper thought women shouldn’t be police officers because that involves authority over men (“Should Women Be Police Officers?” August 13, 2015). In that article he mentioned teaching in colleges as well. Byrd also notes a place where Piper discusses a woman being careful in giving a lost man directions lest we undermine his sense of masculinity. Sorry, I don’t get it. I simply want to get to my destination, and apart from verbal abuse I’m not guarding my sense of masculinity.

Eternal Submission of the Son

Where she goes here is more fundamental, however. She came across a CBMW document expressing ESS (Eternal Submission of the Son). This view states that in the ontological Trinity, the Son submits to the Father. This view is not expressed in any of the major creeds and confessions. We do recognize that in the economic Trinity, the Son as Messiah submits to the Father on our behalf. The first speaks to the Son in his essence, the second to the Son in his office as Redeemer.

She pursued conversations with representatives of CBMW including the president at the time. In books, members of the CBMW continued to assert this view. It shows up in the ESV Study Bible as well. This view is used as the basis for their version of complementarianism: men and women are both human (equal in essence) but women submit to men (different in role/function).

I don’t believe in ESS nor agree with its use by CBMW to defend an erroneous view of men and women. In Ephesians 5, wives submit to their own husbands, not men in general. Women are not inferior to men due to their gender, not to submit to men in general. In the 10 commandments, we are to honor our parents meaning that sons (even as adults) are to honor their mothers. Mothers don’t submit to adult sons.

Back to Byrd’s book from that aside. She tried to address this publicly as well. As she tells it no one was listening. Then Liam Goligher did a guest post on her blog on this subject and the can of worms was opened. ESS became a big internet controversy.

Okay. At this point I wondered if she wants credit for exposing this heterodoxy, simply wants to say no one took her seriously or both. Goligher was more than a “housewife theologian” and had more gravitas. That he was a man can also play into it. But there seem to be some sour grapes at work in this too.

She then brings it back to the Big, Blue Book. Once again she notes there is good material in there, but also some disconcerting material as well. There is a big problem when the differences between men and women are reduced to “one of ontological authority and submission.” I’ve always understood this as patriarchy, not complementarianism. While she mentions Denny Burke, Owen Strachan and others, her focus is on Wayne Grudem who has been a big advocate for this deviant view of the Trinity, including in his work on the ESV Study Bible notes. I was disappointed to see Ligon Duncan so earnestly affirming the updated version of the Big, Blue Book such that communicating the doctrines and applications taught in it were essential to Christian discipleship.

“While I wholeheartedly affirm distinction between sexes, I am convinced that our choices are not between CBMW complementarianism and vague androgynous discipleship.”

She is raising serious issues here. In my opinion she is right. I’ll let her speak for herself:

“Nowhere does Scripture state that all women submit to all men. … And it is difficult for a laywoman like me, who does see some theological teaching for God outfitting qualified men for an office to see this kind of reductive teaching and call it complementarianism. … My femininity is not defined by how I look for and nurture male leadership in my neighbors, coworkers, or mail carriers. I am not denying the order needed in both my personal household and in the household of God, but I do not reduce the rights and obligations in a household to mere authority and submission roles. … I uphold distinction between the sexes without reduction, as Scripture does.”

She affirms that church office is reserved for qualified men. She refers to Genesis 2 in the footnote, but overlooks 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. That is puzzling, frankly.

In the next section she’s wondering if we’ve baptized “chivalry” and made it biblical manhood. I think she is onto something with this. Like the Pharisees added to the laws regarding the Sabbath and used the corban principle to avoid caring for parents, we can add cultural understandings to our biblical understanding in a way that is inappropriate and confusing. She quotes Sarah Coakley as noting that the point of headship “is not executive dictatorship but responsibility for the “well-being of the whole.”” She uses John McKinley’s “necessary ally”, though I prefer Allender and Longman’s “intimate ally”.

To be fair, in What’s the Difference?, Piper’s contribution to the Big, Blue Book, he mentions men listening to their wives to gain input. The “definition” expresses “benevolent responsibility”. But we do need to emphasize, I think, the partnership of marriage. Headship in Ephesians 5 is sacrificial and for the well-being of the wife. Back to Genesis 2, she is an ally in our God-given mission. Being a man or woman can not be reduced to authority/submission. There is a bit of overlap in their expression of this relationship, but their foundation is quite different.

Restoring the Imago Dei

I think she takes too much time expressing the fact that our goal in discipleship is not masculinity or femininity but conformance to Christ (Romans 8). At a few points that will be different. But the goal is being a mature human being, restoration of the image of God (Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3).

“Christian men and women don’t strive for so-called biblical masculinity or femininity, but Christlikeness. Rather than striving to prove our sexuality, the tone of our sexuality will express itself as we do this. … I do not need to do something in a certain way to be feminine. I simply am feminine because I am female.”

She sees some benefit to exclusive studies for men and women. There are “shared experiences and responsibilities within our sex.” (She probably should use “gender” in these instances.) Her concern is that we take this too far too often, as though we can only be discipled separately. Drawing on Phillip Payne’s material she asserts (rightly) that both men and women received authority over earth and creatures. Unlike in the pagan cultures around them, men were supposed to leave their family of origin to cleave to his spouse. In pagan countries she shifted from her family to his.

In Mark David Walton’s article for the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood these gender distinctions (authority & submission) remain for all eternity since they are ontological. Women, in this view, would eternally submit to men even though both are made in the image of God.

Peel and Reveal

She goes off her on “role”. She does this, in my opinion, in a reductionistic way. She focuses on the definition derived from the playhouse. As a result she wants us to stop using this in discussing men and women. She’ll also do this in chapter 6. But according to dictionary.com the 2nd definition is “proper or customary function” and the third is the sociological use (pertinent here!) “the rights, obligations, and expected behavior patterns associated with a particular social status.” That status should not be “woman” but “wife”. Not “man” but “husband” and “church officer”.

She seems to be going after both ESS and expressions of complementarianism at the same time. She does not clearly delineate between the two but goes back and forth between them. They are related, but distinct. This is a weakness of hers or at least this chapter.

And then she returns to norms. “I agree with Mark Cortez that we can still affirm some cultural norms associated with gender without holding that these must be essential to our sexuality.” But in this section she seeks to get metaphysical and philosophical. She depends on Sister Prudence Allen in pp. 124-30, and frankly I’m lost. Philosophy is not my strong point, and I’m not familiar with this philosopher. I got “fractional complementarity” and “integral complementarity”. She brings in Pope John Paul II, as well as Paul Zanacanaro and Julian Marias. In all this I couldn’t tell if she was using them positively (she does say they think more thoroughly and biblically) or negatively (since their conclusion sounds remarkably like Piper and Grudem). Just call me Vinnie because “I’m soooo confused.”

The peel and reveal section seems to waste the good and important material she covered in the body of the chapter. There are serious problems in the theological basis for the CBMW version of complementarianism, and therefore serious problems in how they understand masculinity and femininity in relationship to one another. She could have done a better job delineating her points of agreement with CBMW since there are some.

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Considering Travers

I met John Travers III,  forever known simply as Travers, shortly after I moved to Orlando in 1991. I had lived in New England my entire life. I was going through some culture shock. As a northern Baptist at a mostly Presbyterian seminary, I found a local Southern Baptist Church with a Calvinistic pastor. It was there that I met John.

Like me, he didn’t belong. Or should I say fit. John was from New Jersey, and like me, a northern Baptist trying to figure out life in the south. He had moved down with his family while I had moved away from family. But being “Yankees” we both obviously knew everything and didn’t mind how loud it got when we disagreed. Disagreeing was okay, most of the time. I was probably the more sensitive of the two of us. I might be annoyed for a day or two. But it was hard to stay annoyed with Travers.

But at least he wasn’t a Yankees’ fan. Another person said he was, and I mentioned it in my FB post, but John was really a Mets fan. And a Giants fan. He went National, not American, apparently. This made it fun when we were with Probst who was from NY and a Yankees and Jets fan who could argue with both of us. But I’m getting too far ahead.

Neither of us stayed long at that Baptist church. We both struggled to fit into SBC culture. I was a frustrated nomad for the first few years of seminary until I finally went back to that church. That absence meant I didn’t get an internship position. But the Singles intern would let me teach. I still didn’t quite fit but tried to make the most of it.

Through roommates I started going to some singles events at Orangewood PCA. There was Travers, instantly recognizable and always approachable. He never became Presbyterian, but lived among them the rest of his time in Orlando. While there was that theological difference (infant baptism) he didn’t have people looking down their noses at him because he enjoyed a good Scotch and a cigar.

This was part of the reason my visits among the Presbtyerians became a move. I got tired of being judged for enjoying a beer with my pizza. Orangewood was a very missions-minded church and I went on a mission trip with them to Mexico (3 eventually). Eventually the baptism coin dropped and I became a member, and under care and the rest is history.

Travers never “got” the baptism thing. But our talks, and arguments, over a drink, would range from theology to sports and politics. John, unlike most of us single guys, owned a home. He rented some rooms to make it happen, but he had a house. But this was a difficult period because his dad was dying.

Family was incredibly important to Travers. Family was why he moved to FL, and family would be why he moved to Dallas. Every year  on St. Patrick’s Day he and his dad would watch The Quiet Man. After his dad died, Travers continued the tradition. Every St. Patrick’s Day he’d watch John Wayne and wish his dad was sitting with him.

Travers and I were part of a circle of friends, and so it is hard to think of him without thinking of them. It’s also hard to think of them without thinking of him. But he wasn’t just loud and ready for a good debate, he was playful. He’s play little jokes to get under your skin, in a good way, because he loved you and was just busting your chops.

Travers is across from me, in the front on the right.

As part of that circle of friends there were so many discussions on back porches and Fiddler’s Green with drinks and a cigar. There were also celebrations as friends got married. For Dan’s bachelor party we went to a restaurant with a private room that had ventilation so we could smoke. Our friend D. Abrami wanted us to fill that room with smoke so we couldn’t see each other. It was a glorious evening together. But Travers and I didn’t drive to this restaurant on the south side of town. So we caught a ride back. In the back of a pick up truck. On the highway. In winter. In the wee hours of the morning. That was less than glorious, but it was memorable.

But all of my pictures of Travers are in groups. Most of them are at restaurants. And most of those have cigars involved. We had plenty of good times together in that circle of friends I miss so much.

After I started to pursue my second seminary degree, I moved to Winter Haven for my first pastorate. I recall a week or two living on his couch for a week long class during breaks. Travers was hospitable. He was generous. Under that gruff exterior was a kind heart. I just wish, for his sake, some woman besides our wives would have discovered this. Not all of our wives came from that circle of friends, but they loved him. They saw the person he was.

Travers is in the front on the left.

When I got married the ceremony was in NJ since that was where CavWife lived. A bunch of my friends made the trip from Florida. Travers stands out because I kept getting updates. He was driving, stuck in traffic and snow around DC. But he made it for the bachelor’s party and the wedding. He was also there in Winter Haven (actually Haines City, aka Haineyville) for the Florida reception a few weeks later (I think that was the night of the Snow Bowl game versus the Raiders). Friends mattered to Travers. People mattered to Travers.

At some point Travers left Orangewood and began to attend Willowcreek PCA which was closer to his home. One of my friends whom I affectionately referred to as Chuckie Rob (a childhood nickname), was a pastor there. John began to share some concerns about Chuckie based on a series to Sunday night talks. On the basis of those talks, Travers was able to perceive the beginnings of Chuckie Rob’s slide to egalitarianism when fully manifested itself when he took a new call in CA. Travers was perceptive.

Not too long after he and Mama T were moving to Dallas to be close to his brother and family. The lure of grand kids was likely too great for Mama T, and John wanted to be near her. She had been living in Ocala, so CavWife and I drove up to help load the truck. To complicate things we had been coming from the Jacksonville area where I think we’d spent some time with a sister-in-law visiting her side of the family. But what stood out to me, besides getting slightly lost on the way, was the restaurant we went to for a final meal together. Texas BBQ was the appropriate meal, and it was memorable with regard to my taste buds.

