Grant

KW,

I realy have no idea what to make of everything you wrote. There are moments of clarity and wonderful confessions like when you mention your testimony of having ignored God and Jesus grabbing hold of you, but then most of what you write seems angry and parts of it incomprehensible. I don’t want to be harsh on you, I don’t know you and I am sure you are a wonderful woman, it also seems like you are passionate about God. However please allow me this word of advice.

It seems like your vision of true Christianity is so small that it is almost cultish. This was my fear with your objections to complementarianism as Satanic. Although I am sure that there are some complementarians who are influenced by the evil one, most that I know are very Godly men who are trying to be faithful to Scripture just as you are.

I saw this fear confirmed in the parts of your last two messages I could understand. You railed against war for a while, and while I believe it’s completely legitimate for Christians to object to war if you are going to argue that Christians who support something like just-war theory (look it up on Wikipedia if you aren’t familiar) are not actually Christian than you just made massive chunks of historical Christianity (including St. Augustine!) non Christian.

You also speak out against denominations, fair I guess because Paul does this as well. But Paul also writes in 1 Corinthians 11:19 “There must be factions among you so that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.”

I wonder KW who the “true Christians” are to you. From reading your posts I couldn’t help but wonder if you are the only person in the world who meets your qualifications for being someone who isn’t offensive to God and can stand before Him. Your zeal is admirable, but you seem zealous for things that the Bible is not zealous for. Jesus certainly speaks about our not taking oaths, but the rest of the New Testament seems far more concerned about making sure that we understand that He is God more than it does that we not take oaths.

There’s lots of bad theology out there, but having bad theology doesn’t make one an enemy of God. There is bad theology and there is heresy and apostasism, you seem to roll them together. This is infinitely dangerous as it gives the Church no room to discern where there is room to disagree on an issue and where the Church should take her stand.

Forgive me for when I used Orthodox instead of orthodox, not referencing the Orthodox Church ever but orthodoxy

All right I just stumbled across this blog by googling women together for the Gospel and am glad I found it. I am confessedly someone who greatly admires the pastors present at T4G and has benefited immensely from their preaching.

I was googling women and T4G together because I had read a reference to 7,000 men being at T4G and was trying to figure out if women were not invited, not there, or if that comment wasn’t truly representative of the conference. I hope the conference was open to women, it would be a true embarassment if it were not.

All that said I wanted to interject perhaps a bit of a moderate note here. Again I am someone who has benefited greatly from the preaching of men like Ligon Duncan. I am also someone who is not completely sold on Complementarianism yet and fully believes that there are many wonderfully Orthodox egalitarian disciples of Christ out there.

Because of that background it both upsets me when Complementarianism is too rabid AND when people writing against Complementarians are too rabid (Complementarian Churches= Satan’s Paradise? Really? Come on now.) Ligon Duncan is a Godly man who is I would agree overly committed to his complementarian theology. He is also a brilliant Pastor and Theologian who should not be dismissed merely because he holds to firmly to a theological issue that should not be front and center in our faith and orthodoxy.

It seems to me like many of the commenters on this blog who are criticizing the Complementarians at T4G for making the Church/Gospel closeminded and cult like are doing the exact same thing by completely writing off these Complementarian yet Orthodox theologians. Just as I think it’s a travesty that Ligon Duncan would not affirm an orthodox egalitarian as having a place in the Church I think it’s a travesty that many of the previous commenters seem to not want to affirm an orthodox complementarian as having a place in the Church. You are doing the very thing you are critical of!

One final note for the (un)adjusted Gospel theme. It’s my understanding that Complementarianism is not a building block of the (un)adjusted Gospel. It is elevated in the theology of men like Ligon Duncan and the rest of T4G but I think that they would be willing to affirm that this is more as a response to current debates than it is a clear complementarianism in the Gospels.

These men at T4G are more concerned about the adjusted Gospels of prosperity, old school liberalism, universalism etc. They are far more concerned about preserving the two natures of Christ, Biblical innerancy, the sinfulness of humanity, and the mediatorial nature of Christ than they are about preserving complementarianism. Although again they unfortunately group complementarianism in with the rest it is subordinate to the other doctrines in importance and focus.

Hope this made some sense. I hate to see Godly orthodox egalitarians slandered and I equally hate to see Godly orthodox complementarians slandered. Let us not fall into either trap