Cheryl Schatz

Rachel,

You are a testimony to the truth of God’s word!

Don,

You have properly evaluated the command to learn.  MacArthur and others would agree with you in principle.  They just don’t do it in practice.  This is a serious concern since their actions don’t follow their assertions.  We need to be consistent with what we believe.  The world sees our inconsistencies and we bring dishonor and shame to Christ when we remain inconsistent.

Pinklight,

Excellent questions!  I suspect that hierarchists will not have any answers to your questions, but keep asking them.

Cindy,

Well, it is a small world isn’t it?  We will definitely go to Leiby’s and have some ice cream.  And Don Veinot gives the biggest bear hugs.  He really helped me through some hard times when I lost friends that were precious to me, all because they could not have fellowship with one who believed that women can teach the bible verse by verse to men.

And also I met the man who gave his life to Jesus last year.  He sat right beside me on the last night.  I expect to see him back again this year.  A special ex-JW elder and his dear wife won’t be able to make it this year as he injured his back.  They will be greatly missed.  It is so nice to meet old friends and new ones and the fellowship is awesome.  It is truly a yearly highlight in our lives as long as we can afford to go.

This year the conference is a week early so we should catch the leaves turning (I hope) before they blow off.  It is so nice to walk in the country setting and enjoy the peaceful setting.

Lin and Don, thanks!  The word needs to get out.  I don’t think most comps who follow CBMW realize that they changed from their original mandate.  I believe that CBMW should be willing to do as Gushee challenged them as it would be an honorable admission.

ZZMike,
Thanks for your comments and welcome to this blog!

We are hoping that somehow we can cause people to realize the contradictions so that they start to think instead of just following man’s traditions.

Alas our compatriots will not be able to come this year.  A family reunion and 50th wedding anniversary celebration conflicted with them coming with us.  We will be doing the presenting alone this year.

I know one fellow who comes alone and he may be willing to share a room.  I will email him and see if he is willing.

Hey Don,

It would be great to meet you!  I didn’t realize that you were only a matter of hours away.

If anyone else is thinking of going and would like to share a room with Don, let me know and I can get you in contact with Don.

😉

Don,

BTW I didn’t change the title as it is meant to be a hook.  I used to advertise short questions/statements in a local newspaper for the phone messages that I prepared for JW’s.  People found the questions to be enticing and I learned how to draw people in so that they would listen to what I had to say.   One JW lady couldn’t stop calling in and listening to the 5 or 6 minute sermons that I had.  She finally left a message that her elder had told her to stop reading my questions in the newspaper.  He said that if she stopped reading the questions that were drawing her in, then she would be able to stop calling and listening to the messages.  Because I received almost 100,000 calls mostly due to the questions that I posted, I have learned that a title doesn’t have to be blah or explain everything you are going to debate.  It just needs to catch the attention.  That is my reasoning and it has worked for me in my ministry to the attention of JW’s and I use it here too with women in ministry.  Make sense?

gengwall,

Thanks for the comments on “piling on”.  I liked “My Cousin Vinnie”.  Very funny and lots to learn about persistence!

Don,
I sent off a couple of emails so will see if anything comes of that.  I also removed the reference to Webb.  I will set that aside and do a separate post another time so that this post remains on one issue alone.  Thanks for the suggestions.  I am always willing to listen and learn and submit to a brother in Christ.

1) There were different groups of disciples.  One group was called “the twelve”.  Another group called “the seventy”.  Yet another group called “the women”.  The number of disciples in the group of women was not given.
2) There is one woman named as an apostle.  Her name is Junia.
3) There were a lot of high priests. The duty of high priest was rotated.
4) Modesty can be a cultural thing.  In Islam it is immodest for a woman to uncover her hair.  It is not an immodest thing in the west.
5) It is a command for men to love their wives but it is a cultural thing for men to take authority over their wives.  In some cultures the authority is absolute so that she lives or dies by her husband’s authority.  In other cultures women are free to vote, hold a job and own property.
6) Jesus voluntarily submitted to the Father as he became incarnate.  His subordination is not eternal in the Trinity.
7) Paul’s words are inspired.  All of God’s words are inspired although not all are true.  For example the bible says that the fool says in his heart that there is no God.  “There is no God” is not true, but the quote is inspired by God.
8) Paul did not say that “women” (plural) cannot teach men.  Paul wrote in a personal letter to Timothy about a situation in Ephesus that needed Timothy’s attention.  It is not an eternal “law” given for all time and for all people.

