Cheryl Schatz

Mark,

To my above statement you probably answered it by this

“Wrong, wrong, wrong. I have never said that teaching is the same as pastoring. Nor have I said that prophesying is the same as teaching. We have both agreed that one who prophesies will teach in the act of using their gift, but prophesying is different than teaching just as the gift of Prophet is different than the gift of Teacher. Are you really sure you understand my position?”

I guess it is easy to get confused when we keep using terms interchangeably.

Well, Mark, it seems like you are the one using the terms interchangeably not me. I am not the one who says that a teacher is a pastor (or evangelist). A teacher is a teacher.

You said “If “teacher” must be attached to another gift and we then define that other gift as not being available to one gender, we have in essence removed the gift of “teacher” and replace it with an amalgamated gift belonging to men alone.”

Are you agreeing with me here that only men should be pastors?

No I am not agreeing with you. Here again you are using a term interchangeably which causes confusion. I said “teacher”. I did not say “pastor”. You are the one who makes “teacher” as part of an amalgamated gift. The gifts may have something in common, but they are not amalgamated.

Mark, you quoted my comment below and also said:

“But this is necessary to do because many men are determined that God gives males alone certain gifts and they alone are privileged with an “office” and “authority” and “kingly rights”.

Cheryl your above comment shows your definite bias and deliberate intent not to understand their position. Unless you realise this, you will never be able to dialogue unhindered. I’m sure the majority of comps aswell as egals believe that waht they say is biblical truth not about authority and kingly rights. Of course people will always be deceived by their own sin and self-righteousness but your above comment really speaks of your position. Now i do understand you better. Please try and dialogue with me without having these assumptions about me.

Mark, I think you may want to take the time to read the blog post that I gave you the link to on this site. I can tell from your comment that you did not read it. First of all, I said “many men”. I did not say you believed this. You are reading into my comment a personal comment about you, but if you just re-read my comment above you will see that I did not assume things about you.

Also my comment is not about my bias. My comment was about what many comp men have been taught about their privilege. So that you don’t have to page back to the link here it is again http://strivetoenter.com/wim/2008/01/22/the-husband-as-king-over-the-wife/ Also in this post I link to an online chapter at cbmw called The husband as prophet, priest and king here http://www.cbmw.org/images/onlinebooks/buildingstrongfamilies/husband_as_prophet.pdf If you had read this material, I don’t think that you would have made your comment above.

You quoted me and then commented:

Finally you asked me “What do you mean by not separating them “extensively”? This isn’t clear? Do you mean that we cannot separate them at all? Do you mean that one can be a teacher but not a pastor as long as one is male, but the two must not be separated if one is talking about a woman so that a woman cannot be a teacher because she is not to be a pastor?”

What i mean is when we come to 1 Cor 12 for example and see the gift of ‘teacher’ it needs to be understood in relation to the other listings of gifts. So in Eph we both agree Paul correlates it to a pastor. So by separating them extensively i mean emphasising a ‘teacher’ as something without keeping in mind Pauls other use of the term.

So even though Paul mentioned “teacher” without amalgamating it with another gift in 1 Cor 12, we are not supposed to see this as a separate gift but it must be amalgamated with pastor? I do not agree with you that Paul “correlates” teacher to pastor.

Correlate means “mutually or reciprocally related” but that is not true of teacher and pastor. They have overlapping functions but they are not corresponding gifts. They are different gifts that have some areas that overlap in function. It kind of bothers me that you take the words that I use and redefine them by replacing them with different words. This is unfair.

When we read one verse alone and emphasise something about it without looking at all relevant passages we could get in trouble.

What kind of trouble? You mean we might think that a woman could actually have the gift of a teacher? That would only be trouble for complementarians who have already limited God in His ability to gift women at His own discretion.

That is why so many scholars associate a ‘teacher’ with an evangelist and/or pastor. It is keeping the whole bible in view rather than mis-representing one verse.

Misrepresenting one verse? Saying that a teacher is one gift that is not interchangeable with another gift is misrepresenting one verse? Oh my, you have really gone overboard to try to remove women from receiving and using a gift. Why are you so intent on doing this? Does having a woman being a teacher threaten you in some way? If you were wrong in your view, would you really want to know it or are you content with having all the teachers in the church being gifted by God as only men?