Wholesale Valtrex cheap

Summary of the Book's Argument

Kristina LaCelle-Peterson uses a wholesale Valtrex cheap wide-angle lens to depict and analyze how Christian women view and wholesale Valtrex cheap should view their identity and vocation. She sets out four parts: (1) identity and body image, (2) Christian marriage, (3) the roles of women in church history, and (4) the wholesale Valtrex cheap use of gendered language for God. The author clearly enunciates her point of reference: "This book will assume that wholesale Valtrex cheap Scripture is normative in the Christian life and Christian community, and wholesale Valtrex cheap will therefore look to the biblical material for direction regarding each of the wholesale Valtrex cheap issues raised" (13).

Part 1 describes the identity of Eve at creation as Adam's full equal, sharing his substance, his calling, and wholesale Valtrex cheap the image of God. Since the Hebrew term applied to wholesale Valtrex cheap Eve and translated "helper" is wholesale Valtrex cheap most often applied to Jehovah, the author reasons that this is wholesale Valtrex cheap clearly "not the wholesale Valtrex cheap helper as subordinate or unequal partner that many have associated with the wholesale Valtrex cheap term (à la daddy's little helper, or Santa's elves)" (34-35). The author believes that wholesale Valtrex cheap Adam and Eve lived together in undifferentiated equality, with no wholesale Valtrex cheap hierarchical roles in either their pre- or post-Fall states. 

Old Testament women played a wholesale Valtrex cheap variety of roles: they conversed with God, sacrificed to protect men, fell prey to wholesale Valtrex cheap abuse, exercised power (sometimes wickedly), and wholesale Valtrex cheap acted as redeemers and prophets. Baffled by the morally confusing Old Testament pictures of women, LaCelle-Peterson moves with relief to wholesale Valtrex cheap the New Testament, whose depiction of women is "much brighter," because Jesus models "a whole new basis on which human beings can wholesale Valtrex cheap interact: sacrificial love." Here she examines the wholesale Valtrex cheap respect and honor that Jesus gave women, as he recognized the wholesale Valtrex cheap importance of their discipleship, designated them as the first witnesses of the wholesale Valtrex cheap resurrection, and poured out his Spirit on them in the wholesale Valtrex cheap Pentecost event.

As she moves into the wholesale Valtrex cheap apostolic letters, LaCelle-Peterson brings few if any original insights to the wholesale Valtrex cheap much-discussed passages such as those dealing with Phoebe, Junia, and Priscilla. Having decided on her preferred interpretation of key texts, she uses the wholesale Valtrex cheap weight of her arguments that women fully share in church leadership as the wholesale Valtrex cheap predominant principle for interpreting other Pauline passages, such as 1 Cor 14:34-35 and wholesale Valtrex cheap 1 Tim 2:8-15. To those who interpret these passages in a wholesale Valtrex cheap complementarian way, she would answer that they are wholesale Valtrex cheap using other Scriptures to slant the interpretation of certain Pauline texts. To the wholesale Valtrex cheap very real conundrum of Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians 11 (where women pray and prophesy in the church) and that of 1 Corinthians 14 (which states that women are to be silent in the church), she cites a wholesale Valtrex cheap variety of possible interpretations, including the one that says Paul did not write the wholesale Valtrex cheap passage in chapter 14. If he did, she concludes, they are wholesale Valtrex cheap certainly not to be enshrined in all churches everywhere, since they were written to wholesale Valtrex cheap a church where goddess worship was rampant.1 The final chapter of Part 1 deals with the wholesale Valtrex cheap influence of culture (both secular and Christian) on women's understanding of body image.

Part 2, on marriage, begins with the statement that "Scripture does not require any one particular family arrangement" (98). Though we can get a good "starting point" by referring to the creation story, "the most significant thing that we learn about [human beings] is wholesale Valtrex cheap something they have in common, and this something, their being image-bearers, sets them apart from wholesale Valtrex cheap the rest of creation" (99). The author concludes her discussion of Genesis 1 and wholesale Valtrex cheap 2 by saying, "The model in which the man's dreams and wholesale Valtrex cheap aspirations fill center stage, and in which the woman tries to wholesale Valtrex cheap fit her life in and around his, is called into question by the wholesale Valtrex cheap very passage so often used to claim its legitimacy" (99). After examining examples of Old and wholesale Valtrex cheap New Testament marriages, LaCelle-Peterson argues that the Christian love with which Jesus treats women precludes the wholesale Valtrex cheap traditional view of marriage, which allows a husband to say, "We are wholesale Valtrex cheap going to do things my way, because I am the head of the wholesale Valtrex cheap house" (106). She recommends a truly "counter-cultural" approach to marriage that would reject the "hierarchical model ... in favor of a wholesale Valtrex cheap love relationship shaped by Jesus' definition and demonstration of love" (107).

