Is Evangelical Feminism the New Path to Liberalism? Some Disturbing Warning Signs¹

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I am concerned that evangelical feminism (or "egalitarianism") is becoming the new path by which evangelicals are being drawn into theological liberalism. (By "theological liberalism" I mean a system of thinking that denies the complete truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God and denies the unique and absolute authority of the Bible in our lives.) In the study that follows, I attempt to show (1) that liberal Protestant denominations were the pioneers of evangelical feminism; (2) that evangelical feminists today have adopted many of the arguments earlier used by theological liberals to advocate the ordination of women and to reject male headship in marriage; (3) that many prominent evangelical feminist writers today advocate positions that deny or undermine the authority of Scripture, and many other egalitarian leaders promote their books; (4) that recent trends now suggest that egalitarianism is heading toward a denial of anything uniquely masculine, an endorsement of God as Mother, and ultimately an endorsement of the moral legitimacy of homosexuality. Therefore I will attempt to show that, while egalitarian leaders claim to be subject to Scripture in their thinking, what is increasingly evident in their actual scholarship and practice is a rejection of the effective authority of Scripture in our lives.

A. The Historical Connection Between Liberalism and an Egalitarian View of Women in the Church

When we look at what happened in the last half of the twentieth century, quite a clear connection can be seen between theological liberalism and the endorsement of women's ordination. In an important sociological study published by Harvard University Press, Mark Chaves traces the history of women's ordination in various denominations in the United States.² From Chaves' study, we can observe a pattern among the mainstream Protestant denominations whose leadership is dominated by theological liberals (that is, by those who reject the idea that the entire Bible is the written Word of God, and is therefore truthful in all it affirms).³ Chaves notes the dates when ordination of women was approved in each of these denominations:

	Methodist Church	1956
	Presbyterian Church (USA)	1956 (north), 1964 (south)
	American Lutheran Church	1970
	Lutheran Church in America4	1970
	Episcopal Church	19765

Chaves notes an interesting example with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In 1964 the SBC approved women's ordination (that is, a local congregation ordained a woman and this was not overturned by the denomination itself). But in 1964 the denominational leadership and the control of the seminaries were in the hands of "moderates" (the SBC term for those who did not affirm biblical inerrancy). However, in 1984, after conservatives recaptured control of the SBC, the denomination passed a resolution "that we encourage the service of women in all aspects of church life and work other than pastoral functions and leadership roles entailing ordination."⁶ This means that when the conservatives who held to biblical inerrancy recaptured the denomination, the denomination revoked its previous willingness to ordain women.⁷

Chaves lists some other denominations that are not completely dominated by theological liberalism, but that are broadly tolerant of liberalism and have seminary professors and denominational officials who have moved significantly in a liberal direction. (These categorizations of denominational doctrinal positions are not made by Chaves, who simply lists the denominations and the dates, but they are my own assessment.) Consider the following denominations:

	Mennonite Church	1973
	Evangelical Covenant Church	1976
	Reformed Church in America	1979

Another example that occurred after Chaves finished his book was the Christian Reformed Church, which in 1995 approved the ordination of women.⁸ Chaves does note, however, that the Christian Reformed Church "shifted its official position away from inerrancy only in 1972."⁹

Are there any types of denominations that are resistant to the ordination of women? Chaves indicates the following results of his study:

Two groups of denominations are particularly resistant to women's ordination: denominations practicing sacramental ritual and denominations endorsing biblical inerrancy. . . . Biblically inerrant denominations are . . . resistant to formal gender equality.¹⁰

By "denominations practicing sacramental ritual" Chaves refers especially to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Episcopalian denominations, who think of the priest as standing in the place of Christ at the Lord's Supper. Chaves thinks that explains why the Episcopal Church was rather slow in endorsing women's ordination in comparison to other denominations. But he notes that for "biblically inerrant denominations" the argument that the Bible prohibits the ordination of women is by far the most persuasive argument.¹¹

I think that Chaves's observation that "denominations endorsing biblical inerrancy" are "particularly resistant to women's ordination" can be reinforced if we consider three influential evangelical denominations in the U. S.: the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). All three have the following characteristics in common:

(1) they have fought major battles with liberalism recently enough that such conflicts are still part of the personal memories of current leaders

(2) these leaders recognize that the liberal groups from which they are separate now aggressively promote women's ordination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church-U.S.A., and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship)

(3) these leaders and their denominations are strongly opposed to women's ordination

In the Southern Baptist Convention, conservatives who held to inerrancy regained control of the denomination over a ten or fifteen year period beginning in 1979.¹² The SBC in 2000 added a formal provision to its doctrinal statement that "The office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture" (Article VI of The Baptist Faith and Message).

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in 1974 dismissed the president of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, a measure that soon led to the angry resignation of forty-five of the fifty faculty members of the seminary, thereby removing most of the influence of theological liberalism that denied the complete truthfulness of Scripture.¹³

Yet another example is the Presbyterian Church in America, which was formed when conservatives left the more liberal Southern Presbyterian Church in 1973.¹⁴

In each of these three denominations, people who currently hold positions of leadership remember their struggles with theological liberalism, and they remember that an egalitarian advocacy of women's ordination goes hand in hand with theological liberalism.

Another example of the connection between tendencies toward liberalism and the ordination of women is Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Though Fuller started as a conservative evangelical seminary, it removed the doctrine of biblical inerrancy from its statement of faith in 1971, and today there is significant influence from theological liberalism among its faculty. In addition, full-fledged advocacy of the ordination of women reigns on campus, and I doubt that Fuller would hire anyone holding another position to teach at Fuller (or if someone were hired, I doubt that he would be allowed to express his opposition to women's ordination publicly).

As long ago as 1987, the egalitarian viewpoint was so firmly entrenched at Fuller that even a responsible academic statement of a complementarian view was effectively silenced by a barrage of protests. In May 1987,I received the following letter from a New Testament professor who had been invited to teach a course at Fuller on the Pastoral Epistles:

What reminded me to write this letter was the class on the Pastorals that I am teaching at Fuller. . . . Boy did I get in trouble. One lady walked out, incredibly irate. The Women's Concerns Committee sent a letter to all my students, claiming that I should never have been allowed to teach this and that they would try to censor any further teaching along traditional lines of interpretation. So much for academic freedom and inquiry. I wrote to the dean and will be interested to see how the actual administration will react. I find it incredibly interesting, and inconsistent, that they allow the teaching of universalism . . . but our view of the women's passage must be banned.¹⁵

Two months later I received a follow-up letter:

For two and a half weeks I was slandered up and down campus. I was the major subject on the declaration board, etc. It was a real mess. . . . The vast majority of the letters were from students who were not in the class. . . . 2½ weeks after the fact . . . Dean Meye finally called and we had dinner together. . . . He asked if I would be willing to retell the class what my actual intention was, and without groveling or backtracking, say that to whatever extent I was responsible for the misunderstanding, I apologize. . . . So I agreed and it went very well. . . . The next day Meye was deluged with letters and visits from my students who were very upset at the committee and his handling of the situation. . . . Meye never apologized, said that he or the school had behaved improperly, or that anything was mishandled except that I was allowed to teach what I thought. He accused me of such dastardly deeds as presenting my personal views with more force than the other views. . . . People need to be aware of what will happen at their schools if this situation is not dealt with properly.¹⁶

Endorsement of the ordination of women is not the final step in the process, however. If we look at the denominations that approved women's ordination from 1956-1976, we find that several of them, such as the United Methodist Church and the United Presbyterian Church (now called the United Presbyterian Church-USA), have large contingents pressing for (a) the endorsement of homosexual conduct as morally valid and (b) the approval of homosexual ordination. In fact, the Episcopal Church on August 5, 2003, approved the appointment of an openly homosexual bishop.

In more liberal denominations such as these, a predictable sequence has been seen (though only the Episcopal Church has followed the sequence to point 7):

1. Abandoning biblical inerrancy

2. Endorsing the ordination of women

3. Abandoning the Bible's teaching on male headship in marriage

4. Excluding clergy who are opposed to women's ordination

5. Approving homosexual conduct as morally valid in some cases

6. Approving homosexual ordination

7. Ordaining homosexuals to high leadership positions in the denomination¹⁷

I am not arguing that all egalitarians are liberals. Some denominations have approved women's ordination for other reasons, such as a long historical tradition and a strong emphasis on gifting by the Holy Spirit as the primary requirement for ministry (as in the Assemblies of God), or because of the dominant influence of an egalitarian leader and a high priority on relating effectively to the culture (as in the Willow Creek Association). But it is unquestionable that theological liberalism leads to the endorsement of women's ordination. While not all egalitarians are liberals, all liberals are egalitarians. There is no theologically liberal denomination or seminary in the United States today that opposes women's ordination. Liberalism and the approval of women's ordination go hand in hand.

B. Current Egalitarian Views that Deny the Authority of Scripture

In their writings, a surprising number of egalitarians have published statements that either deny the complete truthfulness of Scripture or else deny the full authority of Scripture as the Word of God for us today. I have listed these in the following fifteen categories. Then in the following section, I list several other egalitarian claims that undermine the effective authority of Scripture in a different way, by making people think it says something other than what it really says.

