Stanley Grenz and Feminist Theology: Feminist Ideology, Defective Theological Method Lead to Egalitarian Conclusions

Stanley J. Grenz, Professor Of Theology and ethics at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., seeks to gain broad approval for his writings in both evangelical and non-evangelical circles by voicing his appreciation of others' viewpoints and by stating his conclusions in ways that are less than entirely unambiguous. While his position on several issues, despite his numerous books and articles, can be gauged only with difficulty, his egalitarian views have recently been set forth quite clearly in Women in the Church (co-authored with Denise Muir Kjesbo, 1995). The publication of this work was followed by a journal article that explains the theological method by which Grenz arrives at his egalitarian conclusions. The article, entitled "Anticipating God's New Community: Theological Foundations for Women in Ministry," seeks to provide a theological foundation for Grenz's belief that "women and men ought to be full partners at every level of Church life, including within the ordained ministry."¹

In the following essay, we will attempt to examine the theological foundation of Grenz's egalitarian views. Some evangelicals judge Grenz's approach to the role of women in the church to be irenic and helpful. However, as will be seen, Grenz frequently misrepresents the complementarian position on biblical manhood and womanhood. What is more, his argument in the above mentioned article can be shown to suffer from substantial leaps in logic that invalidate the egalitarian conclusions Grenz derives from his adduced evidence.

Specifically, the present article will expose the flaws of Grenz's theological method in his effort to justify women's functioning at all levels of ministry as it pertains to the doctrines of God, creation, and the church. In conclusion, we will provide observations on how Christians can identify the theological flaws frequently plaguing egalitarian arguments.

A Flawed Theological Method: Misrepresentations And Faulty Logic

At the outset of his article, Grenz refrains from any exegesis of the biblical texts regarding women in ministry, contending that an undue emphasis on interpreting the relevant biblical texts has led to an impasse in the current debate. Instead of focusing on Scripture directly, Grenz suggests that theology, more broadly defined, will help us come to proper (that is, egalitarian) conclusions. One may ask how theology can be done without looking at specific texts if the Bible is considered to be one's sole and final authority of faith and practice. Apparently undaunted by such concerns, however, Grenz launches into a discussion of the doctrines of God, creation, and the church as these relate to the role of women in ministry. In each of these areas, Grenz finds confirming evidence that women should be involved at all levels of church ministry.

Misrepresentations

But the avenue by which Grenz is able to arrive at his egalitarian conclusions involves serious misrepresentations of others' viewpoints and substantial leaps of logic. Despite his irenic reputation, the following examples demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that Grenz, wittingly or unwittingly, misleadingly misrepresents the complementarian position. Thus he asserts that complementarians believe that men "more completely reflect the divine image than women";² that "some complementarians oppose women's ordination because the ordained position embodies in some symbolic manner the actual nature of our Lord";³ and that complementarian viewpoints promote dominance because "complementarians... are keen to connect authority and power-understood as dominance- with church structures."⁴ Grenz provides no substantiation whatsoever for any of these assertions.

Leaps Of Logic

In addition to these misrepresentations, Grenz engages in leaps of logic that seem to betray reliance on presuppositions rather than resulting from an unbiased assessment of the evidence. In his short journal article, at least three such leaps can be detected. First, Grenz discusses the nature of God as containing both masculine and feminine characteristics. From this simple statement, Grenz draws the conclusion that God can be adequately reflected only if women function on all levels of church ministry equal to men.⁵ But this hardly follows: the idea that God's nature includes feminine as well as masculine characteristics does not explain how masculine and feminine characteristics of God are automatically translated into various human roles or functions.

Grenz's second leap in logic is similar to the first: because the image of God includes male and female who are equal in essence and dignity, Grenz asserts, the church must include women in church leadership at all levels.⁶ But again, this represents a purely functional view of persons, locating their inherent value by what role they play in life rather than their inherent value as a special creation by God. Contrary to Grenz, it is clearly possible that men and women are assigned different, complementary roles in the family and the church and that both men and women are created in the image of God, equal in essence and dignity but different in role. As it turns out, Grenz's argument only holds if an egalitarian viewpoint is assumed at the outset and a complementarian understanding excluded a priori.

Third, Grenz claims that the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers leads to an egalitarian view of ordained office.⁷ Once again, this hardly follows, since not all believers (even men) are assigned leadership roles in churches. Christians are part of a priesthood because we have the privilege of direct access to God through Christ.Grenz's discussion of the priesthood of all believers is plagued by a misunderstanding of what Scripture actually teaches in this regard. Rightly understood, the New Testament on the subject speaks of every believer's direct access to God (without further intermediaries; see e.g. Heb. 10:19-22), not about particular church functions of men and women. But an egalitarian scheme of gender roles can be extrapolated from the notion of the priesthood of all believers only by imposing one's egalitarian commitment onto a framework that does permit other options, including a complementarian understanding.