We also hung out at First Watch before it went national. This was before Probst’s wedding.

Dallas was not very, very good to Travers. Similar to how football was to Chico Escuela (an OLD SNL skit with Garrett Morris for those of you too young to catch it). He seemed to struggle to find his place, aside from the cigar shop. There were job changes, layoffs and financial struggles. When Mama T and his aunt passed away with days of each other there was an emotional phone call. There was another one, I believe, after D. Abrami was murdered (see, that circle of friends).

With General Assembly in Dallas last year I made sure to reach out. We had tentative plans for dinner. He was going to pick me up. Unfortunately he was not feeling well. Maybe that should have been a sign to me that all was not well. I don’t know. He had a 2 cigar/day habit. I’m not sure if that played into things. I do know that it is good to have wife looking out for you. Who knows what factored into the events of the last week.

But yesterday someone linked their FB post to Travers, talking about their friend who died that morning. I was in shock. This could not be. His birthday was a few days ago (he was 4 months older than me). I called and got no message. I called Probst because he’s not on FB, and he’s the one who called me from England to tell me about D. Abrami. Leaving a message I lost it saying “our friend has died.” That’s who he was: our friend!

Our friend, it turns out, had a stroke about a week ago. I didn’t know because the lousy FB algorithm didn’t think I needed to know that from someone’s post on his wall. Thankfully I saw the post that linked to him. Our friend deserves us to be all together, as we had been so many times, enjoying a drink, a cigar, food, laughs and maybe even a good argument. I mean discussion. But we’re spread out over the country. The last time I saw Travers in the flesh was leaving that Texas BBQ joint in Ocala. Many of us will miss John Travers III. He was our friend, and a great one at that.

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 4

Our consideration of Aimee Byrd’s most recent book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, continues with the 3rd chapter, Girls Interrupted. In many ways this is a continuation of the previous chapter in addressing the feminine voice in Scripture. She sticks with the Old Testament, and the same time period as Ruth. Her focus here is Judges, though she begins with Exodus and the midwives.

Before we get there I want to reiterate what she does as she introduces the chapter (and at the end).

“My hope is that you will begin identifying how this coactivity of the male and female voice functions more and more in your regular reading of Scripture and consider its implications in church life.”

The female voice, while not the dominant voice in Scripture, is a helpmate of the male voice. They, she argues, complement each other so we get a fuller Scripture. God, in His providence, provides for this in the dual authorship of Scripture. It is not an addition from disgruntled feminists. Byrd does not seem to argue like a feminist in this regard. She’s not saying this voice is more important. She’s not denigrating the male voice as less important to women. She’s not trying to get women (or anyone) to focus on the feminine voice at the expense of the rest of the Bible; indeed the majority of the Bible. She does want us to recognize it in regular Scripture reading. In other words, as you are reading, notice the perspective (which actually is part of good hermeneutics). Where some people will struggle even more, though, is the implication for life in the church. We will get to this in the Peal and Reveal section.

While Richard Bauckman is an egalitarian, I think his point should be obvious and non-controversial. Women, as part of the people of God, are mentioned in the Bible. Women, as we are about to see, likely participated in passing down the oral tradition of the Scriptures. A woman affirmed the authenticity and authority of the scrolls found in a dusty temple to the king who wanted to know if he should recognize them as Scripture. Other texts focus on women as main characters. This is true, right?

The Midwives’ Voice

In bringing up Exodus Byrd brings up the midwives, in particular their conversation with the Egyptian leaders. We can either believe God gave this information to Moses via direct revelation or through oral tradition as the midwives reported the exchange to the elders of Israel and anyone willing to listen. How we answer this question may say more about us than it does about Scripture. We affirm oral tradition in the Gospels. Luke, for instance, researched it. He did not witness the events himself nor received a Matrix-like download but talked to men and women about the events in question. John may have too. Some of the discussion between Jesus and the Samaritan woman was likely related to him by Jesus. But there are also part that Jesus was not first party to and that may have been reported to John by her at a later date. But we clearly have her communicating to others in her village about Jesus. We see the same thing with the women’s testimony about showing up at the tomb and discovering Jesus gone. Affirming does not make someone a feminist or egalitarian.

She also brings us James Montgomery Boice via his book The Life of Moses. He spent time addressing this. In the section she quotes there is this sentence: ” … God does not record the pharaoh’s names, but he remembers these two women, Shiphrah and Puah, because they did the right thing.” She is assuming that they were tradents of the faith, passing “down the heritage and tradition of God’s people by sharing how God worked through them.” This appears to be a valid assumption.

Women in Judges

Then she shifts to Judges where she’ll spend most of this chapter. Judges focuses on how the people of Israel began to live like the Canaanites and not like the people of God they were called to be. One aspect of this that runs through Judges is “by the way the women are viewed and treated.” This is not the only way. It is a symptom of their apostasy. The apostasy was the main deal, but this was a horrifying manifestation of that apostasy. Judges is a downward spiral, and the two last stories focus on the mistreatment of women. These last two are from the perspective of the men involved. But there are some in the feminine voice.

“The main point in Judges is not the treatment of women. … But as we have the big picture, we can observe that one of the glaring evidences of the Israelites’ increasing depravity is displayed in their degradation of women.”

We find Caleb using his daughter’s hand in marriage to motivate soldiers. This is an unusual way to arrange her marriage but “Caleb is setting his daughter up to marry the best of the best.” We also hear some of Achsah’s voice. She’s not simply a trophy wife but asks for an addition to the dowry of land and asks for springs. She is her father’s daughter, bold and full of faith.

The main feminine voice is Deborah’s. She was a prophetess who also functioned as a judge. People came to her for judgements. Unlike most judges, she was not a soldier or a general. She speaks the word of the Lord to Barak to lead the men in battle. We must consider the realities of the conflict before we are too tough on Barak. The Canaanite General Sisera has 900 chariots, essential the equivalent of a tank. Not only did Barak have none, but it was not an organized militia with weapons. It was really a bunch of farmers. He wants the prophetess to join him because she represented the Word of God to the ragtag army he was called to lead.

We see her voice primarily in her song which tells the story of the battle. God sent a storm (this was supposed to be Baal’s territory) to neutralize the chariots. Barak doesn’t kill Sisera, but Jael (a “housewife”) kills him with a tent peg (an allusion to Gen. 3:15). Deborah is the “mother of Israel in her song. She counseled them, preserved their heritage and provides strategy. This is a woman working in the public sphere. She is contrasted with Sisera’s mother who waits at home for her son to return home with a slew of new female slaves to exploit. From her wicked perspective, sexual domination of women prisoners is a great thing.

Byrd notes that Jesus uses similar language as he laments over Israel. He wants to cover them with his wings like a hen her chicks. Then she returns to Deborah (all this in the same paragraph). She is contrasted with the Canaanite goddesses, and the worst abuses of patriarchy that play out in Judges. Her song passes on Israelite tradition.

Byrd shifts to Jephthah and his daughter. I’m not sure whom or what he expected to come out of his home first but he promised he would sacrifice it. Here is a judge of Israel vowing to consecrate him or her to the Lord. There is some question about what that means and how it took place, but his daughter who was his only child, was the first to come out. Not a servant (I guess that was his hope), but daddy’s girl runs out to greet him. Whether she was consecrated and remained virgin or was sacrificed, this is not an easy to read text. She did become part of Israel’s tradition, as the young women of Israel would commemorate her for 4 days a year. This stands in contrast to the laments of Canaanite goddesses. They lamented dead sons, lovers and brothers; not daughters or sisters. His daughter was valued by Israel.

“Do you see the coactivity of male and female voices in God’s Word at work here?”

She then returns to Rehab and Matthew’s genealogies. The women there don’t sound like representative of the CBMW definition of mature femininity (repeated below). This encourages a passivity, a responsiveness instead of initiative on the the part of women. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba all took initiative in dealing with their circumstances; an initiative born of faith. While Bathsheba was exploited by David (due to his position as king, her inability to reject him leads many to call this a form of rape), Solomon would not be king if she hadn’t approached an elderly, ineffective and largely clueless David. As Gentiles they point to the inclusion of the Gentiles into Israel through evangelism and conversion.

“At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” from Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood

Byrd then brings us to the Canaanite woman and compares her to Rahab, a Canaanite. Jesus obviously recognizes his own heritage and the Gentile women including Rahab in that line. She exhibits faith similar to Rahab. Jesus isn’t dismissing her but testing her. How far would her faith push her? Apparently some of the crumbs of Israel’s children have fallen to her already, she knows some of their history and likely some of the law and prophets since she addresses him as Son of David. Her faith reflects this.

“Their faith was not in their bravery, their discernment, their initiative, or their own resolve. Their faith was in the Lord. They had faith in his calling, his initiative, and his resolve. They responded to the call.”

She also ties together Hannah and Mary in similar fashion. Since I see this is getting long I will leave it at that.

Peel and Reveal

“It’s time for the church to examine whether we too are sending the same message as the radical feminists who are opposed to God’s Word by treating it as an androcentric text that lacks female contribution.”

Radical feminists, in rejecting the Scriptures, claim it is male centered and does not and cannot speak to them. We should not say it is male centered and only speaks to women indirectly. We don’t want to arrive at the same view of the Scripture though for opposite reasons. We do see women treasuring the Scriptures, contributing to the Scriptures and passing on the faith to others. Too often our stereotypes of women, or erroneous teaching about femininity, lead us to minimize their place in the community of faith. Women are necessary allies in God’s mission. This is the key: God’s mission. Both men and women are engaged in that by faith. Spouses share a mission and are to work together.

Think of Elisabeth Elliot for a moment. She was not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. She wrote a book called Let Me Be a Woman, as opposed to rejecting any gender differences. She wrote an incredibly brief forward (one paragraph) to Piper’s What’s the Difference?. She had an important place in 20th century evangelicalism, not simply as the widow of Jim Elliot but as an author and speaker and seminary professor. She was a strong woman. Elisabeth’s materials were sold through Ligonier ministries for a while. At one point I was the point person for dealing with Lars, her husband at the time. She wasn’t supporting his role in the mission, but he supported her role in God’s mission. That included speaking at conferences filled with men and women, including Ligonier National conferences.

Does our understanding of complementarism allow this to happen, or hinder it? Does it make her an exception or do we affirm, train and encourage woman in our congregations to teach people? Are they coactive with us as servants of God or are laymen AAA and women AA (to borrow a baseball analogy)? Do their voices complement those of godly men for the combined good of the church?

“Women are using their voices and asking men to listen. How is the church going to respond? We certainly don’t want to mimic the culture and adapt the philosophy of the sexual revolution. But in our efforts to combat the reductive worldview of our secular culture, we need to make sure we aren’t over-correcting by slapping yellow wallpaper over it.”

It’s too bad she doesn’t develop this enough. She keeps hinting at it. This really seems to be the main issue of the book for me. Have we over-reacted to feminism with a subtle  (or not so subtle) form of chauvinism by clinging to an old traditional culture instead of evaluating both by Scripture so we are counter-cultural, neither feminist nor chauvinist but actually biblical? To borrow from Keller, the Bible is critical of every culture. She will continue to mention this like a tease to keep reading. Her focus is more on asking that question than providing the answer, however.

I’m not sure how this chapter moves the argument along. It provides more information, yes. It gives us some things to think about from Judges. But I’m thinking about the overall argument of the book. Soon we’ll be addressing the CBMW and its views more directly, and whether or not all the boundaries we say exist are biblical ones. At times you feel like she should be writing a couple of different books, not one. She seems to have too many agendas at times (as I think about the whole book). Perhaps that is why I feel like I’m struggling to review this chapter.

