The CBE Scroll

(first in a series of posts regarding the Trinity)

Though eternal subordinationists believe the Son and the Father are equal in essence, they also believe that the Son is inherently subordinate to the Father. In their view, instead of voluntarily emptying himself of divine authority in the incarnation, the Son necessarily does so for all eternity. They claim that the Son’s eternal subordination to the Father within the Trinity provides theological precedent for the permanent subordination of women in relation to men.

In a paper read at the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) annual meeting, prominent subordinationist Bruce Ware stated that names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ “refer not to some ad hoc arrangement for the incarnation but to an eternal relationship in which the Father is the eternal Father of the Son, and the Son is the eternal Son of the Father.” The assumption behind this statement seems to be that there’s no middle ground between meaninglessness and the meaning subordinationists want to give these names.

However, there is plenty of meaning to be found in the Trinitarian Father-Son relationship without requiring an eternal relationship of supremacy and subordination within the Trinity. Two examples (and many more could be offered) of the meaning found in Jesus’ incarnational submission to the Father include his model for relationships between people and God and his model for relationships between all people.

Historically, Christians have understood Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Father in the incarnation to model the ideal for divine-human relationships. Subordinationists, however, suggest that the Father-Son relationship models the ideal for marriage relationships.

This misapplication of the divine-human relationship to the human marriage relationship has serious theological and ethical implications. Though we are free to exercise contextual and provisional authority, no human being can claim the Father’s authority over another.

When Satan tempted Jesus by offering him the authority and splendor of all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would agree to worship him, Jesus responded, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only’” (Luke 4:8). One very meaningful aspect of Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Father is that it provides a model for trusting God above all others, and for resisting others’ claims to take God’s place in our lives.

Christians have also understood Jesus’ submission in the incarnation to be a very meaningful model for human relationships. Scripture records one of the earliest Christian hymns in Phil. 2:6-11. This passage celebrates Jesus’ willingness to empty himself in the incarnation, in which he “became obedient unto death—even death on a cross.” Other Scripture testifies that even though he was the Son of God and didn’t have to take on our weaknesses, Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” in the incarnation (Heb. 5:8).

Right before the hymn about Christ emptying himself in the incarnation, Paul exhorts believers to follow Christ’s example in our relationships with each other (Phil. 2:5). He does not specify that one group should follow the Father’s model of authority and another group should follow Christ’s model of submission. All Christians are called to imitate Christ and use our authority to benefit others instead of ourselves.

The Son’s submission to the Father in the incarnation offers meaningful models for both divine-human relationships and human relationships in general. These models provide a basis for resisting claims to inherent and permanent authority by one group of people over another group of people, and call all people to serve God absolutely and to serve one another sacrificially.

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I grew up a perfectionist, the oldest child in a middle class family. When report cards came out, I was upset for days if I got an A-. I wanted to do well at everything I did, and put in the extra work to make sure that happened.

By the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence, I found great strength in my faith. But I always felt like I wasn’t trying hard enough to submit myself to the perfect Christian woman model I thought I should fit. I wanted so badly to be what God created me to be, but I felt too strong, too outspoken, too overwhelming.

Unfortunately, my answer to this supposed discrepancy between my faith and my gender was to work even harder to “fit the mold.” This was not just spiritual; it shifted into the physical. I became addicted to exercise and cut out every “excessive” morsel in my diet. I thought if I could make my body submit, perhaps my “rebellious” spirit would as well. Finally, I would be the woman God wanted me to be.

But I was just becoming the woman popular culture wanted me to be: clothes hanging loosely, bones protruding, face pale and gaunt. I looked like a child, not a woman. For nearly five years, I battled with myself, sometimes realizing this wasn’t the way I was meant to be, and sometimes succumbing to the driving pulse of what I thought God demanded of me.

After a two-week stay in the hospital, I woke up. I wanted to heal. And faith, for me, was the one place I began to find rest. Through intensive study of scripture and prayer, I realized God did not demand compliance with this false definition of “woman”; God simply invited me to use my gifts as they were given. It was encountering this God of radical grace that overthrew the false god I had set up, a god that demanded conformity to a certain way of being. God’s grace carried me through many of my own faults and into a new way of being.

It takes time to reconnect body and spirit. The body has been starved for so long that once the person begins eating regularly, the metabolism kicks into high gear, eager to use this new substance called food. But while my body was still relearning to work normally, I was in counseling, learning about this person God had created me to be. This was a time of healing, and I believe less people relapse because of this process-oriented approach.