1. Denying the authority or truthfulness of Genesis 1-3

With respect to egalitarian writings that deny the authority of Genesis 1-3, one example is Rebecca Groothuis's claim that the Hebrew language of the Old Testament reflects a wrongful patriarchy. Groothuis says,

We should note that the ancient Hebrew language was an expression of patriarchal culture. We cannot conclude, simply because the Bible was written under divine inspiration, that the languages in which the Bible was written were themselves created under divine inspiration. These languages were as male centered as the cultures they reflected and by which they were created. The fact that certain words in a language can be used to refer either to a male human or to humans in general reflects cultural concepts of gender; it says nothing about God's view of gender.¹⁸

Groothuis uses this statement to answer Raymond C. Ortlund's claim that male headship is hinted at when God calls the human race by the Hebrew equivalent of our word man, rather than by a Hebrew word that means woman or a word that would mean person.¹⁹ Groothuis uses this argument about language reflecting patriarchal culture in order to deny the meaning of some of the words of Scripture. She talks about "the languages in which the Bible was written" as if the debate were about words that occur outside of Scripture. But she glosses over the fact that the story of God's naming the human race man (Gen 1:26-27; 5:2) is found in the Hebrew language in the text of the Bible. To say that these words of the Bible have a patriarchal meaning that God did not intend, and in fact to say that these words of the Bible tell us "nothing about God's view of gender," is simply to deny the authority of this part of Scripture. This approach is not a legitimate evangelical option.

Another example of denying the authority of Genesis 1-3 is William Webb's claim that Genesis 1-3 are not historically accurate. In a recent book that has had widespread influence, Webb argues that the elements of male leadership that are in Genesis 2 do not reflect the actual historical situation in the Garden of Eden, but were inserted there as a literary device for possibly three reasons: (1) to anticipate the fall, (2) to allow for better understanding by readers in the society and culture of Moses' time, or (3) to anticipate the agrarian society that would come into effect after the fall.²⁰

Webb agrees that "the practice of primogeniture in which the first born is granted prominence within the ‘creative order' of a family unit"²¹ is found in the narrative in Genesis 2. He sees this as support for male headship within the text of Genesis 2. He also thinks this is how it is understood by Paul when he says, "For Adam was formed first, then Eve" (1 Tim 2:13). But Webb sees this primogeniture theme in Genesis 2 as a "cultural component" in that text.

But how could there be changing cultural influence in the pre-fall Garden of Eden? Webb answers this question in three ways. First, he says these indications of male headship may be a literary device that anticipates the fall and God's subsequent curse, rather than accurately recording what was in fact true in the garden:

A . . . question is how cultural features could possibly be found in the garden before the influence of culture. Several explanations exist. First, the whispers of patriarchy in the garden may have been placed there in order to anticipate the curse.²²

Webb then claims that the literary construction of Genesis 2-3 includes at least one other example of "literary foreshadowing of the curse" in the pejorative description of the serpent as "more crafty than any of the wild animals" (Gen. 3:1). Webb then asks, "If the garden is completely pristine, how could certain creatures in the just-created animal kingdom reflect craftiness? Obviously, this Edenic material embraces an artistic foreshadowing of events to come."²³

Webb's analysis here assumes that there was no sin or evil in Genesis 3:1 in actual fact, but that by a literary device the author described the serpent as "crafty" (and therefore deceitful and therefore sinful), thus anticipating what he would be later, after the fall. In the same way, he thinks the elements of male headship in Genesis 2 were not there in the garden in actual fact, but were inserted as "an artistic foreshadowing of events to come."

Webb says further that "patriarchy" in Genesis 2 may have been inserted because it was a reflection of social categories familiar to readers at the time when Moses wrote Genesis, and that would have kept readers in Moses' time from being confused about the main point of the story (namely, that God made everything).

Second, Eden's quiet echoes of patriarchy may be a way of describing the past through present categories. The creation story may be using the social categories that Moses' audience would have been familiar with. God sometimes permits such accommodation in order not to confuse the main point he wants to communicate with factors that are secondary to that overall theme.²⁴

Finally, Webb gives a third reason:

Third . . . the patriarchy of the garden may reflect God's anticipation of the social context into which Adam and Eve were about to venture. An agrarian lifestyle . . . would naturally produce some kind of hierarchy between men and women. . . . The presentation of the male-female relationship in patriarchal forms may simply be a way of anticipating this first (and major) life setting into which humankind would enter.²⁵

Even in his analysis of the statement that the serpent was "crafty," Webb understands Gen 3:1 to affirm something that he thinks was not true at that time, and thus Webb denies the truthfulness of a section of historical narrative in Scripture.

There is really no great difficulty in affirming that Gen 3:1 is stating historical fact, and taking it at face value. Webb fails even to consider the most likely explanation: that there was sin in the angelic world sometime after the completion of the initial creation (Gen 1:31) but prior to Gen 3:1.²⁶ Because of this rebellion in the angelic world (see 2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6), Satan himself was already evil and was somehow speaking through the serpent.²⁷ So Webb's claim that the crafty serpent in Gen 3:1 must be "artistic foreshadowing of events to come" is not persuasive. It is better to take Gen 3:1 as historically accurate and affirm that the serpent was in fact "crafty" and therefore deceptive and sinful.

Webb also denies the historical accuracy of Genesis 2 in all three of his explanations of why the narrative indicates male leadership (what he calls "patriarchy" and "primogeniture"). In reason (1), Webb claims that "the whispers of patriarchy in the garden may have been placed there in order to anticipate the curse."²⁸ Webb is saying that patriarchy did not exist in the garden in actual fact, but the author placed hints of it in the story as a way of anticipating the situation that would come about after there was sin in the world. This then is also an explicit denial of the historical accuracy of the Genesis 2 account.

In reason (2), Webb says that Moses, in the time he wrote, used "present categories" such as patriarchy to describe the past, and this was simply an "accommodation" by God "in order not to confuse the main point." That is, patriarchy did not actually exist in the garden of Eden, but Moses inserted it there in Genesis 2 so as not to confuse his audience at a later time. Thus, Moses inserted false information into Genesis 2.

The same is true of Webb's reason (3). Webb believes that primogeniture (Adam being created before Eve) occurs in Genesis 2, not because it reflected the actual situation in the garden of Eden, but because Adam and Eve after they sinned would enter into a situation where Adam had leadership over his wife. This again is an explicit denial of the historical accuracy of the headship of Adam and his prior creation in Genesis 2. It was simply "a practical and gracious anticipation of the agrarian setting into which Adam and Eve were headed"²⁹

It is important to realize how much Webb denies as historical fact in the Genesis narrative. He is not just denying that there was a "crafty" serpent who spoke to Eve (Gen 3:1). He also denies the entire theme of primogeniture found in Genesis 2. That is, he denies the entire narrative structure that shows the man as created before the woman, for this is the basis for the primogeniture theme he sees Paul referring to in 1 Tim 2:13, "For Adam was formed first, then Eve."

How much of Genesis 2 does that involve? How much inaccurate material has to be inserted into Genesis 2 either as a literary device foreshadowing the fall (reason 1), or as an accommodation to the situation familiar to readers at the time of Moses (reason 2), or as an anticipation of an agrarian society that would be established after the fall (reason 3)? It is no small amount.

• God placing the man in the garden (Gen 2:8)
• God putting the man in the garden "to work it and keep it" (2:15)
• God commanding the man that he may eat of every tree of the garden but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16-17),
• God saying, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him" (2:18),
• God bringing the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens to the man to see what he would call them (2:19),
• the man giving names to every living creature (2:20),
• there not being found a helper fit for man (2:20),
• God causing a deep sleep to fall upon the man and taking one of his ribs and forming it into a woman (2:21-22)

This entire sequence, summarized by Paul in the statement "For Adam was formed first, then Eve," is merely a literary device that did not actually happen, according to Webb. And all of this then enables Webb to say that Paul's appeal to the creation of Adam prior to Eve is not proof of a transcultural ethical standard. But if a theological argument has to deny significant portions of Scripture for its support, it should surely be rejected by evangelicals who are subject to the authority of the entire Bible as the Word of God.

2. Saying that New Testament teachings are "seed ideas" showing that superior teaching would come later

With respect to egalitarian writings on the New Testament, a rejection of the final authority of Scripture for our lives today is found in William Webb's claim that Gal 3:28 is a "seed idea" that would later lead to an ethic superior to that of the New Testament. This argument is found in the second of Webb's eighteen proposed criteria for determining cultural relativity. He says, "A component of a text may be cultural if ‘seed ideas' are present within the rest of Scripture to suggest and encourage further movement on a particular subject."³⁰

Webb's conception of a "seed idea" is based on his claim that some New Testament commands are inconsistent with that seed idea, and those commands show only that "the biblical author pushed society as far as it could go at that time without creating more damage than good."³¹ Webb claims that the "seed idea" is simply a pointer showing that there should be "further movement" toward a "more fully realized ethic" that is "more just, more equitable and more loving . . . a better ethic than the one expressed in the isolated words of the text."³² Webb thinks Gal 3:28 is just such a "seed idea," that carries "social implications for the equality of women" today.³³

We should not think it necessary to "move beyond" the ethic of the New Testament. It is not necessary to do this to argue for the abolition of slavery, for the New Testament never condones or approves of slavery as an institution, and never says it was created by God (as marriage was). The New Testament itself provides statements that would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery based on the New Testament ethic itself, not based on some "higher ethic" that would later be discovered. (See section 6 below for a discussion of the anti-slavery teachings of the Bible itself, teachings that were widely and effectively used by abolitionists in the 19^th century.)

