I don't claim to be as plugged in to the Protestant Christian blogosphere as I could be. Many other people know what's up there, and I often don't. This by way of apology for errors in what follows.
As I understand it, the Gospel Coalition is a reformed-leaning, orthodox, evangelical parachurch organization that provides resources to pastors and churches in an attempt to reform and stabilize the evangelical church in America and worldwide.
As it happens, TGC has as part of its statement of faith the concept which has become known as "complementarianism"--in brief, the notion that God made men and women different and meant for them to have different roles in the family and in the church. Of particular relevance to what follows is that complementarianism is opposed to women's ordination and to women's preaching in a role of authority over men. Its opposite in theological circles, which some would call feminism, is known as "egalitarianism."
Recently TGC put up a thoughtful round-table discussion among TGC leaders D.A. Carson, Tim Keller, and John Piper on the question of why TGC is complementarian. If you are interested in this subject at all, I encourage you to watch it, even though it's about seventeen minutes long (which is longer than I usually have patience for when it comes to videos on-line).
The video went up on August 15, and apparently in response, on August 24, Carl Trueman, who teaches Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, put up on his blog a series of posts in which he argues that, though he himself is a complementarian, a parachurch organization like TGC should not make complementarianism a foundational part of its identity by putting that position into its confessional statement. His posts can be found here and here.
At first when I read Trueman's posts and saw the video, I hadn't noted the dates, so I wondered whether he had actually seen the video. It's rather puzzling to realize, based on the dates and his own passing allusion at the beginning of his first post ("Given that the issue of complementarianism is raising its head over at The Gospel Coalition") that he must have done so and that he apparently intends in some measure to be responding to it. Yet his posts are unresponsive to a number of excellent points made in the video, and one wonders why. He's the one asking the questions. The men in the video have obviously heard something like them before and are attempting to answer them. Yet Trueman writes as though they have been neither answered nor even really considered. From the perspective of academic types, it's generally more satisfactory to say, "The folks over at such-and-such group have attempted to answer a question that has often bothered me, and they do address it at some length and from various angles, but here is why I find their answers unpersuasive..." following this up with a point-by-point discussion of what was actually said. Trueman doesn't even try to do anything like this, even briefly. As far as I can tell, he addresses only one of the points that TGC leaders made. He does so twice, and does so unsatisfactorily both times. This is the point made by Tim Keller to the effect that egalitarianism reflects a sadly lacking hermeneutic, an attempt to make Scripture say something different from what it obviously is saying at multiple points. Such an egregious hermeneutical problem is likely to have more wide-ranging effects.To this, Trueman responds,
One answer is that egalitarianism as a position is usually accompanied by lower views of scripture and the presence of other, more serious errors and heterodoxies. That might well be true in some, perhaps even many, cases but it is not necessarily so, any more than it is true that all complementarians are thoroughly orthodox on all other issues or hold the position for biblical reasons. I have known quite a few complementarians who seem to be such less because of the Bible and more because they apparently watched Conan the Barbarian a few too many times in their early teenage years.Still, it is true: I have indeed come across those who argue for women's ordination on the grounds that Paul was simply wrong; but I have also met those who think we have simply moved on from Paul's time, that he was right then but that his teaching cannot be applied directly to the twenty-first century context. Further, I have met those who profess to hold to inerrancy and who think that the relevant texts are authoritative but that the complementarian understanding of them is wrong. The latter two classes of people seem to me to be raising primarily hermeneutical issues; and the last group in particular does not seem, on the face of it, to be advocating a necessarily low view of scripture in the typical sense of the phrase. Indeed, I see no reason why one could not be an egalitarian and an inerrantist. And if it is a hermeneutical difference, how does one decide that this particular difference among inerrantists is more egregious than, say, those between Baptists and Paedobaptists or Dispensationalists and Amillennialists?
and
First, while I appreciate - and indeed sympathise with - the slippery slope argument (for example, that egalitarians today are committed to a hermeneutic which in the next generation leaves no basis for resisting the legitimation of homosexuality), I am not sure that that is a primary concern of a parachurch group in the present. The church, not the parachurch, is God's means of preserving the gospel. For the full range of Christian truth to be preserved, one needs not only a commitment to orthodox doctrine but also a biblical structure for its maintenance and preservation. That certainly seems to be Paul's perspective in the Pastorals. If the track record of egalitarians holding to orthodoxy in the second and third generations is poor, one has to say that that of parachurch groups driven by big personalities without transparent accountability structures and rooted in tending-to-minimal common ground statements of faith, rather than full-blown historic confessions, is equally suspect on this score. If one is going to make complementarianism a gospel issue on the grounds that this is necessary for preserving the faith, then one must also make ecclesiology a gospel issue by the same token. And that brings us back to a point I have made repeatedly over the last year: if the purpose of your parachurch is just to provide resources to help churches preach the gospel, that is fine but then just major on the gospel; if your ambitions are greater, then you need to come clean, be a church and be accountable as a church.
The first of these responses is a poor one because it rests on the unspoken assumption that various hermeneutical issues, if they can be cast that way, are all equally easy or difficult to assess. Hence, as long as one gives lip service to inerrancy or some similarly high view of Scripture, Trueman appears to think that the actual things one interprets Scripture as saying, however implausible, should be written down as merely "interpretive differences" and put on a par with infant baptism or differing views about the end times. This is obviously false. Biblical teaching on the subject of women's ordination and the differences between the sexes is repeated, unequivocal, and deeply tied into the very warp and woof of a biblical view of mankind. The same is not even close to being true regarding these other issues. It is difficult to believe that Trueman is not culpable either for not realizing this or for pretending that he doesn't realize this, especially since he is, he says, a complementarian himself. The answer to his question, "[H]ow does one decide that this particular difference among inerrantists is more egregious than, say, those between Baptists and Paedobaptists or Dispensationalists and Amillennialists?" is so easy that it shouldn't need to be stated.
The second response is strange indeed. What it seems to amount to is saying that if you run a parachurch organization and lack all the gifts and graces of an actual church, then you are in such hot water already that you might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb when it comes to doctrinal problems, you have no business bringing anything into your statement of faith that is not strictly necessary to be believed for salvation, and you have no business worrying ("worrying," that is, officially as an organization) more about feminism than about ecclesiology, even though the former is obviously and blatantly destroying the entire society around you while the latter is not.
I find it difficult to know how to respond to this weird argument except to wonder why anyone should think any such thing. In fact, if a parachurch organization has, as Trueman implies, special problems keeping itself doctrinally on the straight and narrow, is this not a reason for being especially vigilant in opposing the spirit of the age which seeks to corrupt the truth of Scripture and to lead man away from a Christian view of the world?
But except for that one mention of homosexuality, which might be taken as a reference to some of John Piper's remarks, these are the only places where I see Trueman actually responding to what TGC leaders actually said, which was itself intended to be a response to the very question he raises about the relative importance of complementarianism and views of baptism. In fact, Piper makes a knock-down pragmatic point at the end of the video concerning the very comparison (which they've obviously heard a number of times) to infant baptism: He points out that there is not a practical problem with having both credobaptists and pedobaptists in the same organization, because no one is going to press for baptizing infants at a TGC conference. On the other hand, if they have egalitarians as members of the organization in full and good standing, there will undeniably be pressure to have women preach at the conferences as part of acknowledging the equality of the egalitarian members with the complementarian members. And as Piper points out, this makes the organization functionally egalitarian!
This seems like the kind of thing Trueman might have said something about, but he doesn't bother to. Given his desire to tangle everything up with church polity, I suppose he might try to respond by saying that this is the very problem with a parachurch organization--that its members are all deemed to be on a par with one another, so that the members' beliefs are supposed to be represented in the organization's practice. Hence, he might well say, the local church is better because it has more of a distinction between laity and clergy. This allows the laity to have some views that are at odds with the official position of the church without having this cause a major problem, since they aren't the ones who make the majority of the decisions about how things are run, and the church doesn't owe it to them to act on all of their personal theological opinions.
Okay, well, fine, but TGC isn't going to shut down tomorrow, and neither are all the other parachurch organizations in the world, and if we're going to bother to discuss what it should be doing since it does exist, which Trueman evidently wants to do, then the question arises: Given the difference just described between a church and a parachurch organization, especially one like TGC which evidently has a very active and intellectual (and perhaps pushy?) membership, doesn't this naturally and legitimately lead to exactly the sorts of differences that seem to bother Trueman? Trueman is much exercised (see the posts) by the fact that TGC's inclusion of complementarianism goes beyond what most Baptist churches require for membership or for taking Communion. But why should that be a problem? Since, as Trueman ought to be the first to admit, comparing a parachurch organization to a church is something of an apples-to-oranges endeavor, why demand that they operate by the same practical rules or demand that practice and doctrine intersect in the same way in TGC that they do in a church?
We can go even farther than that, though: It makes a pretty good rule of thumb that, where there isn't a sharp clergy-laity distinction, it becomes likely that you will need a longer and more detailed statement on matters of faith and practice in order to prevent the very nature of the organization (or, for that matter, of the church) from being warped by the inclusion of influential dissenting members. This might, in fact, explain the fact that Baptist churches, which are congregationalist in their form of governance, have more detailed confessional requirements for full church membership than do some hierarchical churches.
Trueman seems to consider it some kind of reductio to imagine that any church might exclude people from membership on the grounds of their being egalitarians:
If that is the case, then churches presumably need to start disciplining even those members who may believe in egalitarianism too.
