Don Johnson

To be fair, recall Joseph’s second dream, where the sun and moon bow down to his sheaf, and the interpretation is that his father and mother will bow down to Joseph. So it is not totally made up, the mapping of husband/father to sun and wife/mother to moon. However, almost everyone would let this allegoricsl dream be just that, a dream with a given specific interpretation.

I agree on the arrogant aspect, but it also makes me realize that I too have done this and can do it again. In my techie job, I have once been chided by a friend pointing out I was trying to “prove something by emphatic assertion”. When I teach in a church setting I try NOT to do this.

As my name is Don, my gender has even been questioned on a forum by the male hierarchalists wondering if I was really “Dawn” in disquise. Given the context, I took it an a badge of honor.

At the last CBMW conference (in Feb 2007) they declared that (at least to them anyway) they had “won” the exegetical debates on the “woman verses”. Given this mindset, it does seem doubtful that they would listen to anyone claiming contrary, regardless of their gender.

Cheryl,

You have an admirable goal in wanting to dialog with a male hierarchalist, I agree it would be very consciousness raising for one of them to repudiate their previous ideas. FWIIW, I think at least one of their original people has asked to be taken off their list.

I also study their works, I find I can only take it in small doses, but I do study it. Iron sharpens iron. They do point out some egalitarian arguments that are lacking. I also want to find a way to respond to them if ever requested.

Here is a direct word God gave me for myself, “Love is more important than being right.” I have a temptation to want to win, to win even more than being loving, and God confronted me about this. Being a man, I can testify there is a hormone surge when one wins that is thrilling but dangerous. It is so very tempting to “slice and dice” and feed my flesh, but that is not the way of the Lord. One of the things I am learning from your CD set is how to better “disagree in love”.

Cheryl,
I think you are “inhistime” on this board, is this true?

FWIIW, I have participated on some Internet forums, but it all can seem very chaotic to me as so many people are coming from so many different places (worldviews). It is also very easy to be misunderstood and misunderstand, think you are getting somewhere and finding out you are not, getting frustrated, etc.

It seems very difficult for this method to actually result in any major paradigm shift. From what I have seen, it is each person explaining why they believe as they do; this is not necessarily bad, but is also not very fruitful if one’s goal IS a paradigm shift.

My current view is that Internet forums are fine if one is trying to give a small insight or “tweak” as long as it does not cross the line of whatever that person considers a fundamental belief.

There are just some teachings that take some time to explain.

One point is that is seems MacArthur and CBMW do not even agree on some of the details of their respective interpretations, MacArthur seems more hierarchical. And of course there are others that go even further that way than MacArthur. However, notice what these varying interpretations do to the idea that the Bible is very clear in all that it teaches, namely, it denies it.

This is one of the points the gender hierarchicalists MUST make, that theirs is the ONLY possible correct interpretation and that this is so because it is clear. That it is NOT abundantly clear is very obvious to anyone who has studied both sides on these verses. Note that my claim does not mean there is not a preferred interpretation, my claim is that preferred interpretation would be the egalitarian one; just that faithful believers can differ on their understanding of some verses, based on their worldview coming into the verses and based on the translation(s) they use.

Gen 1:26 shows a few things:
1) That God can express the Godhead as a plurality (us).
2) That both male and female humans are (equally) in the image of God, this is regardless of whether they are believers or not.

As Del Birkey says, “Patriarchy happens.” When men rule over women, then men rule over other men. This is the way of the world and allows giant organizations to be formed. But the body of Christ is not to be like that, the hierarchy is flat.

I agree with you about not caring to see the use the term feminist or even Biblical feminist to describe my beliefs, I refer to myself as a Biblical egalitarian. I see it as a more accurate short term. I can also refer to myself as someone who believes in gender complementarity without hierarchy.

I find it incredible that some believers believe that God’s truth comes only thru a male, the Bible itself shows this to be incorrect and this is without any “sophisticated” interpretation.

In ANY group with an agenda, there is always the temptation to try to “purify” the agenda and exclude “compromisers”, with egalitarians this results in more equality, but with gender hierarchy people, it results in more hierarchy.

I personally find that you have given some arguments that I have not seen before and that I have learned from you. I thank you for that, keep up the good work.

In my understanding, there MAY be some contexts where short hair would be a sin for a woman; this would be where short hair is a coded symbol for wantonness in a culture. In Corinth, some of the Greek temple prostitutes cut their hair to indicate that they would do anything and some of the high status Roman women also did this as a kind of hooker chic. This is obviously inappropriate for a Christian. But notice it is all involved in the motivation for doing it.

But there are lots of other reasons to have short hair that do not involve things like the above. As you mentioned, the Nazirite vows, where the hair indicated the time one was under the vow; it was cut at the start of the vow and at the end, the hair was then offered to God. If the person had to violate the vow, they then needed to restart the process, this is apparently what happened to Paul.

I do not respect the TEACHINGs I have heard from him, admittedly a small number; this is different from not respecting him as a person made in the image of God and as a believer. Paul respected Peter but still did not agree with him when Peter was wrong.