Similarly, Webb is incorrect to see Gal 3:28 as a "seed idea" pointing to some future, "higher ethic." Rather, this verse is fully consistent with other things the apostle Paul and other New Testament authors wrote about the relationships between men and women. If we take the entire New Testament as the very words of God for us in the new covenant today, then any claim that Gal 3:28 should overrule other texts such as Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 2 is a claim that Paul the apostle contradicts himself, and therefore that the Word of God contradicts itself.

Webb also claims that the New Testament commands regarding male headship are only a "preliminary movement" to partially correct the culture at that time, but that the New Testament ethic regarding male headship still needed further improvement beyond what was taught in the New Testament. He argues that the commands about wives submitting to their husbands in Eph 5:22-33 are not part of the "final ethic" that we should follow today, but are simply an indication of "where Scripture is moving on the issue of patriarchal power."³⁴

Webb's argument at this point is not persuasive because it depends on his assumption that the ethical standards of the New Testament are not God's ultimate ethical standards for us, but are simply one step along the way toward a kind of "ultimate ethic" that we should adopt today.³⁵ Webb does not consider the moral commands of the New Testament to represent a perfect or final moral system for Christians. They are rather a pointer that "provides the direction toward the divine destination, but its literal, isolated words are not always the destination itself. Sometimes God's instructions are simply designed to get his flock moving."³⁶

But we should not find this position acceptable, because it essentially nullifies the moral authority of the New Testament for Christians today, not only with respect to Ephesians 5, but (in principle) with respect to all the moral commands of the New Testament. Webb may in fact view some New Testament commands as representing an ultimate ethic, but even then we should obey them not because they are taught in the New Testament, but because Webb's system has filtered them through his eighteen criteria and then has found that what the New Testament teaches is also the moral standard that is found in his "ultimate ethic."

3. Saying that some verses that are in every manuscript are not really part of the Bible

A different kind of problem is found in Gordon Fee's claim that 1 Cor 14:34-35 should not be considered part of the Bible and that these verses are "certainly not binding for Christians."³⁷ In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Fee argues that Paul did not write 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, but these verses were the addition of a later scribe.³⁸ He says,

The case against these verses is so strong, and finding a viable solution to their meaning so difficult, that it seems best to view them as an interpolation. . . . One must assume that the words were first written as a gloss in the margin by someone who, probably in light of 1 Tim. 2:9-15, felt the need to qualify Paul's instructions even further.³⁹

Fee's main reasons are that some later Greek manuscripts move these verses so that they follow verse 40, and, he says, the verses cannot be reconciled with 1 Cor 11:5 where Paul allows women to prophesy in the church. But Fee's arguments have been strongly rejected.⁴⁰ While some who read Fee may see this as merely a text-critical decision based on Fee's careful analysis of many different ancient manuscripts, two factors lead me to think of it rather as a different method of rejecting the authority of these verses for the church today. (I am not speaking of Fee's intention, which I do not know, but of the actual process he followed and the result he reached.)

First, out of the thousands of ancient New Testament manuscripts that exist today, not one has ever omitted these verses (the Western manuscripts that move the verses to follow verse 40 are unreliable elsewhere in any case). This makes this passage significantly different from the other two examples Fee mentions where something not original has crept into the text tradition (John 5:3b-4 and 1 John 5:7).⁴¹ In those cases the oldest and best manuscripts lack the added material, but in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 no manuscript lacks this material. So Fee's procedure is different from every other text-critical decision made by editors of the Greek New Testament throughout history: he thinks we should exclude a passage from the New Testament that is included in every manuscript we have! In fact, this is not a highly doubtful text, but one that is given a "B" rating in the United Bible Societies' fourth edition of the Greek New Testament,⁴² indicating that it is "almost certain."⁴³

Second, the most decisive factor for Fee's conclusion is not the evidence from ancient manuscripts but rather that he thinks that these verses, which say that "the women should keep silent in the churches" (1 Cor 14:34), are impossible to reconcile with 1 Corinthians 11. This makes me think this is ultimately not a text-critical question but an objection he has to the content of these verses. He says, "these verses stand in obvious contradiction to 11:2-16, where it is assumed without reproof that women pray and prophesy in the assembly."⁴⁴But virtually all other interpreters in the history of the church have seen various ways to reconcile 14:34-35 and 11:5, so Fee wrongly sees them as impossible to reconcile, and that is his primary argument against their authenticity. At this point Fee's procedure is different from that of all evangelical interpreters of Scripture. There are many passages in the Bible that on first reading seem difficult to reconcile with other passages in the Bible (think, for example, of the teaching of Paul and James on justification by faith, or the astounding claim that Jesus is God and the Father is God, when combined with the teaching that there is only one God). Historically interpreters with a high respect for the authority and consistency of Scripture have not decided that one set of verses stands "in obvious contradiction" to the other set and then thrown the difficult verses out of the Bible. Think of what would happen if we followed Fee's procedure in the Gospels, where we find some manuscript evidence of scribal attempts to "fix" the difficulty in almost every parallel passage that has details that are difficult to harmonize, just as Fee finds some manuscript evidence of scribal attempts to move 1 Cor 14:34-35 to another context. Rather, interpreters have returned to the difficult texts with the assumption that they have misunderstood something, and they have sought for interpretations that are fair to both texts and are not contradictory.⁴⁵

Does Fee's solution to 1 Cor 14:34-35 then constitute evidence of a liberal tendency to reject the authority of the Bible? Readers will have to come to their own conclusions. It should trouble evangelicals that Fee and others say these verses that are missing from no ancient manuscript are not part of the Bible and therefore "certainly not binding for Christians." It seems to me that Fee's recommendation that we should remove some hard verses from the Bible rather than seeking to understand them in a way that does not contradict other verses establishes a dangerous precedent. When the verses that he throws out of the Bible are missing from no manuscript, and also happen to be the very verses that show Paul's insistence on male governance of the church meetings "in all the churches of the saints," then it seems to me to be another example of a pattern in many egalitarian writings, a pattern of using sophisticated scholarly procedures in order to evade the requirement of submitting to the authority of the Word of God.

4. Saying that Paul was wrong

A liberal tendency to reject the authority of Scripture is also seen in the writings of both Paul King Jewett and David Thompson. In 1975 Jewett, a professor at Fuller Seminary, published Man as Male and Female,⁴⁶ which was (as far as I know) the first scholarly defense of an egalitarian viewpoint by an evangelical in modern times. In it he claims that Paul was wrong in his teaching in 1 Timothy 2:

The apostle Paul was the heir of this contrast between the old and the new. . . . He was both a Jew and a Christian. . . . And his thinking about women . . . reflects both his Jewish and his Christian experience . . . . So far as he thought in terms of his Jewish background, he thought of the woman as subordinate to the man for whose sake she was created (1 Cor. 11:9). But so far as he thought in terms of the new insight he had gained through the revelation of God in Christ, he thought of the woman as equal to the man in all things. . . . Because these two perspectives-the Jewish and the Christian-are incompatible, there is no satisfying way to harmonize the Pauline argument. . . .

Paul. . . is assuming the traditional rabbinic understanding [of Gen. 2:18-23]. . . . Is this rabbinic understanding of Genesis 2:18f correct? We do not think that it is . . . .

The difficulty is that Paul, who was an inspired apostle, appears to teach such female subordination in certain passages. . . . To resolve this difficulty, one must recognize the human as well as the divine quality of Scripture.⁴⁷

Although few have followed Jewett in his claim that Paul made a mistake in what he wrote, Thomas Schreiner points out that a similar position was advocated by Clarence Boomsma as well.⁴⁸

Jewett's position allows the church today to disobey 1 Tim 2:11-15, saying it was a mistake. But Christians who take the entire Bible as the Word of God, and authoritative for us today, do not have that option. This view refuses to take 1 Timothy 2 as God's truthful, divinely authoritative commands for Christians throughout the church age. This is not a legitimate position for an evangelical who believes that the entire Bible is "breathed out by God" (2 Tim 3:16) and is, thus, the very Word of God.

A different kind of claim that the Apostle Paul was wrong is found in the argument of David L. Thompson that Paul misinterprets Genesis 2, and that we can come to a better understanding of Genesis 2 than Paul did. According to Thompson, there may be unusual times when we can carefully and cautiously differ with a New Testament author's interpretation of an Old Testament text. And one of those times is when we read Paul's interpretation of Genesis 2 in 1 Timothy 2.⁴⁹

Thompson says that 1 Tim 2:11-15 is hard to interpret. It poses "particularly complex problems hermeneutically," and, anyway, we might be able to reexamine Genesis 2 and disagree with Paul's interpretation of it: "We should take caution in immediately assuming that Paul's reading of Genesis 2 must, without further inquiry, be ours.⁵⁰ Then he says that we should read the Genesis 2 account ourselves and understand it "on its own terms," and that our understanding of it can then be the "arbiter" of Paul's understanding: "It is entirely possible that at this point the creation account, understood on its own terms, must be the arbiter of the more specifically confined reading given by Paul.⁵¹

Thompson's procedure effectively denies the authority of Scripture for us today. Of course Paul's use of Genesis 2 is a problem for egalitarians because Genesis 2 shows male headship in marriage before there was any sin in the world. Therefore it shows male headship as part of the way God created us as men and women. And then (to make things worse for the egalitarian position!), Paul quotes from Genesis 2 to establish male headship in the church (1 Tim 2:11-14). This means that Paul sees male headship in the church as rooted in the way God created men and women from the beginning.

