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biology, blogging, churchians, controversy, faith, insanitybytes22, men and women, opinion, roles
Micheal Goff wrote an interesting article called, “Why Biology Shapes Juridical Roles in the Church.” Biology and the interplay between culture, creation, and faith is pretty much why I began this blog, so now I am compelled to respond.
The essence of his article is that there is a biological argument to be made in favor of Paul’s words in the Bible, if we are believing that Paul’s words forbid women from teaching, preaching, speaking in the church, and pastoring. He then tosses in a bit of Jordan Peterson and RC Sproul to shake it up.
It is a good effort, however the biological argument that tries to suggest women are not competent or biologically equipped to have scriptural authority, doctrinal authority, or really any authority at all, begins to totally break down when one considers the actual nature of men. Women are incompetent compared to whom??
That is one aspect of what makes applying biology to human men and women so challenging. Yes, we are biological creatures. No, we do not behave accordingly. Instead of honoring our evolutionary roots, following the correct behavioral models, and allowing science to reign triumphant, we tend to break all the rules and leave everyone scratching their heads. Or as a good friend used to say, “wolves are rational, people are fools.”
All in good humor here, but there is no one more invested in the fantasy of men as resolute, as contending for the faith, as clearly being more biologically equipped to protect both women and the gospel itself. I’m quite delighted with the fantasy and content to just let it be.
But it isn’t actually true! Also the first person Jesus chose to reveal his Divinity to, happened to be female, the woman at the well. Then He sent her off to evangelize her whole village. At the resurrection, it is once again women whom Jesus reveals Himself to first. Jesus Himself did not look at women and go, you know what, Adam was made first and Eve was deceived, so you women are out. In fact He did the precise opposite, He singled the women out and chose them. He actually chides the disciples for not honoring their authority when they brought their brothers news of the resurrection.
So not only do we not have a sound biological explanation for Paul’s words in the specific way we are trying to interpret them, but we really don’t have a Biblical one, either. I found it interesting that Michael wrote, “Third, when discussing this subject many make an error. The error is insisting we need to go outside the logical bounds of 1 Timothy 2:11-15 to other texts of Scripture to understand what Paul is saying.” It never ceases to astound me, we’ll carry on about the significance of Biblical context, be amazed by the continuity of Scripture, and yet when to comes to things like “wives submit” or “women be silent, ” suddenly those verses just stand alone disembodied from the rest of the Bible and need no other explanation.
I did have a bit of a wry chuckle reading about how women are more relationally oriented. Our desire to preserve relationship, to be more compromising than men are, is part of what allegedly makes us unsuitable to engage in things like church discipline or doctrinal purity.
A wry chuckle because God always gets the last laugh. And I, more than content to just leave the pastoring and the doctrine to men, and to learn in all quietness and submission, has thrice, that’s 3 times now, been forced to confront the reality and the implications of my own beliefs, my own comfort zone, which believe it or not, is actually a place where I don’t have to bother my pretty little head with such complex theological problems.
‘The last pastor I smiled at politely and agreed with on doctrine, abandoned his wife and young children and ran off with his boyfriend. I was left completely voiceless in that situation unable to really object, lacking any authority. The elders, deacons, indeed, the majority of the congregation, mostly men, all praised him for being so brave and just declared any scriptural objection to be well, basically heresy. Authority is a funny thing, if you have enough of it, the truth can be anything you want it to be.
And if you haven’t got any authority, the truth is in danger of dying in quiet obscurity.
The complimentarians among us, and the women-must-be-silenced-folks, will be quite pleased to know that I still have no voice, while he has been promoted, elevated in his own church, and is still preaching and teaching to his heart’s content. He is one of many, many men who disapprove the suggestion that men are somehow biologically designed better to contend for the faith.
With a just a wee bit of residual bitterness here, I have watched one too many men seek to preserve their relationships over truth, when said relationships were about their own status and well being. I think the sexual abuse cover ups in both the Catholic church and SBC pretty much offers us observable evidence than men’s biological skill set to protect women and children does not always reign so supreme. It’s not that men are more rationally driven and less inclined to compromise and preserve relationship, it is that men will often only protect those relationships that have the most status and value to them. Sadly in the case of so many sexual abuse scandals and cover up, the relationships they cared about, valued, and desired to protect, were not relationships with the victims of abuse.
