Cindy K

Hey, I’m going to count this as a badge of honor. A book by Voddie Baucham they recommended on that blog that they advised all Christian men to read has a two full pages devoted to carrying on about little old me. (I found out about it because someone wrote to me and asked me to review it because it had all but caused her to reject the Christian faith. The woman was mature in the Word, but she found it so miserable and confusing, she was questioning her faith. So I stand in honor with you, Cheryl, an inspiring discernment diva.

I’ve appreciated this discussion, and I wish I had more time to jump in to comment!

Not exposed to many of these gender teachings that are so prevalent today when I was forming my understanding of Scripture, the discussions here are always thought provoking. The forum offers an opportunity to bring what I understand through the reading of the Word under the guidance of the Holy Spirit privately and things I have been taught or heard preached before into a broader audience and into a more specific scrutiny (not guided by my particular denomination’s position).

Oh well. So much to think about and so little time!

Thanks to all.

Hey everybody.

Here’s another obvious problem that I don’t think anyone mentioned yet.

Hard comps claim that Adam had dominion over Eve because he named her, demonstrating his authority over her in so doing.

What does it mean in Genesis 4:1 where Eve names Cain? Is that a demonstration of her “will to power”? How is it that she had authority to name her own son? Or is that an error?

In Genesis 4:25, it says that she named Seth.

If they’re going to make an issue of naming children as a sign of authority, what are the implications for Eve who is not reprimanded for “usurping Adam’s authority” by naming sons over whom she really has no authority to name?

Oh, Don, that’s beautiful. I wish I had seen that and said it. Thank you for pointing it out! Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Charis,

I guess I am disturbed by what I see as a pessimism in your comments. Personally, I believe that, based upon that which Cheryl has described well, though we are not explicitly told all the fine details (to the same degree of assurance that “God created”), to say that Adam and Eve were not together as man and wife in the Garden (something weird that I think might come out of the Kabbalah or the Gnostic gospels or some weird mystical writings) is to say that sex and unity of husband and wife came to us as a result of the fall. Some groups interpret this through a belief in a pervasive innocence, but this is not what I believe. That whole “Sex is Evil” is more Greek and Roman Catholic, actually.

I’m also disturbed by what I would describe as a “disease model” that you seem to read through. Sex as a disease, childbirth as a state of disease… And from the very beginning — from the two most healthy and perfectly healthy people that ever existed. Some of the comments here about Testosterone offered by others are all disease model approaches and perspectives. That really just disturbs me a great deal to read through a disease model anyway. I do not view childbirth as a disease state, nor do I view sex that way.

My first sexual experience was one of violation and was sick, but I never tagged sex as sick in my head. My marriage was holy before God, and I don’t read any of my marital relationship through my experience of being violated. The whole “nice perk” about “chocolate to a child” seems like another example of something of a disease model rather than that of wholeness. That doesn’t mean that Adam and Eve walked around obsessed with sex which is another disease model.

And that’s something that I fear so much about these gender teachings. They make anything gender oriented either evil or a sacrament. They are neither. Sex was likely something Adam and Eve did, right along with everything else they did, in balance. It was neither more nor less than God designed it to be, yet still a very powerful and wonderful way of unity between man and wife that changes over time and over the course of a relationship — and theirs was apparently all honeymoon. God said that His creation was good and He blessed it as such.

With sin came the consequences: painful childbirth, but still not a disease but a promise of hope and blessing.

After reading all of this, the same question keeps coming into my mind: What kind of marriages do these men have? And did they think this way about marriage or one’s relationship with women before they married? My, my. It all sounds like a sad commentary on their relationships when I read this stuff.

Don,
Maybe they need to drop this guy’s meds, or maybe he needs to be on a new one. This panacea isn’t working for him.

Okay,
Do I have an avatar now?

What I’d like to know is if these guys are such stanch Calvinists, why are they wound so tightly? God is sovereign and is working his plan, regardless of what we make happen, right? Each individual in Christ must speak the truth and declare the Gospel, and what God does with it is the job of the Holy Spirit. We must be good and dutiful stewards who do not tread on the Blood of the Lamb. So why are they so concerned about what a bunch of women do or do not do? Why get so vitriolic and acerbic about it. Why do they push so hard? If a bunch of evil egals do this or that, why does that diminish a sovereign God?

Here is something that many people do not realize: Both sexes have all of the sex hormones. In terms of hormones, men and women only really differ in terms of the levels of hormones that one has. Women have testosterone and men have estrogen in their bodies, but they are maintained at different levels. Some men with low testosterone can seem aggressive and then actually seem to calm down when they receive replacement hormone for the deficit. When their physiologic norm comes back to optimal and therapeutic levels, many men will show less anxiety, anger and such and will have a more balanced temperament. We do tend to reduce hormones down to a “male and female” understanding, but it is not that simple of a process.