But Thompson has provided egalitarians with a new way to evade the force of that argument: With much caution, with careful study, with prayer, he says we should study Genesis 2 as twentieth-century interpreters. We should understand Genesis 2 "on its own terms." And when we understand the passage well enough, our understanding might (at times) enable us to reject Paul's interpretation. We can use Genesis 2 as the "arbiter" (or judge) of Paul's interpretation.

Note what has happened here. We are interpreting Genesis 2. And though Thompson may claim that Genesis 2 is the judge of Paul's interpretation, the actual result (in the article) is that Thompson's interpretation of Genesis 2 becomes the judge by which Paul's interpretation is pushed aside. Thompson's argument means that our interpretation can correct Paul's interpretation of Genesis 2-and, by implication, Paul's interpretation of other Old Testament passages as well.

If the Bible is the word of God, then these interpretations are not just Paul's interpretations; they are also God's interpretations of his own Word. There might be times when I cannot understand an interpretation of the Old Testament by a New Testament author, but that does not give me the right to disagree with his interpretation. If I believe the Bible to be the very words of God, then I must believe that neither Paul nor any other Scriptural author made mistakes in his interpretation of the Old Testament, or gave us interpretations of the Old Testament that we can reject in favor of better ones of our own.

5. Locating ultimate authority not in Scripture but at the end of a "trajectory" along which the New Testament was progressing, thus rejecting sola Scriptura

Liberal tendencies in egalitarian procedures for interpreting the Bible include the claims of R. T. France and David Thompson that our authority is the point toward which the New Testament authors were progressing in a trajectory, not what the New Testament actually taught. R. T. France, in his book Women in the Church's Ministry: A Test Case for Biblical Interpretation, takes this position. He argues that the Old Testament and Judaism in the time of Jesus were male-dominated and biased against women, but that Jesus began to overturn this system, and that the New Testament churches continued the process. We can now follow this "trajectory" to a point of full inclusion of women in all ministries. France explains,

The gospels do not, perhaps, record a total reversal of Jewish prejudice against women and of their total exclusion from roles of leadership. But they do contain the seeds from which such a reversal was bound to grow. Effective revolutions are seldom completed in a year or two. In this, as in other matters, the disciples were slow learners. But the fuse, long as it might prove to be, had been ignited.⁵²

France later comments on "there is no longer male and female" in Gal 3:28,

Paul here expresses the end-point of the historical trajectory which we have been tracing . . . from the male-dominated society of the Old Testament and of later Judaism, through the revolutionary implications and yet still limited actual outworking of Jesus' attitude to women, and on to the increasing prominence of women in the apostolic church and in its active ministry. At all points within the period of biblical history the working out of the fundamental equality expressed in Galatians 3:28 remained constrained by the realities of the time, and yet there was the basis, indeed the imperative, for the dismantling of the sexual discrimination which has prevailed since the fall. How far along that trajectory it is appropriate and possible for the church to move at any subsequent stage in history must remain a matter for debate, as it is today.⁵³

And he says that he has found his "basic position" regarding women in ministry

not in these few texts [1 Cor 14:34-36 and 1 Tim 2:11-15] but in a trajectory of thought and practice developing through Scripture, and arguably pointing beyond itself to the fuller outworking of God's ultimate purpose in Christ in ways which the first-century situation did not yet allow.⁵⁴

A similar position is argued by David Thompson in his 1996 article in Christian Scholar's Review:⁵⁵

Sensing the direction of the canonical dialogue and prayerfully struggling with it, God's people conclude that they will most faithfully honor his Word by accepting the target already anticipated in Scripture and toward which the Scriptural trajectory was heading rather than the last entry in the Biblical conversation. . . . The canonical conversation at this point closed without final resolution. But the trajectory was clearly set toward egalitarian relationships.⁵⁶

Both France and Thompson admit that the New Testament authors did not teach the full inclusion of women in all forms of church leadership. As France says, the first-century situation "did not yet allow" this "fuller outworking of God's ultimate purpose," which they say should be our standard today.

But this means that the teachings of the New Testament are no longer our final authority. Our authority now becomes our own ideas of the direction the New Testament was heading but never quite reached. In order to guard against making our authority something other than the Bible, major confessions of faith have insisted that the words of God in Scripture are our authority, not some position arrived at after the Bible was finished. This is the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, or "the Bible alone," as our ultimate authority for doctrine and life. The Westminster Confession of Faith says:

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.⁵⁷

More recently, the widely-acknowledged Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy said,

We affirm that God's revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive. We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.⁵⁸

This trajectory position would have the later standard (the supposed "goal" to which the New Testament was headed) contradict earlier revelation (which limited certain roles in the church to men). The doctrinal statement of the Evangelical Theological Society says:

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written, and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.⁵⁹

But this trajectory argument places authority ultimately in something beyond the New Testament writings.

France argues that we already see change from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and within the New Testament we see the apostles gradually growing in their understanding of the way Gentiles can be fully included in the church (as in the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15).⁶⁰ So why should we not allow change beyond what is in the New Testament?

This view fails to recognize the uniqueness of the New Testament. Yes, the New Testament explicitly tells us that we are no longer under the regulations of the Old Covenant (Heb 8:6-13), so we have clear warrant for saying the sacrificial laws and dietary laws are no longer binding on us. And we do see the apostles in a process of coming to understand the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church (Acts 15; Gal 2:1-14; 3:28). But that process was completed within the New Testament, and the commands given to Christians in the New Testament say nothing about excluding Gentiles from the church. We do not have to progress on a "trajectory" beyond the New Testament to discover that.

Christians living in the time of Paul's epistles were living under the New Covenant. And we Christians living today are also living under the New Covenant. This is "the New Covenant in my blood" (1 Cor 11:25), which Jesus established and which we affirm every time we take the Lord's Supper. That means we are living in the same period in God's plan for "the history of redemption" as the first-century Christians. And that is why we can read and apply the New Testament directly to ourselves today. To attempt to go beyond the New Testament documents and derive our authority from "where the New Testament was heading" is to reject the very documents God gave us to govern our life under the New Covenant until Christ returns.

I agree that the church later formulated doctrines, such as the Trinity, that are not spelled out explicitly in the New Testament. But that is far different from what France and Thompson advocate, because Trinitarian doctrine was always based on the actual teachings of the New Testament, and its defenders always took the New Testament writings as their final authority. By contrast, France and Thompson do not take the New Testament statements as their final authority, but "go beyond" the New Testament to a "target" that contradicts or nullifies the restrictions on women's ministry given by Paul. No Trinitarian doctrine was ever built by saying we need a view that contradicts and denies what Paul wrote.

France and Thompson think the trajectory was heading toward egalitarianism. But this argument could be used in just the other way. Someone could take France's view of Gal 3:28 and argue that the trajectory looks like this:

FROM PAUL'S EARLY WRITINGS	TO PAUL'S LAST, MORE MATURE WRITINGS	TO THE FINAL TARGET FOR THIS TRAJECTORY	APPLICATION TODAY
Gal 3:28: women in all positions of leadership	1 Tim 2-3, Titus 1: only men can teach or be elders	Women cannot participate in any ministry in the church	All ministry of all kinds must be done by men

This is a ridiculous conclusion, but if we accept the "trajectory" principle of France and Thompson, it would be hard to say it was wrong.

Or we could take a "trajectory" argument on divorce:

FROM JESUS' TEACHINGS	TO PAUL'S TEACHINGS	TO THE FINAL TARGET FOR THIS TRAJECTORY	APPLICATION TODAY
Only one ground for divorce: adultery (Matt 19:6)	Two grounds for divorce: adultery or desertion (1 Cor 7:14)	Divorce for any hardship	God approves divorce for any hardship in marriage

We may think these trajectories are foolish, but they use the same process as France and Thompson in moving from earlier to later biblical writings. And these trajectories all have one thing in common: we no longer have to obey what the New Testament teaches. We can devise our own ideas about the direction things were heading at the end of the New Testament. This method has no controls on it. It is subjective, and the final authority is not the Bible but anyone's guess as to where the trajectory was heading.

One of the distinctive differences between historic, orthodox Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church has been that Protestants base doctrine on "Scripture alone" (in Latin, sola Scriptura), while Catholics base doctrine on Scripture plus the authoritative teaching of the church through history. This "trajectory" argument of France and Thompson is disturbingly similar to Roman Catholicism in this regard, because they place final authority not in the New Testament writings but in their ideas of where that teaching was leading. Yet a Roman Catholic could argue that more reliable than their speculation on where the teaching was leading are the historical facts of where the teaching did lead. So the trajectory (which actually was fulfilled in church history) would look like this:

FROM JESUS' TEACHINGS	TO PAUL'S TEACHINGS	TO THE FINAL TARGET FOR THIS TRAJECTORY	APPLICATION TODAY
No local church officers or governing structure mentioned	Increased authority given to elders and deacons	World-wide authority given to the Pope, cardinals, and bishops	We should submit to the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church

The Reformation principle sola Scriptura was formulated to guard against the kind of procedure France and Thompson advocate, because the Reformers knew that once our authority becomes "Scripture plus some later developments" rather than "Scripture alone," the unique governing authority of Scripture in our lives is lost. On several grounds, then, this trajectory argument must be rejected as inconsistent with the view that "all Scripture is breathed out by God" (2 Tim 3:16), and

Every word of God proves true. . . .

