Moore Of The Same

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Paula Fether

I’ve critiqued Russell Moore in the past, but since his followers keep holding him up as a paragon of godliness and scholarship, it doesn’t hurt to remind them of how wrong they are. The most recent I’ve seen is at bWe, where the Moore article is linked in the comments by someone using the name “Robert”. Since there is no link to the commenter he is essentially anonymous and could be anyone… including Moore. The vaunted article is a text document at this link, and I encourage you to read it before reading my critique, as I’ll be using the article’s headings for reference.

I. Introduction

Moore begins with the tired old accusation of bowing to culture. But he, as is typical of male supremacists (MS), conveniently forgets the historical norm of male rule being “the culture”… that is, until one wishes to appeal to the Old Testament’s (OT) reporting of patriarchy as not culture but God’s divine order. So from the first paragraph we’re already seeing a very familiar double standard: if what culture is doing favors males, it is God’s order; if it does not (whether it’s equality or the much rarer favoring of females) then it is the evil culture we must make war against. This is the fallacy of “special pleading”, which in my experience is one of the “pillars” of MS.

The “war on culture” theme continues into the second paragraph, as if the New Testament (NT) ever says such a thing. That is, we never see in Acts, the Letters, or even the Gospels a mandate for Christians to fight culture. Jesus never said a thing about slavery being bad (which was one of the arguments used to say it was God’s divine order in America’s past, an example of argument from silence), or pedophilia, or bestiality, or many other evils including MS. Neither did anyone in the NT promote such a war, but instead focused on changing the world one convert at a time. It isn’t “culture” we are to be fighting, but Satan, who laughs at how easily we’ve been turned from our real enemy.

II. Evangelical Theology and the Eclipse of Biblical Patriarchy

The title alone makes some bold assumptions: that something called “Biblical Patriarchy” has been eclipsed, and that patriarchy/male supremacism (PMS) is somehow “Biblical”. We’ll watch to see whether those assumptions are supported.

The first paragraph cites a study purporting to have analyzed “how evangelical men actually think and live”. I don’t have the time or inclination to go read the study so I’ll take Moore’s assessment, since this is all about him. And the first statement is that “the most conservative and evangelical households were also the ‘softest’ in terms of familial harmony…”. So far we’ve only seen what all evangelicals apparently do, not what PMS evangelicals do, so this statement gives no preference to the PMS cause.

The second paragraph has Moore dissing secular university researchers as a group. No one would dispute the fact that researchers can be biased or incompetent, but secular researchers are no more prone to this than evangelicals, especially on a hot-button topic like women in Christianity. I’m quite sure that Moore would not cite any evangelical study that disagrees with his foregone conclusions, so we can expect that either this one does, or Moore either misquotes it or misunderstands it. Citing studies from a variety of researchers would be ideal, but of course it isn’t practical to do so here. So take Moore’s interpretation of this study as at best one person’s opinion of it.

As a lifelong evangelical myself, I can speak with some authority on “what evangelicals really think and how they live”. But I find a statement by Moore in this paragraph very revealing: “It is not akin to discovering that nineteenth-century slaveholders had less racist attitudes than northern abolitionists.” Think about that: is it even possible for any slaveholder not to be racist (keeping in mind we’re talking American slavery of blacks)? While some northerners may have had supremacist attitudes, it is only the south that institutionalized it into something “good” and God’s divine order. That is, while some individuals in the north believed whites to be superior to blacks, the south’s consensus, by law, was that this was how God created people and ordered society; see Sound Familiar.

But then Moore says this: “[Wilcox, the researcher] shows that the ‘softness’ of evangelical fathers is a result of patriarchy, not an aberration from it. When men see themselves as head over their households, they feel the weight of leadership— a weight that expresses itself in devotion to their little platoons of the home”. PMS is thus allegedly shown by one researcher’s study (or Moore’s interpretation of the same) to be the way to familial harmony, because the men “feel the weight” of their supremacy and the need to dispense it benevolently. The reader is being manipulated into pitying these poor, weighed-down “platoon leaders”. Such a burden, being responsible for the righteousness or sinfulness of others! Yet obviously there is not one shred of NT support for any “platoon leaders”; in fact, Jesus expressly told His disciples that instead of jockeying for preeminence they must not “lord over”, which PMS tries to make equivalent to benevolent lording over. So PMS usurps a place foreign to the kingdom of God and then wants to be pitied and respected– and above all, obeyed– for it!

This feeble argument comes not from scripture but from culture; there isn’t a country in all of history, besides relatively recently in the west, when men didn’t believe that peace in the home and society began with a proper pecking order, which regardless of the variations always had women at the very bottom. But the irony is deep here: Moore and his researcher are appealing to culture to make their case! “What people do” is hardly proof of what God wants, but as I said in my opening paragraph PMS operates on a double standard. If for example we cite the many studies which show that an imbalance of power in a marriage is a leading cause of domestic violence, and that evangelicals in this situation show no advantage or “softening”, PMS will still reject it as “bowing to culture”. But when we look at scripture we see a complete overturning of such pecking orders; if there is any such thing at all, it is upside down. The greatest in the kingdom of heaven will be the lowest slaves, the ones who don’t vie for position or try to make this ambition a case of “divine order and heavy burden to bear”. And as I’ve said before, nobody fights for a humble position. The fact that PMS forbids half the human race from its “humble” position exposes it as having nothing at all to do with humility, but only with power.

The next paragraph quotes Wilcox on what typical Father’s Day sermons are about and how church programs “endow fatherhood with ‘transcendental meaning’”. But wait a minute: isn’t he supposed to be only observing how evangelicals live, and not what they hear in church? Moore goes on to claim that this is based in scripture, and Wilcox adds that “human fatherhood is reflective of divine fatherhood”. But where is the chapter and verse to back up these claims? Then Wilcox appeals to James Dobson of “Focus On the Family”, hardly an unbiased source. But why is Wilcox reading Dobson instead of observing actual families, and from a wide spectrum of evangelicalism? If Wilcox is the authority being cited by Moore, then why is Wilcox citing Dobson? It seems at this point we have a case of authorities of a particular bias appealing to each other. Then we see statements about parental authority, but this again is not supportive of paternal authority. Who disputes that both parents have authority over their own children? How does this argue for father ruling over mother?

Citing a non-flattering source in an attempt to appear balanced, Moore quotes a sociologist named Smith that “American evangelicals speak complementarian rhetoric and live egalitarian lives”. Isn’t this a telling rebuttal to PMS, showing that it simply does not work in real life? Real people, even evangelicals, know that it takes an equal balance of power between husband and wife to make a marriage work and to raise emotionally and spiritually healthy children. Some give lip service to PMS but their own experience shows how bankrupt that theology is.

This is seen by Moore as a very bad thing, but not because it destroys his theory. He sees it instead as evil “prevailing cultural notions of feminism”. Here again we have a legitimate, Biblical appeal to “not so among you” put on the same level as radical, liberal “feminazis” who hate men and want to destroy the family. Moore is so afraid of losing preeminence that he simply cannot tolerate the slightest elevation of women. Every argument that raises women up, no matter how apologetic and polite, threatens the male power base and must be stopped at all costs. That is the distinct impression one gets when reading PMS arguments.

Of course, no PMS diatribe would be complete without whining over the number of women working outside the home. The woman of Proverbs 31 is forgotten and the realities of economics are ignored. But in a jaw-dropping display of narcissism, Moore laments this not so much for the alleged ill effect a dual-income family may have on children, but its effect on “the headship of the husband himself” (p. 571)! As for his rhetorical question, “How does the husband maintain a notion of headship when he is dependent on his wife to provide for the family?”, let us have him ask his own followers and compatriots of PMS: what indeed happens to “male headship” if the man is disabled or dies? If the laws of our land have the wife legally responsible for all debts and she has been kept out of the workforce for perhaps decades, how is she to suddenly become the breadwinner for herself and her children? Is she back under her father, who may not be alive anymore, or her brother if she had one and he can support her and her kids? If she works she feels guilty for being the “head”, and if she doesn’t she is at the mercy of relatives, if she has any male ones. And if PMS will make exceptions in such circumstances, then where is the Biblical permission to do so? Are PMSers going to appeal to “common sense” now, while denying this right to egalitarians? Here again we see that PMS does not work in real life.

I noted with great amusement the statement on p. 571 where Moore describes a woman sending her husband to Promise Keepers “as though she were a mother sending her grade-school son off to summer youth camp”. It’s amusing because when egals argue that PMS treats women as perpetual children, we are accused of being harsh and insulting to comp women– as if we are the ones who treat them as such and call it God’s divine order! Yet Moore reserves the privilege of seeing women leading men as treating them like children. There’s that double standard again, and it’s even more glaring when he holds up Beth Moore (coincidence of last names here?) as an example of “seeing a woman in the pulpit” being familiar to evangelicals. So she’s allowed to stand behind The Sacred Desk without violating God’s divine order, but no other women can? And it’s wrong for a woman to send her husband to PK but not to write books or give seminars? How can anyone make sense of such a twisted, impractical, and unreasonable theology?

But as a movie line puts it, “Reason’s got nothing to do with it”, for we see Moore on p. 572 saying “We must instead relate male headship to the whole of the gospel.” He is unashamedly making “male headship”, a term absent from the pages of scripture, a non-negotiable plank in the gospel itself. It isn’t Christianity that Moore is worried about, but specifically “complementarian Christianity”. And then we see a quote I mentioned in my 2008 article Straw Man Burning: “concessions to the therapeutic and consumerist impulses of American culture”. Then he quotes a woman scholar (!!?) named Pamela Cochran as blaming egal for attacking Biblical inerrancy in order to “make the feminist project fly”, and she essentially calls egals liars for saying we only appeal to scripture. So not only are egals lumped in with radical secular feminists, but also with “liberals” destroying the SBC’s version of Christianity.

Then Moore frames the debate as between societal norms and “tradition” instead of scripture. But if “tradition” is wrong and culture is wrong, to what does Moore appeal? Again the double standard: “tradition” is the rewritten history of the good old days when men ruled and women drooled, so he defines “tradition” to suit his own view and makes culture the enemy and threat to the idyllic yesteryear of his imagination. And again the irony: “tradition” is simply the “cultural norm” of the past. Moore, and all PMS, argues in circles.

III. Evangelical Theology and the Recovery of Biblical Patriarchy

Now we come to Moore’s solution to this great and terrible problem of women thinking they are fully-grown humans in the image of God. Moore fears this “encroachment” on his divine headship and must mount a counterattack. (Yes, I’m getting snarky now, but Moore makes it so hard to resist.) He quotes C. S. Lewis (ignoring Lewis’ later change of mind on this topic): “C. S. Lewis included male headship among the doctrines he considered to be part of “mere Christianity,” precisely because male headship has been asserted and assumed by the Christian church with virtual unanimity from the first century until the rise of contemporary feminism.” Not only was Lewis ignorant of the historical reality of Christian women in leadership in the first century, but again this is an appeal to culture.