“Now that we are armed with a better idea of how the male and female voices operate synergetically in Scripture, let’s explore Christ’s presence in the Word of God and therefore its relationship to the church.”

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 3

In the second chapter of Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, on the subject of recovering how we read the Bible, Aimee Byrd asks “Why Not the Book of Boaz?”.

She is talking about the book of Ruth which is squeezed between Judges and 1 Samuel. It is the first book in the Bible that we come across named for a woman. This is a little book with a big message.

Ruth was not simply a woman, but a Moabite woman who had been married to an sojourning Israelite who died. Moabites were bad news. Their tribe originated from Lot’s child from his daughter after she got him drunk (Gen. 19). Born of incest they were known to be immoral. They were also prohibited from entering Israelite worship (Deut. 23:3), in part for hiring Balaam to curse Israel, and then following his advice to send women to seduce the men into false worship (Numbers 22-23, 25).

Yes, a book of the Bible named after a Moabite widow. This Moabite widow converted to the worship of YHWH and went back to Israel with her mother-in-law to take care of her.

Byrd wants to show us how the female voice functions in Scripture. Ruth doesn’t seem to fit the mold of biblical womanhood (though some memes try to make her fit it by ignoring some things). While the “male voice” arrives at the end of the book, the majority of the book focuses on Ruth. It focuses on “the plight of women in ancient culture- it exposes their difficulties and it shows us a faithful, brave woman who took initiative to rescue her family, as well as an honorable response from Boaz.” Ruth is not passive, waiting for Boaz, or anyone else to take care of Naomi. She takes initiative, and this is seen as a good thing (Boaz commends her!) particularly when we discover who her great-grandson is going to be.

She is reliant on Bauckham and Carolyn Custis James as numerous footnotes reveal. Most of this is helpful. One time, at least, it is less than helpful but confusing. “This male voice is quote not … in order to undermine the female voice of the narrative, but on the contrary, in order to be exposed by the female voice of the narrative as pitifully inadequate in its androcentric selectivity.” It doesn’t undermine her voice! That I get and agree with. I’m not sure what he means by that last phrase about being exposed as inadequate. The patrilineal records complement and explain the significance of the this story: David!

Rumors had probably spread about David and his sketchy origins (the politics of personal destruction is not a new concept). But the truth was this woman was a godly woman who did right by her adopted faith and her distressed mother-in-law. This defends her honor and his.

“The Bible isn’t a book of masculine history. There is women’s literature in Scripture! … We don’t need to take these gynocentric stories out and publish them in books for women’s ministries. All of Scripture is meant for coed reading and understanding.”

She also argues that Ruth is not just about Ruth. “Naomi’s situation parallels Israel’s.” This takes place during the decline of Israel during the time of the Judges. Her husband did what was right in his own eyes by moving his family to Moab during a famine, and allowing his two sons to marry Moabite women despite the prohibition of the Law. He betrayed his name which declared “My God is King”. This book is a study of hesed, covenant faithfulness as displayed not only by Ruth but also Boaz and ultimately by YHWH.

“Hesed is driven, not by duty or legal obligations, but by bone-deep commitment- a loyal, selfless love that motivates a person to do voluntarily what no one wants has the right to expect or ask of them …” quoting Carolyn Custis James

One of the things we should see in Ruth is that “God put man and woman on this earth, and he intends to use both sexes in his mission.” This woman is “in the world” and working in the fields. She’s “bringing home the bacon”. Ruth’s faith and commitment is contrasted with Naomi’s despair and grief. God used a strong woman to preserve Naomi and keep the line alive that would produce the Seed that crushes the head of the serpent.

Rembrandt

Ruth is not a feminist icon. She’s not fighting the system of patriarchy. She is a woman committed to fulfilling her vows. Ruth does, however, not fit into many of the categories of femininity expressed by some complementarians, especially the CBMW. Piper and Grudem’s definition of femininity doesn’t seem to fit Ruth. She’s not waiting for a man to show initiative. This seems to be the point Byrd wants to make in this chapter. Godly women in the Bible don’t match the Big Blue Book’s definition.

After my a recent memorial service for my mother, we had lunch with my side of the family. Due to my mother’s long-term illness it had been a few years since CavWife saw my side of the family, particularly my sister-in-law. My brother’s wife related that mine was a “bad ass” because she stood up to my mother. My wife is strong. Not headstrong or domineering, but strong. She knows who she is and wants to do what is right. She wasn’t waiting for me to “take the lead” and deal with my mother. She was gentle but firm, not abrasive.

Byrd doesn’t stop with Ruth, so to speak. She reminds us that Boaz’s mother was a Canaanite prostitute named Rahab. Like Ruth, she came to faith in the God of Israel, protected her family by protecting the spies. She became a member of God’s household. Knowing her likely prepared Boaz to welcome a kindred spirit in Ruth.

When Byrd begins to peel back the wallpaper (back to the metaphor), she wants us to see “women played an active role alongside men in passing down the history and teachings of God’s covenant people as tradents of the faith.” She doesn’t want to make more of this than it is; or less.

“Women aren’t left out. They aren’t ignored; they are heard. They are more than heard; they contribute.”

Additionally, the book of Ruth functions to provide a critical eye for today’s church. The issue is how God’s hesed works among His people. She wants us to see that He works through both men and women to reveal His hesed. Too often we are concerned with what women are “permitted” to do (and she’ll get back to this often). Our lists, at the very least, need to be evaluated by Scripture. Another way of putting this is asking if godly women in Scripture fit the list. Scripture is more important than the list.

The question I wrote at the bottom of the page at the end of this chapter is: “God gives women a voice to be used. Will we listen?”

I got some push back on my previous blog post. People seem to think Byrd is saying that women need women to “interpret” the Bible to them. Or that they cannot read Calvin or other theology. Byrd is saying the opposite! She doesn’t want theology dumbed down for women. She quotes a variety of male authors and teachers in this book. She’s not reading fluff.

In some ways Byrd is an example she wants others to follow: forsake the fluff and eat the meat of the Word. But she’s also saying that a woman doesn’t learn the breadth and depth of Scripture and theology to teach 3rd graders. She thinks God raises up both men and women to teach in Christ’s church.

She not wanting us to look for the feminine voice like it is a needle in the haystack. It is pretty clear. It is not meant to compete with the rest of Scripture but to complement it.

She hasn’t done any exegesis of any of the important passages involving this topic yet. In a later chapter she deals with 1 Corinthians 11-14. I hope she deals with 1 Timothy 2 in the final chapter (since she hadn’t thus far).

But so far we’ve seen:

•  A godly king seek the wisdom of a prophetess to whom he listened for the good of the nation.
• Women quoted in Scripture whose words and/or actions that inform and shape our faith.
• Books of the Bible, written from a woman’s perspective, show us strong women who change the fortunes of God’s people, in His providence.
• The Bible’s portraits of godly women don’t match the definition of mature femininity put forward by the CBMW.

Let me end with a story. As a new Christian I worked in a bookstore. Utterly clueless, I bought a Hal Lindsey book or two. I became a dispensational pre-millennialist. I advocated for the position. I was sure this was right. However, over time as I read and re-read the Bible I was filled with increasing cognitive dissonance. I found that my views didn’t make the most sense of the Scripture.

I was at a crossroads. Would I stick to Lindsey and company’s interpretation or would I change my view to one more consistent with Scripture? I chose the latter option.

As a more mature Christian, I submit to the Westminster Confession of Faith as a summary of what the Bible teaches. I believe it is consistent with Scripture, and it provides healthy boundaries for me. This standard doesn’t address these issues. I want to go where the Scripture leads as I affirm that the church is Reformed and always reforming.

Don’t panic. This is not the slippery slope of feminism or liberalism. It is an expression of sola Scriptura. The Scriptures do teach that only qualified men are to be elders (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1), and that the husband is the head of his own wife (Ephesians 5). These are non-negotiables.

What I am discovering is not that my views are changing, but that my views (which I’ve held for many years and taught from the pulpit) are not in synch with the CBMW’s understanding of masculinity and femininity on key points. This will be developed in further posts.

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 2

Having looked at Aimee Byrd’s introduction to Recovering from Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, we begin to look at the first part of the book which she calls Recovering the Way We Read Scripture. The first chapter in this section is Why Men and Women Don’t Read Separate Bibles.

Based on the description of this first part, I’d expect her to address hermeneutical issues here. That isn’t quite where she is going to go here. She’ll get there later.

But she begins with a complaint she’s raised in other venues: the proliferation of specialty Bibles, particularly those rooted in gender. She includes a well-deserved lament that many of our Bibles go unread. It is regularly the best-selling book but we see little evidence of this in how our society thinks and acts. With Covid-19 hitting our shores this winter, there was a surge of purchases as people apparently began to hoard them along with the toilet paper. Sometimes her criticisms are a bit idyosyncratic and superficial, and sometimes they have merit.

Part of her issue with these specialty Bibles is that many of them make the Bible more about us than about Jesus and salvation. They appeal to our misplaced identities, hobbies or interests. She mentions the Instagram “rage” of quiet-time selfies (I’d never heard of this, and wish I hadn’t, though I’ve been known to take pictures of the book I’m about to read in the shade with a beer and cigar).

She does commend women for actually reading the Bible, and that more often than men. 60% of women, based on Barna Research, hold to the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, and read it at least four times a week. Only 40% of men do this.

She then shifts gears to talking about the voice of woman teachers. She relates the story of Anne Hutchinson to explain much of what she thinks is wrong in the church’s relationship with women teachers. Anne and her husband came to the colonies with their pastor John Cotton. Anne wanted to discuss the Word she heard preached. Not finding an open door to talk with Rev. Cotton, she opened her home to a women’s discussion group. Byrd notes that the genders were already separated during the corporate worship. As her group grew, she remained ignored by the elders. They did not invest in her (or correct her since she began to teach some heterodox positions including antinomianism). Word of her teaching spread beyond Boston, and men started to attend. Now she mattered to the church officers and politicians. She was quickly tried, excommunicated and exiled. Byrd’s point: pastors tend to let women have their little groups which often spread false teaching because of a lack of oversight & investment. It only becomes an issue when men start showing up (think Beth Moore). Byrd wonders, “What if…?”.

“We therefore need to think more critically about navigating through these resources and how they shape our reading of Scripture and discipleship in the covenant community.”

Many women, not able to utilize their gifts in the local church are using them in parachurch ministries. Resources for women have multiplied, and not all of them are good. Byrd, while wanting women to be able to teach, also wants them to be instructed by church leadership (1 Timothy 2:11) so they further the goals of the leadership instead of being “left alone”. She wants theologically sound women with the gift of teaching to teach within the church, under the authority of the church. This doesn’t sound like feminism to me.

She returns to the question of gender-based Bibles. This is one of her weaknesses, at least for me. She takes a number of rabbit trails instead of following a linear path. It can be easy to lose her point or know where she is going. This chapter suffers from that problem.

The ESV Women’s Devotional Bible has articles on eating disorders, emotional health, forgiveness, healing and shame. The ESV Men’s Devotional Bible covers leadership, calling, pornography and a man’s work. The focus for women is “weakness and victimhood” but for men is “leadership and agency”. Byrd doesn’t criticize the quality of those articles but the presuppositions about men and women behind them.

“The emphasis is on the differences between men and women. I affirm that there are differences between men and women. God made male and female. But we need to be careful not to reduce us by our distinctions.”

Byrd, here, stresses that both men and women are made in the image of God. We have far more in common than we have in differences. What really frustrates her is that women can learn from men and women, but in the church it seems to be that men can only learn from men. She is trying to get to a good question: Can a man learn from a woman? This question is not necessarily about office and authority. She is not pushing women’s ordination. She’s wondering if many of us have misunderstood or misapplied 1 Timothy 2:12 by thinking that no woman should ever teach men (or even high school boys) in church.