Do not add to his words,

lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar

(Prov. 30:5-6).

6. Adopting William Webb's "Redemptive-Movement" Approach to Interpreting Scripture

A variation of the "trajectory hermeneutic" discussed in the previous section, one that contains a similar rejection of the authority of the New Testament writings for our lives today, is found in the redemptive-movement hermeneutic of William Webb. Webb says that the New Testament teachings on male headship in marriage and male leadership in the church were simply points along the path toward a superior ethic to that of the New Testament, an "ultimate ethic" toward which the New Testament was heading. Webb's book, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis, proposes a system that he calls a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic." Through his use of this system, Webb argues that the New Testament texts about male headship in marriage and male church leadership are culturally relative.

In contrast to many egalitarians who argue that the New Testament does not teach that wives should be subject to their husbands or that only men should be elders, Webb takes a different approach: he believes that the New Testament does teach these things for the culture in which the New Testament was written, but he claims that in today's culture the treatment of women is an area in which "a better ethic than the one expressed in the isolated words of the text is possible."⁶¹

Webb admits that the Old and New Testaments improved the treatment of women when compared with their surrounding cultures, but he says,

If one adopts a redemptive-movement hermeneutic, the softening of patriarchy (which Scripture itself initiates) can be taken a considerable distance further. Carrying the redemptive movement within Scripture to a more improved expression for gender relationships . . . [today] ends in either ultra-soft patriarchy or complementary egalitarianism.⁶²

Later in the book, Webb defines "ultra-soft patriarchy" as a position in which there are no unique leadership roles for men in marriage or in the church, but men are given "a certain level of symbolic honor."⁶³ He defines "complementary egalitarianism" as a system in which there is full interdependence and "mutual submission" within marriage, and the only differences in roles are "based upon biological differences between men and women," so that Webb would favor "a greater participation of women in the early stages of child rearing."⁶⁴ Thus, Webb's "ultra-soft patriarchy" differs from his "complementary egalitarianism" only in the slight bit of "symbolic honor" that ultra-soft patriarchy would still give to men.

Because of its detail, novelty, and the complexity of its approach, this book deserves to be taken seriously by complementarians. It is the most sophisticated version of a "trajectory hermeneutic" that has ever been published. However, because of concerns that are detailed below, I do not think the book succeeds in showing that male headship in the home and the church are culturally relative. Nor do I believe that the book provides a system for analyzing cultural relativity that is ultimately helpful for Christians to use today.⁶⁵

At first glance, it may not seem as though Webb "nullifies" the moral authority of the entire New Testament, because he agrees, for example, that homosexual conduct is morally wrong, and that the New Testament condemnations of homosexual conduct are transcultural.⁶⁶ He also affirms that the New Testament admonitions for children to be subject to their parents are transcultural.⁶⁷

The important point to realize is the basis on which Webb affirms that these commands are transcultural. Most evangelicals read a text such as, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right" (Eph 6:1), and conclude that children today are to obey their parents because the New Testament was written for Christians in the new covenant age (the time between Christ's death and his return). Most evangelicals reason similarly about the New Testament texts concerning homosexual conduct (see, for example, Rom 1:26-27; 1 Cor 6:9), and conclude that these are morally binding on us today, because we are part of the new covenant age and these texts were written to new covenant Christians.

But for Webb, the process is entirely different, and the basis of authority is different. The commands concerning children and homosexuals are binding on us today not because we are part of the new covenant age, for which the New Testament was written (I could not find such a consideration anywhere in Webb's book), but rather because these commands have passed through the filtering system of Webb's eighteen criteria and have survived. Actually, the command for children to obey their parents has not entirely survived his filtering process, because Webb believes the command means that adult children should continue to be obedient to their parents throughout their adult lives, but this aspect of the command was culturally relative and need not be followed by us today.⁶⁸

In this way, I believe it is fair to say that Webb's system invalidates the moral authority of the entire New Testament, at least in the sense that we today should be obedient to the moral commands that were written to new covenant Christians. Instead, only those commands are binding that have passed through his eighteen-part filter.

According to Webb's system, then, Christians can no longer go to the New Testament, read the moral commands in one of Paul's epistles, and obey them. That would be to use a "static hermeneutic" that just reads the "isolated words of the text" and fails to understand "the spirit-movement component of meaning which significantly transforms the application of texts for subsequent generations."⁶⁹ Rather, we must realize that the New Testament teachings simply represent one stage in a trajectory of movement toward an ultimate ethic.

So how can Christians discover this "ultimate ethic"? Webb takes the rest of the book to explain eighteen fairly complex criteria (to which he gives names such as "preliminary movement," "seed ideas," "breakouts," and "competing options") by which Christians must evaluate the commands of the Bible and thereby discover the more just, more equitable ethical system the Bible was heading toward. Once that ultimate ethic has been discovered, it becomes the moral standard we should follow and obey.

What this means in actual practice, then, is that the moral authority of the New Testament is completely nullified, at least in principle. There may be some New Testament commands that Webb concludes actually do represent an ultimate ethic, but even then we should obey them not because they are taught in the New Testament, but because Webb's system has found that they meet the criteria of his "ultimate ethic."

The implications of this for Christian morality are extremely serious. It means that our ultimate authority is no longer the Bible but Webb's system. Of course, he claims that the "redemptive spirit" that drives his hermeneutic is derived from the biblical text, but by his own admission this "redemptive spirit" is not the same as the teachings of the Bible. It is derived from Webb's analysis of the interaction between the ancient culture and the biblical text.

Someone may object at this point, "Doesn't everyone have to use some kind of cultural filter like this? Doesn't everyone have to test the New Testament commands to see if they are culturally relative or transcultural, before deciding whether to obey them?"

There is a significant difference in approach. Most evangelicals (including me) believe we are under the moral authority of the New Testament and are obligated to obey its commands when we are in the same situation as that addressed in the New Testament command (such as being a parent, a child, a person contemplating a divorce, a church selecting elders or deacons, a church preparing to celebrate the Lord's Supper, a husband, a wife, and so forth). When there is no exact modern equivalent to some aspect of a command (such as, "honor the emperor" in 1 Pet 2:17), we are still obligated to obey the command, but we do so by applying it to situations that are essentially similar. Therefore, "honor the emperor" is applied to honoring the president or the prime minister. In fact, in several such cases the immediate context contains pointers to broader applications (such as 1 Pet 2:13-14, which mentions being subject to "every human institution" including the "emperor" and "governors" as specific examples).

But with Webb the situation is entirely different. He does not consider the moral commands of the New Testament to represent a perfect or final moral system for Christians. They are rather a pointer that "provides the direction toward the divine destination, but its literal, isolated words are not always the destination itself. Sometimes God's instructions are simply designed to get his flock moving."⁷⁰

At the heart of Webb's system is what he calls a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic." He says that some may prefer calling his approach a "progressive" or "developmental" or "trajectory" hermeneutic, and he says that's fine. Webb explains his hermeneutic by what he calls "the X Y Z Principle." The letter Y indicates what the Bible says about a topic. Webb says, "The central position (Y) stands for where the isolated words of the Bible are in their development of a subject." The letter X represents "the perspective of the original culture," and the letter Z represents "an ultimate ethic," that is, God's final ideal that the Bible is moving toward.⁷¹

Therefore, what evangelicals have ordinarily understood to be the teaching of the Bible on particular subjects is in fact only a point along the way (indicated by letter Y) toward the development of a final or ultimate ethic (Z). Webb says,

The X Y Z Principle illustrates how numerous aspects of the biblical text were not written to establish a utopian society with complete justice and equity. They were written within a cultural framework with limited moves toward an ultimate ethic.⁷²

Therefore, Webb discovers a number of points where "our contemporary culture" has a better ethic than what is found in the Bible. Our culture has a better ethic today "where it happens to reflect a better social ethic-one closer to an ultimate ethic (Z) than to the ethic revealed in the isolated words of the biblical text."⁷³

Webb's approach to Scripture can also be seen in the way he deals with biblical texts regarding slavery. Most evangelical interpreters say that the Bible does not command or encourage or endorse slavery, but rather tells Christians who were slaves how they should conduct themselves, and also gives principles that would modify and ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery (1 Cor 7:21-22; Gal 3:28; Philemon 16, 21; and note the condemnation of "enslavers" at 1 Tim. 1:10, ESV, a verse that was previously overlooked in this regard because if was often translated "kidnappers"). However, Webb believes that the Bible actually endorses slavery, even though it is a kind of slavery with "better conditions and fewer abuses."⁷⁴

In claiming that the Bible endorses slavery, Webb shows no awareness of biblical anti-slavery arguments such as those of Theodore Weld in The Bible Against Slavery,⁷⁵ a book which was widely distributed and frequently reprinted by anti-slavery abolitionists in 19^th century America. Weld argued strongly against American slavery from Exodus 21:16, "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death" (KJV) (13-15), as well as from the fact that men are in the image of God and therefore it is morally wrong to treat any human being as property (8-9, 15-17). He argued that ownership of another person breaks the eighth commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," as follows:

The eighth commandment forbids the taking of any part of that which belongs to another.