Yet if Moore is laying out a strategy to repel the evil monster, why is he still looking backwards? He does get around to it in the next paragraph though, and makes a bold claim which his sycophants deny whenever we quote him: “Christianity is undergirded by a vision of patriarchy”. His first line of attack is to proclaim this loudly and often so as to drown out the voice of egalitarianism. He had said in the previous paragraph that debates over scripture were not working, and were giving the impression that PMS is something less than the gospel itself. So he advocates giving up on that and getting to the very heart of what he calls the gospel. We need to remember this and throw it in PMS faces every time they want to get to scripture: their man Moore says it’s bad strategy. What this says to us egals, however, is that PMS lost the debate on scripture; they have no leg to stand on from the Bible so they lean completely on the culture of some time they liked from the past. Sounds just like Islam.

But he already knows that one of the weaknesses of the PMS gospel is its inconsistency: it can’t come to a consensus on exactly where the limits of women’s permissions lie (there’s that treatment as children again). So what does Moore do? Appeal to culture. And if it’s a culture in the Bible and God doesn’t say it’s wrong, then it counts as God’s sanction, right? Wrong; that’s an argument from silence. If God approved of patriarchy then by the same argument He also approved of polygamy, a “tradition” that was never removed in the NT except for elders. God even gave instructions on how to treat slaves, which parallel instructions on how to treat women. Yet somehow in the twisted wreckage called PMS theology, slavery and polygamy can be jettisoned but patriarchy is absolutely divine. If Moore wants to appeal to how people did things in the OT, then he can’t pick and choose which things God sanctioned.

I’m not sure whether he does this out of ignorance or utter blindness, but to cite C. J. Mahaney’s “sovereign grace network” as an example of comp “vitality” is very good for the egal cause, because anyone who knows what Mahaney and SG is about describes it as a cult from which escapees are badly damaged. Even in his hit parade of PMS bastions on p. 574 he admits lack of uniformity but admires “directness”, as if the latter covers over the former. Regardless of how divided the PMS community may be over women’s roles, the important thing to Moore is that they are forceful about it. And then the followers of such men wonder why we have a problem with their nasty condescending attitude. Here it is being taught as a strategy for repelling egal! Now we know. It reminds me of the lesson of 1 Kings 12, where Solomon’s successor Rehoboam rejected his father’s advisors’ advice to be kind to the people, and instead listened to his peers’ advice to be harsh and overpowering. The lesson is that heavy-handed rule, not egalitarianism, is what causes rebellion. Moore is doing exactly what scripture warns us not to do.

Then Moore appeals to the masculine terms used to describe God, and it is here that he introduces the old Arian heresy of a God of three wills instead of the real Trinity. Quoting Wilcox: “God the Father stands at its Trinitarian core”. If the Father rules over the Son who rules over the Spirit, then they are not one God but three; this is Tritheism, not Trinitarianism. Whether the “lesser two” comply or not is irrelevant; the very act of compliance is an act of a separate will. If dismembering the very God we worship is necessary to prop up PMS, it is defeated forever as the heresy it was recognized to be in the days of Arius and Athanasius. Moore would deny the Trinity in order to keep his place. He even dismisses egal scholars such as Kevin Giles as engaging in “Trinitarian bungee-jumping” (quoting Bruce Ware and Peter Schemm), and claim that their heresy is the “orthodox” view even though it is PMS’ ESS teaching that is new. But rewriting church history cannot save the sinking ship of PMS unless we all shut off our minds and eyes.

Moore goes on to extol the virtues of half the human race ruling over the other half with all the familiar citations of male-centric terminology in the Bible. But as all other PMS teachers, he ignores God’s indication of His ideal whenever He does intervene in history: Cain over Abel, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, David over 7 older brothers, etc. Does scripture not say that God shames the wise by the foolish and the strong by the weak (1 Cor. 1:26-29)? Did Jesus not say that the first shall be last (Mt. 19:30), and that those who exalt themselves will be humbled (Luke 14:11)? Then where is this divine mandate for patriarchy? And where is the excuse for why the Savior could only come from “the seed of the woman”? Eve was greatly honored in this, and it says something profound about the difference between her sin and Adam’s, and about what being a “help” would ultimately mean.

As we mercifully approach the end of the screed, we see another case of guilt by association: egals are lumped in with Open Theists. It seems that Moore will stoop to any depth in order to demonize that which threatens his privilege due to his flesh. Then it’s on to familiar slippery slope argumentation, and of course more irony: egals are a slippery slope to liberalism but somehow PMS is not a slippery slope to domestic abuse. Yet there is no denying not only this glaring double standard but also the fact that “Christian” men who abuse their wives cite PMS teachings to justify it. No egal teaching can be used to sanction domestic abuse, while PMS must continually dance and “bungee-jump” to put fine print on their teachings of imbalance of power. Moore cries “straw man” against this argument, but burns one of his own by presuming egals don’t accept the penal/substitutionary atonement of Christ.

In a classic display of Orwellian doublespeak, Moore trots out the old “headship isn’t about male privilege” line– all evidence (and the whole paper so far) to the contrary. If this isn’t about male privilege, then what is Moore afraid of? What does PMS fear losing? And what is it about lack of privilege that women simply must not have? What is “final say” if not male privilege? And if PMS teaching does not empower wife abuse, then why do they have to work so hard to say they don’t condone it?

Next Moore practically blames all the ills of Western society on egal alone: casual sex, divorce, homosexuality, and abortion. His libelous rant shows the “fruit” of any teaching that cares more about hierarchy than love or unity of spirit. But then, after calling egals unbelievers in thinly-veiled terms, he hardly considers us as people he needs to get along with. Yet if we are lost, then where is the love for the lost that is shown to others, even atheists? He even blames egals for those who abuse male authority!

No Russell, egals aren’t winning the debate because he-men have gone “soft”, but because we really do have stronger arguments– which isn’t too hard after we’ve seen the arguments for PMS. Go ahead and be like Rehoboam, it’ll make our job easier.

An Example of CBMW Dogma

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Paula Fether

At this link you will find what CBMW views as a summary of the complementarian/egalitarian debate. Here is my analysis.

The summary of the egal. position seems fair enough, if over-simplified. But the summary of the comp. position seems to have been written as though they forgot what they just said about the egal position. Hopefully they’re only reciting the positions and not issuing the comp side as the rebuttal. We’ll see.

Under I-A they start off with the adjectives: ” the male was given the responsibility of loving authority over the female, and the female was to offer willing, glad-hearted and submissive assistance to the man”. Take away the over-used adjectives and the teaching is much clearer: in spite of there being scriptural grounding for full equality before sin, the woman is asserted to be the underling of the man. They engage in circular reasoning by first presuming that Gen. 2 “bears out” different “expressions” of humanity (no specific verses are cited, since none exist), then presuming that this assertion is what Paul would later read there as well. They change the true complementarity of male and female (like the left and right hands) into the hierarchy of dominance and submission, which somehow is made legitimate by flowery adjectives alone.

Under I-B they build upon this presumption unfounded in scripture and say it is this hierarchy that was distorted: no longer would the man rule benevolently, and no longer would the woman obey sweetly. They repeat their assertion that God gave the male authority over the female before sin, and even say that his ruling over her is good if it’s “rightfully-corrective”. This makes God the one saying that women are like children who never grow up and must have a male authority over them.

Under I-C they naturally take our redemption through Christ, not as restoring the full equality of male and female, but as restoring the happy hierarchy of the superior and kind male over the inferior and happily serving female. They make sure to introduce their invented term “headship” to put a convenient label on this presumption, and repeat that this is what Christ “restored”. Thus their position is that the Fall turned a good hierarchy bad, not that it introduced hierarchy in place of equality. By thus framing the debate in baseless assertions, all discussion built from this point will be fruitless.

Under II-A-1 they admit that scripture says both male and female were to rule over creation together, not each other. Yet they try to shoehorn male preeminence in here anyway, by hinting that since scripture is silent about the nature of that rule, then we have to allow that differences existed. But at best this is an argument from silence. The burden of proof is on the comp position to justify their wish to qualify this rule and segregate it along fleshly lines. They are hoping that all one needs to overlay one’s desired view upon scripture is a technical possibility born of silence.

Under II-A-2 they leave out the context of Gal. 3:28 and imply that it must only refer to how people are saved. But even without context we have the proof here in this verse: it speaks of those who are already in Christ, not how to get there. And among those who are already in Christ, there is to be no hierarchy of any kind (in keeping with Jesus’ “not so among you”), and certainly none based on race, class, or biological gender. Yet it is well known that when they come to 1 Tim. 2:15, suddenly salvation really is different for only women: we must “play our role” in order to be saved.

Under II-A-3 they agree that spiritual gifts are not given along “pink” and “blue” lines, but once again they argue from silence: the scripture doesn’t specify exactly how those gifts are to be used. But even within this artificial constraint we can see that women are not excluded from even “pastor” and “prophet” gifts. But as Jesus said, “Wisdom is proved right by her children”, and these comps will say that women can prophesy to other women. Yet the rebuttal will nip this claim in the bud: Paul expressly stated that women can prophesy “in the church”.

Under II-A-4 they admit that women are to be honored as co-heirs. But they still bypass the force of the statement: this is not only about abuse but about an unqualified honor; there are no restrictions on the scope of this statement. It should hardly need to be said that if one considers another adult human being his inferior for life, based upon nothing but genetics, this is the opposite of honor. Elsewhere scripture tells us all to “esteem [honor] others as better than ourselves”, and “love does not demand its own way”, and “treat others as you wish they’d treat you”. Do men really wish women would treat them as underlings, whether or not this treatment is benevolent?

Under II-B-1 they claim at least four supports for their presumption of male rule over female: (1)creation order, (2)was apparently forgotten, (3)Eve as “helper”, and (4)Adam naming Eve.

(1) If order indicates superiority, then Man was under the authority of the animals. If reverse order indicates superiority, then male was under the authority of female. If they insist upon an exception just in the case between humans, they commit the fallacy of “special pleading”. Not one scripture ever cites order as an indication of priority in God’s eyes, and in such cases as Isaac and Ishmael, David and his older brothers, and many others, we see a clear pattern of God uplifting the lowly— which is to say, God goes against society’s traditions. And again, it is circular reasoning to presume that this alleged rank by chronology is what Paul was reading in Genesis.

In lieu of the omitted point (2), we can note their reliance once again on implication: that Adam was allegedly told by God to instruct Eve. This has absolutely no grounding in scripture; it is another argument from silence. No one denies that Adam was to guard (not merely “keep”) the garden, and the comps here admit that Adam failed to guard Eve from temptation. But by His actions in confronting them afterwards, God indicates that Eve was held responsible for her own sin, and Adam was never rebuked on her behalf. Otherwise, why the alleged curse upon Eve? By comp logic the curse should have all been on Adam alone, were he the federal head of Eve.

