Is any one familiar with Wayne Grudem’s books on this issue. He’s an evangelical and I find his arguments compelling? He deals with the authority issue as well as the gender roles. Once you’ve read Grudem and his fine exegesis , you will not even want women deacons.

Robert ian Williams - 06 September 2008 06:18 PM

Is any one familiar with Wayne Grudem’s books on this issue. He’s an evangelical and I find his arguments compelling? He deals with the authority issue as well as the gender roles. Once you’ve read Grudem and his fine exegesis , you will not even want women deacons.

Er, any role for women in the church? Just asking.

With respect, Robert, women are a reality in the church.  They constitute the greattest prportion of the members and they have been holding holy orders for many years now.  A women is indeed the head of the Church (defender of the faith, I think is the official title) - QE2.  Wayne Grudem’s views will make little difference.

Wayne acknowledges womens role in the Church, but not to be in authority over men and in ministerial order. Yes a woman is supreme Governor of the Church of England, but not in the Catholic Church.

This is God’s order and we are not to question it. the catholic Church never closed consecrated ministry for women.... the religious orders etc.

Of course the Cof E closed this for women, and then after 300 years they made deaconesses. and the ritulists revived religious communities. For 300 years the best they could do for the Church was clean it.

John, just because something is the case does not mean it ought be the case.  Just because Gene Robinson (sp?) is a bishop doesn’t mean therefore that practising gays ought be bishops.  Just because Chuck’s mum is the defender of the faith doesn’t mean women ought to have positions of authority over men.  Can’t argue from subjective to objective.

It could be granted that there is a morality issue in the case of +Gene Robinson but this is not the case for women. 

“Your sons and daughters shall prophesy” “Junia is greatly regarded among the Apostles.” Deborah was one of the Judges of Israel in that period preceding the monarchy. 

There are too many examples in Scripture of women in significant and recognised leadership over men for your proposition to hold true.

Deborah was sent to Israel as a mark of God’s judgment on the men for failing to step up to the plate.  And, my point above is that you can’t go from is to ought, which is exactly what you’re doing, again.

And prophesying equals authority or leadership how?
Deborah is not the typical judge either.

Well, you girls really seem to like it where you are.  When you can’t accept the evidence before your eyes that God’s Spirit will call and empower any who will respond willingly regardless of their gender, there is little more that I can offer to the debate.

You have created your own theories that cast a particular slant on the interpretation of the Scriptures that skews its meaning just as much as you accuse others of doing.

Cheers.

John , when you revise St Paul in one area , you must by “logic"revise him in others...that is why I am grateful to an infallible Church. There is a superb letter in this weeks Church of England newspaoer...Andrew Carey ( a columnisyt ) is criticised for criticising thrice married and divorced TEC bishops when he himself is divorced and re-married!

Do you support Divorce and re-marriage..if you do you go against the traditional Anglican positon. Even though Henry ViIII was divorced ( pretence was it wasan annulment)and Cranmer wished to liberalise the law ( but was executed before he could do so), the Codf E forbade re-marriage for the first four centuries. So don’t say, Gene Robinson is a matter of morlaity, whn trying to justify divergence from St paul!

By the way here is part of a review of Wayne Grudem’s excellent book on Evangelical femminism..a new path to liberalism: by Robert Sagers

Wayne Grudem’s Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006) is a welcome addition to a plethora of scholarship that has been done in the area of biblical gender studies in recent years. However, this book is quite different than previous work in this area. In Evangelical Feminism, Grudem sounds a clear and explicit warning to his evangelical feminist friends: the presuppositions upon which evangelical feminism are founded necessarily lead to liberalism.

Grudem’s approach in proving such a thesis is to show the connections between evangelical feminism and liberalism in the local church in recent decades (Part 1: 23-30); the views of evangelical feminists that undermine the authority of the Bible (Part 2: 31-150); and the views of evangelical feminists that are based upon “untruthful or unsubstantiated claims” (Part 3: 151-220). In the last section of the book, Grudem lays out the direction where evangelical feminism is taking evangelical Christians, which he contends is a slippery slope toward liberalism (Part 4: 221-263). Ultimately at stake in the gender debate, according to Grudem, is Holy Scripture itself (261-263).

If femenism is about the liberation of women from the stereotypes, as they see it, that limited their options in life and the church, then of course, evangelical feminism will take its adherants away from the traditional understandings of Scripture.  Whether this constitutes liberalism depends on where you stand.  If it is imperative that all Scriputre has a single and immutable meaning or interpretation for all time, as some in the evangelical believe, than any view at variance with that can be declared to be liberal.

