The CBE Scroll

Dr. Sheri Klouda, assistant professor of Old Testament languages, has been dismissed from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Technically, she was denied the opportunity for tenure review, despite the fact that she was hired to a tenure-track position. She was also relieved of her teaching load and told that her contract would not be renewed. SWBTS President Paige Patterson grounds this decision in the fact that Dr. Klouda is a woman, and according to his interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12, it is never proper under any circumstances for a woman to teach or have authority over a man.

It should be noted that Dr. Klouda’s conservative bona fides are impeccable. She affirms the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, which asserts that the role of senior pastor is for men only. She has no designs on the pastorate; she only wants to teach Hebrew, using the education she received at SWBTS, where she earned her Ph.D.

Needless to say, egalitarians are disheartened, angered, frustrated, and/or dumbstruck by Dr. Patterson’s decision. What might not be so obvious is that so are some complementarians.

Bill McKinnon (guest blogging at Internet Monk) believes 1 Timothy 2:12 should be limited in its application to relationships in the local church. By contrast, Dr. Patterson believes the verse in question applies across the board, whenever two Christians are involved and one is male and the other is female (or else why dismiss a qualified professor, who is not a pastor and apparently has no desire to become one, from teaching in an academic institution—not a church?).

McKinnon has ten questions for complementarians who agree with Patterson’s. Here are some of my favorites:

3. If you are pulled over by a female police officer whom you know to be a Christian, how do you make her understand that she has no authority over you (assuming you are male)?

5. Are high school teaching jobs off limits for Christian women, since at the higher grades they might be teaching Christian males old enough (by our culture) to be considered men?

9. At what age does a Christian son go from being under his mother’s authority to being an authority over her (and his sisters, whether younger or older)? One assumes that this is the same age where the mother must stop teaching her son.

Wade Burleson and Marty Duren have also blogged quite a bit about this issue. I don’t know if either of them would describe themselves as egalitarians; I do know that they make a lot of sense on this issue.

Dr. Klouda has since accepted a position at Taylor University in Indiana. I wish her the best.

Mutuality publishes feature articles for evangelical lay readers on topics related to biblical equality and justice. The theme for our Spring 2007 issue is “Advocacy versus Apathy.”

In this issue we would like to remind Christians about why it’s important to take a stand on issues even when doing so may not serve our own best interest.

We would like to explore biblical responses to questions like the following:
* Why should men take a stand for gender equality?
* Why should white people take a stand for ethnic equality?
* Why should healthy and wealthy people take a stand for ending hunger and poverty?

Related issues include:
* Using discernment about when and how to take a stand on an issue
* Personal, biblical, or historical examples of taking a stand
* Why gender-based hierarchy is a justice issue
* How to speak and act with conviction; responding to critics
* What about leaders, churches, and schools that refuse to address “divisive” issues?
* Why and how some voices are silenced and what we can do about it

The deadline for this issue is coming up soon on Feb. 26. Please contact Chelsea DeArmond (cdearmond@cbeinternational.org) if you’re interested in writing for this issue so we can discuss the details further.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

E-Quality, CBE’s online journal, publishes encouraging and practical information on biblical equality. The theme for our Spring 2007 issue is “Working for Gender Justice.”

In this issue, we would like to show how vitally important gender issues need to be for Christians who are committed to justice.

We are looking for responses to any of the following topic ideas (other suggestions are also welcome):
* The connection between race and gender, especially the connection between the abolition of slavery and the egalitarian movement
* Specific issues related to global gender inequality and what we can do about it
* Historical examples of Christian men and women working for justice for women
* Personal testimonies about gender justice
* The biblical basis for working for justice and caring about the cause of women
* Practical tips for advancing biblical equality in your church, youth group, or in your neighborhood

The deadline for this issue is coming up soon on Feb. 15. Please contact Megan Greulich (mgreulich@cbeinternational.org) if you’re interested in writing for this issue so we can discuss the details further.