(3) They admit that “helper” is used not only of Eve but also of God, but they try and put words in Paul’s mouth by ripping a verse out of context. That context clearly concludes with “but all come from God” as an unmistakable refutation of any supposed hierarchy by virtue of chronology. In addition, the words “a sign of” are not even implied in the Greek, and the authority mentioned there is the woman’s. It is she, not a man or the church, who has authority over her own head and must decide whether or not to cover it. Paul had just explained the dilemma facing believing women: if she did not cover she might, depending upon the society, be considered having loose morals and thus bring reproach upon the faith. But as the glory of another, she should not cover; this was the point Paul was making about glory.

(4) Naming, like chronology, is never cited in scripture as an act of authority, and we should note that the woman Hagar named God as “the one who sees me” (Gen. 16:13). Even in the case of parents naming their children, this is more an act of legality than authority, and the child will grow up and no longer be under parental authority. This assertion is completely groundless, both scripturally and logically. The comp position continually presents not scripture but it’s presumptions and interpretations as justification for its views.

Under II-B-2 they say that since Adam was confronted first though he technically sinned second, that this must indicate his authority over her. Here again we have another implication that scripture never confirms. They also skip over the scripture that says “their eyes were opened” after they both sinned, and ignore the fact that God confronts Eve separately for her own sin. And they ignore the common rhetorical device known as a “chiasm”, where an argument is built up to its central point and then traced back in reverse order. The order in Gen. 3 is man-woman-serpent-woman-man, so we look for the central point in the middle where God address the serpent, not at the beginning where He addresses the man.

With this in mind, we also note that while God uses the phrase “Because you have done this” to both the man and the serpent, He never says any such words to Eve. She was “beguiled” into sinning, while Adam sinned with his eyes wide open and “listened to the voice of his wife” as she was tempted. But remember that God had only said that one thing would change if they ate the fruit: they would “die”. That this “death” was not spiritual but physical (unless we consider death as a broken relationship, common in the ancient culture) is indicated by what would have been the antidote for this death: the Tree of Life. And a close look at the Hebrew tells us that only the male was forbidden to eat of it, and only the male was responsible for the ground being cursed, because only the male was taken from it. Why this added penalty? Because Adam extended his sin in a way that Eve did not: he blamed God for giving him Eve!

Another important point is that God never ordered Eve to leave the garden with Adam, and only predicted that she would choose to do so. He also told her of the consequences of that choice: that Adam would rule over her. He did not say that Adam would rule harshly or more effectively; this rule was in the future and depended upon Eve’s choice. So this rule did not yet exist, and thus was not part of creation before sin.

Under II-B-3 they continue to build upon their interpretations and presumptions to claim that sin only made the hierarchy bad, instead of beginning any hierarchy at all. They speak of “the curse of the woman” but no such curse exists; not even Adam was cursed, but only the ground from which he alone was taken. They also blame Eve for Adam having to “assert his rule over her” and appeal to the matter of Cain to support it. But sin, unlike woman, is an evil entity, and in any case it desired the man himself, not some alleged rank or rule over others. Clearly Eve would “turn toward” her husband and follow him out of the garden instead of remaining with God, and this was a terrible blunder— one comps today wish all women would commit. They clearly show their belief here that men’s sin, whether by abuse or passivity, is women’s fault.

Under II-B-4 they again presume Paul’s reasons for citing Genesis, they again repeat their addition to scripture (“a sign of”), they repeat their presumption that a woman is only a “helper” to men, and they still ignore “but all come from God”. And if we follow their pronouncement that these principles are timeless because of Paul’s appeal to Genesis, then a wrong understanding of why Paul appealed to it will perpetuate a timeless error.

Under II-B-5 they admit that Paul’s seeming prohibition on women speaking cannot be taken by the “plain reading” view, but they also admit that they can’t make up their minds about what Paul actually teaches here. Some say Paul must mean women can’t have authority in a “church” setting (whatever that is— ref. “where two or three are gathered”), while others say he must mean women can’t “function in the elder role of judging prophecies”. The latter is itself a disputed presumption; the context is not clear on who the “others” are, and there is nothing to indicate that prophets must play an “elder role”.

Under II-B-6 they gloss over the Greek to change “a woman” to “all women”, ignore the rare words “authentein” and “teknogonias”, and disregard the context of the letter which is all about false teaching. We’ve already addressed the other arguments in this point.

Under II-B-7 they state that a wife is to obey her husband as she obeys the Lord, but how can anyone not admit that this is idolatry? The sentence fragment “wives to your own husbands as to the Lord” has no verb but gets it from the general principle for all believers in the verse before it: submit to one another. They also presume the much later meaning “boss” in the word “head” and then read this presumed authority into the text. And if one reads the context, it is never the divinity of Christ that any believer should model, but the love and humility of Christ. Paul’s mentioning of all that Christ did for the church is simply to illustrate the extent of His love for her, not to say males should be little gods to females. “Not so among you…”

Under II-B-8 they use the traditional “weaker vessel” interpretation of somehow implying that women are not only weaker physically but also spiritually and emotionally. But the context indicates the social issue of women being utterly dependent upon men for support; the mentioning of “co-heirs” brings this out. So Peter is talking about the woman’s limited ability for self-support and thus her vulnerability in that society. The Christian husband is to treat her not as society told him but as his equal. This is not at all about a man having a God-given right of rule which he is to use as a benevolent dictator. And if the man has responsibility for the woman, what can we deduce from the incident of Ananias and Sapphira?

Parents are temporarily responsible for their children, and secular authorities are not responsible for any citizen that moves to another country. But the person who claims rule over another adult for life is claiming superiority of being and essence. It is a logical impossibility for anyone to be “equal in essence, but unequal in function” for life. So by saying the husband is responsible for his wife for life, they are saying she is not his equal in being. No amount of adjectives or excuses can negate this fact.

Under II-B-9 they commit the Arian heresy: that Jesus is a lesser god. This is the logical conclusion to which we are forced if there is permanent hierarchy in the Trinity. And how is it even possible to map three to two? Where is the Holy Spirit in this analogy? And while scripture maps the relationship between Christ and the church to husband and wife, it never maps it to father/son. To do so is to either make the husband/wife relationship incestuous, or to make the Father and Son two separate gods of two separate wills, since you can’t have one will submitting to itself. And I have elsewhere delineated the fact that the alleged “roles” of the Persons of the Trinity overlap significantly; they are not clearly drawn. This is an absolutely cultic error.

Under II-C they begin by presenting their groundless assertion as scriptural fact: that “sin has produced in woman an illegitimate desire to usurp the rightful authority God gave to man”, and add that God is seen in OT history to favor “male-headship”. But as we’ve already seen, God instead has shown a consistent pattern of doing just the opposite. And if we argue that God’s issuing of rules for how Israel should regulate slavery do not amount to divine sanction of slavery, then we must also argue that God’s issuing of rules concerning women do not amount to divine sanction of society’s restrictions upon women.

Under II-C-1 they continue to walk in this presumption and ignore God’s obvious preference for those society deems the least important.

Under II-C-2 they admit that Jesus continued this habit God showed in the OT, but can only cite the 12 apostles’ maleness to claim, again by silence, that Jesus promoted “male headship”. Yet they forget that the 12 were mapped to the tribes of Israel, and that this group of 12 was never perpetuated in the church; never do we see any instructions as to the need for 12, much less that they be male— or Jewish, or non-English speaking. It is fallacious to only pick one quality as eternally binding.

Under II-C-3 they simply repeat their earlier interpretations, but add the famous “husband of one wife” argument. Again we appeal to the context, which is not about the sex or ethnicity or class of the elder, but character. It hardly needed to be said that women in that time were expected to remain faithful to one husband, while men were expected to have many courtesans. So only the men needed to be told about the need for faithfulness to one wife. We should also note Paul’s use of “likewise” whenever he talks specifically about women, and that his need to address women separately was more likely due to the men not thinking women would be held to the same standards. The comp interpretation is hardly as “obvious” as they claim.

Under II-C-4 they ignore the fact that the husband is never called the head of the family, but only of his wife, and that head meant “source” and not “boss”. In fact, it is the wife who is called the “house despot” in 1 Tim. 5:14, and there is no fine print exempting the husband from her rule. As for the ref. to 1 Peter 3, please see my article on who exactly is to do the fearing.

Under III-A they begin their opinion of the rebuttals to the comp position by trying to compare the egal teaching against permanent hierarchy between adult believers with the temporary heirarchy between parents and children or employers and employees; this is the old “apples and oranges” fallacy. They cannot seem to distinguish between matters of being or essence and matters of society. Again, children can grow up, citizens can move away, employees can start their own companies, but women cannot stop being what they are, so this is a matter of being or essence, not “role”. They also perpetuate the Arian heresy by making Jesus “eternally subordinate” to the Father, regardless of scriptures such as Phil. 2:5-11 which distinguish between Jesus’s divinity and humanity.

Under III-B they can only appeal to their circular argument: that Paul must have had hierarchy in mind when he appealed to Genesis. But to boldly claim as they do that “the complementarian stands with Scripture’s interpretation of itself on this issue” is to slam the door on the whole debate, because they assert their interpretation as scripture. This is not only conceited but blasphemous. They cannot assert the point of debate as a “given” in the arguments. One wonders why they bother pretending to analyze the debate at all.

Under III-C they claim that there was in fact a curse on Eve and ignore the fact that God never told Adam he had to rule better, along with other points already made above.

Under III-D they attempt a revisionist historical view of the OT, but add that the apostleship of Junia is “highly disputed”. This is only the case if one is ignorant of the Greek scholarship on Rom. 16:7; please see Epp’s Junia, the First Woman Apostle for more detail. And as for their claim that Deborah was God’s last resort in Israel at the time, they should be aware that God never says or implies such a thing. Here we have explicit divine sanction of a woman as a national leader with authority, and the comps dismiss it as the opposite. The only “difficulty” here is the desperate attempt to deny what God has done, citing non-existent “overwhelming evidence to the contrary”.

Under III-E they flatly deny that “head” meant “source”, in spite of much evidence to the contrary; see this series of articles. Their interpretation of 1 Cor. 11:3 is a good example of their misinterpretation: they ignore that the word “God” is NOT the same as “Father”. The Trinity was the source of the incarnate Christ. And if this is hierarchy by order, Paul certainly could have made it clearer by saying God-Christ-male-female.

The article ends abruptly with a simple claim that their made-up word “headship” is the very Word of God on the matter. If they truly do appeal to “lexical, exegetical, and contextual reasons”, let them demonstrate this by dropping their presuppositions and just letting scripture speak, before forming any conclusions. This they claim but have not demonstrated at all.

MacArthur and the Trinity

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Paula Fether

A friend alerted me to the article Reexamining the Eternal Sonship of Christ by John MacArthur, and I felt the need to comment. At this time I don’t see any date stamp on it so I don’t know when it was written [EDIT: apparently 1999; see near end of document]. But while I had hoped this would denote a change in today’s relentless drive to demote Jesus, the more I studied it the more disappointed I became. It’s commendable for him to re-examine his beliefs, but I think he makes several errors in his argument.