Another consideration — when you speak of testosterone causing aggression — this is based upon a disease model and a study of physiologic disease, thousands of years after the fall. I think if we can assume that if any human being walked in divine health and had the optimal levels of hormone, it would have been Adam. (Again, optimal physiologic levels of testosterone do not induce aggression in healthy male adults.) Adam did not have the exogenous hormones and chemicals and disease altering this optimal balance of divine health either. His optimal level would have facilitated self-control, and I don’t think that it would have predisposed him to unusual aggression. That understanding of testosterone comes to medical science today through the disease model, not through the optimal health that Adam would have enjoyed before generations of the effect of the “wages of sin” (resulting in death and which is preceded by disease). I don’t think it’s fair to view him through a disease model.

I think the same assumptions are true for Eve, as this suggests to me that this concept assumes the presupposition of a disease model, something that I don’t think would have applied to the two people on earth who were the least affected by sin, aging and disease.

And do we even know if Adam and Eve were sexually intimate before the fall? They did not procreate, so can we assume that they copulated? We are not told, one way or another, and we do not know how long they dwelled in the garden before the fall. These are things that we are not clearly told but have to make assumptions about. Are we making the right assumptions?

There is much to consider about what we assume to be true but is not told to us clearly.

Cheryl,

My cats think it’s two hours later than it really is and started the morning routine, and now I find myself awake in the middle of the night. So only heaven knows what my demeanor is like at this odd hour. (The internet is a nice and quite occupation now…) And I’m glad you’re catching up and specifically said so, as I had a tiny twinge of concern that I might have shut down the discussion, (even though I found that unlikely).

In the event that I didn’t state it succinctly, my goal here is to see the Word clearly and discern the truth. I take more of an Augustinian approach to things, tending to be less presumptive about God. That has its pitfalls, because one can lean more towards the idea that God is holy other and too mysterious to know. On the other hand, I am very disturbed at the practice of some who put God in a tiny, human box, presuming to have God’s perspective. Aware of the pitfalls of my natural bend, I try to find balance, but it is always a very dynamic process for me.

My other concern is that at certain impressionable times in my life, I drew from the Word of Faith teachers and was taught by my parents that I never had any right to question the teaching of anyone who called themselves an anointed pastor. Sometimes those influences are those things to which we are most blind because they form our first views of things and are the foundation for what we add to them. I have Copeland’s voice printed on my brain in association with very good memories, and I can hear the tenor of his voice saying “Adam committed high treason….” and other such things. And I loved the poetic and delicate beauty of some of the things I learned from the Jews I’ve studied with over the years (some Christians and some not). So as much as I am trying to bring up ideas here, I am also trying to make sure that I am letting the Word and the Spirit wipe the scales of flesh from my sight.

That said, my reasons for posting here at all are probably more selfish than anything else. If I come across as hard or pushy, I think that would be more a sign of my own discomfort in trying to sort out right thinking from wrong thinking in myself. It is terrifying to consider that I have a Right Brained tendency to be more intuitive, and that can be a terrible trap. I do not want to be a mystical Christian, save when it is appropriate for the discussion of what is truly mysterious. For example, the other morning when discussing this subject with my husband, checking with him about my comment about the distributive fallacy (if that was fitting or not), we discussed the mystery of marriage and why God chose to do things the way he did or to not be more bookish in the Genesis account so that we could have a “clear formula” with analytical exactness. And both of us came to tears, talking of Jesus’ great love for us, and how significant that is as seen in Adam’s statement of “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.” That is mystery.

So if I do come across as some kind of bully at any point, I apologize. But it is always pretty terrifying when I look back at some of these things, wondering if I’m clinging to things I like as opposed to truth because they are easy and familiar. But that consideration has its benefits in this discussion, as this is exactly what we hope that the complementarian will do — consider whether their presuppositions have tainted their reading and understanding of the Word. It is a threatening process to consider that you’ve chosen a foundation stone that needs to be hewn out and replaced. God have mercy on us all as we look at the foundations we’ve chosen with the best of intent.

So Don,

All that to say, where am I going off center or am I going off center?

I’m just trying to make sense of things based on what I understand, and that may or may not be accurate. Do I jump ship from the Scripture anywhere?

Don said: There is a lot that is taught and if something is not taught that we wish were taught, then God is telling us we do not need that for our faith, instead, look at what is taught.

Ah, here is wisdom. It is so difficult to think apart from that which we were taught or how we first conceived of something.

Gen 1 and a good part of Gen 2 says “man” multiple times, but we know not if it means man as male or man as species. So we do add that to the text, probably interpreting gender because the distinction is soon made when female is introduced. Ah, so much to ponder.

