The Gospel Coalition’s front page banner article today (archive) is 5 Reasons I’m Glad I Went to Seminary, by stay at home mom Elizabeth Garn. In closing, Garn explains that seminary wasn’t really required for any of the five reasons she offers:
Is seminary absolutely necessary to get that foundation (or any of the other things I’ve mentioned)? No, not necessarily. Could a person learn all I learned without a seminary education? Probably. But it’s harder to do it on your own. There’s something to be said about surrounding yourself with trustworthy, godly professors who will guide you to a deeper faith in God and knowledge of his Word.
Well, there it is. That’s what I’d tell a friend if they asked whether I’m glad I went to seminary. I’d refill her coffee, double check the time to ensure we weren’t late for preschool pickup or whatever errands we were supposed to be doing, and if we still had an extra minute we’d discuss the ways seminary might be possible for her if she were interested.
But if it isn’t really necessary for a Christian housewife to go to seminary, why is an article promoting this so important that The Gospel Coalition chose to make it the lead on their front page? The reason is complementarians are excited about empowering women by sending as many as possible through seminary, and having the women who can’t directly attend seminary seek out other women who attended seminary for theological instruction. Otherwise Christian housewives would suffer the fate of asking their husbands, as Scripture instructs wives to do (1 Cor 14:35, Eph 5:25-28).
Related:
Good points as always.
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How many Seminaries are coming up short on students associated with TGC? That’s my first thought.
I have never understood the Protestant fascination with female pastors. It’s very uncomfortable; like being lectured instead of taught. That could just be because I was raised Catholic, but even that considered, it’s never made sense to me. Were there not enough men wanting to lead churches?
@Cynthia
I have never understood the Protestant fascination with female pastors.
It’s not all Protestants. It’s mostly those in the old, established denominations (e.g., Anglican/Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) which were co-opted by humanist modernism decades ago and many of which can barely be considered Christian churches anymore.
Even in the Evangelical/fundie denominations where femsle rebellion is just as overt, most women really dislike the idea of a female pastor, no matter how FI-affirming it is. Women HATE being led by other women in the temporal world and would hate it just as much in church. They would much rather be ear-tickled and supplicated to by lift-chasing males than be condescended to by a woman.
Men should pick up the mantle of “teacher” with great care, as the word warns us that not everyone is cut out to teach, and those that do will be held to a higher standard. Christian women pick it up with all the ignorance of a child with a hand grenade, “Oh, wow! I want to teach! I REALLY feel the call and know God is leading me into it! Scriptures against women teaching? Oh, that’s old, misogynistic culture when women were worth less than dogs and men treated them like cattle! I know because ANOTHER woman teacher told me!”
Boom.
I wonder if any seminary teaches the gals to be silent in the church, that if they had a question to ask their husband at home, to wear a head covering to honor their husband or to allow themselves to be mistreated and become like Christ – you know like a doormat.
I’d wager that they are more often taught: to speak up, ask questions of who ever they discerned would give them a pleasing answer to satisfy their itching ears, to act as equals to men in all things they wanted and not in the activities they did not care for, to dress as they judged fit and that allowing one to be a “doormat” is a sin against their own dignity and a denigration of their image bearing.
So…Tuesday night women’s bible study, then?
Christian women pick it up with all the ignorance of a child with a hand grenade, “Oh, wow! I want to teach! I REALLY feel the call and know God is leading me into it!
Most women who have put themselves into the position of “teacher” are in fact regurgitators of propaganda, “indoctrinators,” if you will. Very few, if any, are involved in imparting the critical thinking skills required to absorb and apply genuine knowledge.
I wonder if any seminary teaches the gals to be silent in the church, that if they had a question to ask their husband at home, to wear a head covering to honor their husband or to allow themselves to be mistreated and become like Christ – you know like a doormat.
Not anywhere in the western world, and probably very few anywhere else.
I’d say it was mostly this. Even in the early 1990s, when I was still very blue pill, this is what I was discovering when my church was going through its many pastoral searches. There simply weren’t that many (any?) male pastors to be had.
How is this not apostasy? Christians are so afraid to anger others they are letting their religion go in major decline.
@innocentbystanderboston
Matthew 9:37-38
37Then He said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest.”…
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I’ve always thought that everything that you learn in 3 years of law school could be put on DVDs and sold for a tiny fraction of what a law school charges. Seminary classes would probably work great on DVDs too. With DVDs, you could hire the top professor for each course and add in maps, etc. back at the studio. Anybody interested in theology could study the topics that interested him at his own pace. It’s not like dentistry or architecture or veterinary science where you actually need a building and equipment and patients/clients, etc.. The Socratic method is nice, but doesn’t add enough value to the process to justify the cost.
What on earth would be the point of a housewife studying at a seminary??? A ton of student loans and no job prospects even if she wanted to re-enter the workforce at some point. Most of the men who have graduated from seminary in recent decades are more “professional do-gooder” than theologian. Our entire educational sector is completely bloated.
Great article. This explains why the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has a deaconess program but no program for deacons. The churches truly venerate women.
@Jonadab
Imagining such a seminary made me chuckle. Imagine if it existed, but the attending women didn’t know they’d be given actual Biblical instruction. Hilarious!