There is a very disturbing thing going on to encourage abstinence among Christian teenagers and children. It started with Purity Balls’ “a memorable ceremony for daughters to pledge commitments to purity and their fathers to pledge commitments to protect their girls.” I could not find the pledge the daughters make on their website, but here is the pledge the fathers make:

I, [daughter's name]’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

This year the same organization put on an Integrity Ball for mothers and sons. There was no mention of the mothers making a pledge to their sons, but here is the pledge the sons take:

I, _________________________, choose before God to remain pure in my lifestyle, as I grow toward the goal of manhood, and until such a time that I marry.

I will be a young man of integrity and accountability as I strive to be an example to those around me. I will be bold and courageous, no matter what.

Today, I choose to seek after the high calling of God in every area of my life.

During the Purity Balls girls and teenagers are told to keep themselves pure for their future husbands, and as seen in the pledge, fathers pledge to “cover” their daughters and protect their virginity. During the Integrity Balls boys are told that the every girl they will date is someone else’s daughter and potentially someone else’s future husband. Would these young men want another man messing around with their future wife? Boys pledge to take charge of their lives and body; fathers pledge that they will protect their daughter’s virginity. Exactly how does Generations of Light (the organization behind the balls) view women?

Generations of Light view women as objects to be managed by men: first by fathers then by husbands. Instead children and teenagers should be taught that they are created in the image of God, and for that reason alone they need to respect each other. Boys should have been told that every girl they date is made in the image of God, and he needs to respect her and treat her accordingly, and girls need to hear the same thing. Christian teenagers also need to realize that first and foremost they are brothers and sisters in Christ. They might date, and they might break up. They will eventually get married, but through all those transient relationships, they are still brothers and sisters in Christ.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is that girls and women have sexual drives and needs as well as boys and men. This assumption that men are aggressively sexual and women are to be passive resistors of temptation is a horrible patriarchal myth that needs to end. Both men and women have sex drives, and both men and women have access to the fruit of self-control that the Spirit gives us. We should be teaching our teenagers how to cultivate self-control and set boundaries that will help them keep these pledges they make. It goes without saying that girls should be making their own pledges to take control of their lives and bodies as do the boys.

When men and women view each other as made in the image of God, and as brothers and sisters in Christ, we can respect each other and cultivate the self-control that is necessary to resist sexual (and all other) temptations. When a woman is a person in her own right and a man respects that, then they can set biblical guidelines and boundaries to their relationships.

Kudos are in order for Inductive Bible Study leaders at Urbana 2006 last week. I was hard pressed to find any heirarchical authoritarians in the whole bunch. In a feedback time after the conference, the leadership found that there was very little complementarian argument over the selected study of Ephesians chapter 5. Praise God for that. As well, they used the TNIV as the text of study–another PTL!!

One of the key arguments functional subordinationists use to support their view that there is an eternal hierarchy in the Trinity is the predominant use of the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ for two persons of the Trinity.

It is true that the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are the ones used most frequently in the Bible and in Christian liturgy. It is also true that Jesus obeyed his heavenly Father perfectly in the incarnation.

So on one level, it may seem intuitive that the hierarchical relationship between human fathers and their sons (especially in their youth) applies to the eternal Trinitarian relationships. However, if you scratch the surface of this assumption it doesn’t hold up. Here are just a few reasons why:

1. There is no indication that the term ‘Father’ replaces the name God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14, “I am who I am” (or, “I will be what I will be”). In fact, God commands that, “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation” (Exod. 3:15).

2. Though God does not claim the term ‘Father’ as a name in the Old Testament, according to the messianic prophecy in Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born…and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Therefore ‘Father’ also refers in some sense to Christ.

3. According to Philippians 2:9, Christ will be exalted to the highest place and given the name above every name. If this exaltation is understood hierarchically, it seems to contradict the hierarchy that functional subordinationists read into the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son.’