At some points she goes a bit off course. For instance: “And yet the resources flooding the Christian women’s genre for Bible reading and devotions send the message that God’s word is so male-centered and authored that women need to create our own resources to help us to relate to it.” I don’t think she proves this point at all. It seems to be a weird point to me.

More positively, I have learned from women. I’ve read good books by women. Her better point is that strong, orthodox women teachers help the church, but we often don’t train them. I’ve also read really bad books by men, and women.

She wants us to peal back some of that yellow wallpaper to see female voices in Scripture. Some people have incorrectly said she is arguing for a woman-centered Bible. She is saying is that some passages bear a woman’s voice from which both men and women benefit. She depends on Anglican scholar Richard Bauckman (with whom I am unfamiliar). These female-centered accounts (gynocentric) are “interruptions of the dominant male-focused (androcentric) writings”. They are like CavWife butting in with some important information or perspective.

“… the fact that these women and their stories are remarkable for their particularity, rather than for their typicality or representativeness.” Richard Bauckman

One rabbit trail is male author Andre Brink writing in a first-person female perspective for The Wall of the Plague. At the end he reveals he’s actually a white Afrikaner instead of a mixed-race woman. I’m reminded of As Good As It Gets when Melvin Udall is asked how he writes female characters so well. Brink used the technique to make a point of trying to understand his lover’s perspective, while Udall is just a misogynist who disparages women (and they didn’t get it).

The woman’s voice in Scripture is not there to overthrow the male voice or compete with it. Rather, like Eve, it is meant to be a complement to the male voice. She notes that most of the Song of Songs is written from the woman’s perspective. Throughout Genesis we have the words of Sarah, Rebekah and Jacob’s wives entering the story to provide a different perspective on the matters at hand.

Byrd then gets into “historicially exceptional”  and “textually exceptional” cases which make visible what is usually unseen. For instance, instead of seeking out prophets like Jeremiah and Zephaniah, King Josiah sends men to the prophetess Huldah. In light of the fact that Josiah is seen as one of the good kings this stands out. He was not being weak or wicked. Huldah uses the typical prophetic formula to affirm the authority of the texts discovered in the temple. Josiah was willing to learn from her, and she was presumably the first person to grant such status to the Torah. She was key in affirming part of the OT canon.

“Our churches need both men and women who recognize the authority of God’s Word and speak it to one another.”

Her point that I gleaned from this chapter is that God addresses the Scriptures to both men and women. Both men and women can understand it. Those who do are able to speak that word to others. The church is weaker than it needs to be when we don’t invest in women who are apt to teach.

This has to be kept within the teaching of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus that the office of elder, and teaching with authority as an officer of the church, is limited to qualified men. While she doesn’t mention it yet, she does later on in the book. We should keep this in mind so we don’t accuse Byrd of arguing for something she isn’t. She doesn’t want women pastors. But she does argue that lay women ought to be able to teach lay men as well as women and children, if they are instructed and orthodox.

There is a challenge here to the church to disciple women well. Part of that discipleship, as she gets to later, is to teach men and women how to interpret the Bible as well as solid theology (both biblical and systematic). This is similar to her book No Little Women.

Byrd is suffering from cognitive dissonance. She hears one thing from the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, but reads something else in Scripture. She’s trying to bring herself (I believe) and the church back into conformity to Scripture.

She’s not the only one who experiences such cognitive dissonance. A few years ago the PCA was debating on whether to accept a study committee’s report on Women Serving in the Church. Some guys had brought their wives, and they were listening to the debate. When I talked with them they expressed frustration that we were deciding these matters without talking to the women in our denomination. A good husband listens to his wife, even if he decides on a different course of action. Our church leaders need to do a better job listening to the women we lead so they feel cared for, loved, valued. We need to hear their voice AND bring it to the Lord as Abraham finally did with Sarah’s request (Genesis 21:8-14).

 

 

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Considering Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Part 1

I’ve read one of Aimee Byrd’s other books in the past. I’ve enjoyed her input on the Mortification of Spin podcast when I have listened. Some of our women heard her speak in a sister church a few years ago and came away encouraged.

Her newest book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose, has been the center of controversy. Many of the claims didn’t seem about right. I had some people in the congregation, and others outside of the congregation ask me what I thought.

So, here I am reading the book. As I considered blogging about the book I realized I can’t do it justice in just one post. I’ll need to break this down to handle it wisely instead of with broad strokes.

What is interesting to me is the acknowledgments in which she thanks Bob Brady and Jonathan Master at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals for time they gave her as she began the project. She thanks the Alliance in general for allowing her to use materials from a conference they hosted. I don’t know all the reasons why they ended the official relationship but it seems strange to me. She compromises no first or second order beliefs. Her issues with the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) are not new news. I think this book (I have 2 chapters left to read)affirms what I believe about the differences between men and women. It does that clearly, not obscurely.

• She affirms there are gender differences.
• She affirms that only qualified males should be ordained elders and pastors.

This means she qualifies for what I have long thought were the main tenets of “complementarianism”. Apparently she, nor I, are on the same end of the complementarian spectrum as many in the CBMW. She’s not fighting with the Bible (she affirms the authority of the Scriptures) but with the CBMW’s views, doctrinal statements and methodology to arrive at their conclusions.

I have never read all of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response of Evangelical Feminism edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, aka the Big Blue Book. I read What’s the Difference? Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible by Piper, which is his material from the Big Blue Book in more accessible form (my copy is a little purple book). It has been quite some time since I read it. Since then I’ve read a number of statements by Piper on this subject that seemed to espouse a view closer to patriarchy than my understanding of complementarianism. I thought his views shifted, but now realize they really didn’t.

This is to provide some background to my interaction with Byrd’s book, and therefore the views of CBMW. Just to be crystal clear my views are:

• Men & women were created equally in the image of God.
• Men & women enjoy gender differences beyond biology, yet those differences are not to be understood as absolute (like Men Are from Mars & Women Are from Venus) but on different sides of the spectrum.
• God has made men as the head of the home.
• God calls qualified men to serve as elders in His household.
• Put negatively: men are not superior to women, and men are not in authority over women generally.

Byrd begins her book with an introduction that discusses Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. She will return to this story in each chapter since she views this as an apt metaphor for the problem she is pointing out.

Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper after suffering postpartum depression. Specialist Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s diagnosis was fashionable: she suffered from the pace of modern life. He prescribed rest therapy. Resting, she found herself getting worse instead of better. His diagnosis was rooted in traditional gender roles. He was forcing her into that gender role. Her main character, Jane, reflects her own condition and course of treatment. She does write secretly in her retreat cabin watched by her very traditional sister-in-law Jenny. She becomes fixed on the yellow wallpaper, and comes to believe that a woman is trapped in there. Eventually the narrator’s voice shifts to that woman, and her husband believes she’s gone mad.

“I’ve got out at last … in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back!” The Yellow Wallpaper

Byrd interprets the story, based on Gilman’s explanation, as a woman “trapped in traditional patriarchal structures of family, medicine and society that the yellow wallpaper in her confined room represented for her.” Byrd believes many Christian women are struggling with those traditional patriarchal structures of family and church today, and wonders if they are truly biblical. She is convinced that much of what passes for “biblical” is actually cultural.

“One of our biggest challenges is to actually see this yellow wallpaper’s scrawling patterns that are stifling the force of the biblical message and strangling the church’s witness and growth.”

It is in this context that she refers back to the definitions of manhood and womanhood asserted by CBMW to be “biblical”. She quotes from the Big Blue Book:

“At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships.”

“At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.”

You’ll notice that each is defined by their relationship to the other. Masculinity, for instance, seems to have nothing to do with how you treat other men. While your particular relationship to a person of the opposite sex may differ, you still provide the same basic response. This seems a bit reductionistic to say the least. This places both masculinity and femininity through “a filter of authority and submission, strength and neediness” that would appear to go beyond Scripture.

Remember, the Big Blue Book was a response to Evangelical Feminism. In debate, we tend to over-correct. I would say that the formulations are just that rather than a careful understanding of the Scriptures. She notes that as Christians we want to be moral people. More than that, but not less. However, “morality can sometimes be culturally constructed.” Just ask the Pharisees. Human beings have a tendency, flowing from the Fall and our corruption, to go beyond Scripture and add culture to biblical notions with equal authority. We substitute the man-made for the divinely-revealed. Women are more than affirmers of their men.

She rightly notes that many of us don’t undertake renovation projects because we are afraid of what we’ll find. I’ve removed wallpaper and it isn’t pretty and does some damage. But sometimes that wallpaper needs to GO! She believes that we need to remove the wallpaper so men and women can better understand what God says, and better relate to one another in healthy ways that honor God.

“And we have lost aim of what the church is for: preparing us for eternal communion with the triune God. We have taken discipleship out of the church, further separating God’s people by culturally constructed gender paradigms.”

She will repeatedly return to this theme of discipleship too. It is common in her books. One of the issues is the rise of parachurch ministries taking the place of the church instead of coming alongside the church, as well as “popular Biblicist interpretive methods.” Many of the CBMW founders use such methods (Matthew Emerson brings us similar concerns regarding Wayne Grudem in He Descended to the Dead). She wants to us utilize an interpretive method that is covenantal in nature including the historical and present communities of faith bounded by confessions. The irony is that many of those critical of Byrd would affirm a covenantal method over the Biblicist method used by Piper and Grudem.

In terms of her introduction she touches on some important subjects we do need to think about. Her concerns as expressed are:

• The cultural traditions obscuring the biblical teaching about masculinity and femininity.
• The breakdown of discipleship in many churches that lead many to depend on parachurch ministries, particularly gender-focused ones.
• The faulty methods of biblical interpretation that produce faulty understandings of the Trinity used to support faulty understandings of the relationship between men and women.

To many, raising these questions makes her a feminist. After all, the Big Blue Book was written to combat feminism so the only person who’d have a problem with it must necessarily be a feminist. That is a faulty argument there. It is a logical fallacy meant to minimize the views of another.

While I’ve seen plenty of people accuse Byrd of being a feminist, I see no evidence for this charge through over 170 pages of this book. She’s trying to discern the truth under the authority of Scripture. This is a noble pursuit. She knows she is not coming at the Scripture without her own biases and interpretive grid. As we move forward, we’ll see if she succeeds. At times I think she does. At times she stumbles (in minor ways). At times she confuses. At times she misses a point. She does make some good points, and she doesn’t punt on the faith in the process. Nor does she give too much ground to egalitarians, aka the Christian Feminists.

By the way, let’s not confuse Christian Feminists with any of the various shades of Feminists. While I disagree with them, they are not “them” aka “the enemy.” My beloved professor Dr. Roger Nicole called himself a Christian Feminist. J.I. Packer, among many others, called him the greatest theologian of the 20th century.

The late R.C. Sproul expressed wanted to be as “liberal” as the Bible permitted him to be regarding women. As a result he rejected the ordination of women elders, even being forced out of the UPC for his views. He believed women could be deacons if it wasn’t a position of authority, as it is in the PCA. But R.C. had Joni and Elisabeth Elliot speak at his conferences.

Some may have a different default than Sproul, possibly being as conservative as the Bible permits them. This means there is a spectrum of complementarian views. The people to the left of you aren’t necessarily feminists, and the people to the right of you aren’t necessarily patriarchists. They might be, but that requires more questions to understand their actual positions.

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Considering the Dynamics of Grief

I expected this to be more difficult. I’m finding it more … elusive.

The “this” and the “it” is grief. You may have guessed that by the title of this blog post.

Grieving my mother’s death has seemed both anti-climatic and elusive. Yes, I cried when I got the news though I was prepared for it, and even longing for it due to her and my father’s suffering. I guess I thought grieving my mother’s death would be different. It is more like a free floating thing in the back of my mind than a pressing, intrusive kind of thing. I have a sense that there’s something I should be doing. At times something will remind me of her. I wonder if I bought the stuffed clams recently because that was a special treat she’d make when entertaining. The other night someone made lentil soup and I thought of her because she’d make it. Unlike the clams, I didn’t like her soup.