Glad to know that you will now be agreeing with us 🙂

tiro,

Excellent observations!  Thanks for posting them.

Will be praying for you Michael!  God bless your heart and your boldness.

Where does God say that Deborah as a Judge or Huldah as a Prophet were picked because there were no male leaders?  Does doesn’t say this.  Huldah was picked even though Jeremiah had been a Prophet in Israel for 5 years.  The book of Judges says that the LORD raised up judges for a purpose:

Judges 2:16  Then the LORD raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them.

The purpose was not to show that there were no male leaders.  This is foreign to the text.  In fact this is the one verse that was the final straw for my Pastor that caused him to accept women in ministry.  He reasoned that if God was the only who installed the Judges per Judges 2:16 and he chose to install Deborah, then Deborah was a valid Judge to deliver Israel just as were all the other God-ordained Judges.

The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge says this about the judges:

The shophetim were not judges in the usual sense of the term; but were heads or chiefs of the Israelites, raised up on extraordinary occasions, who directed and ruled the nation with sovereign power, administered justice, made peace or war, and led the armies over whom they presided.

Deborah did indeed rule with sovereign power as God raised her up for that purpose.  To state a purpose of Deborah that is not stated in scripture (that she was only there to put men to shame since every man was unavailable), we do a great disservice to the scriptures by adding to the scriptures.

God always has reserved men for himself.  Elijah thought he was alone but there were 7,000 others that the Lord reserved for himself (Romans 11:3, 4).  To say that there was not even one man in Israel that was godly, is to say that God could not raise up one of the men that he had reserved for himself.  That makes God much less Sovereign that he truly is.  My Pastor has stated that the one who God raises up, is who we are to accept.  If God can choose a woman, then we are not to reject God’s choice.  Who are we to tell God what he can and cannot do?

Creation order also implies created for different purposes.  If this is so that women were not created for leadership but only created to follow the leadership of men, then it wouldn’t matter what realm the leadership is in – it is outlawed by creation.  Once again CBMW has problems.  The “law” is either from creation and covers all aspects of life (there being no “church” in the garden), or we have misread Paul.

The problem is that we have come to see the value of women and it would be difficult if not impossible to go back to a place where women’s opinion was not valued even enough to allow them to vote.  IF CBMW’s position was consistent, it wouldn’t take so much work to try to explain how a woman can be a VP but cannot be a bible study leader in her own home.  This is beyond inconsistent.  It is irrational.  If God cannot speak through a woman to teach the truth from scripture, then how could he speak through a woman VP or a woman president?  If God doesn’t speak through women, then why on earth would we allow them to teach other women and children?  Let’s just do away with women teachers all together and have only men.  This is the consistent position.

They need to be careful or we might just see a rush of comp wives running for office!”

Oh, ouch!

And Lin you are not a blog hog.  You have such good questions!

Lin,

You asked:

How would CBMW feel about Palin leading a prayer group or bible study with her male staff?  Could she be VP but not lead a bible study in her own office?

Excellent question!  I would think that she would not be allowed to teach a mixed group.  CBMW does not allow women to lead mixed bible studies even in their own home unless they are just facilitating and not actually teaching and leading.  If she was “leading” the study, she would not be allowed.  Now how do you tell a VP of the US what they cannot do in their own office when they are the authority?  More good questions that they will have a hard time answering.  Perhaps they will just avoid the questions.

Lin,

It will be interesting to see how CBMW responds to that question.  So far they have said:

This helpful question raises a complex issue requiring specific application of the principles expressed above.  Gender Blog is pleased to be part of this dialogue and plans to address this question in the near future.

Good summary, Don!

tiro,

You are welcome!

Don,

I do not have a copy of BDAG.  Pretty expensive.  Do you know if it is available on-line?

Hi tiro,

The New Thayer’s Greek English Lexicon Copyright 1979, 1981 page 275  Greek word #2228.

No distraction at all.  I love people who are willing to research and test all things!

This is a very precarious day.  Many have hardened their heart so that they have eyes to see but they cannot see and ears to hear but they cannot hear.

Janice,

Good quote!  We all need to practice hearing better.  The more confident we are of what we believe and why we believe it should help us to not be threatened by someone else’s view.  I am learning how to apply to Christians what I learned how to do when I witness to JWs.  It is helpful to ask why a person believes as they do and listen carefully to the answer.  The answer can give you an opportunity to hear their heart, understand what their foundation is.  Then we can speak on their level and address the holes in their argument that may allow them to see something that they have never considered before.  Perhaps it isn’t for us to persuade anyone but merely to put a “stone” in their shoe that is the cause of them doing their own research to find out.  Also maybe by working to actually hear the other person, we might find a stone in our own shoe that will cause us to find our own blind spots.