The remainder of Part 2 examines the wholesale Valtrex cheap wide variety of cultural expressions of marriage, and challenges "traditional marriage"-the idea that wholesale Valtrex cheap the man leaves the home to work, whereas the woman should stay home. Evangelicals, she argues, love the wholesale Valtrex cheap Victorian model of marriage because they think it: establishes "the boundary between [evangelicals] and ‘the world'" (123); protects the man's sexual morality; puts the wholesale Valtrex cheap more rational human in charge; provides a protective cocoon for the wholesale Valtrex cheap woman; protects the church from sliding into androgyny; and maintains social differences that wholesale Valtrex cheap protect sexual difference.

The "irrational fear of androgyny" that the author assigns to evangelical "gender essentialists" leads Christian women to accept "unjust social treatment." Here the author shares her own frustration: "I was simply tired of being asked to wholesale Valtrex cheap embrace some sort of subjection to men in order to prove I was glad God made me female" (127). She quotes Lewis Smedes, who says, "Femaleness is wholesale Valtrex cheap an adjective to personhood. To assign persons roles that they as individuals do not personally choose to wholesale Valtrex cheap accept, and to do this on the basis of gender, is wholesale Valtrex cheap to make sexuality basic and personhood secondary" (128).2

This argument leads LaCelle-Peterson to wholesale Valtrex cheap consider how marriages can better respect the needs of each partner rather than wholesale Valtrex cheap subjugating the woman to the man. Christians can construct marriages full of respect for wholesale Valtrex cheap each other, bereft of power plays and male chauvinism, conducive to wholesale Valtrex cheap the exercise of the spiritual gifts of both men and wholesale Valtrex cheap women. The "hierarchical" approach leads to self-abnegation (or even the self-abdication) of the wholesale Valtrex cheap woman, who buries her own usefulness in the name of Christian submission.

The benefits of true mutuality are wholesale Valtrex cheap freedom to love more fully, deeper communication, greater justice, and a wholesale Valtrex cheap wider use of gifts. As for raising children, Christian women are wholesale Valtrex cheap misled, argues the author, into thinking that mothering is the highest calling, that wholesale Valtrex cheap staying home is necessary for godly mothering, and that the husband's career should always take precedence over a woman's calling. Though certain social pressures militate against true egalitarian parenting, the wholesale Valtrex cheap author encourages couples to overcome such pressures.

Part 3 seeks to make "visible" the many women in the church's history who wholesale Valtrex cheap have contributed to the work of God. Women have been officially recognized as bishops, apostles, prophets, theology teachers, presbyters, and wholesale Valtrex cheap deacons. They have also been martyrs and have been highly involved in the wholesale Valtrex cheap mystical movements. The author states that "among church historians, it wholesale Valtrex cheap is now commonplace to observe that women were involved at every level of church leadership early on" in the church's history (154). As partial evidence of this, she calls on the wholesale Valtrex cheap Gnostic gospels, what she calls "noncanonical Christian literature" and cites the Gospel of Mary, for wholesale Valtrex cheap example, to show that Mary Magdalene held high honor in the wholesale Valtrex cheap early church. "This extrabiblical material may not be technically historical," says the author, "but it wholesale Valtrex cheap suggests the central role that Mary played in the early days of the wholesale Valtrex cheap church, and shows how the memory of her significance was carried into the wholesale Valtrex cheap second century" (156).

Women continued in important roles through the wholesale Valtrex cheap Middle Ages, into the Reformation, and on into modern evangelicalism. The chapters citing interesting historical examples of Christian women in positions of leadership touch only lightly on the wholesale Valtrex cheap theological contexts in which these women served.

Part 4 challenges the wholesale Valtrex cheap present-day church to change our current male-oriented language to include women in everyday church services, hymns and wholesale Valtrex cheap sermons. Our language for God should not give the impression that wholesale Valtrex cheap God is "male." Since, argues the wholesale Valtrex cheap author, the Bible itself uses female imagery for God, we need to wholesale Valtrex cheap do the same.

