Egalitarian pastor Wade Burleson anticipates that the SBC will capitulate on the topic of women preaching:
Within a decade or two, what I say the authoritative Scriptures teach about gender equality will be considered biblical, normal, and eternal by the majority of Southern Baptists, and what I heard today will have gone away, just as the former racism of Southern Baptists went away 100 years ago.
Complementarians have been looking for a way to cave on this issue since the founding of the movement. As Drs. John Piper and Wayne Grudem explained in their 1991 book introducing the complementarian perspective, they chose to reject the traditional reading on women preaching and invent a new one that better fit their modern sensibilities. From Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism:
28. Do you think women are more gullible than men?
First Timothy 2:14 says, “Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” Paul gives this as one of the reasons why he does not permit women “to teach or have authority over a man.” Historically this has usually been taken to mean that women are more gullible or deceivable than men and therefore less fit for the doctrinal oversight of the church. This may be true (see question 29). However, we are attracted to another understanding of Paul’s argument. We think that Satan’s main target was not Eve’s peculiar gullibility (if she had one), but rather Adam’s headship as the one ordained by God to be responsible for the life of the garden. Satan’s subtlety is that he knew the created order God had ordained for the good of the family, and he deliberately defied it by ignoring the man and taking up his dealings with the woman. Satan put her in the position of spokesman, leader, and defender. At that moment both the man and the woman slipped from their innocence and let themselves be drawn into a pattern of relating that to this day has proved destructive.
If this is the proper understanding, then what Paul meant in 1 Timothy 2:14 was this: “Adam was not deceived (that is, Adam was not approached by the deceiver and did not carry on direct dealings with the deceiver), but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (that is, she was the one who took up dealings with the deceiver and was led through her direct interaction with him into deception and transgression).”
In this case, the main point is not that the man is undeceivable or that the woman is more deceivable; the point is that when God’s order of leadership is repudiated it brings damage and ruin. Men and women are both more vulnerable to error and sin when they forsake the order that God has intended.
This created a designated role for women like Beth Moore to preach to women, so long as the women preaching weren’t “in authority” over men. Keep in mind that this feminist friendly rationalization is perceived in complementarian circles as taking the ultimate hard line against feminism. This is the most “traditional” perspective complementarians consider acceptable. And of course as time has passed, the urge to further reinterpret Scripture on the issue has only grown stronger. John Piper has already modified his teaching on the subject to permit women to preach to men, so long as no one involved compromises their maleness and femaleness:
I’m a guy. Is it wrong for me to listen to Beth Moore?
No. Unless you begin to become dependent on her as your shepherd—your pastor.
This is the way I feel about women speaking occasionally in Sunday school. We don’t need to be picky on this. The Bible is clear that women shouldn’t teach and have authority over men. In context, I think this means that women shouldn’t be the authoritative teachers of the church—they shouldn’t be elders. That is the way Rick Warren is understanding it, and most of us understand it that way.
This doesn’t mean you can’t learn from a woman, or that she is incompetent and can’t think. It means that there is a certain dynamic between maleness and femaleness that when a woman begins to assume an authoritative teaching role in your life the manhood of a man and the womanhood of a woman is compromised.
This is of course nonsense, and classic complementarian doublespeak. But it doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to seem somewhat traditional while giving in to the same temptation Piper and Grudem tell us they succumbed to in 1991.
All of this is much less baffling when you realize that while Scripture is ostensibly the foundation of the discussion, this isn’t about Scripture. Complementarians are paying lip service to Scripture while following their true philosophy of chivalry, a parody of Christianity. Under the chivalrous view, women are more moral than men, and men should look to women for moral guidance. This is why you have complementarians teaching that pastor’s wives are light years closer to God than their husbands. It is also why Pastor Doug Wilson teaches that the wife’s role is house despot, and why Pastor Tim Bayly calls his wife “My Lord Mary Lee”.
Burleson understands this reality, at least intuitively. This is why he brilliantly charged complementarians with being unchivalrous when they said that Beth Moore shouldn’t preach in church on Sunday:
First, let me say that Dr. Tom Ascol, the head of the SBC Founder’s Conference is a very humble man of character. He and I had some good conversations face-to-face today. Everyone with the Founders treated me cordially. I could tell there were hurt feelings from some, mostly family members of the men I charged with bullying Beth Moore. But we worked through it.
It’s all over but the rationalization.
H/T Emperor Constantine
See Also: Defenseless
Woke_TGC on Twitter has been aware of Burleson for a while:
Also see Ed Dingess re: Burleson:
https://reformedreasons.com/2019/06/08/wade-burleson-egalitarian-extraordinaire/
I would encourage Dalrock readers to click on the last hyper link in the last paragraph (“I charged with bullying Beth Moore”). Read all the comments; I did, and I now feel about as manly as a whimpering eunuch in the court of king Nebuchadnezzar. That effeminate mess is what’s in the heart of Baptist evangelicalism.
Disgraceful. I attend an SBC congregation, but for years now I have been designating all my tithe money to the Baptist Children’s Village (which is a very well run orphanage with lots of locations). No more money for the smiling Reverend Goodbuddy’s salary–at least not till he steps up and says something as outstanding as Ed Dingess did in his comment above.
More interesting still is that this belief in ‘women being more prone to deception’ is not just a cultural perception in the West alone. Read the works of Kautilya (aka Chanakya) in India. Read Chinese and Japanese history and commentary for LuBu regarding female ‘householders’.
Women are more susceptible to social pressure than men. The sexual expendability of men has biologically meant that men are more socially capable of A) surviving alone as outcasts and B) more willing to take risks that could jeopardize their lives because why not…especially when they don’t have families.
From Genesis to Ecclesiastes this has been well known since ancient times, and since ancient times the leadership and headship of women has served as a death-knell for civilization. Women compromise with evil. Always have. Always will.
Old news, but provides perfect background on Burleson.
https://www.wadeburleson.org/2014/03/the-increasing-divorce-rate-among.html?m=1
A complementarian’s complementarian. The argument of “there’s no authority anywhere” is just golden.
Strike Three,
Soros is throwing money at converging the SBC. See TGC, Russell Moore, Karen Swallow Prior, et al. It’s quite the rabbit hole to jump into.
One commenter stated, “Soros Baptist Convention” in a previous thread.
See also Ann Voskamp; TGC; Desiring God.
Of course they will, because if the Word of God is deemed sexist, they’ll break their spines and the Gospel trying to make it fit.
Disgusting.
Burleson has abandoned the Bible. He now refers to “Creation”. From the link:
“At Creation, God gave Adam and Eve BOTH authority over Creation (co-regents), gave them BOTH equality of essence (“both TOGETHER are Man”), and made them BOTH in His image. In other words, Creation is about equality – as well as the NEW CREATION.”
Nothing in Scripture supports this. Heck, I can look outside my window at lizards eating bugs; the food chain is proof God didn’t plan for equality in Nature.
“It’s the CURSE of sin that causes Adam to wish to “rule over” women, and Eve to “rule over” men. Christian patriarchalism has the same diseased root as secular feminism. Both wish to RULE OVER OTHERS.”
This is a lie. Eve’s curse was wanting to rule over men. Adam’s curse was misery in his labors.
“Question: If at Creation God designed the man to be the “head over” the woman and to have “authority over” her, then is it God’s intention for men to be the “head over” women for all eternity and for men to have “authority over” women in heaven? And if not, why not?
“My answer: God didn’t design men to ever have “authority” over women. Neither did he design “pastors” to have an “office of authority” over people. Nor did he design husbands to have “authority” over wives. That’s the sign of the curse, not Creation.”
Boom. Burleson wants Biblical marriage dead because “Creation” wants us equal.
The SBC’s President Greear has also abandoned Scripture, him in favor of “the Gospel”. More here:
https://gunnerq.com/2019/06/06/sbc-president-j-d-greear-is-a-racist-sjw/
Regarding the Adam and Eve story, there’s a rather simple explanation for why the Serpent approached Eve. It was because she was more susceptible to Envy. Keep in mind what the Serpent said to her, about her becoming like God. While there is definitely an element of Pride involved, it was Envy that did Eve in.
By the same token, it was Lust that did in Adam. The primary vice of men has always been Lust where as the primary vice of women has always been Envy. Yes, we all suffer temptations to all the Seven Deadly Sins in our lives but some are more appealing to us than others and sex differences bear this out.
>This is the way I feel about women speaking occasionally in Sunday school. We don’t need to be picky on this. The Bible is clear that women shouldn’t teach and have authority over men. In context, I think this means that women shouldn’t be the authoritative teachers of the church—they shouldn’t be elders. That is the way Rick Warren is understanding it, and most of us understand it that way.
>This doesn’t mean you can’t learn from a woman, or that she is incompetent and can’t think. It means that there is a certain dynamic between maleness and femaleness that when a woman begins to assume an authoritative teaching role in your life the manhood of a man and the womanhood of a woman is compromised.
this sounds exactly correct to me though. what’s ridiculous about this?
William of Orange County
Women are more susceptible to social pressure than men.
Sure, because their known ingroup preference (4 to 1 women over men) means they run with the herd. That ingroup preference is of survival value in the hunter-gatherer and basic agriculture civilizations; have other women at your back, or potentially be cast out of the tribe which means eventual death.
This herding can easily be seen in fashion, for example. Given enough women who are perceived as “opinion leaders” taking a position, most other women within their social circles will conform. This means that women will bow to pressure, so only the exceptional few can be orthodox in any civilization on their own.
Tangentially women are superstitious, this likely grows out of the poor understanding of cause and effect. Superstitious people believe in all sorts of things, and can be convinced to believe in blatant contradictions. I’m too busy to post the relevant 1970’s music video right now, but maybe later.
I walked away from the SBC last year. Even though we only went to that Church for about 14 months, that was enough. They pandered to women and marginalized and flat out made fun of men. And that from the pulpit.
The Church we go to now seems to be doing it right.
@Dylan Sexton
It is grounded in an absurd reading of 1 Tim 14:11-15
To get where you say seems right, you have to assume that Paul isn’t saying women are more easily deceived than men in the bolded text above. This is the foundation of the rationalization for women teaching. Instead, you have to assume that Paul was merely restating the creation order in verse 14 that he already stated in verse 13. Once you swallow that rationalization, you are then prepared to assume that Paul wasn’t prohibiting women from preaching, but was only prohibiting women from being in authority over men in the church.
As Dr. Moo explains in the book I quoted in the OP, if you don’t make this absurd rationalization, you can’t carve out a niche for Beth Moore, etc to become “women’s preachers”.
I have yet to come across a man who believed that women should preach to women who was willing to sign on to the rationalization required to logically get there. However, I’m sure they are out there. The part that you are signing off on is one step further than this foundational error, and says if it is ok for women to preach to women (since the issue isn’t women’s greater tendency to be deceived), it must be ok for women to preach to men as well, so long as it doesn’t put the woman preacher in authority over men.
“Tangentially women are superstitious, this likely grows out of the poor understanding of cause and effect.”
