Frank

Well, I posted a comment to Mike Seaver’s website yesterday, and when I get a chance, I will reply to his response. Here I just want to briefly respond to some of pinklight’s comments. It appears to be a common practice among evangelical patriarchalists, or complimentarians if you prefer, assume that Paul assumes a timeless, transcultural hierarchical created order in 1 Timothy 2:12-14, use that as the interpretive lens through which they view what the rest of Scripture says about men and women in Christian ministry and leadership, and then after some rather clever but circular reasoning, conclude that this eternal, hierarchical creation order bars women from full participation in Christian ministry and leadership. But when challenged to prove their premise from Scripture as a whole, they can’t do so, simply because this viewpoint is not the teaching of the Scripture itself, but a self-serving distortion of Scripture.

Secondly, as John Jefferson Davis makes clear in his recent Priscilla Papers article, “First Timothy 2:12, the Ordination of Women, and Paul’s Use of Creation Narratives,” the case of Deborah the Judge and Prophet, is an unanswerable dilemma for those holding that this verse is a prohibition that is timeless and transcultural, rather than temporal and congregationally specific to the church in Ephesus. Here, in part, is what he says:

The case of Deborah poses a special dilemma for the “traditionalist” reading of 1 Timothy 2:12: If it is true that Paul’s use of creation texts is intended to prohibit all women in all circumstances from exercising authority over men in the covenant community, then the Apostle is FORBIDDING what God has in this instance PERMITTED–and this would amount to a contradiction within the canon itself. Various ways of evading this problem are not convincing. Was Deborah usurping authority rather than exercising it legitmately? There is no indication in the Book of Judges, the Old Testament as a whole, or in the New Testament that God disapproved of Deborah’s activities; on the contrary, Deborah is to be understood in light of the programmatic statement in Judges 2:16 that God, in his mercy, “raised up judges who saved them”; her leadership is a notable example of exactly such divinely empowered activity.

Then he goes on to make several observations and critical comments of these various evangelical patriarchal attempts to evade this dilemma, very similar to those Cheryl herself made in her own posting regarding Deborah. He then concludes:

The implications of the foregoing observations is that Deborah should be seen as a positive and not negative example of a woman exercising authority in the covenant community. Deborah may be unusual and somewhat exceptional in biblical history, but she is a positive example notwithstanding. Since God himself raised up Deborah as judge, and that which God chooses to do can not be INTRINSICALLY WRONG, it cannot be intrinsically wrong for a woman to exercise authority over a man in ecclesiastical contexts. The case of Deborah, seen as a positive example, is then consistent with a recognition of the CIRCUMSTANTIAL nature of the prohibitions in 1 Timothy 2:12; not all women are prohibited by God from exercising authority over men at all times in the church. The reading here presented then removes the appearance of a “contradiction within the canon” and provides hermeneutical space for the recognition of other “Deborahs” who may be called by God to lead from time to time.

So, as my friend, Robert K. Wright, Mike is going to have give an adequate and convincing explanation of this “biblical platypus” if we are to believe his position is truly logical and consistent with what the Bible teaches as a whole on women in ministry and leadership.