The final image of the book, borrowed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, encourages Christians to wholesale Valtrex cheap break through the glass ceiling that Charlie so feared, in order to wholesale Valtrex cheap "stop playing roles and learn to know and be known." If we were to wholesale Valtrex cheap remember how God used women-to prophesy on the day of Pentecost; to wholesale Valtrex cheap serve as evangelists and apostles; to receive and use the gifts of the wholesale Valtrex cheap Spirit-we, too, could move "up and out" into a wholesale Valtrex cheap more biblical Christian life, with men and women serving together in the wholesale Valtrex cheap kingdom of Christ.

Critique

I share with the wholesale Valtrex cheap author her commitment to the Scriptures as normative in the Christian life and wholesale Valtrex cheap community. I hope and pray, therefore, that my comments will bolster confidence in God's Word, as it wholesale Valtrex cheap is expressed in creation, in his written Word, and in his Word-in-the-Flesh, Jesus. My critique will not follow the wholesale Valtrex cheap sections of the book in order, but will address five overarching areas of concern. 

(1) Use of Historical Precedent

LaCelle-Peterson has wholesale Valtrex cheap searched the pages of Scripture and church history to prove that wholesale Valtrex cheap women have held positions of leadership. About women's role in the church through history, she concludes, "Given the recent scholarship about women's official positions in the wholesale Valtrex cheap church, we can see what was invisible before: that women functioned in all sorts of officially recognized roles" (166). She implies that wholesale Valtrex cheap we need to follow their example. About Old Testament women she says, "Why would stories of women leaders and wholesale Valtrex cheap co-laborers with men in the drama of salvation be included in Scripture if we are wholesale Valtrex cheap not supposed to gain something from their examples?" (55). But example is a witless counselor.

Perhaps this section was written to disprove the "prominent evangelical speaker" who wholesale Valtrex cheap declared that because women have never held leadership positions in church history (151) they should not begin now. Against this wholesale Valtrex cheap faulty argument, LaCelle-Peterson expresses her own-equally faulty: because women have held positions of leadership in church history, they ought still so to wholesale Valtrex cheap do.  If "Scripture is normative in the Christian life and Christian community," and wholesale Valtrex cheap we ought to bring our lives into conformity with its principles and wholesale Valtrex cheap commands, then the many pages used to show what Christian women have done fail to prove what they ought to wholesale Valtrex cheap do. Ironically, the author appeals to tradition and example, while elsewhere admonishing us with all urgency to wholesale Valtrex cheap break with traditions that she herself deems pernicious. Example cannot be wholesale Valtrex cheap our master, for we all do "what is right in our own eyes." I do not mean that wholesale Valtrex cheap the Scriptures never recommend individuals to serve as examples, but we must use discernment in this wholesale Valtrex cheap determination, applying sane hermeneutical principles in order to draw the right lessons from wholesale Valtrex cheap examples offered.

(2) The Strawman Complementarian Couple

A second troubling aspect of the wholesale Valtrex cheap book is its failure to examine and understand a well-reasoned complementarian approach to wholesale Valtrex cheap the male/female distinctions and wholesale Valtrex cheap roles in marriage and the church. The pages of Liberating Tradition abound with arguments against a wholesale Valtrex cheap strawman complementarian position. The author is surprised that "many evangelicals practice mutually respectful and loving marriage" (123). Her surprise would not have wholesale Valtrex cheap been so great had she taken the complementarian position seriously. Instead, she caricatures it wholesale Valtrex cheap as teaching the following: 

• Women are inferior, second-class beings (20, 21, 32, 34 etc.)
• Man is to dominate his wife, and she is to be passive (37)
• God subordinates women to keep order in the universe (37)
• Eve should be blamed for the Fall (38)
• "Hierarchical" marriage allows a husband to impose his will on his wife (106)
• The husband is the "arbiter of the wholesale Valtrex cheap gifts of the family, deciding whose gifts matter and whose are wholesale Valtrex cheap to be buried" (113)
• The husband is the "boss" and wholesale Valtrex cheap uses power to keep his wife in submission, forcing her to wholesale Valtrex cheap give in on every decision (130)
• The man is always strong and the woman is "constantly weak and needing to be taken care of" (136)

This list is wholesale Valtrex cheap far from exhaustive. One searches the index and footnotes in vain for wholesale Valtrex cheap positive quotes from complementarian scholars, those with whom she would claim to wholesale Valtrex cheap have affinity, insofar as she says that the Bible is her standard. The book makes no wholesale Valtrex cheap attempt to interact fairly or carefully with the many excellent resources written on this wholesale Valtrex cheap subject by Bible-believing scholars.