The bottom line is that we don’t know any more than what we’re told, and we have a limited number of possibilities of what could have possibly happened based upon what we are clearly told. The creation order is problematic for evolution, because some creatures were made before their food would have been created, so they would have either have been divinely sustained if there was a long earth day versus 24 hours. I had not considered this morning also that ex nihilo could have been complete on day six with Eve created later as made from something as opposed to nothing. No?

I just (personally) do not agree that right about calling a particular group of JudeoChristian beliefs as pagan (that Adam was a “they” of male and female and then the flesh drawn out of him with an aspect of him that would have been notably Eve’s essence, equal in flesh and any other metaphysical property that was expressly Eve or just a portion of Adam). As I understand it, God would have to be greater than both male and female, so it would not necessarily be evil to say that viewing Adam this way (pre-split) necessarily violates God’s nature or other Scriptures. In what terms was Adam made in God’s image, exactly, and is this reflected in a gender expression? I guess that’s the real issue. (Maybe not?) And I could be entirely wrong.

Ken Copeland has another teaching that because God stretched out the heavens with the span of his hand, Copeland calculates that God, in the form of Jesus, was a certain height and would have been a certain stature. (Isaiah says God is 6’4″ or something like that.) It makes for interesting academic speculation and muse, but not doctrine as Copeland teaches it. And we get ourselves headed into error.

I don’t know. We hit a point where the poetic nature of the language gives us over to speculation. Hhmmm.

I hope I’m not driving you all nuts with too many early morning posts.

I intended to say more directly before that I don’t think that it is expressly “pagan” to believe that the “they” of Genesis 1:27 means that there was one person named Adam who was a “they of male and female,” and not necessarily a reference to the species of mankind. (It may not be Eve or female, but an “Eveishness”) But to say that Adam contained something of Eve in some sense amounts to paganism is akin to a fallacy of distribution. What is true of the parts need not be true of the whole, and what is true of the whole need not be true of the parts. To believe something similar to what a pagan believes does not make one a pagan. It could well be that the pagans took the ideal and altered it. Every society tends to have an account of the great flood, but that does not make the flood pagan. So in and of itself, stating that Adam contained an aspect or quality of Eve when he was made, something that need not be a gender quality at all but “Eveishness,” is neither sacred nor profane. Again, this is so fixed on gender, and it need not be a gender quality at all. God could have added the gender aspect later.

Some people who are not familiar with the Hebrew style of telling and retelling as a literary device understand that Eve was made after God rested, though I do not find that to be cogent, because Genesis 2 said that God rested and was finished. But the chronology is not abundantly clear, and though I ascribe to a young earth, I think that many good Christians believe that God did create Eve after day 6. I would bet that there are a great many that have not even thought about it much, and some explain it by way of an extended day earth. There are some problems with conceiving of how Adam did all that he accomplished on the first day. How clear is the chronology, and how much credulity can some find in that chronology? I don’t know, but I think it might be an intramural consideration.

The question is whether or not it makes any kind of difference to anything later on. Why would it matter one way or the other? I think it makes a big deal if you are fixated on anthropomorphizing God, and egal and comp can do that both alike.

Note: The account of Abraham and Sarah’s names being changed is located in Genesis 17.

The other consideration that I take to heart in some sense is the “analogy of being.” An artist or an inventor cannot create something beyond themselves or greater than themselves. Anything that I make with my hands or conceive of in my mind cannot be beyond my understanding. If I create a sculpture of myself, the sculpture can never become greater than me and cannot be greater than me (lest a force greater than I am comes and adds to my creation and changes it so that it no longer my own).

For God to have created both male and female, He would have had to be transcendent over gender (greater than and pass beyond the limits of gender). And there MUST be something in God that defines the perfect standard of gender, though this need not mean that God has gender. Gender may be a metaphor and an allegory that God designed to reveal aspects of His character to us, and He Himself may have absolutely no gender at all. In some sense, to say that God IS male is to anthropomorphize Him.

Gender has to be contained in God, as there can never be more of something in the creation than there is in the Creator. We are told that we are no greater than our masters or our creator. His ways and purposes transcend us, though He does give us sure truth to know Him, though some things are kept mysterious. (And that it not any kind of advocacy of “holy other.” but more of Van Til’s idea that we are like children that have the tendency to crawl up on God’s lap to slap Him in the face with our arrogance of limiting Him, telling Him who and what He is. That is not “holy other,” or claiming the “mysterium” as I have been thus accused by a disgruntled complementarian online a few months ago.) How can the finite possibly understand the infinite in fullness? Again, we only know what we have been taught. Within God, there is the ideal of both masculine and feminine. That might mean that there is no aspect of God that is literally male or female, or maybe there is an aspect of God that is the perfect male and perfect female. God is limited by neither. But what I think that we should be careful of is restricting God to our finite understanding of that which the Word has told us is, to some extent, a mystery.