Let’s discuss Jordan Peterson for a moment. I like Lobster man a great deal. I think he is interesting and entertaining. However, his ideas about lobster hierarchies simply do not translate well over to human biology and socialization. Like, people are just not lobsters. Also, Jordan Peterson was recently near death, totally incapacitated by a really nasty benzo addiction and immune reaction. Who had to search the world for a cure and eventually take him to Russia? The women in his life. Women with huge health challenges of their own. Those same women allegedly not biologically designed to teach mixed gender Sunday school to grown ups.
It really makes me a bit angry, I know women holding things together and facing insurmountable challenges that would have crushed a lot of grown men, and we’ve got a church here actually trying to suggest women aren’t biologically equipped to teach Sunday school to men?? She’s probably also not equipped to watch her children die or to raise special needs children alone, or to struggle with cancer, but it is what it is.
That’s real life for you. And biology too, I suppose! It would be quite lovely if men never got sick, depressed, suicidal, addicted, dysfunctional, abusive, or dead. Seriously! It would be quite lovely if men never abandoned women and children, never bailed on them, never abused them and never perverted the gospel to justify it. Unfortunately they do all of these things.
Maybe if Michael had sat in on enough genuine conversations by men attempting to explain that women are only saved through childbirth and not by blood of Jesus, he would have a better understanding of where I was coming from. He addresses that issue, implies that no one misunderstands Paul’s words in that way. I assure you, they do. I recently groaned and walked away from a discussion asking in all sincerity if infertile women can go to heaven. One of my “favorite” bits of heresy is the suggestion that Eve sinned, before sin ever entered the perfect garden. She lusted for power, envied Adam, and wanted to be like God, before she ever even ate the apple. Eve is now allegedly permanently cursed for all of eternity and men’s job is to keep her contained so her curse doesn’t curse us all. Very prevalent teaching. Very unbiblical.
So, biological truth and evidential reality around us does a lousy job of validating Paul’s words in the manner we are trying to interpret them.
I’m a big fan of, “Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar.” So the problem is not in Paul’s words, but in our own interpretation and understanding of them. We sometimes forget he is actually speaking to a specific group of believers with a specific set of issues. We often assume without any evidence at all, that he is speaking of a church service, as in worship. Then for some mysterious reason, we also insist his words be disconnected from any other context, like women having their heads covered while praying and prophecy, which seems to indicate they actually do speak, and Priscilla and Aquila are then found to be correcting a man’s doctrine. Is Paul contradicting himself? Because surrounding his one admonishment for silent women we also find a whole lot of empowered women with voices out preaching and teaching all over the early church.
He calls those women, my beloved, as in my beloved Phoebe. In fact, Paul’s words stand in such stark contrast to some of the unkind harshness towards women coming from places within parts of the SBC and the Reformed world.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
“Women are incompetent compared to whom??”
I’d say the problem is not competence, as such, but rather the problem is that women tend to be a lot more ambitious than men, to have an insatiable lust for power, and a massive tendency towards egomania, and to be rather childish about it. Women are pretty much like Veruca Salt, which makes them unsuitable for positions of authority and responsibility over vulnerable people.
Remember, it was Eve who wanted to be God, whereas Adam just wanted to be with Eve.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, which I have developed after observing men and women for almost 6 decades on this mixed up crazy planet called “Earth.”
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LOL! You know, I can laugh about women as Veruca Salt. I don’t even object to that portrayal, sometimes I experience it myself. Women are not always so kind to other women. That is a purely an emotional response however, and not related to theology at all.
The problem arises when we take that emotional response into our theology as if God Himself agrees with us! That’s how we get the idea that Eve is sinning in the garden before sin even enters the world. That is why we spin excuses for Adam. What was Adam’s sin? Nothing really, he just wanted to be with Eve, the evil one.
I’ve been listening to these tales from men for so long, with great patience, with good humor. I have a clarity of vision that can really see the origins of that kind of a false perception. We still have to ask ourselves, but is it true? No, it is not true. It is not good theology, in fact it is actually harmful.
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” That is a purely an emotional response however, and not related to theology at all.”
Veruca Salt is a fictional character, referred to for the sake of humor. But I’m dead serious about the theology of Eve having the deep seated ambition to be God which is contrasted with Adam’s very mundane and sentimental desire to be with Eve instead of God. Both are moral shortcomings, but of different natures with different implications. Adam has to be told to man up whilst Eve has to be beaten down in to submission.
The biggest problem women in 21st Century Post-Western civilization have is being able to see themselves as they really are. Women are just people, but, in the 21st Century Post-West, women have been corrupted with massive amounts of plenary power, and it has made them for most intents and purposes insufferable.
Every time a woman tells a man to man up she is proving my point which I made above.