On Drudge right now, The Working Witches of LA…from the Los Angeles Time’s ‘science correspondent’.
The 19th Amendment was a huge, gigantic mistake.
Dalrock:
It seems that the definition of teach or preach is being used equivocally. There’s a loose way of speaking about preaching, such that anyone’s virtuous example or good words in familiar conversation qualifies as preaching. In this sense of preaching it’s completely unreasonable to interpret St. Paul as forbidding women to preach. But there is the more strict sense of expounding on Sacred Doctrine with authority, and it seems rather obvious (at least to me) that St. Paul is talking about teaching in this sense.
The game that seems to be being played in those paragraphs Dylan cites is to say that we’ll allow women to teach in a context that looks, sounds, and feels authoritative/public with the understanding that it isn’t actually authoritative/public. We promise this isn’t a duck.
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A Catholic splinter group features a lesbian “bishop,” “married” to another female “priest.” A picture shows them in vestments, next to each other on an altar, grinning like fiends. (Which they are.) I noticed that the congregation was barely bigger than the gathering of SJW scolds in the chancel.
That particular splinter group has itself inexorably splintered, each new group outdoing its parent in radical “woke”-ness.
When women enter the pulpit, they always — ALWAYS — bring SJW heresy with them, and so destroy their own religion from within.
@TimFinnegan
My initial response was that they aren’t making this specific equivocation, but after re reading the chapter in question (Chapter 9, PDF link) I’m less certain. I still believe they are limiting their prohibition to women teaching men, but there is at least some room for your interpretation. In the beginning of the chapter Dr. Moo lays it out:
Later in the chapter he touches on the question you raise:
Thank you for the HT Dalrock.
I am following all this deep scriptural review on this topic with great interest.
But allow me to make a more vulgar point about Pastor Burleson. The picture on his web home page is classic beta male: leaning in, with his female looking away and you get the strong impression from the picture she would love to escape him.
Beta tells. I’m pretty sure @rationalmale would agree.
https://www.wadeburleson.org/2019/06/i-now-see-why-they-say-women-are-not-to.html?fbclid=IwAR1KEoR7G6-7lMAZcRiBgv43FV1W3g_y-kGH5s_qDhbKg3cx–UeYwbajbY
Continuing: Note in the quote by Dr. Moo above that he implies that Titus 2:3-4 is referring to older women preaching to younger ones. This is nonsense. Titus 2:3-5 reads:
You could give the bolded instruction to older atheist women, and (feminist refusal aside) they could teach it to younger women. No teaching of doctrine or interpretation of Scripture is required.
The Word commands older women to teach younger women and it is very specific what they should be teaching them.
Titus 2:3-5 – Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Hi, all,
First, a bit about me. I’ve read this blog for years (got here in some manosphere way, no idea how anymore). I’m an atheist, but I find the discussions interesting. I’m also a philologist and at the risk of sounding immodest, I know ancient Greek very well (reasons of anonymity preclude further information, so unfortunately you’ll just have to take my word for it). I also have an interest in Christian history and theology, so I often look up the original Greek of the texts that get cited here periodically, and compare them to the translations used. I have no dog in any of these discussions and simply want to find an unprejudiced understand of the biblical text. There’s one crucial part of the text cited here from 1 Timothy (it’s chapter 2, not 14) where the translation given seems misleading. Here’s a bit of grammatical exegesis that has some bearing on the interpretation.
καὶ Ἀδὰμ οὐκ ἠπατήθη, ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἐξαπατηθεῖσα ἐν παραβάσει γέγονεν. (v. 14), translated as “and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor”.
First, it’s introduced with the neutral conjunction καί, which shows that it’s carrying on from the preceding verse, which in turn explains why a woman should keep quiet and not be master over a man. Here we’re first told that “Adam was not deceived.” The verb is in the simple aorist tense and has no prefix. Hence, this is just a neutral statement about an event in the past (or rather its absence).
But the two verbs next used about “the woman” are quite different. First, we get the aorist participle ἐξαπατηθεῖσα. This is from the same verb as the one just used about Adam, but now it has the prefix ἐκ added in front. This gives the nuance “thoroughly.” The fact that it’s in the aorist means that the action represented by it takes place prior to the action of the verb it’s subordinate to (it’s little more complicated than this, but this’ll do): “having been completely deceived.”
The main verb of the clause is γέγονεν. Unlike the verb used of Adam, this one is in the perfect tense, which signifies the current result of prior action (English has no directly corresponding tense). Since the verb that it comes from (γίγνομαι) signifies “to become,” the sense here is “to be in a state as a result of having come into it (previously).” And the circumstance it refers to is (to be) “in transgression” (ἐν παραβάσει). Putting this all together, the sense is that whereas Adam simply wasn’t deceived, “the woman,” having been completely deceived, became (and now is) in a state of transgression.
Whatever conclusions one wishes to derive from Paul’s assertions, it seems indisputable from the Greek that he thinks as a result of what was thought to have happened in the Garden of Eden, Adam wasn’t deceived at all, but “the woman,” on the contrary, not only became a transgressor then, but as a result of that, still is one.
Note that while on the surface of it, “the woman” has to be Eve, a noun modified by the definite article in Greek can have a generic sense (i.e., “the woman”=women in general), and the use of the perfect tense referring to a present state shows that Paul has played something of a rhetorical game. In the immediate context he has to mean Eve, but the phrase clearly is applicable to contemporary women (as a result, presumably, of their descent from Eve).
As I said, you can make of this what you will, but that seems to me to be what Paul’s language signifies.
The SBC has lost the fight.
It didn’t lose when discussing 1 Tim 2:14.It didn’t lose when discussing Adam and Eve.
It lost when it started throwing around trendy words like ‘complementarian’ and made concessions to ‘women preaching to other women, so long as they aren’t in authority over a man’.
Any compromise with the Left, any concession, any admission, is interpreted as ground given away. This means that the established boundary between what can be and can’t be done today will be tomorrow’s starting point of further bargaining, further concession, until the full agenda is adopted.That agenda comes exactly from ”social pressure”. That’s the evil of the World pressing in on what is sacred. And press in it will.
Don’t even apologise to these bitches. They won’t accept an apology anyway. It just gives them the opportunity to run to the police, the courts, the media or any figure in authority and pillory you.
And in another 10-20 years, I think all of the remaining conservatives in the SBC will be deciding whether to join the OCA or RCC.
Dalrock:
I see. It seems it’s possible also that the equivocation I presented is being applied to Titus in order to justify the equivocation you presented.
In the Catholic and Orthodox Churches the break down of teaching authoritatively can also get even more nuanced. The quintessential case would be a convent. It can’t be said that the Mother Superior isn’t teaching the nuns with authority, and yet it isn’t the same kind of authority as that of the clergy (bishops and, by participation in the bishop’s office, priests and deacons). It’s also limited only to the nuns, who have neither father nor husband over them, and (because of the nature of convents), men are typically not around.
Isn’t this a good thing? All the cards on the table. No more hiding behind words like complementarianism to cover the fact that they don’t like what the Bible says and won’t go along with it. Clarity.
Swimming across the Tiber will be psychologically difficult for them. Fortunately they can swim the Bosphorus instead, without the mental baggage.
Historically this has usually been taken to mean that women are more gullible or deceivable than men and therefore less fit for the doctrinal oversight of the church. This may be true (see question 29).
Go on…
Satan’s subtlety is that he knew the created order God had ordained for the good of the family, and he deliberately defied it by ignoring the man and taking up his dealings with the woman.
Satan’s subtlety. In other words, he knew he couldn’t trick Adam, so he tricked Eve.
In the words of Red Foreman: “Nice try. Dumbass.”
The Word commands older women to teach younger women and it is very specific what they should be teaching them.
I’ve said this many times before here, but it bears infinite repeating:
Today’s “older women” came of age back in the 60’s and early 70’s when Second-Wave Feminism was in its ascendancy. Almost none of them at the time saw anything objectionable about it and they, along with the majority of the secular culture’s women, imbibed of it so deeply that it became part of their spiritual DNA. While not quite as militant in their feminism as their secular radical sisters, they still utterly reject God’s design for women.
TL;DR version: The only thing today’s “older women” in the church are going to “instruct” the younger women in is in how to optimize their rebellion.
Old news, but provides perfect background on Burleson.
Dalrock focused on Burleson’s complimentarianism in a couple of posts here about three years ago. Burleson, to his credit, actually made an appearance here, but tried to defend his complimentarianism on rhetorical grounds alone while refusing to address the flaws in his theology that are inherent in complimentarianism. Like most such visitors here, he didn’t last long. The heat in the kitchen got oppressive quickly.
All the ladies love Wade. All the pastors are jealous. “Who is this guy wooing our women with promises of more power?”
They have to come around to his way of doing business or risk being permanently AMOGed right into the dirt by Wade.
Dalrock
Ed Dingess is well worth reading. What about adding Reformed Reason ( his blog ) to the blogroll.
I came out of an SBC about 10 years ago to go into missions with a “conservative” non denominational group. Since then the missions agency has elected a female SJW as its leader. Now I face all this crap from the SBC. I won’t be going back into a Baptist Church.
Christian feminists really are trailblazers when it comes to recognizing the futility of thinking the Bible provides epistemological closure on reality.
Gee, maybe in 20 years the SBC and other modern funda-gelicals will stop condemning men for divorcing their feminist wives who for years have refused to honor their headship in marriage, “render due sexual benevolence”, etc.
“… winds of change Patriarchs, stuck in your Bible-belt dreams”
– Joni Mitchell — Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow
Now, I think I’ll go reread the Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi.
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@Dalrock: “I have yet to come across a man who believed that women should preach to women who was willing to sign on to the rationalization required to logically get there. However, I’m sure they are out there. The part that you are signing off on is one step further than this foundational error, and says if it is ok for women to preach to women (since the issue isn’t women’s greater tendency to be deceived), it must be ok for women to preach to men as well, so long as it doesn’t put the woman preacher in authority over men.”
I remember about 40 years ago the Reformed church I was in (thoroughly male-led in those days) invited Elisabeth Elliot to teach college men and women about singleness at our fall retreat (she had been widowed for almost two decades then). It was indicated at the time that the leadership at the church (the Classis) had reviewed and approved her message in advance. So I gathered that her message came with their authority.
Today’s “older women” came of age back in the 60’s and early 70’s when Second-Wave Feminism was in its ascendancy. Almost none of them at the time saw anything objectionable about it and they, along with the majority of the secular culture’s women, imbibed of it so deeply that it became part of their spiritual DNA. While not quite as militant in their feminism as their secular radical sisters, they still utterly reject God’s design for women.
When I was having divorce thrust upon me against my will, precisely one woman from the church–a homechooling mother of 5 who was about 15 years our senior–came to my house when I was not there and pleaded with my ex for hours. She laid out the case for why divorce was not an option. She tried everything–shaming, logic, reason, the scripture–to no avail. I found about her visit later.
I must give credit where credit is due. She was one of the angels trying to minister to my marriage, among a host of whisperers telling her what she wanted to hear.
