Category Archives: Complementarians

Adrian Warnock censors those who find an error in Grudem's words

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Adrian Warnock has deleted from this post on his blog a number of comments, at least four by Suzanne McCarthy and two by myself. He has not informed me that he has done this. He has mentioned this in a comment addressed to Suzanne on a post at the Better Bibles Blog, where he writes:

I have removed some comments over at my place that I feel are off-topic. This is one of them

Fortunately I have a copy of these six comments still open in a browser window and so can restore them to public view on this blog.

I must agree with Adrian that some of Suzanne’s points, and my second comment which is in reply to those points, are somewhat off the immediate topic of Adrian’s post. So he has is acting reasonably by deleting those comments.

However, I have a very serious problem of principle with the fact that he has deleted both of the comments which point out an error of fact in his post. The error is in the words of Dr Wayne Grudem in part five of Adrian’s interview with him. These comments are of course entirely relevant to the post concerning which they were added as comments.

Adrian doesn’t seem to have a problem with being corrected himself. Indeed he was very gracious when I put him right about subordination within the Trinity in his recent post on the attributes of God. But it seems that he cannot take it when people find errors in what his favourite teachers have said. He wrote the following in a comment just before the ones he deleted:

O, and please be careful about being disrespectful to our guest around here. If I had Dr Grudem as a guest in my home and another guest was rude to him most likely I would ask that guest to leave.

Indeed it is right to be respectful to a guest – and to any guest, including any commenter on a blog, not just to those who have an academic position and a good reputation in certain circles. However, I do not consider it to be showing a lack of respect to politely point out errors of fact made by someone else. Indeed I would consider it disrespectful to avoid carefully correcting someone, to stop them perpetuating their error and potentially being even more embarrassed by public exposure. And I would certainly consider it disrespectful to the honoured guest, as well as to the person pointing out the error, to intervene in the discussion to prevent the guest from finding out about their error.

As for the particular issue in question here, since Adrian has not let me make the correction through a comment in his blog, I will have to make it more publicly, in a separate post from this one.

Here are the comments which Adrian deleted, unedited:

Suzanne McCarthy said…
On 1 Tim. 2:12 Dr. Grudem also takes a stand against the Tyndale – King James tradition.12But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.12Einem Weibe aber gestatte ich nicht, daß sie lehre, auch nicht, daß sie des Mannes Herr sei, sondern stille sei. LutherSo Dr. Grudem cannot teach from these Bibles, I have heard many times pastors tell me that they cannot teach from a certain text even though it is what was in the KJ or Luther Bible. Why is that? They need their own special version? They will not use a traditional and established Bible? 

I don’t know why the TNIV is “a highly suspect and novel translation”, it is simply an update of the King James translation in this case.

I challenge Dr. Grudem to go back to the King James Bible and teach from that.

12 December, 2006 08:14

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Suzanne McCarthy said…
And why is it alright to post on the internet against the TNIV and its translators? Why is that acceptable? Who are these people?Bruce Waltke
Gordon Fee
Ron Youngblood
Douglas Moo
RT Franceto name a few.It is my prayer that this rift in the Christian community be healed and that there will not be one group posting in public against another, going on radio against another, in front of non-Christians. 

I am so disturbed by this action on the part of the authors of the Statement of Concern against the TNIV. It is my desire that this provocation of disunity be dismantled. These people, these issues are personal to me. This statement has caused such personal grief, and for what, in what way is the ESV a perfect translation and the KJV, the TNIV and the Luther Bible is not?

There needs to be grace and healing and humility. Not this display of why the TNIV is suspect.

12 December, 2006 08:27

Suzanne McCarthy said…
Adrian,I need to address your misunderstanding regarding the generic ‘he’.Dr. Grudem claims,”Thus, in Hebrew and in Greek as well as in English, the usage “suggests a particular pattern of thought,” namely a picture using a male representative” and 

“But in typical contexts, singular masculine gender pronouns encourage a starting picture of a male, not just a totally faceless entity”

This implies to me that Dr. Grudem thinks that the pronoun creates male semantic meaning – a male image in the mind. Does it do this in Greek?

In Greek, the pronoun is αυτος meaning ‘the same one as has been mentioned’. And the grammatical ending is masculine.

In fact, no one has ever suggested that masculine grammatical endings create male semantic content, or a starting picture of a male in the the mind.

So I cannot understand this argument of Dr. Grudem’s. He may feel that this is true in English, but the Bible was not written in English. We have to deal with this.

Let me be clear – the Greek pronoun αυτος does not create a male image in the mind that encourages us to receive Christ in our hearts.

Let’s look at this verse.

Rev. 3:20

20Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Why should we need the pronoun ‘him’ to create a starting picture of a male in a woman’s head. May not woman come to Christ untrammeled by the thought of a human male, not Christ himself, but the male who represents her in her relationship to Christ, as a picture in her head?

Indeed, if someone came to my door I would say, “Please let whoever is knocking come in and I will give them tea.”

I would not say “Please let whoever is knocking come in and I will give him tea.” I think not. I will welcome a woman as easily as a man.

