Cheryl

Michael, Martin, Paula – go ahead and continue to discuss the issues as I work on my responses. I may not be as fast as you folks are 🙂

Michael:

Regarding your first post (#1).  You said:  “Cheryl, your last comment was four pages single spaced when I copied into a word document. This post and the comments we are all making here may be your first book! :)â€

Okay, I admit it, I am long winded.  In “Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free?†my original script was, I think, about 112 or so pages.  With hard work and some help, I managed to get it down to 73 pages which was 3.5 hours in the final production form.  Can you imagine if I had left it as it was?  You would still probably be working through all of my points!  Sadly, I had to take out a great section on the Trinity and the documentation regarding CBMW’s claim that makes Jesus out to be permanently subordinated to the authority of his Father (taking their view of the Trinity outside the historical position and making the Word in practice never exercising an equal authority with the Father.)  It made the DVD too long and there was a concern that the average person might not be able to understand the deep theological discussion.  Even with the use of graphics, it may still have been too deep for some.  I am hoping that this section will be used in a DVD teaching series on the Trinity that we hope someday to produce.

Secondly I am so glad that I have my own blog where I can say what I think without being censored for being too long.  I do have some posts that aren’t long winded at all, but on those I use graphics.  One graphic can shorten a post by a thousand words 😉

My husband has been pushing me to take my research that was used in WIM and expand on it and put it into a book.  I have been resisting the thought, not because I don’t think it is a great idea, but wondering if an unknown author would sell and if the video format of the material which is itself a unique product would be better left this way as people seem to have little time to read and are typically more visual.  I am still pondering on what the Lord would have me do.  I have no book publishers on my doorstep at the moment so it seems easier to let that project rest for the time begin.

Okay, now for your points.  You said:  “CBMW is fearful that if they let open the possibility that women are not subordinate then they will have opened the door to Scripture being discredited.â€

I agree with you for the most part.  However having read through reams of material from CBMW in my research project for WIM, and having listened to countless hours of their audio tapes from their web site, I have come to understand that they truly do believe that women are subordinate for eternity from their creation.  It isn’t that they even see a reason to open the door a crack to the idea that women are not subordinate, because they truly believe that women are subordinate to men in delivering God’s word and somehow God has ordained this subordination for a reason.  Because God himself has ordained the subordination of women, they will not give an inch to anyone who questions why a woman cannot teach the bible to men in her own home (even with her husband’s approval).  To them it is sinning against God and it is a serious matter to go against God’s “clear†prohibition.  So while they do not give an inch to the opposition, they are constantly pressing the point that if one does give women the opportunity to teach men and they bypass 1 Timothy 2:12 as God’s law against this teaching, then it becomes a slippery slope because one can do the same thing regarding many other things that some may not want to be a prohibition either – like homosexuality.

Now strange as it may seem, I can find myself agreeing with them in principle.  If one takes scripture and removes everything that they don’t personally like (by avoiding passages that have clear prohibitions or by reinterpreting God’s prohibitions to soften or avoid God’s words on the matter) then scripture loses its authority and we become the ultimate judge of God’s word.  It is with sadness that I agree that this is what some egalitarians have done.  I have read where Paul is disrespected as a male chauvinist or as someone who got it wrong in the beginning.  The problem with this view is that it disregards God’s Holy Spirit as the ultimate author of scripture and follows the reasoning that God would allow corruption into the text that would distort his will and his word.  I don’t believe that this is possible because I believe that God inspired every word and every piece of grammar and he said what he meant.  That doesn’t mean that there are not some hard passages, but some passages take a lot more work to pull out what has always been in the text in context.

When egalitarians disregard scripture like this, they unwittingly fall into a trap that allows complementarians to disregard our words and our reasoning process.  It is far better to take scripture as it is written and work through the difficult passages to understand what Paul is saying in context.  If we truly believe that scripture doesn’t contradict scripture, then it is in our best interest to “Study to showthyselfapproved unto God,a workmanthat needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.â€Â  2 Timothy 2:15.  If we can’t completely understand a hard passage, at least we can prove what it is not saying by appealing to a scripture that it would be contradicting if it was taken in the most straightforward way.  Disregarding scripture should not be an option.