Slavery takes the whole. Does the same Bible which prohibits the taking of any thing from him, sanction the taking of every thing? Does it thunder wrath against the man who robs his neighbor of a cent, yet commission him to rob his neighbor of himself? Slaveholding is the highest possible violation of the eighth commandment" (10-11).

In the rest of the book Weld answered detailed objections about various verses used by slavery proponents. The whole basis of his book is that the moral standards taught in the Bible are right, and there is no hint that we have to move beyond the Bible's ethics to oppose slavery, as Webb would have us do.

By contrast to such anti-slavery crusaders who took the Bible's teachings as their ultimate authority, Webb claims that we need to move beyond the Bible to a higher ethic. Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic approaches the slavery question by saying that the original culture (X) approved of "slavery with many abuses." Second, the Bible (Y) endorses "slavery with better conditions and fewer abuses." However, Webb believes that on the issue of slavery "our culture is much closer to an ultimate ethic than it is to the unrealized ethic reflected in the isolated words of the Bible." Today, the ethic of our culture, which is superior to that of the Bible, has "slavery eliminated and working conditions often improved." Webb believes our culture is much closer to an "ultimate ethic" (Z) in which we will see "wages maximized for all."⁷⁶

At the end of the book, Webb recapitulates the results of his analysis regarding slavery:

Scripture does not present a "finalized ethic" in every area of human relationship. . . . to stop where the Bible stops (with its isolated words) ultimately fails to reapply the redemptive spirit of the text as it spoke to the original audience. It fails to see that further reformation is possible . . . . while Scripture had a positive influence in its time, we should take that redemptive spirit and move to an even better, more fully-realized ethic today.⁷⁷

Therefore, rather than saying that the New Testament does not endorse or command slavery, Webb believes that it does approve a system of slavery for the people at the time at which it was written. However, in its modifications and regulations of the institution of slavery, the Bible starts us along a trajectory which would lead to the ultimate abolition of slavery, though the New Testament never actually reaches that point.

When Webb claims that "A redemptive-movement hermeneutic has always been a major part of the historic church, apostolic and beyond,"⁷⁸ and therefore that all Christians believe in some kind of "redemptive-movement" hermeneutic, he fails to make one important distinction: Evangelicals have always held that the redemptive movement within Scripture ends with the New Testament! Webb carries it beyond the New Testament. To attempt to go beyond the New Testament documents and derive our authority from "where the New Testament was heading" is to reject the very documents God gave us to govern our life under the New Covenant until Christ returns. Webb's "trajectory hermeneutic" suffers from the same problems as the works of France and Thompson critiqued above.

Here is Webb's key explanation of how his system works to discover the "redemptive spirit" within a text:

The final and most important characteristic of a redemptive-movement hermeneutic is its focus on the spirit of a text. . . . The coinage "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" is derived from a concern that Christians apply the redemptive spirit within Scripture, not merely, or even primarily, its isolated words. Finding the underlying spirit of a text is a delicate matter. It is not as direct or explicit as reading the words on the page. In order to grasp the spirit of a text, the interpreter must listen for how the texts sounds within its various social contexts. Two life settings are crucial: the broader, foreign ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman (ANE/GR) social context and the immediate, domestic Israelite/church setting. One must ask, what change/improvement is the text making in the lives of people in the covenant community? And, how does the text influence the larger ANE/GR world? Through reflecting upon these social-setting questions the modern reader will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of the text. Also, a third setting permits one another way of discovering the redemptive spirit, namely, the canonical movement across various biblical epochs.⁷⁹

This paragraph is remarkable for the candor with which it reveals the subjective and indeterminate nature of Webb's ethical system. If the heart of the "most important characteristic" of his hermeneutic is discovered through "reflecting upon" the way the Bible interacts with ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman cultures, and through such reflection the interpreter will "begin to sense the redemptive spirit of the text," we have entered a realm so subjective that no two interpreters in the future will probably ever agree on where the "redemptive spirit of the text" that they are beginning to "sense" is leading, and what kind of "ultimate ethic" they should count as God's will for them. Ancient Near Eastern and Greek and Roman cultures were themselves diverse and complex, and different scholars will discover different trends and emphases in them. And then listening for "how the text sounds" within each culture is a process fraught with subjective judgments.

Those with a predisposition toward socialism will no doubt be delighted that Webb has begun to sense a redemptive spirit that will lead to "wages maximized for all."⁸⁰ But those more inclined to capitalism will no doubt begin to sense quite another redemptive spirit moving against the slavery and oppression of the ancient world, a redemptive spirit in which the dominant biblical themes of freedom and liberty and fair reward for one's labor lead to an "ultimate ethic" (Z) that encourages investment and a free enterprise system, one with maximization of profits for those worthy individuals who through their business activities best meet the material needs of mankind, and by the high quality of goods they produce for others best show that they love their neighbors as themselves.

No doubt Arminians will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of Arminianism moving against the fatalism of the ancient world in a much more Arminian direction than we find even in the New Testament. And Calvinists, through sober reflection upon the way the biblical text corrects the puny, weak gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon, will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of Calvinism moving through the New Testament toward an even higher emphasis on the sovereignty of God than we find in any current New Testament texts.

And on and on it will go. Baptists will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of believer's baptism as the New Testament corrects the all-inclusive nature of the religions of the ancient world, and paedobaptists will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of inclusion of infants in the covenant community, as the New Testament decisively corrects the neglect and abuse of children found in many ancient cultures. People seeking justification for their desire to obtain a divorce will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of more and more reasons for divorce, moving from the one reason that Jesus allowed (adultery-Matt 19:9), to the increasing freedom found in Paul (desertion by an unbeliever-1 Cor 7:15), to many more reasons for divorce as we move along a trajectory toward an "ultimate ethic" (Z) where everyone should be completely happy with his or her spouse.

Now Webb may object that these hypothetical "redemptive spirit" findings could not be derived from a responsible use of his eighteen criteria. However, I have lived in the academic world for over thirty years, and I have a great deal of confidence in the ability of scholars to take Webb's set of criteria and make a case for almost anything they want. Whether or not my examples are the result of a proper use of Webb's criteria, the point remains: the standard is no longer what the New Testament says, but rather the point toward which some biblical scholar thinks the Bible was moving. Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic nullifies in principle the moral authority of the entire New Testament.

Webb's denial of the moral authority of the New Testament means that his system is not a legitimate option for evangelicals whose final authority is the Bible itself, not some better system for which the New Testament was only one step along the way.

7. Claiming that everyone's position just depends on what verses people choose to prioritize

A different kind of problem is found when R. T. France, Stanley Grenz, and Sarah Sumner assert that our position on the roles of men and women simply depends on which verses we choose to emphasize, as if we were free to make such a decision to emphasize some verses and thereby have less obligation or no obligation to obey others. For example, R. T. France says,

We have seen that fundamental to this issue has been the question which among differing biblical texts or themes is considered to be basic. . . . Once we choose to begin at a given point, everything else will be viewed and interpreted in the light of that starting point. . . . There is no rule of thumb-that is precisely our problem. A judgment has to be made, and not all will make it in the same way. Probably we all have our ‘canon within the canon' (by which we mean those parts of Scripture with which we feel comfortable, and which say what we would like them to say) which we regard as ‘basic' But those instinctive preferences are normally derived from the tradition within which we have been brought up, rather than from an informed and principled choice made on the basis of the texts themselves.⁸¹

Stanley Grenz adopts a similar view in a section in his book titled "The Question of Hermeneutical Priority":

Yet one question remains: Which Pauline text(s) carry hermeneutical priority in our attempt to understand Paul's teaching about women in the church? Are we to look to the egalitarian principle the apostle set forth in Galatians 3:28 as the foundation for our understanding of the apostle's own position? Or do we begin with those passages which seem to place limitation on the service of women (1 Cor 11:3-16; 14:34-35; 1 Tim 2:11-15) and understand the Galatians text in the light of such restrictions?

Egalitarians often claim that Galatians 3:28 deserves hermeneutical priority. . . . At this point, egalitarians, and not complementarians, are on the right track. . . . The seemingly restrictive texts complementarians cite . . . cannot be universal rules but Paul's attempts to counter the abuses of specific situations.⁸²

Sarah Sumner says we have to decide "which verse(s) should take priority over the others," or "which verse stands in charge as the boss" (which she then calls the "boss verse").⁸³Elsewhere she claims that we disagree because "we bring so many assumptions to the text," and if we bring egalitarian assumptions we will find egalitarian teaching in the text, but if we bring complementarian assumptions, we will find complementarian teaching in the text.⁸⁴

But this is not the approach of complementarians, nor is it an approach toward Scripture that evangelicals should adopt. This approach essentially claims that various parts of the Bible teach different, self-contradictory positions, so people can just decide what position they want to find in Scripture and then go there and find it! In the end, rather than Scripture having authority over our lives, the result of this process is that we have authority over the Bible and we just go there to find what we want to find.

In contrast to this approach, nowhere in my writings (to take one example of a complementarian position) have I claimed that we must minimize or ignore so-called "egalitarian texts" on the basis of some kind of "hermeneutical priority" of other texts. I do not believe we should treat Scripture that way, because all of it is God's Word, and all of it is "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16). We must not minimize but treat these texts fairly and to remain subject to their authority, and this includes such "egalitarian texts" as Gal 3:28, and the passages about Deborah, Huldah, Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia(s). Even if we studied all of these texts first and drew conclusions from them before we looked at any "complementarian texts" such as 1 Tim 2:12, these "egalitarian texts" would not lead us to affirm that women could have governing and teaching roles over New Testament churches. The texts would not lead us to affirm that because they do not teach that. They surely honor the valuable ministries of women and their equality in value and dignity, but they do not tell us that women could govern or teach a New Testament church.