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I appreciate your words because they actually demonstrate the very nature of the problem very clearly. This idea that, “Adam has to be told to man up whilst Eve has to be beaten down in to submission,” is a very prevalent one. The implications of that kind of false theology are often tragic. It’s really just a deception, an untruth, an urban legend having no basis in the Bible.
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” It’s really just a deception, an untruth, an urban legend having no basis in the Bible.”
But you said that Adam kinda sorta failed to take responsibility in the Garden. I say that Adam rejected God the same way that Eve did, the only difference being that Adam rejected God in a wimpy and insipid way, in contrast to the active and deliberate manner of Eve’s rejection of God.
The sin part belonged to Adam because he was appointed to responsibility and authority by God. None of this is any sort of excuse for Adam, he did not do his job and it’s because of him, not because of Eve, that sin entered the world.
Our problem nowadays since then is that women think way too much of themselves and very much refuse to see the nature of their faults and shortcomings, that they are consumed with selfishness and egotism and egomania and narcissism and that when they get power they can be as cruel as any other tyrant towards those who are helpless before them. The main difference in the 21st Century Post-West is that male tyrants can be criticized but female tyrants must be humored.
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Oh boy.
All right. First off, I am convinced that God ordered the world as he did not to reveal a biological truth to us (women are biologically “inferior” or whatever) but to give us a picture of a *spiritual* truth He wants us to trust.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that God has ordered His creation thusly:
Women and children are under the protective authority of
Husbands and fathers who are under the protective authority of
Jesus, to whom all power and authority has been given.
If this is the case, then what spiritual truth is God revealing to us through it?
Of the many theological truths this picture suggests, the biological and/or spiritual “inferiority” of women is not one of them. And yes, I understand that sexual dimorphism gives men an advantage over women in terms of raw strength and all that; I just think it’s kind of interesting that we hardly ever look at the other side, the disadvantages to being a sexually dimorphic species. Whether we like it or not, the very fact that we can’t procreate *without each other* implies a *dependency* on one another that is echoed and expanded upon all throughout Scripture, particularly in the Commandments given at Sinai.
Time and space just don’t allow me to go into the various other truths I see reflected in what I would call the “created order”, but if you’re interested, Luther’s doctrine of vocation, and the doctrine of the “two kingdoms” really influenced my thinking on this issue. Actually, on a lot of issues – there’s a lot of theological, as well as practical, meat packed into them. You can find English translations of them all over the intertoobz if you’re curious.
(You do know how to work that intertoobz thing, right granny?)
😜
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LOL! Yep, I do know how to work the intertoobz thing. 🙂
I don’t really subscribe to this hierarchy of created order as if women’s access to the Holy Spirit is now beneath 3 or four layers of bureaucracy. People actually draw a diagram, an umbrella so women will know exactly where stand in created order. You have got to be kidding me! Not working for me at all.
I do however love the rhythms of Scripture, the cycles, God’s created order in that sense. He redeems, restores, and completes His stories. Adam for instance kind of avoids responsibility in the garden, but Joseph takes on sacrificial responsibility for a mother and child that is not really his. Eve eats the apple, but Mary gives birth to our Savior. Sin enters the world through Adam, but it is finished by Jesus. You see these cycles through out the Bible that really do speak to God’s created order, but it is an order of redemption, restoration, and completion.
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I’m chuckling a little bit, thinking about the times I have heard a Lutheran pastor argue vorciferously that the church is not a hierarchy. “Das ist catholisch!” (Old Lutheran saying, translating roughly as “That’s too Catholic!”)
We Lutherans tend to bristle when we are told we have a hierarchal church model – we reject that, and obviously we don’t practise it either.
I’m not convinced that the created order is meant to be understood (or practised) as a hierarchy either – at least not in the way we (humans) understand it. Jesus pretty much turned that one on its head: “The first shall be last” and so on. We think to be at the top of the hierarchy is an honour to be grasped for ourselves. But who’s really at the top of the food chain?
Jesus. The servant of the world! If there is, indeed, a hierarchy intended, we have it inverted.
I’m positive there’s something else going on, some spiritual truth in here that I haven’t yet winkelled out.
I’m positive God is not a misogynist. Like, hello? He saves women too! Nor does he think less of women in comparison to man. In fact, didn’t He say something about man without woman = not good? Huh. Let THAT sink in for a moment…
But I am also certain that He has limited the pastoral office to certain men with specific qualifications, and that these qualifications are for all ages of the church. We both know each other’s positions on this, but I’d like to put that aside for the moment.
Just put yourself in my position for a moment.