I don't know about "disciplining." Do churches always "discipline" those members who are found, after becoming members, to be out of step on this point or that with the church's confessional statement, even if they are not committing some other sin worthy of church discipline? Should churches always do so? It's not obvious that they always should and would seem to depend on a host of factors. But churches might well screen people carefully on their theological views if they want to teach Sunday School. In fact, I think churches should do so. If your church rejects women's ordination, I don't think you should want someone teaching a Sunday School class on the book of, say, Ephesians or on the pastoral epistles who is a defender of women's ordination or who is a feminist in general. And if the problem became acute enough, especially in a church with a congregationalist governing system, you might well include complementarianism in your statement of faith and screen prospective members by means of it before giving them the status of full members in the first place. So even if it did follow, which it doesn't, from the inclusion of complementarianism in TGC's statement of faith that adherence to complementarianism should be required for church members in some church, this wouldn't constitute the reductio Trueman envisages.
Trueman doesn't attempt to address the comments by D.A. Carson about the biblical view of God. The fact that the Bible chooses to call God "father" rather than "mother" ought to be relevant to our view of human fathers. If there is no deep difference between human fathers and mothers, why should it be important to retain a concept of God as our Father in heaven? Is it not understandable that this should be a more important issue than premillenialism?
John Piper also makes excellent comments about raising children, to which Trueman's columns are unresponsive. Piper points out that it is very difficult for an egalitarian to answer a question from a boy as to what it will mean for him to grow up to be a man, per se, as opposed to a woman, a father, specifically, rather than a mother. These are questions that go straight to the nature of man and, hence, the good of man and the good of the Christians to which churches minister. Again, it is entirely understandable that they should be considered to be more urgent than opposition to (or promotion of) pedobaptism.
Let's return for a moment to Trueman's brief mention of homosexuality. He says, first, that he has some sympathy for the argument that "egalitarians today are committed to a hermeneutic which in the next generation leaves no basis for resisting the legitimation of homosexuality." Actually, I would say that egalitarians today are committed to a hermeneutic which right now leaves no basis for resisting the legitimation of homosexuality. Why wait until the next generation? But more than that, I notice that metaphysics seems to be out of the picture altogether. Let's be clear about this: If you reject the premise that there exists a deep metaphysical difference between man and woman, a difference created and intended by God, which makes them complementary to one another, you have problems ginning up a theological and metaphysical basis for resisting the legitimation of homosexuality! Of course, you can always fall back on a kind of bare divine command theory: "Men and women are really fungible, but God says that homosexual acts are wrong, so, egalitarian theory to the contrary notwithstanding, it turns out that that fungibility doesn't extend to the morality of sexual acts." Good luck with that. Somehow I don't find that very compelling, and, while it may stand the test of time in the case of some individual, it's extremely unlikely to do so in the church (or parachurch) as a whole.
Moreover, it won't help you very much in influencing society at large with an alternative view of the human person, a view grounded in the natural law. And here is where we come to a huge lacuna in Trueman's entire approach, a lacuna which I believe was filled by implication in the video but which should be brought out a bit more explicitly: Trueman appears to be insisting that no parachurch ministry can ever exist, even partially, for purposes of affecting things like worldview and for equipping the church to speak to society at large about the problems that are currently destructive in society. In fact, he comes very close to disparaging such goals:
Because as soon as you decide that issues such as baptism are not part of your centre-bounded set but complementarianism is, you will find yourself vulnerable to criticism -- from both right and left -- that you are allowing a little bit of the culture war or your own pet concerns and tastes to intrude into what you deem to be the most basic biblical priorities.
Heaven forbid that we should allow even a little bit of the culture war to intrude into our priorities!
But could it not be that the culture war is called that for a reason? Suppose that there really is a culture war and that we need to fight it? What if the culture is becoming increasingly unnatural and destructive? And what if those unnatural, destructive, and unbiblical modes of thought are coming into our churches, so that our churches are coming to be conformed to this world rather than being transformed by the renewing of our minds? Could it not then be a legitimate goal of a parachurch organization to address those issues and to strengthen the churches at those very points? To these questions Trueman has no cogent answer. He just doesn't like parachurch organizations that join co-belligerents across denominational lines (which will involve having members who disagree on issues like infant baptism) and that engage with the church and with the culture on issues that are not bare, minimal matters of saving faith.
Perhaps Trueman would have less rhetorical purchase if TGC had some other name. As things are, the issue keeps being framed as "Is complementarianism a Gospel issue?" Now, any philosopher will cry, "Distinguo!" at this point. It should go without saying that it depends on how one defines "gospel." Was abolition a gospel issue? Is abortion? What about wife-beating? One could make an argument that they are "gospel issues" on one definition, and one can easily imagine legitimate non-church Christian organizations that come together around those issues in cultures where the issues are current and relevant. If anything, one could argue that complementarianism is more intimately bound up than those issues are with the church's own faithfulness to God's plan for its own activities. It would be impossible in this day and age for any parachurch organization to convey a broad vision of church ministry without addressing the issue of women's ordination. And it is entirely understandable that an organization that exists to help churches : "[reform their] ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures" and that opposes "theological and moral relativism," as TGC's "about" statement says, should end up addressing the effects of egalitarianism/feminism in both the church and the home.
Three cheers for TGC for supporting the important and fundamental notion that God created man as male and female, and that He did so for a reason. The organization is obviously under some pressure to regard this truth as of only marginal importance to their mission, or to what others think their mission should be. It's therefore good to see that they aren't backing down, and it's to be hoped that that strong-mindedness on the subject will continue for the entire future of the organization.
Comments (82)
I think another way to rephrase it with Trueman would be why is he placing the Gospel above the rest of scripture? The Gospel itself is only the keystone to the rest of the Bible. A keystone without the other stones does not a bridge make. In fact, Jesus affirmed that the Gospel itself is meaningless without the rest of scripture because the entirety of the Gospel is the Living Word of God Himself explaining the true meaning of the Torah and the prophets to those who would believe. I think phrasing like "is it a gospel issue" is inherently a red herring used by many Protestants to dishonestly carve out territory where they can "agree to disagree" because they don't wish to submit their own understanding of an idea or issue to what would normally flow from Christian scripture and tradition. You can almost inherently tell a Protestant who is jonesin to commit heresy by how much they claim "scripture isn't clear" or claim that grace somehow makes it trivial.
Somewhat topical, your buddy Dalrock has a post up about how one of the leaders of the Southern Baptists is now arguing that women have a scriptural right to use sex as a weapon whenever they feel their husband is "not doing right." He included a whole host of things ranging from blatant abdication of scriptural duties, to shaving and halitosis. Obviously, he would have no problem with a man coming home and plopping down in front of his XBox for 3 hours a night if his wife refused to have sex and let her appearance go.
I don't know what the deal is here with these "conservatives," but it seems to me that many of them cannot take scripture at face value.
Posted by Mike T | September 7, 2012 9:46 AM
Well, just to be clear, I do refuse to discuss that other site to which you allude. I have to admit that I'm also not terribly interested in what the Southern Baptist leader said, whether that characterization is correct, and what I think about it. (That's right, I'm not interested in finding out what I, myself, think about what the Southern Baptist actually said about sex in marriage.)
But I do agree that we need to be careful about a kind of pietistic concept of "the gospel" that separates it radically from all sorts of other outworkings thereof. What bothers me particularly about Trueman's posts is the lecturing tone and the absolute nature of his proscriptions:
My reaction to that is more or less, "Who died and left you Pope?" I mean, heck, we have Christian non-church organizations feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, visiting the prisoners, running hospitals, supporting home schoolers, fighting abortion, giving legal aid to those persecuted by liberals. The list goes on and on. By this standard they should all go "poof" tomorrow! After all, their purposes are not merely "providing resources to help churches preach the gospel," and they don't agree merely to "just major on the gospel," on Trueman's narrow definition of "gospel," so evidently they have no right to exist.
On the other hand, if they have a right to exist, then a fortiori TGC has not only a right to exist but a right to bring the issue of complementarianism into its attempts to bolster and help the church.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 10:17 AM
"This is the point made by Tim Keller to the effect that complementarianism reflects a sadly lacking hermeneutic..."
Don't you mean egalitarianism?
Posted by The Masked Elephant | September 7, 2012 11:01 AM
I too was mystified by Professor Trueman's comments. Westminster Seminary is a parachurch organization. It is not officially a denominational school. J. G. Machen deliberately set it up that way. Prof. Trueman is either a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or the Free Church of Scotland. Both of those denominations practice Church discipline when office-bearers of the Church have departed from the faith, in either life or doctrine. Both of those denominations historically have had a strong testimony on the different roles of men and women in the family and in the Kirk. [Although the OPC does permit women to vote in their congregational meetings.] I would be surprised if an elder in one of those denominations did not call Professor Trueman on the carpet for his comments.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 7, 2012 11:01 AM
I'm almost starting to get numb to the effect of seeing "conservatives" who turn out to be an inferior grade of liberal. I referenced it because it was another one of those face-palm incidents where you think "if these are our friends..."
This is where his argument truly collapses. What is the gospel, if not a detailed explanation of how a much larger tradition and revelation was misinterpreted? I think Trueman is likely a preacher of "lawless grace." You know that tendency among evangelicals to say that we are simply not bound by the Law because grace "has freed us." (Instead of freeing us from condemnation we justly deserve, it has set us outside of the Law as a Law unto ourselves)
Posted by Mike T | September 7, 2012 11:44 AM
Thanks, M.E. Fixed.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 12:01 PM
Well, that would take us into a whole different discussion of the origins of Christianity. I find that characterization a bit limited, myself. The gospel includes a truly new revelation that God is a Trinity, that Jesus of Nazareth is God and the Messiah, that God raised him from the dead, etc. A lot more there.
As for speculations about what else Trueman teaches or believes about law and grace, I would only be guessing and prefer not to do that.