I want to state publicly that I have abandoned the doctrine of “incarnational sonship.” Careful study and reflection have brought me to understand that Scripture does indeed present the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son as an eternal Father-Son relationship. I no longer regard Christ’s sonship as a role He assumed in His incarnation.

In order to make “You are my Son, this day have I begotten you” mean something other than “incarnational sonship”, it has to be allegorized and the meanings of ‘today’ and ‘begotten’ have to be changed to something entirely new. He knows the normal meanings as he used them in his former view:

“Begetting” normally speaks of a person’s origin. Moreover, sons are generally subordinate to their fathers. I therefore found it difficult to see how an eternal Father-Son relationship could be compatible with perfect equality and eternality among the Persons of the Trinity. “Sonship,” I concluded, bespeaks the place of voluntary submission to which Christ condescended at His incarnation (cf. Phil. 2:5-8; John 5:19).

“Begetting” still speaks of a person’s origin; this has not changed. Its metaphorical use would only apply if we were to say something like “The new law begat a great increase in bureaucracy”, yet even then the begetting refers to causation, not some abstract philosophical concept. As for the subordination of sons to fathers, this is a temporary situation. Though the father/son relationship will always exist, the authority will not; when the son grows up he is no longer under his father’s authority, and he will then truly be his equal.

But his former view’s flaw was not in a clash between inequality and eternity, but in failing to recognize two vital points: that a father must precede his son in time, and that a son is only temporarily under his father’s authority. Further, he neglects to address the fact that Jesus at His incarnation became both God and Man, and it is His humanity that was subservient to the Father, never His divinity. So there is no conflict at all in the scriptures; Jesus took on humanity at a point in time, and this humanity was unequal to divinity. Therefore MacArthur has set out to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist.

1. I am now convinced that the title “Son of God” when applied to Christ in Scripture always speaks of His essential deity and absolute equality with God, not His voluntary subordination. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time understood this perfectly. John 5:18 says they sought the death penalty against Jesus, charging Him with blasphemy “because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.”
…
If Jesus’ sonship signifies His deity and utter equality with the Father, it cannot be a title that pertains only to His incarnation. In fact, the main gist of what is meant by “sonship” (and certainly this would include Jesus’ divine essence) must pertain to the eternal attributes of Christ, not merely the humanity He assumed.

The Jewish leaders were looking at a man, who they presumed was not also God; this is what they objected to. The reason the Son could be equal to the Father is because Jesus was also God. We should also note that the Hebrew expression “son of”, such as in “a son of Israel”, means “one in the group”, e.g. an Israelite. Thus Jesus’ titles “Son of God” and “Son of Man” identify Him as both divine and human, that is, One of the class “God” and One of the class “man”. So John 5:18 does not force us to replace one with the other at all, but instead shows the Jews’ lack of understanding and faith. Yes, Jesus was saying “I am God”, but He was not saying “I was always the Son”; MacArthur’s argument is a non-sequitur.

2. It is now my conviction that the begetting spoken of in Psalm 2 and Hebrews 1 is not an event that takes place in time. Even though at first glance Scripture seems to employ terminology with temporal overtones (“this day have I begotten thee”), the context of Psalm 2:7 seems clearly to be a reference to the eternal decree of God. It is reasonable to conclude that the begetting spoken of there is also something that pertains to eternity rather than a point in time. The temporal language should therefore be understood as figurative, not literal.

Here is a case of redefinition of scripture that otherwise would not fit the theory being promoted; it is an example of eisegesis. That is, because he misunderstood the fact that one aspect of the nature of Jesus is eternal and divine while the other was begotten and human, he was forced to impose a novel interpretation on scriptures that clearly oppose this view, his assertion in the article that “most theologians recognize this” notwithstanding. What is apparent “at first glance” has to be reinterpreted to fit, and that means ignoring the meanings of the words in their context. Is everything else in that context subject to redefinition, such as “I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill” and “you will rule them with an iron scepter”? Keep in mind that these metaphors point to realities: God WILL install His King on Zion, and Jesus WILL rule absolutely. Likewise, Jesus WAS incarnated at a point in time and BECAME the “Son” at that moment. The metaphor is intended to convey to us a change in relationship that applied to Jesus’ humanity. Where is this alleged “eternal decree”? How does any “begetting” happen in eternity past? The word means that someone or something was not, and then was. To attribute this to God is blasphemy! Yet in spite of understanding this, MacArthur continues to assert this new meaning:

To say that Christ is “begotten” is itself a difficult concept. Within the realm of creation, the term “begotten” speaks of the origin of one’s offspring. The begetting of a son denotes his conception–the point at which he comes into being. Some thus assume that “only begotten” refers to the conception of the human Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary. Yet Matthew 1:20 attributes the conception of the incarnate Christ to the Holy Spirit, not to God the Father. The begetting referred to in Psalm 2 and John 1:14 clearly seems to be something more than the conception of Christ’s humanity in Mary’s womb.

It is not difficult at all to understand “begotten”, unless one is determined to make it mean something else and is having trouble finding a working substitute. The Spirit’s involvement in Jesus’ incarnation doesn’t change a thing; both He and “the power of the Most High” were involved, of course along with Mary. There is thus no warrant, logically or scripturally, to leap from here to a forced redefinition of Psalm 2 and John 1:14; this is another non sequitur.

Christ is not a created being (John 1:1-3). He had no beginning but is as timeless as God Himself. Therefore, the “begetting” mentioned in Psalm 2 and its cross-references has nothing to do with His origin.

But it has everything to do with the fact that He is of the same essence as the Father.

Again, this simply does not follow. The begetting clearly speaks of His incarnation at a point in time, while in His divinity He is eternal and equal to the Father. Very simple and clear as related in scripture, though there will always be particulars about this duality that our minds cannot grasp.

My previous view was that Scripture employed Father-Son terminology anthropomorphically–accommodating unfathomable heavenly truths to our finite minds by casting them in human terms. Now I am inclined to think that the opposite is true: Human father-son relationships are merely earthly pictures of an infinitely greater heavenly reality. The one true, archetypical Father-Son relationship exists eternally within the Trinity. All others are merely earthly replicas, imperfect because they are bound up in our finiteness, yet illustrating a vital eternal reality.

The previous view was correct, but the new one is not, as it is based upon the requirements of Eternal Sonship instead of scripture and sound reasoning. It would be just as reasonable to apply this principle to other aspects of Jesus, such as His relationship to the church as His Bride. Is this too a “picture” of some relationship that has existed in eternity past? Is everything people have done— including patriarchy and polygamy— to be read back into the eternal Trinity? Where does it stop?

If Christ’s sonship is all about His deity, someone will wonder why this applies to the Second Member of the Trinity alone, and not to the Third. After all, we don’t refer to the Holy Spirit as God’s Son, do we? Yet isn’t He also of the same essence as the Father?

Of course He is. The full, undiluted, undivided essence of God belongs alike to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is but one essence; yet He exists in three Persons. The three Persons are co-equal, but they are still distinct Persons. And the chief characteristics that distinguish between the Persons are wrapped up in the properties suggested by the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… That such distinctions are vital to our understanding of the Trinity is clear from Scripture. How to explain them fully remains something of a mystery.

This is the “elephant in the living room”; what about the Spirit? We are talking about THREE Persons, not just two. But this attempt to explain why the Spirit is not also a “son” actually exposes the error in MacArthur’s defense of Jesus’ sonship as eternal. That all three Persons are of the same essence should go without saying, such that marking one of them “Son” is superfluous. What’s the point, especially in eternity? Jesus as divinity was not created, but His humanity certainly was, and from “the seed of the woman”. This was His “sonship” at a point in time, as clearly illustrated in Phil. 2:5-11.

In the Trinity debate on which I did a series of articles, this same argument was used: that the only way to tell one Person from another is through hierarchy; that is, without a pecking order there would not be three Persons. But these titles, rather than denoting hierarchy, show that Jesus became human at a point in time. Again the interpretation seems to go backwards. And if, as MacArthur admits here, the Trinity is beyond our understanding, then one must ask why this is such an important question to answer, seeing that it has absolutely no bearing on the gospel. We all agree Jesus is fully God and fully Man, and that there is one God in Three Persons; why all this splitting hairs about the inner workings of God? MacArthur’s conclusion seems to acknowledge this question:

this basic understanding of the eternal relationships within the Trinity nonetheless represents the best consensus of Christian understanding over many centuries of Church history. I therefore affirm the doctrine of Christ’s eternal sonship while acknowledging it as a mystery into which we should not expect to pry too deeply.

I must strongly object to the assertion that this new view “represents the best consensus of Christian understanding over many centuries of Church history”; it is unknown in church history except as heresy. MacArthur simply asserts his new view as not only correct in spite of it being a mystery, but claims that all the faithful scholars always held it as well. But again we must wonder what this is all about, what motivated it. And just as in politics we say “follow the money”, in theology we could say to look for what pet teaching depends upon it. And the prime candidate is patriarchy / male supremacy, as I’ve written about many times. If one wishes to make the logically impossible a reality (equal in essence, unequal in role), one needs a model. If one’s goal is to justify saying women are equal to men while forcing them to play a “role” that is neither temporary nor voluntary but based upon essence, then one must invent this in the Trinity, even while continually ignoring the fact that Three cannot map to Two.

Logically, there is simply no way to stretch Jesus’ “sonship” into eternity past without making Him a lesser God. Though the father/son relationship is of equal essence in humanity, it still denotes a progression, which cannot be true of Jesus’ divinity. There is simply no way to justify this whole exercise apart from a desire to support another untenable teaching. Jesus is God, Jesus is Man, and the same Spirit indwells every believer; that is what scripture teaches. I still await any coherent justification for dismembering the Trinity in this manner.

(EDIT: This really is another example of “vaporware“, per yesterday’s post.)

Boys Will Be Boys

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Paula Fether

I just read The Role of Women in the Church, another typical male supremacy-endorsing document, and I'm really tired of such things. But because these familiar claims and arguments keep being promoted, there is a need to keep refuting them, beginning here with their Introduction.

"Western culture has undergone a dramatic shift in its view of women."

There's a good reason for that: Christian women who believed the Bible instead of the culture, and got government to do away with laws that forbade them full status as grown, free human beings. They recognized that culture had always been male-supremacist and always denied that in Christ we are all one, and there is no more division on the basis of class, ethnicity, or biological gender (Gal. 3:28). But this document begins with the same false premise: that "western culture" is a bad thing that caused women, who apparently are unable to read the Bible for themselves, to blindly chase after silly things like wanting to be treated as adults of sound mind whom Jesus died for.

"This shift has caused a rift within the culture and within the church."

