(That’s not one of my Photoshop specialties. That is from Mark’s Blog)

Mark Driscoll’s Brand of Complementarianism
If you have not read the previous post on why I hold to an egalitarian postion please start there.

Last October I wrote a piece called All the Innovative Dudes are at Home Watching Football. In it I addressed some issues I have concerning Pastor Mark Driscoll and his ruff and brash so called complementarian position. In the last 3 days I have had a couple of dozen hits on that post from The Hippie Christian Bulletin Board. This happens from time to time as it seems that Driscoll’s out of control antics have come up several times as an issue of debate there. On at least two such occasions my good friend Christian has left a link to my post in his responses to conversations there. Most recently the hits are all coming from a conversation over there that I somewhat reluctantly joined in because someone had read my post and concluded this type of conversation is “a waste of time for heresy-hunters.”

You may remember this past December in the wake of the Ted Haggard sex scandal Driscoll made these disparaging remarks about how a pastor’s wife should present herself:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

You can read Driscoll’s comments in their entirety on his blog. I am still wondering what relevance those comments had to the tragedy that the Haggard family experienced or how his wife not ‘letting herself go’ might have helped with Ted’s temptation to lie with men.

Anyway, I honestly had no intention of writing anything about Driscoll again anytime soon and then this whole Hippie bulletin board thing came up so I started poking around on Driscoll’s blog again and I found a post on his banned church planting video. Which is also right here for your viewing displeasure:

The outlandish video was for a church planting conference that Driscoll could not attend. The entire thing was shot in a military cemetery. In it Driscoll discusses “the man, the mission and the message” essential in his estimate for affective church planting. The video was pulled from the conference and DVD copies were not distributed after the video was criticized by Bill Hybels for not including women as potential church planters. I am not a big fan of Hybels but I do commend Brother Bill for speaking out against this:

The Least likely person to go to church in the United States of America is a young man in his twenties. These are guys who have absolutely made a wreck of everything. They’re banging their girlfriends. They are guys who are blowing all of their money, staying up all night playing World of Warcraft, finding free porn on the internet and trying to figure out how to get a bigger subwoofer into their retarded car. Those are the guys who must first be gathered. They must get a swift boot in the rear. They need a good run through boot camp. They need to be told that Jesus Christ is not a gay hippie in a dress and that they’re dealing with the king of kings and the Lord of lords and there is a mission he has called them to. Sixty percent of all Christians today are female. I’m glad the ladies love Jesus; but if you want to win a war you have to get the men. And once you get the men you’ve got to know what to do with them. They want to know how to get married. They want to know how to have sex with their wife at least once a day. They want to know how to make money, buy a home, how to have children, how to pay bills, how to father their sons, how to encourage, love and instruct their daughters… The bottom line is the mission is to get the men because if you get the men you win the war.

According to Driscoll if you get the young men, the women and children and the rest of society will follow. Apparently nobody informed Jesus or the apostle Paul that you need to get brutish young men in order to “win the war.” (Again please see the previous post if you have not yet)

So Where are the Respectful and Thoughtful Complementarians?
I do not want to set up a straw man. I realize that Driscoll is a controversial figure and some of his rhetoric is way over the top. But what I am wondering is where are the complementarians that are respectful to women but still insist on different roles in the Church and in the home? Where are the complementarians who oppose ordination of women but have a thoughtful and well articulated reason as to why they take that position.

I know that Driscoll has a relationship to other prominent evangelical leaders who publicly take such a position such as John Piper, a member of the Together for the Gospel movement (also including the likes of John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul). But I do not see Piper or any of his associates making any effort to distance themselves from Driscoll’s ultimate fighting-esque approach to the complementarian position. To the contrary there seems to be a growing affinity between Piper and Driscoll.

Of course, I have no idea what any of these men may say to Mark Driscoll in private. And John MacArthur has stated some disapointment with Driscoll but mostly for the fact that he is too culturally savvy he swears and was labled as a “cussing pastor” in Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Well personally I think Driscoll’s presentation of his message is antiquated and a bit barbaric not savvy or hip. And I don’t give a damn if he curses; I am more concerned that he start treating woman better and quit ridiculing other men for “singing love-songs to Jesus” or for generally being too effeminate in his estimation.