And don’t think Burleson learned anything from Ed Dingess’s comment (see below his response).
He’ll throw men under the bus anytime he can just to suck up to and look good for his new feminist overlords.
Dalrock, note especially this sentence from Burleson’s response:
“[women have been “abused”] by men who have no biblical understanding of the gracious Christian servant attitude they are to have toward women, then the SBC needs to implode.”
Note the implication: chivalry is more important than historical Christianity.
In Wade’s case the new boss — pussy — is not the same as the old boss, our boss, the infinitely powerful, good, loving God that created us and the entire universe. How pathetic, to give up the eternal infinite “I AM” for something He created: vagina.
The good news? Like other pathetic beta male feminists (that women find CREEPY, as WOKE TGC rightly pointed out), I predict Burleson will be the target of “abuse” allegations soon enough.
Enjoy your 15 minutes Wade…
“Blogger Wade Burleson said…
If it is unwise to rebuke a group of Christian leaders in the SBC for rebelling against Jesus’ command to serve others and not lord over other, as well as rebuke them for rebelling against Paul’s command to be mutually submissive to one another (including women), then Beth Moore and unknown others who are abused – verbally, physically, and sadly even sexually – by men who have no biblical understanding of the gracious Christian servant attitude they are to have toward women, then the SBC needs to implode. The ungodly and unconscionable problems we have in the SBC (sexual abuse crisis, dominating patriarchy, and unbiblical leadership principles) are a reproach to historic Christianity, not to mention the Southern Baptist Convention. If anyone is being uncharitable, unloving, and ungracious to the Kingdom of Christ, it’s those Southern Baptist who let the Ed Dingess of this world comment like what was said above without a rebuke. Sorry, Ed. You asked for it.
Sun Jun 02, 06:15:00 AM 2019”
@wodansthane
Thanks. I’ll check his blog out. Are there any specific posts you would direct me to?
Simple solution for the SBC. Declare, like most biblical scholars, that the pastoral epistles (i.e.,1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) are forgeries. They weren’t written by St. Paul. Therefore, excluded them from canon and let women preach.
@Scott
That is why I often repeat “wide is the path that leads to destruction” when people start making excuses on issues like this. When women in my life start whining about mercy, love, etc. on issues like this and abortion, I simply direct them to look at the Passion and say with a straight face that God is going to say “you’re justified sweetie” in deliberately taking the low road.
Simple solution for the SBC. Declare, like most biblical scholars, that the pastoral epistles (i.e.,1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) are forgeries. They weren’t written by St. Paul. Therefore, excluded them from canon and let women preach.
You KNOW that that’s coming in the very near future. Count on it. And, as with every other encroachment on the Faith by the forces of Satan, there will be nary a whimper of protest from “the faithful.”
Blogger Wade Burleson said…
“…(dominating patriarchy, and unbiblical leadership principles) are a reproach to historic Christianity.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I’m also reading that some scholars believe even 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 are a later addition, added by an unknown counterfeiter with little talent at forgery. These passages also concern women speaking in church.
I find it interesting that all these experts find all the passages about women MUST be forgeries.
“…(dominating patriarchy, and unbiblical leadership principles) are a reproach to historic Christianity.”
Reproach to historic Christianity. You tell ’em Wade. That’s why Jesus selected 6 women and 6 men as the vanguard. Egalitarianism.
There is a perspective missing here and in the multiple discussions of this issue that have gone on at Wade’s place for years.
The authors in the New Testament that folks refer to support or refute a point were Jews. They had been Jews. They had been raised in the Temple and its traditions. And with the tearing in two of the veil in the Temple, those traditions were turned on their head.
At least from the time of Ezra’s rediscovery of the scrolls while the Temple was being rebuilt, women have not been allowed on stage in the Temple – to do the reading of the scrolls and the attendant ministrations that went on.
Now, with the resurrection of Jesus, with the beginnings of the establishment of the Church, those Jews in charge of creating this new organization out of the remnants of the old organization (the Temple culture of the Jews) struggled with what traditions should be kept and what should be abandoned (much like the founders of the U.S. had to decide what of English law they wanted to keep and what they wanted to reject in creating this new nation).
It was tradition in the Temple that women did not teach men. There have been two reasons offered for that Jewish tradition that I think are legitimate, beyond any argument about the relationship that God established between husband and wife (he the helped, “ruling over” by giving instructions to his wife; she the help, submitting her will to his by carrying out the instructions her husband has given her): That is, 1) it was an embarassment to the congregation that no man could be found that was educated enough to read from the scrolls and expound on them, and; 2) men are visual and are created to respond physically to the form and mannerisms of a woman. If a woman is reading the Torah, that makes it less likely that the men are focused solely on the message of the words being read. Rather, they are being distracted by the feminine attributes of the reader.
Paul, a Jew among the other Jews working out the formation of the new Church, responded “I do not permit a woman to teach men”. He was not making up a new dogma. He was admitting that he was carrying that rule over from the Temple tradition – to continue on as a tradition in the new Church that they were creating. This, I believe, was no different than the struggle we find in Acts 15 about what of the law should the new Church impose on the new converts / believers.
Based on the previous paragraph, I think those who argue this issue from “well, Paul was just reflecting the sensibilities of his social period in history, but that no longer applies to our social sensibilities” are way out in the weeds. Paul was doing no such thing. He was continuing a tradition into at least HIS Christian followers that had been part of the Temple tradition going at least all the way back to Ezra. That tradition, the New Testament Jewish creators of the new Church kept. Of the law, those same Jewish folks agreed to only impose four (?) conditions on the new believers, in place of the whole of the law (story laid out in Acts 15).
ID,
What was wrong with someone challenging Scott’s wife (at the time)? That would seem to fit completely with Biblical instructions. Counseling a woman to not nuke her marriage fits with training in being a good wife.
Nothing. That’s why I said when people make excuses. I was talking about the people whispering in his wife’s ears, not the woman openly admonishing her to her face to not do it.
There is a deeper irony in all of this. On the one hand, we have pretty clear language in parts of the new testament that say women are barred from preaching. The only way around that language involves getting away from plain text – playing games with translations, twisting the words, definition games, attempting to limit the text to certain portions of space / time, etc. This is supposed to be a good thing because of the pursuit of truth, or some such.
On the other hand, we have evolutionary psych which admittedly does tend towards Just So stories, except that applied Evo-Psych is testable in some ways due to the way Pick Up Artists (PUA”s) and others who apply Game choose to use it. Men who choose to lead women in certain ways using applied psychology find that This Stuff Works, and not just in bars or on party streets – it works in long term relationships and it works in the marriages of churchgoing people. Because women are women .
PUA’s in the party streets find that women are easily led, and easily misled in both the short and longer time frames. It’s not a secret. Women are easier to bamboozle in some ways.
It’s empirical. It’s in fact Science.
So what is it that the Complementarians are following? The Bible says “women are easily fooled / misled” but that makes Complementarians and other feminists unhaaaapy. Certain forms of Scence! say the same thing, and that makes Complementarians and other feminists unhaaapy as well.
They won’t follow the literal words of the Bible, they don’t like the testable, repeatable, empirical results of Science!…what exactly are the Comps and other feminists really following?
“Well, the Bible may say that at a superficial level, and those sleazy cads may be able to seduce sluts, but that’s not the way things ought to be!” [stamp foot / wave hands].
In other words, the Bible is sexist, reality is sexist, and it’s all men’s fault.
LOL!
PS: A lot of the re-revising of the Bible quotes can be reduced to “Does it really say that?”, which should be an obvious warning to anyone who claims to believe in the Bible as a literal word from God.
It is the evo part of evo psych that has issues. It’s a post observation theory that doesn’t mesh well with reality. Humans evolve to a certain degree, Europeans today are resistant to the Bubonic plague. Despite centuries of killing adulterers, murderers, rapists, none of these characteristics appear to have diminished, they are merely suppressed by civilization and morality.
If evolution through selection pressure is how humanity came to have certain negative traits, it would be likewise effective in breeding away those negative traits. Many sins humanity commits are clearly not evolutionarily sound, especially sexual sins(use of contraception, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism).
Why are women so unstable, destroying their own households and killing their offspring? Because that’s the most successful way to reproduce? Really?
@gdgm+
Woke_TGC on Twitter has been aware of Burleson for a while:
I took a look at that thread, as well as the one he included as a subtweet in which Burleson responded to Ed Dingess. I’ve known for a long time that “Pastor” Wade is one of the most vocal proponents of the theological assertion that women do not sin, but even I was a little surprised when he tried to defend his position by posting this little gem:
“. . . If you’d said ‘Men are to lead . . . women’s emotions distract them’ to Deborah, Yael, Athaliah, Salome, the daughters of Philip, Lydia, Junia, Priscilla, and a host of other OT and NT women leaders, every one of them would have ruffled your feathers.”
Just leave aside that Deborah actively resisted a general who wanted her to lead a military campaign with him and then cursed him by saying that God would give his victory to a woman when he refused to fight without her. Or that the only time the Apostle Philip’s daughters are known to have prophesied was when they did so in their home and at the request of their father.
No, what really grabs me is that when Burleson wants to provide a list of strong, independent female leaders from the Bible he has no problem with choosing examples like a woman who slaughtered almost her entire family in order to gain the throne and then kicked off a purge of the Levite priesthood so that she could institute Baal worship as her country’s official religion. That’s who Athaliah was.
Or if that’s not enough we could also learn from a spoiled princess who slept with her step-father the king (after being advised to do so by her mother) so that she could use their romantic connection to sweet-talk him into beheading a prophet who was praised by His cousin Jesus Christ as possibly the greatest mortal man ever born of a woman. That’s who Salome was.
But none of that should be important! What really matters is that these were tough women who kicked ass, took names, and “ruffled feathers,” and as such, “Pastor” Wade is more than happy to overlook incest, idol worship, religious slaughter and child murder on their part when he places their names in the Hall of the Righteous. May all in the church learn to follow in the shining example of such women!
@AR said: we have pretty clear language in parts of the new testament that say women are barred from preaching.
Your post is spot on. But you refer to the New Testament – which gives opportunity to others to respond that Paul was just reflecting the social traditions of the day, which are no longer relevant today.
If you haven’t done so yet, you might read my post 3 posts above yours. Rather than emphasizing what was said in the New Testament, you might ask folks to answer these two simple questions:
1. Why were women not allowed to read from the Scrolls in the Temple?
2. What heirarcy is implied with Eve being created to help Adam? What heirarchy is implied between the help and the helped? By anyone’s definition of “help”, to help means to subject your will to the will of the one being helped, to follow the instructions they give you. Indeed, if you refuse to follow the instructions, how then can you be considered a help?