Another conservative feminist heard from. Rhetorically I wonder who paid for that time in seminary, was it Elizabeth Garn or someone else? Cynically I wonder if Lizzy went looking for a little whiff of Alpha male at seminary, and didn’t find it, so she went on with her life? Not that any woman would ever do that, of course. No. Never.
Conservative feminism is still feminism. TGC refuses to push back against feminism, therefore it is just another feminist organization. The difference between Elizabeth Garn and the most virulent pink-haired, pro-abort screeching menopausal harpy marcher in DC last weekend — is only a matter of degree. Because feminism is feminism, no matter how many rounds of No True Feminist someone wants to play.
@cynthia there are still Prot denominations that do not allow women to preach or to serve as officers. Probably they are engaged in contiuous pushback against feminists, especially male White Knight “it’s only fair!” types.
What on earth would be the point of a housewife studying at a seminary???
There is no legitimate reason for ANYBODY to study at a seminary unless their intent is to survey/take a pulse check of the decadent state if today’s theology. Even if that’s the goal, it hardly merits the time and expense required.
If you are a devoted Christ follower and want to spread the Word as it is written and teach and lead others, then seminary should be avoided like the plague. It will only corrupt you and lead you astray.
Reblogged this on Patriactionary and commented:
Spot on. One thing that Reformational Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox are agreed upon is that clergy are only supposed to be men; accordingly, there is no point for a woman in any of these traditions to attend a theological school / seminary. None whatsoever. Waste of time and money. But, as with domestic science / household science / home economics, it is a way to feed impressionable young women agit-prop under the guise of traditionalism, and to thus ‘subvert the dominant paradigm’ (as them there progs say).
I’ve dealt with the TGC folks and their ilk in the past; alas, utterly and completely Blue Pill. They just don’t ‘get it’, and they never will…
“My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.” James 3:1,NKJV
But, you see, where a man reads that and understands that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, women have no such inhibitions.
@Original Laura: The Teaching Company does much of what you talked about with college-level classes on DVD from the best teachers, but their field is mainly secular teaching. Touching Christian stuff their main guy is Bart Ehrman, who seems to have a goal of disabusing Christians of their beliefs.
Beyond that, there’s a wealth of seminary material available free through iTunes, both audio and video. It would certainly be possible to get a seminary-level education that way, but it would be difficult to get the language studies (if you wanted them). There’s also a face-to-face “sharpening iron” aspect that makes classroom study more valuable.
But we mustn’t overlook that many seminaries, especially mainstream ones, are dying on the vine, Having a bunch of students who won’t be looking for a ministerial job afterward is pure profit.
@AR: “There are still Prot denominations that do not allow women to preach or to serve as officers. Probably they are engaged in continuous pushback against feminists, especially male White Knight ‘it’s only fair!’ types.”
I am part of the PCA, and we fit this description. No women ordained as pastors, elders or deacons. While there’s no pushback in our local congregation or our Presbytery (statewide group of about 15 local congregations), at the General Assembly (whole denomination) level there’s plenty. Every year there are motions put forward to study women as deacons (which would be the camel’s nose in the tent). These come mainly from presbyteries that include large cities.
In our particular congregation, women only teach children through the second grade. Above that, men teach.
Women are really good at rote learning, and by extension, rote teaching. That’s why they’re excelling and outdoing the boys / men in our modern western “education” (indoctrination) system. Perhaps she came away empty from the seminary because it didn’t involve rote teaching / learning? Just perhaps.
“There’s something to be said about surrounding yourself with trustworthy, godly professors who will guide you to a deeper faith in God and knowledge of his Word.”
Most of those professors are married men. Sitting under their tutelage is – by definition – a form of submission.
So, submitting to her husband is an insufficient (though Biblical) method of growing spiritually, but submitting to other women’s husbands is not.
Makes perfect sense.
Resources for women that might be “gifted” at teaching and/or leadership.
Womenleaders.com – “Live Your Calling”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/women-leaders/
@Hmm
Beware the fate of the Presbyterian Church when it got taken over:
http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/gncf.pdf
Study how our enemies works and prepare accordingly. Also pray ceaselessly in regards to this matter and other matters. Its important that the church stays faithful to God and his infallible word.
Beware also:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/cbmw.niv2011.2.pdf
Lest men/women via deceptive translation deceive the flock of God in regards to his word trying to causes us to regard good as evil and evil as good. Bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
@Hmm
”Every year there are motions put forward to study women as deacons (which would be the camel’s nose in the tent). These come mainly from presbyteries that include large cities.”
Why haven’t the men who put this forward been deposed and stripped of their position?
A little harsher than is merited but on the whole good.
It’s a banner article on a website I’ve never visited, apparently soliciting more for theological instruction. If you told me fewer people joined mdiv programs than in the old days, I’d readily believe you. In the world of corrupt culture and the devaluing of men and husbands, a biased source trying to shove people that have considered it into actually doing it is more an outflowing of bad articles and bias with attempt to deceive than a connection to undermining Christian headship.
