The CBE Scroll

Just thinking about the way God chose to come to earth to begin the huge task of reconciling the world to himself. No wonder the religious leaders of the day had trouble recognising the Messiah as they expected a huge fanfare at his arrival. Not only did God not choose to announce his coming to the teachers of the law, but he chose to send an angel to the woman who was to bear the child Jesus. Not to her father or even her fiance, but to Mary first and while she was alone.

Unlike  some other recipients of angelic messages, Mary accepted what was told to her, even though she questioned how it might happen. After the angel explained the supernatural way in which she would become pregnant, there was no more questioning…Mary accepted what the angel had said and replied that she was ready to be the Lord’s servant. Not only that, but she rushed off to visit her cousin Elizabeth to share the good news and rejoice with Elizabeth who was also expecting a child, even though she was thought to be too old to bear children.

Can you imagine these two women, bound together by the excitement of both expecting babies which were miracles of conception. Why, even the baby in Elizabeth’s womb jumped for joy at Mary’s arrival and Elizabeth said of Mary “Blessed woman, who believed what God said, believed every word would come true.”  And in reply, Mary said “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Saviour God. What God has done for me will never be forgotten. It is exactly what he promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now”  What a wonderful 3 months they would have had together before Mary returned to her home.

Both these women believed what God had said would happen and could see it was all part of God’s great plan of redemption. Amazing, since they were not skilled in the law as that was reserved for Jewish men and there is no mention of their needing anyone to interpret the meaning of these events. God planned from the beginning of time to reveal himself in this way, to these women at this most momentous time in history – the God who never makes mistakes and who does everything at just the right time through the people he chooses. This should encourage every one of us to listen out for God’s voice in our hearts.

(Bible references from Luke in ‘The Message’)

I have just been browsing a website which promotes roles for women and men as God’s ordained will for all time. It showed again the enormous power of words to create impressions and convince people of a point of view. History shows that many strong people convinced others that what they promoted was the ‘truth’ and consistently it has been done by ridiculing those who have a different way of looking at the same facts.

I am not writing this merely to criticise those who made the statements I will reproduce below, but mostly as a reminder to those of us who believe in true biblical equality that how we say things is vitally important. We do not want to have a reputation for gaining ground or new adherants by misrepresenting those who have another opinion. We want to recognise that those who believe in gender roles have varying degrees of that doctrine and hopefully, many are in the process of examining history and biblical scholarship for themselves.

The article I read was about Deborah from the book of Judges and was quite long, covering many aspects of her life. Three statements stood out which I believe should be refuted and they are in italics. They all use Deborah to portray how the author believed Deborah would have acted had she been an egalitarian.

“Egalitarian women want to replace men in these roles”

Biblical egalitarian women do not want to replace men but desire to work alongside them in the spirit of unity and deference to one another while recognising that Christian service is not about leadership but servanthood and working together for the cause of the gospel.

“Her goal would have been to take Barak’s job”

This is suggesting that if Deborah had been an egalitarian she would have had unworthy motives and not been listening to what God had to say to her in this instance.

“She would have filled her hymn with her own achievements”

Would it have then been acceptable for a male judge to write a song about his own achievements instead of honouring God who is ultimately the one who raises up and puts down all leaders and gives victory to his people? I’m not at all sure that God would have been happy with such a song being written by a man or a women on this occasion.

Rather than being inspired to retaliate for such misrepresentations of our biblical beliefs, let us resolve to honour God by writing of his great deeds and wonderful redemption where we all have been given freedom and equal standing as much-loved children.

I grew up in patriarchal churches. I got used to hearing Scripture readings and having to internally translate “man” to “humanity” or “people;” to seeing women behind the piano but not the pulpit or conducting the children’s choir but not the adult musicians; to being allowed to ask public questions in my high school Sunday school class but then denied the same opportunity later when I became an adult. So when, a few years ago, all my searching and questioning finally produced a permanent shift to egalitarianism, the smallest acts of justice in the church were great sources of encouragement to me.

At the time I was a member of a patriarchal but relatively supportive congregation, and when “liberal” forces within the congregation led to invitations to serve on the vision team, to usher, or to give a public testimony, these opportunities seemed vastly liberating compared to what I had previously known. My husband and I didn’t want to change churches over one issue – especially if our willing service could be an example of winsome egalitarianism – so we stuck around. But the completion of graduate school and the beginning of a nationwide job search recently opened the door for us to explore other denominations and particular congregations that would share our egalitarian commitment. We’re still in the job search process and haven’t settled permanently, but we’re currently attending a small Episcopal church that we appreciate for its lovely and historic liturgy, warm people, and obvious dedication to the outworking of the gospel through social justice.

The reason for this rather rambling biography is to help you understand the significance of what happened last Sunday. Longtime Episcopalians probably think nothing of it, being used to women represented as equals. But when, during the celebration of the Eucharist, the rector addressed his prayer to “God of our ancestors: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God of Sarah, Rebekah, and Ruth,” I was stunned. Never in my life had I heard our spiritual fathers and mothers held up together with equal significance at a public ceremony. There was no elaboration, no qualification of the statement as hinging on a “correct” understanding of manhood and womanhood derived elsewhere; just a prayer that acknowledged men and women recorded in the Bible as being among those God spoke through and to in millennia past.

Kneeling there in my pew, the congregation continuing to pray aloud around me, I repeated that phrase over and over, startled to find my eyes filling with tears. I am generally the last person to “get emotional” during worship. But I was overwhelmed with gratitude for a God who never discriminates, who loves his daughters as he loves his sons, who loves me as he loves his other children, and loves me so much that he would speak to me in such simple but profoundly moving and comforting words. That morning I received the bread and wine with a suddenly-deeper gratitude for the transforming grace of Christ.