No, it has sought to repair the rift. Any teaching that promotes division, on any basis but God's truth, is dividing the Body of Christ. The teaching of male preeminence divides that Body right down the middle. The only reason the Body remains divided is because the privileged half doesn't take kindly to losing its control over the unprivileged half.

"As with all issues, University Presbyterian Church desires to be biblical above all else."

Being "Biblical" is what drove those women to actively oppose their oppression. The justification made for keeping men in first place are identical to those that had been used to justify slavery in the US (see this article). So the real question is not who is being Biblical, but who is trying to make their interpretation on a par with divine scripture.

"Yet, the progressive model obliterates the God-given differences of women and men."

This is an attempt to make one's conclusion a "given" or foundational premise. Who says that God ordained "differences" beyond the biological? Where is this written plainly? What is "the progressive model", and how exactly does it "obliterate" the difference between male and female? This statement is loaded to guarantee the desired outcome: God puts men first. But God still is not "a respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34) and still "looks on the heart" instead of the flesh (1 Sam. 16:7). To presume that "the Bible’s teaching on the different ways in which men and women may serve in the church" is a fact instead of the point being debated ends all discussion before it even begins; it imposes its interpretations as being "Biblical" and undeniable.

"the Session adopted the following paper as its position on the role of women in ministry"

That's fine, but surely they know that women, as adults and co-heirs, are not looking for their permission to exercise fully the gifts of the Spirit. To our own master we stand or fall (Rom. 14:4), and with Peter and John we say that it is better to listen to God rather than men (Acts 4:19).

"The Bible prohibits women from serving as elders"

No, it doesn't.

"Women may serve in any capacity in the church and may use their spiritual gifts in every way that any non-elder man may serve, except that women may not shepherd men"

Again, I rejoice that as a woman I am not looking for men's permission to do anything. I will serve where God has led me to serve, and shepherd whomever the Spirit tells me to shepherd. And if anyone appeals to some imaginary line between "official" meetings and "informal" ones, I defy them to show where scripture draws this line. Instead, Jesus said "neither here nor in Jerusalem but in spirit and truth" (John 4:21,23) and "where two or three are gathered" (Mt. 18:20).

Now to the document itself. The Introduction there presumes that all who argue against the suppression of women in the church have a problem with Paul, but a lot of us do not. Instead, we hold that Paul has been misinterpreted, and that this problem is exacerbated by the denial of cultural influences and other pertinent aspects of context. We also object to denying cultural influence upon scripture when it may support egalitarian arguments, but allowing such influences when it does not appear to threaten male preeminence.

"For many centuries, the church did not let the Scripture lead it away from the general oppression of women conducted by society. The church should have seen that the Bible does not teach the inferiority of women."

Here they admit that the cultural norm has always been male supremacy, not feminism. To promote this male dominance is truly to bow to culture. It is commendable that they admit this, but they will go on to promote it anyway. And as for the admission that women are not inferior, this immediately brings up the issue of the claim that people can play an inferior role for life, based upon genetics alone, without being inferior. This is a contradiction and an absurdity. A woman is a woman by virtue of her biology alone, or we couldn't tell newborn boys from newborn girls. She cannot change who she is biologically, so any statement about her as a female is a statement of being, not role. So for a woman to be forced to play a subservient role for life is for her to be inferior in being.

Then they convey their wish to remain unified regardless of personal conviction on this matter, but this too is impossible. If a woman is called to ministry by the Holy Spirit, how can she obey that call if her church forbids her to exercise it as any male would? How can men whose personal conviction fears a "Jezebel spirit" from any woman preaching remain under such preaching? Either women can preach or they can't, and if your personal conviction doesn't match the church's rules, then you have no choice but to leave. Would they expect a non-white member to remain in a church that believes only whites can serve in leadership and teach scripture with authority to a mixed congregation? If everybody goes along to get along, somebody is being oppressed.

Under The Trinitarian Pattern, the first thing we see is a favored proof-text: 1 Cor. 11:3. They begin their interpretation with an invented and loaded term, "headship", and thus impose their opinion on the text here that Paul is talking about authority. This is highly disputable at best, but the document states it as indisputable fact. It presumes there is such a thing as "headship" and then presumes to link it to Christ's authority. I've covered this whole "headship" thing before, and this passage as well, so I won't go over that again (my Nicolaitan book is the handiest place to see that; just go to the Downloads page). But one must ask why the Trinity has anything at all to do with this.

In this verse Paul does not follow a top-down hierarchical pattern, but instead lists a very strange order: head of man is Christ, head of woman is man, head of Christ is God. Regardless of the very disputed meaning of "head" in Greek, we cannot lightly brush away this order. Why didn't Paul say "God is the head of Christ, who is the head of males, who are the heads of females"? Why didn't he use something like his list of gifts to the church in 1 Cor. 12:28, where we see words like "first… second… third… then"? Clearly Paul is NOT giving a pecking order here. Instead, the most straightforward interpretation is that this is a chronological order, which we must emphasize is NOT inherently hierarchical, or the animals in creation week would be above humans. So what Paul most likely means to convey here, to introduce the topic of literal heads and coverings, is that Christ was the source of man, man was the source of woman, and the Trinity (God, not just "Father") was the source of Christ.

But they leave out verses 11 and 12: IN THE LORD woman and man are not independent, for though the first woman came from the first man, every man since then has come from a woman. BUT EVERYTHING COMES FROM GOD. This is a clear and undeniable refutation of any notions of hierarchy in the Body of Christ. More about that shortly.

So point 1 in this section simply ignores all this and asserts that there is "headship". And as I've said many times, the question is not the quality of rule, but the fact of rule. If rule/hierarchy itself is wrong, then it matters not how nicely or benevolently one exercises it.

Under point 2 they seem to deliberately ignore the fact that hierarchy between equals can never be permanent or involuntary. They admit that the Son VOLUNTARILY took on a subordinate role, yet they follow it with "obeying the Father". Nothing can be voluntary and forced at the same time, so either Jesus HAD to do what the Father ruled over him to do, or he CHOSE to TEMPORARILY lower himself and only then, and for a time, obey the Father as an example FOR ALL BELIEVERS, not just women. This is completely different from imposing lifetime, involuntary subservience on half the human race, and on such a ridiculous basis as one's reproductive organs.

But notice that they never mention the Holy Spirit in this alleged analogy. The Trinity is THREE, not TWO, and they are all spirit, not flesh, such that none are "male" or "female". How can this Trinity be any kind of analogy to marriage? It can't.

Point 3's title is just incomprehensible. But at least in the ensuing discussion they distance themselves from the extreme (consistent!) view that women are basically slaves to men. And they realize that God gave both male and female rule over the earth, and that both are joint-heirs. But only now do they mention 1 Cor. 11:11-12, yet still hedge their bets for some one-way authority nonetheless.

Then they try to argue against the view I gave, that Paul is talking about chronology and sources here instead of hierarchy. But their rebuttal claims that God "did not create Christ", which is a red herring, because nobody says God CREATED him! Being the source of Christ is nothing more than what scripture says in Ps. 2:7, quoted also in Acts. 13:33, Heb. 1:5, and Heb. 5:5, as well as the passage in Phil. 2:5-11 they mentioned already. This entry of Jesus came at a point in time, and this is what we mean by God being the source of Christ; we are NOT saying Christ was a created being! And it was both the Father and the Spirit who conceived the body of Jesus (Luke 1:35).

Then they try to address the inherent contradiction in rejecting slavery but upholiding male supremacy, but they use their debunked Trinitarian argument to do so. They think that if they can tie female subordination to the Trinity while slavery has no such connection, that this justifies a pivotal difference. I have to say this is a tactic I haven't seen before, but the reason for this should be obvious.

Next they try defending against the inherent contradiction of "equality of personhood but inequality of function", once again by appealing to their debunked Trinitarian analogy. Again they admit that Jesus TOOK ON a role of submission, but ignore the huge difference of being born into a permanent subservient role. This is not a matter of "feminist" bias but simple logic and coherent reasoning. They have to appeal to absurdity to keep this argument.

Since they go on to build upon their debunked Trinitarian basis, there's little point in commenting further. But I will mention the old "tie-breaker" claim, just for fun. The fact is that they cannot escape making women into virtual children by making males permanent, designated "tie-breakers", because they are saying there is an intrinsic superiority to the male when it comes to decision-making. These are statements of being, and thus of inequality, which contradicts their repeated claims to the contrary.

Other arguments to follow cite the same fallacious arguments we hear all the time, along with making up artificial distinctions such as between "ruling" elders and "non-ruling" elders, and presuming that any believer has any authority at all over any other believer. Those who wrote scripture could do so because they were given the teachings from God, so anyone who does not claim their writings are scripture is admitting they have no special authority.

Well, at least they were true to their goal cited in the main Introduction: "it is not an exegetical paper". But a pronouncement or position paper without scriptural exegesis is nothing but pretense; it makes a claim based upon fallacies and a few common proof-texts and then says "can't we all just get along"? I'd summarize their whole paper like so: "We aren't trying to throw our weight around or anything, but here is what God says, and now let's all just stop this questioning of our interpretation and let the boys tell the girls what God says."

Sorry boys, but us gurlz ain't playin’ by your rules anymore. We're following the Jesus that read from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." We're following the Jesus who treated women like adults, who entrusted them with the first preaching of the gospel of the risen Christ, who sent his Spirit on male and female alike at Pentecost, and whose Body must not be divided.

Trinity Debate Assessment, Part 5

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Paula Fether

Under “5. Final Comments”, Affirmative

Again the assertion is repeated that since the Bible uses names for God like Father and Son, then it must indicate a hierarchal relationship. And again they insist that permanent subordination does not mean inferiority of being. And yet again, they insist that without hierarchy of roles there is no way to distinguish the Persons of the Trinity. The examples given to claim support for equality of being with inequality of role are fundamentally different from their view of the Trinity. Human authority relationships that are not based upon a person’s essence cannot be compared with those that are. The only possible illustrations that would match would be prejudice on the basis of race, sex, or social class, which make the people underlings for life on the basis of intrinsic qualities of being. And again, they completely ignore the Spirit in this.

Under “5. Final Comments”, Negative

If the Son is subordinate to the Father, then they cannot share an identical essence. The Persons can be differentiated simply because they exist; no hierarchy or roles are needed for this. The fact that the Father says “You are my Son; today I have become your Father” speaks clearly of the incarnation and not a role from eternity past.

My Conclusion

Without knowing the names of the debaters for the Affirmative, one could easily mistake them for apologists for the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other aberrant groups that also see everything, even within the Godhead, in terms of hierarchy and authority. They use the same arguments. Our inability to fully grasp the concept of the Trinity should at least temper the rhetoric of those who insist upon dissecting it. I see no practical difference between a chain of command in the Trinity and that of three levels of deity, or even three gods. This attempt to probe the inner workings of the Godhead has given birth to many cults and been fodder for many critics of Christianity. But there is no danger in teaching that the Persons are all fully equal and fully divine.