I did have another post up a while back (no time to look up the link) about a post in which Michael Horton was similarly saying cryptic things about an over-emphasis on complementarianism. Horton also alluded to some comments by John Piper (without naming Piper) to the effect that Christianity has a "masculine feel," which seems like a completely unobjectionable statement to me. So it looks to me like there is some sort of movement developing for some folks in the evangelical community to say, "We're complementarians, but we don't think it's really important at all, and y'all are weird for emphasizing it." Or something to that effect.
Allusions to Conan the Barbarian (see Trueman's post) scarcely help. Why even say things like that? If anything, the chaps at TGC are pretty suave, and a rampaging blogger like me sometimes finds them a bit too apolitical for my preference (Tim Keller especially), so references to Conan are definitely beside the point. Certainly it is possible, _very_ possible, to oppose feminism in an objectionable way. But the men at TGC are about as far from that as it's possible to get.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 12:09 PM
Aside from revelations about the the nature of God, really not that much changed. Jesus alluded on a few occasions that the Gospel is not a radical departure from the true nature of the Torah and prophets, but rather a divine clarification of them with some new revelation.
Complementarianism invariably leads to a realization that the way many people want to live or just do live is unbiblical and unnatural. That causes a moment of crisis where the scope of orthodoxy increases and the scope of acceptable heterodoxy shrinks significantly. There are fewer things more offensive to most evangelicals than the realization that orthodoxy extends far and wide, and that the scope of things which they can choose on their own is not that big.
After all, we did break away from the Catholic Church because we were fed up with being told there is any objective, knowable reality about religion outside the Bible...
Posted by Mike T | September 7, 2012 1:08 PM
Mike said,"I think Trueman is likely a preacher of 'lawless grace'"
Professor Trueman is no antinomian. That is, in part, what makes his take on complementarianism and para-church organizations so troubling.
Trueman is sometimes brilliant and insightful. His take on this issue is just out of step with what one expect from a Professor at a school founded by John Gresham Machen.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 7, 2012 2:10 PM
For a taste of Trueman go to http://www.wtsbooks.com/pdf_files/9781596384057.pdf
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 7, 2012 2:14 PM
I'm also disappointed in Trueman, having enjoyed his writing before. He seems like a witty guy, but this is just carping. Very disappointing.
Posted by The Masked Elephant | September 7, 2012 4:17 PM
If your organization is not a church, then it's are a man-made organization, and you can have anything you want to be "essential" to the organization's meaning and mission. If I wanted to run a "Chess While Wearing Beanies" organization (CWWB), it would be completely irrelevant for Trueman to come along and say "but wearing beanies is not critical to chess, so you shouldn't have it as part of the mission statement or critical elements." Obviously, if the man-made organization's basis for existing includes beanies, then beanies IS critical to it.
All Trueman has succeeded in doing is saying that this is an organization that is a poor fit for him. OK, fine, start your own, Trueman. If you cannot find anyone who thinks the way you do, maybe you will re-think whether you can successfully be (and remain) complementarian without putting it into your faith statement.
Posted by Tony | September 7, 2012 4:20 PM
Lydia, I have thought for a while now that the Gospel revelation of the Trinity was an explicit unfolding of prior seeds planted firmly and definitively in the Old Testament: "Let us make man in our own image", and the appearance before Abraham:
I would suggest, rather, that the Old Testament had greatly emphasized the one-ness of the Lord for the sake of distinguishing and separating the Jews from the pagans, who multiplied their gods without end. But even from the beginning the revelation to man included the beginnings of the trinitarian truth.
Posted by Tony | September 7, 2012 4:58 PM
By "truly new," Tony, I certainly didn't mean "in contradiction to what God had revealed before." However, I disagree with the thrust of Mike T.'s comments above concerning Christianity. What he says about the extent of new revelation in Christianity ("Aside from revelations about the the nature of God, really not that much changed") reminds me a bit of the infamous mayoral statement that "Except for the murders, Washington D.C. is a very safe city."
I deliberately did not respond again, however, on that because I consider the whole large subject of the relationship of Christianity to the Old Testament to be OT (pun intended) and to have come up in this thread by the merest accident.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 5:36 PM
There is a context to Trueman's post - the rows that broke out over Mark Driscoll's pornographic visions, and James McDonald's decision to treat a modalist as a fellow Christian. Trueman took some folk to task on his blog. I think men like Thabiti Anyabwile were more constructive, and seem to have set the Coalition on a steadier path. (Anyabwile is probably the wisest man on the Coalition blogs; therefore, he gets less press.)
OK, the basic problem: there is not a robust, conservative evangelical definition of the Church. Reformed Confessionalists have a robust definition of the Church. Trueman is attracted to the view that there's no such thing as an evangelical (he really needs to read Lydia's "I Was a Teenage Nominalist"). So he gets a bit grumpy with groups like the Coalition who want to define what an evangelical is.
That said, Trueman is a bit of a controversialist. I'm not sure how seriously to take his posts. He definitely hit the correct targets when he attacked conservative, reformed, evangelical celebrities like Driscoll; and it took guts to take those guys on. It cost him, too. But I usually take him with a pinch of salt.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 7, 2012 6:13 PM
Graham, the content here just is what it is. I'm happy to take him with a grain of salt, but I can't expect _him_ to like that. In these posts he is quite soberly arguing that an evangelical parachurch is wrong to treat complementarianism as a confessional matter. I differ with him, and it made a good post for me to take him seriously enough to say why I differ with him. It makes no difference to me what _other_ disagreements he might have had with _other_ people in TGC. On this one, these three guys are right and he's wrong.
His attempts to bring ecclesiology into this, somehow, are frankly tortuous and argumentatively unconvincing. If he wants a more robust ecclesiology, he's welcome to go to Rome if he likes, but he might be disappointed to find plenty of parachurch organizations there as well! And many of them focus on things other than "the gospel" as he is defining it here.
If he thinks that he can snark at TGC over complementarianism because he doesn't think they have a robust enough definition of the church, then he's just allowing his Inner Snarker to get out of hand. And all the more weirdly given that this should be an issue on which he _agrees_ with them.
Would he prefer it if they had _no_ confessional statement? We'll hope not. But as long as they have one, his attempt to make up some sort of metaprinciples that they _ought_ to use to guide them in what to include is just falling flat. He isn't coming up with any such metaprinciples that are even remotely convincing, and he should abandon the effort and rethink his position.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 6:24 PM
"What it seems to amount to is saying that if you run a parachurch organization and lack all the gifts and graces of an actual church, then you are in such hot water already that you might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb..."
In all honesty, Lydia, I think that this really is Trueman's position. He really doesn't like the "para-church." It should have a very, very limited role. In his view, TGC should not be attempting to steady the evangelical ship! Leave that to the professional pastors (like Trueman!) Confessionalism offers the only safe definition of the church, and the rest of us be hanged...
So I think he does need to answer many of the questions that you have asked here; and I don't think that he'll have convincing answers.
Posted by Graham | September 7, 2012 6:32 PM
Oh, I'm on your side here Lydia. I think his arguments are odd.
Posted by Graham | September 7, 2012 6:33 PM
OK, I could have been clearer...I'm not a confessionalist. I'm a conservative evangelical, and proud of it. I don't like the snarks from reformed confessionalists. They take Cornelius Van Til seriously, so they shouldn't be looking down their noses at anyone...
I was suggesting that Trueman's posts are a case of "any stick to beat a dog with". He doesn't like TGC, and he uses every opportunity to say so. He has made some decent points in the past, but this TGC bashing is getting weird.
Posted by Graham | September 7, 2012 6:58 PM
Thanks, that's clarifying. And that actually fits quite well with the whole strange tone of Trueman's posts.
A major problem with the "any stick to beat a dog with" attitude (and I'm sure you'll agree) is that it can end up being pretty destructive. I've seen it here in the U.S. in politics. Without meaning to introduce a threadjack of my own (in this forum where people are all too easy to derail, that's a perilous thing to risk), I've seen it among certain non-mainstream conservatives. They start by being annoyed with some aspect of mainstream conservatism (e.g., foreign policy), and they end up bashing the pro-lifers, even though they themselves started out by claiming to be pro-life. It starts as, "You doggoned pro-lifers allow yourselves to be used by the neo-con establishment," and before one knows it, the pro-lifers are just being torn down all over the place, and one finds it impossible to tell that the critic is pro-life at all.
It seems that Trueman may be headed in a similar direction with the complementarianism issue.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 7:28 PM
I'm a habitual derailer, so I'll pull this back in penance for previous offences!
"You doggoned pro-lifers allow yourselves to be used by the neo-con establishment"
Did you know that Trueman has a book called "Republocrat" that makes this argument?
http://www.amazon.com/Republocrat-Confessions-Conservative-Carl-Trueman/dp/1596381833
I think there is a temptation to retreat from the secular world into a comfortable sub-culture. So there is a danger in telling Christians to opt out of the para-church, and to opt out of politics, and to leave everything to Pastor. Carl's ordering a retreat and declaring it a victory!
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 7, 2012 7:44 PM
Ah, thanks for that insight on Trueman. I notice the deliberate downplaying of the importance of abortion in the book. Yes, well. That tells us a lot about where he's coming from.
In fact, I had a thought: I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Trueman would agree with TGC at a point where I'm inclined to disagree with them. (I had a post here criticizing John Piper on this.) Namely, that the church should be strictly apolitical. Well, if the church should be apolitical, and if Christian parachurch organizations should not exist, especially not those that have any "non-gospel" purpose, then what follows? Neither more nor less than this: Christians should have no venues in which they organize among themselves to influence their countries through civic, legal, and political processes! Verry interesting. Ordering a retreat and calling it victory indeed.