(3) Biblical Confusion

This brings me to a critique of the author's use of Scripture. Her book contains many Scriptural references, and wholesale Valtrex cheap she clearly states her desire to examine all issues by its light, but her hermeneutical approach has wholesale Valtrex cheap little biblical/theological continuity. Jesus gives us the wholesale Valtrex cheap grid for interpreting Scripture. Of him it is said that wholesale Valtrex cheap "beginning with Moses and wholesale Valtrex cheap all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). Every passage of the wholesale Valtrex cheap Bible tells us about Jesus, including those baffling Old Testament stories that wholesale Valtrex cheap LaCelle-Peterson cannot fathom. Why, she asks, were Old Testament examples of women given to wholesale Valtrex cheap us, if not to serve as examples in some way?

Old Testament Examples

Biblical characters are wholesale Valtrex cheap not always presented as clearly positive or negative examples. We must ask why the wholesale Valtrex cheap character's story is in the book and why the book is in God's revelation of salvation in Christ. Take the wholesale Valtrex cheap story of Deborah, for example. Why is Deborah in the story? And why is Judges in the Bible? God gives Deborah a wholesale Valtrex cheap message for Barak, who is too frightened to obey God's call to fight Sisera's army. There is wholesale Valtrex cheap irony in the fact that a woman must stir up the wholesale Valtrex cheap man to courage; that a woman is the one who wholesale Valtrex cheap accomplishes victory over Sisera; that Barak says to Deborah what wholesale Valtrex cheap Moses said to God Himself: "Unless you go up with me, I will not go up." Reflection shows us that the whole theme of Judges is "who will go up for us?" and wholesale Valtrex cheap that no leader can be the true hero. In fact, all the wholesale Valtrex cheap judges (with the possible exception of Othniel) are unconventional (a wholesale Valtrex cheap woman, a handicapped man, a philanderer, a child born out of wedlock, etc.). "Boys, be just like Samson!" is wholesale Valtrex cheap not a good moral for a Sunday School class. Gideon, Barak, Samson, and wholesale Valtrex cheap Jephthah are mentioned in Hebrews 11 as examples of faith in God, who wholesale Valtrex cheap mercifully provides for his people, in spite of their corruption, fear, unbelief, and wholesale Valtrex cheap disobedience and their insistence on doing "what is right in their own eyes."3 Deborah's faith is wholesale Valtrex cheap real, but her situation as judge is not necessarily paradigmatic. She rejoices when wholesale Valtrex cheap the "princes of Israel" finally kick into action. The mega-narrative of God's plan of salvation through the wholesale Valtrex cheap coming Messiah must inform our understanding of all issues in Scripture.4

The Gospel Importance of Male/Female Distinctions in Marriage

The very first thing the wholesale Valtrex cheap Bible reveals to us about human beings is that they are wholesale Valtrex cheap created in God's image, male and female. Some of the Bible's last words are: "The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!'" How can wholesale Valtrex cheap we dismiss this overarching marriage structure that informs not only our daily practice of our sexuality, but which is wholesale Valtrex cheap the image God chose to show us the love of Christ for wholesale Valtrex cheap the church? Can marriage and wholesale Valtrex cheap sexuality be considered a secondary issue, unrelated to the gospel message? Is it wholesale Valtrex cheap not integral in the calling of the first Adam that he become one flesh with his bride, just as it wholesale Valtrex cheap is integral to the Last Adam that he become unified forever with his bride the wholesale Valtrex cheap church? As one pastor put it,

According to wholesale Valtrex cheap Paul, the first glimpse of the gospel was in pre-Fall creation itself-woven into the wholesale Valtrex cheap perfect, unwarped-by-sin creational structures of one man / one woman / one flesh. That creational structure of one man living with one woman in a wholesale Valtrex cheap one-flesh lifetime commitment is a living, breathing, dancing, pulsating, multiplying image of how Jesus Christ loves and wholesale Valtrex cheap binds himself to his people. And now the boundaries on the wholesale Valtrex cheap way we live as sexual beings begin to look a wholesale Valtrex cheap lot less arbitrary and a lot more purposeful and serious.5