I discussed this with Dr. Packer and he agrees on this – the generic ‘they’ is perfectly standard.

12 December, 2006 08:53

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Suzanne McCarthy said…
Arian,Does is only matter to you how masculine sounding the words are, or do you care about something being true?Think of the women who reported that Christ was risen. Wasn’t that truth? Can you not open up to something more than masculinity? 

12 December, 2006 09:05

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Peter Kirk said…

I am sorry to have to report yet another factual error in what Dr Grudem says. In fact I see that Suzanne has already spotted this, but I repeat it here because some may not take such a point from a woman or may not read all of her comments – and because I drafted what follows before reading Suzanne’s comments.Grudem writes: “in 1 Timothy 2:12 the TNIV adopts a highly suspect and novel translation … It reads, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man”“. But this is not a novel translation at all, for as with Matthew 5:9 Grudem seems to have ignored KJV. Look at the KJV rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12: “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man”. Of course “usurp authority” is not precisely the same wording as “assume authority”, but the meaning in the context must be the same. Grudem continued: “If churches adopt this translation, the debate over women’s roles in the church will be over, because women pastors and elders can just say, “I’m not assuming authority on my own initiative; it was given to me by the other pastors and elders.” Therefore any woman could be a pastor or elder so long as she does not take it upon herself to “assume authority.”” Well, for over 300 years most churches adopted KJV, but despite Grudem’s argument here this did not stop the debate over women’s roles in the church. So what is the real difference between TNIV and KJV here?Grudem also writes: “I don’t think a pastor can give a woman “permission” to do Bible teaching before the church, because the Bible says not to do that.” But actually what the Bible passage in question says is that Paul himself does not give women this kind of permission, in the churches over which he had authority. So this seems to leave open the possibility that other church leaders could and did give this permission. There is a long and complex hermeneutical procedure which needs to be followed, including such issues as how far our churches today are under Paul’s apostolic authority and whether individual examples should ever be taken to be normative, before we can translate Paul’s example into a command for churches today. This process seems to have been ignored in this whole discussion, at least on the blogs I have been reading. I hope Grudem has addressed this issue in his book. 

12 December, 2006 14:55

Peter Kirk said…
Suzanne, you shouldn’t call Adrain “Arian”. You may disagree with him, but I don’t think he is guilty of this particular heresy!You quote Grudem as claiming concerning generic “he” “Thus, in Hebrew and in Greek as well as in English, the usage “suggests a particular pattern of thought,” namely a picture using a male representative”.Here we need to distinguish carefully between linguistic and theological issues. It is true that in many languages, including Hebrew and Greek, and in some mostly older varieties of English, a grammatically masculine pronoun can refer to or “represent” all humans, male and female. But this is not true of all language, especially those like Persian and Turkic languages which have no gender distinctions in pronouns; it is also not true of the form of “gender neutral” English used in many parts of the English speaking world. It is thus of necessity a language specific issue, which has no significance outside the structures of specific languages. Thus it is something which cannot does not need to be preserved in a translation into a gender neutral language. The problem with this comes when Grudem attempts to recharacterise this as a theological issue and then insist that language specific distinctions are preserved even in languages which do not and cannot make these distinctions. 

12 December, 2006 15:07

The non-negotiables of the faith, including gender distinctions?

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Adrian Warnock has been reporting on the Desiring God 2006 conference, entitled “Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World”.

Now let me first say that I have a lot of respect for the ministry of Desiring God and its leader John Piper. They are doing a great work by emphasising the importance for Christians of desiring God and seeking “a passion for the supremacy of God in all things”. I also greatly appreciate Piper’s support for exercise of the gifts of the Spirit in a properly balanced way.

But Piper is not as careful as he should be at distinguishing between biblical standards and the cultural norms of conservative America. I am not the only one to suggest this. For example, Suzanne McCarthy has referred to a list of roles which Piper considers as suitable for women. I commented as follows on her posting:

Are these rules supposed to be Christian and derived from the Bible? It sounds to me as if they come from a 19th century manual of etiquette. That doesn’t make them necessarily wrong, but nor does it make them right. Piper, Grudem and friends need to distinguish between Christian values and old-fashioned conservative cultural ones. A good course in cross-cultural evangelism, or some in depth first hand experience of a very different culture, would do them a world of good.

and also:

I just read the first half sentence of Piper’s book, and I think this gives the real key to his thinking. That first half sentence is “When I was a boy growing up in Greenville, South Carolina“. It was in that conservative environment, around 50 years ago (according to Wikipedia he was born in 1946, actually in Tennessee), that his cultural values were formed. In the second paragraph we learn that they attended a Southern Baptist church, and that of course further explains the formation of his cultural values. He goes on to describe supposed differences between men and women which he claims “go to the root of our personhood“, but which it seems to me are at least very largely conditioned by the specific cultural and religious context in which Piper grew up. …To summarise, Piper is making the mistake which I am afraid is so common among Americans, especially conservative ones but not only Christians, of simply assuming that their own cultural values are objectively and absolutely right, … There is a woeful failure to understand the distinction between cultural norms and absolute morality.