Posted by Lydia | September 7, 2012 8:37 PM
Though the TGC roundtable was refreshing, I found it a bit aggravating except in strictly church political terms. So we hear from the first speaker that an improper understanding of our sexual nature to the world is an "indirect relationship - It loosens your understanding of the force of scriptural teaching". He goes on that it will "protect the gospel, display the gospel, release the gospel for maximum human flourishing". So far so good from my perspective, as well as when Piper discusses the way egalitarians moral view forces a deconstruction of any sort of complementarian understanding. But the moral reasoning of the complementation view is no less in play, which only points to the reasonable basis of both views. In other words, one could think that Paul's statements don't provide sufficient means to form a doctrine on this issue, but still think that men and women's roles in the church must be different for natural reasons as we see within the family.
I don't think it should be a problem for a Christian to say "Well, ya know I have to admit scriptural support is too weak to form a doctrine about it, but let me tell you the rational ground is quite strong and there are no grounds for its refutation in scripture". Scripture doesn't offer explicit arguments for what was considered self-evident since dirt. What would be wrong with that? You arrive at the same position that TGC does so far as I can tell, or at least I have.
I think it would have been far more interesting if they had been caught on secret camera at the local pub discussing the same matter because it is difficult to believe they wouldn't have attempted deeper explanations on the matter. Believing that two things are different, without some understanding of how and in what ways doesn't help so much in the end. C. S. Lewis discussed such matters but that was an earlier time.
But yeah, I get that the discussion is supposed to revolve around the TGC/Trueman discussion so this is a tangent in that respect. But sometimes it is aggravating to see what the smart guys aren't saying anymore.
Posted by Mark | September 8, 2012 3:03 AM
This might sound like a thread-jack, but I'm building to a point---
Trueman falls prey to the Wodehouse fallacy: that Britain is the Jeeves to America's Wooster. For example, "Republocrat" expresses British prejudices against American conservatism in an entertaining ramble. But I only found it entertaining because I share his prejudices; and they are only prejudices. I don't get the impression that Trueman understands American politics any better than me.
He laments that he would like to vote for a party that is pro-life, pro-marriage, and socialist. In America he doesn't have that option. (He can't join the "Sojourners" because his theology is too conservative.)Now I sympathise, but I don't know if Trueman is going to find a party like that anywhere in the western world.
Our political choices are limited; that's a sad state of affairs, but it's an imperfect world. The question is "what should we now do?" And the simple fact of the matter is, there are more political choices available for the Christian in America than England (or Northern Ireland, but that's a different story.) There isn't one viable pro-life, pro-marriage, party in British politics. There are Christian MP's, but a British citizen might have to move some considerable distance to live in their constituency.
In America there are strong, vibrant and thoughtful conservative Christian political groups. Yes, there is a tendency to "baptise" the Republican party. But that is not an American problem; as Trueman notes, evangelicals in Welsh mining communities took the same attitude to the Labour party (before it abandoned socialism.) Furthermore, British evangelicals should not criticise the alliance of Republican and Christian until we have acknowledged the union of secularist and Democrat!
I said that I was builidng to a point, and here it is: Trueman would rather be a Jeremiah lamenting in the ruins of Jerusalem than Nehemiah rebuilding the walls. He does not like the choices on the menu, so he refuses to eat.
He makes this comment in a recent book review:
I am myself a 'sectarian' as some have said, and happy to operate in a small, culturally irrelevant denomination. I need roots, I need stable, biblically based, historically tested and ecclesiastically responsible theology. That is what confessional churches provide. And only such provide.
This is why Trueman runs from politics and the para-church. Why face Rome in the valleys when you can hide behind the walls of Jersusalem? So much can go wrong in open warfare, why take the risk. But the Romans will still come, Carl, and they'll build a trench around your city, no matter how carefully you try to hide it. What will the Church do then? Sooner or later, we have to make choices in an imperfect world. And when we do, we need guidance from our theologians; no a plan of retreat.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 8, 2012 6:39 AM
I don't consider the absence of a Christian socialist party to be an example of our living in an imperfect world, myself. :-) But then, I think socialism is very bad for the common good, to put it mildly.
I'm inclined to think Trueman wouldn't have written the book at all if he were really inclined to a Jehovah's Witnesses in-principle retreat from voting. I admit to going on summaries (and don't intend to get the book), but I don't think one would write a book in which one argues that the pro-life issue should be set aside in deciding whom to vote for if one really just wanted to go off into a "sectarian bubble" and never vote again. Plus the claim (which, again, I'm getting from a summary) that progress can be made in the pro-life direction in the Democrat party is laughable, though not funny--bitterly laughable. As the recent convention has shown. To me, that combined with the socialist comments sounds like somebody who really doesn't get it w.r.t. to the evil of abortion, who not-so-secretly thinks one is superior to those un-nuanced, mainstream conservative Yahoos, who really really really likes misguided economic approaches, and who is looking to justify voting Democrat at least some of the time. In my experience it's likely that someone like that will end up being a man of the left (and voting accordingly) more and more as time goes by.
Posted by Lydia | September 8, 2012 10:05 AM
Mark, I sometimes share your frustrations with Christians who insist on sticking to revelation and eschew the natural law, but this isn't one of those cases. I thought they did a good job in the video. If anything, I would probably have expanded on some of the revelation-related points, particularly the way that feminists understandably come to reject the fatherhood of God and distort the nature of God, which D.A. Carson touched on briefly.
This is a case where revelation gives us plenty of ammo. The Apostle Paul even addressed women's having authority in the church. That didn't have to happen, but it did happen. And Paul has a lengthy discussion of male headship in the family, too. Plus there are plenty of other things in Scripture that show the complementarian nature of man and woman. When revelation and the natural light dovetail as well as they do in this case, we have a real knock-down case. It's perfectly understandable that they would lean on the revelatory side of things, but they were by no means exclusive about it. They didn't confine themselves to some kind of simplistic, "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." Piper in particular (as you note) addresses the devastating effects on society of tearing down natural concepts of masculinity. I thought they showed quite well that an abandonment of God's plan for mankind messes up mankind. That's the kind of thing we need more of, even though it was obviously addressed to a Christian audience that accepts Scripture. But there's nothing wrong with that. After all, they _were_ talking to a Christian audience. You could see them in the picture!
Posted by Lydia | September 8, 2012 10:11 AM
Professor Trueman says,
I think Professor Trueman overstates how culturally irrelevant The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is. Be that as it may, the fact many protestants are now forced into small denomination is the very reason they should join together in organizations which seek to express their vision of culture. Trueman should not be hostile to para-church organizations which seek to bring Christians together to stand up to the watering down of the Gospel, or oppose feminism, or abortion or The homosexual agenda.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 8, 2012 3:57 PM
I see what you mean, Lydia.
The other side of the coin is he despairs of the Democratic Party (the first chapter is called "Left Behind"). He does realise that there is no place for him in the Democratic Party.
He is happy with an individual Christian making a decision about an individual candidate; he is unhappy with a Church making a decision about a political party.
So I want to ask "OK, Carl, but what about all the ground in between? Are you saying that the Church should not have had a position on slavery? After all, think of all the poor Voortrekkers who were alienated from the faith in the 19th Century..."
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 8, 2012 4:07 PM
The Gospel Coalition's foundation statement says
In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.
This is a fairly broad definition of complementarianism. It only calls for the distinctive leadership role to be reserved for qualified men. It does not specify what that role should be. So a church could have women preachers, say, but only male elders. Or women elders, but only male pastors.
It does not even specify whether the distinctive role should be in the local church, or at a denominational level. The Coalition is only arguing that some distinctive role should be set aside for men, so that the principle of male leadership is preserved.
Most Coalition council members would go much further than this; so they have hardly made their complementarianism the defining mark of an evangelical! I think Trueman is really attacking a straw man.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 8, 2012 4:28 PM
I think Pastor Piper's comments make it pretty clear that his understanding of complementarianism as they are discussing it wd. rule out women preachers and any situation in which women are given "spiritual authority over men." Piper may not be the only one who puts it this way in the video either; I'd have to re-watch. I have no problem with that, of course, and that may be what the phrase "the distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men" is meant to imply.
Posted by Lydia | September 8, 2012 5:09 PM
One blogger I saw mentioned a posting by Driscoll where he was lamenting that a "beautiful, smart, funny successful 40 something" wasn't married. It never seemed to occur to him and his wife that such a woman would likely have had ample opportunities to marry in her 20s or even her 30s. Rather than use her as a cautionary tale, he lamented it as though she had not likely been the sole author of her misery. This says to me that Driscoll really doesn't have a firm grasp on the realities of complentarianism and sexual attraction; that most of her "qualifications" were things women find attractive in men, seemed to never occur to him.
Well, for many Protestants Sola Scriptura is an excuse to deny things which are self-evident and interfere with their personal autonomy.
Posted by Mike T | September 8, 2012 6:14 PM
Mike T @ 11:44. I do not know which evangelicals you speak of that preach "lawless grace."
Certainly preachers like John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll or David Jeremiah know how to apply law and grace when they exposit the scriptures. Why do you not list some of the pastors that preach this "lawless grace", otherwise, your comments are just spouting meaningless drivel.
The scriptures speak quite eloquently about women not being in a position of authority over men. Tell me how many women have been Popes or priests. The Catholic church understands this admonition from the scriptures. As you know, closer to the end times, ravening wolves will come in and lead some of the flock away, alas. w$gck
Posted by whirlwinder | September 8, 2012 6:31 PM
Yes, Piper and Carson were both founders of "The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood". Piper's pretty black and white on this issue; he's representing 'mainstream' complementarianism.