My apologies to God first and everyone reading here next.

I did not capitialize “He” and “Him” in the above comment. I really hate when I do that, as I really do endeavor to show God that respect and honor. I take great joy in doing so, and I am disappointed when I fail to follow through.

Though we attended an Assemblies of God Church, I was fed a fairly steady diet of Ken Copeland from the time I was a young teen. Later, my mother forced a great deal of Benny Hinn on me, and I’d been told from a young age that God intended that I become the next Kathryn Kuhlman, so I dutifully ate what I was fed by my parents. Unfortunately, much of that ideology has shaped my thinking, sometimes to the point that I wish I could take a toothbrush and toothpaste to scrub out my brain.

As an undergrad, my college hired impressive people to come in to teach electives, and I arranged to study classes on Judaism (as I didn’t feel comfortable learning Christian topics from Catholics — I went for the nursing program, not the theology). I had the honor of studying with a Rabbi and notable leader in Philadelphia who traveled one night a week to teach at the school. I so wanted to take the opportunity to understand the Jewish roots of Christianity at that point in my life. I was very impressed and also enamoured by the things this Rabbi taught regarding Hebrew tradition. While between churches at different times in my life, for the novelty, I’ve attended Messianic congregations — primarily to get more expert insight into Hebrew.

I find the Yeshivite myths of language to be very lovely about how God added the “ah” sound to Ish to make woman Isha. Woman is man with God’s breath of fire. The “ah” represents fire — the fire of life. This could also be meant as woman is man’s fire of passion, too. And I was taught that this is also what God did with Abram and Sarai when he changed their names — he breathed his life into them which allowed them to conceive Isaac. He added that “ah” to their names, heralding the that life. Again, this is not Scripture, but it is a long tradition that demonstrates a great love for the Hebrew language held by that tradition. There are some lovely observations that are thought provoking, but again, I am not stating that they are Scripture. It is just a commentary on how the Jews now understand their own language, once very near to being a dead language.

Don mentioned one of two schools of thought in the previous thread, that one being that woman is only an understanding of “opposite” that God created, not necessarily implying anything about gender at all, save that woman was made to be “opposite”
(ke’negdo) from man. Some say that man and woman are like mirror opposites in whom one sees a recognizable reflection of the other in a very Jewish poetic sense as described by some rabbis.

The other idea held by many Jews (most all that I’ve encountered which is no true representation of all Jews), as mentioned above in this blog post, is that per Genesis 1:27-28, Adam was made as one being who somehow contained some type of qualities of both male and female. I’ve read Jewish commentaries that said that Adam, though physically a male, did initially contain all that was Eve within him in some capacity. I’ve read the language (of non-believing Jews) that also speculate that this might make Adam a “functional hermaphrodite” of some type.

Under the influence to some degree of the Ken Copeland stuff and respectful of the Jewish teachings (with some assumption that the Jews have some capacity to traditionally interpret their own language), I have always been persuaded that God transcends all gender, but has chosen to reveal Himself to us as male and not female (which includes Jesus who is not some kind of sick ESS understanding). The female symbolism and analogy is carried by the church, and gender helps teach us something about this mystery of God’s love for His creation. With the caution, fear and trembling that I have been strongly affected by some of these things, concerning Adam and Eve, I have made sense of this that Adam was made as one being that contained the seed of what Eve was in his side/rib (a supportive structure that protects man’s heart as opposed to a bone from the foot or head per Justin Martyr -I think that is attributed to him). And to that substance of bone and flesh taken from Adam, something both physical and representative of something metaphysical — whatever that means, God added that same breath of “ah” that was the very same thing that allowed Abram and Sarai to become parents. Again, anything we add to what is expressly written in the word is man’s theory, but I’ve always been moved by the parallel of the “ah” in the story of Abraham. (And I am not out publishing books about this, claiming that this is the only possible interpretation of Genesis, either.) But I do think that God is not gender-bound at all, but that we were given gender to help us understand some mysterious aspects of Christ’s relationship to us as our Redeemer. (That, again is based on some of my understanding of certain Hebrew words, but another topic for another day.)

I’ve pulled some quotes from “The Jewish Way in Love and Marriage” (by orthodox Rabbi Maurice Lamb) last year and posted online, mainly to demonstrate that what was taught by Vision Forum’s weird twis of traditional theonomy with Jewish, Uber-Adam weirdness was not remotely like anything traditional Jews believe. (Vision Forum relies pretty heavily on their claims that they are following practices true to traditional Jewish patriarchy which actually proves to be more harsh than the Mishnah.) If anyone is interested, they can link over to read the blog posts here: http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2008/05/creation-of-eve-jewish-way.html

It’s just more information, something that may or may not be helpful sometimes. But I can’t shake the Abraham and Sarah name change as completely insignificant.