On the one hand, this is a sad story about just how oppressive our wrong-headed attitudes are when all it takes is a simple acknowledgment of God’s work in both men and women to open the floodgates of the heart. And yet, on the other, it is a testimony to the amazing power of truth offered without hesitation and with humility, the solidarity of the people of God standing together on equal footing before the cross of Christ. I would have missed the sweetness of that moment of communion had I not experienced the previous oppression, and therefore I am grateful to God for both.

And so I am prompted to ask this question: have any of you, who like me converted to egalitarianism from a patriarchal background, ever had such an “a-ha!” moment – a time when the full significance of your equality before God hit you unexpectedly? I’d love to hear where you were and just what it was that took you by surprise. I’m certain your story will be an encouragement to others – so do tell!

I’ve been reading the recent issue of Priscilla Papers (Summer 2006). I have been struck by both Catherine Clark Kroeger and Philip B. Bayne’s use of history in their respective articles on 1 Corinthians 11. In Kroeger’s article she is looking at what kephalē, “head,” means in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ” (NASB). She uses a plethora of secular, Jewish, and early Christian historical sources to show that the conventional meaning of kephalē means “source” or “beginning,” not a hierarchal understanding of a boss or somone who has authority over other people. Bayne does the same thing in his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Using sources contemporary with Paul, he shows what Paul meant by “head” as well as the culture and custom of the day regarding how men and women should wear their hair, which has nothing to do with head coverings. He also looks at what the early Church Fathers had to say about this passage and how they interpreted it. The striking thing is the consistency of the translation of “head” in all the sources: secular, Jewish, and Christian—nowhere is kephalē translated to be an authority over another. It always means source or beginning.

One of the things that has aggravated me about Evangelicalism for the last 15 years is its ignorance regarding Christian history, and it’s arrogance in thinking it doesn’t need it. I am very happy to see Robert Webber and others working to bring Evangelicals back into the stream of our shared history instead of just looking at it as “Catholic history” we don’t need (I grew up Southern Baptist in rural Oklahoma, and this was how early Church history was referred to). I think both of these articles show how important it is for us to know how contemporary sources and the early Church used words, and how the early Church interpreted Pauline and other passages. This history shows that the complementarians are wrong in their translation of kephalē, and corrects how we also interpret head coverings and how Paul wanted men and woman to relate to each other. When we consider all of Christian history and tradition, then we have the resources we need to more correctly understand what the biblical writers were saying instead of imposing our own intepretations and world views on the text.

When the messiah comes, says the Old Testament, he will “proclaim freedom for the captives.” (Is. 61:1 TNIV) Jesus the Messiah came, but he brought something better than the expected freedom from foreign domination: instead, he was interested in making people’s spirits free. Jesus himself said, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (Jn. 8:34-36 TNIV)

Of all the authors of the Old and New Testaments, Paul speaks most often about freedom. Christ, he says, brings freedom from sin (Rom. 6:18-22; 7:14), freedom from death (Rom. 7:24-25; 8:2, 10-11) and especially freedom from the bondage of the [Jewish] Law (Rom. 7; Gal. 3), all things which enslave us and quench our spirits.

Thanks be to God that He saves our spirits, our souls, that which is the real, essential us. In I Cor. 7:22 he addresses slaves and makes a wonderful play on words when he says that in becoming Christians they have become free persons in Christ, while those who are externally free have become slaves for Christ. In other words, external social status is not as decisive as true (internal) freedom and certainly not decisive for salvation. Christ is the liberator of Christians from the slavery of social status and public opinion, as in this verse, and also in I Cor. 9:19, 10:29; Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11, and Eph. 6:8. In Gal. 2:4-5 Paul relates how false believers tried to infiltrate “our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.” (TNIV) Come back, they said, to the old ways of the Law and legalism. Come and get bound up again.

But II Cor. 3:17 says: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” So anything that kills our spirits, is not freedom, and can’t be of the Spirit of the Lord.

Sexism, enforced subservient roles based on gender, whether sociologically modeled or religiously imposed, kills women’s spirits. How can it be, then, of the Holy Spirit? Be of God?

How should we then interpret Paul when he seems to be restricting the freedom of women during his time in some of his churches? Paul, the champion of freedom in Christ, lessening basic freedoms that came with salvation!

I believe that it is the height of intellectual arrogance, and perhaps spiritual as well, to assume that one can figure out exactly what specific problems Paul was faced with in his cultures, in his churches and exactly what shading of meaning he meant by this word or that, particularly Greek words that are only used once or twice in the New Testament. Instead, two thousand years later, we should be asking, How is the Spirit freeing us here and now to do His work?

A well-known and respected evangelical theologian I admire, F.F. Bruce, says our hermeneutic principle should be as follows.

“Whatever in Paul’s teaching promotes true freedom is of universal and permanent validity; whatever seems to impose restrictions on true freedom has regard to local and temporary conditions.”

“Our application of the [Biblical] text,” Bruce says, “should avoid treating the New Testament as a book of rules…. We should not turn what were meant as guiding lines for worshippers in one situation into laws binding for all time…. It is an ironical paradox when Paul, who was so concerned to free his converts from bondage of law, is treated as a law-giver for later generations. The freedom of the Spirit, which can be safeguarded by one set of guiding lines in a particular situation, may call for a different procedure in a new situation.” ["Women in the Church: A Biblical Survey" Christian Brethren Review, 33 (Dec. 1982): 7-14.]

Amen to that.