They want to go to seminary for the same reason they want to go to college: because men do it. But going to college is worse. Most women never use the degrees they receive; they only go because men go, and because men are there. But when a woman takes up space at an institute of higher learning, she is denying a man that education; education he needs to support his wife and family in the future. So she graduates with a huge debt load (that the man has to pay for) and a degree that will never be used. And a man that could make better use of the education never gets the opportunity. Such a waste of public resources…..
This blog, and the people who comment here, I consider the only outpost of Christianity that hasn’t been corrupted.
Maybe each post should begin with a Benediction, and throw in a few prayers in the middle of the comment list, and the Dalrock blog would make a fine church on its own.
DC,
Not really. No one here was around when I went through some tough times this weekend. No one here can go by the hospital and pray for me or even visit me if I end up there. Personal connections will always remain important.
That is why we must build and maintain all we personally can. It is a tough and almost impossible task, but it can happen. I doubt even most of us here have an exactly consistent ideology either. Even the outright Christians would disagree on very strong doctrinal points.
This is a forum to discuss and vent. Quite useful and valuable, especially with Dalrock’s good posts, but not a substitute for human connections.
@N. Vandenberg,
I think you technically can do a deacon program at some of the Concordias, but yes, it’s the deaconess program that’s heavily emphasized on lcms.org. It’s embarrassing. I know families that have moved across the country because the wife ‘was called,’ forcing the husband, the actual provider, to nearly start over his career.
Thankfully there are serious churches in the LCMS that don’t have any time for deaconesses outside of what ordinary congregation members do.
There may also be a mercenary aspect to posting an article like this, especially when you keep in mind that a lot of the folks running TGC don’t even earn their bread by pastoring a church. Instead, they’ve got seminary presidents and professors — Al Mohler, Jared Taylor, D. A. Carson are some prominent examples. There’s also a decent amount of the staff there that make their living in world of Christian publishing; just off the top of my head, that would include Justin Taylor and Trevin Wax.
In that light, a piece like this will serve a purpose for them: It helps drum up support and interest for the products that they sell. When readers (many, perhaps even most of them being women) see an article like this, it follows that many might suddenly find themselves tempted to pursue a ministry degree. That will give the seminary workers will get a new supply of students, and this in turn will give the publishers a ready audience to sell required reading and textbooks to. All the while, they can go on claiming that they intend to remain Biblically faithful, and have no aims of bringing women into church leadership — which would make a lot more sense if only they weren’t also building an army of females that they equipped and encouraged for exactly that task.
. . . . But hey, a preacher’s got to make a living somehow!
Meanwhile, how many men get pushed out of open spots in these seminaries to make room for the laydees?
We see the exact same thing happening in the workforce; policies are created to encourage more women get hired. Even when there is an imbalance caused by women voluntarily choosing to avoid those career fields, lawmakers push even harder to make it “equal” by creating incentives for women to do something they don’t want to do while the qualified men who intend to make a life-long career out of it get crowded out. And we wonder why millions of men aren’t working right now.
Quintus Curtius put it well when he said “this isn’t an economic crisis. This is a spiritual crisis.”
The double punch of this situation is that women get good career jobs but struggling finding a man who is financially better off. Then you’ve got men forced to take lower paying jobs that can’t support a family and therefore aren’t in a position to provide even if they wanted to do so, if for no other reason than to get the tradcons of the world to shut up.
I see this occurring all around me, and no seems happy with their lot. But we keep doubling down.
N. Vandenberg says:
January 25, 2017 at 11:54 pm
Great article. This explains why the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has a deaconess program but no program for deacons. The churches truly venerate women.
Some years ago I attended a Missouri Synod church for a while with a friend of mine, and they had closed communion, which means that you could only partake if you’d been vetted by the pastor. He and I sat down one day and he asked me what I thought communion was (I’d been a Christian for 20+ years by then, so I already knew, of course). I said it was symbolic of the body and blood of Christ and I may have referred to the passage in 1 Cor 11 that explains it.
He told me that I was wrong (apparently they cling to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation), so I asked him a question: “If you walked out of church and got hit by a bus, would the medical examiner who conducts the autopsy find bread and wine in your stomach, or the human flesh and blood of a Jewish man?”
He answered, “Bread and wine.”
To which I responded, “There’s your answer, then.”
He told me I wouldn’t be allowed to take communion there, and I have never set foot in a Missouri Lutheran church ever since. If they choose to put themselves outside the community of believers, that’s on them. Placing women in authority (with a training program that actively favors women over men, yet) is just one more step down the path.
I can think of no reason why a woman would have any cause to go to seminary… then again I find it hard to think of a reason why any man would, either.