ROFLOL!

The hockey thing is big here in Detroit and friends here will love this~

What do I think?

I think you are right.  I think that Genesis 2 and 3 makes Eve out to be the first apologist (one who gives an account of their reasoning for faith in God).  Adam did nothing like this and just sinned.  Eve worked to discern the truth and the wisest choice that would have resulted in what was best for everyone.  She had to be deceived in order to get her to do what was wrong.  Today, Christian apologists, counter-cult or otherwise, don’t always get things right.  We do see through a glass darkly and we are all in the process of getting sanctified.  So we do not have perfect truth.  But we have advantages that Eve did not, including the benefit of the knowledge of her experience.  We know much more today than Eve did then.  Above all things, we have the inspired Word that is the only authoritative and objective standard.  “I believe that it says ___” falls far behind the inspired Word itself and the Holy Spirit who watches over the Word to perform it.  The Word always accomplishes that which God intends it to do.

I also agree that Peter and Paul had ample opportunities to be more direct and clear, particularly when discussing submission and wives and gender.  When Paul alluded to the old oral traditional prayer of “King of the Universe, thank you for not making me a goy, a slave or a woman” in Galatians 3:28, if he had meant what so many people imply from an argument of silence and circular reasoning that presupposes hierarchy, then Paul certainly coulda, shoulda, woulda put his “true meaning about male headship and federal representation” to us plainly and and directly so that there could be no misunderstanding.  He did not.  When Peter talked about slaves and wives and such, he coulda, shoulda, woulda pointed out something more specific, but he didn’t say anymore than what he wrote for us.   That which was/is/always will be God-breathed does not need additional inspiration or extra breath, does it?

For that matter, considering that I don’t agree with Ortlund, I don’t believe that he is deliberately and willfully “misquoting God” either.  I think that he and those who follow the dogma of CBMW are very much like Eve — they are deceived.  Part of living the Christian life involves cutting through both our ignorance and our deception with the sharp, sharp double-edged Sword of the Word of God.  It is a process that continues until we are changed and no longer see through a glass darkly.  And having lived a “Christian” lie in some of this mindset and in others that were passed off to me as Christian and were anything but, I have great compassion for those who are deceived.  It is a terrible thing.

And I am deeply grieved when I read this stuff, seeing to the lengths that some go to and the dances that some do in order to create something that gives the appearance of an “iron clad” argument for their position.  Why “monkey around” with Genesis if you believe 1 Cor 14 and 1 Tim 2 says women cant ever teach or speak in church, or whatever particular twist you put on the verse ?  We are all to be obedient to the Word, and those Scriptures should be able to stand up as truth and stand up to scrutiny without any additional help.  Right?  Why then also warp the Trinity, too?

But I remember the days when I would have taken a bullet for Rodney Howard Brown or my old pastor, and I would have fought to the death to defend their honor.  I used to argue the Word of Faith dogma that it’s God’s will and can only be His will that we walk in perfect health at every moment of our lives, and that if we are ill, we either have sin in our hearts or we do not have enought faith.  Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word, so add water and stir, and you will get your healing.  And I had to watch the Word of Faith guaranteed formula fail (in myself and in others in the hospital in the Southern “Bible Belt”) many times before I would consider that this might not be what the Word taught.  (BTW which does not mean that I am against divine healing or mediating on the Word for healing.)  But I would have argued man’s wisdom, partly because my world (my presuppositions and rested on my faith in the fact that how man made sense of the Word was true and as true as the Word was itself.

It must be perhaps the toughtest thing on earth to go back to what you’ve believed was true, used to build up the bedrock of what you built the rest of your understanding upon and esteem it as an error.  If you are a minister and have taught a particular position that was based upon a misconsception that you used to lay the foundations of your understanding of who God is and how we as His creatures relate to Him, this is all the more difficult.  Your matters of personal faith become public and doctrinal.  And I think some of that definitely gives way for us into willful error.

I don’t know how these guys are ever going to pull back the curtains and look for cracks in the foundations of the worlds they’ve built on some of these ideas.  It seems like they just keep building supports and props to keep up the spires into which they’ve vested themselves.

I absolutely do not agree with the meaning that Ortlund ascribes to the Genesis account here, but I think that there is some Scriptural basis to argue against the points you brought up.  I will play devil’s advocate for a moment, just for the sake of thought.

Cheryl, you wrote in the original post:
3.  …Where does the Bible say that the effects of sin operating in Eve’s mind caused her to distort the command of God?