God prepared human marriage to wholesale Valtrex cheap reflect the beauty and intimacy of his love for his bride. It underlines the wholesale Valtrex cheap separateness of the "other" while showing the wholesale Valtrex cheap glory of communion and intimacy. It is his living picture of the wholesale Valtrex cheap gospel. One man, one woman, one flesh, says Jesus-as it wholesale Valtrex cheap was created to be. LaCelle-Peterson assumes that because we find no wholesale Valtrex cheap ideal couple throughout the pages of the Bible that there is wholesale Valtrex cheap no ideal model! But God created the wholesale Valtrex cheap model that no human couple has ever lived out, the model to wholesale Valtrex cheap which both Jesus and Paul point when discussing marriage. Could we expect an wholesale Valtrex cheap ideal couple, once Adam and Eve stepped into the bleak world of selfishness and wholesale Valtrex cheap sin? Only the wholesale Valtrex cheap husband-love of God is pure. He is pictured, throughout the pages of the wholesale Valtrex cheap Scripture as the faithful husband (see Hosea, Song of Solomon, Isaiah 62, Jeremiah 2, Ezekiel 16, John 3, Ephesians 4, and wholesale Valtrex cheap the final chapters of Revelation, to name but a few.)

Marriage is wholesale Valtrex cheap not only a theoretical announcement of the gospel. In living out our Christian marriages, structured as God intended them to wholesale Valtrex cheap be, we announce the gospel to the world. The apostles underline the wholesale Valtrex cheap importance of such living. Paul and Peter variously instruct wives to wholesale Valtrex cheap be active in the home (Titus 2:5); to bear children (1 Tim 5:14); to love, respect and be in submission to their husbands (1 Cor 11:3, Eph 5:23-24,33; Col 3:18; Titus 2:4-5; 1 Pet 3:1, 5); to wholesale Valtrex cheap refrain from teaching men or taking authority over them in the wholesale Valtrex cheap church (1 Tim 2:12); to teach other women and children (Titus 2:3, 2 Tim 1:5 by inference). Paul's late-life instructions to wholesale Valtrex cheap Timothy and Titus are full of practical instructions and soaked in an wholesale Valtrex cheap insistence on sound doctrine. They offer not only excellent examples for wholesale Valtrex cheap us to follow, but those examples are set before us specifically as normative for wholesale Valtrex cheap the church. They are programmatic for these young pastors (who will follow the powerful apostle) and wholesale Valtrex cheap are applicable for all the churches, in whose name Paul so often speaks.6 Ephesians 5 offers the wholesale Valtrex cheap model of marriage that LaCelle-Peterson says is absent in the wholesale Valtrex cheap Bible. This is puzzling, to say the least, if she claims that wholesale Valtrex cheap the Bible should inform our behavior. Turning Paul's image in Ephesians 5 into a wholesale Valtrex cheap mutual submission model, as she does, refuses to honor the Bible's clear teaching. Husbands and wholesale Valtrex cheap wives who obey that teaching not only glean many benefits in their own lives, but also keep God's name and his gospel from being slandered.7

Women are wholesale Valtrex cheap not alone in the godly exercise of submission. All of us are wholesale Valtrex cheap called to submit to authority: children to parents, employees to their bosses, the wholesale Valtrex cheap church to Christ, Jesus to his Father, and citizens to their political leaders. When infused with the wholesale Valtrex cheap powerful love of Christ, all created authority structures become places of refuge, stability, and wholesale Valtrex cheap blessing. God's model of marriage does not allow a wholesale Valtrex cheap man to lord it over his wife. Christians should be the wholesale Valtrex cheap first to protect women from abuse, to recognize their honor as image-bearers of the wholesale Valtrex cheap most High, and to fight against any and all injustice against them, whether in the wholesale Valtrex cheap culture or in the church. Christians champion selfless, humble love in one-man, one-woman marriage, thus exhibiting the wholesale Valtrex cheap eternal love relationship that the Head of the church establishes with his bride.

(4) Language for God

LaCelle-Peterson's final chapter urges the wholesale Valtrex cheap church to use the feminine metaphors for God that we find in the wholesale Valtrex cheap Bible, such as Jesus' image of a wholesale Valtrex cheap hen gathering her chicks under her wing, or the Old Testament references to wholesale Valtrex cheap God birthing creation. In her discussion of metaphor and language, the wholesale Valtrex cheap author implies that language serves us by allowing us to experience a wholesale Valtrex cheap mosaic of the face of God. If we patch together all the wholesale Valtrex cheap metaphors in the Bible, we will have a fuller experience of God's person. However, God spoke the wholesale Valtrex cheap world into existence and created human beings who communicate in language. God also chose to wholesale Valtrex cheap reveal himself in language and such revelation is sufficient for us to wholesale Valtrex cheap know Him truly. Not all the expressions God chose to reveal about his nature and wholesale Valtrex cheap character are metaphorical images into which we pour our own experiences.

