Paula

It’s just like someone (probably one of you here) said once: it’s to the point we will be required to shout “Unclean!” when we are near “Christian” men!

Good picture, Cheryl. The girl doesn’t look too happy either!

It seems that some little boys still think girls have cooties. Only now, you can catch them even by breathing instead of just touching.

Wow.

Believe it or not, an excellent article at wikipedia about Lottie Moon. This lady sounds a lot like her.

Yes, may God “work all things together for good” for this lady. I’m sure He isn’t done with her yet!

And I have to wonder how all those proud men deal with the likes of Lottie Moon who were single missionaries, who also believed in women’s full equality in every sphere of Christian living. I’d like to see them call those who were saved because of her “lost”, and then continue to hypocritically collect mission offerings in her name. I’d like to hear them call her a Jezebel for choosing to “obey God rather than men”. And she is only one of many.

This is exactly why our message must be heard. How many more women have been “led out of the garden” with man and away from God? How many men have been taught to swallow this blasphemy which makes them little gods? How can the Holy Spirit not be grieved and squelched by this pride in the flesh? And how many more women must also face this terrible choice between God and family (“I came not to bring peace but a sword…”), all because of “he will rule over you”?

There can be no “live and let live” or “agree to disagree” when women are belittled, mocked, and often beaten or killed due to the teaching of hierarchy in the community of believers. Light cannot live with darkness; the flesh can only fight against the spirit.

We all need to start putting our money where our mouth is. How long will we just keep silent in the “churches”, in the name of a false and man-centered “peace”?

That’s the goal, to get the “other side” a voice. It’s very much like the evolution issue (sorry Cheryl, but it’s a perfect analogy): one side uses every dirty trick in the book to keep the other silenced, because it fears examination. It knows that if people truly had a choice, and could freely examine both sides, they might “leave the club”.

There is a terrible plague of pride in the churches today, pride of position. And now they are adding pride in the flesh. They so crave hierarchy as to even extend it to the Trinity, thus carving up the One True God for the sole purpose of justifying their own authority.

And a lot of us have tried reasoning with them, their leaders and followers, but to no avail. The solution is to just keep shouting out the truth and try to reach as many as possible.

a parody of male supremacism

You’re all inspiring me…

… to write up a Female Supremacist scripture passage.

It’s not my fault. 😛

Thanks for the plug TS!

A little background: A comp asked, “Why, if in the 1 Cor. passage, head means origin or source, we don’t go on then to read in verse 5: “but every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her ‘origin’ uncovered dishonoureth her ‘origin'”? Or “For this reason a woman ought to have power over her own ‘origin’ because of the angels?”

My rebuttal went something like this: Okay, let’s try it your way. “Why, if in the 1 Cor. passage, head means BOSS, we don’t go on then to read in verse 5: “but every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her ‘BOSS’ uncovered dishonoureth her ‘BOSS'”? Or “For this reason a woman ought to have power over her own ‘BOSS’ because of the angels?”

In other words, the comp’s charge against egal is one comp is also guilty of. And in either case, the answer is in the fact that Paul is using one of his characteristic plays on words when he introduces the whole question of head coverings with the 1st century Greek metaphor. Then, as in any language, he switches to the literal meaning. He even defines the metaphorical as ‘source’ by talking about who COMES FROM whom. So we have ample contextual warrant right there for the metaphor being ‘source’ and not ‘boss’.

Good one!

But it might feed egos, ya know?

Hmm… definite potential. After all, what self-respecting GOOF wants to be called “warm”? 😛

And for those who may not be comfortable with the PMS double-entendré…

How about GOOF?

(God Ordained us Over Females)

Just trying to brighten your day, sis. 😉

I also keep getting that familiar “nudge” to do some kind of chart or pictogram of the whole mess, but it hasn’t jelled yet.

Glad to be of service, TS. 🙂

Trust me, ladies, I could think of some better and more accurate acronyms. 😉 Just trying to keep it G-rated.

Now back to Chris’s Chiasmic Chaos:

A (9-10) Christian “women” (plural)
B (11-12) “a woman” (singular indefinite noun) –it means any Christian woman.
C (13) “Eve” (generic / representative woman)
C’ (14) “the woman” (generic / representative woman)
B’ (15a) “she” has the antecedent “a woman”
A’ (15b) “they” has the antecedent “women,” Christian women in context

But if there is any actual chiasm, it is this:

A (8) How men must pray and behave
A’ (9-10) How women must pray and dress

He is force-fitting his interpretations into the text in order to construct a chiasm where there is none. In other words, his chiasm depends completely on interpretation, whereas a real chiasm is in the very structure of the words. It also would have at its center a point being built up to, the main point being argued. Yet he and many others make the end (his A’) another central point. While it’s true that chiasms can overlap, it’s also true that one can make a tangled mess out of a text in an effort to see chiasms where they aren’t.

