Dusman

Cheryl,

I listened to the debate earlier today while driving and I was absolutely appalled at Matt’s behavior towards you. In spite of his adamant disagreement with your biblical egalitarianism, such prideful, disrespectful, and sadly, ungodly behavior can never be justified, no matter how strong the disagreement. This past Sunday I taught about “The Essence of the New Heart” (John 13:34-35) and I have two pertinent quotes from that teaching that are appropos here:

“Paul says that we are to “. . . admonish one another.” (Rom. 15:14), “comfort one another . . .” (1 Thess. 4:18) and “encourage one another and build up one another” and “always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people . . .” (1 Thess. 5:11-18). And so, we are to diligently seek the good of both believer and non-believer.

Because all believers are “ministers” (believer-priests) who have been spiritually gifted by God with the ability to lovingly build up their spiritual brothers and sisters and encourage them toward spiritual maturity, the ministry of elders and deacons must be viewed against the backdrop of the general priesthood of *all believers.* Elders and deacons serve an important part in the building up of the body, but they are not the only sources of edification in the body. A harmonious church that exhibits body-love by doing the “one-anothers” of Scripture will also will be a light to the world, attracting unbelievers to the light of salvation through trust in Jesus (John 12:32). This is how Jesus said that the unbelieving world will know that you are His people. Again, He said,

NAU John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I began this teaching with the following,

” . . .the New Testament never talks about two classes of Christians – “minister” and “laymen” — like we often hear in churches today. According to the Bible, the people (laos, “laity”) of God comprise all Christians, and all Christians by exercising their spiritual gifts should be doing good deeds for each other as a part of the “work of the ministry”. So, if we want to be biblical, we will have to say that all Christians are laymen (God’s people) and all are ministers of some sort who are performing good deeds that glorify God and benefit His people as well as showing love to those who don’t know Jesus. This is why the clergy-laity distinction is unbiblical and invalid. It developed with the ancient Christians of church history and actually marked a drift away from the biblical teaching of our need to do the “one-anothers” of Scripture. Because of this, it has almost rid the church of the much needed Christian intimacy, mutual ministry, and strong accountability and most importantly, body-love. This is what Jesus was emphasizing when He said that people will know you are His disciples by the love that you show for each other (John 13:34).”

Why reproduce this in this combox? Because brother Matt (and all of us, including me!) needs to remember what Jesus said in John 13:34-35 and what Paul said in Romans 15:7, 14 in light of the disrespectful and ungodly way he behaved.

Here are some mental notes that I made in regards to some of Matt’s arguments (I’ve taken 3 years of graduate-level NT Greek, so much of this information is readily available to me either through daily translation or via frequently used lexical resources):

(1) It is *NOT* true that the plural interrogative pronoun tines means that Paul “designating men” (i.e., males only) since Greek grammarians readily state that tines can refer to both male and female gender. Tinas is correctly rendered in 1 Tim. 1:6 as “certain persons” (ESV), and “some” (KJV, NET, NIV, NKJV). This is clearly taught in introductory Greek grammars.

Greek Grammarian Ray Summers lists the plural interrogative pronoun tines under both masculine and feminine gender headings on p. 119 of his introductory grammar titled Essentials of New Testament Greek, (Nashville, TENN: Broadman Press, 1950), 119.

(2) For the purposes of a reductio ad absurdum, if the semantic range of tines is confined to the male gender only, then the following types of absurdities occur:

a. Jesus could only have compassion on the male portion (“some”) of the crowd of Mark 8:3.
b. Jesus used tines of the “some women” in both Luke 8:2 and 24:22 which must mean that either (1) they really weren’t women, which would mean that (2) Jesus was wrong, or (3) tines is an interrogative pronoun that is used to designate “some” or “certain ones” of either male or female gender. I’ll go with option # 3!
c. If tines refers to males exclusively, then unbelieving Jewish women do not fall under the condemnation of Romans 3:3.
d. If tines refers to males exclusively, then only unbelieving Jewish males were broken off from the true root in Romans 11:17 and Jewish women are still grafted into the root even if they are unbelievers in Yeshua.
e. If tines refers to males exclusively, then repentant former lesbians, female drunkards, etc., still cannot be saved because they are female according to 1 Cor. 6:11.