Due to a variety of circumstances, my mother’s memorial service and interring of ashes was delayed until June. At that point my aunt was dying. My cousin and I were very close as kids, and my aunt was an important person in my childhood. And as a result, my life. Since then, she lost her battle with cancer. I hope to talk to him soon, but I imagine his experience of grief is, and will be, very different than mine.

Due to my ignorance, I’m calling this the dynamics of grief. Perhaps it is the circumstances that help create a different experience just as much as who you are as the one who grieves.

I thought grieving my mother’s death would be harder, more profound. I don’t know … debilitating. After all, she’s my mother. As a result she’s one of the 3 most important people in my life.

So, I got to thinking about grieving. I seem to be doing more thinking about it than doing it. I suppose it says something about me.

I moved to Florida in 1991, the same time that my parents moved to California. My brother and his wife initially moved into the house I grew up in. Eventually my parents sold the house. When they moved back to NH in 2001, they bought a manufactured home in a retirement community.

My mother was not a daily part of my life. We were separated physically by thousands of miles for the last 30 years. I’d see her on vacations (either mine or theirs). We’d talk on the phone every week or so for most of that time. I think it was less frequent initially since long distance was not included in phone plans at the time. At times we were separated emotionally as I tried to sort out some of the dysfunctions in our relationship that complicated things (at least in my head), and now complicate my grief.

I suppose it was her profound influence on those first 25 years of life that had me thinking the grief would be more pressing.

My cousin, on the other hand, never moved away. We weren’t in contact for some time so perhaps he never had his own place. His father always had back issues which run in that side of my family. His mother had, I think, 3 different bouts with cancer. He has health issues of his own, in part due to a bad accident. Since he never married, it made sense for him to live at home so they could look out for one another.

His dynamics of grief are going to be very different. He saw his mother nearly every day of his life. This means that a huge part of his every day life is missing. All of his routines and rhythms have had to change. The things she used to do must now be done by someone else. That is so very different from having a mother you interacted with on a weekly basis for 10 minutes at a time for 30 years!

Not only was his on-going relationship with his mother very different but he also lives in their shared space. Everywhere in his home there is always something to remind him. There are memories in most of those rooms. I remember she’d give us baths (there was photographic evidence). He can’t escape thoughts of her since she’s associated with nearly every part of his daily life. His daily life is “haunted” by his mother, whereas mine was absent of her in most ways.

How they died is also very different and likely shapes our experience of grief.

My mom had Alzheimer’s Disease. She hadn’t recognized me for about 5 years. She’s been there but not there. In many ways I’ve not really had a relationship with her for years. It was one-sided and obviously very intermittent (when I was in town on vacation for a few days. I’ve been grieving in some ways this whole time. Her death came as a relief, and long overdue.

My aunt had cancer, as I noted. Last year when my dad and I went over for lunch, she was feeling well. My cousin still had a vibrant, interactive relationship with his mother up until the end. Though she was suffering at the end, it was her. They could communicate. In that sense, her absence was more sudden despite her long illness. This likely makes his grief more intense, present and unavoidable.

Trauma matters too.

When I was a kid we had a dog for a year. There are pictures of me in my plaid pants (it was the 70’s, people) playing with him. I’d walk him. And then on Easter Sunday while getting ready to head home from a visit with my dad’s cousin he ran into the street to greet another dog and was hit by a car. It hit me hard (and my dad). I would periodically grieve for years afterward, especially when I was lonely.

As an adult I had to put my dog down. It was a horrible, no good day. I wept as he lay in my lap. How could I abandon him in those last moments. My periodic grief is punctuated by the fact that his death was a result, in part, of my choice. It was no accident this time. It was not the slow fade of a disease. He was suffering, and I put an end to that suffering. I feel like I failed him, and that complicated my grief. Intensified it as well.

There are a boatload of issues that complicate my grief. It seems too elusive. I feel guilty that it isn’t a crushing weight (yes, some might call me neurotic). It’s like I have unfinished business that I can’t finish.

I’m reminded of my various incompetence dreams. I’m sure there is a different name for them, but it is what I call mine. These are better then the “I can’t find the bathroom but really need to go dreams” as your body is sending you the message to “get up!”. For many years they would be about the test you had to take but couldn’t get to. I’d be stuck on the T (I went to college in Boston). For the last few decades they’ve been about jam packed sanctuaries for worship services that can’t start because of some technological glitch or something. Another wasted opportunity. I need to “perform” but find myself blocked.

That’s sort of how I feel. I need to “do this” but seemingly can’t. Is it that I’m emotionally constipated regarding grief (while emotionally vomiting regarding anger or is that really my grief or …..)? Is it that I’m profoundly broken? Did I compartmentalize this too long so I could function as a husband, father, son and pastor? Am I unable to retrieve the grief from the place I stuffed it?

Or is it just that the dynamics of my grief are different from other people’s because our circumstances are different?

The world may never know.

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Considering Packer on the Christian Life

As a new Christian without a clue I stumbled into the Christian bookstore in Kenmore Square, uncertain about what to buy to better understand this new faith I barely understood. Among the various and sundry items I noticed a book that had sold over a million copies and won some award. The title was simply Knowing God by someone by the name of J.I. Packer. I wanted to know God, so I bought it.

That book, which I’ve read a few times since the initial read, has been one of the most important purchases of my life. After finally becoming a certified “Calvinist” I re-read the book and saw all the seeds had been sown by Packer in this book.

While struggling with sanctification and charismatic issues I picked up Keep in Step with the Spirit which also proved to be immensely helpful. While looking at RTS Orlando in 1991, I was able to go to the Ligonier National Conference on The Cross of Christ and Packer’s lectures were profound. He was not the most dynamic speaker in the line up, but his content was amazing. Steve Brown also stands out in my mind as impactful, though he got in “trouble” because people misunderstood him.

I have a long, storied history with J.I. Packer. He’s been one of the most important theological influences in my life, particularly in the early years. He kept me from any number of heresies. I am thankful for J.I. Packer, and was looking forward to reading Samuel Storms book Packer on the Christian Life in the Crossway series. It was time for vacation/study leave and time to read another volume in the series.

Samuel Storms is an interesting choice to write the volume on Packer. Sometimes the editors do that, choose a wild card from outside the person’s theological heritage. Storms is also a Calvinist who loves the Puritans. But Storms falls into the new Calvinist camp (non-denominational, non-confessionalist, baptistic and continuationist) while Packer himself is an old school Anglican who affirms the Westminster Confession (I’m pretty sure) as well as the 39 Articles. He is, therefore, denominational, confessional, paedobaptistic and a cessationist who isn’t too hard on his continuationist brothers and sisters.

“Theology, as I constantly tell my students is for doxology: … Theologies that cannot be sung (or prayed for that matter) are certainly wrong at a deep level, and such theologies leave me, in bot senses cold: cold-hearted and uninterested.”

The subtitle of the book is Knowing God in Christ, Walking by the Spirit, which brings both of the books I’ve mentioned into focus. It also sums up Packer’s understanding of the Christian life. It draws on many of Packer’s numerous books and articles.

As with all the volumes, Storms begins with a short biography of the subject. If you’ve read one of the biographies on Packer, there isn’t much that is new. But if you haven’t, you’ll get a good sketch of the man. One of the key events of his life was an accident as a child that kept him from sports and forced him into the library. Whatever your views of nature and nurture, Packer became an academic that we can’t be sure he’d be if he hadn’t had to wear a metal plate that encouraged the worst out of his peers. One key friendship was with Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, centered upon the Puritans. Both men were key in a Puritan conference and Banner of Truth. Lloyd-Jones’ call to separation from the Church of England at the Evangelical Alliance conference in 1966, along with Stott’s response, created a rift between the men. Packer would be despised by the the non-conformists like Lloyd-Jones (whom Packer still spoke highly of) and distrusted by the Anglicans who kept moving to the left (Storms credits Carl Trueman for this observation). Trueman thinks this is behind Packer’s move to Canada, far western Canada at that. He was, in a sense, in exile. Eventually the Church of England would go too far, and Packer along with many others would seek refuge among the African bishops. In many ways Packer has been a man without a home, looking for the city whose builder and architect is God.

“Self-denial is a summons to submit to the authority of God as Father and of Jesus as Lord and to declare lifelong war on one’s instinctive egoism.”

In terms of analyzing his view of the Christian life, Storms begins with the cross of Christ. Apart from this, none of what Packer believes about the Christian life makes sense. What doesn’t make sense, to me anyway, is that Storms doesn’t refer to Packer’s famous introduction to an edition of Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. This is one of the few places where Packer draws a hard line in the sand, calling the various alternative theories to particular atonement false gospels. Packer didn’t usually take such hard stances, but for him this was the place to take the hard stand. Packer didn’t normally do polemics, but when he did he did them well.

Packer affirms the necessity of the atonement due to our sinfulness, Christ’s substitution in our place to pay the penalty of said sinfulness and sin, and its propitiatory nature. Packer held to a cross that saved elect sinners, not to a cross that merely made salvation possible to every sinner to which faith must be added.

As a confessional Christian, Packer affirmed the authority of the Scriptures above all else. It is to this that Storms turns next. Here we see why Packer walked out of the synod of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. It was their acceptance of same-sex unions contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture. He, rightly, saw this as no small thing. Authority rests, not in culture, not in my personal interpretation or even the Church and its interpretation of the Bible, but the Scriptures themselves. There ultimately can be no living of the Christian life without an atonement and the Scriptures as our authority. This is not to reject Confessions and Catechisms. Packer encourages the use of catechisms to disciple believers new and old.

“In the New Westminster debate, subjectivists say that what is at issue is not the authority of Scripture, but its interpretation. I do not question the sincerity of those who say this, but I have my doubts about their clear-headedness. The subjectivist way of affirming the authority of Scripture, as the source of the teaching that now needs to be adjusted, is precisely a denying of Scripture’s authority from the objectivist point of view, and clarity requires us to say so.”

The Christian life, entered by faith (self-abandoning trust) in the person and work of Christ, is about holiness. Storms makes great use of Rediscovering Holiness (a hard to find gem in my opinion) in this chapter. He also refers to Keep in Step with the Spirit to discuss Packer’s early struggle with Keswick theology (let go and let God for victory) from which he was saved by discovering John Owen. Missing is Holiness is about the heart that results in actions, not simply outward conformity to rules. From him I discovered the hard truth that the holier we are the more discontent we will be with our holiness. True holiness is empowered by the Holy Spirit, not by us. Packer writes of the opposition to holiness. We are taken to God’s gym and made to sweat as unholiness leaves the body. Holiness involves a life of repentance driven by self-examination (not simply introspection) and the war on pride in our hearts. It isn’t simply a personal and individual thing, but God places us in a community to help us become holy precisely because holiness is about love and without a community we can’t grow in love (and forgiveness).

“Purity of heart is indeed a matter of willing one thing, namely to live ever day of one’s life loving God.”

Having defined holiness, Storms moves into the process of sanctification. Here he leans on Hot Tub Religion, another hard to find gem. You may begin to think that books on sanctification don’t sell well. Storms returns to the influence of John Owen whom Packer called “God’s chemo for my cancered soul.” He address the synergism of sanctification revealed in the God who works in us to will and work according to His good purpose (Philippians 2). It is the transformation of our desires, disposition and motives.

“God’s method of sanctification is neither activism (self-reliant activity) nor apathy (God-reliant passivity), but God-dependent effort.”