Original Laura thinks that three years at law School could be conveniently placed on a suitable number of DVDs and she may be correct, but before the invention of the DVD a rather archaic technology did just that: the book, and before everyone went off to college for three years men and I suppose a few women would spend their evenings home from work not out carousing with their peers but slaving over the said books in what was known as a Correspondence Course. It was, however, clearly not easy. That is exactly what David Hume was supposed to be doing but you see how things turned out; he failed to be called to the Scottish Bar and we got A Treatise on Human Nature Instead. As late as Gold (1974) Roger Moore explains that his character had studied Civil Engineering by Correspondence Course. Maybe I am mistaken but most people coming to Law for the first time find it not merely difficult but largely incomprehensible and unassimilable (I defer to Novaseeker for confirmation); in my day the pass rate was hardly fifty per cent and I know this to be true as at that time I was dating a female whose father was Chief Examiner in one of the subjects, but now every one passes do they not. The way it works is quite simple. You Matriculate and start the course. You are not doing very well and fail the first year exams. You thus sit them again. Now the University wants your fees not merely to stay open but to expand and so you are passed; you may after all improve in the second years. You then come to the end of the second year and ditto. By the third year the college does not want to have to admit that they are incapable of teaching or that they have been unable to attract the more capable student, so the student is then passed and let loose on the world and that is how people do well these days. You in effect pay for your qualification in pretty much the same way that a friend of mine was granted a Diploma in Divinity – a Reverend-ship, to be precise – from one of your less reputable institutions. For $50 he sat an exam and had to answer the question who was the mother of Jesus. He wrote Mary (every women in the NT is called Mary I have noticed so it was a good guess) and he was right and so he was awarded a diploma. You may say that was a waste of money. Not so, announcing that one is a man of the cloth intimidates people such as police officers. Take it from me in Court one never administers the Oath to a Man of the Cloth and further being a man of the cloth enables one to obtain cheaper motor insurance and that is worth taking advantage of too. I would say the initial outlay has now been re-couped now many times.
Just to clear up some of the confusion about the LCMS (full disclosure: I’m Lutheran). Yes, the LCMS has only a deaconess program and deacon program, though the office of deacon/ess has not been recognized in any Lutheran congregations I have been part of. It certainly is not an ordained position. This program likely came about to throw the feminists a bone, as women cannot serve in ordained positions within the LCMS. Not saying that a deaconess program is in any way a good thing, just that the term “deacon” means very different things in different denominations.
Even within different Lutheran circles, the roles of women in the congregation may vary widely. While the mainline ELCA is feminist controlled, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) does not allow women to participate in any office over men – women may not vote in a WELS congregation.
@Lyn – No, Lutherans do not believe in transubstantiation. We do, however, believe in the Real Presence, as do many other denominations: Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist. Each has subtle differences in the particularities of the substance of the bread and wine and how this occurs, but they all in some way believe that the body and blood of Jesus are truly present in the Sacrament. Nominally, the purpose of closed communion is to attempt to isolate the church body from corrupting outside influences, though the success of this methodology is certainly debatable. Calvinist/Reformed usually believe in a spiritual presence in the Sacrament. Most Baptist, Zwinglian, and Evangelical groups believe the Lord’s supper is merely symbolic.
I’ve mentioned my friend’s sister here before. She has four children and is currently in seminary. Here’s a sample of the stuff she’s reading:
RPC says:
January 26, 2017 at 2:11 pm
We owe your friend’s sister a debt of gratitude for providing us with hard evidence in support of shutting down these disgusting heresy factories.
Dalrock, did it ever occur to you that your website is one of the most effective anti-Christian sites on the Internet? You make the case better than Richard Dawkins that Christianity, as it is mainly practiced in the Western World, is for fools.
In defense of the LCMS: As a former member, I recall them calling it “close” communion, as in closeness, breaking bread with those of like mind, etc.
They maintained that it was only called “closed” by others, but to those in the group, the focus was not on exclusion but fellowship.
@infowarrior1: “Why haven’t the men who put this forward been deposed and stripped of their position?”
Because they are only “studying” it, and because they are some of the larger churches in the denomination. The whole thing is kind of a one-way trap door. If any liberal overture or study committee report is voted down by the General Assembly, be sure there will be another committee put together next year. But once the decision is approved, it’s “settled law” and must never be questioned again. Kind of like the Supreme Court.
Some metro PCA churches have unordained “deaconesses” (commissioned but not ordained). There is some biblical and early church precedent for this, but none dare go further – yet.
Believe me, many of us have seen the entire progress of women’s ordination in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and Reformed Church in America (RCA), over the last 35 years. Remembering my Gary North, there are five steps in the process of liberal takeover on a particular issue:
1. We have a right to be heard.
2. We demand a place at the table.
3. There needs to be equal representation.
4. We’ll allow you nonconforming churches to keep your ways for awhile.
5. There’s no place in this denomination for what you believe.
One of the newer churches in our presbytery, University Reformed Church in East Lansing, MI (Kevin DeYoung’s church) ordained only men. They were in the RCA, which held in Step 4 for almost 20 years due to the work of their previous pastor Tom Stark. But finally the RCA moved into Step 5, and URC transferred out. They had to pay a hefty price to the RCA and forfeit their building, but they raised the money, found a new building and are now with us.
One interesting thing in the PCA constitution is that the local church owns their own property, and this rule may never be amended. So if the PCA drifts too far, the churches in our presbytery are free to find a more conservative group of churches to partner with, without giving the denomination cash and prizes.
I am impressed. That Haley Ballast finished the book by Barndt on the first day of her course. Well, now, if she is telling the truth that means she has read all two hundred and forty pages of the book in just one single day. Having had the exquisite pleasure of reading her Twitter feeds one might be forgiven for thinking that she would have been better off in the Church of Marx rather than that of Saints Peter and Paul (turf-war there?). She really hates white people especially Fascists, and it seems that over half of America’s electorate now fit that description; she hates Brexit too but that is frankly absolutely none of her concern – I am sensing a lot of self-loathing from her and the fact that she has a mulatto child can only be making it worse, far far worse.