Oh, sorry… it stands for

Patriarchy / Male Supremacism

“Only this, and nothing more.” 😛

Ya mean like…

PMS — “I’m a-HEAD of you. The Bible says so.”
EGAL — “What happened to ‘the first will be last’?”
PMS — “That doesn’t apply between men and women.”
EGAL — “Why not? Where’s the fine print?”
PMS — “Because I’m a-HEAD of you. The Bible says so.”
EGAL — “You’re changing the meaning of “a head” to “ahead”.
PMS — “You just have a dastardly plot to bow to culture.”
EGAL — “Culture has always been male supremacist.”
PMS — “See? It’s God’s ordained order.”

ad infinitum, ad nauseum

I knew as soon as he got here that we were dealing with a closed mind and a stony heart. Neo-chris and his own back-slapping buddies have no intention of conversing with any egal in a civilized manner, because they love preeminence, and like the Pharisees they will do anything to keep it. To call someone lost over this shows complete ignorance of the gospel, which is all about Jesus and not them.

I think the “churches” at large have long forgotten the gospel. They have become clubs centered around personalities and programs, whose leaders drill their own personal convictions into them as if they were divine revelation. It is the pride of man and hatred of dissenters which has eaten away at the fiber of the Body until it is now but a skeleton, dead on its feet.

I have long said that the best way to discover a person’s character is to see how they react to being disagreed with, and many big names in religion have shown their contempt for all who do so. Their followers have adopted the same character, slandering and gossiping as if Jesus never said “do to others what you want them to do to you” or “you will be judged with the measure you use for others”. I can’t imagine how the love of Christ lives in such hearts. I wonder what “gospel” they believed?

TS,

While it is common knowledge that Hebrew poetry uses repetition, the parallels are within a few lines– certainly not between entire chapters (even considering that the chapter divisions came much later, the point is that what we call ch. 1 is not a parallel of ch. 2, not even structurally).

And above all, the method of expression is still not the genre. Facts in sequence are being conveyed; that they are done so with style does not make them allegories. It would be like the difference between “Both good and bad things were happening” and “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Genesis 1 is expressing, one way or another, a sequence of events, and Genesis 2, while not violating the sequence, pauses to give additional details of some events.

So regardless of terminology or style, the fact remains that the creation account is not a made-up story, parable, allegory, or vision, but history. No one in the NT, including Jesus, gave any hint that Gen. 1 and 2 was not a historical record. Even the 10 Commandments refer to it as the basis for the Sabbath, which would be quite meaningless had it been allegorical. And of course with Jesus being the “last Adam”, and sin coming through Adam alone, it all evaporates into meaninglessness if Adam is a mere allegory. And if Adam is historical, then so is creation week; they are both found in the same passage.

That’s my whole point in all this: both Adam and creation week are in the same passages of scripture, so if one is allegory then so is the other. No one has ever come up with an explanation as to how only some parts of the account are fiction and some are history.

You know, Cheryl, I only did all that to be popular. 😛

But really, it would be enough to identify “Chris” through the fallacies; he even uses identical phrases to those he used here. And as you observed, he’s still stuck in 1st gear, repeatedly asserting his conclusions as proofs. Starting a blog just because we wouldn’t be fooled by his bluster is like a spoiled brat who destroys someone’s property out of the frustration of being beaten in a fight.

And we still must ask, as always: what kind of Christian clings jealously to the right to control others? Even if there had been a Biblical mandate for such a thing, and men only accepted it as a burden and not an issue of pride, then they would not react to the threat of losing it with such hatred and bullying. If their alleged preeminent position were a humble and serving one, why would they lash out at those who would refuse to swallow the lie that it belonged exclusively to them?

The proof is in the “fruit”, and this male supremacist spirit is rotten to the core. It is not of God.

Martin,

The Greek word for appoint or ordain is kathistemi. It is used in ch. 1 vs. 5. In ch. 2 vs. 3 is the phrase katastemati hieroprepeis which means to be have in a manner in keeping with a sacred appointment. It is typically translated as something like “to be reverent in the way they live” (TNIV).

This is per footnote 1 for Titus 2 on Nyland’s Source NT. The Amplified Bible reads, “Bid the older women similarly to be reverent and devout in their deportment as becomes those engaged in sacred service”.