The Christian life, as already mentioned, is a struggle. Storms brings us to Romans 7 to discuss the problem of indwelling sin in the life of every Christian. Storms goes through the various views of this passage, but spends particular time explaining Packer’s view that this is the experience of Paul as a Christian (he provides further support for this view in an appendix). Paul affirms God’s law but struggles to do it. In Romans 8 we see that the sinful mind is hostile to the law. If we are honest, our obedience is always less than we desire it to be. We drift. We are prone to wander. This all drives us back to Jesus and Him crucified for our deliverance. And yet we do have the Spirit at work in us to put sin to death (back to Romans 8). We are changed people, but not as thoroughly changed as we ought nor long to be.

In keeping with Romans 8, Storms brings us the Packer’s views on the person of the Spirit who provides the power of Christian living. Like many of the Puritans, Packer held to experiential Christianity, not simply intellectual or rational Christianity. We must be born again, and we must have the Spirit dwelling in us. While personally a cessationist, Packer was not as rigid in addressing charismatics as, say, John MacArthur. But Packer does not limit the work of the Spirit to the gifts of the Spirit. His focus is on the fruit of the Spirit, produced in sanctification. There is that word again. The Christian life is taken up in sanctification; a sanctification that flows out of knowing God in Christ through the atonement we know about through the Scriptures.

“Our lack of love for praying may be an indication of all-round spiritual debility. … Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.”

One of the ways this all works out is prayer, which is the next chapter in the volume. He discusses hindrances to prayer as well as the activity of prayer: petition, conversation, meditation, praise, self-examination, and lament. Growth in holiness is produced in part by a commitment to prayer. The same Spirit who works in us to will and work, works in us to draw near to the Father thru the Son to express our hearts.

Connected to prayer (and Scripture) is the role of guidance in the Christian’s life. We do need to discern the will of God. Many of Paul’s prayers for others found in Scripture relate to this need on their part and ours. Packer connects this to the doctrines of adoption and God’s sovereignty. God’s guidance comes primarily from the Scriptures which were written for us upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor. 10). Guidance is not helpful without a commitment to submit to God’s guidance. We must accept His will as our own. As such, Packer rejects fleeces and signs as not normative for Christians. That is not how we ought to seek guidance, though we see some saints of old, who didn’t have the whole Bible, did receive guidance this way.

“Discernment comes through listening to Scripture and those means of grace that relay biblical teaching to us in digestible form- sermons, instruction talks, hymns, books, Christian conversations and so forth.”

Christian living takes place in the context of suffering. We can suffer from unwanted temptations and struggles with sin, our bodies that won’t work right, persecution, and hard providences. Suffering is inevitable. Packer does note that God is particularly gentle with new Christians, so often suffering can become more profound the more we mature. Packer, like Luther, was a theologian of the cross. He rejects the triumphal theology of glory that has capture the heart of so many American Christians. Such triumphalism often points to some failure on our part as the cause of suffering. We need to identity the particular (often unconnected secret) sin so God will restore a suffering-free blessing. Such people aren’t growing in perseverance and character (Rom. 5), but remain immature as they reject God’s purposes in their lives. Packer speaks of our weakness and grief as important in helping us grow.

“… a most painful part of the pain of grief is the sense that no one, however sympathetic and supportive in intention, can share what we are feeling.”

In a sense, Storms brings us back to the beginning by talking about the theocentricity of the Christian life. Eternal life is knowing God, and Jesus whom he sent (John 17:3). It isn’t Christian living without Christ as the center of it. We are to believe in Christ, love Christ and hope in Christ. Christianity isn’t just doctrine, intellectual commitment. Christianity is personal commitment to Christ about whom the doctrines speak. It is vital union with Him, and experiential.

“Again, Christianity is Christ relationally. If there is a center or hub to all of Packer’s thought on the Christian life, it is here. Christian living is conscious, joyful, trusting relationship with Jesus of Nazareth.”

The book ends with a chapter on ending well. When Storms wrote the book, Packer was 88. He is still alive, and still writing (though much shorter books). He is increasingly weak, but still has a sharp mind. He is a model of using one’s faculties and energies to live and serve as long as one has them. One may retire from a vocation, but not from living as a Christian.

Overall this was a good and thorough contribution to the series. Storms made ample use of Packer’s writings. As I noted above there were some glaring omissions; not just his introduction to Owen’s book (he wrote introductions galore, actually), but also Faithfulness and Holiness which introduces the read to (and includes) Ryle’s classic Holiness. This is a hard to find volume, but of immense help. I blogged through this in April of 2007 for those who are interested.

In the bowels of the Bird and Babe (1999)

Storms did mention the need for community, but as I get older I see the need for friendship. Jesus had the 12, and the 3. He enjoyed the closest of friendships with Peter, John and James. When I visited England with friends, we spent a few days in Oxford. We had meals and drinks at the Eagle and Child. We went to the Inklings exhibit as well. Friendships are a part of community, but the special relationships that we enjoy that extend beyond our worship communities by geography and time in many cases.

As I go through an extended period of loss, I’m seeing the lack of friendships I have as a pastor. I don’t have enough. Storms mentioned Packer’s friendship with Lloyd-Jones (interrupted by controversy) and John Stott. I’m curious about his friendship with Sproul, which seemed to end with Evangelicals and Catholics Together. What is missing is Packer’s long time relationship with another of the important men in my life, Dr. Roger Nicole. Even Nicole’s biography seems skimpy on this account.

We think of these theologians’ writings, but often don’t think of their friendships (except for C.S. Lewis, it seems). These friendships, and sometimes how they end leave their mark. I know this is true in my life. If the Christian life is largely about love, and it is (!), then there should be more about the long term relationships with the people they loved (including spouses!) in these volumes.

Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy this series and that is why I read a volume on each vacation. I’m just pointing out a weakness in the series, and one in my life and in the lives of many men. At a time I find I need my friends, they seem busy. And I can’t point a finger at them for I realize I have not pursued them in their similar times of need and loss. Friendships matter.

Some of the bestest friends a man can have!

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Considering Maturity

In 1980, Sinclair Ferguson published Add to Your Faith. In 1981 this was republished in the U.S. under the title Taking Your Faith Seriously. In his introduction to Maturity: Growing Up and Going On in the Christian Life, he calls it a “young man’s book.” As a result, Maturity is not simply an old book with a new title, but a re-working of the old book to reflect his greater understanding and wisdom 40 years later. Having not read the original version of this book, I am not qualified to compare the two volumes. I will, however, say this is a much-needed and excellent book.

Similar to Devoted to God, Ferguson notes that he prefers passages to proof-texts as his method. In Devotion, he used a passage that illustrates one of the illustrates an aspect of sanctification. This book is not structured that way, but as he approaches aspects of Christian maturity he looks a themes in books, focusing on a few passages instead of exegeting one passage. The 12 chapters are organized into 5 sections: Growing Up, Standing Firm, Facing Difficulties, Pressing On and Maturity.

In the first section, Growing Up, Ferguson tackles the topics of the Importance of Maturity, the Symptoms of Decay and Abiding in Christ. As indicated by the final chapter in this section, there is a strong emphasis on union & fellowship with Christ as essential to growing up in Christ. We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves in this matter. Maturity does take time and effort (an effort born of that mystical union with Christ, not an effort of the flesh). He begins with some of the hindrances of maturity including contemporary society, our personal history, “Christian” influences that don’t value maturity or communicate the process. Discipleship is not about quick returns, but delayed gratification. We are setting our hopes on God’s promises relating to the future which are often fulfilled when we see the Lord either thru death or His return. They are not all about the present or immediate future.

Ferguson points us to Jesus who also grew into maturity (Luke 2:42). He’s not simply our example, but the source of the resources necessary through the aforementioned union. As man, he was a real man who grew in wisdom and stature. He was a boy as a child, not a man in a boy’s body. Ferguson then surveys a number of epistles to show the importance and need of maturity. We see the great importance of love, and our need to hear the Word preached if we are to become mature.

“The disease diagnosed here is a failure in concentration, an inability to fix the heart and mind on Christ and to make him the chief object of devotion and attention.”

Decay is indicated by attention deficit, the inability to concentrate on spiritual matters. We become governed by our desires instead of the will of God. He also notes a poor appetite as a symptom of decay. This of course is about whether we are feasting on the Word or the world and its delights. One of these will shaping our thinking, desires/values and will/choices. When we are not chewing on Scripture, we begin to be conformed to the world instead of transformed by the renewing of our minds.

“Secret failure cannot remain hidden. If we do not deal with our indwelling sin, it will eventually catch up with us. We may disguise it for a while, but we will lack the perseverance to do so permanently; one day our spiritual failure will become clear.”

Another symptom is a lack of discernment, the inability to spot the problems in a teacher’s doctrine or practice. This doesn’t mean we should all be discernment bloggers, but that we do practice discernment: affirming what is good while rejecting what is bad. It is a rejection of man-made rules, and a dependence upon the grace of God. Weakness of worship is another sign of decay. We look for the pep rally instead of worshiping the exalted Christ who suffered for us, and calls us to suffering.

The third chapter in this section focuses on John 15 and the parable of the vine. We are branches that are grafted in, and this provides a picture of life-giving union with Jesus. The Father prunes us for greater fruitfulness thru providences and interventions. He begins to remove that which is unhelpful for our spiritual life and maturity, as well as shaping and molding us. Abiding with Christ is connected to having His Word dwell in you richly. He returns to the subject of feasting and chewing on the Scripture to gain nurturing truth.

“We need to learn to see our lives within his purposes and plans, not to think of him as fitting into ours!”

Standing Firm focuses on assurance and guidance. Moving toward maturity requires that we are assured of our salvation, and receive proper guidance from God. Otherwise we flounder wondering if we are saved and what we should do with our selves. He develops the idea, as he did in The Whole Christ, of faith as a direct activity and assurance as a reflex activity of faith. To we saved we must be sure that He saves those who believe, and believe. Assurance as a reflex activity has to do with whether or not Jesus has saved us because we believed, not simply whether there is salvation in Christ. Calvin focused on the objective assurance of faith as necessary. The reflex activity, which is reflected in the Westminster Confession of Faith, not necessary, nor infallible (some sure they are saved are not because their certainty is based on something other than Jesus’ person and works). Ferguson spends time exploring Romans 8 to see the foundations of our assurance through the series of questions that Paul asks. If we are in Christ, no one can accuse us, condemn us or separate us from Christ. Opposition while seemingly great, is unable to thwart God and his purposes for us.

He then looks to some obstacles to assurance of salvation, also focusing on Romans 8 (Kevin DeYoung, for instance, goes to 1 John). He reflects the Westminster Confession, again. One is an inconsistent life as a Christian. He’s not talking about the presence of temptation, but the practice of unholiness. Forgetfulness of the indwelling Spirit is another obstacle for assurance. We can also be confused by suffering which often makes us think God does not love us.

Ferguson then looks at marks of assurance. They are laid out as:

1. Satisfaction with God’s way of salvation.
2. A new sense of security in Christ stimulates a new desire to serve him.
3. Assurance fills our hearts with love for Christ.
4. Boldness to live our lives for Christ.

“God does guide his people.” The question for the chapter is how God guides his people. We have to recognize that we won’t and can’t always understand what God is doing or up to in our lives. We can have guidance, but we won’t have comprehension. To illustrate the general views of guidance, Dr. Ferguson points us to the differences between Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. The point of using them is that neither was an extremist and is esteemed within the Reformed community most likely to read Ferguson’s book. Whitefield was prone to rely on “impressions”. Edwards focused on “the application of the precepts and principles of his word.” During an overnight stay in Northampton by Whitefield, the two talked about this. Edwards was concerned about the dependence on this sudden impulses. How do we know they are from God unless they are consistent with biblical commands or principles. The Spirit may bring these things to mind when we need them, but we should still stop to consider whether that impression or impulse is consistent with Scripture properly understood. But this reliance on impulses is highly subjective, and God doesn’t speak to which legitimate job I should take, which single Christian woman I should marry, which house I should buy, etc. God reveals those not by impressions but largely through circumstances (which offer is better for me and my family overall, which woman actually wants to marry me, or which house can my spouse and I agree upon).