The strange thing about this type of teaching is that the people most affected are disqualified by the teaching from confronting him, it is a Catch 22. This is a dangerous aspect of this teaching, one should instead desire to hear from God from anyone. The very people who would be most likely to correct him are disqualified from doing so.

Macarthur’s quotes are simply incredible and really demonstrate how he does not handle the word of God correctly. I have seen him do this with Genesis 1 where he claimed create and form mean the same thing and marriage and divorce also where he uses NO 1st century context, so I am totally unimpressed.

Debroah Gill has a DVD on Spiritual Gifts, which I found very insightful.

On “God is a God of authority. The Son and Holy Spirit are under the authority of the Father, and the result of being under that authority is that they always do the Father’s will. The reason this fact doesn’t offend the Son and Holy Spirit is because God is an infinite Fountain of goodness who uses authority for the ultimate good.”

It is true that all authority flows from God. It is true that the Word/Son became a person and was subordinate to God the Father while on earth. Howevver to read that back into the eternal relations in the Godhead is “making God in our image” something we are not to do as it is idolatrous. (P.S. We are are tempted to do this and so is something every believer should watch out for.)

The basic insight is that the Godhead is far beyond our understanding, so the Bible uses metaphors and similes so that we can have a glimpse of what is going on, else we would be totally baffled.

Look at the story near the Oaks of Mamre in Gen 18. This is an example of God talking to God. YHVH says “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?…” Does this SOUND like a command to functional subordinates or a discussion among equals?

An often missed metaphor for the Godhead is in the Patriarchs. Joseph is seen as a type of Jesus, rightly so. Much is made of Jacob’s sons bowing down to him and the fact that ALL of them needed to do it, when Benjamin is missing, Joseph asks for him to come. Benjamin then does this and many teachers just do not discuss the remainder of the 2nd dream, namely that Joseph’s mother and father ALSO will bow down to him.

But if Joseph is a type of the Son, then Jacob can be seen as a type of the Father in this part of the story. In other words, in this metaphor, the types demonstrate mutual submission in order for us to get a glimpse of what the Godhead is like.

My understanding on naming is that the verse should use the actual word “name” or in Hebrew shem. “Woman” is not a name, it is a recognition that a person is in a particular class, an example of “women”. When a female baby is born and the Doctor says “Its a girl!” does anyone really think the Doctor is NAMING the baby?

This is seen even clearer in the Hebrew, the male is ish and the female is ishah. The “ah” suffix indicates the female, like in Sarah. So the male is saying the female is like him, only female, with his declaration. This continues with bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, which indicates being in the same family.

It is true that shem/name is used in Gen 3 with Eve, but where was this authorized by God? In fact there are at least 2 points to make about this. Naming is an act of authority and this is an indication that “he will rule over you” is coming to pass. Also, as in Adam the male we all die, he could be called the “father of the dieing”. This gives us a BIG hint that we need to look further in Gen 4-5 about what Eve is like and what Adam is like. Why does Gen 3:15 mention the seed of the woman? Why not seed of the man since they would be the same offspring physically? I believe it is becuase more is being hinted at, that one should look for satan’s crusher to be the offspring of Eve spiritually.

P.S. The CBE conferecne was great.

Very good analysis, but I think it can be made to go a little further.

“the law says” is found 3 places in the NT, the word “says” is a clue that what MAY be being discussed is the so-called Oral Law of the Pharisees (later written down in the Mishnah), which includes the Written Law (what we call the OT), which in turn includes the Law of Moses (what we call the Pentateuch).
The point is that the “the law says” in ALL 3 cases in the NT can mean Paul is referring to the Oral Law, that is, to followers of rabbinic tradtion. Not all of their traditions negated the Written Law, just some of them. We do know that the Mishnah says women should be silent.

We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that “works of the law” refers to the boundary markers that identify Jews from gentiles.

I see CBMW as being very pragmatic, what they want is no women teachers of men, so the lesser things they can give on, they want to spread their male preference bias as far as they can. But their position is self-repudiating. They want to claim that Scripture is very clear and that it prohibits women from teaching men in church. But then they do not use that same principle of clarity elsewhere. It is like they force fit puzzle pieces together and get a jumble.

The truth is that not all Scripture IS clear to us, almost 2000 years later. However, they do not want to admit this, because then the “plain reading” argument goes out the window and they know this is one of their strongest cards.

The headcovering verses can be puzzling to us because covering one’s head today does not mean what it meant back then, and shaving one’s head does not mean the same thing either.

Being a Biblical Egalitarian, I of course see that all issues of justice are related, in church, home and society. However, just as I grew in my understanding from where I started, I realize that God gives the same grace to others. I also am grateful that God did not show me all my sins at once, but gave me pieces to digest (as God still does for me).

So I think it is wise to let people learn from whatever their current focus question is. Even just the Women in Ministry area takes some time to digest, as you well know.

I think you need to decide what the focus of your website will be. This does not mean it cannot expand later, but once it expands it is hard to contract it. I do believe that the restoration of women in ministry is something God is doing, this means we are getting closer to the church in the NT.