So, I was really interested to see that Desiring God was taking on the issue of relating to a postmodern world whose cultural norms are very different from those of the conservative South in which Piper grew up.

And what do I find? I am basing this mainly on Adrian’s rather brief summaries of others’ reports, but these are the points which some have considered significant. I have also looked at some of Tim Challies‘ more detailed first hand reports.

The controversial preacher Mark Driscoll spoke about: (as summarised by Adrian, condensing a report by Ricky Alcantar):

Nine issues to contend for:

1) The Bible.

2) The sovereignty of God.

3) The virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

4) We must argue against pelagianism, a denial of original sin.

5) We must contend for penal substitutionary atonement.

6) The exclusivity of Jesus.

7) We must contend for male and female roles.

8) We must contend for hell.

9) We must contend that kingdom is priority over culture.

John Piper, in comments on Driscoll’s talk, spoke as follows about these nine issues (as reported by Josh Harris and quoted by Adrian):

He referenced a point Driscoll had made in his talk about the importance of holding certain unchanging truths in our left hand that are the non-negotiables of the faith while being willing to contextualize and differ on secondary issues and stylistically (these are “right hand” issues).

In principle Piper is making an excellent point here on relating to postmodern culture. But I find it very interesting that what Piper affirms as “the non-negotiables of the faith” are apparently these particular nine points listed originally by Driscoll. Most of these nine points I can accept as important and non-negotiable (although I would want to ask for clarification about point 4, and I would argue that penal substitutionary atonement is only one among several good biblical models of the atonement). But this list is revealing both for what it includes and for what it omits.

For example, it omits any mention of several things which are clearly taught and commanded in the New Testament as norms for all believers, such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I refer not to the details of how these are to be administered and what they mean, but their very existence. If such things are not listed as non-negotiables, does that imply that they are secondary issues on which we can differ and which we can abandon for the sake of “contextualisation”, in other words in order to make our Christian faith more palatable to, for example, a postmodern generation? Or are they simply additional non-negotiables, thus implying that this list nine points is to be consider as incomplete?

But my main point here is the inclusion in this list of one item, “7) We must contend for male and female roles”, which seems to me totally out of place here. Tim Challies‘ version of this is “6) We must contend for gender distinctions”, but he actually lists this before “7) We must contend for the exclusivity of Christ”, as if gender roles more important than the exclusivity of Christ! Well, what exactly are the “male and female roles” or “gender distinctions” which we must contend for? Ricky Alcantar’s report says a little more here:

7) We must contend for male and female roleswe’re different. Male elders are to govern. We do not endorse homosexuality.

If Driscoll and Piper’s main point is that Christians should oppose homosexual practice and same-sex “marriage”, I would not disagree with them. But I would wonder why opposing these is listed as a “non-negotiable of the faith” when there is no mention of opposition to any other sins, such as heterosexual sex outside marriage, or greed, or pride. Why is homosexuality considered to be a much worse sin than these others? Is there really a biblical basis for this, or is this a case where (despite “non-negotiable” 9) cultural values are being put before kingdom values?

But it seems that what Driscoll and Piper largely have in mind is gender distinctions in the church, that “Male elders are to govern.” Now it is well known to regular readers here and at Better Bibles Blog that I differ from Piper, and implicitly also from Driscoll, on such issues and on the principles of interpretation of Bible passages which are alleged to teach this. I won’t repeat those arguments here, but will restrict my comments to wondering why they make such a big thing out of this. After all, there are in fact only a very few passages in the New Testament which teach about such gender roles. There is probably more teaching which favours slavery, but I don’t see “We must contend for slavery” among the non-negotiables! It might well have been on similar lists in the early 19th century, but anyone looking at such a list today would recognise how dependent it was on cultural norms which have now been abandoned.

There are many issues which are given far more prominence in the Bible than gender roles but have been omitted from this list of non-negotiables. For example, Paul devotes two long chapters of 1 Corinthians to spiritual gifts, and commands elsewhere

Do not put out the Spirit’s fire. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject whatever is harmful.

(1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, TNIV)

But Driscoll and Piper do not list acceptance of spiritual gifts including prophecy as a non-negotiable. Why not? Piper accepts these gifts himself, but maybe he is afraid of upsetting a large part of his audience, cessationists who disagree on this, by stressing their importance. But he doesn’t seem afraid of upsetting those who reject his approach to gender issues. Or is it because he accepts that cessationist arguments are strong enough that this should be considered a legitimate area for disagreement among Christians? Well, the cessationist arguments, largely an indefensible interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:10, seem to me much weaker than the arguments for alternative interpretations of passages on gender roles in the church. So why can’t Piper and friends accept that here too there is a legitimate area for disagreement among Christians?

It seems to me that Driscoll and Piper are picking and choosing among biblical commands, and not to find issues which really are central to the Christian faith and should really be considered non-negotiable. Instead they have selected a list of points which fit with their personal presuppositions about what is central to the faith, based on their culture as much as on the Bible. Their approach on such matters seems to be similar to that of the scribes and Pharisees of Mark 7, who no doubt justified their teachings from Scripture, but of whom Jesus said:

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.