The difficulties we face, which God works for our maturity, are largely things we have little to no control over. These are realities that can often dismay and discourage Christians. We need to begin to see them from a different angle as under the providence of God who uses them for our good, even if they themselves are not good. Those difficulties he covers are sin, temptation, spiritual warfare and suffering.

“Sin is the internal enemy of spiritual growth.”

The sin in question is our original corruption, the sinful nature, the remaining presence of sin as a power in our hearts. This corruption which produces temptations and transgressions is one of God’s means to keep us humble, and amazed at the glory of the gospel. This is something that gets lost in the SSA discussion for some. Some seem to grossly minimize the problem of pride, and the great means God uses to root it out of our hearts.

“There is a profound correlation in the Christian life between the consciousness of sin and the realization of the wonder and power of the gospel. … Until we realize how great the weight of sin is, we will not make much progress in pursuing holiness without which we will never see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).” … He sets up an ongoing cycle in our lives, convicting us of sin in order to deepen his work of sanctification in us.”

In this chapter, Ferguson keeps returning to Psalm 119. It is the Word that exposes sin and its power, the Word that holds out gospel promises, and the Word that the Spirit uses for our sanctification thru these means.

His chapter, Overcoming Temptation, is probably the best in the book. I read this just after reading the PCA Report’s section on temptation, and thought they would have benefited from talking with Dr. Ferguson. This, while only one chapter, is great stuff. As one friend would say, he puts the cookies on the counter when the kids can reach them. The cookies being John Owen’s penetrating but heady work on this topic. He defines temptation, and notes that as such it is not sin (by this I believe he means transgression based on the larger context of the chapter). He speaks of indwelling sin remaining and producing an inclination and disposition to sin (verb, to transgress, or actual sin). In temptation, however, the enemy speaks as if we are already condemned. Maturity begins to tune this out, not in a way that minimizes the real danger we are in, but in a way that we don’t fall into the trap that means we might as well go ahead and sin anyway, or that we are so vile we are beyond hope because we experience such temptations.

“So the distinction between temptation and sin is vital theologically and also pastorally.”

He then explores Owen’s distinction between temptation and “entering into temptation.” In that process he explores the process of temptation.

Internal desires ==> stimulated further by the world ==> weakness exposed & opportunity for the devil to stimulate further

But the key to “entering into temptation” is a sentence I missed somehow in Owen that ties it together well.

“Whilst it knocks at the door we are at liberty; but when any temptation comes in and parleys with the heart, reasons with the mind, entices and allures the affections, be it a longer or shorter time, do it thus insensibly and imperceptibly, or do the soul take notice of it, we ‘enter into temptation’.” John Owen, Works, VI, 97

We enter into temptation, or transgress (I think he uses them interchangeably if we recall that transgressions include thoughts). There is a parley or dialogue instead of immediately saying “no” to temptation. We begin to argue with our temptation, or entertain that temptation. At this point the temptation becomes transgression.

In this context, Ferguson goes to David’s temptations regarding Bathsheba and Uriah for illustration and explanation. Then he shifts to the complementary accounts of the census to discuss the doctrine of concurrence in the context of temptation.

“Here, taking the statements together, God, Satan, and David are all involved in one and the same action. We should not try to resolve the tension here…”

In terms of overcoming temptation, he advocates watchfulness, prayer and being armed against the enemy. He then writes about spiritual warfare. Spiritual conflict is another difficulty we must face. He brings us to Ephesians 6, like so many other books I’ve read recently. Our ordinary life is the context, the setting, for our spiritual conflict. Here the Enemy seeks to disrupt and discourage. The conflict reminds us that we are intended, and only successful as a result, to depend upon the Lord’s provision to us in Christ for this warfare. As in other chapters, we see references to Pilgrim’s Progress. There is also the influence of William Still, his pastor while a student. The following sounds like a paragraph in Still’s book Towards Spiritual Maturity:

“… sudden sinful and distasteful thoughts and temptations; moments of feeling overwhelmed by a sense of darkness; doubts that appear in our minds from nowhere.”

Suffering can, sadly, define us. I’ve seen men crippled by suffering. By this I mean all roads lead to their particular and personal suffering. They seemed unable to really move beyond it. Their fixation stunts their growth. Forgetting our suffering can also stunt growth. Ferguson brings us back to Psalm 119 to show us that God intends us to learn from our suffering but not be ensnared by that suffering. He breaks it down this way:

1. Affliction brings our spiritual needs to the surface.
2. Affliction teaches us the ways of God.
3. Affliction shows us the faithfulness of God.

Ferguson then brings us to Paul and his thorn to help us understand these realities in the flesh. It was a sharp pain in his life. He was “‘cuffed’ by it, beaten black and blue as it were.” Our usefulness for the future necessitates our prior suffering. We need to be changed, and shaped by that suffering.

“Satan desperately tries to drive the holy man insane.” John Calvin

Ferguson then moves into the areas we have more control over in the section Pressing On: service and endurance. Serving moves us beyond ourselves and our needs to the needs of others. He interacts with 1 Corinthians and Hebrews. God gives us grace to serve just like He gives us pardoning and purifying grace. He covers some of the pitfalls and dangers if we don’t deal with our selfishness when seeking to serve.

Crossing the finish line at the London Marathon (Image: Reuters)

The reality is that Christians must keep going to become mature. They keep running that race, by grace. Ferguson again provides some hindrances like indwelling sin, sluggishness, discouragement and more. He then provides some encouragements focusing on Christ who has run the race before us.

The book concludes with a short chapter on living maturely. In many ways he reiterates much of what he has already said. Maturity doesn’t mean “retirement” but continuing the life you’ve been living to the glory of God by the grace of God. As a result, the repetition makes sense.

This is a book drenched in Scripture that continually encourages the reader to dig into and chew on Scripture as one of the primary means of grace for maturity. This book also bleeds Bunyan and John Owen. Ferguson loves the Puritans, but his loves are not narrow. There is plenty of Calvin, as well as Augustine and other church fathers. He also refers to some recent books which means that Ferguson is reading in “community” past and present as Richard Pratt encouraged us as students.

Sinclair Ferguson provides us with another great book in his “retirement”. This book could well serve as Sinclair Ferguson on the Christian Life, thinking of the Crossway series. It makes the theological practical and pastoral as Ferguson usually does. It’s a keeper.

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Considering the PCA Report on Human Sexuality: Apologetics

Having dealt with the Twelve Statements, Sin & Temptation, and Language, it is time to turn our attention to the last major task of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality. This is our apologetic stance.

What follows here is not written directly to a skeptic. It is an essay addressed to believers that lays out the issues we will have to address and the questions to which we will have to provide compelling answers.

In my opinion, this apologetic work needs to also be done with the younger generation of Christians in our churches. We have, in many ways, failed to build the proper foundation for understanding biblical sexuality in many of our churches. We see this, for instance, in the recent post of a young woman in a PCA church who expressed her disagreement with biblical sexuality which stated that our view toward homosexuality was wrong. We need to provide compelling reasons to our people too, rather than simply say “The Bible says…”. We need to explain the biblical context of what it says.

The Contemporary Narrative of Sexuality

The Report begins with the common view of sexuality in our culture. They offer the following highlights:

1. The Oppression of the past, including the view that sex outside of marriage was about controlling the sexual activity of women.
2. The need for authentic expression of our internal desires as a human right necessary to human flourishing
3. The fight to love whom we want to love against the oppressive culture exhibited, in their mind, by the Church.
4. The hard-won rights of today to engage in same-sex relationships, including marriage. This is viewed as progress of which the Church has stood in the way.
5. The continual danger to this “healthy culture of sexual freedom.” There is a fear of “turning back the clock”.

The Report notes that this contemporary narrative rests on a number of erroneous presuppositions. Apologetics should address these presuppositions, and provide a counter-narrative rooted in the history of redemption.

Three Challenges for Christians Today

The Report begins with three challenges we must address to be effective in our counter-narrative.

The first is challenging modern identity narrative, in particularly unseen, deep background beliefs about “identity and freedom/power.” We need to challenge the idea or presupposition that “sexuality is crucial for the expression of identity.” Having been separated from the imago dei, our sexuality becomes not a way to honor God but to pursue “self-realization.” This flows out of the notion of “expressive individualism” so prevalent in our culture today. This is the idea “that deep within are feelings and desires that must be discovered an unlocked and expressed to become a true self.” This means that one should experiment to make sure you don’t have undiscovered desires, among other things. But you clearly can’t be true to yourself unless you satisfy your many desire that flow out of your corruption. The Report doesn’t connect our cultures erroneous belief in the innate goodness of humanity here, but this does flow out of that additional presupposition. No longer is one’s identity rooted in God’s image, our redemption and our various duties and commitments. The culture is more a reflection of Wild at Heart than Richard Phillip’s The Masculine Mandate. This explains why I got so much push back from someone when I had our men’s ministry go through the latter instead of the former. This person thought we discovered who we are in isolation from our communities and commitments instead of in them.

An identity based on feelings is rather fragile since our feelings can change over time. Commitments, particularly the covenant of marriage, are intended to protect us (and those to whom we make these commitments) from our fleeting feelings and desires. The pursuit of “authenticity” at the expense of your spouse and children is profoundly wicked, but our culture calls this evil “good”.

Morality, in this view, becomes internally generated. No one can objectively tell you what is wrong, though this is a self-defeating argument since such people usually condemn the actions and attitude of other with whom they disagree. It is a “soft relativism” but a relativism all the same.

Additionally there is the question of freedom/power. On top of the foundation laid by this “expressive individualism” is the “post-modern view of freedom and power.” This means that power is exercised in a culture by “dominant discourses” produced by those in power- in this case, the Church. Cultural norms are not only culturally relative but culturally constructed by the elites. Oddly, it was the elites who forces many of the cultural changes that are opposed to biblical sexuality upon us. The “oppressed” seek to destabilize the dominant discourses. The example they provide is deconstructing the idea of gender as binary.

This, The Report notes, produces a “self-contradictory ‘hard relativism’.” If morality is a social construct, how can the dominant moral view be wrong? How can it be unjust? As I interacted with one person holding to this “internally generated morality” they noted that differing norms between cultures simply resort in war, the ultimate exercise of power. But how can that ever be just, unless there is a transcendent morality? And how can there be a transcendent morality (say, racism is wrong) if there is no God?

The Report also notes that these are at odds with one another. The concept of identity they hold to is rooted in Freud and is individualist. The view of power is Marxist and Nietzschean, and therefore communal.

“The meaning of life is to determine who you are and to throw off the shackles of an oppressive society that refuses to accept and include you.”

One reason we struggle to make a plausible case for biblical sexuality, it notes, is that we’ve adapted too much to our culture, particularly with regard to identity and freedom (insert here my comment about Wild at Heart and note how it took the Church by storm). The methods of ministry in many churches has begun to reflect the youth and parachurch models focused on emotions, which makes sense when you see they often hold up Charles Finney and the Second Great Awakening as models. We’ve been focusing on self-esteem rather than biblical theology and doctrine. There is moralistic therapeutic deism in too many churches in our country.

“And so no Christian sexuality apologetic can have any real impact unless it spends time and effort to reveal the deeply problematic nature of these background beliefs.”

The second challenge is ignorance of the history of sexual revolutions. Here the Report is dependent on Kyle Harper’s From Shame to Sin. I would recommend Sexual Morality in a Christless World by Matthew Rueger which is written on a more popular level.

The false narrative is that the Roman empire was filled with sexual diversity but that Christianity imposed a much more restrictive sexual morality on it. This narrative ignores the roles of power and status undergirding the Roman (and Greek) sexual “freedom”.

