Why ‘complementarianism’ matters: reflections occasioned by Carl Trueman

Carl Trueman has an excellent blog post on the Reformation21 site, expressing puzzlement at why so many (American, evangelical) parachurch organisations make complementarianism (male-only leadership) a defining point of their platform. He highlights the potential absurdity of this in characteristically sharp and witty fashion, pointing out that the historical divisions that these organisations choose to bridge (baptismal practice; church polity; doctrines of grace) are, or should be, far more basic than complementarianism, and asking some sharp questions about practice (he imagines a situation of a male, paedobaptist, Presbyterian minister and a female Baptist minister visiting a Baptist church that is part of one of these coalitions, and asks how this will be played out, indicating that every possible answer is absurd.) As a committed evangelical (indeed, someone who has defended inerrancy in print a couple of times), who is also committed to the principle that not only should all areas of church life be open to women, but that every local church should in fact have female leaders, I might be expected to applaud Carl’s post. He certainly makes his point well, but I think he misses something about the significance of praxis in defining unity. Reflection on that point illuminates something about British evangelicalism also. Carl’s post asks about theology, and considers practice in the local church; what he misses, I think, is any consideration of what organisations like the Gospel Coalition actually do. I have commented before that church division generally happens on issues of practice rather than doctrine: two people can probably find a way of negotiating a disagreement over (say) Christology, particularly if they both agree not to preach on it; if they disagree over how to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they are fairly soon going to be worshipping in different congregations, simply because they cannot both practice their beliefs in the same one. The original genius of the first evangelical parachurch groups back in the eighteenth century was their ability to negotiate differences over church order and sacramental practice by removing their organisational activity from the context of the local church: a Bible Society meeting in a town hall can be attended by Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians indifferently. At this functional level, what a group like The Gospel Coalition does is hold conferences and write stuff; the fracture points for such a group, then, are going to centre on disagreements over how to organise a conference and/or what stuff gets written and by who. The question of who is allowed to speak in public, then, inevitably becomes a point of division, and so of identity. If the group is going to organise conferences, and is only going to invite men to preach/teach at them, then the restriction of the teaching ministry to men is a defining point of the group, and it is as well to be honest about that. Why has this not generally happened this side of the Atlantic? We might point to the generally more relaxed attitudes of British churches (Carl’s illustration of a Presbyterian pastor being refused admission to the Lord’s Table because he has not been baptised as a believer does not describe something that would happen in very many British Baptist churches, rightly or wrongly). We might also point to some more nuanced accounts of complementarianism that operate in Britain, largely due to the weight of influence of the Church of England. I suspect, however, that the most honest response would be to say that the same point of division has happened in British evangelicalism, but we have generally been less than open about it. To take the issue of nuance, a common form of British complementarianism has focused on the issue of authority, rather than the issue of teaching per se. So there are many British evangelical churches which have articulated a position where women are allowed to teach, indeed to be part of the ordained ministry team, but are not allowed to hold the senior role in the team. Churches holding such a position could cheerfully be a part of a conference with both male and female speakers, although they may want some visible asymmetry to reflect their theology. (In some cases this gets convoluted to the extreme, with certain central platforms being denied to women; I have never been able to fathom what theological principle is at play in allowing women to speak to only a certain size of audience…) That said, some British evangelical parachurch groups do in practice restrict their platforms to men only; I have been told by people on UCCF staff that this is, or recently has been, common amongst university Christian Unions, for example. The rhetoric deployed...

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On writing and being read: Jared Wilson on Fifty Shades…

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass, ch. 6) A rather ugly storm in the blogosphere has broken out over the last couple of days over a recent post on the Gospel Coalition website. I don’t want to adjudicate who is right and who is wrong (like anyone involved might listen to me…), so much as to reflect on the misunderstanding – and the anger – to understand a bit more about what we do when we blog, or write in other contexts, and what our proper ethical responsibilities might be when addressing a sensitive subject. The post, by Jared Wilson, was an attempt to account for the popularity of E.L. James’s Shades of Grey trilogy. This is a worthwhile aim: we understand our culture better by understanding those parts of it that become popular, and so understanding why a piece of – by all accounts – very poorly written pornography has suddenly achieved enormous mainstream success is an relevant task for the church. Jared Wilson quoted several paragraphs from a book by Doug Wilson which applied the ‘complementarian’ understanding of gender relations to the act of intercourse in the context of marriage; Jared Wilson then suggested that this was God’s intention for human sexuality, and that male rape fantasies and female submission fantasies – such as those reflected in Shades of Grey – arose because of our cultural refusal to practice proper male headship/female submission. Our culture’s embracing of gender equality leads directly to the popularity of the books. Now, I I have not read the book quoted, or – to the best of my recollection – anything else Doug Wilson has written, but, insofar as I can understand it from the post and the ensuing discussion, I do not find his account of the marriage relationship to be convincing when tested against Scripture. Even if it is granted for the sake of argument, Jared Wilson’s analysis of 50 Shades at least needs a great deal of expansion to be plausible (he accepts without comment Freud’s bombastic claims about the universality of rape fantasies, which have surely been comprehensively demolished by the last century of psychological work in this area; I can begin to imagine how an attempt might be made to extend the argument to reflect such data, but that attempt is wholly absent from the post…) Disagreement with the claims made does not make a blog post offensive, inappropriate, or otherwise worthy of the opprobrium heaped on this one, however. After all, only by disagreeing, and teasing out our disagreements, can we hope to make progress in understanding. Yes, I find the casual assumption that Freud’s bizarre theories of a century ago are right very difficult – particularly coming from a site that professes a commitment to Biblical authority – and I confess to serious concern over the apparent lack of any awareness of the extensive work that has been done in understanding the real causes of rape and domestic abuse that has been done since then (which would point in very different directions to those proposed in the post). All this, however, is a cause for engagement and (hopefully) mutual edification, not for a call for removal. So is there any reason to regret the fact that the post was published? Yes – because the post contains language which will inevitably be heard by some as promoting or justifying domestic abuse, and we have an extremely serious pastoral responsibility not to use such language. This has been repeatedly pointed out, but both Jared Wilson and Doug Wilson have attempted to defend the language used. The defence is summed up in a second post by Jared Wilson, and seems to consist of two, rather contradictory, lines – one of which has some validity as an argument, but does not lead to the conclusion pressed. The first line can be summed up in a quotation from a comment by Doug Wilson, quoted in Jared Wilson’s second post: Anyone who believes that my writing disrespects women either has not read enough of my writing on the subject to say anything whatever about it or, if they still have that view after reading enough pages, they really need to retake their ESL class. The defence here is that the offending language is being read out of context, and so misunderstood. As I say, I have certainly not read enough of Doug...

