Jeremiah

Dear all,

I am from Singapore, i am a male and i serve in a local church here. I would like to share my point of view having studied what everyone said here and what i’ve garnered in my learning. In love and gentleness, i would like to say that i am for both men ministry and women ministry. however, i would also like to share that God created man and woman separately, differently for a reason. i am for Federal Headship not because i am like what most people here say “alpha male theorist” but rather, i would like to take after what God said in the bible paraphrased “the woman ate the apple, but sin entered the world through the man.” how is it so? if both roles are the same, then eve could’ve have taken the rap… but why “sin through adam” then to us? obviously, man – represented his people, and in this case eve. Adam represented the entire world and eve along with it. It was God who gave Adam the position to name all animals ahead of woman being created.

Over time, as generations degrade and degrade on further… family integrity social fabrics are torn as families no longer are Father, Mother and children but rather ‘man-man & children’, ‘woman-woman and children’ or simply ‘woman-children’ or ‘man-children’. These children grow up without vital perceptions of family intact or having their spiritual, emotional, physical and social side nourished. They grow up impaired and join with other impaired children building upon errors of errors to form our society today… Today, man are weak, wimpy, chauvinistic and dominating for the wrong reasons. I, in church am doing my best to portray manhood in its biblical manner… while working along with woman to win as many souls as we can for Christ. But when man fail to do their role, God will arise other beings to replace it, even Donkeys!

Both man and woman are responsible for their own walk with God. Of course men do not open door for women! The only person who opens door is God and the Son Himself and the Holy Spirit. But we didnt design the family system, it was God. Our ‘singlehood’ is in preparation of our ‘familyhood’. In my church, and majority in asia, majority churches have more woman strongheads and leaders than man… it is very worrying because this spills over to life examples and their life outside church.

In Love of Christ and His ever Glorious Church
Jeremiah (Acts 20:24)

What is baffling to me, having read John Murray’s book The Imputation of Adam’s Sin, is how federal headship has stopped being a theory for how sin passes from one generation to another after Adam and Eve sinned (and correspodingly why Christ’s birth is unique) to a theology addressed with hiearchies in earthly relationships. Federal headship simply means that Adam as the first man made a decision that effected and affected the future of humanity. Since his wife sinned with him arguing that only Adam’s sin is imputed to future generations is splitting hairs. Even Murray assumed that a federal or representative imputation still worked through natural imputation. In other words, even if Adam’s status as representative meant his sin was imputed to future generations he still had to have children with Eve before that was going to happen.

The usual explanation for the woman’s usurping role is in “because you have listened to your wife”. I find this argument dubious simply because the emphasis is not on Eve usurping her role but Adam heeding the voice of his wife rather than God’s warning. Both Adam and Eve attempt to pin the blame for their actions on another yet both are finally held responsible for their disobedience in eating the fruit. A lot of speculation about precisely how the man or woman sinned that expounds on gender roles seems wasteful to me because it finally is locating sin in some place other than ignoring God’s warning about eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Now I have heard men try to argue that the sin nature is not passed through the woman and in response to that I proposed the following scenario: human cloning is successfully obtained and a clone of a woman is developed who then undergoes a sex change. Does this man then have grounds to claim he was born without a sin nature? Would anyone buy that or would that seem like special pleading? Since Luke tells us Jesus was born of a virgin hamartology was concerned with explaining how and why it was necessary beyond the mystery of the incarnation (i.e. why for our sake it was necessary).

I think federal headship is being conscripted by complementarians to solve a social and political problem the doctrine was never even designed to address. If the doctrine helps you understand why salvation is through Christ alone then you’re understanding the doctrine properly. If you employ the doctrine to establish a social or political agenda in the here and now then it smells like a bad kind of special pleading.

Sorry if this is too long but the application of imputation in theology has been a hobby of mine and I have been disappointed by how doctrines related to it have been appropriated to deal with things it wasn’t designed to deal with.