TL
Active 2007–2012
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adorable! I would have been laughing in the other stall. 🙂 And I would’ve come out to congratulate the woman on the child’s grasp of English. hehe
How sad that the pastor was stuck in the place of rejecting women’s contributions. You are quite correct that it is a great loss for the church.
BTW my pastor is allowing me to speak in a Wednesday evening special service…. as well as two other women on other evenings. Please pray that God will greatly use us all.
Thanks Sheryl. I liked how he presented it.
A book a month? Wow! Makes me wonder about the quality of the content.
And yes, I agree, he and Noel need everyone’s prayers.
Amazing. Sounds like the KKK, the Taliban, etc. Of course one would not want a slave to participate in having an opinion of whether he should be freed or not. That is the picture the world will see.
Perhaps, there were more women than men in the congregation and the men who wanted to keep their superior position figured they could keep their privileges best by not allowing those women to speak and by exercising coercion on their fellow men. The sad thing is that they don’t seem to realize that their arrogance is obvious to many.
I can still hear the tone of withheld amazement in Piper’s voice when some years ago John Piper talked about a conversation he had with God when he first realized that his wife was equal to him. My first response was that I wondered what his marriage was like before he realized that women were equal to men. My second thought was I wondered where this would lead John in the future. One thing I’ve always appreciated about Piper is that he has a sincere passion. Now I wonder with some amazement myself, if this concern with personal pride is a result of that initial insight of woman’s equality with man.
My applause is to Piper for his passionate decision to get things in order in the Lord. I pray that he comes out of it a better person and more in tune with mutuality and unity in his marriage and a new and better vision of the mutuality and unity God means for the body of believers.
” “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity”
I like that quote also. Think Augustine was the originator though.
also my blog for posting about gender issues….
Another excellent post! I appreciated your point about verse 22. I hadn’t noticed that before. Now I will add it to my collection of important info on this topic. God bless you for this observation.
BTW would you please add my other blog to your egal list as I’m doing most of my posting relative to gender issues on it.
http://tiro3.typepad.com/spoudazo_logos_blog/
P.s. Cheryl, can you email me.
sorry to go off topic here.
Our forums at equalitycentral.com/forum need a new host, desperately. And we need someone trustworthy. If anyone can help, we’d really appreciate it.
I don’t feel safe to give out my email publically, but if you log onto the forums and IM any of the moderators, they will be able to respond. Or Cheryl can give you my email.
praying…. please keep us updated.
“(Note: Col 3:18 has an imperative “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.” but if we select from the range of meanings for hupotasso-’connection’ and for anako/”fit”-”connect”, the verse would be rendered “Wives be connected to your husbands as you are connected in the Lord”)”
I like your conclusion, Charis. And if fits quite well with my understanding. But I disagree that it isn’t voluntary. That is the whole point IMO, that it is all voluntary; both to be arranging ourselves under one another, or be connected, and in wives doing so with their husbands in their whole life. Wives should not withhold parts of themselves, unless the husband is abusive and harmful.
Most of these men who view maleness as the preferred of God, do not really understand the whole picture of God using a woman to clothe Himself with perfect human flesh and so walk and talk among us. They think it is simply a matter of necessity and the woman was merely a womb to grow in and breasts to be fed by. They do not fathom the personal relationship between Mary and Christ. They do not see that she had anything else of worth to give.
“This does not mean that men are less co-operative, but some studies have shown that testosterone makes men more hierarchical, and dominating in relationships”
This may explain the tendency of the young. When we are young and hormones are raging we want to follow the hormones. As we mature the pull of the hormones lessens and gives us a chance to think and evaluate.
Many young people like the man in authority and the woman yielding to his big strong shoulders. I have suspected it is because of the sin nature described in Gen. 3:16. The woman has turned to the man in ways that she should be turning to God for. And the man responds to it naturally by trying to be a bit like a god to her which humanly comes out in some form of domination even benignly. It will work for a while for many, until real life sets in.
As a couple matures, the woman will often get tired of being controlled. When that happens either the man matures and relinquishes his control and they continue together to become more like Christ, or the woman knuckles under and lives a restricted and subdued life thinking she has to.
“And of course submission must be “joyful.” It would not be quite as pleasant to live with a woman who is unhappy. The “joyful” submission removes any and all feelings of guilt the man might experience and makes the whole arrangement look legitimate.”
It also puts the burden of being happy on the woman and not the treatment the husband is giving.
“‘But this text definitely shapes that leadership and gives added Biblical guidance for how to work it out. It makes it clear that leadership will not involve selfish unilateral choices. He will always strive for the ideal of agreement.’”
But as you can see, its still all about the man. It’s as if they all have asperger’s disease with it’s associated narcissism.
