Jason Oliver Evans

Jesus is simply the Man I want to be like. Both egalitarians and complementarians need to learn of Him. I just read an interview of J.I. Packer, eminent evangelical theologian, from Touchstone Magazine. His views of women in church leadership and in general are interesting:

Women’s ordination is probably the single major bone of contention among traditionalist and Evangelical Anglicans. Where do you stand on that issue? Are you for or against it?

JIP: I do not find the arguments to the effect that Scripture forbids the Church to make women presbyters compelling. While I, therefore, think the Church may do it, I think it is folly for the Church to do it.

Why?

JIP: Scripture makes clear that God, having made the two sexes different, wants them to remain different. To turn the presbyterate, which in the New Testament is defined clearly as a man’s job, into a unisex role is a departure from that divine wisdom. I believe in women’s giftedness and ministry, but their ministry should be separately structured.

Is this personal for you?

JIP: I do not hold the church’s mistake here against any individual woman clergyman, but I make plain to anyone who asks that I accept women presbyters as such under protest. I think the Anglican Church ought not to have accepted women’s ordination to the presbyterate.

In regards to the TNIV:

What might be at risk in these new translations?

JIP: What is jeopardized in these translations is the fact that, according to Scripture, masculinity entails leadership and femininity entails support. Patterns of cooperation between the sexes in which the man takes leadership responsibility are, on balance, healthier, because they are directly fitted to human nature in a way that a reversal of this pattern can never be.

What is puzzling about Packer’s theology of gender is it’s lack of scriptural support for the clean cut “masculinity-lead” and “femininity-support” motif. Since when is being an elder of the church of God a “man’s job?” What about the female elders in 1 Timothy 5? Whatever happened to mothers instructing children, Deborah leading the army of the Lord into victory over Sisera and Jabin, Queen Esther being an instrument of salvation of her people, Priscilla instructing Apollos, Nympha leading the house church she help establish? This seems the a blatant disregard for the Scriptures to me? Any thoughts, Cheryl?