First note that all that I will bring up happened after the fall of man and after we have all been born into sin, so you could debate that this does not necessarily apply to Adam and Eve prior to original sin.  But that is a different argument that I am not offering.

I do think that one might argue that as 1 John 3:15 says, he that hateth his brother is a murderer.  He has not acted upon murder, but he has an attitude of heart that is not consistent with eternal life according to John’s epistle.

James 1 also pops into my mind.

13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

James qualifies sin as being the act and is neither the desire nor the enticement.  Sin is something conceived from the seeds of desire, if we indulge it.  John’s example of hatred is neither desire or enticement but is conceived lust not acted upon.  Lust is sin.  Desire for food that is lovely like Eve was considering was not lust.

I can’t help thinking here of Cheryl’s recent blog post of “sinning through questioning.”  It is not a sin to question what something means.  Langauge is tricky, and Eve is the first person in history to engage in debate over the use of language, now the boondoggle of our day.  Thinking about what God meant and trying to put this into perspective is not a sin.  We enter into sin when ascribe our meanings to what God has said and decide it in our own minds, casting off His cords from us like ignorant fools.  Eve did not do this but was caught up in lofty words of deception.

Her action was a sin, ans as pointed out many times and places on this blog, it was very different than Adam’s sin.  Eve intended to do what was right but was decieved.  She was not acting to fulfill her own lusts (she did not eat out of lust for the fruit but because she was “drawn away” to trust in the serpent and her own reason rather than obedience God’s Word of instruction to her).  Adam ate with intent (out of either the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh or the pride of life, either one or some combination of all three).  Eve did not intend to disobey in her heart, but Adam did.

Ortlund seems to be saying that Eve set out with the willful intent to twist what God had said, as if she needed no encouragement from the serpent.  If that was true, the serpent would likely never have had to convince Eve with craft and subtlety with his “surely argument.”  All he would have had to have said was “Go ahead and eat,” and Eve would have followed the lust in her heart.

Thoughts about this, anybody?

Cheryl, you also wrote:

4.  Who said that Eve “misquoted” God?

This also reminds me of the “sinning through questioning” concept.

I don’t think Eve was attempting to quote God at all.  She clearly did know exactly what God said to her and repeats this to the serpent.  If she “quotes” anything, it is either her own understanding or she is quoting the serpent.  I think this is pretty clear from Scripture.

My comments here are not the quoting of the God’s inspired words when I am thinking through what the Word of God says.  I only do that when I am actually quoting the Word.  What I get right is still not necessiarily the Word (just me regenerated and sanctified in an area) and what I get wrong is my own error and fallenness (not yet sanctified).  No one died and left me the rank of pope.  If I have a misconception about what the Word actually means, am I misquoting God?  I don’t think so.  That just makes me human.  It makes me very much like Eve was when she was trying to discern the truth.  She just discerned wrongly.

In other words, Sovereign Grace (and many of those groups that were hooked up into Shepherding which wove many Calvinist doctrine into things) is unusal.  They were far less Calvinist in years past, but they followed the hierarchy of shepherding.  The CBMW connection grew as their connection to Calvinism grew (as a guiding force).

Anyway, they are an oddball group that underwent a lot of syncretism when they were formed, all resulting from the Charismatic Renewal and Shepherding, as they were one of the bigger shepherding denominations/groups.  Those threads all go back to Bob Mumford and his participation and dabbling in the dominionist ideas of the Calvinists.

If you look only at where the groups came from, traditional Methodists and traditional Pentecostals tend to be more egalitarian.   Baptists that are Dispensational tend to be more egalitarian as opposed to their Reformed Baptist counterparts.

I think.

But Sovereign Grace is a weird product of both the “love and togetherness” of the time when it was formed and of the dropping of many denominational barriers during the Charismatic Renewal that seemed to trancend all denominational barriers.

Lin,

Sovereign Grace follows Calvinism, though.

Calvinism and complementarianism?  It is old, old tradition.

They carry torches for the Scottish John Knox and his “First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” with great passion.  Knox retreated to Geneva when “Bloody” Mary Tudor reestablished Catholicism in the UK, and while in Geneva, Knox gleaned from the wisdom of Calvin himself.

