Scripture Trumps History

[Dr. Shawn Wright is a history professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and in this post is critiquing a paper that was presented by Dr. Mimi Haddad, the president of Christians for Biblical Equality.  You should also know that Shawn is an elder and teacher at Clifton Baptist Church (which he helped plant a decade ago), a humble husband and loving father of five sons.  -- David Kotter]

I have two responses to Mimi Haddad's paper which I was happy to hear at the most recent annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.  One of my points is positive, but the second is a critique of Haddad's argument.

First, I appreciated being reminded of God's remarkable work in the nineteenth century.  The 1800's were a period of incredible growth and activity amongst Evangelicals in America and Britain.  Missions agencies-both domestic and foreign-and benevolence societies of all sorts grew and prospered and dramatically impacted the world.  We should praise God for this advance of the gospel.  Among other things, we should thank the Lord that he chose to use many remarkable women to accomplish some of these things.  Haddad's paper was a helpful reminder of this fact.

Nevertheless, I think there was a severe weakness to Haddad's "Since A, then B" argument.  She attempted to prove that since women led in some important ways in the Evangelical movement in the past, we should encourage women to assume leadership in our churches and ministries today.  Without nit-picking about the details of the nineteenth century (What were the relative numbers of women leaders vs. men leaders anyway?  Lottie Moon impacted Southern Baptists without ever being placed in a position of leadership on their missions agency, right?), here is my major concern with Haddad's argument.

We must remember that the Bible is authoritative; history isn't.  We must always eschew the fallacy of looking back in time to follow the doctrine that our favorite theologian formulated or to adopt a methodology that "worked" at some previous time.  As a church historian I remind my students of this all the time, for this is the danger of those who love and value history.  "John Owen said it, so it has to be right."  "William Carey did it, so it must be biblical."  Right?  No.  We must humbly learn from sisters and brothers who loved Christ before us.  That is, in my opinion, one of the great reasons to study history.  But the only touchstone of our faith and practice is God's inspired word, the Bible.

All evangelicals should agree that the Bible alone (sola scriptura) is the only inerrant guide for our beliefs and church practices.  Haddad argues, though, that we should seek to base our ministries on the example of women's roles in the nineteenth century (which is not as strong an example as Haddad implies), rather than tackling the teaching of texts like 1 Tim 2:11-15.  This is a dangerous course.  If we follow it, we are in danger of abandoning the Protestant principle of sola scriptura in favor of Roman Catholicism's view that God guides us through both Scripture and as the Holy Spirit leads the church to fuller revelation in her tradition.  Protestants should value and learn from the tradition of the church.  But we must always critique that tradition biblically.  On the basis of the Bible's teaching on women's roles, I don't think that Haddad's arguments from the history of the nineteenth century are valid.