My point is that Carson and Keller didn't 'copy, cut and paste' the Danvers statement across to TGC's foundation document. They left a bit more room for maneuver. The foundation document doesn't say that woman should never have spiritual authority over a man.
John Stott, for example, would have allowed women on a leadership team (ie. eldership) as long as men were in the majority, or so long as a man was the 'lead elder'. TGC don't say anything that would rule this interpretation out - the video isn't a binding document; Carson and Keller are clear that they don't want that sort of role within the Coalition.
So TGC just isn't as rigorous on the definition of complementarianism as they are on the definition of the Gospel. But TGC has good practical and pastoral reasons for promoting complementarianism, and will continue to do so. This seems unobjectionable, and it leaves me wondering what exactly Trueman's point is.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 8, 2012 6:34 PM
Mike T
I wondered if the "Conan the Barbarian" quip wasn't a jibe at Driscoll. (If ever a Prod needed a shot of natural law to the head, it's Mark Driscoll...check out the twaddle in "Real Marriage")
But Driscoll and co have moved on from TGC. Trueman was right to object to their antics; can't he just say that TGC is better for their absence, and let bygones be bygones?
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 8, 2012 6:39 PM
Right, because three men who can properly explain the relationship between grace and the law disproves my point that many evangelicals leave church with beliefs about grace and the law that are eerily similar to the cultural Catholic "sin now, confess later" meme. If I had a buck for every evangelical I met who believed that God's grace meant that with proper contrition, you can remarry after divorcing a fellow Christian on profoundly unbiblical grounds, I'd be driving an Enzo to work.
That is what I mean by "lawless grace." It is, as my wife says about such evangelicals, the belief that grace is a perpetual "get out of jail free card."
I haven't read Real Marriage, and doubt I will. I would be surprised, though, if most of his conservative critics have actually read it. A lot of the criticism I've seen consists of stuff like "gadzooks, [ed.]!" I also reflexively dismiss left-wing commentary about the "degradation of women" because the left has absolutely no credibility with me on these issues (now that they've nearly destroyed the value of "racist," some are starting to turn toward "misogynist")
Mark Driscoll sounds like's over the top and wrong more from exaggeration unto hyperbole. I would imagine that that is a consequence of being a non-liberal pastor in a place like Seattle. Tougher environments tend to breed tougher, rougher around the edges Christians.
Posted by Mike T | September 8, 2012 8:03 PM
Mike T., you can find lengthy reviews of the book by people who definitely _have_ read it. The content is not, actually, in question, and their criticisms are highly credible. However, this is a family-friendly site, and we are not going to discuss what is wrong with that book in detail. You'll have to do your own research. Suffice it to say that the one item you mentioned, which I edited, is by no means the only problem with the book.
Nor are we going to get into discussing all the other problems Mark Driscoll has. I'm inclined to agree with Graham on this one but am not writing a post on the pros and cons of Driscoll--again, partly because of the family nature of this site, partly because a couple of decades ago I was personal friends with Driscoll, so I find the direction he has gone a painful subject.
Posted by Lydia | September 8, 2012 8:54 PM
I seriously doubt that Piper and Co. would say it's fine and dandy to remarry under un-biblical circumstances. Even Russell Moore, who's not the steeliest bloke on the block, wrote quite a good letter sternly rebuking a man who wrote wondering if divorce would be okay for him and his spouse because they just "didn't get along," even though there was no abuse or unfaithfulness in the picture:
http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/03/15/should-i-divorce-if-im-miserable/
As for Driscoll, actually I read two quite thorough reviews of _Real Marriage_ by people who had obviously read it (and in one sense wished they hadn't even though they felt it was important to inform their readers how bad it was). Besides, there's something to be said for the "gadzooks [insert perverse sexual act here]" reaction.
Posted by The Masked Elephant | September 8, 2012 10:04 PM
Graham, can you describe what you mean by "evangelical?" I have heard the term used in so many apparently unrelated senses that I get confused. What do evangelicals mean by it when they call themselves that?
Posted by Tony | September 8, 2012 10:17 PM
Lydia/Mike
I don't think a discussion of Mark Driscoll would be helpful; but I do think he illustrates the problems with equating "sola scriptura" with "proof-texts only, please." And I think this is a problem with "reformed leaning" evangelicalism (speaking as an evangelical who is quite comfortable with TGC's confession of faith.)
For example, I don't think evangelical Calvinists really get to grips with the problem of evil or human freedom. We neglect the resources of natural theology and natural law theory for spurious reasons. We ignore tradition as practically useless, yet never stop to ask why the traditions developed in the first place.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 9, 2012 6:10 AM
Tony
Trueman believes that evangelicalism is nothing more than a constantly shifting network of alliances. So evangelicalism is a useful fiction. It does not really exist because no one document or institution binds us all together. By this reasoning there are no socialists or conservatives or jazz musicians. His philosophy of history irritates me.
He criticises those who spend more time doing philosophy of history than writing history. (He's the expert, you see.) He then makes assertions that you can only read between your fingers.
To my mind, ideas and traditions have consequences; evangelicalism is the product of a form of evangelism and a way of understanding the gospel.
So - evangelicalism is movement which originated in the revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Our roots are orthodox, and we should always recognize that the early Creeds of the Church express central truths about God and salvation. Our roots are in revivalism (for better and for worse), so we emphasize the truthfulness of the Bible and the need for personal conversion.
And "need for personal conversion" is not a vague or amorphous concept:
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/gospel-jesus-christ-evangelical-celebration/
Does that help?
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 9, 2012 6:38 AM
To quote from Trueman's "The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind"
When the fog has lifted and it becomes clear that all talk of evangelicalism as a clearly defined movement was a category mistake—a confusion of a coalition for a doctrinally committed movement—then new alliances may emerge.
When Mark Noll declared that the scandal of the evangelical mind was that there was no mind, he meant to criticize the lack of cultural and theological engagement among evangelicals. I agree there is a scandal involving the evangelical mind, though I understand the problem in the exact opposite way. It is not that there is no mind, but rather that there is no evangelical.
[E]vangelicalism has a twist: It doesn’t exist. . . . There simply is no pure, platonic ideal of evangelicalism, no common identity in which all evangelicalisms participate.
Yeah, Carl. And there aren't any Hindus either... or orthodox Christians for that matter.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 9, 2012 8:09 AM
Graham, thinking about that TGC statement you quoted earlier on complementarianism (and about another paragraph in the confessional statement about God's creating man and woman to be complementary), I would say that an egalitarian couldn't sign the statement in good faith regardless of the specifics of church government that the egalitarian espoused. An egalitarian is going to object to the whole idea that men and women are meant by God to be essentially different (in marriage, for example) and to have these different and complementary roles. Think of a writer like Rebecca Groothuis, for example. I'm sure she wouldn't sign that confessional statement. So I doubt that the flexibility allowed by the specific language on church government is going to make a whole lot of difference to TGC membership.
Posted by Lydia | September 9, 2012 9:22 AM
Oh yes, it's definitely true that many evangelicals are ruled out by TGCs confession. Ben Witherington III is ruled out; although, I doubt that a Wesleyan could sign in good faith in any case!
I'm simply pointing out that the definition of complementarianism in the TGC document is very broad.
So, Trueman argues - "If one is going to make complementarianism a gospel issue on the grounds that this is necessary for preserving the faith, then one must also make ecclesiology a gospel issue by the same token."
But the statement of faith and the video make it clear that complementarianism is not a gospel issue for TGC! It is simply an important issue, in their view.
Trueman's posts ignore the fact that TGC began life as a response to emergentism; it aimed to steady the evangelical ship. It never simply aimed at preserving the gospel. And promoting complementarianism was important for steadying the ship; unchecked, egalitarianism was taking evangelicalism in a dangerous direction.
I also imagine that TGC council members have different reasons for promoting complementarianism. One reason is the "slippery slope" argument. But Piper's argument settles the issue. Not to choose complementarianism is to be egalitarian by default.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 9, 2012 1:35 PM
Graham quotes Dr. Trueman as saying,
I find this to be an odd statement. Dr. Trueman is on the board of the para-church Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The stated mission of the Alliance is to proclaim and defend the central evangelical affirmations of the Protestant Reformation; specifically the final authority of the Bible in all matters of faith and practice, salvation by grace alone, through Christ alone, and all things to the glory of God. [The Alliance definition of Evangelicalism sounds like the five solas of Martin Luther]
Recently the Alliance has sought to be at the center of response to serious doctrinal erosions such as Open theism, New Perspective on Paul and the so called Federal Vision as it relates to justification by faith alone, and the redefinition of marriage and the family.
I wonder what distinction Prof. Trueman sees between the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and the Gospel Coalition.
The one class of para-church organizations that trouble me the most is Theological Seminaries that are not formally under the oversight of an ecclesiastical authority. Aside from administering the sacraments, I can think of nothing that more obviously should be an ecclesiastical function not a para-church function. Westminster Seminary, where Professor Trueman teaches, is a para-church academic institution.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 9, 2012 5:33 PM
Thomas Y, I have always wondered how you could have seminaries not formally under an ecclesiastical authority. Seems to me that they would run the very strong risk of either forming their own new sectarian core faith commitments, (and thus become a church and seminary), or become so open ended that they cease to be a seminary and become simply a university.
Posted by Tony | September 9, 2012 6:44 PM
Graham, so a good Catholic could be an evangelical?
Reading over the long list of commitments in your link, I think a Catholic could sign up for all of them except for parts of 12, 13 and 14 - and with a certain casting of meaning, all of 13 and 14. That's a lot of agreement.
Posted by Tony | September 9, 2012 6:49 PM
Thomas
He is aware of the apparent contradiction.
