Cheryl Schatz

Tiffany,
You asked:

Cheryl you have mentioned before that complementarians have never answered questions you have for them about various texts. I suspect what you mean is that they have never answered to your satisfaction, they have never proven their position to you.

So when is it proven?

Thanks for re-asking your question. I missed that one.

No, I don’t mean that my questions are not answered to my satisfaction. What I mean is that my questions are not answered according to God’s standards. For someone to be charged with a crime there needs to be two or three witnesses. Both Jesus and Paul also used the two or three witnesses as a standard for a testimony of truth and for bringing truth to the church in a “safe” way. So I look for evidence that would be applicable to a solid witness that is confirmed in the Scripture. Two witnesses is okay with me.

In the area of authority, a Biblical witness is mandatory. It is such an important area because we must never assume an authority that God has not given us. That would be usurping His authority and it is a very inadvisable thing to do.

So I look for evidence that would stand up in court. What is a good witness? I would accept evidence from God, Adam or Eve that in the original good creation God had given the husband authority over his wife. Unfortunately we all know that there is no such evidence in Genesis.

So I look for evidence in the NT that the woman is told to submit to the husband’s authority over her. There is nothing like that either. I would also accept any apostle who would tell the husbands that they are to take authority over their wives as God has given them this authority. No such evidence of this either. So how are we to accept an authority that has no witness? It is very problematic.

For the vast majority of the thread the sides haven’t even been able to agree on basic common ground. (the definition of authority, that for whatever reason it is there that the instructions are different to husbands and wives, and others).

It doesn’t help when one redefines a word like authority. How can there be common ground when the definition of a word is outside of the definition of our common English words? God gave us language so that we can use it to understand each other. If every took common words and made them mean something different for each person, then we would not have a hope of communicating. We need to be consistent. It was Dave’s idea that if one wanted to change the meaning of a word that all one would have to do is to create a new word that had that meaning. That is the legitimate way of having a word with a new meaning. Just make up a word and tell us what it means to you and we can dialog around that word. But it is not helpful to take authority and recreate a meaning.

Does this make sense?

Which really is fine. Arminians and Calvinists disagree on many many (very big) things. They are both however Christians and a part of the body, The aren’t both 100% right, but they are both still Christians.

I agree that we are all a part of the body of Christ. However even with that issue there are ways to help with our understanding of each other’s viewpoint by defining our words and working hard to understand the other person’s point of view.

This isn’t an issue of not being a Christian and so we can agree to disagree.