“In the Greco-Roman world it was understood that while the respectable women had to be virgins at marriage and could have sex with no one but their spouses- husbands- all males- were expected to have sex with servants and slaves, prostitutes, poor women, and boys. Men could essentially force themselves on anyone below them in the social order; they could have sex with anyone bu the wife of another man of status.”

It was, in fact, an oppressive sexual ethic where social dominance was exhibited through sexuality. For men, it was generally a permissive sexual ethic as long as you didn’t pursue sex with someone above you socially, unless you took the passive or feminine position.

One reason the Church grew was that it actually protected people from sexual predators and oppression. Therefore the sexual ethic of the Church was more humane and positive. It reintroduced consent and faithfulness to one’s spouse.

“The rightness or wrongness of sexual acts depended on whether or not they kept persons in a right relationship with the polis, the social order and hierarchy.”

We see reflections of this in politics today. Powerful men can have whomever they want, and exert authority in the process either explicitly or implicitly. This is part of what the MeToo movement exposed. We can also see it in the way slave owners treated slaves prior to emancipation. For those who claimed to be Christians it was a corruption, a deviation, from the biblical sexual ethic rather than an expression of it.

“Christianity changed the “foundational logic” of sex.” Sex was once again rooted in “God’s created and redemptive order.” We discover that “Christians insisted that the rightness or wrongness of sexual acts be determined not by social status and power but by covenantal love and gender difference.” Such an ethic guards the vulnerable from sexual exploitation. Men had to rightly give up their independence and commit their whole lives to their spouse. Instead of being slaves to appetites, we were freed to enjoy sex in a way that reflects the created order (Gen. 2) mirrors Christ’s exclusive self-giving to the Church in redemption.

The sexual revolution that we are currently experiencing affirms sex as good, and generally affirms consent. These are idea borrowed from Christianity. But in other ways, this sexual revolution is also turning back the clock with a return to Rome’s logic. Sex is detached from commitment, life-long commitment, as well as gender differentiation. It has become about self-fulfillment (with greater opportunities that Rome) instead of self-giving. Instead of only one person being used, but use each other in the quest for self-fulfillment or self-actualization. It is “depersonalizing and objectifying.”

The third challenge is to root our teaching in all our theology rather than simply declaring the boundaries. While it can be, an should be, expressed simply, we have work to do in explaining why it is so. We need to speak of creation and redemption. It is to this that the Report then moves.

Grounding the Purposes of Sex in Biblical Theology

The purposes of sex in biblical theology they express center around the idea of union with Christ. I’m not sure why they didn’t return to the pattern of redemptive history here, emphasizing the Creation Mandates (image as equality, fruitfulness to fill the earth requiring different genders, common mission to subdue and rule to unite them in a purpose greater than their own relationship), as well as redemptive realities. They make mention of creation mandates under the rubric of redemptive realities rather than a creation, curse, cross, consummation pattern, if that makes sense.

1. “As union with Christ is a relationship of exclusive, covenantal, self-giving love, so sexual intimacy is only to be experienced within the covenant of marriage.” We have no fellowship with God apart from entering the covenant of grace by faith. He only has such a relationship with the Church. This covenant is exclusive and permanent (apostasy is a most grievous sin). Sexual intimacy is meant to be a picture of this fellowship between Christ and the Church: exclusive, covenantal, self-giving. This is quite different from our culture’s consumerist view of relationships, including sexual relationships. The focus in those relationship is our needs, what we get out of it. As we consider the covenant of grace we discover such relationships are about mutual self-giving so we seek to put the other person’s needs at least on par with our own. It is giving of the whole self, not part of the self, as in our culture. This is what marriage entails, the giving of the whole person to their spouse. Sex is not separate from the giving and receiving the rest of the person. Sex is no longer a play thing, simply a good way to spend some time, but a way to create and continue the deepest human relationship we are intended to enjoy.
2. “As union with Christ is a relationship between deeply different beings (God and humanity), so sexual intimacy is only to be experienced in a union across the deep difference of gender.” The Report does bring us to Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31-32 as its interpretation. Marriage is a sign pointing to the union of Christ and the Church. In marriage two equal but different genders are united in “a loving union.” We see a great gulf of sin emerging in Genesis 3, but this alienation is bridged by Christ’s giving Himself for the Church, and on the basis of forgiveness spouses can live in harmony. “Homosexuality does not honor the need for this rich diversity of perspective and gendered humanity in sexual relationships.” Even more, “(i)n one of the great ironies of late modern times, in which we celebrate diversity in so many cultural sectors, we have devalued the ultimate unity-in-diversity- inter-gendered marriage.” Since marriage is a microcosm of society, the gender differences should necessarily be present. And, Moses’ parenthetical comment concerning Adam and Eve’s union is prescriptive, not simply descriptive (especially since neither had parents to leave).
3. “As union with Christ brings new life into the world, so God has bestowed only on male-female marriage both the ability to create new human life and the best resources to nourish life.” The Report does refer us to Genesis 1 and the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. It takes a man and a woman to do this. This is about God’s purpose and plan, not His providence by which some (due to Adam’s sin and our bodily corruption) married couples are unable to have children. Two people of the same sex are necessarily unable to produce children. Any children they may raise come for a different set of parents. Children are intended to be raised by parents of both genders engaged in this life-long exclusive relationship. They are to see and experience the strengths and weaknesses of both genders, and how sin is addressed through forgiveness.

“Summary. To recap: sex is (A) for self-giving, which is only complete if there is a life-long covenant, (B) for the bridging of difference across the barrier between male and female, and, (C) for the creation and nurture of life. These theological purposes explain the ethic- why sexual intimacy is only to be experienced within marriage between a man and a woman.”

Toward A Christian Sexual Apologetic

Having developed the purposes of sex using Biblical theology, the Report connects them with the “cultural narratives, so as to both critique them and yet build on them.” The Report develops this apologetic as follows:

1. Super-Consensual. Sex is not about temporary consent (an evening, or until we both move on) but intended for a “permanent, whole-life consent to each other through marriage.” Each belongs to the other, and there should be self giving in marriage. This should NOT be taken to mean that a spouse can never say “not tonight, please” or that one spouse can force themselves upon the other. There is a general consent with permission to say “not now” based on circumstances. This reflects our permanent, exclusive covenant with God.
2. Gender diverse. God distributes “unique abilities, perspectives, and other gifts across the two genders.” This is not to say Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus but that the ranges for various attributes differs between the genders. (Sadly, instead of allowing girls to be “tom boys” like we used to, our culture now pushes them to actually be boys. And more sensitive boys are now pushed to be girls. So much for diversity within the genders.) “We believe a marriage between persons of the same gender fails to practice the gender diversity that we wish to see in other areas of life.” Meaning, society wants gender diversity in the workplace, in leadership and more, but for some reason wants to see less gender diversity in marriage through the promotion of same-sex marriage. Society seeks diversity in the types of “marriages” not the actual marriages.
3. Capable of life. God’s will is that sexual union in marriage will produce life. I do wish some comments would be made about providence and wisdom (some people may have genetic disorders they don’t wish to pass on to children) reflecting the pastoral wisdom found in other portions of this Report. But the general principle remains: marriage couples should not permanently prevent themselves from having children without just cause. “No only is this relationship the one that produces new life, it also then exposes growing children to the full range of our gendered humanity through the presence of both a mother and a father.”

The Christian Counter-Narrative of Sexuality

1. “The brutality of sex in the old world.” There were no glory days of sexuality during the Roman empire, unless you were among the highest in the social strata. It placed the will and pleasure of men over women, owners over slaves, rich over poor. Wives did not experiences this sexual freedom, but men could have sex with many partners. There was brutal sexual exploitation of women and children.
2. “A new personal identity.” Christianity proclaimed the grace of God and restoration of fellowship with God through the work of Jesus Christ for sinners. It was a message of salvation by grace, not good works. This gospel “had a social-levelling effect.” All who believed were equal at the foot of the cross. Your social status did not determine your standing with God.
3. “A new social ethic.” Performance was not the basis for self-regard. All Christians had equal status as sons of God, and equal access to the Father by the Spirit who baptized them all into Christ. We were “equally sinners in need of grace, and equally loved, justified, and adopted as God’s beloved children.” The effects of this was “the first multi-ethnic religious community, which brought wealthy and poor together in unprecedented ways.” Class and status gave way to love.
4. “A new vision for sexuality.” The key ethical change was with regard to sex. Instead of an exercise of power, it became an exercise in love. Sex was shaped by self-giving and gender diversity reflective of our covenantal union with Christ.
5. “The failures of western society.” In western society, laws reflecting biblical sexual standards were divorced from the gospel and creation. Negative views of sex did grow, and sex was seen as shameful in many communities. “When Christian sexual mores are held by a largely nominal Christian populace- without a keen sense of being sinners saved by sheer grace- these mores were more often than not enforced harshly, so that pregnant teenage girls or homosexual youths were treated with cruelty.” We’ve seen a profound lack of mercy shown to sexual sinners because we’ve forgotten we are all sinners. Too many speak as though sexual sinners can’t really be Christians. We have also seen a Roman use of power by cultural elites to coerce sex from women, and children.
6. “The modern sexual revolution.” In many ways the current sexual revolution is a produce of the failures of western society. This is seen in the MeToo movement, the push for consent, critiques of the “purity culture” which shamed sex and villainized women as the “foul temptress” while failing to teach young men self-control. While focusing on consent, this consent have been disconnected from commitment, life-long covenantal commitment. “Sex becomes transactional, a consumer good in which two parties exchange favors only as long as they are getting their needs met.” This means that both parties often feel used. People like musician John Mayer admit that pornography is easier than dealing with a messing relationship in which you feel used. Others abandon marriage, and the prospect of children. Others seek polyamorous relationships to somehow get all their needs met since one person can’t do that. “These trends are especially devastating to the poorest communities and so, arguably, the modern sex ethic is hardest on those with the least power and societal protections.” Sound familiar? It should, because this is the awful carnage of Rome’s sexual ethic. Put another way, the modern sexual revolution is contrary to human flourishing. Instead it spreads misery and we are reaping a bitter harvest of societal dysfunction, distress and disunity.
7. “The Christian sexual counter-culture.” We believe that discussions of sex should be taking place in the context of God’s Story, not simply our stories. Our greater long-term satisfaction and joy is found living in sync with God’s created order. It is found in becoming fully human, as revealed in being like Christ. It is not found in the sad counterfeit of self-actualization and its evil twin authenticity. But we do have contrary impulses due to the original corruption that remains. We still want the wrong things sexually: whether heterosexual, homosexual or omnisexual. As I noted in the margins of one of my books on post-modernism years ago: we all have a sexual agenda. As a result, we need healthy boundaries. “Christianity says: don’t let tribe or culture control you and vie you your valuation. Let God’s Word give you the moral grid to understand your heart.” That’s because your heart is not “all good”, but subject to corruption.

Don’t let any minor criticisms I’ve offered deceive you. I believe this is a very helpful portion of the report. In other portions you can’t tell which committee members were influential, but this section has Tim Keller’s handwriting all over it. That is not a bad thing when you are talking about communicating biblical truth to a skeptical culture in a winsome way instead of trying to defend the Reformed fortress.

Too often we are quite off-putting in how we defend biblical sexuality. Defend it we should. But our goal should be communicating a grander more alluring picture of sexuality reflective of God great Story. Our goal should reflect that Story in the redemption, not the condemnation, of sexual sinners. They know we see their sexual license as sin, but the don’t know we (should) understand them as forgivable. They sense a scarlet letter that can never be removed and which forces them to the outskirts of society like Hester Prynne.

The Church, including the PCA, has a long way to go in being able to consistently communicate the biblical sexual ethic in an honest, grace-filled, inviting and God-honoring way. This, I think, is a good step in the right direction.

“We believe that this link between God’s love and sexuality, that is lived out through the Biblical model of marriage, is the best way for human beings to live and thrive.”

 

 

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