I do not regard myself as liberal in that sense, but I do allow that there are various and equally valid understandings of Scripture in many situations.  Without such flexibility I would have to regard everyone who held a different view to the one I felt was right to be no longer Christian.  Instead, I regard my friends from the many different traditions of church to be just as Christian than me, even though we have different views - I certainly do not regard them as liberals.

John Clapton states:

I

I do not regard myself as liberal in that sense, but I do allow that there are various and equally valid understandings of Scripture in many situations. 

That statement on carefula\nlysis is meaningless....subjectivism becomes the litmus test of orthodoxy....this is relativism pure and simple..

Back in early June, when the other thread was only a couple of weeks old, I had no real problems with the idea that women should not be given leadership/eldership roles in the church but couldn’t see any good reason why they should be barred from teaching mixed congregations.  That was the result of many years of hardly thinking about these particular issues at all.  Since then I’ve done a lot of reading and, as a result, I now see no good reason why suitably gifted and qualified women shouldn’t also be elders.  Thank you to all whose comments have worried me enough to go and search these things out, get even more worried, read more and finally make up my mind.

In a review of Wayne Grudem’s Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism Kevin Giles writes,

Evangelical Feminism is written to further a cause that has consumed the author’s working life: the permanent subordination of women as God’s ideal. It judges all fellow evangelicals who disagree on this matter to be “theological liberals,” or implicit liberals. The fundamental seismic fault in the author’s thinking is that he cannot differentiate between the interpretation of Scripture and Scripture itself. For him, if anyone rejects his interpretation of the key texts on which he and other hierarchists base their case for the permanent subordination of women, then that believer is by definition rejecting the authority of Scripture. What this means is that the methodological challenge to interpret Scripture rightly in its given historical and cultural context and to apply what is said rightly in another historical and cultural context is solved by assuming and asserting that “my interpretation” tells you exactly what the Bible says. When an author claims that one’s interpretation of God’s word is God’s word without any caveats, then, by implication, one is claiming to speak for God. The author is asserting that what he says the Bible says is what God says, and, thus, if you disagree with him, you are disagreeing with God.
...
To begin an honest and open dialogue, we have to agree that the issue is not the authority of Scripture, but how Scripture is to be interpreted and applied. Evangelical egalitarians do not reject the authority of Scripture; they reject an interpretation of the Scriptures that suggests that God’s unchanging ideal is the subordination of women.
...
Hierarchists may have the very highest view of Scripture, but, by making their theory the “glasses” or grid through which the Bible’s teaching on women is to be interpreted, they dishonor Scripture by not allowing Scripture to speak in its own terms.

Kathryn wrote that,

Deborah was sent to Israel as a makr of Gods judgment on the men for failing to step up to the plate.

That is an interpretation of the text based on the interpretive principle that God created women to be always subordinate to men.  The Bible says only that “the children of Israel cried out to the LORD; for Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and for twenty years he harshly oppressed the children of Israel.” (Judges 4:3)

It is true that there is a great deal in the OT that is descriptive rather than prescriptive, e.g., the story of Judah and Tamar, of the Levite’s concubine and of all those polygamous relationships.  Note that in all these, sometimes horrific, stories of sin the parties involved were all sinful human beings.  In the case of Deborah, the prophetess, (prophets getting listed after apostles but before evangelists, pastors and teachers in Ephesians 4:11 - for those who are interested in how roles/functions are ordered) it was God, Himself, who chose to speak to His people through her and thereby make a leader of her.  Can God go against His own will?  Can God do what is wrong?  Do you think that God could not have raised up a man to do the job He gave to Deborah if His eternal will was that no woman should ever have a position of leadership/authority/teaching (including over men) among His people?

There was a judgement if you can call being humiliated a judgement.  The humiliation was not of all Israel but of Barak and he was not humiliated because of anything Deborah did but because of what Jael did.

And Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go!”
So she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. (Judges 4:8-9 NKJV)

I will leave you with an article written in 1985 titled Why Evangelicals are Vulnerable to Cults.  The author, Harold Bussell, points out that,

A close examination of every major cult today, with the exception of Eastern cults, reveals that they all began in an evangelical church or with a leader from an evangelical background.
...
First they all began by defining themselves as being in opposition to their local church, their denomination, or the church at large. ... Their foundation always began with an identity by opposition. Second, in all these systems, the pastor or leader was placed in a position beyond confrontation, coupled with a tight discipleship or shepherding approach to instruction. Third, all these groups placed a high emphasis on group sharing, testimonies, spirituality, devotions, and, in some cases, Bible study. Fourth, in all of these groups the leader had gained some new spiritual insight emphasizing the last days, healing, community, or spirituality. Fifth, all of these groups slowly developed their own subcultural spiritual language.