Ah, for those of you unfamiliar with this lovely writing, here’s a taste:

http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm

“That the weak, the sick, and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the whole and strong? And finally, that the foolish, mad, and frenetic shall govern the discreet, and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women, compared unto man in bearing of authority. For their sight in civil regiment is but blindness; their strength, weakness; their counsel, foolishness; and judgment, frenzy, if it be rightly considered…

Nature, I say, does paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish; and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel, lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment…

Would to God the examples were not so manifest to the further declaration of the imperfections of women, of their natural weakness and inordinate appetites! I might adduce histories, proving some women to have died for sudden joy; some for impatience to have murdered themselves; some to have burned with such inordinate lust, that for the quenching of the same, they have betrayed to strangers their country and city; and some to have been so desirous of dominion, that for the obtaining of the same, they have murdered the children of their own sons, yea, and some have killed with cruelty their own husbands and children…

For God, first by the order of his creation, and after by the curse and malediction pronounced against the woman (by reason of her rebellion) has pronounced the contrary…

But after her fall and rebellion committed against God, there was put upon her a new necessity, and she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God…

This sentence, I say, did God pronounce against Eve and her daughters, as the rest of the scriptures do evidently witness. So that no woman can ever presume to reign above man, but the same she must needs do in despite of God, and in contempt of his punishment and malediction…

[Speaking of both 1 Tim 2:12 & 1 Cor 14:34] These two testimonies of the Holy Ghost are sufficient to prove whatsoever we have affirmed before, and to repress the inordinate pride of women, as also to correct the foolishness of those that have studied to exalt women in authority above men, against God and against his sentence pronounced…

The apostle takes power from all women to speak in the assembly. Ergo, he permits no woman to rule above man…

He then goes on to quote many of the patristic writings about women which are mostly Roman Catholic, something ironic because even Knox essentially bashes them in the sermon.

But impossible it is to man and angel to give unto her the properties and perfect offices of a lawful head; for the same God that has denied power to the hand to speak, to the belly to hear, and to the feet to see, has denied to woman power to command man, and has taken away wisdom to consider, and providence to foresee,the things that are profitable to the commonwealth: yea, finally, he has denied to her in any case to be head to a man, but plainly has pronounced that “man is head to woman, even as Christ is head to all man [every man]” (1 Cor. 11:3)…

For what man was there of so base judgment (supposing that he had any light of God), who did not see the erecting of that monster to be the overthrow of true religion…

I mean, I could put the whole thing up here.  And notably, it was written in protest to the Catholic Mary Tudor, but it all backfired on him somewhat when Elizabeth I succeeded her, considering that she was a devoted protestant.  And in his passionate discourse, he did build his entire argument upon male headship and the typical Scriptures used and applied by those devoted to the complementarian cause.

Yet another one of these Brave New Ersatz Calvinists.

I find the lack of pretense refreshing in a way, but more is not better.  I have seen enough televangelist hair (both men and women) to make me sick for two lifetimes.  So the Jeans and T-shirt Coffee House style that was popular when I was young appeals to me.  I love frank discussion, so that appeals to me.  And those who follow fast on my heels in age (like Driscoll) are sick of the fakes that were busted while we were growing up.

But this is ridiculous.  I don’t understand why these guys are this arrogant and boiling with anger.  I learned about some very evil things that were done with impunity and how some of these things have been essentially washed away through money and intimidation.  Just really sick things that have been done.  And I don’t know where the fear of God plays into things for these people or whether the fear God at all.  They certainly expect people to walk in awe and fear of them, though.

I’d heard that Rick Warren is also pretty authoritarian and requires that a covenant be signed stating that people won’t challenge the elders or question the pastor.  Does anyone know if this is an urban myth or not, or where I would have heard this?

Don,

I had the same thoughts about this article.  When I first skimmed it, I had a whole different image in my head from what the article actually said.  The Stop Them, Shame Them, Leave Them sounds like a tactic that many groups use to “steamroll” others in arguments, the tactics that Koukl suggests as strategies to respond to those who are steamrolling you.   But it’s a good article, none the less.

I caught a Catholic believer on this a couple of years ago.  We started talking about the James Taylor song that sings about how God showed mercy to the Magi, sending them home by another way.

The woman was shocked because even the liturgy separates their observance of epiphany from the advent celebration.  Epiphany comes a few days after the new year on our calendar.  She didn’t believe me until she realized the subtleties in her own tradition that identified the epiphany (“upon the revealing” of the Messiah to the Magi).

It sounds like one of those trick questions on an intelligence test or the GRE.

Hi Paula and Cheryl,

I think we are all talking about the same thing.  I just wanted to make sure that I’d not said anything that would take away from what I really meant to convey.

The other day, someone tried to pull some damage control online that was pretty insulting, and I fired back some reasonable rhetorical questions in response.  But why is it that my strong comments like this don’t seem as potentially offensive until after I’ve hit the “submit comment” button????  So I offered an apology in a second comment and stated what I probably should have just simply stated from the beginning.  It seemed to me that the person was belittling in their comment so they could look good at everyone else’s expense.

It is a dying to self, and this old flesh does not like to die, even though I desire to morify it.  It’s often a learning process.

