Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Biblical Patriarchy: A Conclusion

So after all of those lengthy posts, what exactly is my point? It is pretty simple. God created men and women differently and likewise has called them to function differently. As it relates to gender the Scriptural evidence is crystal clear and overwhelming. God has called men to sacrificial and loving leadership as the head of the home and as servants in the church. God has not called men to abuse their headship or even to focus on authority or making their wives submit. The submission of a wife to her husband is an act of obedience on the part of the woman and the sacrificial love of a husband for his wife is not predicated on her submission to her. Likewise a woman’s submission to her husband is not based on how much her husband loves her but rather how much she loves Christ.

I am a big boy. I know that there is not a single man who has ever loved his wife the way that Christ loves the church. In our sinful, finite existence it is by definition impossible. I also recognize that I especially fall far short of the mark here, both in loving my wife and in leading the family. Here’s the rub. Our perceived failures don’t give us license to rewrite the Word. We are called to roles by God and in spite of our failings the calling remains the same. The problem is not in the Scriptures, it is with us.

Taking this a step further. The failures of male headship in the church are caused by the weakness and failings of men, not with the underlying principles that are so clearly laid out for us in Scripture. The failure of Biblical male servant leadership in the church and in the home shouldn't lead us to teach our daughters to assume the roles reserved for men, it should cause us to redouble our efforts to raise our sons to be godly, humble and loving leaders in the church and home. In other words we as parents need to raise our sons to embrace loving, sacrificial Biblical headship in the home and male servant leadership the church and we need likewise to raise our daughters to seek husbands who understand, embrace and seek out their God ordained role in the church and family.

As the church we likewise need to mentor young men to be the men they should be in the home and family and provide examples for them to follow. Instead of age based segregation in the church, putting "young adults" in one class and "senior saints" in another, we should encourage the different generations to mingle and form friendships. A 65 year old brother may not be up to speed on the latest smartphones or who the coolest contemporary Christian music groups are but he has knowledge that is timeless and precious and all too often ignored and lost with each passing generation. How often are couples who have been married 40 or 50 years encouraged to form bonds with newly married couples? We don’t need to recreate the gender wheel with every couple, we have already been given timeless wisdom in the Word and invaluable experience in the older generations of Christians. Anyhoo, off my soapbox….

Have we culturally outgrown the old fashioned gender roles we see in the Bible or have we abandoned those important doctrines in favor of modern sensibilities? It strikes me that when we have a disparity between what we see in Scripture and our current cultural norms, the Bible should win out. This is true in places like sexual immorality and propitiation as well as in gender roles. Our culture today is hardly superior to that of the first century. Men and women have not fundamentally changed and the world is still in the grips of sin. Every effort to conform the Scriptures to the whims of the culture has ended disastrously.

Male headship, patriarchy, whatever you want to call it, is not merely a social construct of the ancient world that we have outgrown. It is deeply tied into the entirety of Biblical revelation from Genesis up to the image of the church as the Bride of Christ. While the term and the idea have been hijacked by some in the so-called "patriarchy movement" that doesn't mean that the underlying idea of male headship in the home and church, demonstrated by humble and loving servant leadership, should be discarded in favor of a more socially acceptable egalitarianism. Our standard is always the Word of God and the consistent theme throughout Scripture is of different and complementary roles for men and women that are established in Genesis, demonstrated in the Old Testament and reinforced strongly in the New Testament. What is acceptable to the culture, what is pragmatic, what is equitable is irrelevant to those who follow Christ.

A quick word regarding the so-called “Biblical Patriarchy movement”. I am not a part of this movement, nor do I seek to be part of any other “movement” whether it be homeschooling, Reformed theology, house church, headcovering, etc. The danger of so any “movements” in the church is that they often elevate secondary doctrines to positions of preeminence and likewise divide the church. I experienced and participated in that with Reformed theology and in doing so likely alienated many fellow believers. While I believe that Reformed theology, i.e. the Five Points and the Five Solas, is an accurate summarization of the soteriological message of the Bible, it is not the Gospel no matter what Charles Spurgeon said.