There are similes and wholesale Valtrex cheap metaphors in Scripture, some of which use feminine imagery to wholesale Valtrex cheap depict God's love or character. Jesus is like a hen (simile). God is a Rock (metaphor). However, when the Bible says that God is our Savior and wholesale Valtrex cheap Creator, or that Jesus is our Lord, King and Redeemer, these are wholesale Valtrex cheap not metaphors. They describe the real, absolute nature of our God. The word "Father" is on Jesus' lips constantly and wholesale Valtrex cheap he teaches his disciples to call God Father. He never tells them to wholesale Valtrex cheap call God "Mother." Paul says that all "fatherhood" on earth is wholesale Valtrex cheap from the heavenly Father.8 These are not metaphorical statements, unless one argues that wholesale Valtrex cheap all language is wholesale Valtrex cheap necessarily metaphorical, since it cannot describe the entirety of God's nature-a direction LaCelle-Peterson seems to wholesale Valtrex cheap seek. But let us give the metaphor its due. Metaphors of God as a wholesale Valtrex cheap birthing mother, or as God with breasts9 emphasize the differences between the wholesale Valtrex cheap roles of men and women rather than blurring them. Women give birth. Women have wholesale Valtrex cheap breasts. These metaphors do not play down the differences between men and wholesale Valtrex cheap women, but rather appeal to the common sense differences we all know to wholesale Valtrex cheap be true. So citing them does no good for LaCelle-Peterson's argument that gender distinctions should be downplayed or eliminated.

The author's admirable motivation in emphasizing the wholesale Valtrex cheap feminine metaphors is to make women feel included in worship and wholesale Valtrex cheap the church. She is concerned that women think they are excluded from wholesale Valtrex cheap such verses as, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the ungodly." In fact, the wholesale Valtrex cheap culture has been so soaked in feminist thinking, that I believe LaCelle-Peterson is wholesale Valtrex cheap correct. But how should we resolve such misconceptions? Should we substitute the word "one" for "man"? Such a wholesale Valtrex cheap simplistic solution may destroy not only the grammatical elegance of the wholesale Valtrex cheap representative male pronoun, but, more importantly, the Christological and prophetic nature of the wholesale Valtrex cheap passage. 

In an attempt to "destroy God" (more on this later), radical feminists knew they first had wholesale Valtrex cheap to take down language. Fortunately all their suggestions have not held (such as "ze" to replace "he" and "she," or "hir" to replace "him" and "her"). But they have succeeded in forcing us to say "him or her" constantly and wholesale Valtrex cheap to make most pronouns plural, in order to avoid confusion and wholesale Valtrex cheap offense.10 Would it not be better to teach women what a wholesale Valtrex cheap privilege it is to be considered a "son of God," than to destroy the richness of the Bible's understanding of the rights of the firstborn son? God uses those rights as a wholesale Valtrex cheap picture of the inheritance of our older brother, Jesus, who purchased for wholesale Valtrex cheap all of us-men and women-the right to be co-heirs with him. To think that wholesale Valtrex cheap a woman is incapable of understanding such a principle is an wholesale Valtrex cheap insult to her intelligence. So let's be wholesale Valtrex cheap careful and gracious in our language, but guard it from desecration by a wholesale Valtrex cheap culture soaked in anti-patriarchal principles. We must not mold the Bible's language to wholesale Valtrex cheap fit our culture. Instead, we ourselves must be molded by the wholesale Valtrex cheap true Patriarchal gospel, given to us by our Father in heaven, and wholesale Valtrex cheap lived out in the flesh of a man Christ Jesus, who wholesale Valtrex cheap is incarnated for eternity in the recognizable male body in which he was born. This is wholesale Valtrex cheap no insult to women, since all of us, men and women, are wholesale Valtrex cheap the bride of Christ who will be received as perfect, dressed in the wholesale Valtrex cheap beauty of his holiness and seated at the banquet table of the wholesale Valtrex cheap Wedding of all time.