Fast-forward three years. The symptoms of the eating disorder (ED) are long gone and I haven’t seen a counselor for nearly 18 months. Anorexia is not a persistent thought anymore; I’m too busy exercising the gifts God has given me! Imagine my surprise, then, when I open a letter from the health insurance company: “Due to your history of anorexia in the last five years, we are not able to approve you for service . . .” WHAT?!?

Certainly, relapse occurs in a small percentage of people with eating disorders. But I was being punished for seeking out help. If I had never been treated, never seen a counselor, I would have health insurance today. Eating disorders aren’t treated as many other mental illnesses–which have only a two year waiting period before suffers can seek insurance independently–even though illnesses like depression and anxiety often manifest themselves in the physical body. And the treatment for ED’s are not often more expensive: counseling, some nutritional work, check-ups, an occasional prescription. I am left to wonder if this injustice is partially due to the gender of most of those who suffer. While men do make up 10% of ED cases, it is women who represent 9 out of 10 patients.

I am not alone. Since being denied insurance, I have found others who faced similar injustices. Thankfully, advocates are forming groups to address these issues. The Anna Westin Foundation , created by parents of a young woman who died after her insurance company said her treatments were “not necessary,” has devoted an entire section of its website to information about insurance coverage. Along with the Eating Disorders Coalition of Wasington, D.C. , the Foundation lobbies for greater federal acknowledgement of and action toward just eating disorder treatment legislation. Christian organizations like Breaking Up With Ed and Remuda Ranch offer Christ-centered approaches to healing from eating disorders. There is great promise that situations are improving, but many more people who suffer from eating disorders—and the after effects of their recovery—remain unable to access the basic services they need.

The injustice I have experienced in the health system is a Christian issue. It involves body image, healing, and how we as a community respond to those who are suffering. Whether we write letters to our lawmakers, invite speakers to our youth groups, or offer a listening ear to a struggling friend, I pray that, as people who follow Jesus, we can be part of this ministry of healing and reconciliation (2 Cor 5:16-20).

In a recent pre-Christmas sermon on Mary, it was suggested that fathers should take their sons to see the movie, The Nativity Story. By seeing this movie, it was said, young men will see how they can be loving husbands, like Joseph, and protect their wives in difficult circumstances like these—“these” circumstances referring to their long trip to Bethlehem. I don’t know exactly what the preacher meant, but in the context, it made me laugh. I don’t anticipate making that kind of journey with a pregnant, God-Man bearing wife riding on a donkey anytime soon. Those circumstances belonged to someone else.

It also reminded me of something else, that is, the many times I’ve heard someone appeal to the biblical narrative (or any biblical passage) without regard to the context or genre. At times, what is merely description in the Bible is taken as prescription. By way of example, one might look to the Old Testament patriarchs with that sentimental feeling of missing the days when men were men. The hierarchicalist, for example, who longs to be like an Old Testament patriarch, may praise his patriarchy as an example of true biblical manhood. I know of some who want to emulate it so badly, they even set up arranged marriages for their children.

It is true that there are lessons to learn from these lives in the Bible and how they served God (or failed to). Through them we learn about the history of redemption and are pointed toward Christ’s death and resurrection. Of this, I have no doubt. What I do doubt is that all that is described in the narrative is intended to show us exactly how to live in our culture today. After all, should a man have more than one wife? The Bible is written in a context and is speaking to a context. We would do well to understand that context. When Paul writes Timothy to fetch his cloak for him (2 Timothy 4:13), I find no reason for this to mean that I must fetch it as well, nor that I should leave my cloak behind so that my young mentor may retrieve it for me.

As the immediate context sometimes appeared “irrelevant” to Christians of other eras, the early fathers looked for the deeper meaning in the text, that is, the allegorical sense of the text, hoping to find some value in the mundane. Perhaps the cloak symbolizes something from the spiritual world and that is the timeless meaning. The problem is, of course, that there is no standard for interpreting the spiritual sense of the text. It is left purely in the hands of an arbitrary interpreter. In reverse, while it is patriarchy that may seek to return to the family life of the Old Testament (though often it seems that it is painted with the brush of Victorian England or Puritan New England), there is little attention given to how the Bible should be applied in our current context. How should we live today?

To argue that Scripture demands our respect of its world and culture before interpreting and applying it to our world is not the same as saying that the Bible is outdated, outmoded, or less authoritative. It is to enjoy it in full color. It is also to recognize that we don’t always have the full picture. “The world presupposed by our text,” reminds Gordon Fee in his “The Cultural Context of Ephesians 5:18–6:9” (available at CBE’s free publications section), “is a world so radically different from ours culturally that it is difficult for us even to imagine our way back into that setting.” I think of this when I read 1 Timothy, for example. Paul’s letter is not a creed, a confession, or doctrinal standard. It is not a systematic theology. It is an epistle, and it is written to a church leader in a specific historical context. It is much like a one-sided phone call, from which we only find meaning if we pull together clues, based on what we know about the callers, their lives, friends, family, the place they live, the words chosen, the tone used, and the facial expressions expressed. The other side of the conversation is always left out to some extent.