What we see in the New Testament is not a new dogma created out of whole cloth. Rather, it is a continuation of what existed in the Old Testament. Don’t let folks argue that Paul was out of touch with his times. Force folks to answer the two questions posed above, particularly Question 2. There is zero wiggle room there, because at that point they will be arguing with God, not Paul. And I dare them to argue that God was just being consistant with the traditions of the culture at the time when he created a heirarchy by creating Eve to be the help and Adam to the helped, but those traditions are no longer relevant. God is the creator, and that is what he created. Challenge the “created”, the creature, to disagree with the Creator and see what sort of response you get.
And then the board of elders sits there and wonders how the wolves got to the flock…
As John Chrysostom said… “the path to Hell is paved with the skulls of erring priests.”
@RichardP said: Don’t let folks argue that Paul was out of touch with his times.
Meant to say “out of touch with OUR times.
Vandicus
It is the evo part of evo psych that has issues. It’s a post observation theory that doesn’t mesh well with reality.
Depends on your view of evolution. There are some unpleasant and downright ugly truths about women to be found there, and it’s a side issue. Women are what they are, regardless of how we all got here. If you prefer a literal 6-day Creation, then “God Made Them That Way” applies. There’s some ugly truths in there also.
At the sharp edge of reality, it doesn’t matter how women got to be they way they are, All Women Are Like That. This can be demonstrated over and over and over again, in every social venue. All it requires is a pair of The Glasses in order to see clearly. Once you are “one who can see” there are things you cannot unsee. Some of them are ugly.
Back to the main topic:
The Complementarians and other feminists are elevating female feewlings over literal words from the Bible they say that they follow, over Science! that some of them claim to believe, over common sense, over everything else.
What is it that people put on a pedestal? Well, sometimes it’s what they actually worship. Uh-oh…
Women’s feelze are more important than anything else. Might as well worship the wind…
Some denominations allow for divorce in cases of adultery or abandonment. I think Hmm’s denomination is one of these. In older times in the Anglosphere “abandonment” was more or less defined as “totally out of touch, gone, zero sighting” and it had to be for 7 years. Some man goes to sea and isn’t seen for 7 years, his wife can apply to a court to be declared a widow, for example.
It’s an old term, but it’s still relevant. A few weeks ago I heard a man from one of these denominations observe that his church considered “abuse” to be a form of abandonment. It would have been antisocial for me to ask him in that time and place to define his term, to explain what he considered to be “abuse”, but perhaps sometime later this year I’ll be able to catch up with him on that. Because I really want to know what he meant.
If he’s following the typical Duluth definition, where broken bones and hurt feelings are equally abusive then we likely will have an interesting conversation. Perhaps even entertaining, to me anyway.
This came up in my head re=reading the OP where Bureleson refers to men who “bullied” a lady. What does it mean to “bully” nowadays? Often that is just another term with enough ambiguity to allow all sorts of power plays. is it “bullying” to disagree with a lay-dee on anything? Are lay-dees so delicate that they cannot stand to be told they are wrong? Or are lay-dees strong ‘n independent women?
Same stuff, different denomination…
@Darwinian Arminian
Perhaps he just didn’t bother to read the context of all them there Strong Women? I’ve known preachers who would do that, grab one little quote and run with it , ignoring context.
Or maybe Wade has mommy issues…either way, nice dissection of his foolishness.
ID,
That makes more sense.
Minor point, but I hope the Salome he references is the mother of James and John, not the incestuous dancer who isn’t actually named in the Bible.
William of Orange County: On Drudge right now, The Working Witches of LA…from the Los Angeles Time’s ‘science correspondent’.
That’s nothing new. Nearly 30 years ago, Buzz Magazine ran a feature on the rise of Wicca in the Hollywood film community. It profiled several female producers, agents, studio executives, who felt “empowered” by Wicca and “female spirituality.” They saw Wicca as a tool to combat Hollywood’s “patriarchy” and “old boy’s network.”
This was nearly 30 years ago. Well before the MeToo movement.
Of course, the New Age was widespread in Los Angeles even by 1980s. I dated an aspiring screenwriter in the late 1980s who took me to a party for an Indian shaman. Her own mother, an attorney, practiced “crystal magic.
It’s not like women pastors/priests are more prone to giving out false information than a male pastor.
A female pastor is deceived and is actively deceiving others just by being in this position to begin with even if the information that comes out of her mouth is more correct than a male pastor.
@Jean
Minor point, but I hope the Salome he references is the mother of James and John, not the incestuous dancer who isn’t actually named in the Bible.
You’re right; This woman isn’t named in the New Testament. But the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus do give the name to a woman who matches up almost perfectly with the description of the dancer that appears in the gospels of both Matthew and Mark: the only known daughter of Herodias (who was married to King Herod at the time of Christ’s ministry), who was also publicly known for more than one dalliance with leading political figures of the time. Church history has always remembered her with this name, and it wouldn’t be controversial to say that she’s probably the most famous person to be known by it.
I feel fairly safe in assuming that she’s the one Burleson is referencing, especially when I remember that he didn’t have any qualms about including her name as an example for women in the same list which included another “strong woman”: A descendant of King Ahab (and in all likelihood, Jezebel) who was so evil that the Old Testament takes special care to inform us of how she met her end.
Then again . . . given his recent stance on Beth Moore I suppose that it’s certainly possible “Pastor” Wade would tell us that in this story, Jehoiada the priest should be viewed as an unchivalrous brute who was guilty of bullying Athaliah.
I’m gonna pat my own back here: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2019/06/10/fathers-day-matt-bevin-says-nuclear-family-being-undermined/1380564001/
Richard P.
You wrote the role of the helper is about receiving instruction from the helped. In reality this interpretation is meaningless and highly subjective.
The battle lines are drawn between immanence and transcendence. The lone man in Adam was completely inadequate to connect with creation without a helper suitable for him. The creation of Eve as a vessel of immanence provides the perfect counterpart to the mans transcendence.
The creation of eve would get the man into his body, delight in the senses and ground him to creation. She gives his work a fullness of meaning and purpose first in herself and then to any children born to their union.
The fall of Adam and Eve was to reject, transcend and self author the predetermined purpose of the helper.
A woman standing at the pulpit is the ultimate fist to God and clear evidence that spirituality has switched from immanent to transcendent and the fall is soon to come.
Actually as a general rule women do dispense more error from the pulpit than men. Some of this may be due to the fact that pulpits that are open to women are in denominations that repudiate the Bible; but I have seen truly God fearing women fall more easily to theological errors than men in my own experience. In fact this extends well beyond theology. It is a general rule that women do worse on any subject requiring precise thinking, like STEM fields, than men. Of course there are exceptions. In fact any of my 3 daughters can think more precisely in most areas than most men. In fact most conservative women can out think almost any modern “liberal” (aka, progressives). Liberalism is a mental disorder that routinely turns very intelligent people into fools with ease.
The fact that Burleson gives Athaliah as a positive example of leadership once and forever ensures the safety of discounting anything and everything that comes out of his mouth for all time. It’s like getting recipes from a corprophile.
@ charles b. “Far too many dead beats around here.” Never never ever too many harlots? How can those men abandon their responsibility? (Its called a protection order) they are free require no evidence and by the time your done fighting it most men give up. You lost, good luck next life, you dead beat.
Gov props himself up against people with no civil rights as can seen in all 50 states and every political party.
“I’m a guy. Is it wrong for me to listen to Beth Moore?”
It’s wrong for anyone to listen to Beth Moore, because she is off the biblical reservation.
Beth Moore LITERALLY believes she is a prophet. She LITERALLY believes God speaks to her. Whether audibly or as a voice in her head, I don’t know, but she claims to literally hear God speaking to her and giving her specific messages, including prophecies of the future.
I know it’s popular for Evangelicals to say “God spoke to them”, but we need to hold these people to account. God speaking to someone gives that person a pretty high level of authority (the highest, actually). It’s fair to ask them exactly what they mean by “God spoke to them”.
There are way too many people running around Evangelical circles today claiming God spoke to them with conflicting messages for them all to be genuine prophets. Beth Moore is, I believe, one of the false ones.
The argumenr based on which gender speaks more error at the pulpit is a rabbit hole that will bog us down with endless examples by both sides.
The simple fact is a woman is deceived and is actively deceiving others by standing at the pulpit.
Liberalism is based on autonomy. Autonomy desires to be self determining
@Lee said: The creation of Eve as a vessel of immanence provides the perfect counterpart to the mans transcendence.
The creation of eve would get the man into his body, delight in the senses and ground him to creation. She gives his work a fullness of meaning and purpose first in herself and then to any children born to their union.
Lee (or anyone who knows), can you point me to some reading material that lays out your point in more detail. Particularly with respect to how it works itself out in husband and wife, rather than just Adam and Eve.
Wade Burlson’s list:
”Deborah, Yael, Athaliah, Salome, the daughters of Philip, Lydia, Junia, Priscilla, and a host of other OT and NT women leaders….”
This requires some scholarly scrutiny.
Deborah was a judge, but there was some controversy about this in the original story: God wasn’t happy with the arrangement. Yael and Athaliah I dont know. Lydia was woman who hosted the Apostles in the Book of Acts, but there is no indications she was a leader. Junia I don’t recall, but Priscilla was the wife of Aquila, who listened to Paul in her company. She wasn’t a leader in her own right. as far as I can remember.
I have seen lists like this drawn up by women who demand (yes – demand) to preach, citing how ”there were leaders who were women in the New Testament….” and it always rings a bit hollow and always makes me suspicious.
Sorry, my mistake.
Just read Darwinian Armenian’s post on the subject above.
Suspicions confirmed!
@locustplease, I agree. I’m just amused because I figured they’d take this tack
I have seen lists like this drawn up by women who demand (yes – demand) to preach, citing how ”there were leaders who were women in the New Testament….” and it always rings a bit hollow and always makes me suspicious.
Try this mental exercise:
Imagine those demands being made by 13 year old girl in a snotty, entitled, petulant teenage voice concluding with all the other Dads let their girls preach! accompanied by hands on hips, eyerolling, etc.
What’s the appropriate response ?
Anonymous Reader says:
June 12, 2019 at 6:26 pm
”Try this mental exercise:
Imagine those demands being made by 13 year old girl in a snotty, entitled, petulant teenage voice concluding with all the other Dads let their girls preach! accompanied by hands on hips, eyerolling, etc.
What’s the appropriate response ?”
I had exactly that experience on the Parish Council. The church elders bunker down, torture the Greek, find it says what it always has said, but then, when the 13-year-old, “mature qualified Christian directly under the authority of Christ” (read: unmarried), bursts into tears just before the vote, they all turn to water and vote 5 to 1 in favour.
I voted against, and boycott any preaching by aforesaid 13-year-old mental age.
We all know how this will end. Just visit any progressive church (extra points if they fly a rainbow flag with a sign that says “all welcome here”) and see all the empty pews on a Sunday. Most of those churches can only keep their doors open because of old endowments. But when there are few parishioners left (or eventually none), the last “pastor” retires and the doors are closed for good.
The actions of Christ, Himself, are evidence enough that women shouldn’t be in charge. The rationalizations of modern women (Christ had to abide by conventions of the time, blah, blah, blah) are just self-serving, pernicious noise.