I hold to a patriarchal position because I think the Scriptures clearly present this as God’s plan and intent in the design of human beings, the family and the church but I do not impose it as a barrier to fellowship or cooperation. I think that the various types of gender egalitarianism are in error but I also think that infant baptism is an error (you can replace infant baptism with dispensationalism, arminianism, etc.). That doesn’t mean that I reject fellowship with those who differ from me. I find it disingenuous to acknowledge someone as a fellow believer in Christ in words but to reject their fellowship and cooperation in Kingdom work in deeds. Nor do I seek to be an evangelist for patriarchy (or believers baptism or Calvinism or….). My intent in this series was and always has been to present a counter-voice to those who push for egalitarianism and the blurring of Biblical gender roles, a movement that is prevalent in the simple church crowd and a position that I say unapologetically is an error. I am not at all interested in using secondary, important to be sure but secondary, issues as a wedge between believers. I have tried very hard to avoid bashing or slandering those who disagree with me on this issue even as I recognize that some who are advocates of patriarchy have not done the same. Of course as I mentioned there is undeniably plenty of vitriol, slander, ugliness and half-truths on the other side of this position as well. Wherever that sort of unpleasantness crops up, whether from people I agree with or disagree with, it is unscriptural and damaging to the unity and witness of the Body of Christ. There is plenty of work to be done for the Kingdom without expending so much of it tearing into those we should be laboring alongside of. Patriarchy, complementarianism, male servant headship, whatever you call it, is important and needs to be given a fair hearing in the church but it is also not the Gospel and never will be. I hope if nothing else that this series has given you cause to think or rethink your position and that it spurs you onto greater love, greater sacrifice and greater service in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Art,

I enjoy your willingness to state what you've learned from Scripture without absolutizing anything but Jesus Christ and his gospel. Always appreciate your blog, especially when I disagree with you because your attitude is biblical: "be patient with those who disagree...God might grant them repentance."

Geoff

Arthur Sido said...

Thanks Geoff!

Arlan said...

Okay having made it through your series probably later at night than I am capable of thinking, let me recap: Just so I am clear, I am not wholesale opposed to what you are saying.

Clearly, women have wombs and men do not. I think it silly to insist the difference stops there. Also clearly, marriage is designed to be a witness of Christ, and Christ's relationship with his Bride is not one of totally interchangeable equality. It is one of identity, where each part identifies with the needs of the other seeks the good of the other, but that doesn't work out to interchangeable equality.

There are satellite issues around this such as the suggestion that part of the curse of Eden is that women will specifically desire to usurp man's place. Maybe; that's a bit fuzzy to me. Certainly not everything that we want sincerely or are good at doing is necessarily right.

But when it comes to arguing about leadership and authority, more and more it has been reminding me of James and John vying for the right seat of power. Neither one can be right in this argument...

The scripture tells us to evaluate teaching and authority by truth, not gender. You may call that evasive if part of the truth is that women shouldn't teach or lead. But what I am getting at is: you won't get sin-cooties by doing something a woman told you to do. If it's the right thing to do and you do it, fine. If later the same woman starts teaching heresy, don't follow her then. Ditto for a man. Forbidding a woman to speak because she might possibly be deceived is the same "preemptive strike" attitude that has the clergy hushing the laity, and every other power-mongering gambit out there.

Christ's leadership came not from control, prohibition, and silence, but trust, credibility, and character. A matter that seems doubtful (such as whether a woman should teach or have authority; or if not, whether a particular scenario qualifies) will become more clear if it is entrusted to God and not controlled to remove sin by our power. Godlessness becomes more and more strikingly ugly and just hideous on the face of it as we rest in godliness; but sinning to stop sin makes it harder and harder to understand what sin is.

I have found male leadership to be naturally true even when people aren't enforcing it or even think they are practicing egalitarianism. But by "leadership" I don't mean total domination. Likewise, wherever women are specifically and deliberately "kept in their place" I have found it to be a Spirit-quenching silence I could not bear.

Codifying The Rules Of Gender seems to invite disaster, while pursuing Christ seems to bring a natural quietness and order. I think gender-neutral concepts of avoiding dissension, keeping good order, and sound doctrine will lead to the appropriate gender-specific balance, and the one who is unbalanced will increasingly be seen to err in a multitude of ways.