Those who believe in the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father, and therefore of women to men, identify themselves in opposition to those dastardly “liberals” who allow women to have any sort of position of leadership over men.  Their leaders regard their own teachings as so authoritative that all dissenters must be, well, dastardly “liberals”.  That kind of put down tends to help leaders avoid confrontation.  I don’t know about the group sharing, testimonies thing.  But there is definitely the new spiritual insight in relation to the Trinity which says that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father.

I’m not saying that evangelicals who believe in the subordination of women should all be classed as members of a cult.  But I am deeply concerned about where all this is going.

John Clapton - 05 September 2008 04:24 PM

But my last question still stands.  How did we get into a discussion of the intricacies of the Trinity in a thread about women Bisops and whether or not we might accept their authority?

Hi John

That’s a good question - and I’m going to leave it to someone else to reply to properly.  From my observations, both sides will claim the Trinity is a basis on which human relationships can/should/do exist.  I suspect being made in the image of God as relational beings comes into it.  And so how we should relate (and if there is some sort of relational order) will depend on how the Trinity relates.  Ultimately, the Trinity shows us how to love.  If there is no differing in roles in the Trinity, we shouldn’t have differing roles either.  And if there is - perhaps we should to.

Janice Money - 06 September 2008 10:18 AM

But both the Wikipedia article and Giles note that this view of the Trinity, that the Son is eternally equal, but subordinate, to the Father is one that, “is an invention of the 1970s”

Hi Janice

Please see some of the quotes I mentioned above.  All of them were well before the 70s, and will argue that the Son is eternally equal, but submits to the Father.  Those who claim otherwise have not done their research well. 

Janice Money - 06 September 2008 10:18 AM

And that, I think, is the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son.  They are united in will and purpose.  (John 10:30 - “I and the Father are one.") There is no eternal submission because there is no need for submission because they are one.

There are a couple of issues here.  Firstly - there is no disagreement here that the Father and the Son are united in will and purpose, and that they are united in the Trinity.  Yet having “wills” that are united, and after the same thing, does not mean they only share one will - they could still have a will each which share the same desires.  Jesus prays “Not my will, but yours be done”.  Here he clearly indicates he has his own will, as does the Father.  Of course - they are united wills.

Janice Money - 06 September 2008 10:18 AM

To say that there is eternal submission is to say that they are not one.

If you follow this logic - if there are any eternal differences between the Father, Son and Spirit they are not one.  It seems that if we follow your line of reasoning, there are no (eternal) differences between the Father, Son and Spirit.  And do we therefore not have a Trinity, but a single Deity who only showed himself in three different ways?

Mike

Thank You Janice!!!!

You have articulated things that I was only aware of intuitively - I couldn’t find the words or the examples.

These two things disturbed me - the idea that the Son was eternally subordinated to the Father, and that therefore women were eternally to be subordinated to men.

The relationship between Father Son and Holy Spirit is indeed complex, but you have to admit that by any approach to logic we Christians are forcing our language to say that we worship one God in three persons.  However, one thing that has remained consistent in the witness of the church is that despite the relationship we try to explain using fallible language there is a unity and equality between all three that is unique and in fact so unique that it makes the three ONE.

If this is the longstanding witness of the church, then for someone to come along in relatively recent years and propose that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father, that this is the way it has always been, and that because of this it is indeed logical and appropriate for us to require women to be eternally subordinated to men has the very strong smell of a theory that has been cooked up to satisfy a pre-determined position.

I am sure that Wayne Grudem was not the first to propose the ideas he propounds, but they are clearly intended to justify a particular interpretation of the Scripture.  I happen to agree with a different intepretation that is filtered by the idea that I have declared before “that we are called through our baptism into a priesthood of all believers in a Kingdom in which their is neithe male nor female”.  This theological framework is not derived from thin air - it is firmly grounded in the teaching of Scripture.  It is not disrespectful to the Authority of Scripture, indeed it affirms it.  Yet I come, along with Janice and others, to a very different conclusion about the possibility that a woman can take up leadership in the church without countermanding the divine order.

Different interpretations, as Kevin Giles asserts, do not mean a repudiation of the authority of Scripture; they are just different interpretations.

Go Janice.