I grew up in an area settled by the Moravians (missionaries that Count Zinzendorf sent to America and the West Indies) who used the Christmas story and the Star of Bethlehem as an evangelical tool.  The town of Bethlehem, PA where my husband grew up has a start of light on the mountain above the town that they light at Christmas time and during special events throughout the year.  I was amazed when I started to encounter evangelical Christians who taught of the evils of Christmas, not because of the commercialization of it but because they thought that Scripture condemned it.  I was quite stunned.  It did remind me of talking with Jehovah’s Witnesses about holidays, and it still grieves my heart.

I don’t know if anyone has read about some of the information about the origins of the Zodiac (“circle of animals”) as another depiction of the Gospel that was supposedly told to Enoch by Adam.  Henry Morris published a small book on his studies and D. James Kennedy did a huge series on it in the early eighties.  (My favorite thing about what Kennedy shared was that the name of the star that marks the  foot of Orion.  It’s named “Rigel” which translates in many ancient languages as “THE FOOT THAT CRUSHETH.”  He identified this as a reference to the proto evangelian in Genesis 3:15.)

To the best of my recollection, Kennedy said that the Star of Bethlehem appeared in the sheaths of wheat held by the virgin, Virgo. The star that shown so brightly was in an area in those sheathes, where a child is seated upon the lap of a king.  The name of that star, in several ancient languages, (or perhaps it was the name of that child on the king’s lap ? I don’t quite remember) was called “the anointed one.”  He states that this is why and how the magi were able to understand just who Jesus really was.  They knew to look for the Anointed One who was born of a virgin.

And I don’t know what significance that has on all this other than this:  As I often look up in the winter sky to see the Orion constellation — probably the easiest one to identify in the sky — I look up at Rigel and remember that God has promised that though mankind has been bruised by sin, God came Himself to crush the head of sin.  And yet a little while, these temporary and light afflictions will cease and shall not compare to the glory that shall be revealed in those who believe in Jesus.

Paula wrote: I’ve heard of other big names in eschatology who reportedly are less than civil to those who oppose them, but I think we have to be careful about connecting their theology to their spiritual health.

Paula,

I was not trying to point out anything about anyone’s eschatology and how that would reflect on them personally, particularly when I did not have a vested interest in either side of the argument (which I never did really process anyway because the “window dressing” was so distracting.  If anything, I meant it to reflect the opposite of this — that how we argue might not actually reflect the merit of what we argue.  That applies to the person and their Christian witness as well.  My only point concerned the nature of how we argue, and how things that we don’t intend (and may not actually ever leak out) tend to betray us.  Pascal said that “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not.”  And our emotions along with the intent of our hearts speak, even when we do not want them to do so.  All that may not even have any bearing on the topic or anything else that makes any sense.

I’m sorry if I didn’t make that perfectly clear in my comment, as that was certainly in my thoughts.  Tommy Ice did not strike me as one who I would anticipate would respond in such a way.   I thought the example and the people I named and thought would be recognized by others posting in this thread, adding weight to my germane point regarding arguing a premise, as that one specific example of DeMar’s is certainly not central to his mission but is the one more frequently remembered.  It might also be of interest to some to note I’ve dis-associated myself from in recent years because I do not agree with the “patriarchal”  twist and increase in associations with other intolerant ministries that his own ministry started to follow (atypical for DeMar in the past).

Cheryl wrote in the original post:  Galatians 3:28 contains a negation of three categories that reflected common ways of distinguishing humanity among the Jews. The Jewish cycle of morning prayers for the men began this way: “Blessed be He that He did not make me a Gentile; blessed be He that He did not make me a boor [i.e., an ignorant peasant or a slave]; blessed be He that He did not make me a woman.”
Referring back to the initial post,  I was wondering whether CBMW and their devotees ever reference the morning prayer of the Jews, thanking God for their exclusion from these lower-level groups.  It just amazes me how very little knowledge these teachers demonstrate concerning the many allusions (here and elsewhere) that Paul makes to the Jewish traditions.  Part of sound grammatical-historical hermeneutics involves understanding as much about what the audience would have understood these things to mean.  Paul was a Jew, talking about the Jewish traditions to Jews who professed faith in Christ, using the Greek language to do so.  His comment is a direct reference to what the audience would have prayed or overheard being prayed on a daily basis.

So it just boggles my mind that so many of these types of references are just steamrolled over and these novel interpretations are just put up in their place.  This passage was Paul’s repudiation of the morning prayer, directly countering it.

Now, are those of us who are aware of this said to be unbiblical in our approach because we do consider what the text means in context of the whole epistle, in context of the intended audience, and what they would have understood it to mean? Yet few people make reference to this.