Arthur Sido said...

Arlan

But when it comes to arguing about leadership and authority, more and more it has been reminding me of James and John vying for the right seat of power. Neither one can be right in this argument...

As I said previously I am uninterested in trying to exercise authority over my wife. I am called to lead and my wife is called to follow and my leadership in the home is not contingent on her submission. Likewise her submission is not contingent on me being a good husband.

The scripture tells us to evaluate teaching and authority by truth, not gender. You may call that evasive if part of the truth is that women shouldn't teach or lead. But what I am getting at is: you won't get sin-cooties by doing something a woman told you to do. If it's the right thing to do and you do it, fine. If later the same woman starts teaching heresy, don't follow her then. Ditto for a man. Forbidding a woman to speak because she might possibly be deceived is the same "preemptive strike" attitude that has the clergy hushing the laity, and every other power-mongering gambit out there.

Again, I think you are misrepresenting or misunderstanding what I said. Unless your point is that Paul didn’t mean what he wrote, it is not possible to be faithful to Scripture and disregard the teaching on gender. A woman teaching men or a wife urusurping the role of her husband are inherently disobedient. You seem to be propsing that we judge a situation based on the immediate context “Well if a woman is teaching and it is Ok, you shouldn’t have a problem with it but if she isn’t, THEN it is a problem” whereas I would say and I believe Scripture agrees that a woman teaching a man is inherently in error, no matter how swell a teacher she is. You can’t teach truth by disobeying.

I have found male leadership to be naturally true even when people aren't enforcing it or even think they are practicing egalitarianism. But by "leadership" I don't mean total domination. Likewise, wherever women are specifically and deliberately "kept in their place" I have found it to be a Spirit-quenching silence I could not bear.

I am not sure how being faithful to Scripture can be “spirit-quenching”. Nor am I advocating “total domination”. One only need to look around the church as a whole to see that excessive male headship is hardly our problem and that just the opposite is true.

Codifying The Rules Of Gender seems to invite disaster, while pursuing Christ seems to bring a natural quietness and order. I think gender-neutral concepts of avoiding dissension, keeping good order, and sound doctrine will lead to the appropriate gender-specific balance, and the one who is unbalanced will increasingly be seen to err in a multitude of ways.

I think you might be guilty of recency bias here. The Rules of Gender were codified long before you or I was born, or the Reformation or the Nicene Council. The rules are not my rules and as I stated earlier, if this wasn’t an issue then and an issue now I don’t think Paul and Peter would have spent so much time talking about it. There are at least five distinct places in the Pauline epistles plus Peter that speak directly and forcefully to this issue, a pretty substantial number of occurrences in multiple contexts and dealing with several different situations. I don’t think Paul or Peter just assumed that we would figure it out, just as Paul didn’t assume we would figure out how we should meet (see 1 Cor 14) or how to observe the Supper (1 Cor 11). Where we fail to live out the proper husband and wife relationship where wives submit and husbands love as Christ, the fault is in us, not Scripture and the response should be repentance and submission to the Word, not chucking it and doing as we see fit.

I do appreciate you reading and reacting though. Many people are just entrenched in their positions and not interested in working through these issues. So please don’t take my pushback as personal!

Arlan said...

Hi Art,
I am going to wind down my dialogue a bit because to fairly answer you any further I'll have to sit down and think it through more systematically. It's eminently worth doing but will require more time.

You say that 1 Cor. 11:2-16 does not refer to the assembly of the saints. I cannot recall when our conduct in the assembly is ever directed to be different than our conduct out of the assembly unless it is incidental to the assembly. For example, we cannot "together" lift up holy hands if we are not together. But just as we are called to a peaceful assembly, we are called to be at peace with all men.

If you grant that women are prophesying in chapter 11, why would they not be prophesying in 14:26-33? Now hold that thought a minute - I realize the next sentence is commonly translated "Let women keep silent." But my basis is understanding that the Bible is not merely a book of rituals, verging on spells. Spiritually, what difference does it make whether a woman prophesies under a peach tree or in an assembly?