In "Scandal" he tries to square the circle by arguing that there are "evangelicalisms"; that is, networks of alliances. He is a member of one of those alliances.
But, in Trueman's opinion, there is no common ground, no set of doctrines, that all these groups hold in common. Trueman actually argues that the term "evangelical" has no referent! Trueman is being -quite self-consciously - empiricist. If there is no concrete institution to which all evangelicals belong, or written doctrinal statement that all evangelicals subscribe to, evangelicalism does not exist.
This is a poor argument. For example, "religion" is notoriously difficult to define. But that does not mean that it is a meaningless term, or that it does not have a referent.
And we could give the term "evangelical" the substance that Trueman requires by picking paradigms - say Wesley and Owen - and defining evangelicalism in terms of resemblance.
Hilariously, Trueman says that the non-existence of evangelicalism does not bother him because he is, first, a christian; second, a Protestant; and third a Presbyterian.
Er, the Westminster Confession might unite many groups who call themselves Presbyterian, Carl, but I think some of you might hold little more than bipedalism in common.
And Christian and Protestant? Aren't these just as vague as evangelical? Actually, aren't they even more difficult to define?
That said, there is some good stuff in the book - he warns all those evangelicalisms not to compromise for a place at table of cultural respectability.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 9, 2012 6:49 PM
Tony
Er...sorry, my bad! Should have added "and supreme authority in all matters of faith and practice" beside "truthfulness of scripture"
That said, Catholicism is a big ship, and I'm cheered by the number of faithful Catholics who agree with evangelicals on the nuts and bolts of conversion. Roman Catholics and evangelicals don't interact very much in Ulster, and it's a shame. I can't get many of my evangelical friends to acknowledge how much common ground we have with other "Mere Christians!"
So rather than debate the importance of thpse three points, I'll just say I'm very happy to read your comment!
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 9, 2012 7:15 PM
Tony asked the rhetorical question,
. Some evangelicals seem to believe that especially some with Pentecostal leanings. In 1994 many evangelicals signed on to Evangelicals and Catholics Together.http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9405/articles/mission.html .
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals; of which Prof. Trueman is a board member, was organized in 1994 by Pastor James Montgomery Boice to revive a passion for the truth of the Gospel within Evangelical Protestant Churches. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals answered the Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1996, when it issued the Cambridge Declaration
http://www.alliancenet.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086_CHID798774_CIID1411364,00.html
Classic Evangelicalism gives primacy to Sola gratia over Sola Fide
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 9, 2012 9:58 PM
I wasn't thinking of natural law per se. I think they did a good job in the video given what I take to be their purpose of providing a ground for the reasonableness of a complementarian view, and that is good as far as it goes. It's like arguing for the reasonableness of theism rather than Christianity per se. Certainly not a bad thing to do. For all I know they go beyond this elsewhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't.
I believe that C. S. Lewis gave some very straight-up and unmistakable statements about how the headship of men in the family relates to the core principle of Christianity (neighbor love), and I think he left the question of how headship of the family relates to church politics as an open question to be resolved personally or culturally. Whereas I suspect TGC begins with church politics and leaves the relation to such Christian principle the open question. It just seems the impetus and direction of Lewis view is more practical and inductive. All I can say is that I've heard complementarian views for years but when I came across a sentence or two about Lewis' understanding of the matter in Gilbert Meilaender's Phd thesis on this issue I just about dropped the book. In the years since it still seems to me that sentence or two gets to the heart of the issue and goes so very far in terms of practical application of some very critical life issues. This is a very confused world on sexual matters of all sorts. It is easy to be doctrinally complementarian but egalitarian in practice on any given issue. But that's all I'm going to say about that.
Posted by Mark | September 10, 2012 1:24 AM
The difference between a good Catholic and a good Protestant is minimal compared to the chasm between a luke warm (or bad!) Catholic and a similarly situated Protestant. The former are superstitious, pagan idolators most of the time and the latter are open theological quasi-deists whose minds are fertile grounds for everything from postmodernism to new agey rubbish.
Posted by Mike T | September 10, 2012 8:55 AM
I don't think that ECT accepted that evangelicals could be Roman Catholic; in fact, the ECT statements presuppose that they cannot. The point of ECT was that there is enough common ground for collaboration on some issues.
The bottom line is that evangelicals accept Sola Scriptura; so it is difficult to see how a faithful Catholic could be an evangelical. I'm not really sure that the term "evangelical catholic" is very useful - I suppose it could denote a Catholic with evangelical sympathies.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 10, 2012 12:00 PM
Mike, that's actually a very well-put description.
Graham, so what would you call a Protestant who signed on to all of the evangelical tenets except Sola Scriptura? Would he be not-an-evangelical whole and entire? Or would he be mostly an evangelical who is mistaken about an important point?
Posted by Tony | September 10, 2012 8:43 PM
Thomas, I am puzzled about your citing the Cambridge Declaration. From the last line of the Declaration,
one can only surmise that these evangelicals believe Catholics are not Christians. Not, mind you, that Catholics are poor Christians, that they are misguided Christians, but they simply aren't even Christians.
Then you go on to say that
But Catholics not only agree with Sola Gratia, they contend that this doctrine is found all over the Gospels and all over the apostolic writings and all over the writings of the Fathers of the Church who were taught at the feet of the Apostles, and so on, for 1500 years, whereas Sola Scriptura was never mentioned in the writing of any person (nor in the Gospels) until the 1500s. So, even though classic evangelicals give primacy to Sola Gratia, and even though the only Christians in existence for 1500 years were Christians who made not one mention of Sola Scriptura, then the Catholics who were martyred under Rome and the Catholics who spread the faith throughout Europe were not even Christians because they did not profess Sola Scriptura?
That doesn't quite add up.
Posted by Tony | September 10, 2012 10:18 PM
Tony observes that he
This is an apt observation. The history of Westminster Seminary may give an explanation as to why and how this occurs.
The scene is the late 1920s the height of the Fundamentalist/Modernist dispute that raged in protestantism, and the liberals have just won a battle with the fundamentalists in the Presbyterian Church USA. The hotbed of fundamentalism and reformed orthodoxy in the denomination is Princeton Seminary. The Presbyterian Church USA then goes on to reorganize Princeton Seminary in ways that were objectionable to the conservative faculty members. Several Princeton Seminary faculty members, notably John Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til, Robert Dick Wilson, Oswald T. Allis, and John Murray, left Princeton and went to Philadelphia and founded Westminster Theological Seminary. These faculty members did not renounce their ecclesiastical connections. The denomination departs from orthodoxy further including permitting the ordination of women as ruling elders. In 1936 the denomination disciplines and deposes John Gresham Machen. Machen and the faculty at Westminster Seminary declares those who deposed him to be in apostasy and launched a new denomination, which becomes the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Machen dies in 1937. Cornelius Van Til becomes the leading intellectual force at Westminster Seminary. Gordon Clark is forced out of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church because he disagrees with Van Til's apologetics.
Thus the para-church Westminster Seminary becomes the parent of a denomination.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 11, 2012 2:50 PM
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 11, 2012 3:12 PM
Tony looks at the conclusion of the Cambridge Declaration and says,
You are correct; many evangelicals believe the Church of Rome apostatized from the Holy Church Catholic with the answers she gave Dr. Martin Luther at the Council of Trent.
Many are confessionally committed to the proposition that the Pope is Anti-Christ.
Some even doubt the legitimacy of Baptisms performed by Roman Catholic clerics.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 11, 2012 3:48 PM
Tony
He wouldn't be an evangelical; he would have broken away from the tradition of Wesley and Whitefield etc.
It's no big deal, really. The church is bigger than evangelicalism; obviously Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and even Calvin and Luther, were not evangelicals.
But the movement came out of the reformation. I like guys like Frank Beckwith a lot, but I just can't see how Catholic and evangelical fit together.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 11, 2012 4:33 PM
Thomas
While evangelicals believe that justification is by faith alone, we do not believe that justification is by faith in the doctrine of justifcation by faith alone! Obviously, a person can receive salvation, yet misunderstand exactly why they have been reconciled to God. So I don't know any evangelical leader who would say that all Roman Catholics are damned! Who are you thinking of here?
I was raised fundamentalist, and while we practiced "two degrees of separation" (we wouldn't associate with evangelicals who associated with ecumenicals!) we certainly believed that many Catholics had saving faith.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 11, 2012 4:44 PM
The Cambridge Declaration is not saying that Roman Catholics are not true Christians; it is saying that the Roman Catholic Church is not a true Church (because the word is not faithfully preached there, and possibly because the sacraments are not properly administered).
Offensive enough, I guess. But Wells, Horton, Veith and co. aren't more fundamentalist than the fundamentalists.
Graham
Posted by Graham | September 11, 2012 4:53 PM
Westminster Confession of Faith XXV 5 & 6 says that:
See also the Belgic Confession, Articles 27 & 28.
I could also cite Lutheran Confessions out of the Book of Concord to the same effect.
Many Reformed and Lutheran evangelicals would say that adherents of the Church of Rome are presumptively not Christian because they are members of a false or an apostate Church.
Graham is correct that it is a strech to say that the Cambridge Declaration explicitly teaches this.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 11, 2012 6:33 PM
Obviously, if "evangelical" is defined in terms of distinctively controversial doctrines like "Sola Scriptura," no Catholic can rightly think of himself as evangelical. What I was trying to pick up and look at is what evangelical Protestants think of as what sets them off from other _Protestants._ The "to be evangelical" formal identity is not "to be Protestant", since Luther and Calvin were not evangelical, and in spite of the fact that they believed Sola Scriptura. It is, rather, found in something distinct from that.
