Discuss Theology

John Piper on NT Wright and justification. This is worthwhilehttp://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/825/

Does Father God Have Too Much Testosterone? Open Theism, Evangelical Feminism and the Doctrine of God
by Russell D. Moore
The growing alliance between open theists and evangelical feminists is pressing with increasing volume a new argument against classical theism: It is just “too male.”

[from Suzanne McCarthy] Sunday, January 21, 2007

Junia, the apostle: part 17

posted by Suzanne McCarthy at 11:46 AM

[I originally posted this on the Christians for Biblical Equality Blog]

In the first century, women lacked the education available to men. This was true for both Jews and Gentiles. No matter where one presently lands in the discussion about women in the ministry; this fact, everyone agrees upon. Craig Keener stated this in Discovering Biblical Equality, “Learning in the Assemblies” [p. 169]. He writes, “More reasonably, women on average were less educated than men, an assertion that no one genuinely conversant with ancient literature would doubt.” Complementarians have used this as a reason to further their arguments forbidding women to preach, teach and exercise authority over men. In the first century, less education equaled less fitness for the ministry. On July 9, 2006, Tamar Lewin wrote an article in the New York Times titled, “At Colleges, Women are leaving Men in the Dust.” Lewin states that women make up 58 per cent of students in both 2 year and 4 year colleges and universities. The most striking statement in the article reads, “Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.” The word “disproportionate” is the important one here. So, in the United States, at least, women are better educated than men. For complementarians, women remain less qualified [or unqualified altogether] for the ministry. Lack of learning is given as a complementarian reason for disqualification from ministry among women in the first century. Oddly for complementarians now, learning has nothing to do with 21st century ministry in the United States. If women are better educated than men, should they be labelled as unqualified for full leadership positions in the church?

I have been thinking a lot about this recently.  I appreciate the desire of complementarian theologians to be Biblical first and everything else second.  I think they are really serious about this. What does a complementarian theologian do right?

Let’s look at our generation from the view of church historians. I think they will simultaneously wince and praise us. I think they will wince as they consider evangelical theologians like Wayne grudem holding to a subordinationist view of the Trinity and receiving a broad complementarian audience. I think they will further wince as they think of process theologians, like Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd and others, in the name of evangelicalism, telling us that God does not absolutely know the future. I think they will wince as they consider our waffling on life issues such as abortion, on sexual moral/ethical issues such as homosexual ordination. I actually believe there will be more wincing than this.
With all of the wincing, I also think there will be at least two places where they will praise our generation. I think that church historians will rejoice over the emphasis on missions in our era. There are more people becoming Christians in Africa and in mainland China than there are people physically being born in those areas. I think the historians will look back and rejoice over this wonderful circumstance. I also believe that they will look back and rejoice over the progress that the evangelical church made relative to the rights of women in the church-the right to preach, the right to pastor and the right to lead in even broader capacities. I think historians will write that the majority of evangelicalism began to take Galatians 3:28 seriously, “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”. The church historians will probably contrast the positive strides made on male/female issues in the evangelical church at large with what the evangelical radio and television media usually espouses-namely Victorian leadership ethics. Historians will simultaneously wince and praise.

Wayne Grudem is a Protestant theologian and author.

Grudem holds a BA from Harvard University, a Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 2001, Grudem became Research Professor of Bible and Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he was also the chairman of the Department of Biblical and Systematic Theology. Grudem is currently on the staff at Phoenix Seminary as Research Professor of Bible and Theology, Arizona.

Grudem served on the committee overseeing the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and in 1999 he was the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He is the author of, among other books, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, which advocates a Calvinistic soteriology, the verbal plenary inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the body-soul dichotomy in the nature of man, and the complementarian (rather than egalitarian) view of gender equality.

Grudem holds Charismatic beliefs and is a supporter of the Vineyard Movement and one of its main apologists and spokespeople.

Richard and Catherine Kroeger write in the introduction to I Suffer not a Woman, [p.17] that, “It is essential that we face honestly the difficulties inherent in a traditional understanding of 1 Timothy 2:12.  Traditional interpretation has held that this verse forbids women to teach or make decisions.  The fact is that women did indeed teach men, that women served as leaders, and that in doing so they enjoyed God’s blessing and won the praise of other believers.” Non Complementarian thought for the day

Bok published, Our Underachieving Colleges in December of 2005.  He wrote, approvingly,  about Oberlin College accepting women in 1837.  He also mentioned that, “College presidents initially disagreed on whether women should go to college at all.”[p.212] Harvard President, Derek Bok not a complementarian