In the context, Paul is addressing false teachers (possibly influenced by the cult of Artemis), who are teaching “myths” and “endless genealogies,” and are only eager to promote “controversies,” rather than “God’s work” (1:3-4 NIV). These dangerous people are apparently more interested in the “meaningless words” of their false teaching and disturbing the church than they are in sound doctrine and peace (1:6-7). By verse 18 of chapter 1, we are told some have “shipwrecked their faith” and blasphemed (19). Clearly, it is a letter written to a church in need of peace, for Paul follows his description of these troublemakers by calling for prayer for “kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (2:2). Paul is writing to Timothy on handling a context of anger, fighting and rebellion. Men are told to “lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing” (2:8). There are, apparently, widows, roaming from house to house, spreading rumors and talking about things “they ought not to” (5:13), some of which had “turned away to follow Satan,” presumably like the false teachers Hymenaeus and Alexander (1:20).

I would take this context into consideration when wondering what Paul intends to say to women in chapter 2. That women are targeted by these false teachers and that they might have joined them in their unruliness, sheds light on why he might urge them to learn in “peacefulness” and “submission” under church authorities (2:11). I would also take this into serious consideration when reading that Paul does not permit women “authentein” (2:12). Should the Greek word be taken as “to exercise or have authority” or should it be translated “to dominate or usurp”? The latter makes better sense in this context and of Paul’s concerns about living peacefully. It allows us to avoid unbiblical applications and hierarchicalist interpretations that see this text as an opportunity to bar women from ministry or even speaking altogether.

We must understand that all life situations are unique. Paul’s teaching is directed at those unique situations. For one person, Paul might permit circumcision (Acts 16:3), but for another, he would not (Gal. 2:3). Part of interpreting the text is getting into a culture and context often very strange to us, and recognizing how what is said and done can be applied to our lives today, without casting the Bible aside as some archaic human text.

Like Joseph, I too want to obey God. From him I’m reminded that I too should be a servant to my wife (as to all human beings) and to Christ. And as his life was full of trials, yet he continued to follow the path God placed before him—thorns, thistles, stones, and all—I too plan to endure and hopefully one day gain that crown. But I’ve never guided a donkey before, and Bethlehem is not likely to be literally on my map.

Note: For further reading on the context of 1 Timothy 2 see Linda Belleville’s “Teaching and Usurping Authority: 1 Timothy 2:11-15” in Discovering Biblical Equality, available at the Equality Depot.

A December 1, 2006 article in the New York Times entitled “Sex Abuse of Girls Is Stubborn Scourge in Africa” had a profoundly upsetting effect on me.

It’s not that I don’t come into contact with stories about sexual abuse and children. On the contrary, I am sometimes disturbed by how unaffected I feel by the bombardment of these sickening stories that daily make their way to me through various news sources.

I guess what really struck me was the fact that these reports came from Africa. While I read this article, I felt like screaming out, “No! These children face poverty, hunger, AIDS, and death on levels I will probably never understand. Why are they forced to undergo unnecessary physical and emotional horrors as well?”

The article’s author quotes Dr. Rachel Jewkes, a specialist on sexual violence with South Africa’s Medical Research Council, who says that “If I had to put my finger on one overriding issue, it would be gender inequality.”

It makes sense to me that gender equality is a key to battling sexual violence in our world. Sin, of course, is the root of these atrocities, and Christ’s love in us is the only weapon strong enough to stand up to such evil. But how can we follow Jesus’ call to “love our neighbors as ourselves” (Luke 10:27) if we view our neighbors as some “less” equal than ourselves?

As a little girl, my immediate mental association with the word “missionary” was Africa. I often wondered what it would be like to be listed among the ranks of brave men and women who risked life and limb to bring God’s message of love to the people of Africa, and I still have so much respect for the men and women who do this great work.

It is easy for Christians to fall into the temptation of seeing “gender issue” as a lesser issue to wrestle with. We can start to think that our main goal is to “get people saved” and then deal with the fuzzy issues of Bible interpretation later. I don’t think we can continue thinking like this. The message of reconciliation incorporates the whole person — body, mind and spirit. Systems that lead to abuse cannot be ignored.

The gospel of Jesus Christ demands that we stare patriarchy in the face and lovingly bring the truth of Galatians 3:28 that we “are all one in Christ Jesus” to the forefront of mission work.

The women and children of Africa are literally crying for change.