The puppy?  No, he isn’t mine, but I fell in love with his eyes and his little face expressed what I wanted to express in this post.

Janice, thanks for commenting and giving that great quote.  If we do not take time to listen, we will probably find ourselves without the ability to really affect change in others.  Listening, asking questions, caring, these are all things we all could work on.

I added a disclaimer at the end of my post.

Okay Jeremy, I will email you on site things.

Don,
Thanks for reminding me of a warm policy that we have here.

Jeremy welcome!
I do try to welcome every new visitor to my blog who posts here for the first time and because we got into it kind of early, I failed to do that.  I hope you feel welcome here as we have a genuine care for the body of Christ whether people believe as we do on the secondary issues of faith or not.  We are to be known for our love and sometimes we are very passionate in defending the truth from scripture so please don’t take our passion as anything other than pure love for the scriptures and care about other members in the body of Christ too.

As far as the audio, I will give the links here for you.  You will probably want to read through this post too as it gives the rest of the story that I was forbidden to give in my time on the radio.  When you listen you will hear that I ask permission to finish the passage from the most important verse that defines the passage on 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and I was refused the ability to do that and then he refused to have me on again.  Here is the rest of the story:
http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2007/09/30/the-rest-of-the-story-1-timothy-211-15-and-matt-slick/

The audio to debate number 2 is linked in the above post and the audio to debate number 1 is linked in this post http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2007/09/19/debate-audio-between-matt-slick-and-cheryl-schatz/

Lastly, Jeremy asked:

Since my authorship is not coming up, I am not aware of how to change that. I can put my name under each of my blogs, if that is the case. I have already provided a new post explaining it is my site.

Well, for the record, the article is listed as an ownership by someone else.  Have you let him guest posted your site in the past?  If so, perhaps you are signing up under his guest post name.  You will have to make sure that in your author’s list that you do not list his email address because that will surely list him as the author.

I am going to leave this post as it is since your arguments are his anyway, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt although Google thinks you aren’t telling the truth.  You will definitely have to change the inner workings of your site or fess up to Mr. “unnamed” that you have been inadvertently posting as him. 😉

Jeremy,

So I am on a tight budget. Is there a way I could get a discount, that way I can view it?

If you are serious, email me and we can work something out 🙂  I am very favorably disposed to young men who love apologetics and want to hear both sides so that they can study to show themselves approved as a workman rightly dividing the word of God.

Jeremy,

You said:

It looks like the reason women seem to “dislike” 1 Tim 2:12 is because we want equality. Even I believe women are great teachers, some are great leaders and etc. The thing is, we can’t let something scriptural become only something that is now emotional.

This is not true at all.  I for one do not “dislike” 1 Timothy 2:12.  It is inspired by God and fully true in its context.  Also look at my previous post to see that trying to discredit someone’s argument because one charges them with being emotional is a non-argument.  It begs the question.

As for Matt Slick, you seem to have a grudge against him because of your time on air with him. One thing I would like you to know, he is not the only good apologist that has this viewpoint. This is why I will begin by using many apologist’s and theologians as sources for my commentary on Women in ministry.

Also not true.  His on-air presence is not great but I was willing to continue our dialogs on air.  He was not.  The issue came after my on-air time with him.  My statement linked to this post tells it all. My blog is also open for anyone to test to see if the responses to complementarians is reasonable.

We are told in scripture to refute false teaching.  That is where I stand.

Jeremy,

It is not true that this “unnamed” radio show host will only not let people back on the air unless they are rude.  I was not rude at all.  In fact I took great pains to compliment him and tell him how his site had helped me with a friend that was getting into universalism.  I have the audio files linked here on my blog so you can listen to hear if I was rude.

It was my very first time on radio.  I am a teacher and not used to answering yes and no questions but there was no way that I was rude.  I was extremely gentle with this person and he was extremely rude to me.  In fact he later said that he would let me back on the radio if I promised to keep my answers down to 1.5 minutes a question.  I agreed to that stipulation and asked for the questions in advance so that I could time myself and keep my answers short.  He later rescinded his offer and refused to have me back on.

I am not looking to trash anyone, I would like to debate Cheryl. I would like to see how she uses scripture to prove her side of this case, so I can see where she believes my side is wrong.

Well that is good.  I assume that before a debate you would want to be familiar with my arguments and will be getting a copy of the DVD.  Excellent.