I think we both agree that the NT teaches the assembly of the people of God is not a particular mountain, nor any particular physical place, but a spiritual Mount Zion (Heb. 18-24) so that our conduct is always "before the assembly," to which our physical gathering pays homage and witness.

The Plymouth Brethren that I have known have followed what I think is a similar line, forbidding women to speak in the church but allowing them to lecture in para-church (campus group) events. Perhaps you follow a more consistent line where women should never in any context teach men. I still have trouble with that; what is the difference between teaching and prophesying? When does a boy (teachable by a man) become a man (unteachable by a man)?

You may consider this silly abstract hypothetical thinking. But it is the way that I do think through things and it has helped me see my way clear on the absolute sovereignty of God, the necessity of literal creation, the reliability of the Bible, and the Christian witness in war and rule of force. In general I find the pragmatic argument the one that gets along without God, while the truth of God, once rightly understood, defies any hypothetical test.

You can and I am sure do learn from your wife by her example. You can accidentally learn from her in casual conversation - when flowers bloom or why you shouldn't over-knead dough. You can learn spiritual lessons when she talks about her experiences with her friends.

I know you acknowledge all this. But it appeared you missed my point (in the midst of my sloppy language) so I am trying to illustrate more clearly.

Service is the principle way by which Christ taught his disciples. It is not the only way, I grant. Exposition and description were also prominent. But as far as explaining goes, with respect to Priscilla, it is senseless to even mention her in connection with Apollos if she were silent. It would be like saying that my chair and I explained something to you.

So if living-teaching, serving-teaching, and storytelling-teaching are available to women, it is only the authoritative imperative teaching which is not. "Thou shalt" is forbidden them.

I appreciate your insistence that you have no interest in forcing your wife or any other woman to submit to you and I'm sorry I didn't better acknowledge this in my first remarks. It is actually an integral part of what I am driving at. If you are not going to dominate your wife or another woman, and you are not going to enjoin her to always be silent, then how are you going to avoid learning from her? If she walks toward Christ, how are you going to avoid following her?

Arlan said...

I used a very poor choice of words when I suggested that we would "naturally" realize the truth. Sin comes to us by nature. Revelation comes to us by grace. Therein is my intended point.

Did you believe the scriptures just because you read them? No - God's Spirit testified within you that they were true. Do you really think that the Corinthians had to be told that sexual immorality was wrong? No; but when they were confronted, the Holy Spirit confirmed the rebuke as it was presented.

So too the warning against women teachers should be confirmed in our hearts. This is not because "our feelings" validate God's truth; how absurd! But if we believe that God made the world thousands of years ago, and that God raised his Son thousands of years ago, it is not by reading it alone. It is because He lives his word in our hearts.

If it were righteousness to simply read something, shrug, and say "It is written; therefore I do," Paul, a Jew among Jews, would have been righteous apart from the gospel. He did whatever was written.

Like you, I am committed to following God who has spoken in and through and of his Son in the scriptures. I do not follow the Law of Moses because I understand how what was said in one place relates to what was said in another. I do not "just" submit to the scriptures; I understand, rejoice, and obey.

I do not understand this matter of women. It would cost me nothing to take it in the most repressive sense! I am guilty of violating other scripture I do understand because it does seem to cost me something to follow it. I resist the silent women teaching because the witness in my heart rejects and does not confirm it.

I do not say that the witness in my heart settles the matter. No. If I cannot explain how the scripture bears out my hunch than I have nothing to offer you, my brother. But I do have an obligation not to accept the justification that the Bible says so, and therefore I must submit.

By way of illustration, I have no business giving up my concubine to be raped, then cutting up her dead body and shipping it all over the country; nor joining in a massive fratricidal campaign to avenge the sin; nor remorsefully giving up other men's daughters to be taken by force by the survivors of the massacre. All of this is clearly written in the Bible. Just as clearly, you and I do not follow it. Why? Because it is inconsistent with the revelation of Christ.

So on this point my protest is not that "You must be wrong because I don't like your answer." It is, "You must do better to show me Christ in it other than saying 'It is written.'" I am objecting not to your conclusion but to your method.