What strikes me as awfully funny is a Protestant group saying to Catholics that they aren't a "church" because "because the word is not faithfully preached there, and possibly because the sacraments are not properly administered", and yet between THESE evangelical Protestants and THOSE evangelical Protestants there is often as large a gap in the total body of actual doctrine, and in the administration of sacraments, (including _how many_ sacraments they hold to), than they hold in dispute with Catholics. How many different evangelical Protestant churches are there? How many disputes do they have on what "the word" means?
How, for a particular evangelical church, do all the other Protestant churches escape such a presumption? Not just some (like, for example, those who mealy-mouth the Resurrection to the point of disbelief), but all? For, to bother forming a distinct denominational church is precisely to assert a difference _important enough_ to be the basis of separation. If separated on a point of teaching, then the others are apostate, aren't they?
Posted by Tony | September 11, 2012 9:38 PM
We have strayed far from the original para-church issue that Lydia examined in this post.
Tony is mystified by the evangelical protestant scene and muses,
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals' Cambridge declaration was designed to answer the question by giving an identity that evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Anglicans and Calvinistic Baptists could all subscribe to. I would understand Knox, Luther, Cranmer and Calvin to be proto-evangelicals.Tony looks at the confessional evangelical presumption that Roman Catholics are not Christian and goes on to ask,
In the past Churches would point to their Reformation era creedal statements. Today for much of evangelicalism their is no doctrinal standard to define the issue. The Cambridge Declaration was an attempt to give a creedal like definition to evangelicalism. As Graham point out,
That, would seem to be one of the real scandals of evangelicalism.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 11, 2012 11:05 PM
Yes, Thomas, but that suggests that what they were trying to do was establish a creedal standard for being Christian, not merely for being evangelical. Unless they understand that "to be evangelical" is congruent to "being a Christian Church", I suppose, but it amounts to the same thing.
But my other point still stands: it doesn't matter how firmly entrenched your Reformation roots and your evangelical creed are, if your church B split off from some other church A and even a part of that separation is due to a difference of teaching, simply separating over it implies that you think this is a matter of basic importance. Which means the other guys are apostate.
It's not a scandal of evangelicalism, it's a scandal of Protestantism, isn't it?
Posted by Tony | September 11, 2012 11:56 PM
Tony asks,
If the separation is over some non essential issue like refusing to have fellowship with someone over differences in the understanding of eschatology, or the incomprehensibility of God, or a disagreement over whether it is proper to refer to God's providential care as common grace, then I would agree that such a separation is sin and a scandal. Protestants have been wrong to split over issues that are not core issues of the faith.
When I look back to the 1050s and try to find the essentials of the faith in the issues that separated the Church of Rome from the historic Eastern Patriarchs, I am mystified.
The issues that initially separated Evangelicals from the Church of Rome were viewed by both sides to be essential issues. The Church of Rome spoke at Trent and expressly anathematized Luther, and those who agreed with him, on the questions concerning grace, faith, and the nature and extent of Biblical authority. Luther had no choice but to hold that the Church of Rome was apostate.
The question is one of truth. Mutually exclusive options on essentials of the faith can not both be true. Three possible options exist. A is right and B is wrong. B is right and A is wrong. Both A and B are wrong. If the issue in question is an essential to the faith then of necessity one side or the other is apostate.
Is this a scandal for the Church of Rome or Luther and the Protestants?
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 12, 2012 2:09 AM
Thomas, anytime a person who has the faith, a free gift from God, reverses himself and repudiates the gift and the content of that faith, it is a scandal. As a Catholic, of course I think that Luther fell into just that scandal. Protestants will of course have another view. I realize that. What I don't understand is Protestants saying to one another "your beliefs are so opposed to mine, on such a matter of importance, that you and I cannot remain in one church", and THEN say that the Catholic Church is an apostate church without saying all the other Protestant churches are apostate.
Right. And if the separation is over some essential issue, then you have to think the other guys are apostates. So: we have Lutherans, and Pentecostals, and Methodists, and Presbyterians etc, all with different churches because they all depart from each other in some points of teaching. And yet the evangelicals of the Presbyterian stripe don't go around saying that an evangelical Methodist church "isn't a church" even though it is apostate. Why?
Posted by Tony | September 12, 2012 8:13 AM
It is a scandal OF the one who is wrong, of course. And FOR the Church whole and entire, since she ought to "be one, even as the Father and I are one". The prima facie evidence for who the separationists are, is that they are the ones with a new name, a new structure, and so on.
Posted by Tony | September 12, 2012 8:22 AM
Tony;
I agree with you that when you say to someone, 'your beliefs are so opposed to mine, on such a matter of importance, that you and I can not remain in one Church', you must also say that the one who you are breaking fellowship with has apostatized from the Church.
That is, in part, why I am an Anglican not a Presbyterian or a Lutheran. I am not willing to break fellowship over minor issues.
Getting back to the original point I agree with Don Carson and John Piper take on the complementarianism/egalitarian issue. I also view the ordination of women [which is what the whole complementarian/egalitarian debate is really about] to be an issue of such magnitude that I regard those who ordain women to be apostates.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 12, 2012 9:28 AM
Thomas, I'm with you. Ordination of women is an important enough issue to break apart a church. Or, to put it another way, the vision of what man is, what roles the sexes have, and what offices Christ handed on within His church and to whom, are essential.
And your sense of not breaking apart over less than major issues is like mine. Christians ought to bear with each other even in each other's ignorance and foolishness, to some extent.
I thought Anglicans ordained women. According to a quick check with wiki (and so not reliable) almost all most Anglican provinces allow ordination of women to the deaconate, most to the priesthood (including provinces of England, Wales, and Scotland), and a lot allow women to be ordained bishops.
Posted by Tony | September 12, 2012 11:44 AM
Tony, several of the "continuing Anglican" denominations don't ordain women, but I have to admit they are very small. Even, I'm sorry to say, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, which came into existence quite courageously over the egregious position of the American Episcopal church concerning homosexuality, has found a weird way to accommodate women's ordination within its umbrella. And to make things even stranger, it was one of the most courageous founding African bishops who requested that they do so. The book _Never Silent_ is an absolutely fascinating account of the origins of the AMiA, but it simply remains discreetly silent on the issue of women's ordination.
Posted by Lydia | September 12, 2012 11:50 AM
Nigeria is the largest Anglican Province in the world. They are orthodox, and do not ordain women to the diaconate. The state of affairs in the Church of England is sad. It is an apostate church. At one level I do not fault those in the Church of England who have joined the Anglican Rite Ordinariate in union with Rome, or the Western Rite Antiochian Orthodox Church, even though I wished they could find their way into a continuing Anglican Communion.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 12, 2012 12:33 PM
I don't think there's anything scandalous about evangelicalism or Protestantism, really.
A few quick points
1) Evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics have very different understandings of the Church. An evangelical has little difficulty envisioning a true Christian attending a false church. Furthermore, an evangelical can believe that there are many "true" churches in a "false" denomination!
2) A problem with confessional evangelicals is they believe wholeheartedly in the confessions - except for the bits that they now disagree with. Very few evangelical exegetes would identify the Pope with the Anti-Christ (much to the embarassment of confessional evangelicals, who skip those passages by...)
3) Keep in mind that I'm responding to Trueman's rant against the para-church, which presupposed that there is no such thing as an evangelical. Mark Noll would say that post Vatican II, and post-ECT, there are evangelical catholics. Now I disagree; however, the debate is "are there evangelical catholics, or just catholics with evangelical sympathies?"
There's not a huge difference between Noll and me; we both refer to standard evangelical beliefs (without needing to thumb our way through a confession!) and make a judgment. So Noll and I clearly share many beliefs about the nature of evangelicalism.
4) Membership of a Protestant denomination is not prima facie evidence of Christian faith! You need to talk to the individual to ask what their hope is, who he depends on for salvation, and whether he has been transformed by the message of the Gospel. That's kinda the point...
Posted by Graham | September 12, 2012 3:52 PM
It was Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, an admirable and courageous man, but on this issue dead wrong, who requested that women priests be accommodated through a different "wing" of the AMiA.
Posted by Lydia | September 12, 2012 6:36 PM
Sure, there are lots of so-called Protestants who are not Christians really. No more than self-identified surface "Catholics" are truly Catholic or Christian. But these guys are only cultural members, not real members of said church.
But if you ask a self-identified Christian whether he (a) believes that Christ who is God and man is the only one by whom we are saved, and (b) we are saved by faith in Him, because of His sacrifice, (c) that this salvation is pure gift without any dessert on our part, and (d) is his life transformed by this saving faith, I think you will get a yes from many, many Protestants and Catholics who are not evangelical nor belong to churches that evangelicals consider true churches. And there are churches whose creeds explicitly include the above points that are not evangelical churches. If you are a real member of such a church, if your belief aligns with such a creed, then I would say that your being a Christian is part and parcel with your being a member of such a church. Which means that freely belonging to such a church IS prima facie evidence of being a Christian.
Posted by Tony | September 13, 2012 7:37 PM
Graham's discussion of the difference between those evangelicals who are committed to a confessional standard and those who are not so committed; points to a serious divide within evangelicalism. Prof. Trueman is expressly a confessional evangelical. It is in that context that he finds the word evangelical to be devoid of content.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | September 14, 2012 1:10 PM
Lydia,
I'm going to hunker down with this discussion this afternoon, lots to digest here!
In the mean time, I hope you won't mind if I make a couple of possibly repetitive remarks.
First, I think the TGC video on Complementarianism is problematic simply because of the participants. Dr. Carson is a something of a fifth columnist, if I may use the term, being a promoter of "inclusive" biblical versions. As such he is giving aid and comfort to the feminist heretic. The second concern with the TGC video is Pastor Keller, who is skirting around the PCAs BCO with female deacons and women in authority over men in exactly the same manner the feminist camel got its nose under the tent in the first place.