Female Pastors are only going to empty the Pews. No woman wants a female Pastor any more than she wants a female boss or supervisor and I don’t think the men want one either. I only ever met one female pastor and all I could think of was how to remove her tightly fitting cheese-cloth shirt as I nodded enthusiastically to her exposition of St Paul on sexuality (he’s wrooong!) or whatever it was she was on about. The real Litmus Test for tolerance these days seems to be whether one can have a Muslim in your Church reciting passages from the Koran denying the Divinity of Jesus*. I can only imagine as the Musselman does so that he is thinking ‘I’ve got away with it’ much as lawyers like to see if they can slip in words like Cunning Linguist into their address to the Bench without the Judge grasping what is being said. They sometimes fall asleep in the afternoon so that is the best time to try that sort of thing.
*Glasgow Episcopal Cathedral, last week
brockhedegaard and m11nine,
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that sort of hair-splitting is at best “a distinction without a difference.” It’s also unnecessarily divisive, and manufacturing division has no place among believers (I Cor 1:10 and John 17: 20-23, among others). But like I said, if they want to put up a wall between themselves and Christians, they’ll find they’re on the wrong side of it… no skin off my nose.
@Lyn – I understand where you are coming from and mean no disrespect, though I and many others would contend that removing the Divine from the Sacraments is not a case of splitting hairs and manufacturing division. I will choose to take the best possible reading of your statement on putting a wall between “themselves and Christians,” and not push you with regard to the implication that those who practice closed communion are outside the Church. Such an argument would be tactless and futile.
I actually attend an LCMS that practices open communion (don’t tell the Synod!). I personally have no issue with it, and we all know there are members within the Lutheran church body that don’t believe in Real Presence in spite of official doctrine, though they would never say it out loud. However, there are valid reasons why many in the church have maintained closed (or close, if you wish to be picky about terms) communion. Let’s just say that ecumenical outreach ain’t all it’s cracked up to be; it rarely resolves errors in teaching and typically results in watered-down doctrine.
Opus
As they used to say in the old days in certain parts of the USA, “you’re the limit”. You must never stop writing here. I saw where the Queen’s Chaplin resigned because he stood against the Glasgow episode. I would like to have a couple pints with that man and talk things over.
Please don’t tell us you ever addressed the bench with any reference to a master debater.
Gunner Q says:
I deny it.
Are you denying that slavery hasn’t greatly declined in the modern world?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/179459/million-adults-children-slavery-worldwide.aspx
The estimated number of slaves is just short of 36 million worldwide, about .5 percent of the population.
Contrast this with ancient Rome, where the percentage of slaves was many times greater (may have been as high as 40% in Italy in the 1st century BC). The employment of that many slaves in the modern world simply makes no economic sense, so it’s not done.
Those guys have the money & access to tech to do away with slavery as the West did and they aren’t doing away with it.
Yes, they do. Regardless of their poor ethical choices, I expect slavery will continue to trend downwards.
You do realize that slavery is a religious practice under Islam?
The Wikipedia article I read says that the official Koran position is that slavery should be reserved for exceptional situations. It doesn’t sound like a wholehearted endorsement of slavery to me. I realize people don’t practice what they preach but that’s a different issue.
I disagree because it hasn’t been for decades.
I’d agree the availability of cheap labor has slowed down the development of technological substitutes. But stopped it entirely? No way. Once employers get a more inexpensive, more productive alternative, they’re certainly going to jump ship and use it instead of employing human labor.
They didn’t come here illegally to work in squalor because they had a real choice.
Nonsense. They left because they believed they had a better choice than what Mexico offered them.
Why else is Mexico not trying to retain its own citizens?
Mexico is a weak state that prefers to use the US as a safety valve instead of taking better care of its people. But it looks like President Trump is determined to change that. Good.
Hmmm. You know then that Kevin writes for TGC and speaks at CBMW conferences? Do you think URC is teaching about women’s rebelliousness and encouraging submissiveness? Please,which sermons was that in? It is usually avoidance and if not you better be sure servant leader and abusive men will get equal representation at the same time.
@Hmm & @Opus et al
The classroom experience is valuable. I just don’t think it is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tuition and fees. It is still just barely possible to practice law in the USA in a few states without attending law school but you will never become a judge or be hired by the state or the feds. I have been told by a very reliable source that students now spend up to eight years completing dental school in some cases. This is eight years of graduate school subsequent to four or more years of university. As Opus says, to throw them out means acknowledging that you admitted people who couldn’t handle the program. University courses have become so expensive that it isn’t even controversial when somebody points out that you could hire a highly qualified tutor in almost any subject for a fraction of what a college would charge. But a college can give you a diploma and a tutor cannot.
@Lyn87et al
The LCMS churches that are overrun with deaconesses, feminism, etc. are the ones that don’t have closed communion, don’t believe in the real presence, and so on. Closed communion and no guitars during service are good signs that a church will be led by a (male) pastor and male elders. Christianity can’t sustain itself without taking traditional theology and practice seriously. This is blatantly evident in the United States right now.