Michael, you said “Answers in Genesis is a carbon copy of CBMW. They fear that anything other than a young earth 24-hour day interpretation will lead to discrediting the Bible and open the door secular evolutionism. They take passages that are ambiguous (like Genesis 2:19) and impose a narrow readings on the passage that supports their agenda and reject all other considerations.â€

I can’t say that I have read a whole lot of Answers in Genesis material from their web site.  I have been too busy on other projects.  However I have some DVD’s of their teaching and I have seen several debates between young earth versus old earth people and I have two books that go through Ross’ material and refutes him point by point.  However I wouldn’t say that they are a carbon copy of CBMW although I would think that both are concerned about people disregarding scripture.  In that point, I agree with them both.  The heresies of the past have come about because people have disregarded scripture and gone off on their own tangent while their views are in direct opposition to God’s inspired word.  I have worked intimately with the cults and with cult members who have left their organizations and I have a library of cult material that dates back to 1879.  I have spent years reading the twist that the cults put on scripture and I have seen them disregard other clear scriptures that refute their heresies.  I agree that we need to be careful that as Christians we do not do the same thing that got the cults into trouble.  This is one of the few points that I do agree with CBMW.

Now as far as rejecting other considerations, I think that is okay as long as you thoughtfully go through the other considerations and explain why they are not viable options.  I did this on WIM.  I went through the common explanations of 1 Timothy 2:15 and showed the reasons why I had to reject each of the other explanations of this verse.  These are serious objections.  However I agree with you that anyone who dismisses other renderings without a valid reason is being closed-minded.  I never want to fall into that category.

Finally, Michael, you said:  “I am unfamiliar with David Bergen. I would invite you to Did God Create Animals or Man First? Keil and Delitzsch disagree with your interpretation here as do every scholarly source I have consulted across a wide range of Christianity. To insist that God made animals after Adam and before Eve is to impose an esoteric and idiosyncratic a meaning on the text for ideological reasons, not because the text requires it.â€

To be fair, they list the reading that God created animals after Adam as an option.  “Although in my judgment it is very unlikely that God created a special group of animals to be named by Adam (after creating all others before the creation of man—Genesis 1:20-27), some commentators hold this view. After his comments concerning the translation of yastar, Victor Hamilton indicated that the creatures mentioned in 2:19 refer “to the creation of a special group of animals brought before Adam for naming†(p. 176, emp. added). Hamilton believes that most all the animals on the Earth were created before Adam; however, those mentioned in 2:19 were created on day six after Adam for the purpose of being named.â€

I also have not come upon the understanding I have because of ideological reasons.  I came across the understanding because I came across the Hebrew grammar that showed that the text required the passage to be read in the way that I read it.  While the article you sent me to claims that the Hebrew can be rendered in the pluperfect, and at least one of the references they gave was done four years before the Bergen book was published, they do not give the grammatical reasons why the grammar can be given in the pluperfect.  In Bergen’s book, however, the precise grammar is given to prove that this passage does not fit the requirements for the pluperfect tense and therefore this option cannot be considered an option in Genesis 2:19.  I have read through the explanation and the requirement for the pluperfect and it appears to be a very solid case.

Grammatically Genesis 2:19 cannot be properly rendered in the pluperfect and few bibles render it this way so it shows that the natural rendering is not the pluperfect because most bibles do not render it in the pluperfect.  Those who do render it in that way are said to be in error and unless this precise explanation of the grammar is refuted, and to my understanding it has not been refuted at all, I have to hold to scripture that Genesis 2:19 was written in such a way as to make it obvious to the original Hebrew recipients that Adam was privileged to some acts of God that no one else in history has even been privileged to witness.  I don’t think it is wrong to discard an inaccurate grammar reading of 2:19 if one has the Hebrew rules for rendering the pluperfect and this verse falls outside of those rules.

So as we discuss this issue, and I am looking forward to responding as I am able time wise to each of your comments, I want to say right off the start in this first post that I respect you and would not consider your view to be a view that would cause separation between Christians, neither will I disregard any of your points or look down on you in any way.  I will thoughtfully consider what you have written.  My place is not to try to persuade you to go against your conscience, or to change your viewpoint to something that you cannot accept, but my place is to give you reason for the hope that is within me.  I am taking this as a challenge to offer the reasoning process regarding why I believe as I do.  This is why I have made this a separate post outside of the 1 Timothy 2 discussions.  You and I and whoever joins in this discussion will have some freedom to discuss these issues with Christian love and I hope a deep respect for God’s word and the truth that it reveals.  In the end we may exhaust all of points that we both have and we may still agree to disagree, but that’s okay.  I think in the end we will be better equipped to fully understand the reasoning of the opposing viewpoint and understanding each other is always a good thing.  It will definitely help me to see outside of my own box and I am hoping it will do the same for you.

Okay does this qualify as chapter one of my new book?  Yikes!  I apologize in advance for my passion that will follow in the days ahead!  May God grant me the ability to be brief while still passionate for God’s Word which is The Truth!