And if we were to use the same tactics as the Affirmative in questioning motive, we could easily ask them exactly why this hierarchal view of the Persons of the Trinity is so vital to them. What is the practical necessity of this belief? Truth to tell, there is one sinister motivation: the subordination of women to men. If they can prove that Jesus can be permanently subordinated to the Father’s will while still being equal in essence, then they can claim that women can be made subordinate to men without saying women are inferior in essence.

Yet even then their plan fails, because the relationships between men and women are never, ever compared to that between the Father and the Son. It’s not even remotely implied. Jesus modeled the father/son relationship for all believers; all are to follow him in laying privilege aside to stoop down and help the weak. “Not so among you” is a command for men as well as women. The humility and service of Jesus in his incarnation gives no exceptions to anyone.

Passages that speak of Christ being the head of the church speak of unity of flesh, and the analogy of bride and groom is to represent that between the church and Christ. It is a joining, a picture of unity and sacrificial love. And that is the model for married couples. A man is to leave his parents to join to his wife, just as Christ left his Father to join to his Bride. It is specifically the love of Christ for his Bride that the husband is charged with emulating, never the authority of Christ as God.

So all of this is a wasted effort on the part of the Affirmative, and it is destructive to many believers as well as to our unique view of God. It does much damage for no other purpose than to justify male supremacy. It is a shameful display of pride in the flesh.

(back to Part Four)

Trinity Debate Assessment, Part 4

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Paula Fether

Under “3. Rebuttals”, Affirmative

The affirmative asserts that although incarnational events don’t necessarily equate to eternal truths about Jesus’ divinity, they still insist that the relationships among the Persons are not presuppositions but have scriptural support. Then a personal attack is made, wherein the motivations of the Negative are called into question. Next an appeal is made to the fact that many things are held to be true in spite of the fact that they have to be inferred. Yet all of the inferences they have made have been philosophical presuppositions without any direct scriptural support (e.g. the sender outranks the sent, the terms Father and Son must be terms of hierarchy).

Finally, they use the tu coque fallacy which basically amounts to “So you think we’re promoting a heretical view of God? Well, that’s nothing compared to your heresy!” Specifically, they claim that they are (falsely) accused of believing Jesus is a lesser God, but that it is much worse to promote an idea they think resembles Modalism. But this charge of Modalism is completely false because the Negative states clearly that there is One God in three Persons. The Affirmative does indeed have to choose between Jesus being made a lesser God and their self-contradictory claim that permanent subordination is compatible with equality of being.

Under “3. Rebuttals”, Negative

The Negative is fully justified in calling the charge of Modalism a cheap shot. (I loved the little addition, “If not a cheap shot, a moderately priced one”!) They point out that scripture does not support the claim that only the Father has authority over creation, and even if it did, it really does nothing to prove that the Father has always had, or will always have, authority over the Son. Then they make the additional point that if relationships can change, then they are not necessary relations.

Under “4. Follow-up”, Affirmative

The affirmative repeats its assertion that if God reveals himself as Father and Son (again the Spirit is ignored in this), that the Negative’s claim of non-necessary hierarchy is a denial of what God has said about himself. Of course this is a false charge; they never denied that God uses terms like Father and Son about himself. And in spite of the fact that the Negative believes in God in three Persons, they repeat the charge of Modalism by asking quite sarcastically what the differences are between the three Persons. They then claim victory due to their “massive support” from scripture. Lastly, they accuse the Negative of misunderstanding a book written by the Affirmative on the Trinity, along with another appeal to “church fathers”.

Under “4. Follow-up”, Negative

Since the Affirmative keeps trying to use “church fathers” as authoritative sources, the Negative points out that not all of them are unified in support of the Affirmative view. Then they challenge the Affirmative to address the meaning of subordination. Phil. 2:5-11 is then presented as proof that Jesus had given up his authority and equality with the Father in the incarnation. One has to have possessed something in order to give it up.

Regardless of what anyone intended to say (which is an argument typically offered when one cannot answer a challenge on what they actually said), it remains that saying Jesus was subordinate to the Spirit during the incarnation yet that the Spirit is also eternally subordinate to the Son is contradictory.

The final post in this series is up next, and it will cover the final comments and conclusions. (or back to Part Three)

Trinity Debate Assessment, Part 3

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Paula Fether

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I (neg.)

Point I states that that the affirmative lacks scriptural support while the negative has such support. They clarify and focus the debate by stating that Biblical authority is not a part of the debate at all, and that neither view believes philosophy should trump scripture.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point II (neg.)

Point II examines whether the scriptures used by the affirmative are valid. The “indirect Biblical argument” made by the affirmative fails due to its presumption that the Trinity can be adequately described in human terms. By grounding the relationship among the three Persons in what we understand about people, it limits the unfathomable Trinity to whatever we can grasp. In other words, to dogmatically state that there must be hierarchy in the Trinity is to claim knowledge beyond that which is actually stated in scripture or can be deduced from it.

The “direct Biblical argument” used by the affirmative is shown to be logically self-defeating. Please refer to the list at the transcript for details. It shows that if the sender is superior to the one sent, then what do they do with scripture that shows the Spirit sending the Son (Mt. 4:1, Mark 1:12, Luke 4:1)? By their own logic, scripture must be saying that the Son and the Spirit are subservient to each other (ref. John 15:26 for the Son sending the Spirit)!

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point III (neg.)

Point III is where the detailed rebuttal is given. I will try my best to relay the argument as simply as I can. I will abbreviate “eternal role subordination” as RS to match the transcript (that is, to stand for the belief that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father). I won’t go over each of the points individually since they are trying to cover all possible scenarios in various RS theories, and they do so from the angle of more formal logic.

Since we cannot know for certain that the Son is permanently subordinate to the Father beyond a philosophical presumption, and since that is the very point being debated, the RS argument is primarily philosophical and not theological. The point under debate cannot be presumed in the premises. The philosophical presumption is that distinctions among the Persons cannot be made without hierarchy or at least some kind of roles. But even if the presumption is that their relationships are what distinguish them, it is still a philosophical assertion to presume that these relationships must entail hierarchy.

If RS is true without exception in any scenario, then it must follow that the Father has an essential property that the Son lacks, and vice versa (the same principle follows for any combination in the Trinity). And it follows from there that the three Persons do not have the same nature. Yet both sides unequivocally agree that they must all have the same nature. Therefore RS cannot be true. Either they all have different and unique natures, or there can be no hierarchy among them. Either RS is self-contradictory or merely an arbitrary assertion based upon philosophy instead of scripture.

Next up: the rebuttals to each view. (or back to Part Two)

Trinity Debate Assessment, Part 2

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Paula Fether

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point II

This point is very simple: an appeal to the so-called church fathers. But history is not scripture, and if they want to win a debate on the eternal relationships among the Persons of the Trinity, they need to stick with what God has actually said and not someone’s personal views, however eloquent they may be. And though I won’t go into detail on this now, I’ve read some of those creeds and do not share the view that they all believed in eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. In some cases I think even the creeds have been misunderstood because people tend to read them through the lens of modern language and expressions, a very common error in Biblical interpretation as well.

We should always remember that mere proximity to the writers of the NT in time or location means absolutely nothing about authority, although it can be useful as historical record. Paul was constantly battling heresy even as he wrote, and others warned often of destructive teachings coming “from among yourselves”. The point being, that if falsehood was a big problem even while the original apostles lived, then how does living in or close to that time make someone a true and faithful teacher of scripture? In this regard it is very much the same error as presuming hierarchy in chronological order or in titles.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point III

Based upon the nearly worthless foundation of church history as somehow authoritative, they look for scriptural support to back it up and what implications may stem from this. They begin with an assertion that “Everything in Scripture on this subject indicates the submission of the Son to the Father—in eternity past, in the incarnation, and in eternity future.” Easy to claim, but do the three points beneath it back it up?

Point 1 really says nothing about it, and certainly nothing disputable. We all believe that God had to reveal himself to mankind in order for us to know about him. Yet we also know from scripture (e.g. Rom. 1) that even without scripture, people have been given enough evidence of God’s existence to be “without excuse.” This does not mean they can discern the full gospel in this way, but only the existence of God.

Point 2 acknowledges the unity of divine nature or essence shared by all members of the Trinity. Again, there is no dispute here. Two out of three points and so far we have nothing to back up the assertion.

Point 3 shows that points 1 and 2 were solely for the purpose of setting us up to accept it, but the claim here is so blatantly in violation of the other two points that they couldn’t help. The claim is simply a repeat of the assertion that the terms “father” and “son” must denote a hierarchal relationship. So in spite of points 1 and 2, they want us to believe it’s possible for one equal to be subservient to another equal, for all eternity, on the basis of intrinsic qualities of each. In other words, equality of essence is supposed to be compatible with inequality of “role” for all eternity. But that is impossible; a role is something which is not an intrinsic quality but a voluntary and temporary arrangement. One cannot “play a role” when such a role is an integral part of their being. And again, where is the Spirit in this? What “role” does the Spirit play when he is not designated with a relationship type of title? Is he the butler or something?

After more assertions that the hierarchy view is the only possible view the Bible supports, they make another pivotal error: that without hierarchy it is impossible to distinguish the three Persons. How so? If there are identical triplets we don’t presume any chain of command, yet we know that they are three very unique persons. They do not lose their individual identities on the basis of being triplets. Individuality does not require hierarchy to exist. There would still be three Persons of the Trinity even if they were called The Height, The Width, and the Depth. Is the height indistinguishable from the width? Are the depth and width identical? Does height rule over width which rules over depth? All those questions seem ridiculous when we are talking about a three-dimensional object, yet it is a good illustration of how Three can be One yet with each one easily distinguishable from the others, all without hierarchy.

Likewise, the Persons of the Trinity can be distinguished by virtue of their being, regardless of any other factor. And like a three-dimensional object, God would not exist without all three Persons. But to boldly claim that there is no way to make distinctions without hierarchy shows an appalling lack of reason. And of course there are no compelling scriptures to say otherwise, as the later rebuttal indicates.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point IV

This is their summary of the preceding points, and it contains four points.

Point 1 affirms their belief that all Persons of the Trinity share an equal identity and divine essence, and that this has been true for all eternity.

Point 2 continues to affirm that this equality is shared between the Father and the Son, making them of the same “nature”. Finally they mention the Spirit; good to know they haven’t forgotten about that Third Person.

Point 3 asserts that the relationships among the Persons are indistinguishable from “roles”; that is, that a person (or Person) has a role as an intrinsic quality of their being. There is not one shred of scripture to support this claim, and plenty to refute it. In addition, they claim that these roles are non-reciprocal; that is, there is no overlap at all. No scriptural support. They further assert that these roles constitute an eternal hierarchy, with the Father having authority over all but being under none, the Son being under only the Father, and the Spirit being under them both (yet somehow lower beneath the Father than the Son is). There is no scriptural support for this at all.

