Frank

An excellent critique of those who misuse the Scriptures to justify male dominance, and to unjustly “keep women in their proper place,” denying their equal status as members of God’s household and as royal ambassadors of his kingdom. And it also shows, if I may say so, their true ignorance of what the Scriptures actually do teach on this subject.

It amazes me that these people regularly read 1 Cor. 12:1-11 and Eph. 4:11-16, and yet cannot see that the gifting, preparation, and calling of the Spirit of a man or woman for a ministry precedes any formal training and approval by the “institutional church”; that the Holy Spirit chooses, gifts, prepares, and calls a man or woman into ministry in full agreement with both the Father and Son, who also want this man or woman to carry on this ministry; that the real purpose of any valid, useful formal theological training is to improve the knowledge, gifts and skills they already have as Spirit-called ministers of Christ, and not for placement in leadership and ministry for which neither they have been gifted nor called by the Triune God. This is a truth that many Evangelical Protestants, if they once knew it, seem to have forgotten.

Our Evangelical forefathers and foremothers knew, on the basis of 2 Cor 3:6 ([God] has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”), that any preaching and teaching of the Scriptures, apart from Spirit-quickened interpetation that imparted power and comprehension to live out Gospel truth, often led not spiritual health and fruitfulness, but into deadening legalism and barreness. William Law, who was one of many involved in the Great Awakening of the 18th Century, expressed his concern this way:
“Bible scholars are generally looked upon as having a divine knowledge when they are as ready at chapter and verse of Scripture as the learned philosopher is at every page of Plato or Aristotle. On the basis of prescribed religious education, the clergynman is thought to be fully qualified to engage in that ministry for which the apostles had to receive an endument of power from on high. This scholarly worship of the letter has greatly opposed the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and blinded men to the living reality which the gospel holds out to those who believe. The manner in which Greek and Hebrew scholarship is admired and sought after in the church would lead one to believe that a man has all the divine life and reality of a Paul if he can say his epistles by heart…What would be the advantage if he knew this letter in the original Greek, and had thoroughly mastered all the nicieties of grammar and shades of ancient meanings? Such a man, while more thoroughly grounded in the letter [of Scripture], must remain just as empty of the reality of the gospel, unless he knows in his own experience the immediate inspiration and quickening power of the Holy Spirit” (An Affectionate Address to the Clergy, 1761). And one of the leaders of the Great Awakening in New England, Isaac Backus, put it this way:
“One very great means that God has been pleased to make use of from the beginning for the recovery and salvation of lost men, has been the preaching of his Word. And therefore in every age he has called and set apart particular men for that purpose. Jude speaks of ‘Enoch’s prophesying’ (Jude 14), and Noah is called ‘a preacher of righteousness’ (2 Pet. 2:5). And we are told that God ‘at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets’ (Heb. 1:1)…Hence it is a truth allowed by all persuasions (i.e. denominations), that the public preaching of the Word is an ordinance of divine appointment. But then there is a great diversity of sentiments about how men are to be qualified and introduced into this great work. Multitudes place their qualifications more in human learning than in divine enlightenings, and place their authority more in being externally called and set apart by men, than being internally called by the Spirit of God…And the main argument that is commonly brought to prove this is, that the Bible is completed, and the days of inspiration are ceased. Therefore, to hold that any are by the Spirit and the power of God, in our day, called and sent forth into this, this they say is giving heed to new revelations; for it is nowhere expressed in Scripture that this or that one is, or ever will be, called to preach the Gospel. But though I believe with all my heart that the canon of Scripture is full, and that there is a curse against any that shall ‘add to or diminish from it’ (Rev.22:18-19), yet I am far from thinking that it is just to conclude from hence that the Lord does not in these days as really call and direct his servants by his Spirit as he did in olden times; yea, to deny this is to contradict a great part of the Scriptures” (A Discourse on the Nature and Necessity of An Internal Call to Preach the Everlasting Gospe, 1754).

Now, though these men were products of their time and culture, and so may not have been favorable to women preachers or women leading discernment ministries, what they say about the priority of the Spirit’s gifting, preparing and calling men and women to ministry to the formal preparation and approval of the institutional church, in my judgment, applies to the concerns of the present discussion. Neither Law, Backus, or myself mean to deny the necessity or credibility, of a good, solid theological education. After all, I myself have earned a bachelor of divinity degree, a bachelor of liberal arts, and studied for one year at a Reformed Episcopal seminary. Hopefully, it has made me a wiser, more knowledgable, more skillfull worker for God and his kingdom. However, any such education divorced from a true, vital and humble connection with the Holy Spirit is not only dead and useless, but even harmful to both the minister and those he ministers to. For I agree with Law when he states, “When this empty, powerless knowledge of the letter of spiritual truth is held to be the possession of the truth itself, then darkness, delusion, and death overshadow Christendom. For gospel Christianity is in its whole nature a ministration of the Spirit.”