Christ blithely flouted conventions that interfered with proclaiming the Kingdom. He ate with harlots and tax collectors, associated with Samaritans, and repeatedly provoked the letter-of-the-law crowd (Pharisees, Sadducees, etc.).
If the Son of Man had wanted women leaders, He’d have appointed some — convention be hanged. Sorry, girls.
P.S. There’s also the reality test. As I, and others have observed in this thread: when women enter the pulpit, heresy enters the church, and serious Christians leave. Look at the Anglicans, the Methodists, the…well, you get the idea.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So, the Church is Christ’s master?
Guys, I think this syllogism is broken.
Reposting in case it avoids the moderation pit (feel free to delete the duplicate, dalrock).
https://mobile.twitter.com/Wade_Burleson/status/1138915457971499008
So the Church is Christ’s master?
Guys, I think this syllogism is broken.
This came up in my head re=reading the OP where Bureleson refers to men who “bullied” a lady. What does it mean to “bully” nowadays?
“Bullying” = not giving a woman what she demands
It’s like getting recipes from a corprophile.
I’m really, really, really not happy at you now for making me have to look that up. Yick. :p
PokeSalad,
I bullied my ex because I tried to get her to learn useful things (from cooking to homemaking to job skills). She didn’t want to learn anything, only to do the bare minimum with what she already had.
I have not seen ANYTHING in churches that would hold such thoughts to account be her or any other woman.
Dalrock
The Doctrine of Scripture is a good one. Bonus points, it has graphs!
@ RichardP said “Lee (or anyone who knows), can you point me to some reading material that lays out your point in more detail. Particularly with respect to how it works itself out in husband and wife, rather than just Adam and Eve”
The reading material is found in written revelation, natural revelation and taught by the historic church.
The truth about marriage is found in the etymology of matrimony.
Just re-attach spiritual meaning back onto the gendered body instead of the androgynous thinking soul.
Call me a fatalist if you will, but I cannot help but think it is time for right thinking men to abandon the conventional “church” and do something new.
That raises several questions:
1) Are there enough of us scattered around that we could have a critical mass to establish that something new in various geographic areas around the USA. (I honestly don’t know the answer.)
2) Would doing so split families? I’m not convinced that the women folk would necessarily follow their men out of the existing church for reason of bad theology. (This would be so bad as to make this idea unworkable.)
3) Could we come to a consensus on theology? (I think we could but we tend to be a fractious sort.)
4) Logistics of publicising/establishing such a new organisation. (I don’t have a clue, honestly.)
5) Does this already exist somewhere and could we aid that effort instead of diluting it?
I’m interested in making this happen. Lets do something positive instead of just griping about the world. If you are interested too, let me know. We will figure out what the next steps have to be.
@Lee – I see by your reposting my question that my question was too vaguely worded. You used transcendant and immanence with regard to Adam and Eve. My request was for a pointer to readings that defined at least immanence and showed how it is applied. I’m familiar with transcendent, but am not familiar with immanence. And, in particular, not familiar with labeling Adam as transcendent and Eve as immanent.
However, Google has been my friend and has provided several lengthy articles that deal with the subject. So – thanks for helping me learn something.
@TheOtherScott: What church did John the Baptist belong to?
I’m sure you’ve heard of the visible Church and the invisible Church. Those who belong to Christ are the Church, both visible and invisible. And we are called to be the salt of the earth. Be the salt that Christ has called you to be, wherever you are. Be John the Baptist and teach the word as Christ has called us to do, whever you are. Don’t desire a bureaucracy where Christ has called us to operate as part of the body of Christ, individually, allowing the Holy Spirit to operate through you to minister God’s mercies to those who need such mercies. Whatever part of the body Christ has called you to be, do it well. Romans 12:6-21 You don’t need a formal church organization to do that.
Far worse quote from that Twitter thread:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Wade_Burleson/status/1138939042073067520
According to this pastorbator, the Apostle never gave this authoritative and binding teaching:
(This is why I even as Protestant, I love to use the term “infallible, binding teaching” when referencing the Apostles. It really gets under the skin of the right kind of people who want to make scripture into word salad.)
Wade’s on a roll. Being a beta male dependent on female attention to measure his self-worth and frame, who needs the Truth? Imagine all the females sending him messages about how brave he is to challenge all those evil knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who insist Scripture means what it says.
1 Peter 3:5, New Living Translation
Such a charlatan.
The meaning of Eph 5: 22-24 is plain as day: husband is analogized to Christ, wife is analogized to Church. Church submits to Christ, Christ saves Church in a self-sacrificial way. Plain as day. It’s amazing how these guys just pretend than 5:24 doesn’t exist, or ignore the obvious analogy Paul is making in Eph 5:21-33 in total. They are on board with self-sacrifice in imitation of Christ but not in submission of will as is the role of the Church vis-a-vis Christ. But Paul’s analogy isn’t a one-way street — he makes that very clear by spelling it out.
Just a charlatan.
Unfortunately I do think that these charlatans are going to win the day in the short term inside the churches because future generations of males are all being raised to be deferent to women, and therefore Eph 5:24 seems like pure fascism to them.
The complementarian marriage message is serve your wife, and what she does is none of your business.
Wade seems to think he is challenging the complementarians and trying to set them straight, yet reading much of his commentary I see no difference between their essential messages in this.
TheOtherScott
The probability of something like what you are describing rising up in an organized, led, deliberate way approximates zero when you account for all the variables–some of which you already mentioned.
And the so-called “invisible church” is essentially a form of the “no true Scotsman” argument about the faith. It is, by definition, secret, and powerless. It presupposes that within and outside the organized churches, there is a remnant of true believers who are working toward the kingdom, most of them unaware of each other. If it exists, it has–on an individual level–influence but no authority. It cannot be reasoned with, bargained with, held accountable, given orders, direction or singularity of purpose.
No matter how you slice it, decline is underway and maybe, just maybe, when total rock bottom is hit, something will form organically and naturally.
For Christians of the confessional faith traditions (about 1.5 billion worldwide) the idea of a fulfilled Christian life without access to sacraments through the line of apostolic succession is a non-starter.
In the west, the tradition of communion — until your brother or your church says something you can’t find in the Bible according to your own personal interpretation — will ultimately halt any progress before it ever gets off the ground.
OT:
Over at Anna Hitchings’ site the author is stridently avoiding the elephant in the room. In a recent post about “what men want in a woman” she sets the bar ludicrously low, then gets out her pom-poms to cheer on her fellow women who – she just knows – can do it if they REALLY try!
I find it telling that she, as a Roman Catholic, rigorously avoids the issue of chastity. I posted this comment yesterday AM (US time) and even though others have been approved since, it still sits in moderation. We’ll see.
____
We’re familiar with the “man up and marry those sluts” shame tactic. Or, the “anti-slut shaming” tactic, as you may call it.
And you’re patently wrong anyhow. St. Joseph was going to divorce Mary when he thought that she was carrying another man’s child. He was even called RIGHTEOUS for how he planned to go about it. And it wasn’t until he learned that the child was from the Holy Spirit that he was on board with joining that project.
Widows are one thing altogether. Another category. But women don’t get to jump from one bed to the next through their 20s, showing utter disregard for the statutes of God, and then demand a devout (but sexy-as-hell) man when they’re ready to settle down in their 30s.
Seriously, ya’ll complain about the lack of virtuous men who spent their 20s making the right choices and preparing for their future families; after all, guys who don’t do that aren’t “marriageable” and factor into why there is such a “lack of marriageable men”. But men are supposed to fight through some kind of gauntlet of worldly hazards on some “Quest” for a “Lady” who is still wiping her mouth (Proverbs 30:20) as he drops the dragon’s head at her feet?
Good luck with that happy ending.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the visible Church and the invisible Church. Those who belong to Christ are the Church, both visible and invisible. And we are called to be the salt of the earth. Be the salt that Christ has called you to be, wherever you are. Be John the Baptist and teach the word as Christ has called us to do, whever you are. Don’t desire a bureaucracy where Christ has called us to operate as part of the body of Christ, individually, allowing the Holy Spirit to operate through you to minister God’s mercies to those who need such mercies. Whatever part of the body Christ has called you to be, do it well. Romans 12:6-21 You don’t need a formal church organization to do that.”
The Bible specifically tells us that not many of us should be teachers, and that teachers will be judged more harshly. Other than preservation of the teachings of the Apostles and the oral tradition, the Church hierarchy also exists to teach us humility. Protestantism becoming tends of thousands of sects is a direct result of the idea that anyone can and will interpret the Bible correctly(why not have a priesthood of low iq people then, sounds dumb?, according to the espoused theory there’s no reason this shouldn’t work. In fact, if anyone can teach, why not the retarded, it gives those who otherwise lack gainful employment a better avenue).
One does not need to be a member of the Catholic Church to be a member of the Church per the CC’s teachings, extending even to those who have never heard of Christianity, but correct teaching, the Sacraments, and a brake on those more gullible tendencies (Prosperity Gospel, seeking for signs, etc.) all help.
Huh, it just occurred to me that the doctrine of a universal priesthood logically applies to women.
@RichardP I see by your reposting my question that my question was too vaguely worded. You used transcendant and immanence with regard to Adam and Eve. My request was for a pointer to readings that defined at least immanence and showed how it is applied. I’m familiar with transcendent, but am not familiar with immanence. And, in particular, not familiar with labeling Adam as transcendent and Eve as immanent.
The reason God is illustrated as male is due to the transcendence that is inherent to men. Males are independent from procreation because the act is external to us. Yet, God is more than just a generic male. God is illustrated as a husband and a father because this signifies his transcendent and immanent relationship with creation. While a man inherently transcends procreation, a husband and a father sustains his dependent wife and children by his care and provision.
Husbands and wives are an image of God’s relationship with creation. Marriage is only lawful when a man takes on the responsibility for a dependent bride. If this change doesn’t take place then its not marriage….its cohabitation.
It’s extremely heretical when feminists declare the womanhood of God because it alters the nature of God and His relationship to creation. Whats more ironic is they demand the womanhood of God while they want to transcend their own womanhood
I am protestant and can clearly see that everyone claims to be their own pope. Yet, the apple really didn’t fall far from the cart.
The bishop of Rome desired authority and independence from the other bishops that made up the christian church. So he broke off and created his own church independent from the other bishops.
If one bishop can speak God’s truth ex cathedra from the consensus of the historic bishops then you can hardly complain when the logical conclusion is everyone speaking ex cathedra as his or her own pope.
The difference is martin luther was justified by the corruption of the priesthood at that time who created bullshit doctrines to extract money from the people.
The bishops need to get back into communion with each other and bring in protestants and coptics
Right, but it need not be theologically problematic if proper distinctions are made. Since at least Aquinas, and probably earlier, theology has stated that all of those in the state of Grace can act “in persona Christi.” We’re used to hearing that as applied to priests when they confect the Eucharist, but what’s left off is that the priest is acting “in persona Christi capitis.” So there are distinct ways of being in the person of Christ, some of them universal and some limited to the sacramental priesthood (which by the nature of how they act in the person of Christ, is limited to males).