Then they plainly state what is a logical impossibility: that eternal hierarchy is possible among Persons of equal essence. In order for any two people to be equal, there cannot be a permanent and involuntary hierarchal relationship between them. Someone may be a police officer and be under a chain of command, but this relationship does not rule in their off-duty hours. It is a relationship confined to the workplace, and the underling has the option of quitting at any time. But if the underling were told that because he is from Venus while his superior is from Mars then he must be in subjection to the superior for life, that relationship is most definitely not one of equality of being.

They can claim that these hierarchal relationships are compatible with equality of being, but claims and proofs are two different things. Any “role” that sticks with you for life, was not of your choosing, and cannot ever be changed, is a quality of being; there is no way around that. Therefore, if hierarchy exists among the Persons of the Trinity, they cannot be equal in being. It’s that simple.

Point 4 seems to be there for the purpose of trying to “reverse the charges”. It claims the logical fallacy is on the part of those who disagree with them. They use the term “functional subordination” here to try and drive a wedge between essential quality of being and eternal roles based on being, but no such division can be made while still calling it logical or scriptural.

Thus concludes the argument for the affirmative. Part Three will be on the Negative. (or back to Part One)

Trinity Debate Assessment, Part 1

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Paula Fether

At Henry Center Media there is a transcript of a debate on the Trinity. The point under debate is whether or not the Persons of the Trinity have a hierarchal relationship; the formal question is “Do relations of authority and submission exist eternally among the Persons of the Godhead?” Please read over the transcript or click on the link there to listen to the audio. You might also want to open the transcript in another window when reading my assessment.

This will be very detailed, so it will have to be done in a series of posts. And given how much I wrote about only the first affirmative point, there could be quite a few, but time will tell.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-A

The scriptures cited are all in the NT. There’s nothing wrong with that, but surely if one wants to look for scriptural support concerning the pre-incarnate Christ, one would begin with the OT. Now lets look at the NT references they gave.

Eph. 1:3-5 is probably the best of their choices, but they have jumped to some unwarranted conclusions. What the Father chose before the creation of the world is not necessarily from eternity past. And what he chose is specified as that we who would believe were to be holy and blameless, and to inherit rights as adopted children. The big presumption they make is that because this adoption was to be through Jesus, that the Father must have forced this decision on Jesus from eternity past. Yet nothing of the sort is stated here. That the Father would “delight” or have “pleasure” in this tells us that there could be no coercion; only evil delights in using force to make those weaker than themselves obey. Since even the “affirmatives” in this debate believe in the full equality of all three Persons in their “essence”, then they also must believe that the Son is not weaker or less than the Father. And if we are truly talking about a Trinity and not three gods as anti-trinitarians sometimes claim, then they must all have one will among them. In other words, it is impossible for submission or hierarchy to exist within a single will.

Rom. 8:29 is a rather weak prooftext, but a common one among fatalists. The verse begins by stating that God “foreknew”. In fatalistic thinking, God cannot foreknow without causing; his omniscience is only possible by forcing all that happens. (As I’ve said many times, how much omniscience does it take to predict the outcome of a game that you rigged?) So in the fatalistic mind, if God foreknows then he causes. Therefore they see no distinction between what God foreknew and what he predestined.

The verse clearly states that the object of “foreknew” is “those who love him”, not those he predestined. And what God predestined is that such people would be conformed to the image of Jesus, not that certain elect people would be saved. I think the only reason they included this verse as supporting their case is because they wish to establish this fatalistic view of God, because other arguments will follow from that. They usually argue that the entire Godhead is the only entity in existence that has a free will, but here they wish to further dissect the Trinity by making only the Father possess a free will. That effectively puts the Son and the Spirit in the category of underlings, just as they believe all created beings are. This is the point where they are dangerously close to the cults’ view of God.

2 Tim. 1:9 has the same problems as Rom. 8:29, being more an argument directly for fatalism than hierarchy in the Trinity. Again, we must remember that “before time” does not mean “in all eternity past”.

Eph. 1:9-11 is basically a repeat of Eph. 1:3-5, but they are getting sloppy now. Who is the “he” in these verses? God (theos in Greek); it does not specify the Father here (pater in Greek). While the Father is specified in verse 3, it is not in verse 7. And in verse 19 we see again that God (theos) was “pleased” to have all his “fullness” dwell in the Son. What does that do to their hierarchy?

Eph. 3:9-11 is yet another instance where theos is mentioned, and cited as the creator of all things. Col. 1:15ff shows clearly that the Son is the agent of all creation. And if this isn’t getting confusing enough, we can add Isaiah 9:6 which calls the Son the “everlasting Father” and “mighty God”.

To summarize point I-A of the affirmative, they seem to be more intent upon establishing fatalistic views of God than proving hierarchy in the Trinity. And passages they cite can only be spun as supporting hierarchy by ignoring other scriptures to the contrary. The dividing lines between the Persons of the Trinity regarding their alleged “roles” are not clearly drawn in scripture; in fact, as we’ve seen, they seem almost interchangeable. The error the modalist makes is to use this fact as proof of God being a single One instead of a compound One as is evident in the Hebrew (echad is used both for God and for the nation of Israel; one nation of many people is a compound one, and one God of Three Persons is a compound one).

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-B

For the claim that the titles Father and Son indicate authority and submission, they cite several passages. But even before we read those, we immediately must ask, “What does the name Holy Spirit signify?” Is our own spirit subservient to our brain or body? No, there is nothing inherently hierarchal about the Spirit as a name or title. Neither is there anything permanently subservient in human parent-child relationships. That is, grown children are still children in relationship to their parents, but that relationship no longer entails authority and submission. We continue to respect them, but we are not compelled to obey them.

The first reference, John 1:14, only states the names; it gives no indication of permanent or eternal hierarchy. Likewise with John 17:24, and I noticed they carefully avoided verse 21 which states that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. And all of this is in the context of the incarnation. If they’re trying to prove pre-incarnate hierarchy, they’re missing the boat completely. Heb 9:14 is actually counter-productive to their cause, because it tells us that the blood of Christ was shed “through the eternal Spirit”, which would indicate superiority of the Spirit. And again, the one being offered to is not pater but theos. Very weak.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-C

Here they try to claim hierarchy in the act of creation, but we’ve already cited passages that show the Son to be the creator. How John 1:1 helps their cause, I don’t know; it says the Word was God from the beginning. Heb. 1:1-2 tells us once again that the Son is the creator, and the verses following further define the Son as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”; how does this in any way indicate subservience to the Father? And the context there is still post-incarnate. I’m beginning to wonder if they even know what that means.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-D

Still thinking they’re talking about eternity past, they cite more verses from the time of the incarnation. John 3:16-17 says God, not the Father, but it is only implied by use of the term Son, and still does not denote hierarchy in eternity past. Gal. 4:4 speaks of the Son being sent, but again this does not indicate hierarchy. They presume that it does but scripture never says so. In fact, it’s my understanding that in the culture of the time, the sent one was considered the same as the sender; that is, the sent one was to be treated exactly the same as the sender. It is a statement of equality, not authority and submission. 1 John 4:9-10 is more about the Son being sent; it does not introduce anything new.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-E

This statement doesn’t even belong in a section supposedly about eternity past; the statement is about Christ’s earthly ministry (John 6:38; 8:28-29; 15:9-10). That ministry was lived out as an example for us all to follow.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-F

Now they move to eternity future, and by the verses they use I’d say they ignore what is known as the “hypostatic union”, the dual nature of the incarnate Christ. Jesus was not human in eternity past, but he will never stop being human in eternity future. Yet neither did he stop being divine; he is still fully God. In citing passages such as Heb. 7:23-25 they continue to ignore or fail to grasp the fact that Jesus acts as God-Man, as the bridge between the two, and that some of his activities are or were in regards to only his humanity. Jesus is a High Priest forever because he only needed to make one sacrifice; he is not still sacrificing like human priests had to. He holds the office of High Priest because of his humanity, yet he is no less God than he ever was.

The mention of Jesus sitting at the Father’s right hand is put forth as a proof of inferiority of rank, yet once again, it was never considered anything but a sign of equality. He sits on the Father’s throne (Rev. 3:21); he had to sit on one side or the other, didn’t he? If you sit beside someone who’s already sitting, you are not taking an inferior position. This whole premise is nothing but a baseless assertion.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-G

The only verse given to support the claim that authority and submission exist between the Father and the Son after the final judgment is 1 Cor. 15:26-28, which speaks of everything but God being put under the feet of Christ. But once again they do not distinguish between that which pertains to Jesus’ humanity and that which pertains to his divinity. That’s supposed to be what the debate is about: Jesus’ divine nature. It’s supposed to focus on whether he was in a hierarchal relationship with the Father before he ever became human, yet they continue to try and blur the line. They evidently hope to claim that whatever Jesus will do in eternity future must also tell us how things were in eternity past, and that is clearly not true. There was a point in time at which Jesus took on humanity (John 1:14 for example), a point in time when something changed.

Under “2. Opening Statements”, point I-H

Now they summarize their points and begin by repeating the baseless assertion that the words “Father” and “Son” must denote hierarchy. This is circular reasoning because that is the point under debate; they cannot simply presume it to be true. They ignore other scriptures (Isaiah 9:6, Luke 1:35– the Spirit is also “fathering” the Son) that don’t fit their view that the “roles” of father and son are clear as crystal. Then they set up the straw man that anyone who disagrees with them has “hostility toward authority”. But of course we who disagree with them have no such problem, but only a problem with their trying to put human understanding onto the incomprehensible Trinity, their ignorance of the hypostatic union and what that implies, and with putting their philosophy of hierarchy in all things over scripture. Their final exaltation of authority seems to border on worship of it above all.

Part Two

Birth of a Cult

Posted on August 6, 2008 by Paula Fether

For if evangelicals go off again in a fundamentalist separatism while clinging to an unorthodox doctrine of the Trinity, their separation from the rest of the Body of Christ could prove irreparable, like the invention of a new sect in the characteristically American mode of Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses (“The New Evangelical Subordinationism: Reading Inequality Into the Trinity,” Priscilla Papers, Vol. 20, No. 4, Autumn 2006, pp. 41, 45)

This quote comes from part 2 of an excellent series entitled The Trinity and Evangelical Neo-Arianism beginning at Emmaus House, a new blog. While I don’t assign Biblical authority to creeds and confessions, their value lies in refuting this new cult’s claim of having history on their side. Specifically, this cult is the one that calls itself “Complementarianism”. It is male-supremacism, to the point as the article shows of denying the very nature of God. It worships male flesh and pride, rank and order and authority, to a practically fascist level.

Of course they don’t like hearing these words and will take great offense. But it’s the truth, and truth must not “dialog” with error.

The Trinity and Subordination

Posted on June 1, 2006 by Paula Fether

Are you being told to believe in the “eternal Sonship of Jesus”, that he was always and will always be inferior to the Father? Most likely, and the reason is not because it’s necessarily a clear Biblical teaching, but because it’s necessarily the justification for women’s subordination. I’ll comment briefly, but I would encourage you to read the article at this link for more detail and documentation.