(5) Theological Naiveté: Monism, Androgyny, and Feminism

LaCelle-Peterson cites "evangelical essentialists" (biblical complementarians) only negatively while sustaining and wholesale Valtrex cheap supporting her arguments by egalitarians such as Rebecca Groothuis, Catherine Kroeger, and wholesale Valtrex cheap Stanley Grenz. She cites others who are so far afield theologically that wholesale Valtrex cheap they might well be classified as pagans: Virginia Mollenkott, Mary Daly, Sallie McFague, Elizabeth Johnson, and wholesale Valtrex cheap Rosemary Radford Ruether (not to speak of the Gnostic gospel writers). Had this wholesale Valtrex cheap radical cohort been quoted in order to refute their anti-biblical theories of God and wholesale Valtrex cheap man, the reader would have more confidence in LaCelle-Peterson's commitment to the Scriptures.

Perhaps she truly does not understand the wholesale Valtrex cheap implications of what she argues. Her analysis of current social trends in gender and wholesale Valtrex cheap sexuality is peculiarly naïve. Why is she enamored with McFague's "body of God" theology, which is pure monism? Why is wholesale Valtrex cheap she intrigued by Mary Daly, who admires the Hindu goddess Kali, who wholesale Valtrex cheap became a witch and who encourages women to be "sinarticulate"? Why quote with such enthusiasm Virginia Mollenkott, a self-described "evangelical lesbian feminist" who wholesale Valtrex cheap believes that there are some fourteen sexual identities our enlightened society must embrace, and wholesale Valtrex cheap that homosexuals are "God's ambassadors" to bring about a "gender-liberated new world"?11 The feminist movement was not born from wholesale Valtrex cheap a simple desire to treat women with respect. The engine of the wholesale Valtrex cheap feminist train entered pagan territory long ago, as is evidenced by the wholesale Valtrex cheap 1973 statement of Mary Daly, who said that feminism should reach "outward and wholesale Valtrex cheap inward toward the God beyond and beneath the gods who have wholesale Valtrex cheap stolen our identity."12 Feminism's goal, according to Naomi Goldenberg is this: "We women will bring an end to God."13 She goes on to say,

The feminist movement in Western culture is wholesale Valtrex cheap engaged in the slow execution of Christ and Yahweh. Yet very few of the wholesale Valtrex cheap women and men now working for sexual equality within Christianity and wholesale Valtrex cheap Judaism realize the extent of their heresy.14

Liberating Tradition seems heavily influenced by these hardcore, pagan "anti-Patriarchs" and their plea for independence from God Himself. The Creator/creature distinction is wholesale Valtrex cheap at stake in this battle of gender and sexuality. LaCelle-Peterson says we overplay distinctions, and wholesale Valtrex cheap she admires Goldenberg, Daly, Mollenkott and company, who have taken the wholesale Valtrex cheap feminist scythe to God-created distinctions in order to clear a wholesale Valtrex cheap path to the throne of the ultimate tyrant, the Heavenly Patriarch. God the wholesale Valtrex cheap Father will survive their attacks and remain on his throne to wholesale Valtrex cheap judge those who disdain the distinctions he has placed in this wholesale Valtrex cheap world as a sign of His transcendence.

The culture's heavy pressure to eliminate all created distinctions: (male/female, human/animal, right/wrong, God/the world) comes from a monistic system where there is no "Other." Yet both creation and the gospel begin with "otherness." Instead of seeking to wholesale Valtrex cheap destroy difference, we Christians should bask in it! We are most "like God" not when wholesale Valtrex cheap we prefer our own utopian notions to his structures, but when wholesale Valtrex cheap we absorb his principles and, by the power of his Spirit exhibit them in our lives. Those principles begin with God's absolute transcendence and carry on with the "set apartness" that wholesale Valtrex cheap makes creation holy-separations between night and day, land and water, fish and wholesale Valtrex cheap birds, and between male and female.

The author separates our humanity from wholesale Valtrex cheap our sexuality, but God created us in His image, male and female, a distinction God declared holy. Gender essentialist? Yes, indeed. We are wholesale Valtrex cheap not persons first, with a frosting of sexuality. We are wholesale Valtrex cheap male or female persons, and though in heaven human marriage will no wholesale Valtrex cheap longer be necessary, our recognizable human bodies will never cease to wholesale Valtrex cheap exist.