God doesn’t discriminate – truth.
Except in the church – truth.
Which one of these truths should I let go of in order to accommodate the other?
The truth is, I’m not prepared to give either up. Rightly or wrongly, my conscience affirms both as biblical truth. And no, I don’t want to argue that, I’m just stating that this is where I am. I can see in Scripture, little bits and pieces, glimpses really of how both these truths work harmoniously together, buts it’s just a theological “hunch” I have; I don’t have a coherent, fully articulated argument to make yet…and maybe I never will.
God and I, we have an agreement. I have brought my dilemma to Him, and put it in His hands. I will live and believe that – in a way I don’t fully understand – both are true.
And if I have put my trust in a false understanding, well, I trust that He will reveal this to me too. God has shown me where I have been in error before, I’m totally used to it, lol!
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LOL! I too have those words regarding hierarchies stuck in my head, “that is Catholic!” There are several church fathers frowning at me right now. I find it oddly comical, because one problem with many of the Catholics I encounter is that they aren’t even aware there is a hierarchy within their own faith! I can’t tell you how many times I have had to say, listen can we just respect the pope? I mean, he is your pope!
Anyway, I don’t believe our feelings about women in the church are necessarily a division. You are certainly free to hold your two ideas in tension, that God doesn’t discriminate, except in the church. I’m a bit more free with my thinking, I think God discriminates quite a bit in different ways. I even think some kinds of discrimination can be good, certainly not in the hands of man, but Holy and just in God’s hands. He did love Jacob more than Esau. I don’t know why, but I do value the question it poses, the idea that God is free to do as He wants.
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I always considered that since men bear the most burden of bringing sin into the world God considered giving them the most burden of undoing that act, by giving them the most burden of spreading the gospel to reverse sin in the world. In other words God is protecting women from a burden He gives to men.
Of course being sinful flesh, some men twist that message into “men are better equipped.” No, not better equipped. Just ordered to carry the heavier burden. Are men up to the task? No. Not without Christ’s leadership via Holy Spirit.
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I like what you said about how “God is protecting women from a burden He gives to men.” I’m not sure I really believe that, but Paul’s words do seem to reflect a sense of protection. We forget that “teaching” in those days meant likely to be the first one to be executed. Paul is calling men to accountability, to authority within the church, not trying to tear down women.
I also like what you said about how men are not better equipped. None of us are equipped, none of us can do it without Jesus. That’s another danger inherent to our ideas about biology. If men are allegedly biologically equipped, than they can just rely on themselves and not on Jesus. All in good humor here, but men relying on themselves and not on Jesus is never a good thing.
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I read the Michael Goff article. While I’m not trying to argue for or against whatever SBC believes (I’m not a member), nor do I disagree with the biological differences Goff mentions, I do very much disagree with his premise on juridical authority.
Goff: “What he says she cannot do is be an elder, because an elder holds juridical authority.”
This is what happens when you make a doctrine from primarily one passage (1 Tim.2:11-5) and ignore the rest of Scripture. We very much need to be able to discern the difference between Paul’s specific pastoral solutions to specific problems and blanket doctrinal statements. Like with 1 Cor 14, a careful read, and taking the full scope of NT Scripture into account, Paul’s statements in 1 Tim 2 seem to be the former.
Why? Because one chapter later, in 1 Timothy 3, Paul says “anyone” who desires to be an overseer. The male-biased KJV Bible (and others) say “man” and use the pronoun “he” but the Greek word is τις (tis), which is not gender specific. It simply means anyone.
Another thing to consider here is cultural language. While Paul’s language is not modern language (we say humankind instead of mankind now), and his culture was very different than ours, Paul is not necessarily limiting juridical authority to men. In fact, later in the same chapter, he is referencing to both men and women.
Another example: in Romans 16, Paul addresses Priscilla first (before Aquilla) as his fellow worker in Christ, giving her preferential acknowledgement. We also see women in actual leadership listed– Phoebe, who led a house church, and Andronicus and Junia (a woman), who Paul said “are of note among the apostles…” So, if Junia can be among the apostles, according to Paul, who are we to limit women in juridical authority? (Because of this bias, later leaders like Origen in the second century, tried to make her name male gender, in order to fit the prevailing bias, but this has been since corrected by most modern scholars.)
We also know that there were women in leadership in the first and part of the second century of church history. This changed as a more misogynist element started to control the church.