As far as misogyny goes, Driscoll uses “the feminine” as and insult for other men not conforming to his image of what a man should be. He constantly employs terms like “chick” and “chickified.” At best he could mean weak or soft which would be the original meaning for such slang, comparing a woman to a baby chicken. At worst it’s often a euphemism for Bitch in the contemporary culture of the young males Driscoll prides himself on working with. He also uses “chick” or “chickified” or other euphemisms for feminine in the video and in several places on his blog and in interviews as an insult for men who are not living up to his version of male. It would be similar if I constantly used derogatory terms for jews or blacks when I was disgruntled with my white friends but still insisted I was not antisemitic or racist. To say that female does not equal less than male in Driscoll’s system is to turn a blind eye.

So again I ask: where are the respectful and thoughtful complementarians? I should add Protestant complementarians. I can understand the Catholic and Orthodox positions. It is part of the faberic of their overall theology. However, what I have a much harder time understanding is the Protestant for whom “the priesthood of all believers” is one of the great revelations of scripture that the Reformation was founded on. Where is the man or woman who will say that Mark Driscoll’s use of anything and everything “feminine” as an insult or weapon against other men makes them sick but yet will argue for “different roles” for men and women? Do such people exist? Or is the vulgar sense that the feminine is something “other” even something “less than” truly lie at the heart of even the most polite presentation of the complementarian position?

Please think on these things.

Shalom,
Wayne

The Recent Synod Decision
As I mentioned previously, the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church met recently and a monumental proposal to fully include women in church office passed. You can read a summery of this year’s Synod – including this landmark decision – here. This truly is a big step forward in the life of the Christian Reformed Church.

Since 1995, “congregations and classes had been allowed to ordain women as office bearers under a system of local option.” Meaning basically that individual churches could ordain women but that it would not necessarily be recognized at all CRC churches. Our church is one that has ordained women and has had several women pastors on staff in recent years. Last year Erin and I were in an historic service in which the first ever African American woman was ordained in the CRC in our church!

I do not know what the future holds, or what denomination Erin and I will end up ministering in for sure; but I am really proud to be a part of the Christian Reformed Church at such an exciting and important time in its history.

A Case for an Egalitarian Position
Our Lord of course made his entrance into this world through one very special woman, Mary whom the Early Church honored with the title Theotokos (the God-bearer). Jesus traveled with many women, they even funded his mission:

The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.(Luke 8:1-3).

So much for Mark Driscoll’s suggestion that the young men are the ones we must have to “make money, make babies… [and] make the culture of the future.”

All four Gospels have the women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James and Joseph, Joanna, Salome and the other women disciples accompanying Jesus to his death while Peter and the others had abandoned him. And let us not forget that the first witnesses of the resurrected Jesus were women.

And then there is the Apostle Paul. In Acts 16 after being forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak elsewhere, the Apostle Paul has a vision that leads him and his companions to the district of Macedonia. There in the city of Philippi Lydia and a group of women gathered for prayer became perhaps the first ever European Christians.

In Romans 16 Paul asks the Roman church to welcome sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, who delivered Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul tells them to give to her whatever she requires. In the same chapter of Romans Paul asks the recipients of his letter to greet his friends Priscilla and Aquila who Paul says risked their necks for his life. It is interesting that when Paul mentions the couple and their acts of bravery on his behalf that he first mentions Priscilla. Still in Romans 16 Paul gives a shout out to a woman named Mary and another named Junia, a relative of Paul’s. Paul says she was imprisoned with him, prominent among the apostles, and in Christ before he was.

In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul tells men and women how they ought to where there hair and and sure some fundamentalists out there are still trying to apply that in their present context. But for the most part Christians recognize this as immediately pertaining to the cultural situation of the church at Corinth. And it sure helps to realize that shaved heads were the mark of the temple prostitutes in Corinth and Paul wants the believers to distinguish themselves. What is important to note is that when Paul instructs “any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head – it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved” (1Cor 11:5) he is still nonetheless assuming that women will be praying and prophesying in church.

Yes the task of interpretation gets a little more difficult when we get to passages such as the puzzling parenthetical comment in 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 which says women are not allowed to even speak in church. And then there is the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles, especially 1 Timothy, which seems to be almost irreconcilable with the Paul of the seven undisputed Pauline Epistles (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon) at least on issues concerning the role of women in the Church and home. Of course the traditional answer from biblical scholars is that 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 is an interpolation (later addition by Pauls followers) to match the content of writings like those in 1 Timothy:

I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent… Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Timothy 2:12,15).

I tend to agree with the vast majority of biblical scholars that such passages are probably Deutero-Pauline. And that is helpful for explaining drastically different attitudes in the Pauline corpus about the role of women. However that does not help at all with the hermeneutical problem we are left with. It does not matter who wrote what or when; for it is still part of the canon of scripture to which the Christian community is called to bear witness.