The deference to the Bishop of Rome is evidenced as early as Paul’s confrontation with Peter over what could be eaten in the Acts of the Apostles. Theologically this is all connected to the prophecy of The 4 beasts in Daniel, and how the Son of Man would conquer the fourth beast (commonly interpreted as the Roman Empire) and establish His own kingdom.
The idea that Peter was not preeminent among the apostles or that Rome did not have a special place as regards its see until later when another Bishop made a power play is dubious.
Gentlemen, if the angel Gabriel tells you in a dream that a woman’s baby is God incarnate, conceived supernaturally by the Holy Spirit, then by all means marry her.
Otherwise, don’t let anyone guilt you into fixing something you didn’t break.
Lee, might want to review a little history. The Emperor was the de facto head of eastern Christianity(and the ERE viewed as the Kingdom of God manifest). Iconoclasm and back again is pretty substantial evidence of this. The schism unsurprisingly is driven primarily by Imperial politics, for example the deposition of patriarch Ignatius in favor of the layman Photios was driven by such things as the scandalous sexual relations of Michael III. It is imperial politics again that nearly brings the east back into communion with Rome, and imperial politics that created the Pentarchy and elevated Constantinople. (fun fact, Rome owes its significance to Peter and Paul being martyred there, follows the sort of 2-man thing going on in the Bible, John and Jesus, Peter and Paul, Enoch and Elijah)
The great flaw in Orthodox Christianity is that they are all truly national churches, more easily forced to submit, and without a single leader to unify them, except in so far that he is powerful. Kirill is the present de facto leader of the loose association of Orthodox Churches, with the Ecumenical Patriarch(whose power was derived from the authority of East Roman Emperors) now being ignored. The dispute over the new autocephaly of the orthodox Church in Ukraine is a great example, all the patriarch of Constantinople recognized it while all the other autocephalous heads rejected it, following Kirill’s lead.
The tsars for some time would take the role of the old Roman emperors, driving Orthodoxy this way and that, and rejecting attempts at reunion in regards to the Council of Florence(even ousting their present metropolitan, they had not yet declared independence from Constantinople at this point). Implicit in all this, of course, is an acceptance of the ability of powerful secular authorities to remove or appoint religious authorities at their leisure, even of the highest rank.
The timing of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, when hopes for reunion were highest, was a terrible tragedy. What should have been a unified front was not, and so there has been a great deal of suffering.
As for the idea that a ecumenical council is a gathering of the whole Church, well that’s never actually been the case for any of them. There are practical limitations on the ability to do so. There needs to be an officer who can ratify such things. The idea of a Pope as a powerful tyrant is laughable, the closest to come to it would be the Borgias and that would be local only to Italy, and derivative more from ruling a secular state than theological authority.
What’s lost in the debate about the See of Rome is that there were actually four other Sees established by the time the Roman Empire fell: Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople. Within 100 years of Mohammed’s birth, three of the five sees were gone, overrun by Islam, these being Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The See of Rome was important during that early period, but it didn’t have the sole authority until it split with the See of Constantinople in 1054 when Constantinople refused to accept Rome’s authority.
Well now we’re starting to get lost in the weeds of Catholic vs Protestant once again, hence I promise this is my last word on that.
Regarding Burleson, gotta love those forked tongues and that contorted reasoning.
That Rome was the primary see is indisputable by the time of the establishment of the Pentarchy, with the East Roman Emperors only daring to elevate their imperial seat to the second highest position. There is ample evidence for this being the case well before that point and indeed since the beginning but it is not so overwhelmingly abundant. The activity and important of the Pope in combating heresies(such as Nestorianism) in the East is not disputed in the few centuries prior to the Pentarchy, and there were no jurisdictional issues then.
EMPERORS GRATIAN, VALENTINIAN AND THEODOSIUS AUGUSTI. EDICT TO THE PEOPLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.
GIVEN IN THESSALONICA ON THE THIRD DAY FROM THE CALENDS OF MARCH, DURING THE FIFTH CONSULATE OF GRATIAN AUGUSTUS AND FIRST OF THEODOSIUS AUGUSTUS
From 380 AD, roughly a year before Constantinople is first elevated.
@Scott said: And the so-called “invisible church” is essentially a form of the “no true Scotsman” argument about the faith. It is, by definition, secret, and powerless.
Scott – there are probably mutliple definitions of “the invisible church” of which I am unaware. That term has been presented to me in my circles as, and I have always assumed it meant, another way of saying that man looks on the outside but God looks on the heart / inside. And thus he can say to those who claim “but Lord, we cast out devils in your name”, “depart from me, I never knew you”. That is – there are folks inside the church building (the visible Church) who do not belong to Christ, even though they claim that they do. And there are folks outside of the church building (the invisible Church) who DO belong to Christ – and Christ does minister his mercies to other through them, as he does through other members of the body of Christ, whether we know who they are or not (as in, we don’t personally know everybody in our particular denomination, much less the entire world).
In that context, as a conduit through which flows the mercies of God to others, it is definately not powerless. I’ve read enough of your writings to think that you don’t disagree with that. So I am left to assume that you have a different definition of “invisible Church” in mind.
@Lee – thanks for the further elaboration / clarification. By “true marriage”, I assume you mean a Biblical marriage – one of which God says “what I have joined together, let not man put apart”. The way you phrased your definition of “true marriage” becomes problematic when we realize that there are folks who thoroughly reject God’s claim on their lives who have marriages that fit the description you gave. Their relationship fits with your definition, but God is not part of their relationship and so how can we claim it is a Biblical marriage (rhetorical question)?
@vandicus – thanks for the elaboration. I agree with everything you say. My comment to TheOtherScott was not meant to dismiss the importance of the visible church. I was addressing his desire to bring the body of believers back to a more correct reading of God’s design for the relationship among men and women, among members of the Church, and between husbands and wives. I considered responding as Scott did above, that the chances of what he desired actually happening are zero. I chose to respond as I did – to emphasize the fact that it is not the Church (bureaucracy) that God works through, it is the individual – whether they are visible members of the Church or invisible members of the Church. There are other examples, but I offered John the Baptist as someone to consider. God was definitely working through him although he was outside of the mainstream religious body (bureaucracy) There is a bit more to this included in my response to Scott above.
I suggest people look if they have a local Reasonable Faith chapter. It is content driven and as such will attract more serious men.
“I think what is important to emphasize is our ministry, Reasonable Faith, is a ministry in defense of what C. S. Lewis called “mere Christianity” which is the Christian essentials that belonged to all of these great faith traditions whether Coptic, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant. Therefore I am so pleased when I travel to meet people from, for example, the Coptic Church or from Orthodox churches who will approach me after the talk saying how much they have benefited in their local congregation from Reasonable Faith materials in the defense of the Christian faith. We have folks who are in all of these different traditions and are benefiting from the kinds of materials that we produce.”
@basedangemon
This distortion of St. Joseph to celebrate manning up and marrying sluts is a horrifying heresy. The Virgin Mary was not a slut, and the only possible reason to marry a single (not widowed) mother is if an Angel from God unmistakeably tells you to do it.
No flawless evidence exists that Peter even went to Rome, let alone died there. The Scriptural evidence is far too great, even if the RCC (and probably Orthodox Church) assert that.
Putting priests into a special place is also not a Scriptural practice, at least inasmuch as they are in Christ’s place. (Leadership/deacons are appropriate, not someone else acting in an middle man role.) One of the letters in the Book of Revelation may have even been directly referring to that, in a negative manner, when it talks about the Nicolaitans. Putting someone in between people and Jesus is not a good thing.
Vandicus,
The admonition against treating teaching casually does not mean only “authorized” people should do it. It means we need to take it very seriously. Hiding behind that to remove your own responsibilities goes against much of the message of the NT. It is RCC doctrine, but that doesn’t apply Scripturally and would only be valid for those who decide a heirarchy is more important than the Scriptures.
I would encourage the pro-RCC (and such) posters to shut up about that. It is not relevant and will take us far off topic. Suffice it to say that many disagree with you.
@RichardP
Everyone on planet earth is in relationship with God whether they know it or not.
A relationship with God includes the mind and body. Christianity is the most embodied religion on planet earth because we are not promised heaven as a disembodied soul but are promised new bodies in creation. You are having trouble with this because autonomy and it’s disembodied understanding of spirituality only understands a relationship with God in terms of heart knowledge and a privately held spidery sense that can only be known by the knower.
Rachel Held Evans gives intellectual consent to the existence of God but wants to dethrone God by teaching women be autonomous?
@Ranger
It’s bad enough by itself, but see her whole post: https://agonyandhope.com/2019/06/10/what-men-want/#comment-288
Or could it be that the women on offer for the “winners” are single mothers who try really, really hard to be counter-culturally kind – and this just isn’t worth the investment Phillipa expects men to make?
@RichardP
Everyone on planet earth is in relationship with God whether they know it or not.
A relationship with God includes the mind and body. Christianity is the most embodied religion on planet earth because we are not promised heaven as a disembodied soul but are promised new bodies in creation. You are having trouble with this because autonomy and it’s disembodied understanding of spirituality only understands a relationship with God in terms of heart knowledge and a privately held spidery sense that can only be known by the knower.
Rachel Held Evans gives intellectual consent to the existence of God but wants to dethrone God by teaching women be autonomous?
@RichardP
A relationship with God divorced from the body and creation means that morality is only relative to certain machines but not other machines. CS Lewis got his hand slapped by JR Tolkien when he claimed that Jesus”s condemnation of divorce was only applicable to Christian’s but not non believers.
Every aspect of Christian morality is just as relative to believers as non believers. Anyone can say they can transcend their cars braking system because they have a spiritual relationship with their car but natural law means everyone will end up crashing back to planet earth.
So how can a non believer be rejecting Gods purpose in their lives if they are cooperating with Gods purpose for marriage while people like Held Evans have replaced the snake in the garden with Jesus Christ as the liberator who offers autonomy and freedom
@Lee said: Christianity is the most embodied religion on planet earth because we are not promised heaven as a disembodied soul but are promised new bodies in creation. You are having trouble with this because …
Jesus said the two greatest commandments were to love your neighbor and to love God. He further said – if you love me, keep my commandments. If you don’t keep my commandments, you don’t love me. Jesus also said that he spews out of his mouth folks who are only lukewarm. The assumption is that he does not spew everybody out – some remain in his mouth. The Judgement seat, where all will give account of what they did while in the body, will divide everyone into two camps – the sheep and the goats. One camp will be accepted. The other camp will be sent away from God’s presence, forever, and be cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death.
These are but a few of the situations in the Bible where we are taught that God divides all of creation into those who will live with him forever, and those who will not. God further specifies that not all who say Lord, Lord will be placed into the camp of those who will live forever. This is perhaps an assumption, but I am thinking that the folks God has in view in this Lord Lord situation are folks who are part of the visible Church. Conclusion: being visible in the Church is not one of the requirements for salvation, since some folks who ARE visible in the Church are not going to be “saved”.