By the time the KJV was translated, we lived pretty much in a misogynist culture, which makes it quite ironic when people make the objection that we’re allegedly changing doctrines for cultural reasons! 🙂
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To be clear, I’m not arguing for a female-dominated leadership either. I just believe we benefit the most from having both. 🙂
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I’m with you, Mel. We have the Bible speaking of women as apostles, in Paul’s own words even, but we also have historical evidence, archeology that documents their existence. Sadly, many were martyred too.
Ironically in those churches where women have little voice, no power and accountability, we often wind up with something that looks very much like female dominated leadership. That’s because women are forced into a more passive/aggressive role, so they rule by gossip, by manipulation, by back door influence. It can get very vicious and there is no accountability for what goes on behind the scenes because nobody can see it. So in truth if you really want a healthy system, give women a voice and make them accountable for it.
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Amen. What you mentioned is why we need BOTH men and women working together in leadership. We not only balance each other’s weaknesses out, we get the best of both strengths.
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In Acts 16, Paul encounters Lydia and she and the other women at the river are the first people in Philippi to be converted. Throughout Paul’s travels, the women were the ones that supported him and taught the word in their communities.
The people that Paul sent the letters to lived in a community that worshiped a female god and had temple prostitutes. He didn’t want the women of the Christian church to behave like the temple prostitutes or insinuate that they were messengers from Artemus or Athena. They would be in danger of persecution for blaspheming the god of that city, and it would damage the Christian community as well.
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Good points about the female deities and the temple prostitutes. The cultural context of the time really matters as well as who the intended audience of those words is, what ideas are being communicated and why.
A somewhat comical example of this problem is a calendar devotional that once put Luke 4:7 as it’s inspirational quote of the day, “If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” That is actually satan speaking during the temptation of Christ. So definitely Biblical, but not exactly right in this context. 🙂
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I haven’t read the article and don’t know all the ins and outs of who the people are and what they are saying, but I do think there are people on both sides of the “what is the role of women in the church” issue who are either not looking at Scripture, or as you say, IB, only looking at isolated Scriptures. To add to your examples, which are excellent, Paul referred to the two women in Philippi who he was urging to stop quarreling, as “fellow workers.” So apparently they had a key role in the Church. In another context he mentions a woman “and the church that is in her house.” I’m pretty sure that had to mean she had an important role to play. Doesn’t mean she was a teacher, but it also doesn’t mean she stepped aside and had nothing to do with the work of the church. Not to mention that tucked into the gospels are numerous references to the women who accompanied the disciples, some even providing funds.
But to the point of the “pastor” you referred to who left his wife to go with his boyfriend and who is still preaching. I think Romans 1 covers that. In fact, it covers very clearly that both women and men are equally fallen: “their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way the men abandoned the women and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts . . .”
That being said, I do think God gave men a role He didn’t give women, but He also gave women a role He didn’t give men. Funny how men don’t seem to be envious of women there!
Becky
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” Funny how men don’t seem to be envious of women there!”
It’s not like envy is a good thing. Maybe the problem with women is their intense and bitter envy of men.
Ac 7:9 And the patriarchs, moved with ENVY, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him,
Ac 13:45 But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with ENVY, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.
Ac 17:5 But the Jews which believed not, moved with ENVY, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.
Ro 1:29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of ENVY, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Ro 13:13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and ENVYing.
1co 3:3 For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you ENVYing, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?
2co 12:20 For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, ENVYings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults:
Ga 5:21 ENVYings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Ga 5:26 Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, ENVYing one another.
Php 1:15 Some indeed preach Christ even of ENVY and strife; and some also of good will:
1ti 6:4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh ENVY, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
Tit 3:3 For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and ENVY, hateful, and hating one another.
Jas 3:14 But if ye have bitter ENVYing and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.
Jas 3:16 For where ENVYing and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
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Excellent! I must add this – it was a women that led me to Christ. It is a woman, who through godly submission TO THE LORD, has continued to bless me, love me tolerate me. If not for the good fruit God has produced in and through her, I might still be an ignorant heathen. It was seeing Jesus in her that caused me to desire Christ. Her witness is not religious nor authoritative, but none-the-less extremely compelling. Whenever Scripture is interpreted to elevate some at the devaluation of others, it is certainly a misinterpretation and probably heresy. We are ALL being conformed into the unity of the Spirit as individual member, needing each other equally.
“Indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it”.
1Cor. 12:20-26
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BINGO! Thank you, MJ.
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I’m just curious, are you still in the church that teaches all these silly things? If so, why?
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Nope, not me! I just don’t have the patience to endure this kind of stuff anymore. But I do love church and always manage to find a good group of believers to be with. 🙂
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