But it is difficult to imagine that an egalitarian advocate could do the same with passages such as 1 Cor 14:33-36, 1 Tim 2:11-15, the passages about male elders, and the passages about the twelve male apostles. It would be difficult to believe that an egalitarian could begin with only those texts and reach the conclusion that all roles in the church are open to women as well as men, because these texts set a pattern that so clearly affirms just the opposite.

I am not saying that we all emphasize every verse of the Bible equally. There will always be passages that a pastor will emphasize more in his preaching and teaching (he will probably spend more time teaching from Romans or 1 Corinthians than from Leviticus, for example), but that is not because this pastor thinks that Romans is part of a "canon within the canon" or that it has more authority. It is rather because Leviticus was written to a situation we no longer find ourselves in, the situation of God's people in the old covenant who had to follow ceremonial rules and regulations. But the New Testament epistles are written to people in the same situation we are in today-members of the New Testament church who live after Jesus' resurrection and before his second coming. Preaching from Leviticus is worthwhile and also "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16), but its application to our situation is less direct and more difficult to understand, and it is not wrong to give it less emphasis in preaching than many of the New Testament books. This question of emphasis, however, is different from an egalitarian claim that implies we can decide to be subject to some parts of Scripture and not others.

I am troubled by the egalitarian claim that it all depends on what texts we choose as basic, because that suggests there are other texts we can decide do not apply to us today and do not have authority over us today. Once again, that position weakens the authority of Scripture in our lives.

The complementarian position does not "limit the application" of the so called "equality texts" in Scripture (such as Gal 3:28), but understands them to be limited by their own contexts and subject matter and wording. This is not wrongly understanding these texts, but is understanding them according to the principles by which we should understand all texts. And we understand these texts in a way that does not require them to nullify or contradict other texts about male leadership in the church.

The two positions are not the same in how they treat the texts they emphasize. Egalitarians wrongly limit the application of male leadership texts by saying they don't apply today to the very same kinds of situations they applied to when originally written (namely, conduct in the assembled church and the office of elder with governing authority over the church). But egalitarians wrongly expand the application of equality texts far beyond the kinds of situations they were originally written to address (as explained above, the "egalitarian texts" were not written to address situations of governing or teaching over the church).

By contrast, the complementarian position rightly applies the texts on male leadership to exactly the same kind of situations they applied to when originally written (governing and teaching God's people in the church). And the complementarian position rightly applies the "equality texts" to exactly the same kinds of situations they applied to when originally written (affirming all sorts of ministries for women except governing or teaching over the assembled church, and affirming the full dignity and value of women in God's sight and in the ministry of the church).

Thus, the two positions clearly differ in the way they interpret and apply biblical texts, not just in which texts they "choose as basic."

In fact, this egalitarian claim that first derives a principle of "equality" from Gal 3:28, and then uses that general principle to override the specific teaching of texts that talk about church leadership, looks dangerously similar to a procedure that has been used numerous times in the past to deny the authority of Scripture and allow all sorts of false doctrine into the church. For example, in the early part of the twentieth century, liberals routinely appealed to a vague general principle of the "love of God" (which surely can be found in many passages) in order to deny that God had any wrath against sin. And once they denied God's wrath, then it was easy to believe that all people everywhere would be saved (for God is a "God of love" and not of wrath). After that, it was also easy to believe that Jesus' death was not a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins-that is, he did not bear the wrath of God against our sins-but rather that his death was somehow an example for us. In this way a vague biblical principle ("God's love") was used to deny many specific passages of Scripture on the wrath of God and on Christ's death, and to deny a major doctrine such as substitutionary atonement.

This is similar to the egalitarian claim that the vague general principles of equality and fairness (as derived from Galatians 3:28) require that women have access to the same governing and teaching roles in the church that men do. In this way, vague general principles (equality, fairness) are also used to weaken or nullify specific verses of Scripture.

8. Silencing the Most Relevant Verses by Saying They Are "Disputed"

Another egalitarian method of effectively denying the authority of Scripture is one taken by egalitarian authors Cindy Jacobs, Sarah Sumner, and Rich Nathan, and also by the position paper of The Assemblies of God on "The Role of Women in Ministry." These egalitarians claim that it is not possible to figure out what the Bible teaches on this issue, so our decision must be made on the basis of observing what kinds of ministries are effective today. But this procedure effectively silences the ability of Scripture to speak to this controversy, so it is a different kind of rejection of the authority of Scripture. Cindy Jacobs writes,

As I've studied the so-called "difficult passages" about women, I have concluded that the differing interpretations are rather like that of teaching on end-time eschatology. Throughout the years I've heard excellent sermons on just about every position, all using Scripture, and all sounding as if they had merit!⁸⁵

A few pages later she affirms this principle regarding controversial passages of Scripture:

Controversial passages lacking consensus from godly people of different persuasions usually mean that the passages are not clear enough to resolve with certainty. Therefore we must be tolerant on [sic] different views on those passages.⁸⁶

A similar approach is taken by the Assemblies of God position paper on "The Role of Women in Ministry":

We all agree that Scripture must be our final authority in settling questions of faith and practice. But when born-again, Spirit-filled Christians, following proper hermeneutical principles, come to reasonable but differing interpretations, we do well not to become dogmatic in support of one position.⁸⁷

Sarah Sumner says,

We don't know how to translate 1 Timothy 2, much less interpret it correctly or apply it appropriately today. That's why this passage is so humbling; to some extent it has stumped us all, scholars and practitioners alike.⁸⁸

Rich Nathan writes,

It is not at all plain what Paul meant to communicate to his original readers, plus it is even less plain how Paul's words should be applied today . . . . My files include at least fifteen very different interpretations of 1 Timothy 2. . . . To summarize, there is no common agreement on what these individual words mean in 1 Timothy 2:9-15.⁸⁹

The heart of this approach is that sincere Christians like Cindy Jacobs, the leaders of the Assemblies of God, Sarah Sumner, and Rich Nathan are saying that they cannot reach a decision on the meaning of 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2, and the passages that say elders are to be the husband of one wife.⁹⁰ It is important to recognize what this does in this debate. It effectively prevents these passages from speaking to this question. If someone says, "Don't talk to us about those passages because nobody can figure out what they mean anyway," then he has essentially said that those passages cannot play a role in his decision about this question. And that means that the passages that most directly speak to the question of women teaching and governing in the church are silenced and excluded from discussion on that very question.

In essence, this approach guarantees that a decision about women teaching and governing in the church will be made without reference to the passages in the Bible that speak most directly to the topic. It is hard to think of an approach more likely to lead to a wrong decision.

There is another serious problem with an approach that says we will not make decisions based on any "disputed" passages. If people really adopt this principle, they probably cannot rule out any major heresy in the church. In the fourth-century controversy over the deity of Christ, the Arians (who denied the full deity of Christ) were apparently godly people who disputed every major verse used by those who argued for the full deity of Christ. That meant that all the passages on the deity of Christ were "disputed verses," with godly, praying scholars on both sides of the question. In the debate over biblical inerrancy, "godly people" vigorously debate the key verses used to support inerrancy. The "Oneness Pentecostals" who deny the Trinity hotly dispute all the verses brought to support the Trinity.

I wonder how many who take this "avoid disputed passages" approach have ever tried to discuss justification by faith alone with a born-again Roman Catholic. Within the Roman Catholic church are "godly people" who make every verse on justification by faith alone a point of controversy. On this principle of "avoiding disputed passages," no Christian could ever come to any conclusion about whether to baptize infants because "godly people" differ on whether infants should be baptized, and every verse is in dispute! To take yet another matter, the matter of spiritual gifts, all the key passages about miraculous gifts are "disputed" by sincere Christians. Must we say about all those passages, "These are disputed passages and evangelical scholars will never reach agreement, therefore, we cannot use these passages to decide what we think about miraculous gifts today?"

Once we begin to use the "avoid disputed passages" approach, we lose the ability to use hundreds of verses in God's Word that he gave us to understand, to believe, and to obey. And when that happens, our churches will be "tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine" (Eph 4:14).

A better approach is to say that God has given us his Word so that it can be understood. Therefore we must pursue these "controversial texts" and follow the arguments on both sides, until we come to a satisfactory answer on what they mean. If a position is true to God's Word, it should not be based on "trust me" arguments from scholars who appeal to evidence that lay people cannot examine and evaluate, or who just quote the opinions of other authors to "prove" their points. Even when it involves arguments about Greek and Hebrew words, or ancient history, the evidence should be laid out in clear English, the examples of word usages should be given in English translation, and interested lay persons should be able to look at it and evaluate it for themselves, so that people can come to their own conclusions about what the Bible says.⁹¹

Much of the dispute on this question is not because the Scripture passages are difficult to understand. The "controversy" and "lack of consensus" over the key passages on women in ministry is in many cases caused by lack of information or by false statements being repeated again and again in egalitarian literature.

With regard to most of the crucial questions, the supporting evidence is not something that is restricted to the realm of specialist scholars with technical knowledge. Even in those cases where the argument depends on the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word, the relevant evidence from ancient literature can usually be presented in a clear and forthright way (in English translation) so that interested lay people have an opportunity to make an informed decision.