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British and European theological bloggers

A while back I announced a desire to keep a list of British and European theological blogs; several people made helpful suggestions, and I’ve been meaning to construct the list, but, well, life… I have now put all the suggestions I had or received in the blogroll on the right; if you hover a mouse over them, you should get a bit of description. I’ll get it all up on a page soon. Further suggestions very welcome – there must be more theological blogging than this?

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Justice and the gospel: Bruce Longenecker on Paul and the poor.

Joel Willits offers a review of my former colleague Bruce Longenecker’s recent book Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (Eerdmans) over at Euangelion. I have not yet seen a copy, but Bruce was working in these directions before he left St Andrews for Baylor, and I think I can guess something of how the argument goes: although there is not an enormous amount of emphasis in the NT texts on Paul’s ongoing concern for the collection for the church in Jerusalem, or for caring for economically-disadvantaged members of the community, there is some; if we consider the then-prevalent assumption amongst devout diaspora Jews (like Paul…) that charity was an essential component of acceptable worship, then we can reconstruct on the basis of the evidence we do have a picture of concern for the poor, and particularly concern that the gentile churches should relieve the poverty of the mother church in Jerusalem, as being central to Paul’s vision of his own mission, and of the Christian identity of the churches he founded. Rather like Finney refusing to allow someone to profess Christianity without committing to the abolitionist cause, Paul could not conceive of a church that was not involved in (what we would now call) social justice; it is as intrinsic to the gospel as worship, discipleship, and mission – actually, it just is worship, discipleship, and mission, in Paul’s view. As Joel points out, this is a timely reminder. Joel himself has recently offered a substantial review of Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s What is the Mission of the Church?, which is only the latest of a stream of publications arguing that social justice, whilst perhaps commendable, is no part of the core business of a Christian community. I understand the concern that, sometimes, justice has been perceived as an easier and less costly practice than other forms of gospel witness, and so has been allowed to displace them. The answer to this, though, is not so to swing the pendulum as to neglect this aspect of gospel witness instead. The bloodless conquest of the Empire by the early church was in large part achieved by a sustained and serious practice of social justice; bishops took the title ‘lovers of the poor,’ and lived it so well that, over a century or so, they constructed a new and previously-unimagined political power-base that propelled them to positions of prominence in almost every city of the Empire (Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, is very good on this; start around pp. 90-100). Human hearts were conquered by the fearless witness of the martyrs; but the culture was conquered – whilst the church was still a minority movement – by a faithful practice of social justice. Paul consulted once with Peter and James and John about the ethical implications of belief in Jesus; one thing only was agreed to be non-negotiable by all four of them: ‘remember the poor’ (Gal. 2:10). This is at the heart of the...

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British/European theo-bloggers

For reasons explained in the previous post, I would like to start to construct a list of British and European blogs with theological content. Nominations are hereby invited. I guess we need to define ‘theological content’. I would go for something like this: ‘a majority of the posts would be interesting to someone, educated to higher degree level, who is generally interested in theology and wants to keep abreast of contemporary developments and discussions.’ So a blog that offers informed and reasoned posts on a particular theological topic, and a blog that serves to alert its readers of upcoming publications, lectures, and conferences, both make the cut. I would generally like to err on the side of generosity, also: it is a list inviting people to explore, after all, and I don’t think it is going to be excessively long… (‘British/European’ also invites some analysis; what of Brits now living abroad, or Americans temporarily resident here to do a doctorate? The test is content, and again to be applied generously. Suggest away.) I have ten or so candidates in my own head, but I’d like to hear others’ proposals, so I’m not even going to start a list. Tell me what should be...

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