(Mark 7:8, TNIV)

So, what should we do? I nearly finished this post here, but decided that this was too negative. I would challenge Driscoll and Piper (if they would listen to me!), and others who might agree with them, to go back to the drawing board and reexamine what really are the central non-negotiables of the Christian faith, the points which are not culturally relative and which are also central to the Good News of Christ. And these are the things which I would recommend them to concentrate on in their preaching to a postmodern generation. Then there will be other things which they will also hold as non-negotiable in principle but in practice might allow to take a less prominent position; here I might include baptism, the Lord’s Supper, spiritual gifts, and (from Driscoll’s original list) the virgin birth and hell. Finally, I would remind them to base their contextualisation on Paul’s biblical model:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

(1 Corinthians 9:19-23, TNIV)

Dawkins is wrong: a scientist can believe in a real God

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Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion seems to be causing a bit of a stir. I haven’t read it, and I probably won’t. Not long ago I sat through a series on Channel 4 TV in which Dawkins presented his views on the same subject, and that was more than enough to put up with!

But I would like to respond to one of Dawkins’ points which is highlighted by Al Mohler in his commentary article The Dawkins Delusion. And as Mohler has not enabled comments on that article, I am responding here and in more length than appropriate for a comment.

Mohler writes, in part quoting Dawkins in The God Delusion:

In [Dawkins’] opening chapter, he argues that most legitimate scientists–indeed all who really understand the issues at stake–are atheists of one sort or another. He defines the alternatives as between a stark atheism (such as that Dawkins himself represents) and a form of nonsupernatural religion, as illustrated by the case of Albert Einstein. “Great scientists of our time who sound religious usually turn out not to be so when you examine their beliefs more deeply,” he explains. As examples, Dawkins offers not only Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking but also Martin Rees, currently Britain’s Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society. … He cites Einstein to the effect that he was a “deeply religious nonbeliever”–moved by the majesty of the cosmos but without any reference whatsoever to a supernatural being.As Dawkins explains, real scientists are naturalists. As such, they eliminate entirely the question of a supernatural being’s existence. “The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.”

Thus Dawkins claims that scientists are never true theists, believers in a living and personal God separate from his creation, but if they are not atheists they are more like pantheists, believers in the divinity of the universe. But this claim is so wide of the mark as to be ludicrous. For centuries there have been many scientists who have been theists of one sort or another. Indeed the founders of modern science were almost all theists, even though many, such as Isaac Newton, were not orthodox Christians, and some tended towards deism (which is rather the opposite of pantheism, not identifying God with the universe but separating him entirely from it). Einstein also seems to have been a theist, despite what Dawkins claims, as shown by his famous statement “God does not play dice with the universe” (is that “without any reference whatsoever to a supernatural being”?); so apparently is Stephen Hawking, for he has insisted that “God does play dice with the universe.” Indeed, in our own time there are many good scientists who are theists, indeed who are orthodox Trinitarian Christians.

As an example, I can mention John Polkinghorne. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge, in the same department as Stephen Hawking (although not then in its beautiful new building). In fact Polkinghorne taught me astrophysics, when I was a graduate student of physics at Cambridge; I still remember his graphs of the life cycle of a star. He would never have got that post, nor been elected FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), if he had not been a good scientist! He was also a reader (effectively a part-time assistant pastor) at a local Anglican church; I remember receiving communion from him. At about the time that I left Cambridge, 1978, he also left to train for ordination in the Church of England; he was then in his late 40’s. He ministered in churches for some years before returning to Cambridge as President of Queens’ College.

Polkinghorne has written a number of books on the subject of science and faith. In the one I have in my hand, Science and Christian Belief (SPCK, 1994), based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures for 1993-4, he argues from scientific first principles for an orthodox Trinitarian Christian faith, with a very definitely theistic God. Now I don’t agree with everything that Polkinghorne writes in this book. But he is certainly a counter-example to Dawkins’ claim. And Dawkins must be aware of him. Does he get a mention in Dawkins’ book, I wonder, or is this an embarrassment which is simply ignored?

But does Dawkins in fact have a point that these scientists have “a form of nonsupernatural religion” which is “light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible”? Well, yes, although this concept of a non-interventionist God is not pantheism but deism. As I mentioned before, there has certainly been a tendency towards deism among scientists, and more widely, since the 18th century Enlightenment. Indeed, as I have discussed elsewhere, a form of deism is found even among many Bible believing Christians, whose God is not really “interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, … prayer-answering”, and is “sin-punishing” only outside this world; they too hold to “a form of nonsupernatural religion” at least since the end of the apostolic age. But that is another issue.

Well, as we have seen, Hawking is certainly not a deist but a theist if he is serious in asserting that “God does play dice with the universe,” for this is a personal God intervening in the universe after its creation. Einstein’s denial of this did not make him a deist either, for, according to a BBC programme, “Einstein’s work was underpinned by the idea that the laws of physics were an expression of the divine.” It seems rather that their concept of God is a classical theistic one: God perpetually controls and upholds the universe which he created. But at least for Einstein this seems to have implied that God always works in a way determined by the laws of physics, thus ruling out miracles as well as randomness.