Having said that, I have no idea what you mean when you say to me you are having trouble with this because … I assume you meant I was having trouble with the sentence preceding your statement that I am having trouble with something (included in the quote at the top of this post).
I was not aware that I was having trouble with anything in this thread. You introduced me to a word that I was not familiar with. I asked for clarification, but also went exploring the internet and educated myself to the meaning of the word. So now I understand what you were saying in your initial comment to me.
If you have a mind to, and the time, can you spell out in more detail what you think I am having trouble with. Otherwise, I will just move on.
Lee,
Because being a Christian doesn’t require perfection on this earth. We are to aim for that of course, but the state of one’s spirit (deep inside – true person) is the measure of salvation, not outward works.
I believe one of the reasons He will need to “wipe away every tear” when we all get there is because we will realize how far we fell from our potential.
@Lee said: CS Lewis got his hand slapped by JR Tolkien when he claimed that Jesus’s condemnation of divorce was only applicable to Christian’s but not non believers. Every aspect of Christian morality is just as relative to believers as non believers.
Jesus (who is God) said the two greatest commandments are love your neighbor and love God (who is Jesus). Jesus then said, if you love me, keep my commandments.
Jesus was not speaking to everyone. He was speaking to those who wanted to honor God’s claim on their lives. Jesus’ response was – this is how you do it.
For God so loved the world that whosoever believeth on him … God’s promises (and salvation itself) are intended only for those who obey him. God loved the entire world enough to provide a way of salvation for everyone. But only those who actually jump through the hoops that God has said we must jump through in order to obey him are going to benefit from that love. God requires those who wish to live with him through eternity to be moral in the way he specifies. That “reality” has signifigance ONLY to those who wish to live with God through eternity. God has made it possible for all to spend eternity with him – but ONLY if they obey him. Therefore, all of what the Bible says that God requires of the redeemed apply only to the redeemed, and those who wish to be redeemed. They do not apply to the one who has no desire to submit to God’s claim on his life. They only begin to apply to that person when he turns from rejecting God outright to asking, as did the jailor of Paul and Silas – what must I do to be saved? Only at that point does what Jesus did on the Cross, and what God requires in our obedience to him become relevant to this person.
Within the context of what I have just written, it is true that Jesus did not care whether sinners divorced. Jesus did not care, and does not care, what sins sinners commit today. What Jesus did cared about in the New Testament, and what he does care about today, is whether people who love him, or want to love him, know what he requires of them. If you love me, keep my commandments – and, by the way, here is what my commandments are is not a statement directed by Jesus to those who have no desire to submit to God’s claim on their life. I’m pretty sure this is the point that C.S. Lewis was making, and I’m pretty sure that JR Tolkien totally missed it.
There are too many words to place them in this post, but there are verses in the Bible that speak in specific detail that there are two outcomes to sin: the reprobate is condemned thoroughly and driven from God’s presence forever because he sins; but the believer has one who pleads his case before the Father when he sins, asking that the believer’s sin be forgiven. Two wildly different outcomes of sin, based solely on the status of the person who sinned.
Jesus is never going to plead before the Father on behalf of the reprobate who sins. Therefore, it really does not matter THAT the reprobate sins, or WHAT those sins are. He is flat out lost. But – for those who want Jesus to plead before the Father on their behalf when they sin, it does matter terribly that they know what commandments Jesus is referring to when he says “if you love me, keep my commandments”. Only if you demonstrate that you love Jesus by keeping the commandments that he lays out for the believer, will Jesus accept that you love him and so plead your case before the Father.
I’ve said a lot in this post and in this thread. It is important to me that you understand that I believe everything I have said in this thread is subordinate to the scripture which states: no one can claim that Jesus is Lord without the help of the Holy Spirit. No one in the Church, visible or invisible, is going to be of any use, to God or man, without the help of the Holy Spirit.
And – as it pertains to Ms. Held Evans – no one, and I mean no one, knows whether anything transpired between Ms. Held Evans and the Holy Spirit in the moments before she slipped into her final unconcious state, or before she slipped into eternity. But that is the thing that makes the difference for Ms. Held Evans, wrt eternity. And since we cannot know, we are foolish to speculate.
Hi RichardP.
You mentioned having trouble with the fact that if non believers have the ability to practice biblical marriage then what is being practiced cannot be biblical marriage.
Does a spidery sense validate marriage? Is marriage defined by the predetermined inherent purpose of the body or the expressive individualism privately held and defined by the thinking soul.
One Christianity detached spiritual meaning from the body and creation to the realm of the thinking soul it no longer made any earthly sense.
Take a look at the complimentarian doctrine of a husbands spiritual authority. What the framers of complimentarianism did was remove spiritual meaning from the body and then attached this onto the thinking soul instead of getting rid of it all together like egalitarians did.
Egalitarians pull their hair out because only God is the mediator between man or woman. The basic assumption is spiritual authority means head knowledge and a man acts like a lightning rod that conducts spiritual heart knowledge from God just because he is a man and the woman is in a relationship with him.
This is just gnostic bullshit.
I am my wife’s authority because I am responsible for her as my dependent.
If a person says
@ RichardP
So you give a pass to Rachel Held Evans who fought fiercely against biblical marriage and exchanged the truth of Jesus to that of the snake in the garden but someone without intellectual consent who upholds and practices biblical marriage somehow makes it unbiblical.
Do you see the gnostic influence. .
I don’t know about RichardP Lee, but God is the one who decided that you can’t do enough good works to get into heaven, nor can you do enough bad ones to stay out. Take any problems with that up with Him.
Does your position mean that unbelievers that don’t steal are not doing right in that area? Is the believer who takes a pad of paper from work going to hell?
Rachel Held Evans will have consequences for her choices, even if she makes it into heaven. Too many forget that we still get rewards (or don’t) based on how we lived our lives. Some will make it through the cleansing fire there with just their eternal life and nothing else. I have no idea exactly how it will play out, but many of the strong people of faith in the past made huge mistakes. Calvin is said to have burned Christians at the stake. The RCC has also. That doesn’t mean everyone who touched on that is going to hell. It does mean they won’t get rewarded for their actions however.
OT: Early last year, Seventies Jason said he had booked a vacation in England for June 2019. Which is now. I hope he’s enjoying his vacation.
This is completely off-topic (abortion) but it touches feminism, so I’ll post it here.
As a long time foe of abortion, I’ve always considered the “Abortion kills babies” slogan weak. A few years back, I was thinking, what if we used baby as an adjective? “Abortion kills baby ______” (fill in the blank). I like “Democrats”, but you may like “feminists” or “liberals” or some other protected class that loves abortion. Seems to make a much stronger statement.
But one thing I noticed recently. If you make a potentially non-PC comment, you can always assure your listener that it’s OK by adding seven words to the end. “I hear that Barry Manilow came out as gay. [beat] Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” That final phrase is a strong disinfectant, but there’s a way to use it as a linguistic kill shot.
After all, most Democrats, liberals and feminists would say there’s nothing wrong with abortion. So why not combine the two sentiments? Consider a T-shirt:
ABORTION KILLS BABY DEMOCRATS.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If you want to make a meme or T-shirt that says that, feel free. I dare not, because I’m still gainfully employed.
@Novaseeker
Unfortunately I do think that these charlatans are going to win the day in the short term inside the churches because future generations of males are all being raised to be deferent to women, and therefore Eph 5:24 seems like pure fascism to them.
I agree with you that the church is raising the future generations of men to be deferent to women, but they’re also not really bothering to offer them anything of value either. So here’s the question: If the only thing that young men get from the church is a demand that they do penance for sins that most of them didn’t even commit in the first place, how long will it be before the young men start thinking that fascism looks pretty good?
I ask this because the longer the egalitarians’ song-and-dance routine goes, the more obvious it becomes that their goal of “equality” will never be limited to opening new roles and opportunities for women. No, their program will never work unless the men are always kept in their place, and that’s one of the reasons why you keep seeing the church find new ways to put the boot on their necks.
Just one example of how to do this can be found in Relevant magazine with an article cryptically titled, “If We Want Fewer #MeToo Stories, Here’s What Has to Happen”:
. . . “Words alone would not suffice,” so that’s why the men of his church — most of whom I’d guess probably aren’t rapists or sex criminals — had to perform a mandatory bow-and-scrape routine for the women in the congregation lest they have their eternal salvation revoked.
Don’t think that public calls for men to make a show of repentance for someone else’s sins will be a one time thing that only the minor-league kooks want, either. In fact, since we’ve already been dealing with Beth Moore, this is probably an apt time to mention that she too is a big fan of stunts like that:
It used to be that you went to the church when you wanted redemption, and they would show you the way to receive forgiveness for your sins. For men today (and even more so in the future), woke religion will offer the inversion of that: a church that hunts you down, demands restitution for crimes someone else did, and then lets you know that even if you give them exactly what they’re asking for they will gladly deny you any sort of atonement. I can’t imagine any kind of world where that’s an attractive message, and given recent polling that shows a continuing decline in church attendance and membership, I’d like to think that many men aren’t seeing it that way either.
With that said . . . men in general have often been all too willing to sign their collective names to a shit deal in the name of “duty” and “sacrifice”, and there’s no reason they couldn’t do that again here. This is why I find myself in the strange position of being a Christian who prays that the church will collapse as quickly as possible before it has the chance to do even more damage to the cause of Christ.
Almost forgot, the link to that story I mentioned from Relevant can be found here:
https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/if-we-want-less-metoo-stories-heres-what-has-to-happen/
@vandicus
“Huh, it just occurred to me that the doctrine of a universal priesthood logically applies to women.”
That’s true. But then there is also hierarchy in that universal priesthood. With only men being allowed to have the rank of Bishop/Pastor. And representing Christ in marriage.
Universal priesthood as defined in scripture has a hierarchy as defined by God.
“We are to aim for that of course, but the state of one’s spirit (deep inside – true person) is the measure of salvation, not outward works.”
The heart brings forth both good works and evil. Works are an indication of a person’s salvation or not. That’s why Christ said: “Ye shall know them by their fruits”.
Works don’t bring about salvation but they are reliable barometer even if a person isn’t perfect he recognizes all he does wrong. Especially in regards to knowing right from wrong.
The presence of the holy spirit is evident by the manifestation of the fruits thereof. There is no such thing as a disconnection between works and the state of the heart.
“This is why I find myself in the strange position of being a Christian who prays that the church will collapse as quickly as possible before it has the chance to do even more damage to the cause of Christ.”
May Christ take away the lampstands of all those churches that don’t repent as he have done in revelation.
@D.A.
Too right, concerning churches hunting down men. To take it further, hunting down the righteous: “It takes just one jerk like that to blow a beautiful setup.”–the fink-King in the Wizard of Id cartoon.