TS,

There are many places to study terms of literature, such as this one. But I think the issues you brought up really have to do with genre, which is the type of literature, as opposed to whatever methods of expressions may be used within that genre.

You mentioned wisdom literature, which the Proverbs are a prime example of. They are listed as proverbs, written in a somewhat poetic style. Psalms of course are poetry. The books of Kings are history. These are various genre of literature.

The question of women in ministry really isn’t as much a question of genre or expression as it is of grammar and syntax. Both sides agree that Paul’s letters are non-fiction, largely non-poetic, and instructional. The arguments come over the meanings of words, the structure of sentences, and the consideration of context to ascertain meaning.

But the debate over Genesis, specifically creation week, is one of genre. Is it written as typical Hebrew poetry? Does the LXX, which long predates our earliest Hebrew text, convey creation week as poetry or moral lessons? The genre of Genesis is clearly written as prose, as fact, and not as wisdom literature or parable. That’s been the issue in this particular thread.

Don’t know if that helps, but I tried. 🙂

it would help if you would answer your own when you asked them. so I can see what kind of answer you seek.

I have no clue what this means. Are you actually saying I’m supposed to supply the answers to questions I asked YOU? How difficult is the question, “how do YOU decide what goes in the core?”

God exists and reveals God in the Bible

How do you know? What is there in the text that you recognize as fact, as opposed to allegories or moral tales?

I try my best to understand any book in context as an original reader would have, knowing I may have many challenges to doing so in some cases. If an original reader would have seen something as literal, then that is a big clue I should also, but things are also often described in the Bible by appearances, not actual reality.

Yet you presume that in the case of the Bible, “an original reader” was primitive and incapable of understanding certain things, or that they always wrote in allegory if they wrote of things you think were beyond them. This is hardly an established fact, and it still does not deal with genre. The text determines genre, not preconceived notions about the people reading it. And why would Jesus, so many centuries later, refer to Genesis in factual terms? Were the people of His day also too primitive, and didn’t Jesus know fact from allegory? Did Paul not really believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and if so, why would this allegory prove anything about Jesus the Last Adam? Is Jesus the last allegory?

And it still remains that even allegories point to literal facts. When John was given the Revelation he wrote in factual terms what he observed. The images he described represented realities: governments, people, judgments. These are not moral stories for primitives. Neither is Genesis; it is fact, written clearly, and I would challenge you to imagine how a factual account would have been written.

The church got this wrong with Galileo.

Oh please! Didn’t you read my blog on The Galileo Syndrome? It was SCIENCE that “got it wrong”; it was a clash between THE PREVAILING SCIENTIFIC VIEW, which the church adopted (sound familiar?), and OBSERVATION. You really need to study this and learn the real issues. Besides, this hardly amounts to justification for throwing out the scriptures as a hopeless mishmash of stories for primitives.

So “the earth cannot be moved” is not literal, even tho it appears to us as not moving

It’s an expression, one we still use today. Sunrise, sunset, etc. Are we thus primitive? More importantly, we are STILL REFERRING TO LITERAL FACTS, not moral tales for primitives.

Don, your mixing apples and oranges here. You don’t seem to know where expression leaves off and the facts they point to begin. And you STILL have not explained how YOU, not someone else, decide what is truth and what is merely a story.

Sorry Cheryl, I’m done. This is still going nowhere.

Don,

The question still is: HOW do you decide what goes in the core? HOW do you decide whether something is factual, allegorical, poetic, etc.? What is it in Heb. 6 that tells you “this is factual” and not allegorical?

Ah yes… “I accept with great humility this heavy burden God has placed upon me, but WOE to any fool who tries to lift it!”

It’s their reaction to losing it that tells all.

And ya know, if you nail long enough, the jello will eventually run out.

Glad to help, TS. 🙂

And if they did say this passage has to be subordinated to another in a separate letter, I’d ask them what happened to “plain reading” and then accuse them of theological “gymnastics” since that’s what they say to us when we bring other scriptures to bear.

They can only keep their preeminence by making mincemeat of scripture, taking this part but not that part, plain reading here but “exposition” there. Yet they never deal with the real question: why would any real Christian even want to have first place?

Martin,

As a general rule, if one male is or can be in a group, the male form of a word is used. So if the female form is used, then no males are in the group. Only if both males and females are specified can we know whether females are excluded.

So it is context that determines who is being addressed, and in the context of Titus, we see Paul using terms both ways: generically and specifically. But there are additional indicators in Titus that Paul refers to female elders and not merely elderly women.