Polkinghorne, although not in the same league as Einstein and Hawking as a scientist, is certainly not a deist. He also goes beyond Einstein’s kind of theism to accept that God can work outside and beyond the laws of physics, for he accepts that at least one miracle took place: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if one miracle is possible, then there is no reason why others should not be. So, while Einstein’s God is not “the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible”, and while Polkinghorne might not identify completely with this rather tendentious description, Polkinghorne’s God is able at least in principle to do all these things, and his religion is not “nonsupernatural”.

And where my former science professor led, I am not afraid to follow. Indeed I would go further, and claim that God does indeed intervene in our world, work miracles, read thoughts, punish sins (but more readily forgive them), and answer prayer. There is nothing in science, understood properly, to say that these things are impossible. But I have seen these things happen, and as a scientist I need to take this as evidence that they are possible, and indeed should be expected to happen today.

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 5: Scholarly Application

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I introduced this series by looking at Al Mohler’s change of mind. In part 2 I described the fundamentalist approach to the Bible, and in part 3 and part 4 I looked at the first of the two main stages of the scholarly approach, exegesis. In this part I am moving on to the second main stage, application.

I will start by continuing the quotation which I started in part 4 from Think Again about Church Leaders (1 Timothy 2:8-3:16) by Bruce Fleming, now from p.88 and concerning “husband of one wife” in 1 Timothy 3:2:

The instructions in the Bible apply to all people in all
cultures. However, in my work as a missionary
professor I came across three different, distinct and
mutually exclusive interpretations of this phrase in 3:2:

In the United States I heard:

No divorced and remarried man may be an
overseer – one may have only “one wife.”

In France I heard:

Bachelors may not be overseers because they
are not “husbands” and do not have “one wife.”

In Africa I heard:

No polygamist may be an overseer because
one must have only “one wife,” not many.

When the original meaning of verse 2 is understood
as a comment on being a “faithful spouse,” it applies to
all marriage situations wherever one may live. Single
persons may be overseers. If married, either husbands
or wives may be overseers, but in married life they must
be a “faithful spouse.”

This is a good illustration of how the same exegesis of a passage, as meaning literally “husband of one wife”, can lead to different applications. Fleming seems to consider that his alternative exegesis, “faithful spouse”, solves the application issue. Well, maybe it does in this particular case, but the problem is not solved in principle.

Study of the principles of how a Bible passage (or any other text) may be applied today is known as hermeneutics. And this is a very complex field of study. All I can do here is to outline some of the issues which relate to Titus 1:6 and its near parallel 1 Timothy 3:2.

The first thing which needs to be established is whether the text has any kind of authority today. Christians accept the New Testament as in some sense the foundation document of the church, but there are many different views on how far it is authoritative today. I take the evangelical position that what is explicitly taught in the Bible is authoritative for Christians today, and that anything in it which is intended to be a normative or binding rule for Christians should be obeyed – although I would not take the stronger position that the Bible is inerrant on all matters of fact. Some scholars argue (and with some good reasons) that the Pastoral Letters (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) were not in fact written by the Apostle Paul and so should be seen as less authoritative than other parts of the New Testament. While I would not be dogmatic about authorship, I accept these books as part of the Bible and so authoritative regardless of authorship. Where in this series I write “Paul”, this should be understood as “Paul or whoever actually wrote this letter”.

It is then necessary to establish whether the rules laid down in these letters are to be understood as normative for the church today. At this point I need to lay to rest one argument. Christians who hold the cessationist position, that the gifts of the Spirit ceased to operate in the church at the end of the apostolic period or when the canon of the Bible was closed, apparently argue that certain commands of the apostle Paul, such as “eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy” (1 Corinthians 14:1, TNIV) and “be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:39, TNIV) no longer apply to the church today. Concerning these passages, Adrian Warnock writes to cessationists:

Why, on the one hand, are we at liberty to ignore Paul’s clear commands to the Corinthians … when, on the other hand, we are expected to accept all of his other commands to local churches as applying to us today? If these two commands do not apply to us, which other of Paul’s commands also do not apply? How are we then meant to decide which of Paul’s commands we are going to obey and which we are going to ignore?

Perhaps someone could argue that Paul didn’t allow women elders while spiritual gifts were in operation, because they were not equipped to direct these gifts, but there is no reason to continue this prohibition in the post-apostolic era. With this kind of argument cessationism can be used to negate any biblical command. But, as I am not a cessationist, I will assume that there is no time limit on any biblical command.

But there is a more difficult issue here. Should Paul’s instructions to Timothy and Titus about elders and overseers be understood as applicable only to the recipients’ specific situations, in Ephesus and Crete respectively? Here the issue becomes very complex. Paul’s original intention in writing may have been only for the specific situations. But the letters were preserved by the church and incorporated into the Bible on the understanding that this was authoritative teaching for all situations, not just the specific one which Paul addressed.

At this point I turn again to Gordon Fee, and to chapter 4 of the excellent book which he wrote together with Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (the link is to the edition which I have, which is not the latest). Fee sets out two rules for proper hermeneutics, in the context of the New Testament letters:

a text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or his or her readers (p.64).