Conclusion

Freedom is not breaking "up and out" of God's seemingly restrictive glass ceiling. God "sits above the circle of the earth" (Isa 40:22). He alone lives in the land of "up and out," yet He sent Jesus, our Bridegroom to wholesale Valtrex cheap rescue, protect, cherish, lead, and serve his glorious, beloved bride, the wholesale Valtrex cheap church. It is that ultimate relationship of selfless love that all Christian men and wholesale Valtrex cheap women seek to embody-wives lovingly submitting to their husbands in the wholesale Valtrex cheap power of the Lord Jesus, and husbands depending on Jesus' love to wholesale Valtrex cheap wash their wives in the pure water of the Word, and wholesale Valtrex cheap to serve and love them for a lifetime. Since its early days, the wholesale Valtrex cheap church has never fought a culture as soaked as is wholesale Valtrex cheap ours in pagan thinking and pansexual chaos. If ever we needed a wholesale Valtrex cheap clear witness to God's transcendent Fatherhood and to male/female distinctions, it is now.

Endnotes

¹Scholarly articles have wholesale Valtrex cheap debated the influence of goddess worship in the Ephesian church. If such an wholesale Valtrex cheap influence were strong, the teaching in Ephesians would be even more appropriate for wholesale Valtrex cheap our own culture, in which goddess worship is back with a wholesale Valtrex cheap vengeance.

²Lewis Smedes, Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 24.

³Even the priests have fallen away: the grandson of Aaron (Phinehas) turns a wholesale Valtrex cheap blind eye to violent homosexual gang rapists in his hometown, while the wholesale Valtrex cheap grandson of Moses (Jonathan) happily sets up an wholesale Valtrex cheap alternative, polytheistic worship system for a renegade tribe.

⁴Nowhere in the wholesale Valtrex cheap Scriptures do we read of God commanding that women be placed in leadership. Moses elects elders to wholesale Valtrex cheap help him judge; God chooses male kings; male judges are elsewhere specifically chosen; Jesus appoints male apostles; the wholesale Valtrex cheap apostles appoint male leaders to oversee diaconal concerns; and Paul specifically forbids women to wholesale Valtrex cheap take authority over or to teach men.

⁵Theodore Hamilton, "Creation Sexuality, or Sex as Prophecy" (unpublished paper presented at a Think Tank entitled The Sexual Body: Epicenter of the Worldview Battle, Escondido, CA on February 4, 2009).

⁶Rom 16:4, 16; 1 Cor 7:17; 11:16; 14:33f; 16:1, 19; 2 Cor 8:1, 18f, 23f; 11:8, 28; 12:13; Gal 1:2, 22; 1 Thess 2:14; 2 Thess 1:4. Given how confident Paul is wholesale Valtrex cheap in his apostolic mission, and in stating things for, from, and wholesale Valtrex cheap to "the churches," we need to wholesale Valtrex cheap treat seriously any instructions he gives. He was certainly aware of his foundational role as the wholesale Valtrex cheap "last apostle." When Paul states what wholesale Valtrex cheap ought and what ought not to be done in the church, we should not quickly rush to wholesale Valtrex cheap a decision that he is merely tidying up local issues that wholesale Valtrex cheap have no relevance to the church for all time.

⁷See my article, "Women against Public Blasphemy," The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 11, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 8-18.

⁸Ephesians 3:14-15: "For this wholesale Valtrex cheap reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family (fatherhood) in heaven and on earth is named." (The "reason" seems to wholesale Valtrex cheap refer to Ephesians 2:20-21, which speaks of the unity of the wholesale Valtrex cheap body under the headship of Christ.)

⁹The interpretation suggested for El-Shaddai in this book.

¹⁰Translation decisions are wholesale Valtrex cheap complex and each language has its own difficulties. The feminist attack on language has wholesale Valtrex cheap made little inroads into the French language, for example. (Not much gets past the "Académie Française"!) No French male is distressed to be included among "toutes les personnes" in the room. "Personne" is wholesale Valtrex cheap feminine in gender, but would refer to all people in the wholesale Valtrex cheap room, males included. La Celle-Peterson might prefer living in France-except that wholesale Valtrex cheap the default pronoun for a group of men and women is wholesale Valtrex cheap still the masculine pronoun.

¹¹Virginia Mollenkott, Sensuous Spirituality: Out from Fundamentalism (New York: Crossroads, 1992), 166.

¹²Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1973), 29.

¹³Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Boston: Beacon, 1979), 3.

¹⁴Ibid., 4.