Second, Trueman is a pretty good example of Complementarians. Constantly assuring the "right" people he really, really, really he is one of them -- while at the same time bending over backwards to assure the feminist he can work with her (or him) and really, aren't they just colleagues having a friendly intramural disagreement? This is what Complementarians do because it is in their DNA. The only reason we have the term in the first place is because they were all too scared of offending folks to embrace the perfectly legitimate and perfectly biblical word - patriarchy.
When the world attacks the church, the answer is not to channel the ghost of Neville Chamberlin. The Complementarians did this and now we are faced with a group (multiple groups) claiming that name without the necessary courage to name feminism for the heresy it is. We are long past the day when anyone can reasonably claim that religious feminists (Egalitarians) are Christians of good will who are simply mistaken. When they promote "godde" worshipping pagans, partner with rebels who celebrate homosexual unions and promote books claiming Christ submits to the Church -- well, I ask you, how do you justifying calling such a heretic a Christian sister?
/rant off
Kamilla
Posted by Kamilla | September 15, 2012 2:10 PM
I readily concur with Lydia's disapproval of Trueman, trusting your representation of his response (I watched the TGC video, but not these responses). I am troubled by the attempts to devalue the gender-issue by equating it with another issue--namely baptism. It seems to me that lowering baptism to the level of inconsequence is already a misstep, and one that helps not at all in framing the relative importance of gender for Christians in this culture.
Pace Lydia, who wrote: "Trueman appears to think that the actual things one interprets Scripture as saying, however implausible, should be written down as merely "interpretive differences" and put on a par with infant baptism or differing views about the end times. This is obviously false. Biblical teaching on the subject of women's ordination and the differences between the sexes is repeated, unequivocal, and deeply tied into the very warp and woof of a biblical view of mankind. The same is not even close to being true regarding these other issues."
In truth, baptism is taught in Scripture with sufficient clarity to rule out infant-baptism as merely an interpretive difference. And this is a salvation issue, relegated to mere indifference at tremendous peril.
Christian conversion requires relational-dynamics for which infants are incompetent. And I will set aside, for the moment, the ill-fit of these dynamics for infant-persons who have never sinned and so have never suffered a break in their relationship with God that is in need of a baptismal-repair. Salvation requirements--such as the placement of faith, repentance, confession of the Lordship of Jesus, and embracing the baptismal-dynamics that replicate the Cross and Resurrection such that the life of Jesus is in some measure recreated in the baptized person--are serious business. Adults are required, usually. Children, sometimes. Infants, impossible.
What I've written presupposes that a relationship (covenant) takes two active partners. Sealing this relationship is the role of baptism. There is no magic in "getting wet all over" (infants get a mere sprinkle). There is no "ex opere operato" efficacy to the rite. Stripped of the relational dynamics, one merely gets wet, not baptized.
Catholicism (infant-baptizers par excellence) have been driven to admit that their pews, full of adults-baptized-as-babies for the most part, are fertile grounds for evangelism! It is not enough to administer water under any given formulation of words, however careful and meaningful, and expect that the infant will thus carry the seed that will surely blossom into Christianity.
The notion that babies are tainted with hereditary sin is as scantily supported in Scripture as is the notion of infant baptism. Psalm 51:5, for example, is poetic hyperbole.
This all leads to another aspect of the larger discussion. Some disputes involve one side insistent on some particular application of the issue, while the opponent is indifferent to particulars and may glady abide them all. Egalitarians care not if a man is a leader, nor if a woman is--they gladly accept both. Complementarians, however, allow only one particular application: male leadership. In such disputes, the one who views none of the particulars as consequential will deride the other as narrow-minded and judgmental. This dynamic rides the same vehicle into the domain of logic as in this scenario: "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into two groups, and those who do not. Personally, I am one of those who does not." In a postmodern environment, noticing hypocrisy in the procedure is simply not allowed. Judgmentalism is the grandest postmodern immorality.
I once visited a church that insisted on all drinking from a common cup at the Lord's Supper. As one accustomed to sanitary individual cups to distribute the Lord's cup, it was purely a matter of indifference to me. I could be "liberal" on the issue (though I preferred to take a seat up front, for obvious reasons).
With TGC and Lydia, I strongly advocate complementary gender. And I trust we all make this valuation (and many others besides) because we find it set forth in God's Word (and not from postmodernistic tolerance of anything and everything). However, I am far less sanguine about our ability to cohere when this issue is elevated to the disdain of baptism.
I should note that we are entering a time when baptism is reclaiming its place in Biblical theology. The old barriers to its acceptance, increasingly, are understood to go back in time no earlier than the year 1500 AD--the time of the Protestant Reformation. Prior to theology being seriously skewed in the wake of Luther and Calvin, baptism held pride of place in conversion requirements for Christianity. For several decades now, brave evangelical scholars have swerved away from the thinking that saw baptism as a "work" employed for nothing better than self-righteousness. It has a vital role to play in securing salvation. Maybe it is time for us--individual Christians, parachurch, and church--to re-evaluate afresh what matters God esteems, and them esteem them ourselves?
Posted by John | November 28, 2012 7:10 PM
John, I also do not accept infant baptism, though I'm not sure that this means that you and I would agree entirely on the theology of baptism, either. I do not mean to indicate in this post or elsewhere that I hold baptism or the theological issues surrounding it in disdain.
However, in my opinion, if baptism were written about in Scripture as explicitly as women's ordination is written about in the pastoral epistles (for example), we would literally find the Apostle Paul saying something on the order of, "But suffer no infant to be baptized, nor a little child. For they must remain unbaptized. For the little child is not capable of receiving the grace of baptism..." etc., etc. This, of course, is meant to parallel the Apostle Paul's unequivocal teaching that a woman may not have teaching authority over a man in the church but is (!!) to be in silence in the church. One could, I suppose, with sufficient ingenuity construct similarly explicit passages that bore a resemblances to the passage in the very next chapter where Paul says that a bishop is to be tested for his fitness to rule the house of God by his ability to rule his own household well--an explicit reference to masculine headship. And to the discussion in Ephesians of the husband as the head of the wife. The point is that it almost looks like Paul _anticipated_ egalitarianism, to such an extent that his teachings go out of their way explicitly to reject it. While I myself do agree that infants should not be baptized, there is no sense in which the notion of infant baptism is _raised_ and _rejected_ in Scripture in the same way that the notion of female leadership in the church is explicitly raised and rejected. My guess is that the reason for this is that the nature and practice of baptism were sufficiently widely known and uniformly practiced at that time that no question or controversy had happened to arise on that particular point. To some extent, the issues addressed in the epistles are a result of the questions the apostles were asked or the abuses they had seen or thought needed to be headed off. Baptism of infants doesn't seem to have fallen into any of these categories. It is partly for this reason (and partly for some of the practical reasons raised by Piper in the TGC video) that Christians can more readily engage in ecumenical enterprises among denominations that disagree on that point.
Posted by Lydia | November 28, 2012 8:24 PM
Hi Lydia,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I would only say that enough is said in the NT about the meaning and purpose of baptism to obviate ruling out infants as participants. You are right: explicit rejection is not to be found because the issue never arose in NT times. I would otherwise no more expect a firmly stated prohibition against infant-baptism than I would one against infant-marriage. In each case, an infant is thrust into an adult situation, and this in utter absurdity.
Given all this, I react as badly to the notion that gender is relegated to the level of a matter of indifference as I do infant baptism. My essential point is that both issues are of major importance and consequence.
Posted by John | November 29, 2012 6:07 AM
Homosexuality is a sin...unequivocably...according to scripture.
So how do you conclude that allowing equal liberty to women as well as men opens the door to permitting sin? Am I now to conclude that being a woman is a sin? Is it a birth defect? Is God a respecter of persons? Are you? Was Paul? God says" As for me, my way is equal." "Is not your way unequal?"(Ezekiel) Jesus said hierarchy was forbidden..."it shall not be so among you"...and taught that,
"Ye have one master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." The only CONSISTENT conclusion the churches reach via complement-arianism is that, in the end, men must always have their own way. This contradicts the essence of love in that "love seeketh not her own." Yet complementarians insist that the male gender will always have the final say about women, making complementarians extra mediators between God and women. "Love your neighbour as yourself....ALL things ye would that men would do to you do ye even so to them." Complementarians violate these two commandments.
Posted by judy | October 21, 2013 11:49 AM
Judy,
How about Ephesians 5?
Clearly, the equality that Paul spoke of was not the equality you have in mind. Rather it was the equal possibility of salvation in Jesus Christ for women. Those are just two of the more common passages about female submission to male authority in the New Testament. You can find more elsewhere, including from Peter.
Posted by Mike T | October 21, 2013 2:30 PM
Judy, to take your question about homosexuality more seriously than perhaps I should bother to take it, egalitarianism makes it difficult to make a principled stand against homosexuality for the reasons I outlined in the original post: Egalitarianism greatly minimizes in importance or even relegates to the "cultural" the differences between men and women. But if men and women are not *really and importantly different* in their natures as intended by God, then there is no rationale in human nature for preferring male-female pairs over male-male or female-female pairs. The entire opposition to the homosexual agenda needs to be, in order to have any metaphysical and worldview basis whatsoever, based on there being real and important differences between the sexes. That, for example, is why a child should have both a father and a mother, rather than any two (or more) parents of any gender: Because men and women are different. A notion of the complementarity of the sexes is at the very heart of opposition to the homosexual agenda.
Posted by Lydia | October 21, 2013 3:44 PM