Whenever we share comparable particulars (i.e., similar specific life situations) with the first-century setting, God’s Word to us is the same as his Word to them (p.65).

Fee warns that we must be very careful with extending applications into areas beyond comparable contexts. But he does accept that even where there is no directly comparable modern context there may be a principle which can be applied to

genuinely comparable situations (p.68).

Fee then turns to the problem of cultural relativity. He notes that some Christians do not seem to recognise cultural relativity but

argue for a wholesale adoption of first-century culture as the divine norm (p.71).

My own take on this is that whereas many Muslims take this approach, with the 7th century Arabian culture of Mohammed as the norm, in practice the culture which Christians take as normative is something from the 19th or early 20th century, which they read back into the New Testament. As an example, I would cite John Piper’s Vision of Biblical Complementarity, discussed on the Better Bibles Blog; it seems to me that Piper is not so much Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as recovering Victorian manhood and womanhood. But my position is the same as Fee’s, that

there is no such thing as a divinely ordained culture… the recognition of a degree of cultural relativity is a valid hermeneutical procedure (p.71).

Fee notes that there are basic lists of sins concerning which the New Testament witness is consistent and unambiguous, and that these prohibitions should be considered applicable to all. But in other matters such as women’s ministry and the retention of wealth there is more variation, and this suggests that these are cultural rather than moral matters. He also writes that

The degree to which a New Testament writer agrees with a cultural situation in which there is only one option increases the possibility of the cultural relativity of such a position (p.73).

Thus slavery is accepted in the Bible because it was accepted by all in the cultural context, but this does not imply that it is normative for Christians.

On these principles Fee argues that the prohibition on women teaching in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 may be culturally relative and so applicable only to Timothy’s specific situation (p.75).

But I think it would be much harder for him to argue the same about “husband of one wife” in Titus 1:6 and 1 Timothy 3:2,12. For this condition for church leadership is repeated in several places in relation to differently named church offices and without any restriction to specific contexts. So I would conclude that this phrase is applicable to church leaders today, and without restriction to specific named offices. But it can only be applied today in accordance with its meaning as determined by good exegesis.

As I have previously concluded, Paul’s teaching at this point is not about the gender of church leaders but about their sexual activity. Titus 1:6 did not mean to Paul or Titus that women must not be elders, so it cannot mean the same to us today. What it does mean today is what it meant to Titus, that married male elders must be faithful to their wives – and by extension to genuinely comparable situations, it may also mean that married female elders must be faithful to their husbands, and that single and widowed elders must be celibate. At least, this is the conclusion to which I am led by the scholarly approach to the Bible.

This concludes my discussion of this scholarly approach, but I do have some more, possibly surprising, things to say about approaches to the Bible in part 6: Conclusions.

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 3: Principles of Scholarly Exegesis

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I introduced this series with a look at how Al Mohler became a complementarian, and then in the second part I looked at “the husband of one wife” in Titus 1:6 (RSV) from the fundamentalist approach. I will now continue by looking at how to take a more scholarly approach to this phrase.

At this point I will remind you all that in the 1980s I studied theology to MA level at a school, London Bible College (now London School of Theology), which is committed to an evangelical position but also to a scholarly approach to the Bible. As such it is similar to Al Mohler’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary referred to in Part 1 of this series – or at least to how that seminary was in the 1980s (Mohler also quotes a report that now “Baptist schools increasingly are being ‘forced to sacrifice their intellectual integrity to ensure the flow of funds,'” and I might wonder whether under Mohler’s presidency SBTS has been forced to abandon its former scholarly approach to gender issues and instead teach the intellectually flawed works of Grudem et al about this). Later I taught biblical exegesis at the European Training Programme of Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International. What I write here is based on what I learned at LBC and taught at ETP, as expanded by myself.

A proper scholarly approach to a Bible passage requires two distinct stages. The first, known as exegesis, is to understand what the original author was trying to say to his or her original audience. Only when this has been clearly established should the interpreter move on the next stage, application to a present day situation. In this part of the series I will look only at exegesis, and will move on to application in a future part.

Gordon Fee has defined exegesis as follows:

Exegesis… answers the question, What did the Biblical author mean? It has to do both with what he said (the content itself), and why he said it at any given point (the literary context). Furthermore, exegesis is primarily concerned with intentionality: What did the author intend his original readers to understand? (New Testament Exegesis, p.21)

The essential steps in doing exegesis are first to identify the problems, then to find out the facts about these problems, then to make the right choices. The following step by step procedure for exegesis is adapted from Fee’s New Testament Exegesis:

1. Get an overview of the whole document: survey the literary setting of the passage.

2. Examine the communication situation: survey the historical setting of the whole document:

  • Who is the author?
  • Who are the recipients?
  • What is the relationship between them?
  • Where did the recipients live?
  • What historical situation occasioned this writing?

3. Examine the validity of treating the passage as a unit: try to be sure that the passage you have chosen for exegesis is a genuine, self-contained unit.