University courses have become so expensive that it isn’t even controversial when somebody points out that you could hire a highly qualified tutor in almost any subject for a fraction of what a college would charge. But a college can give you a diploma and a tutor cannot.
That’s what it ultimately comes down to: the piece of parchment. It has nothing to do with the competent practice and application of knowledge gained.
Modern “Christianity’ will get the hardest judgement by God, as they have been leading the people astray. Especially with feminism. Jesus would be considered a heretic and a bigot by western teachings today. The Alan Parson song You Don’t Believe would be one of many songs aimed at modern Churchianity today.
@Ray Manta and others
”Why else is Mexico not trying to retain its own citizens?
Mexico is a weak state that prefers to use the US as a safety valve instead of taking better care of its people. But it looks like President Trump is determined to change that. Good.”
Razorfist sums it up:
Mexico is a hard-class State. The ruler classes in most of South & Central America are based on racial & family ties, for the most part. It simply isn’t an ethno-state like Japan or more of Europe.
It also has the historic problems of any Tropical Region state: food too easy, diseases too much. The culture always ends up with fairly endemic corruption.
Lastly, read up on the “School of the Americas”. We pretty much created a whole slew of Autocrats in the process of preventing Communist take-overs. While it worked, the results have to be judged in the “at least the countries weren’t slaughtered by their own leaders” manner. There’s still a lot of semi-functioning societies there. It’s going to be a while.
@Swanny: “You know then that Kevin [DeYoung] writes for TGC and speaks at CBMW conferences?”
I do. But I also know that not everyone at either of those organizations stands against Scripture on those issues. Remember, it was Kevin that brought his church out of the RCA over the women’s ordination issue. And at a recent meeting, Kevin was most eloquent speaking against a ministerial candidate who believed there should be a path to the ordination of women as deacons. So I count him on the right side in this.
@feeriker: “That’s what it ultimately comes down to: the piece of parchment. It has nothing to do with the competent practice and application of knowledge gained.”
Well, a woman who attends seminary for just the knowledge and not the career doesn’t need the parchment. But it is in the seminary’s interest to get more people there, even if introducing women affects the dynamic in unpredictable ways. And it’s clear that introducing women into an all-male educational environment can have dire effects on the results.
Mexico is a hard-class State. The ruler classes in most of South & Central America are based on racial & family ties, for the most part. It simply isn’t an ethno-state like Japan or more of Europe.
Yep, the economic and political power is generally concentrated in the hands of folks who are quite … white … even in countries where most of the people are brown. There are some exceptions to that, but they’re exceptional for the region, really.
@Novaseeker:
I remembered watching Mexico vs someone else in an International soccer match. My first thought was the Mexican side looked more European than most European teams.
The discussion about credentialism is pertinent here. Except in certain fields (theology is not among them), brick-and-mortar facilities are not required for a person to master a subject. I had to get my Masters degree for my last promotion, and it didn’t matter what subject it was in. I picked Military History because it interests me and is something I already knew a great deal about from years of reading books and periodicals and just watching the History Channel (I can remember when the History Channel used to be about history and even when MTV used to play music). I wrote the papers and participated in the message boards, and very nearly missed being the valedictorian, but I can’t say that I learned very much that I didn’t already know. There were two differences, though. 1) I spent a great deal of money (some of which was taxpayer-supplied as I was on active duty), and 2) I had a fancy piece of paper that certified that I had completed the degree requirements. It didn’t help me do my job except insofar as a Master of Military History degree gives an officer “street cred” in a military training environment, but I would not have been promoted without the sheepskin despite the fact that anyone could gain the same mastery of the subject the way I did (autodidactically).
…
Which brings us to seminaries. In Acts chapter 4, Peter and John were brought before the high priest and the Sadducees (all graduates of the seminaries of their day) to ascertain their qualifications to preach and perform miracles. It’s worth quoting at length (emphasis added):
What all that means is that a piece of paper from a seminary does not indicate that the bearer has an extraordinary level of Bible knowledge, nor is he necessarily “closer to God” than the devout man sitting quietly in the third pew. If the bearer of the diploma is a woman, it’s probably a pretty good indication that she missed the whole point of what she was studying, anyway, since the purpose of acquiring a seminary degree is to go into a leadership position for which she is automatically both unsuited and prohibited by reason of her sex.
There is a counter-argument that one of the meanings of the word “deacon” is “servant” and Phoebe in Acts 16 is commended and identified as a servant (diakonos) in the church at Cenchream using the same Greek word as is found in 1 Timothy and Titus. It is clear from the context that Phoebe was a devout woman who served in the church (nearly every church has a platoon of little old ladies who take care of mundane tasks… there’s nothing wrong with that), but she was certainly not in a position of leadership – the other meaning of the word diakonos – and would have had no use whatsoever for credentials from a school of theology.
About the only reason I can think of for a man to attend seminary is to enter a position that requires those credentials… namely, advancement in the military’s Chaplain Corps, and even then that’s only because he needs to show that he possesses the (mostly) arbitrary academical qualifications.
@Yggdrasil
” You make the case better than Richard Dawkins that Christianity, as it is mainly practiced in the Western World, is for fools.”