So what does one do when there seems to be two different strains of thought in the biblical witness on one subject? Fundamentalists and sometimes even liberals attempting to be faithful to the biblical witness get to the task of synthesizing. Differences, discrepancies? There are none they would like to believe. However, I prefer a different approach. We can ask: How does this fit with the overall trajectory of the biblical narrative. For instance: I think the Church set a precedent for such situations when they decided they were going to interpret such passages as Colossians 3:22 and 1 Peter 5:1-7 – which both urge the submission of slaves to their masters – in light of such passages as Paul’s instructions to Philemon to receive his one time slave Onesimus as his beloved brother (Philemon 1:16) or the message of freedom in Christ which Paul championed. And let us not forget:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28).

You know taking the same approach with the issue of women in the Church and in the home it seems like there is also something in that verse that could be applied, to our understanding of both sexes in fact. Allow me to do what I am aware I do too much on this blog, offer a word from Jürgen Moltmann relevant to the subject at hand:

The fact that the Bible grew up in the world of patriarchy and slavery still does not tell us anything about the presence of eternity at that time or about the future in its past… No one reads the Bible in order to take over a world picture that is past and gone. No one has to adopt the social concepts and the patriarchal sexual hierarchies of the Bible. If that were so, for biblical reasons we should have to reintroduce slavery into Christianity, revert to absolute monarchy instead of democracy and so forth. (Experiences in Theology, 279).

Indeed, we could add to that list, oh say the polygamy of the Old Testament or the aforementioned long hair and veils for women and short hair on men of the New Testament. The former did not work out so well for the latter-day saints. And I can’t help but wonder how the latter would do in the Church today.

Right about now someone is saying: “Yeah but Men and women have different roles and God made it that way” Well yes there are a lot of generalized differences between men and woman. But they are generalizations and cannot be applied to all woman or all men. What I want to know is, why, when such generalizations are the case, does it continue to get attributed to God’s design and never to the fall? It was only after the fall that God pronounced an enmity between the sexes (Genesis 3:16-17). But this is part of what Christ came to undo!  And Paul knows that well when he reminds his readers in Galatians that in Christ they are now one.

Shalom,
Wayne

This is an Orthodox icon of the Pantokrator: the “all-conquering” or “all-powerful” Christ. The sustainer of the world. The life giver.

My friend Christian asked me quite a while back if I would write something about why I am adamant about the importance of believing in the physical resurrection of Christ. In asking me this, I think he is also asking me what I find unconvincing about modernist/liberal explanations of the resurrection as strictly a spiritual event.

I very strongly disagree with spiritualized explanations of Christ’s resurrection. I fervently believe that Christ experienced some kind of bodily resurrection; that after the resurrection he possessed a body that had continuity with the body he lived, breathed, ate and was crucified in. And someday he will come to judge the living and the dead and all who are in Christ will also experience the resurrection of the body.

So first let me say up front what I can and cannot or will not do. I cannot even scratch the surface of all of the ink that has been spilled on this subject. Many, many brilliant minds have devoted years of study and wrote dissertations, books and even volumes of books on this subject. And on both sides of this issue. I will make no judgment about Christians who do not believe in the physical resurrection of Christ.

I will do my best to unpack some of the arguments given by those who prefer a spiritualized interpretation of the resurrection. Most of those concerns center either on the tradition of the empty tomb or on Saint Paul’s epistles, especially I Corinthians 15. For some of my more theologically astute readers this will be way too over-simplified. But I know for some of you this may be the first time you have ever heard such arguments. I will also share what I believe is a good apologetic (I once never thought I would use those two words together) concerning the resurrection. It may not be a sufficient explanation to a non-believer. However I believe it is a good explanation and reinforcement for Christians who really struggle with this issue but are still compelled to hold to the traditional stance of the Church.

There are several reasons given by those who argue against a belief in the tradition of the empty tomb. The most obvious yet perhaps the most superficial reason given is an appeal to the “conflicting” accounts in the gospels themselves. One account tells us that just Mary Magdalene went first and discovered the empty tomb while another reports that several women went. One reports two angels were present and another only states that there was one angel. Questions arise: Where was the stone? or Why were the women going in the first place? and answers can vary depending on which gospel account we look at.

Secondly, those arguing against belief in an empty tomb appeal to Paul, especially to I Corinthians 15. Paul never mentions an empty tomb. Furthermore, Paul speaks of Jesus as having a “spiritual body” after the resurrection. He also says in this passage that flesh and blood will not inherit heaven.