There is more I could point to, but I think I’ve made the point exegetically. As Greek scholar Ray Summers points out, tines is a plural interrogative pronoun that can refer to either males or females.

Therefore, Paul’s use of the plural tines is *not* exegetically significant and Matt has been exegetically sloppy.

The idea of an “illegitimate totality transfer” of the various meanings possible for a Greek word only applies when either (1) the meaning suggested is *outside* of the semantic range of meanings for the particular word in question, (2) when the suggested meaning has neither internal or extrabiblical lexical support, and/or (3) when the meaning suggested for the word *is* in the semantic range of meanings, but clearly does *not* fit the greater context and causes insuperable difficulties that are otherwise avoided by way of another semantic meaning.

You broke none of the above rules in the discussion of the hapax legomena authentein, which, in extrabiblical contemporanoues Greek literature of Paul’s day carried the idea of “dominating so as to murder/slay”. See Linda Belville’s excellent scholarly treatment of 1 Tim. 2:11-12 in Discovering Biblical Equality.

Also, if brother Matt takes a traditionalist understanding of 1 Tim. 2:12, then Paul was preventing women from teaching men under *all circumstances* (lest he be inconsistent by having women teach as long as it’s not from a “pulpit”, something that is totally foreign to Scripture; especially in light of the fact that the early church focused on mutual, interactive participation in church meetings. Cf. 1 Cor. 14:26ff) and therefore, we have Prisca (Priscilla) sinfully teaching Apollos the way of God more accurately!

Remember what Paul says in 1 Tim. 2:12 (lit. translation from Gk.), ” But I am not presently allowing a woman to teach nor to dominate/rule over a man.” This means that if a traditional, complementarian interpretation is taken, a woman not only is not to “dominate/rule over” in the role of a pastor/elder/overseer (which, according to Scripture, nobody should *ever* do in the first place.), but that she cannot teach men at all since Paul used the negation particles ouk and oude translated usually “neither . . . nor” respectively. Under a classic traditionalist understanding of 1 Tim. 2:12, she cannot instruct a man under *any circumstances,* whether as a pastor/elder, or off to the side in an informal conversation, bible study, or Sunday School class. Thus, Matt’s own interpretation refutes his own position where he said, “Women CAN teach men . . .” IMHO, this is where consistency gets the complementarian every time!

So the 64 million dollar question is this: Does God consider it a sin for a woman to teach true doctrine to a man under any circumstance? If I hold to a complementarian position on 1 Tim. 2:11-12, I’d be forced to say yes (!) . . . and that is so awkward, foreign, and inconsistent when compared to what I observe occurring in the rest of the NT (i.e., Acts 18:26; 21:9; 1 Cor. 11:5, and 1 Cor. 14:26ff.).

And one other thing, much of what I heard in this interaction demonstrates a problem that I think inevitably occurs when you have institutionalized, hierarchicalism that manifests itself in what I call the great “church office syndrome.” There is no warrant for the idea of inserting the concept of “church office” (with its authoritarian, dominating, dictatorship understanding) into the NT meaning of the *function* of elder/overseer/pastor or deacon. I realize that Matt would not hold to this either (at least not to this degree), but he would hold that there are specific “offices” in the church ( i.e., elder/deacon) that need to possess some kind of authority over the congregation. This is probably *the* root problem of complementarianism because when you realize that spiritual leaders in the NT churches are to have the “authority” of slaves (Matt. 20:25-27; 23:8-12; Mk. 10:42-44), then you realize that the entire idea of * anybody*, whether male or female, “usurping authority” is absolutely ridiculous in the first place!

Thanks for your efforts Cheryl. You did a great job of showing Christ-like love for this brother with a huge dose of sanctified patience while still effectively presenting God’s truth. God bless you my sister!