As I wrote about in one of my web documents on women and the Bible, complementarians (comps)— those that teach women’s subordination to men— base their argument partly on the concept that Jesus’ subordination to the Father is eternal, not confined to his humanity. They use the term ontological subordinationism, meaning subordination in being or essence. A legitimate example of this kind of subordination would be that of man to God. There has never been and will never be a time when man is equal in essence or authority to God; it is intrinsic in ourselves to be eternally subordinate to God.

But the ‘persons’ of the Trinity, as Giles argues in the article, are all of the same essence and being; they are One. Any terminology we see in the Bible as to submission has to do with the voluntary and temporary situation wherein Jesus laid aside his divine privilege to become human and pay for our sins (see Philippians 2:5-11). He also points out that “the sending of the Son is best explained in terms of the Jewish shaliach principle: the one sent has the same authority of the one who sends. If this is the case, sending does not indicate subordination but equal authority.”

The concept of ontological subordination is claimed by comps to be the historical orthodox view held by the “church fathers”, but Giles shows that the exact opposite is true. In fact, the councils of Nicea and Constantinople firmly rejected the idea. The early theologian Athanasius argued against this heresy, which was being promoted by Arius, some of whose ideas were Gnostic in origin.

What has this to do with women’s subordination? Comps will say that because they believe Jesus is eternally subordinated to the Father, and because the relationship of the church to Jesus is the basis of and model for the relationship between a husband and wife, then the wife is eternally subordinated to her husband. In addition, they extend this to the relationship of all women in the church to all men in the church. But if the Bible does not teach the eternal subordination of the Son, then the basis for the comp argument is refuted.

We have a hard time wrapping our brains around what is called the “hypostatic union”, the idea that Jesus is fully God and fully man at the same time. Nonetheless, like the concept of the Trinity itself, our inability to fully grasp a concept found in the Bible is no excuse to reject it. The Bible teaches that Jesus voluntarily submitted himself to the Father in his humanity, not permanently but to accomplish our salvation, which is “finished”. He ascended back to his original position of divine equality after he arose from the dead, having made the final sacrifice for sins “once for all”.

It is utterly impossible for Jesus (or anyone) to be equal in essence but eternally subordinated. That being established, it follows that the command for wives to “submit themselves” to their husbands cannot be seen as a permanent or universal statement of being. Women, who are clearly presented in the scriptures as “co-heirs” and full spiritual equals with men, can therefore not be subjected to ontological subordination. The Bible presents it instead as voluntary submission to an equal, NOT required and involuntary inferiority of being. The popular phrase “equal in being but not in function” is thus an unBiblical oxymoron.

Trinity Hebrew plurality God Elohim

Posted on July 7, 2004 by Paula Fether

The Trinity is the concept of God as the Deity having unity with diversity. Deut. 32:39, Isaiah 43:11, 45:5-6,18,21-22, 46:9, etc. make it clear that there is only one God; the other verses listed above make it equally clear that this one God is in three Persons.

Scientifically speaking, we live in a trinitarian universe: space/time/matter, past/present/future, height/ width/ depth, etc. Each of these groups contain distinct elements that cannot stand alone; take away one of the three, and the thing ceases to exist. So the concept of a unit requiring at least 3 distinct components is really not that hard to grasp.

From the “timebombers” forum June 2004 (source)
To be fair: Jews for Jesus just has a lot of good stuff!

Summary: The article explores the usage of the pronouns and verbs and then gives evidence for more Binity (Bi-Unity?) and then Trinity.

I’m not Jewish, but let me pull out some of the meaty parts:

The Name Eloah

If the plural form Elohim was the only form available for a reference to God, then conceivably the argument might be made that the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures had no other alternative but to use the word Elohim for both the one true God and the many false gods. However, the singular form for Elohim (Eloah) exists and is used in such passages as Deuteronomy 32:15-17 and Habakkuk 3:3. This singular form could have easily been used consistently. Yet it is only used 250 times, while the plural form is used 2,500 times.Plural Descriptions of God

One point that also comes out of Hebrew is the fact that often nouns and adjectives used in speaking of God are plural. Some examples are as follows:

Ecclesiastes 12:1: “Remember now you creator…” [Literally: creators.]
Psalm 149:2: “Let Israel rejoice in their Maker.” [Literally: makers.]
Joshua 24:19: “…holy God…” [Literally: holy Gods.]
Isaiah 54:5: “For your Maker is your husband…” [Literally: makers, husbands.]“

The Shema

Deuteronomy 6:4: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!

Deuteronomy 6:4, known as the Shema, has always been Israel’s great confession. It is this verse more than any other that is used to affirm the fact that God is one and is often used to contradict the concept of plurality in the Godhead. But is it a valid use of this verse?

On one hand, it should be noted that the very words “our God” are in the plural in the Hebrew text and literally mean “our Gods.” However, the main argument lies in the word “one,” which is a Hebrew word, echad. A glance through the Hebrew text where the word is used elsewhere can quickly show that the word echad does not mean an absolute “one” but a compound “one.”

For instance, in Genesis 1:5, the combination of evening and morning comprise one (echad) day. In Genesis 2:24, a man and a woman come together in marriage and the two “shall become one (echad) flesh.” In Ezra 2:64, we are told that the whole assembly was as one (echad), though of course, it was composed of numerous people. Ezekiel 37:17 provides a rather striking example where two sticks are combined to become one (echad). The use of the word echad in Scripture shows it to be a compound and not an absolute unity.”

II. God Is At Least Two

Elohim and YHVH Applied to Two Personalities

As if to even make the case for plurality stronger, there are situations in the Hebrew Scriptures where the term Elohim is applied to two personalities in the same verse. One example is Psalm 45:7-8: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” It should be noted that the first Elohim is being addressed and the second Elohim is the God of the first Elohim. And so God’s God has anointed Him with the oil of gladness.

A second example is Hosea 1:7: “Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword or battle, by horses or horsemen.” The speaker is Elohim who says He will have mercy on the house of Judah and will save them by the instrumentality of YHVH, their Elohim. So Elohim number one will save Israel by means of Elohim number two.

Not only is Elohim applied to two personalities in the same verse, but so is the very name of God. One example is Genesis 19:24 which reads: “Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens.” Clearly we have YHVH number one raining fire and brimstone from a second YHVH who is in heaven, the first one being on earth.

A second example is Zechariah 2:8-9: For thus says the LORD of Hosts: “He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he that touches you touches the apple of His eye. For surely I will shake My hand against them, and they shall become spoil for their servants. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent Me.” Again, we have one YHVH sending another YHVH to perform a specific task.

The author of the Zohar sensed plurality in the Tetragrammaton3 and wrote:

“Come and see the mystery of the word YHVH: there are three steps, each existing by itself: nevertheless they are One, and so united that one cannot be separated from the other. The Ancient Holy One is revealed with three heads, which are united into one, and that head is three exalted. The Ancient One is described as being three: because the other lights emanating from him are included in the three. But how can three names be one? Are they really one because we call them one? How three can be one can only be known through the revelation of the Holy Spirit.”

III. God Is Three

How Many Persons Are There?

If the Hebrew Scriptures truly do point to plurality, the question arises, how many personalities in the Godhead exist? We have already seen the names of God applied to at least two different personalities. Going through the Hebrew Scriptures, we find that, in fact, three and only three distinct personalities are ever considered divine.

1. First, there are the numerous times when there is a reference to the Lord YHVH. This usage is so frequent that there is no need to devote space to it.

2. A second personality is referred to as the Angel of YHVH. This individual is always considered distinct from all other angels and is unique. In almost every passage where He is found He is referred to as both the Angel of YHVH and YHVH Himself. For instance, in Genesis 16:7 He is referred to as the Angel of YHVH, but then in 16:13 as YHVH Himself. In Genesis 22:11 He is the Angel of YHVH, but God Himself in 22:12. Other examples could be given.5 A very interesting passage is Exodus 23:20-23 where this angel has the power to pardon sin because God’s own name YHVH is in him, and, therefore, he is to be obeyed without question. This can hardly be said of any ordinary angel. But the very fact that God’s own name is in this angel shows His divine status.

3. A third major personality that comes through is the Spirit of God, often referred to as simply the Ruach Ha-kodesh. There are a good number of references to the Spirit of God among which are Genesis 1:2, 6:3; Job 33:4; Psalm 51:11; Psalm 139:7; Isaiah 11:2, etc. The Holy Spirit cannot be a mere emanation because He contains all the characteristics of personality (intellect, emotion and will) and is considered divine.

So then, from various sections of the Hebrew Scriptures there is a clear showing that three personalities are referred to as divine and as being God: the Lord YHVH, the Angel of YHVH and the Spirit of God.

The Three Personalities in the Same Passage

Nor have the Hebrew Scriptures neglected to put all three personalities of the Godhead together in one passage. Two examples are Isaiah 48:12-16 and 63:7-14. Because of the significance of the first passage, it will be quoted:

“Listen to Me, O Jacob, and Israel, My called: I am He, I am the First, I am also the Last. Indeed My hand also has laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand has stretched out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand up together. All of you, assemble yourselves, and hear! Who among them has declared these things? The LORD has loved him; he shall do His pleasure on Babylon, and His arm shall be against the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken; yes, I have called him, I have brought him, and his way will prosper. Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, I was there. And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit have sent me.”

It should be noted that the speaker refers to himself as the one who is responsible for the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is clear that he cannot be speaking of anyone other than God. But then in verse 16, the speaker refers to himself using the pronouns of I and me and then distinguishes himself from two other personalities. He distinguishes himself from the Lord YHVH and then from the Spirit of God. Here is the Tri-unity as clearly defined as the Hebrew Scriptures make it.

In the second passage, there is a reflection back to the time of the Exodus where all three personalities were present and active. The Lord YHVH is referred to in verse 7, the Angel of YHVH in verse 9 and the Spirit of God in verses 10, 11 and 14. While often throughout the Hebrew Scriptures God refers to Himself as being the one solely responsible for Israel’s redemption from Egypt, in this passage three personalities are given credit for it. Yet, no contradiction is seen since all three comprise the unity of the one Godhead.

Conclusion

The teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures, then, is that there is a plurality of the Godhead. The first person is consistently called YHVH while the second person is given the names of YHVH, the Angel of YHVH and the Servant of YHVH. Consistently and without fail, the second person is sent by the first person. The third person is referred to as the Spirit of YHVH or the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit. He, too, is sent by the first person but is continually related to the ministry of the second person.

If the concept of the Tri-unity in the Godhead is not Jewish according to modern rabbis, then neither are the Hebrew Scriptures. Jewish Christians cannot be accused of having slipped into paganism when they hold to the fact that Jesus is the divine Son of God. He is the same one of whom Moses wrote when he said:

“Behold, I send an Angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.” –Exodus 23:20-23

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