While these three instances of leaps of logic differ in the particular point they are trying to make, each can be traced to the same fundamental conviction: the dogma of modernity, disdained by Grenz in his other writings, particularly on postmodernity, that views a person's worth or value solely in terms of status or role. This is clearly borne out by the general orientation of the egalitarian viewpoint, as can be illustrated by a quote from Jeannette Scholer:

The claim that women are inferior is a real, although often unspoken, force in the church today. Some claim that it is possible to believe in the full personhood of a woman on the one hand and limiting her status and function on the other. For me, and for most of us here, these terms are inextricably bound. As Gretchen Hull pointed out, ‘Yes, but...' is really no and means that women are not fully redeemable. If women are fully human, Christ's death must be fully efficacious for them, and, once redeemed, they cannot be limited in status and function in church and society.⁸

If God has masculine and feminine characteristics and the image of God includes male and female equally (essence), then all positions in church leadership (roles) must be open to and include women. This inference, drawn apart from any study of specific scriptural texts, is based upon the valuing of people for what they do rather than for who they are. The erroneous nature of this notion will become clear in the following discussion.

Dubious Theological Conclusions:
Grenz On God, Creation, And The Church

Professor Grenz is part of a movement in evangelical circles which has been identified by Millard Erickson as postconservatism.⁹ This movement, which includes Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, and James McClendon as well as Grenz, has decided to "shed theological conservatism" by embracing such concepts as:

• broadening the sources of theology to include culture and experience;
• rejecting propositional inerrancy in favor of narrative theology;
• propounding an "open view" of God to replace both classical Arminian and Reformed theology;
• advancing an "optimistic" view of salvation outside of explicit faith in Christ through general revelation and other religions;
• and rejecting any epistemological certainties (ways of knowing) based on universal or absolute truth.¹⁰

While Grenz may not have adopted all of these positions, he is the unquestioned leader in terms of a new theological method that views culture as a source of theology and that rejects propositional inerrancy in favor of narrative or postliberal theology.¹¹ Grenz's article critiqued here provides clear evidence for how his postconservatism accounts for his egalitarian stance. It also reveals how egalitarianism is based on non-evangelical thought constructs.

1. The Doctrine Of God

In seeking to justify the full inclusion of women at all levels of ministry, Grenz not only leaps from God's masculine and feminine characteristics to leadership positions for women in ministry, he also engages in the recent feminist practice of redefining the Trinity.

In order to obliterate the distinction between essence and function (see already the discussion above) as seen in the orthodox formulation of an ontological (related to essential being) or hierarchical relationship involving different eternal functions,¹² Grenz makes the completely unsubstantiated statement that the Father is dependent on the Son as much as the Son is dependent on the Father.¹³ This mutuality or cooperation between the Father and Son should lead to cooperation and equality of men and women in all church positions.

But contrary to Grenz's claims, there is absolutely no biblical support for the notion that the Father is dependent on the Son for his deity. Scripture definitively states that the Son is always dependent on the Father in his eternal role as divine agent of the Father (1 Cor. 8:6) in creation (Col. 1:16), redemption (Gal. 4:4-5), and eschatological reconciliation (1 Cor. 15:28). Jesus said, "For just as the Father has life in himself, even so he has granted the Son to have life in himself, and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man" (John 5:26-27). The authority came from the Father, because the Son is eternally the Son through whom we were chosen from the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:3-4).

The only substantiation Grenz seeks to provide for his claim is not from Scripture; Grenz rather refers to a passage in Athanasius's treatise "Against the Arians." It can be shown, however, that Grenz misinterprets Athanasius's statement regarding the importance of the work of the Son for the Father by interpreting it to mean that the Father is of necessity unable to be God without the work of the Son. Once again, Grenz subsumes the essence of God under his function. But the real import of Athanasius's statement is rather that the Son is the Word of the Father, who is the divine agent through whom the divine will is effected.¹⁴ The fact that Grenz must resort to misuse of an early Church Father to substantiate his conclusion is a telling example of the lack of evidence that plagues egalitarians in their effort to eradicate the doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son from Scripture.