1– There is a phrase in ch. 2 that means “in keeping with their appointment” regarding female elders. What appointment? In this very short letter we only know of the one mentioned in ch. 1, the elders Titus was to appoint. Since age cannot be appointed, this must refer to spiritual elders. We should also note that the word translated “young” can also mean “new”, that is, new believers.

2– If Paul is saying that female elders can only teach women, then he must also be saying that male elders can only teach men. Yet who would believe that? The male supremacists would have a dilemma on their hands since they presume men can teach anyone but women can only teach women and children– ironically, the most easily deceived according to them. So if it cannot be denied that men can teach women, then it also cannot be denied that women can teach men. If Titus is cited as proof that women can only teach women then the corresponding restriction on men only teaching men must go with it.

So there is no consistent and uncontradictory way for male supremacists to argue that the male form must exclude females.

Don,

Cheryl has been more than patient with you on this. Most bloggers would have closed comments by now because you keep the merry-go-round going even after quite a bit of time has passed since the last post. But for her sake I will make this one last comment.

Your argument appears to be this: smart, godly people reject a literal Genesis, so that view must be valid. But truth and understanding are not determined by majority vote. Even in science, if we stick to the scientific method (observation), one’s credentials are irrelevant. Of course we recognize those who have studied various issues and respect their knowledge, but when observed scientific facts (as opposed to theory and presupposition) differ from the majority view of scientists, the facts must rule. I think I’ve mentioned before about the lowly intern that defied all the experts and insisted he had proof that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria. They called him names, they reminded him of his “place”, but the facts were undeniable. Now it is “common knowledge”. The experts, the whole world full of them, were wrong.

Likewise, not all theologians agree on the first two chapters of Genesis. There are smart, godly people on both sides. But it doesn’t take a ThD to read, or to comprehend, or to think. Experts are needed to determine the words, to write dictionaries, to offer insights into the culture, etc. But even among themselves they argue vehemently over meaning and interpretation. (And I should add that this very determination of who is an expert is itself utterly dependent upon the schema of absolutes.)

Does this mean, then, that every view is equally valid to every other view? If so, then we must accept as valid the views of Unitarians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists, and every other view that has come down the pike. They all have what they consider airtight, indisputable backing for their interpretations.

But the question for you personally, Don, is this: By what criteria do you reject the interpretations of any of those groups? If you can’t rule them out, does that mean you have to accept them as possibly valid? Should they not, as you do to Cheryl, demand that you say you allow their views as possible? Where does it stop?

This is no mere academic exercise either, for it impinges upon the very gospel itself. Saving faith is more than “I think so” or “It’s probably true”. Saving faith requires conviction, that is, accepting Jesus and ONLY Jesus as the ONLY Way, Truth, and Life. Anyone who cannot say this with absolute conviction, who allows that they may be wrong, is in all likelihood not saved. But again the question comes to you: By what criteria do you reject all other views of salvation?

I’m not questioning your salvation. I’m only trying to get you to define the standard by which you determine truth from error, saved from lost. You may say that this very question is “too Greek” and that it isn’t part of your schema, but to this point you have not offered an explanation of your own schema. And when you demand that we say your schema is possible, you are demanding that we abandon our entire epistemology! If, as the Zen Buddhists say, “nothing is knowable”, how do you expect us to respond with anything but “that’s self-contradictory nonsense”? In other words, you are demanding that we discard our epistemology and only accept yours– which is intolerant of our view.

You still haven’t even begun to explain how you tell fact from fiction or history from allegory. And you would have to explain it in a schema we can fathom; othewise you still demand that we allow your relativity schema, which effectively discards ours. That is, it is impossible for us to accept your schema without denying our own.

My 2¢–

A guardian/overseer was to protect the less spiritually mature from false teachings. But we really don’t know the function of servants (diakonos, a term Paul used for himself and his co-workers, including women). Note a parallel in the letter to Titus where Paul uses the term “elders”; it is another instance where both males and females are specified. Yet even there, there is also an over-arching set of qualities for both groups.

From the little we have to go on we can only speculate as to why male and female servants/elders are addressed separately. It may be in the nature of the service, and in social constraints.

Another consideration is the principle that these are not lists of exclusions but character traits required of these people. Perhaps in mentioning both male and female Paul is making it clear that women are not to be less qualified, or given any kind of lesser rank due to less demanding qualities.

And of course, in all of this, not even males are ever given rule over anyone. That anyone should seek to prevent women from a low position of servitude speaks volumes about the real agenda of male supremacism, and of their failure to grasp the nature of the Body.