This unfortunately, is true. It is not true that Christianities truth claims are false. There really was a Jesus Christ and he did perform miracles. In fact, ancient pagan detractors never denied the miracles. Instead they attributed them to Christ learning magical arts, during his sojurn in Egypt.
I think what Dalrock has done, in a very conclusive manner, is how modern Churches have been completely co-opted by secular trends.
Examples:
Cohabitation in the church
http://issuesetc.org/2016/02/10/4-cohabitation-pr-mark-surburg-21016/
Rampant frivolous divorce and remarriage among church members
http://issuesetc.org/2013/04/04/4-evangelical-compromise-on-divorce-how-does-the-story-of-sodom-apply-to-homosexuality-dr-robert-gagnon-4413/
Modern American churches are hardly Christian. For every sincere Catholic priest, Baptist minister or Reformed theologian there are at least 10 people like Mark Driscoll, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, etc.
What you are witnessing is basically religious country clubs who are into crowd funding.
See Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church by Kenda Creasy Dean
@ Lyn87 says:
January 27, 2017 at 7:57 am
“… anyone could gain the same mastery of the subject the way I did (autodidactically).”
That and a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.
@ Lyn87 says:
January 27, 2017 at 7:57 am
“There is a counter-argument that one of the meanings of the word ‘deacon’ is ‘servant’ and Phoebe in Acts 16 is commended and identified as a servant (diakonos) in the church at Cenchream using the same Greek word as is found in 1 Timothy and Titus. It is clear from the context that Phoebe was a devout woman who served in the church (nearly every church has a platoon of little old ladies who take care of mundane tasks… there’s nothing wrong with that), but she was certainly not in a position of leadership – the other meaning of the word diakonos – and would have had no use whatsoever for credentials from a school of theology.”
Acts 6 tells us that the first Deacons served tables.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+6&version=KJV
Serving as a Deacon was a prerequisite to serving as an elder (1 Tim 3)…
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%203&version=KJV
… but the elders exercised authority and taught the word. Deacons did not. Of course, you’d want a prospective elder to serve – and prove himself – in a position with little or no authority for a time to ensure that the prospective elder actually wants to serve his brothers and sisters in Christ, not just exercise authority over them. Deacons also served as an example of godly living to fellow Christians.
So, yes, women can serve as deaconesses who serve the flock and provide a good example to their sisters in Christ, but they’re disqualified from serving as elders.
I believe it’s been established that the “deaconess” position fell out of favor pretty early on, mostly for the problems we normally see now.
Oscar,
Great scene from GWH.
As for your other point, I don’t often disagree with you, but the passage you quoted does not state that being a deacon is a prerequisite for serving as an elder. I think it’s important to differentiate between the two ways the word diakonos is used in the New Testament. It can be used in the generic sense of “one who serves” like Phoebe in Acts 16 or the aforementioned platoon of little old ladies who wash the pots after the Sunday “pot luck,” and in the specific sense of “holding the office of deacon” in the passage you referred to. So although Phoebe was a servant (diakonos) in the church at Cenchream, we know that she did not hold the office of deacon, because that is specifically restricted to men in both Titus 1 and I Timothy 3. Granted, Phoebe’s service at Cenchream predated the Pauline epistles, but I’m sure we agree that there’s no reason to suppose that women held ecclesiastical office in the early church, or that it would have been met with approval like we see in Phoebe’s case.
I disagree with women going to seminary. Period.
However, there is an important issue to be addressed. (IMO, this is a very pressing issue.) There is a huge shortage of godly women suitable for the task determined in Titus 2. Many women belive that they are Titus 2 women (like Proverbs 31 woman, you know), but for become Titus 2 women, very good Bible skill is required that almost all of them lack. Also, most Christians have a very narrow canon (Some OT stories, well known parts of Psalms, four Gospels, Acts, some highlights of the letters of Paul and that is it.), and I can’t see the improvment. (And I mostly blame pastors for it, it is easier to pick some well-known gospel story for sermon than something from Ezekiel.)
So maybe not seminaries, but some type of deep training (also available for women) would be desirable.
(We have 6 year long seminary here, and around 30 years ago, there was a special correspondence program designated for pastor’s wives, they would study the same curriculum as pastors (minus Latin, Hebrew, Greek), but it was discontinued.)
@Oscar
The deaconess program, in the LCMS, is simple a venue for feminists to use religion to dominate men. The whole focus of American churches is to make men subservient and effeminate.
The Ethics of Women
I HAVE SAID that the religion preached by Jesus (now wholly extinct in the world) was highly favourable to women. This was not saying, of course, that women have repaid the compliment by adopting it. They are, in fact, indifferent Christians in the primitive sense, just as they are bad Christians in the antagonistic modern sense, and particularly on the side of ethics. If they actually accept the renunciations commanded by the Sermon on the Mount, it is only in an effort to flout their substance under cover of their appearance. No woman is really humble; she is merely politic. No woman, with a free choice before her, chooses self-immolation; the most she genuinely desires in that direction is a spectacular martyrdom. No woman delights in poverty. No woman yields when she can prevail. No woman is honestly meek.
H.L. Mencken
@ Lyn87 says:
January 27, 2017 at 9:50 am
“As for your other point, I don’t often disagree with you, but the passage you quoted does not state that being a deacon is a prerequisite for serving as an elder.”