4. Study and compare different translations of the passage; in particular compare a fairly literal translation (or the original text itself), with a meaning-based modern translation. Look at other translations to see if there are any major differences of interpretation. Comparing translations in this way will alert you to places in the text where it is possible to interpret the meaning in more than one way, or to further implications or nuances of meaning, which might otherwise be overlooked. Try to re-express the meaning of the passage in your own words.

5. Formulate questions listing the points that need to be investigated. This should include a listing of points where the meaning is unclear to you and of any alternative interpretations.

6. Establish the text: are there any alternative textual readings in the passage which affect the meaning of the text? If so, examine the evidence in support of each alternative reading.

7. Identify words for which word studies need to be made and make these word studies, using help from lexicon, concordance and commentaries.

8. Use the bible itself and commentaries and other reference books to look for help in answering the questions you have listed. Through studying commentaries you may also be alerted to further questions that need to be considered.

9. Analyse relationships between words and between larger units, such as clauses, sentences, paragraphs.

10. Study other passages of scripture which may be relevant because

  • they give teaching on the same topic, or
  • (for the Gospels, Kings/Chronicles etc.) they are parallel passages, or
  • they use similar words or expressions and may throw light on the meaning of that expression.

11. Make a decision on those points where alternative interpretations are possible.

12. Make a new version of the passage in your own language expressing the meaning clearly and explicitly.

As this part is already getting rather long, I will leave it here, and in part 4: Exegesis of Titus 1:6 apply these principles to that verse.

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 2: The Fundamentalist Approach

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In Part 1 of this series I looked at how Al Mohler became a complementarian, and in doing so apparently rejected the scholarly arguments which were dominant at his seminary on the basis of a fundamentalist appeal to “the clear teaching of Scripture“.

In this part I will look at the fundamentalist approach to studying the Bible, and prepare the way for describing what I see as the proper scholarly approach. I will do this in the context of what must have been one of the Bible passages which Mohler studied before becoming complementarian. On this blog I have previously looked at 1 Timothy 2:8-15, and so on this occasion I will look at another passage, in fact just a short phrase, which is translated very literally “the husband of one wife” in RSV, but less literally “faithful to his wife” in TNIV. This phrase is found in Titus 1:6, where it refers to elders, and in 1 Timothy 3:2,12 referring to “bishops” or overseers and to deacons respectively. As Lingamish notes in his original discussion of this phrase, in 1 Timothy 5:9 there is an opposite phrase translated “the wife of one husband” in RSV and “faithful to her husband” in TNIV. I will concentrate on Titus 1:6 because it is here that the phrase is applied to elders or presbyters, and most Christian traditions seem to understand modern pastors or priests as in some equivalent to biblical elders.

So let’s start by looking at Titus 1:6 from the fundamentalist approach to the Bible. On this approach, it is indeed a simple matter. This verse gives some conditions for anyone to be appointed as an elder, and one of these is that an elder must be “the husband of one wife“. As a husband must be male, the implication is very simple: elders must be male. And, from the same approach to 1 Timothy 3:2,12, “bishops” and deacons must also be male. I am sure that it was in passages like this that Carl Henry found “the clear teaching of Scripture” about which he challenged Al Mohler.

It is interesting, however, that not many traditions also take the position, equally clear from this verse on this method of interpretation, that “bishops”, elders and deacons must be married. It is also interesting that this interpretation when applied to deacons contradicts another Bible passage, Romans 16:1, where Paul writes approvingly of Phoebe, a woman deacon. Yes, “deacon” (TNIV) is the correct translation here, not “deaconess” (RSV), nor “servant” (NIV, ESV), for she is described with the same grammatically masculine Greek word used for “deacon” in 1 Timothy.

This illustrates the weakness of the fundamentalist approach to Scripture. It can be highly selective; an interpreter can choose to give great importance to small phrases, even the tiniest grammatical details, which support the position which he or (more rarely!) she supports, while ignoring the main teaching point of the passage in question. It can also be highly ingenious in finding excuses to dismiss other passages which seem to be contradictory – while rejecting similar attempts to dismiss the original interpretation as “deny[ing] the clear teaching of Scripture“. In the case of Romans 16:1, the ingenious attempt to dismiss “the clear teaching of Scripture” that Phoebe was a deacon has even been written into several Bible translations. A further weakness of fundamentalist Bible interpretation, not seen so clearly in this example, is that fundamentalists often take verses entirely out of their original context.

In fact, it is possible to support almost any position on any issue of current controversy in the church with this kind of interpretation of Scripture. (Yes, I could even put together an argument for gay bishops if I wanted to!) An interpreter can take a verse of two out of context, selectively latch on to small points within those verses, and use them as support for any teaching they might choose to promote. They then use their ingenuity to reinterpret any verses which might seem to contradict their position. And when anyone tries to disagree with them, they resort to ad hominem arguments like “how … could [you] possibly deny the clear teaching of Scripture on this question[?]“, sometimes even hinting that someone who doesn’t accept their argument might not be saved.

I wish this were a caricature of fundamentalists, but unfortunately I have seen far too many arguments which are just like this, not just on the blogosphere but even in works which people like Mohler claim to be scholarly.

