I tried to post this comment on Adrian Warnock’s blog, in response to his post on Mark Driscoll at the Menmakers conference in Scotland:
Looks like Driscoll has not read 1 Corinthians 7:25-32, or noticed that Jesus was not married. Come to think of it, looks like Driscoll has not read the New Testament at all, except perhaps for isolated verses, for his “gospel”, as seen here and in the previous post about him, seems to leave humanity fallen and sinful with God hating them.
Charity, the basis for the argument you mention is a dubious translation of Genesis 5:2 which was new in the RSV.
Adrian, who has recently reintroduced comment moderation on his blog, refused to publish this comment because I dared to suggest that Driscoll might not have read the whole New Testament.
Well, first he doesn’t seem to have realised that this is very obvious hyperbole, rhetorical exaggeration. My real point is of course that Driscoll is ignoring most of the New Testament in his teaching. Perhaps I could have got away with writing that. But I am not going to allow Adrian to determine what literary style I can use in response to his blogging. If he doesn’t want my response on his blog, he can have it here, and I will send him a link.
But what this really shows is Adrian’s hyper-sensitivity, so typical of Reformed Evangelicals, to any criticism of their favourite preachers. It is not that they are sensitive to critical comments in general. They seem quite happy to accuse well known Christian teachers from different strands of preaching another gospel or blasphemy. So they can’t claim that they dislike criticism because it is not showing Christian charity. No, instead they seem to react like fundamentalists of some religion who hear their gods being criticised. For it seems to me that favourite preachers like Piper and Driscoll have become idols in the minds of certain people, who treat their words as infallible and beyond criticism, and react intemperately to anyone who disagrees on this.
Peter
You are of course welcome to say whatever you want about me or others on your own blog. But I refer you to my Comment pollicy page. I do say there that any character assasinations however minor will not be tolerated in the comments threads. I have frequently considered shutting down comments altogether, and may well do that at some point.
God bless….
Adrian, do you really think my attempted comment was a “character assassination”? Come on! I was quite explicitly referring to Driscoll’s actions, or supposed non-actions, rather than to his character. As such, I was obeying your guideline “Stick to critiquing a person’s teaching, not their character”. My point was of course that Driscoll’s teaching shows a lack of familiarity with the New Testament. Isn’t that a fair point?
And then does your “no character assassination” policy apply also to your posts? If so, you certainly need to remove your quotations of John Piper’s character assassination of Steve Chalke, and your own character assassination of NT Wright (links in the main post).
Thank you for trying to answer, Peter. So far Adrian has not done so, and Glenn has simply stated that the answer has been given many times elsewhere, without saying where!
Suzanne has posted something which suggests as you do that this is based on a faulty translation of Genesis 5:2, however even on the basis of the faulty translation I still do not see how that means that “men rule humanity”…
If you do not mind, I would like to ask Adrian another question here, since he has brought it up here…
What would be your reasoning for shutting down comments on your blog?
Adrian started moderating his blog, I think, during an interview with Grudem, when Peter and I questioned Grudem’s statement that he could not preach from the TNIV because it used “assume authority” instead of “exercize authority” in 1 Tim. 2:12.
I tried to point out that the KJV had “usurp authority” in it and I wondered if he could preach from that.
Here are the comments that Adrian originally deleted. .
I find it so irritating that Grudem says things about Bible translations, as he does about the TNIV, that are not accurate.
If you translate for him you should know that much of what he says is not accurate. For example, the Greek word aner(man) did have a gender neutral use, and kephale(head) is listed in the major Greek lexicons with the meaning of “source” but not the meaning of “ruler.”
Just so you know, he has been told all of this but it doesn’t have much effect.
Thank you Suzanne
I translated for Grudem just the once. Before that I would say that I accepted what has come to be known as “complementarian” teaching (though I can see less and less any justification for use of the term) having grown up in churches and in a family which functioned in that way. Basically before my experience of translating for Grudem I had never questioned that broadly-speaking the teaching was biblical.
It was as I was translating that I realised, as you say, that much of what he was saying was not accurate… but I did continue with the translation to the end of the session!
I am not in contact with him at all personally.
You are probably right about when/why Adrian switched on comment moderation – I think that was before I started reading his blog. There was however a brief period last week or so, when the moderation function was not activated.
He now says however that he is considering “shutting down comments altogether”. While I can understand that some bloggers may wish to moderate comments if they are getting content which they consider (rightly or wrongly) to be abusive, it seems to me that shutting down comments altogether changes the nature of blogging completely, which is why I asked him what his reasoning was.
Peter, sorry to hear your comment was knocked back. I have also commented, and have yet to see what happens to mine. I think Adrian, who has some sort of friendship with Driscoll, just wants to honour his friend. Having met Driscoll myself this weekend, I too want to honour him as a man of God, even if I disagree with some points of his theology. Perhaps try reposting the comment without the hyperbole?