Catholic congregations treat young men like dirt. Then lay readers (75% of whom seem to be aging, angry, unattractive, unmarried women) read intentions essentially DEMANDING more “vocations to the holy priesthood.” Or even, “that young men will heed the call to serve God and His people,” as though the guys you won’t even say hello to are the problem, spurning the Divine Will! So…run the young guys off, then blame THEM for your institutional problems. Typical feminine “logic.”
Or Catholic bishops (mostly gay or spineless) demanding “fasting and pennance” for the sex scandals the bishops are ALL guilty for, whether through action or conspiratorial silence. Because “we are all sinners.” Or something. Thus, we somehow all share the bishops’ heinous sins. Which they hid from us, and are STILL trying to spin. The former Archbishop of Omaha, on the cathedral steps after Mass, tried to publicly fire a schoolteacher after she called the cops on a scumbag pedo-priest His (dis)Grace was protecting.
Feminism and misandry are just part (albeit a big, important part) of the Satanic takeover of Christianity. For some reason, the Almighty has allowed these Devil’s minions to take over the leadership Christendom: weak/gay/radical Catholic and Mainline Protestant clergy, with the “leaders” written about in this blog gaining ground fast.
ABORTION KILLS BABY DEMOCRATS.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Abortion: A woman’s Constitutional right to a dead baby.
@BillyS
“I don’t know about RichardP Lee, but God is the one who decided that you can’t do enough good works to get into heaven, nor can you do enough bad ones to stay out. Take any problems with that up with Him”
Our destiny is not to escape planet earth or the body in hopes to reside as disembodied souls in a place called heaven, We are promised new bodies and a new creation. Take any problems with that up with God. Touche!
The idea that some place external to God creates an experience of heaven or hell is an idolatrous concept. The love of God will offer illumination for those who are drawn to him but also a consuming fire towards those who despise him.
I don;t think we are going to agree on much because you probably understand salvation as fire insurance from a burning place called hell where all you need say some magical words to get saved. I understand salvation as a relationship with God.
I am not saying the mind is not part of salvation because we are a unity of body mind and soul. However, Gnostic mystic Christianity cannot comprehend verses in scripture where salvation is referenced outside of some spidey sense or thinking soul such as baptism or communion. The cognitive dissonance goes into high gear when mystical Christians come across verses like “women are saved in child bearing” because salvation includes the body,
Every time I read that quote, the passivity and effeminacy of it turns my stomach.
@ Scott and Richard P
I suppose you are right but I don’t like the idea of sitting and doing nothing. Maybe the better idea is to act locally and invent what I want to see. If the grows into something bigger well Gods will be done.
*update*
Anna Hitchings did publish my comment.
https://agonyandhope.com/2019/06/10/what-men-want/#comment-294
Here’s hoping she will write SOMETHING addressing the chastity elephant soon.
Read this and tell me we badly need female preachers.
This tweet goes right along with your post, but just the next logical step.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JonathanMerritt/status/1139366372025294848
This is a little off-topic but it was part of the #SBC19 feed on Twitter (80% of which is pro-change, either beta males or feminist harpies celebrating victory). And it relates to Russell Moore, who has a role in Christian culture war defeatism. Dalrock wrote him about last December:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2018/12/14/russell-moore-we-lost-the-culture-war-now-prepare-to-welcome-the-refugees/
Russell Moore had written a piece in 2018 on how boys should be trained to “respect” women:
https://www.russellmoore.com/2018/02/12/teach-boys-respect-women/
Although he off-hand criticizes chivalry, it is a fascinating read not so much because of what he says, but what he doesn’t say: that women can sin, do evil, and bear any responsibility whatsoever for their actions. And that is pretty much his operating frame: men bad, women good. He is so unaware of in internal chivalry-dominated mindset, he writes sentences like:
“A man can more easily abandon his responsibilities to his children than can a woman who carries these children in her own body.”
and
“One would strain to think of a man-denigrating matriarchy in the world today or in the past, but woman-oppressing patriarchies are sadly common, and indeed all around us if we define a pagan patriarchy for what it is: one that bases the worth of women and girls on their sexual attractiveness and availability to men. We are not to conform to that spirit of this present darkness.”
as if we are not living in man-denigrating matriarchy today, where men are hounded for child support and alimony, that have to pay the adulteresses they had children with who dumped them for Chad!
It astonishes me that people this dense can be considered Christian leaders. Truly insane.
Can we stop talking about who here is RCC & who is Orthodox so often? Doesn’t matter and the rest of us really don’t care.
I’m Paul Orthodox and my brother is Apollos Orthodox.
You can’t imagine how awkward our Thanksgivings are.
@7817
More likely the SBC will be required to issue groveling apologies, which will never be sufficient.
@Emperor Constantine
Dalrock has a fair amount of history regarding Sheila Gregoire. She’s one of the poster girls for why women should never be allowed into any church leadership.
Russell Moore’s paycheck depends in part on him not noticing certain things…
This is why I find myself in the strange position of being a Christian who prays that the church will collapse as quickly as possible before it has the chance to do even more damage to the cause of Christ.
It’s not only not strange, but perfectly logical once you realize that what is passing for “the Church” today is a satanic fraud, a cancer upon the true body that cannot be eradicated quickly or thoroughly enough.
DA.
I have not problem with such repenting on behalf of others per se, but the fact it only ever goes one way is a problem. You are also right that it should not be used without a general call to repentance, something we don’t really see today in the context of women.
Were the women at that meeting ever called to turn from sinful ways toward God? Or was it just “raise your hand” or something else very trivial? Did any discipleship happen? Were they trained (after this point) to be godly women?
I would see the drummer’s actions as opening the door for some of these women. Some need a graphic action to help them clear out the past. Though I would have to admit I cannot find such in the Scriptures, so it is possible my views have been colored by the society I live in.
Did this man or those he claims to represent ever directly harm the specific women at the meeting? Or are they just walking and living in offense of past wrongs? That is popular today, but is not a Scriptural approach.
“Drag queen story hour” is popular in some cities now. It’s a form of rubbing ordinary people’s faces in transvestism, from my perspective, it’s “liberation” to other people.
I wonder how the usual complimentarians such as Russell Moore would respond to a
demandrequest that draq queens be included in church summer programs? Just as part of the necessary reparations to sexual minorities…Hmm,
The reason people are numb to abortion killing is that they really don’t care about killing others, including babies. They only think of themselves and really don’t care beyond that, even many who claim otherwise.
You have to deal with that first and no amount of rhetoric will convict the heart.
Lee,
You need to read and study the Scriptures more. Heaven and Hell are real places where people will end up. The city in heaven will come down to the new earth in the future, but it is still part of “heaven”. We will not be stuck in heaven, though those in hell will be stuck there. It is a real place that will be thrown into the lake of fire.
This may not fit well with your neat and tidy solutions, but I go by what is written, not neat and tidy solutions.
We have to continually wash our minds with the water of the Word for a reason – our thinking will never be fully converted on this earth. Solid actions should follow a true faith, yet some people often end up in so much bondage and can’t break free, especially if they have no support to do so. Deciding one sin is worse than the other in this process is ludicrous. Some sins certainly harm others more, but that is a different issue, though quite important in other ways.
It also depends on what “salvation” is, which requires us to understand what The Fall was and what happened there. Adam and Eve’s spirits died. Those in Christ have a reborn spirit. That says nothing about outward actions – it is an inner state. Few Christians really understand that and think it is only having a name written on a list rather than a true inner (spirit) rebirth.
OT
If you don’t believe Dalrock’s Law of Feminism, note that this perfect illustration of it, described in one Tweet by a bitter daughter observing it, received over 800K likes mostly from women.
“Men have caused all our problems”: my ex wouldn’t build me a case for my mugs!
followed by “pleas to men to solve their problems”: my new bf is so wonderful he built a case for my mugs!
BillyS
I adhere to the early church teachings on heaven and hell that interprets scripture.
The very first example is how Adam and Eve reacted to the glory of God with shame.
The reason you see everything as an inner state is due to the esoteric nature of Gnosticism blending with Christianity. You will never be able to explain this spidery sense because information is secret, hidden,esoteric and can only be known by the knower.
The sin of Adam and Eve was the rejection of the immanence offered by Eve as a helper as a woman.
The early church fought the same gnostic bullshit. The info is contained in the gnostic gospel of Thomas 114. Jesus says women can be saved if the are reborn as men.
The Buddha said a woman cannot attain nirvana and the best age can hope for is to be reborn as a man.
When a meaningful life is transcendent rather than a meaningless state of immanence then women become marginalized as vessels of immanence unless the take on the function of a pseudo man.
So your spidey sense of spirituality is in vogue right now because the androgynous thinking soul creates equality by transcending gender.
Lee,
I will take the Scripture as primary. Taking this in the context of The Fall tells that something dead (our spirits) has come back to life.
Dropping a little harassment fire this morning on our friend Sheila. I hope everyone is have a great day.
@Emperor Constantine
In some conservative Protestant churches “abuse” is now considered a form of “abandonment” and therefore acceptable grounds for divorce, like adultery. I have no clue if these people are using Duluth definitions for “abuse” but it is entirely possible.
It’s surprising Sheila hasn’t blocked you yet. Like most women, she can’t take even the slightest bit of criticism.
This man claims the Southern Baptists are heading for full “intersectionality”, which means the SJW’s are in the process of taking the SBC over. No idea if he’s accurate or not, frankly, but if his claims are accurate then the SBC will split in 10 years if not sooner, because accepting the full constellation of SJWism will drive away some fraction of the churches in the denomination.
http://www.deliveredbygrace.com/the-woke-tools-of-the-sbc-a-review-of-resolution-9-on-critical-race-theory-and-intersectionality/
Intersectionality means Drag Queen Story Hour isn’t just an option, but a requirement. Not this year, but not too long from now.
@AR
Agreed. Have to give that girl credit, I have given her quite a pounding. Beth Moore too. I think I’m a useful foil.
Bayly blocked me in a microsecond, but I have to admit I was pretty obnoxious to him. “Man up and marry” pastors who then thrown men under the bus, as Dalrock has so eloquently pointed out, really do deserve opprobrium.
Make no sense – if men and women are both equally gullible, then why wouldn’t Satan have gone after Adam first, knowing Eve would follow, given the divinely assigned order?
Emperor Constantine
Bayly blocked me in a microsecond, but I have to admit I was pretty obnoxious to him.
You weren’t any more obnoxious to Bayly than he and his minions at Warhorn are to other men. Those types obviously enjoy dishing it out, but they can’t take it. Rather like women.
Kinda eeeeeeeaaaaaahahhhhhhhfffffeminate, as Nathan would say.
A Catholic splinter group features a lesbian “bishop,” “married” to another female “priest.”
Technically not a Catholic splinter group unless you include Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists or Calvinists as “Catholic splinter groups.” They are simply (from the Catholic perspective) apostates.
@c matt
I call them a “splinter group” because they are a small breakaway asserting primacy over “authentic” Catholicism (complete with abortion, women “clergy,” and gay “marriage”). They even call themselves something like the “New Age Catholic Church.”
Incidentally, their symbol is a cross–with a rainbow on top of it. The Devil just can’t resist showing off.