In part 3: Principles of Scholarly Exegesis I will, by way of contrast, start to look at the proper scholarly way of interpreting the phrase in Titus 1:6.

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 1: Introduction

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I was led to write about this topic because Adrian Warnock linked to an article by Al Mohler explaining how he came to became a complementarian (i.e. someone who believes that God has given men and women different but complementary roles in the church and in the family) and an opponent of women pastors. While Mohler, a leading Southern Baptist, is not well known here in England (I had not heard of him until about a month ago), he has been described as the “reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.” – and put this description in his own personal profile! He also serves on the council of The Council on (so-called) Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, the leading group promoting the complementarian position.

Mohler notes that at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, when he was a student there in the 1980s (he is now its President),

the only position given public prominence in this question was avidly pro-women as pastors. Furthermore, I encountered no scholarly argument for the restriction of the teaching office to men in any seminary forum or format. That argument was simply absent.

He then writes that he changed his mind on this issue as a result of

a comment made to me in personal conversation with Dr. Carl F. H. Henry in the mid-1980s. Walking across the campus, Dr. Henry simply stopped me in my tracks and asked me how, as one who affirms the inerrancy of the Bible, I could possibly deny the clear teaching of Scripture on this question.

I have a serious problem with the implications of Henry’s question. To anyone who has studied this kind of issue in any depth, it is clear that the teaching of the Bible on this is not at all clear. I suspect that Henry had in mind a small number of proof texts which could be called upon, often out of context, to prove for example that women could not be pastors. That is the typical approach of biblical fundamentalists to answering this kind of question. The trouble is, this is not how the Bible should be used.

To give credit to Mohler, he did not simply accept Henry’s position on the basis of a few proof texts. I’m sure he had been taught better than that by the scholars at his seminary. He writes:

I launched myself on a massive research project, reading everything I could get on both sides.

Nevertheless, I can’t help suspecting that the reason why at the seminary he “encountered no scholarly argument for the restriction of the teaching office to men” is that there are no such scholarly arguments, that is to say, no arguments which don’t quickly fall when subjected to proper scholarly scrutiny. Of course Mohler wouldn’t agree, for he writes:

there just wasn’t much written in defense of the complementarian position. Egalitarianism reigned in the literature. … Thankfully, with the rise of groups like CBMW and the influence of scholarly books by Wayne Grudem, John Piper, Mary Kassian, and so many others, this is no longer the case. The complementarian position is now very well served by a body of scholarly literature, for which we should be thankful.

But I have examined some of this “body of scholarly literature”, what has been written on this subject by Grudem and his collaborators, and I cannot accept that it is truly scholarly. Books like The Gender Neutral Bible Controversy, by Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem, are full of elementary misunderstandings of Greek and linguistics, and show every sign of being an attempt to put a scholarly dress on to an argument which is in fact based on fundamenalist proof texting. Instead such issues need to be examined with a proper scholarly approach.

So, what is the difference between the scholarly and fundamentalist approaches to the Bible? Having whetted your appetites, I hope, I will leave that for part 2 of this series: The Fundamentalist Approach (see also part 3: Principles of Scholarly Exegesis; part 4: Exegesis of Titus 1:6; part 5: Scholarly Application; part 6: Conclusions).

Did God kill Jesus?

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Without really intending to, I have got involved in a controversy, which has been raging most recently on Adrian Warnock’s blog, over whether it is right to say that God killed Jesus. See my posting here last Saturday for the beginning of the story. Adrian took things further with his posting Making an Impact Outside the Blogdom of God; it seems that he is proud of making such a negative impact on the non-Christian Duck. That post has generated a long series of comments, including from the well known American Christian leader Ligon Duncan. And Adrian has himself brought in an even bigger gun, John Piper, supposedly in his defence.

The problem is that no one is actually supporting the idea that God killed Jesus. Duncan, Piper and others insist that God sent Jesus, and that it was God’s plan for Jesus to die, and that by Jesus’ death God dealt with the problem of sin. And I agree with all of this, although some of the details are debatable. But none of them, no one except Adrian, can bring themselves to say that God killed Jesus. This is not surprising, for the Bible doesn’t say so, and it is not just the non-Christian Duck who realises that for God to kill his own Son would not have demonstrated his justice (Romans 3:26) but would have been a monstrous injustice.

Some people have suggested that verses such as Isaiah 53:10 and Romans 8:32 imply that God killed Jesus. The latter says no more than John 3:16: the word translated “delivered” or “gave up” does not imply death, for it is also used in Acts 14:26, 15:40, where it is sometimes translated “committed” or “commended”. Isaiah 53:10 is very difficult and unclear in Hebrew; “crush” is metaphorical, and there is no proper justification for the ESV rendering “he has put him to grief”. The closest anyone can come is Isaiah 53:4: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.” (TNIV). Adrian still considers that Jesus was punished by God, but in this verse there is a clear contrast, signalled by “yet”, between this misunderstanding and the true position given in the first part of the verse.

So, Adrian is left alone trying to defend what was probably originally a rhetorical flourish by CJ Mahaney, one which probably he would not really intend to be taken as a proper theological position.