Alastair
It doesn’t appear to be a problem of hyperbole. I tried to comment on Adrian’s post myself this morning and my comment has been censored too. I did not immediately mention this here, as I thought it may just be taking time to get through the process. Since Adrian has now added to the blog I think it is safe to assume that is not the case.
Unfortunately as the tone of my comment was not at all hyperbolic I did not take the precaution of saving the text. I basically thanked Suzanne for her answer, and said that I’d just reread the first few chapters of Genesis, which Adrian said was the basis of Driscoll’s talk, and could not find anything to support the idea that “men rule humanity”.
Likewise my own comment hasn’t appeared, which praised the preach but mentioned by reservations about the meaning of the Hebrew word “adam”. Perhaps Adrian doesn’t want anything on his blog that even remotely disagrees with anyone who is a friend of his. Personally I would hope to think that Driscoll is happy we are all discussing his message, its a little sad that it appears some are censoring the debate.
Adrian did not censor my remark but maybe as it was the first in that thread he didn’t think to do it right away. The problem is that he sees himself as hosting these people as friends and then they get criticized. He does not see himself hosting these people in order to allow people to interact with them and question them.
My observation is that if he doesn’t want people to jump on this stuff about women then he could edit the sermons that he posts, and remove any content that is counter to what the Bible actually teaches about women. I think sometimes he does try to do this. But other times he can’t resist posting the whole thing.
It is interesting to me that Adrian cannot discern that male dominance is something that is part of worldly culture and not spiritual culture. It is the Christian counterpart to the present worldly preoccupation with sexuality. To teach male dominance is to pander to the natural fleshly inclinations of some people. Myconcern is that gender role theology is not a good witness to non-Christians.
Thought I’d better report back that my comment has just appeared on Adrian’s blog, along with a couple of others…
Actually guys, I did think I had cleared some of those comments for publication.
I am actually finding these decisions about what to publish and what not to publish more and more difficult. This is in large part due to time pressures. I genuinely do appreciate reading your thoughts.
I just sometimes worry that many of my passing readers might not understand the whole concept of commenting and think that I am in some way endorsing amd agreeing with the comments simply by publishing them. I rarely have the time these days to formulate full responses either (although I do try and take counterarguments in account in later posts on that subject wherevere posssible and certainly find knowing what others thinks if nothing else helps me to express my own views more clearly)
Interestingly I do see that tendancy among my commentors about things that I quote myself in a post. Strictly speaking, you should remember that I posted my notes of a sermon rather than my own view on every point. Of course that distinction is not easy to make often. But what really worried me a year or two back was when I saw a comment taken from my site and quoted as being written by me on another site!
I am sure Peter wouldnt want some of my comments here being attributed to him!
Please understand their is no animosity here, and I do want to continue to interact with critics. I fear though that I simply do not have the time to manage this comment moderation thing in a timely, and for that matter entirely fair and consistant manner. To do it properly I suppose I should read a comment, then come back to it a few hours later to see if my initial reaction is still how I feel. The trouble is by that time the writer has probably concluded I have already rejected it!
So, anyway, I am thinking seriously of nuking the whole concept of comments over at my place. I do hope you guys understand my dilemna.
Adrian,
I do see your dilemma but certainly I don’t see how anyone could think that I am attributing to you the words of either Mark Driscoll or Wayne Grudem.
I thought that it was because of what I said to Grudem about the fact that he couldn’t preach from the KJV that induced you to begin moderating. I don’t know why Dr. Grudem had such a thing about the KJV anyway. It is not that bad. I rather like itl
I do think that publishing without allowing comments is not really being accountable, because what Mark said about men ruling humanity really is not in the Bible. He needs to reflect on that. But if you looked over what was said in your post and then edited out things that don’t seem biblical and sound like they are their because they meet the needs of men ( as in males vs men as in humans), then it would help.
These are just my thoughts, We never moderate comments although we do allow people who have spats to delete themselves. And once I deleted one of Peter’s comments because he quoted one of my comments that related to a current event that I rethought it and felt I should take it out.
But – on principle we let people express themselves.
It has been interesting to read these comments, mostly received yesterday while I was busy with other things. Despite my personal absence and not posting again, yesterday seems to have been by far the busiest day on my blog at least in recent months, with 493 views, whereas more like 100 was typical until about a week ago when I started on some new controversial topics.
Yes, it is right to honour one’s friends. But I don’t think any controversial speaker, especially one like Driscoll who clearly revels in controversy, is best honoured by being protected from debate and criticism. Driscoll is quite capable of making outrageous hyperbolic accusations against others. I’m sure he is quite happy to take as good as he gets. If not, he should remember that people in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones.
I have my own thoughts on the need for bloggers to be accountable by allowing comments, which I intend to work up into a post in due course. I also want to come back to the issue behind this post, which seems to have got lost in the discussion, which is Driscoll’s apparent teaching that all men should get married.
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