Sadly, again and again I find that egalitarian interpretations are accepted not because people have actually seen the hard and fast evidence that proves these views to be valid, but rather because they have read the interpretation (not the actual evidence for it) in some evangelical writer whom they trust. What readers don't realize is that often these writers are depending on the statements of other writers, and those writers on yet other writers, or in a number of cases the egalitarian scholar is advocating an extremely doubtful theory about the evidence that no one has ever before held. But seldom is the actual evidence itself provided. In many cases, that is because it simply does not exist. In other cases, the egalitarian scholar who is trusted has promoted an unusual understanding of the ancient world or a novel interpretation held by no other expert in the field before or since, yet the lay person believes and trusts the egalitarian scholar while having no idea how strange that scholar's views actually are, or how widely what the egalitarian author claims wanders from the actual truth about the ancient world.⁹²

This consideration affects claims such as the idea that the Greek word for "head" could mean "source," the idea that Eph 5:21 teaches "mutual submission," the idea that there were women teaching false doctrine in Ephesus when Paul wrote 1 Timothy 2, the idea that the word translated "have authority over" in 1 Tim 2:12 can mean "commit murder" or "proclaim oneself the originator of a man," and so forth. For all of these points and more, there is no clear factual evidence from ancient literature (from word usage, similar grammatical constructions, etc.) to support the claims made. The necessary evidence does not exist and no egalitarian author has shown that it exists. Yet thousands of people are making decisions based on these claims because they think the relevant evidence really does exist. In many cases they are believing a myth.

To say that we should be tolerant of different views about the end times is understandable. Whether someone is an amillennialist or a premillennialist, or a pretribulational or posttribulational premillennialist, does not make very much difference in how he lives the Christian life. And since these views involve predictions of the future, they will continue to be impossible to resolve with certainty until the future arrives! It should not surprise us that God has left us with some aspects of mystery concerning the end times.

But the question of whether women should teach and govern churches is a different matter. Either we decide to have women pastors and elders or we do not. It is impossible to do both at the same time. Do we think this topic is something that God cares about? Do we think it is something that he counts as a matter of obedience to him? Or do we think that God does not really care what we do about this question?

The issue of roles of men and women in the church affects, to some degree, every Christian in the world, for it affects whom we choose as leaders in our churches, and it has a significant effect on what kinds of ministries the men and women in our churches carry out. When we say, "It is impossible to decide what the Bible teaches on this," we imply that God did not think this to be an important enough issue to give us clear guidance in his Word. We imply that God has left us instructions that are unclear or confusing on this issue. Do we really want to say this about God and his Word, on a topic that affects every church in the world every week of the year, for the entire church age until Christ returns?

I do not believe that this subject is unimportant to God. Nor do I believe that he has left instructions that are confusing or unclear. Yes, there is controversy about this matter today, but the controversy has come about because of other factors, not because God's Word is confusing or unclear.

Finally, there is one other difference between questions about the end times and questions about women's roles in the church. There have been controversies about the end times since the very early centuries of the church's history. But there have not been controversies about whether the roles of pastor and elder are reserved for men. Apart from a few sectarian movements, the entire Christian church from the first century until the 1850s agreed that only men could be pastors and elders, and the vast majority agreed that only men could do public Bible teaching of men and women. From the 1850s until the 1950s in the United States, women pastors were a tiny minority, but over 98 percent of evangelical churches (over 99 percent of the Christian church if Roman Catholic and Orthodox groups are included) had only men as pastors.⁹³Allowing women to be ordained began with some liberal Protestant denominations in the 1950s and spread to a number of evangelical groups under the influence of evangelical feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. Before the advent of evangelical feminist writings in the 1970s, today's "disputed passages" on women in ministry were not thought to be unclear. This matter is much different from disputes over the end times.

9. Saying that Women Can Teach "Under the Authority" of the Pastors or Elders

Another liberal tendency to reject the authority of Scripture in our lives is found in the claim that a woman may teach Scripture to men if she does so "under the authority of the pastor or elders." I say this is indicative of a liberal tendency because on no other area of conduct would we be willing to say that someone can do what the Bible says not to do as long as the pastor and elders give their approval.

This position is found frequently in evangelical churches. Many people who hold this position say they genuinely want to uphold male leadership in the church, and they are doing so when the woman teaches "under the authority of the elders," who are men (or of the pastor, who is a man).

This is not a commonly held view among egalitarian authors,⁹⁴ for they do not think only men should be elders, or that women need any approval from men to teach the Bible. But this view is often stated in phone calls or e-mails to The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood office, and I often hear it in personal conversations and discussions of church policies.

Is it really true that a woman is obeying the Bible if she preaches a sermon "under the authority of the pastor and elders"?

The question here is, what does the Bible say? It does not merely say, "Preserve some kind of male authority in the congregation." It does not say, "A woman may not teach men unless she is under the authority of the elders." Rather, it says, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man" (1 Tim 2:12).

Can a pastor or the elders of a church give a woman permission to disobey this statement of Scripture? Certainly not! Can a woman do what the Bible says not to do and excuse it by saying "I'm under the authority of the elders"? Would we say that the elders of a church could tell people "under their authority" that they have permission to disobey other passages of Scripture? What would we think of someone who said, "I'm going to rob a bank today because I need money and my pastor has given me permission, and I'm under his authority"? Or of a person who said, "I'm committing adultery because I'm unhappy in my marriage and my elders have given me permission, so I'm still under the authority of my elders"? Or of someone who said, "I'm committing perjury because I don't want to go to jail and my pastor has given me permission, and I'm under his authority"? We would dismiss those statements as ridiculous, but they highlight the general principle that no pastor or church elder or bishop or any other church officer has the authority to give people permission to disobey God's Word.

Someone may answer, "But we are respecting the Bible's general principle of male headship in the church." But Paul did not say, "Respect the general principle of male headship in your church." He said, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man" (1 Tim 2:12). We do not have the right to change what the Bible says and then obey some new "general principle of the Bible" we have made up.

Nor do we have the right to take a specific teaching of Scripture and abstract some general principle from it (such as a principle of "male headship") and then say that principle gives us the right to disobey the specific commands of Scripture that fall under that principle. We are not free to abstract general principles from the Bible however we wish, and then invent opinions about how those principles will apply in our situations. Such a procedure would allow people to evade any command of Scripture they were uncomfortable with. We would become a law unto ourselves, no longer subject to the authority of God's word.

We could try this same procedure with some other passages. Would we think it right to say that the Bible teaches that men should pray "without anger or quarreling, unless they quarrel under the authority of the elders?^" Or that women should adorn themselves "with modesty and self-control, unless the elders give them permission to dress immodestly?" Or would we say that those who are "rich in this present age" should "be generous and ready to share, unless the elders give them permission to be stingy and miserly?" (See 1 Tim 6:17-19). But if we would not add, "unless the elders give permission to do otherwise under their authority" to any of the other commands in Scripture, neither should we add that evasion to 1 Tim 2:12.

If a woman says, "I will teach the Bible to men only when I am under the authority of the elders," she has become no different from men who teach the Bible. No man in any church should teach the Bible publicly unless he also is under the authority of the elders (or pastor, or other church officers) in that church. The general principle is that anyone who does Bible teaching in a church should be subject to the established governing authority in that church, whether it is a board of elders, a board of deacons, a church governing council, or the church board. Both men and women alike are subject to that requirement. Therefore this "under the authority of the elders" position essentially says there is no difference between what men can do and what women can do in teaching the Bible to men.

Do we really think that is what Paul meant? Do we really think that Paul did not mean to say anything that applied only to women when he said, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man" (1 Tim 2:12)?

10. Evading New Testament Commands Regarding a Specific Activity by Saying, "We Are Not a Church"

And yet another liberal tendency is the claim that since an organization is not a church, it does not have to follow the New Testament commands regarding such activities as women teaching the Bible to men. The reason I say this is indicative of a liberal tendency to avoid the authority of Scripture is that, while we may agree that parachurch organizations are not required to do everything that the New Testament commands for churches, nevertheless, when a parachurch organization does those same things that the New Testament talks about for churches, it is required to follow the same rules that the New Testament lays down for churches. It is not as if we can set up a separate organization next door to a church and then say that the rules no longer apply to us.

This is another argument that is not usually made by egalitarian writers, because to make this argument someone has to assume that the New Testament restrictions on women in ministry do apply to a church situation. That is an assumption egalitarians are not willing to make.

But this argument is frequently made by people who claim to be complementarian and say they support male headship in the home and the church. Yet they say because they are part of a parachurch organization (such as a seminary, a mission board, or a campus ministry), the New Testament teachings on women not teaching or having authority over men do not apply to their organization. I have listed this argument here as an "egalitarian claim" because it often functions in practice to advance egalitarian goals and to encourage women to function in ways contrary to New Testament teachings. It is thus a kind of "closet egalitarian" argument.

To respond to this argument it is necessary to point out, first, that there is some truth in the argument, but it is not the whole truth. There is some truth regarding some kinds of New Testament commands, but it is not the whole truth regarding the commands relating to women's roles in ministry situations.

The truth in this argument is that parachurch organizations do not function in every way as churches do. Take, for example, some of the parachurch organizations I have been involved with. As far as I know, Phoenix Seminary, where I teach, has never

• baptized anyone
• ord