One concern is that as you expand it, the message can become more diffused. The more focused you remain, the more others can accept your specific insights into their own situation. That is, some ministry groups recognize that to better get their message out, they will NOT discuss other things, simply because there is such a wide variety in the body of Christ and they see the other things as less critical.

Any reference to law in the NT may mean
1. civil law
2. The Torah of Moses, the Pentateuch
3. The Tanakh, what we call the OT.
4. The Oral Law of the Pharisees.

Some do not know all of these options. Then we need to try to figure out when one is the best fit in context. As we know from the gospels, Jesus had some big problems with some aspects of the Oral law, when it negated the Written law.

We need to strive to do the same, not all tradition is wrong, but tradition that negates Scripture is wrong.

I would agree that the ref. back to earlier in the letter is more likely. One can certainly be a faithful interpreter and believe only that interpretation.

I only pointed out the human messenger idea as a possibility, one that also fits the context.

My take is that I like to cover the bases when something is even potentially ambiguous to us.

That main point is that a woman has authority concerning her physical head. I find it interesting that Paul gives freedom here to a woman that he does NOT give to a man, in 1st century cultural context. Some people read the Bible as limiting women, but here is a case where men are limited. This is perhaps another reason that male-preference hierarchicalists make a hash of these verses.

I agree with you. Here is my understanding.

1. God is so far beyond us that we cannot comprehend. We are finite and God is not finite. In order to allow us to even begin to understand aspects of God, God will use similes and metaphors, else we would be mostly clueless about God.
2. As far as I can figure out, the only description of God that may not be a simile or metaphor is that God is “Holy, Holy, Holy”.
3. The OT has some references to God as “our Father”. Jesus went even further with “my Father” and “abba”.
4. The OT also says that God has breasts and a womb, but I cannot find where God is said to have male genitals.
5. My conclusion is that God incorporates aspects of both genders. That is, God is not gendered, God created gender and one reason to do so was to show us aspects of God.

I agree that what you wrote is one possibility, it is a refence back to earlier in the letter.

There is another possibility. The Greek angelos means messenger. A ref. to angelos might be to one of God’s messengers, typically called angels in English, or to a human messenger. Since the context is so limited, I think it is possible that a human messenger is meant. The people at Corinth would have known, as they simply knew more than we do about their immediate context. But for us it is slightly ambiguous.

If it DID mean human messenger, then there is a context that fits very well and that is where the government sent out people to check up on meetings, as any meeting could be the prelude to a conspiracy to attack the government. So to nip things in the bud, they send out people who were called messengers. Such would be a unfamiliar face in the home church.

As a head covering was done in public to indicate one was married, what do you do in the semi-public house church meeting? If everyone knows you are married, there is no confusion and no impropriety in removing one’s head covering. However, if there was a stranger there, esp. one that seemed to be checking up on things, one would want there to no hint of impropriety. In this case, a woman chould choose to keep her head covered. If someone made her uncomfortable, she could cover up.

It is cultural in any case, but it does indicate to me that social symbols (e.g., of marriage, like a wedding ring) can be appropriate for believers to weak today (in case someone does a super strict reading of some other verses about jewelry).

FWIIW, this is my (admitedly limited) way that Greek works. Male terminology sometimes includes females, like 1950’s English. The plural male forms in Greek (and Hebrew) can include females. (It can also be all male, but is a judgement call.) As the group gets larger, one should assume females are included unless there is a reason to think it is all male, for example, the Twelve apostles of Jesus.

This is one reason we are called “brothers” in Christ, what it really means in current English is “brothers or sisters” in Christ and is the way some current translations are translating it. This is one of the fundamental flaws of the thinking of those in CBMW, they simply do not know some basic Greek, because they wear “blue-colored glasses” they insist that some male Greek terminology be translated to EXCLUDE women, but this is simply not how Greek works in some cases.

Here is how I see CBMW, a lot of people who have read the Bible in a certain way and think that is the only way to read it. As they realize they are losing, they get more shrill, as the alternative is to admit they made a fundamental mistake. But these are leaders and to admit such would mean a huge loss of acceptance by their hearers, so they are stuck. They do not even need to watch your DVD, it just goes in the trash as it is not even possible in their worldview that they MIGHT be wrong.

For me, I am always concerned that I might be wrong. I do not want to be and I try not to be, but I have been changed enough times by Christ to know that where I am right now still needs more changing.

P.S. I just ordered your DVD set, I am a member of CBE and going to their convention in August.

I agree that non-polygamy is a part of the specification for an elder. In my understanding, Jesus clarified (correctly interpreted Torah) that marriage was designed for one man and one woman.

The idea of being a faithful spouse means more than just not committing adultery, it means not being flirtatious, etc. Like what the country song means by “one-woman man”.

I do not think I am disagreeing with anything you wrote, just clarifying my understanding.

I have read that the term “one-woman man” (in Greek) has been found on tombstones in Ephesus referring to BOTH the husband and wife, in which case it should be translated as “faithful spouse” as the term was understood symmetrically.

See Nyland’s The Source NT, for example.