4. Though Jesus frequently refers to himself as the Son of God in the Gospels (esp. John), the name most often used for Jesus by his first followers, including the disciples and Paul, is ‘Lord.’ (The name ‘Lord’ is also used to refer to ‘I am who I am’ in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that the disciples used.)

Paul attributes a special significance to using the term ‘Lord’ for Jesus. For example, those who “confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord” will be saved (Rom. 10:9), and “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). Functional subordinationists’ insistence that ‘Son’ entails inherent eternal subordination seems to undermine this confession of Jesus’ Lordship.

5. Jesus’ use of the term ‘Son’ often invoked his likeness with the Father rather than his subordination to the Father. Here’s an example:

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:18)

The Son was not persecuted for claiming to be subordinate to the Father. He was persecuted because he claimed to be equal to the Father.

6. The Son’s family resemblance to the Father is also understood as the fullest revelation of God. For example, Jesus tells his disciples, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In Heb. 1:3, the Son is called “the exact representation of God’s being.”

This emphasis on likeness is also supported by John’s reflections on what it means for believers to be children of God: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.…it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him…” (1 John 3:1–2). Here the emphasis is not on the child of God’s subordination to God the Father, but rather on the child’s eschatological likeness to the Father.

7. Inheritance is another key biblical concept that accompanies the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son,’ as in Heb. 1:2, where the Son is described as the “heir of all things.” Paul compares and contrasts the status of a son who is the recipient of the father’s estate with the subordinate status of a slave and applies this to believers who are adopted into the family of God, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.…So you are no longer slaves, but God’s children; and since you are his children, he has made you also heirs” (Gal. 3:26, 4:7). Paul also contrasts sonship and slavery in his description of life in the Spirit:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves…rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.…” Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Rom. 8:14–17)

Rather than reinforcing the permanent subordination of some groups of people, our adoption in Christ and life in the Spirit frees all believers to live out of our inheritance as children of God.

8. The Bible uses a vast diversity of terms to refer to the Triune God. Though God is like a father, God is also like a mother eagle (Deut. 32:11-12) and a rock (Isa. 17:10). Though Jesus is called the Son, he is also called the Word (John 1) and Wisdom (Luke 11:49; 1 Cor. 1:24). The shear variety of biblical terms used for God guards against any of them becoming too closely associated with God in his essence.

Since functional subordinationists rely on the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ to support their view of inherent, eternal hierarchical Trinitarian relations (which is used to justify their view of permanent hierarchical human relations), their doctrine of God requires these particular terms rather than other biblical terms for God. The second commandment forbids us from substituting any images of God for the essence of God.

Conclusion

The functional subordinationist claim that the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are evidence of inherent, eternal hierarchical relations within the Trinity neglects the way these terms are used in the Bible to convey important truths that form the foundation for Christ’s divinity, including Jesus’ claim to equality with the Father (see 5 above), Jesus’ revelation of the Father (see 6 above), and Jesus as heir to the Father’s kingdom (see 7 above).

The functional subordinationist dependence on these particular terms to make their case for an inherent, eternal hierarchy within the Trinity also neglects other key biblical terms that refer to members of the Trinity such as the everlasting name God revealed to Moses (see 1 above), the messianic prophecy that Christ shall be known as ‘Everlasting Father’ (see 2 above), the name above all names that is given to Christ (see 3 above), the confession of Jesus as Lord (see 4 above), and the sheer variety of other biblical terms used for God (see 8 above).

Though functional subordinationists claim that the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ would be ad hoc unless they refer to inherent, eternal hierarchical relationships within the Trinity, the burden of proof is on them to show that 1) the examples of biblical meanings listed above are somehow incorrect or insufficient, and that 2) their understanding of inherent, eternal functional hierarchy is somehow consistent with biblical meanings for ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ that have been upheld throughout church history, as well as other biblical terms for persons of the Trinity.