Isn’t it interesting that in 1 Cor. 7 husband and wife are told they have authority over one another’s bodies. Then in Ephesians 5 all are told that we are to be submissive one to another, before discussing how spouses are to be one one flesh.
There is a dichotomy there you know. 🙂
He got a lot of responses, some good some bad. But the page was down for a couple days, during which most of the responses were removed.
I can hardly wait. 🙂
but I’ll have to since I’m off to a Bible Study….
“Some may say that although the authority appears reciprocal in 1 Cor 7 it really isn’t because of the differences in sex drive. Since the male sex drive is so much greater than that of the female, the authority he wields over her is proportionally greater. Therefore, he can in a sense overrule her authority in relation to intimate relation and there is a hierarchy which needs to be submitted to. What say you to that?”
Doesn’t matter how much of a sex drive he has. The wife still has authority over his body and all it contains! There are no qualifications. And the husband still has authority over the wife’s body and all it contains.
It’s a wonder no one has gotten into the problems of when the wife and husband’s desires are polar opposites.
This does give us pause as to what influences a passion for something, even something good. What constitutes a call for God, is the secondary question.
Not all instances of spousal disagreement necessarily should squelch a passion or calling IMO. However, in the instance of missionary work, which IMO is not a type of spiritual gift but merely one exercise of a spiritual gift, I think a spouse would absolutely need to be in agreement. There are many things we can be called to that we can do without jeopardizing the welfare of our families.
“There is no connection between the Middle voice and an action being undertaken voluntarily. I don’t know where that came from.”
I believe Bristow wrote about it in his book What Paul Really Said About Women. But he also mentioned the passive as being voluntary as well.
“For hupotassoe itself being a military term, it was.”
hupotasso was not a military term exclusive to the military. It was a word that was used in the military like many other, but was not explicitly for such things. I think Vine’s made a mistake in saying that. Arranging oneself under can and does include so many other situations in life. In fact if we would just translate it simply ‘arranging under’ we might escape the many misinterpretations that are going around.
In humility we should all arrange ourselves under one another, honoring God who made us. We should not think of ourselves too highly, but seek to support each other in the things God calls us into, helping each other, carrying each others burdens and seeking to do good for one another…. and so forth.
“regarding church fathers. INdeed they are fallible and got many things wrongs, as we all do now aswell. However they are the closest people we have to the NT times who would best understand language, culture, exegesis than we can ever do this far from Christ- that is why there imput is invaluable. To be accurate historically we need a good understanding of history. They give us insight into early theological crisis, early ministry formation, interpretation of scripture, language difficulties and ultimately how the church began and grew through the early centuries of persecution.”
Thank you Mark, for that clarification. We agree. The input of the early Church fathers is invaluable. But it is not authoritative. Their understanding was not authoritative. Only Scripture is authoritative.
I’ve always found it amazing that the apostles even with Christ with them daily did not understand so much. They were just human and fallible after all. However, we can trust the Holy Spirit’s anointing upon them as they addressed problems in the church and wrote things which still help us today. The Holy Spirit can use anyone to write and speak eternal truths. There were some things that the early church fathers wrote that was indeed anointed, but not like the writings of the original disciples. There were other things they wrote that was actually horrible, and yet they thought was so right. As Kay said, a reformation was surely needed. Without the HS, we’d be helpless indeed.
Perhaps, I should limit my involvement while I’m sick. I get a tad bit snotty and blunt! 🙂
““because the Church fathers said so”.”
LOL These guys just want to be everyone’s ‘big daddy’ who whips em all into submission. aaarrrggghhh!
“The bible teaches that sin came through Adam; everyone who believes the husband is the leader of the family rejects this teaching.”
sounds kinda like a backwards strawman, gengwall. They are requiring that their group believes the husband is the leader. Then when they do they MUST reject the other. it is strange.
Please pray for me this week. I’ve managed to get a good sore throat and cold and feel terrible. Have to at least show up at my Bible group this morning to open the doors and give the material, but wish I didn’t have to do even that. Hoping it will be gone by Saturday.
Don’t forget that this is Christmas season, gengwall. People will be scarce. 🙂
And frankly, the area of women and gender is such a bad area for humanity, that somehow we’ve got to be able to grace each other to some degree, but without giving up women’s lives to destruction and limitations because of it.
gengwall,
it IS disappointing to see Christians gifted in some area brilliantly and really lacking in others to the point of possible heresy. But that really is just the way we humans are. We cannot possibly get it all correct in a mere 90 or so years of life on this polluted earth.
With that thought, we ought to be able to hear MacArthur in the areas he is gifted in and ignore the others he’s mixed up in. 🙂