Those who interpret Paul as saying this spiritual body is not one that has continuity with Christ’s earthly body will then argue that the tradition of the empty tomb was a later development of the gospel writers for apologetic purposes. Paul’s writings were indeed earlier than the gospels. I make no contention of that. And Paul does use some language that may seem strange to us: a spiritual body? But I believe that this is an acknowledgment of the fact that Christ’s resurrected body was different or greater than the one he went into the tomb with. It was not a mere resuscitation. He did not just pick up where he left off. However it was still his body, it had continuity with the body that he went into the tomb with. But as I mentioned Paul did not speak of this tradition of the tomb.

If we turn aside the debate over the empty tomb, there are still several observations that we can employ in presenting our best historical case for the belief that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead. For the following six observations I am indebted to my Christology professor at Calvin: Dr. John Schneider. I do not take credit for the argument. But I do believe it is a pretty good defense of the resurrection.

First, we can say with little doubt that this man, Jesus, existed. Very few people, even those antagonist toward the Christian faith doubt this claim. Secondly, Jesus embarked on a tacit campaign to be considered God’s ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’. Consider Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah after the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus did not (as John the Baptist would have) deny that this claim was true about himself. Third, we know that the expectation for the Jewish Messiah was that he would be an all conquering liberator: the Pantokrator.

The fourth observation is that Jesus was crucified. This led many to believe that Jesus could not have been the Messiah. Fifth, something happened to make many knowledgeable Jews believe that Jesus was/is the Messiah or Christ. That he is the all conquering liberator of humanity! Whatever happened, we must not forget that it happened in the context that Jesus was indeed crucified and his followers were for a time filled with grief and doubt. Finally, this belief that Jesus was indeed God’s Messiah persisted even in the face of systematic persecution of those who believed it.

This resurrected life giver, this all conquering liberator of humanity is who restored hope to the disciples who were filled with grief and doubt. And I believe it is this same Jesus that Paul experience on the road to Damascus. This is why he said so adamantly:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (I Corinthians 15: 12-19 NRSV).

Christian, my friend I do not know if you will find this line of reasoning convincing. I am not sure how much you are still wrestling with this issue. But I do hope that you and anyone else reading this will be encouraged by this post to continue in the faith, seeking understanding, but above that to continue to grow in love for God and neighbor.

Shalom,
Wayne

Throughout the ages, Christians have developed a plethora of different ways for reading and interpreting scripture. For some the Bible is a set of proof texts used to uphold and defend the particular views of an individual or community of believers. For others – often those rightly noting the many different genres, traditions and even discrepancies within the biblical texts – the Bible needs to be read with a degree of scrutiny. Unfortunately this sometimes collapses into skepticism. On one hand there can develop an unbending allegiance to the way things have always been understood, with no room for critique. On the other hand the overly skeptical often fall the way they are leaning into the vortex of theological liberalism. Of course blind fundamentalism and theological liberalism are extremes on a spectrum and the vast majority of Christians today will fall somewhere in between theses broad polarizations.

A favorite understanding for some Christians is to approach scripture as one would a family photo album or scrap book. The pictures are painted with words – history records and narratives. Near the back of the book there is a collection of letters from distant relatives to other family members of the past, who often found themselves in situations that parallel those that family members find themselves in today. For those baptized into the family of God in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Bible is the official family album.

Above is an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. You can find more like this at the icon gallery of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America I love Icons – they are wonderful – and as a protestant I am a bit Icon deprived. The art of the church served as a primary vessel for conveying important Bible stories, stories church history and the gospel message for 1500 years. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions icons and stained glass still find a more welcome place than they do in certain protestant traditions. I find this unfortunate; for I feel I am missing out on something that is a cherished part of the Christian Heritage.

However we do have our Bibles and are often encouraged (or sometimes beat over the head) to read them. I recently have been researching the portrait of Paul that is found in the book of Acts. What I found was that the author of Acts (traditionally understood to be Luke) finds a Hero in Paul. For him Saint Paul is a Hero because he is carying out the mission of Jesus to take the gospel from Jerusalem to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

For the skeptic the snap-shot of Paul in Acts will be compared to his self portrait in his letters – often “discrepancies” will be found and this illustration of Paul will get largely dismissed. For the Bible thumping, proof-texting fundamentalist we find a set of actions that must be perfectly emulated. However as I have suggested I prefer a narrative approach. Taking this understanding seriously, I too find a hero in Paul. I find a man willing to go anywhere and brave many obstacles to tell others about Jesus. Above that I see a Picture of God opening up his family to everyone and through Paul, Peter and others ensuring that his message gets heard.

(I also find my Bible ransomed back from the cold hands of modern scholasticism).

Peace,
Wayne