Looking at a different translation, I see what you mean.
1 Tim 3:10 These men must also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach.
@ N. Vandenberg says:
“The deaconess program, in the LCMS, is simple a venue for feminists to use religion to dominate men. The whole focus of American churches is to make men subservient and effeminate.”
I’m not familiar with the LCMS, but what I’ve observed in other churches leads me to believe that you are – unfortunately – right.
So I read the advertisement…….I mean Article. I also clicked on the two related articles.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/your-4-priorities-for-seminary
Matt Smethurst March 29 2012
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/4-questions-for-women-considering-seminary
Mary Wilson April 12,2016
One thing I noticed is that Matt’s article is Priority focused….or at least warning not to confuse your priorities. 1. Don’t neglect your church, 2. Don’t neglect your family (specifically calls out dating, pursuing, praying for/with, listening to, enouraging, and spending time with your wife) 3. Don’t neglect your soul, 4. Don’t neglect your King.
Contrast this with the two other articles. First, the word husband does NOT APPEAR in either article. And the points in each article are directed at SELF.
The subject article is all about what the woman can get out of seminary. 1. Knowledge of God, 2. Deeper walk with God, 3.Realize what I don’t know, 4Understand what I do know, 5Honing my TRUTH filter “Seminary gave me a firm foundation of truth, which serves as a gauge by which I measure everything I hear. It’s guarded me from bad theology and helped me to weed through fields of ideas to find teaching rooted in scriptural truth. I needed that. I needed a compass. There’s so much teaching out there and without a firm foundation, it can be extremely difficult to discern the difference between what’s true and what’s not. My seminary education gave that to me”
The second article is about questions that should be asked before seminary. Again, No mention of “does your husband support this”. 1. Why Seminary, 2. Have you been encouraged to consider seminary by those you know well-especially within your local church? 3. To the best of YOUR ability, have YOU assesed the risk and counted the costs of this decision? Are you prepared to make these sacrifices joyfully? 4. Are you willing to invest in a church wholeheartedly while you pursue your seminary degree.
One last quote from the Wilson Article………..From point 2 regarding “have you been encouraged”
“Perhaps key leaders do not consider seminary a valuable option in general for a woman; we then prayerfully seek truthful and gracious conversation with our pastors and elders before seeking other counsel, which we must do in some cases.”
In a nutshell this says that your husband doesn’t deserve to be consulted, he is certainly no authority, and if those whom you give that authority to don’t recognize the validity of what the woman wants, then she should “seek other counsel, which we must do in some cases.” I noticed she left the “Godly” requirement out of this last ditch counsel.
Dal, apologies for the links……..
@Hmm
Remember, it was Kevin that brought his church out of the RCA over the women’s ordination issue. And at a recent meeting, Kevin was most eloquent speaking against a ministerial candidate who believed there should be a path to the ordination of women as deacons. So I count him on the right side in this.
Don’t put any hope in Kevin DeYoung; He shares the same corruption that you’ll find in his Gospel Coalition cohorts. He’ll hammer the men for the women’s sins while letting the women get away with murder. In short: Not a Red Pill man.
For a great demonstration of this, just go to the TGC site and look up an article he wrote a few years back called, “Dude, Where’s Your Bride,” in which he — wait for it now — boldly called out those immature single men of the church for refusing to grow up, get a high-paying job and offer a ring to one of those righteous single Christian women that desire a husband. Key quote: “Some women may be expecting too much from Mr. Right. But in my experience this is not the main problem. Impossible standards? Not usually . . . . . But I think the problem largely resides with men.”
For added entertainment, read the comments on the article. A bunch of Red Pill men (including a few who’ve commented here at Dalrock’s) flooded the page to set him straight. Kevin panicked and shut down the section, citing “a number of inappropriate comments.” Another church coward.
Link for the Kevin’s TGC piece is here: https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/kevindeyoung/2011/11/03/dude-wheres-your-bride/comment-page-5/#comments
Damn…. Fell in the rabbit hole of at TCG and found another article from Mary Willson in 2013 titled “5 Challenges for Women Teaching the Bible”, Its starts out “I recently polled a group of women actively engaged in teaching the Scriptures within their local churches,”
Actively engaged in TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES within their local church
@Hmm:
This is precisely why I can no longer worship in anything other than a congregationalist “church”; the episcopal or presbyter polity places too much control outside of the congregation itself. I have found the churches of Christ to be refreshingly biblical in their organization and function . . . which is to say if it ain’t in the scriptures we don’t do it or spend time debating the subject, if its in there, we do it. But this isn’t nuanced enough for most western christians these days.
The push for women to go to seminary is about money.
The more applicants/students you have, the more money you can charge.
This is also one of the reasons for the push to send women to college.
So what if she ends up with a useless degree and a ton of debt. The seminary is making money, and that’s what matters.
So what if she ends up with a useless degree and a ton of debt
So what indeed. After all, given that women can NEVER be held responsible for their choices, it’ll be some beta sucker, either her husband or her daddy, who will eat the cost of her bad decision.
@Otto Lamp:
They won’t preach the Prosperity Heresy, but they’ll sure as Hell try to live it.