But the real source for Grenz's concept of the eternal dependence of the Father on the Son is not Athanasius-it is Wolfhart Pannenberg, who served as Grenz's doctoral mentor at Munich.¹⁵ Pannenberg explicitly states that the historical resurrection of Jesus is necessary for the deity of the Father.¹⁶ The life and passion of Jesus as well as the work of the Holy Spirit in history are required before God's rulership from eternity can be sustained.

Among the many doctrinal errors that result from this idea, only two can be mentioned here. First, this notion denies the biblical witness of the gift of the Son by the Father's own divine will. Second, events in history require a prior foundation in being through which events occur (that is, God must have existed before He could perform any deeds). The Father and the Son existed in eternal relationship prior to the incarnate activity of the Son on earth.¹⁷

Thus, feminist trinitarian error informs the foundation of Grenz's egalitarianism: the postulation of a mutually dependent relationship between God the Father and God the Son in place of the orthodox hierarchical and functional relationship that exists from eternity.

2. The Doctrine Of Creation

Grenz ties the idea of the Trinity as a relationship of mutual dependence to the concept of the image of God. Thus, the image of God as male and female requires both men and women to serve at all levels of the Church. As the doctrine of the Trinity indicates, God is the fellowship of trinitarian persons throughout all eternity. At creation, the triune God designed mankind to mirror the unity-in-diversity and mutuality that characterizes the eternal divine reality. Consequently, neither the male as such nor the isolated human-whether male or female-is the image of God. Rather than being an individual possession, the imago Dei (image of God) is a corporate or social reality.¹⁸

But once again, Grenz commits the error of seeing the value of a human being in his or her function (corporate or social reality) rather than essence. People are valued and valuable only as they contribute to one another. Therefore, the inherent value or essence of a person prior to functioning in relationship to others is denied. Grenz again directly ties his errant view of the Trinity to human beings to further his egalitarian ideological convictions.

3. The Doctrine Of The Church

Grenz contends that as a result of being a new creation in Christ, the church as an eschatological community in Christ must reflect no distinctions in economic standing, ethnic background or gender.¹⁹ This community known as the church will be the egalitarian community enjoyed by Adam and Eve prior to sin.²⁰ Grenz also maintains that the fact of giftedness to teach requires that all church positions related to teaching be open indiscriminately to all. Complementarians, Grenz argues, subsume ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church) under anthropology (the doctrine of man) by focusing on the relationship between the sexes in keeping with the complementarian notion of creation order instead of focusing on the giftedness of individuals to serve in the church.²¹

But Grenz again fails to distinguish between essence (position in Christ) and function. The fact that in Christ everyone is equally valued by God does not eliminate gender distinctions. These distinctions are obliterated by salvation as little as is a person's race. Roles in the church are defined by biblical revelation, not anthropology. I agree with Grenz that the model envisioned for the Christian community is Adam and Eve before the Fall but disagree that this logically implies an egalitarian view of gender roles. Rather, Genesis 2:18 defines Eve's role as helper which 1 Timothy 2:13 extends to the family of God by limiting certain teaching roles in the church to men.

Conclusion

More criticisms could be registered regarding this short article by Grenz, but it should be clear by now that Grenz's theological method, and thus also his egalitarian conclusions, are severely flawed. I will close with three closely related observations. First, it is important to note how the idea of relationships without any hierarchical or functional distinctions dominates Grenz's theological discussion of women in ministry. Grenz's view comes dangerously close to affirming that people created in the image of God have no value apart from relating to other people. Worse still, Grenz's egalitarian presuppositions dominate and override anything the biblical witness might say.

This, secondly, illumines Grenz's opening contention that the primary biblical texts on women's roles in the church are inconclusive. To the contrary, Grenz's assertion amounts to an implicit admission that an egalitarian framework does not allow for a literal interpretation of passages such as 1 Timothy 2:12-13 or 1 Corinthians 11:3. Therefore, theological ideas based on egalitarian ideology must override the plain meaning of the biblical texts. This is clearly seen in the tendency in both feminist and at least some egalitarian theology to dismantle the orthodox notion of an ontological and hierarchical Trinity and to replace it with a Trinity of purely equal social status.

The result of this is, thirdly, a proliferation of novel, highly speculative theological constructs that are not only dubious but take their cue not primarily from Scripture but from extrabiblical sources. As mentioned, Grenz's theological method includes the notion of culture (in this case modern feminism) as a source or norm alongside Scripture and tradition,²² and his narrative, non-propositional view of Scripture hardly qualifies as evangelical.²³ Therefore one must be careful not only to be aware of ideological agendas that determine theological conclusions but also take heed to see whether so-called "biblical feminists" or "evangelical egalitarians" such as Grenz are in fact evangelical.