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Text of the page (random words):
ism part of the gospel itself and question the christianity of those who don t agree but leeman doesn t go that far also the basic definition of egalitarianism above at least doesn t set it up as a flimsy strawman position i would add the caveat however that there is one way you can say men and women are equal in worth but still restrict women from equal leadership if you fall back on god s plan to do this to women as something mysterious that cannot be questioned as i said in another blog post either women are not equal to men because god created them with a certain lack of authority over themselves or ability to lead others that men do not lack and this lack is intrinsic to womanhood while any lack a particular man may have in the area of leadership is simply an individual characteristic not intrinsic to his manhood this makes women in their essence as women inferior to men or women are equal to men but god simply decided that women because they are women despite lacking nothing that he gave men for authority over themselves or leadership of others may not use that authority or leadership in other words they are to be under male authority even though god did not design them or create them to be suited for being under male authority this makes god in his essence arbitrary and unjust he makes rules without good reasons the gist of leeman s argument however takes a third path he argues that having authority is not actually any different than being under authority and he does this by seemingly redefining authority but before he gets there he offers the basic argument that egalitarians are capitulating to worldly thinking rather than being submissive to the plain teaching of the bible egalitarianism possesses an obvious appeal in an individualistic age like the immigrant parent who abandoned the old world with its castes or its aristocracies egalitarianism looks affirmingly into the eyes of the little boy and the little girl and offers that quintessential american promise you can be anything you want to be boundaries are gone ceilings have collapsed god has given everyone certain talents the game now is self discovery and self realization faithfulness requires us to discover and employ all our god given potentialities like madeline who says pooh pooh to the tigers at the zoo egalitarianism s brave maxim is to one s own self be true egalitarianism depends upon the worldview of individualism that doesn t mean egalitarians are all self centered it means that individual desires and talents trump any class or category considerations so the rule makers should never keep anyone belonging to the class of female from being whatever she wants to be and complementarians admittedly limit what members of this class can be in the home and church based on the egalitarian s sense of justice this is irrational it is 2 2 5 complementarianism is not just a different perspective it defies an egalitarian s basic assumptions about what it means to be human and is therefore dangerous how many of history s grand exploitations and terrors have rooted in the systemic prejudice of one group over another as such the emotions and the rhetoric run hot as they always do in political contests where the two sides appear irrational to one another why because our rationalities always derive from our gods or rather what you take to be most reasonable or most rational is your god a god cannot be questioned a god is the unmoved mover a god is the word or logic who cannot be overruled emotions boil hot because one s gods hold one s universe together and gives it meaning so we go to battle for them precisely here then is where the complementarian in all of his or her worldly folly leans in toward the egalitarian and warns be careful you are not serving an idol at least in this one area of your doctrine you ll have a pretty good idea that you are if in spite of the plain teaching of the text you ll find some justification for re interpreting it because your sense of justice can imagine it no other way let s examine this more closely egalitarians are wrong because of individualism and leeman defines individualism in terms of individual desires and talents taking precedence over classes and categories of humans the bible apparently is not plagued by this problem of individualism this would mean that new testament doctrines are primarily meant to focus on our identity as members of categories and classes this raises several questions however why do jesus and the apostles put such emphasis on the necessity of following christ trusting christ obeying christ as an individual person why didn t they simply preach to the leaders of the groups they were seeking to convert jesus could have talked to the heads of the synagogues in each town gotten them to agree with his teachings and then left them to instruct their congregations paul could have sought out the governors or the priests operating in athens in corinth in rome the leaders once converted could then have ordered their people to report for mass baptism but it didn t work that way in fact many if not most analyses of individualism agree that christianity has historically been a major contributor to that philosophy as encyclopedia com says christianity contributed doctrines of the freedom of the will and personal salvation that added a further dimension to human individuality created as equal persons in god s image human beings enjoy inherent dignity by virtue of the divine flame that burns within their souls christian moral teaching replaced status race gender occupation and all other markers of social difference with one s individual orientation toward god as the determinant of the ultimate disposition of one s soul while judaism had conveyed some overtones of personal salvation the dominant relation with god was conditioned by the divine covenant with the jewish people as a whole in contrast jesus message was directed to all people who were open to his words and treated them as individuals capable of receiving divine grace and blessing every person as one of god s created could through individual effort and renunciation of worldly concerns render him or herself worthy for salvation emphasis added in fact the idea of personal individual salvation is one of the distinguishing marks of evangelicalism and particularly of conservative evangelicalism to the point where it has been indicted for its emphasis on personal individual sin and atonement while tending to ignore many systemic social evils so the real issue seems to be not individualism but a certain aspect of individualism should the focus on the individual apply only to personal salvation or should the value of the human individual mean that systemic injustices against individuals because they are part of a restricted group should be abolished in other words does the gospel apply only to our spiritual state before god or is it meant to set the captives free luke 4 18 in our earthly lives too a while back i wrote what galatians 3 28 cannot mean which rebuts the idea that when paul said that in christ the category and class distinctions of jew and greek slave and free and male and female no longer applied he meant to separate our spiritual state from our earthly lives so that gal 3 28 only applies to spiritual salvation yet that is the main idea really that leeman s argument is espousing any application of galatians 3 28 to earthly human classes and categories so that women are set free of restrictions that apply to them as a class in their churches and homes is individualistic and thus worldly and wrong however individualism in spiritual salvation is wholly embraced by evangelicals and is in fact central to the marks of gospel and evangelism in leeman s own 9 marks of a healthy church i would contend that the problem american christians face is not individualism per se but the sacred secular split that spiritualizes the value of the individual and sees life almost exclusively in terms of personal sin and righteousness while ignoring or even condoning the unjust treatment of people as members of categories and classes the final paragraph in leeman s argument above includes this warning be careful you are not serving an idol at least in this one area of your doctrine you ll have a pretty good idea that you are if in spite of the plain teaching of the text you ll find some justification for re interpreting it because your sense of justice can imagine it no other way taking a stand on the plain teaching of the text and accusing of idolatry those who disagree about how plain it is seems to me to be a kind of spiritual bullying it invokes the authority of god as a weapon to make sure the writer gets his way on what a particular proof text means as zach hunt puts it in his blog post why proof texting is not like other sins this sort of proof texting ripping a bible verse out of context to prove a point is the traditional weapon of choice in fundamentalism because it allows the soldier who wields it to destroy his or her enemy with a single verse while claiming the impenetrable high ground of clear biblical authority there is in fact a principle of interpretation that evangelicals including i m sure leeman himself use all the time if a particular verse read at face value appears to contradict a number of other verses and especially if it appears to contradict the big picture meanings of the texts considered together the particular verse must be re examined consider for instance this individual text she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self control 1 timothy 2 15 the plain sense of this verse is that women are saved through having babies if they combine it with faith love and holiness but complementarians such as kim ransleben on the desiring god blog re interpret the text to be about the sanctification of women not their salvation presumably because their sense of justice can imagine it no other way than that women just like men are saved through faith in jesus christ alone applying leeman s own litmus test to this re reading the text in this way is idolatry plain and simple and yet an idolatry that clings to the overarching message of the gospel over the supposedly plain text of an individual verse hardly seems unfaithful to god so i would say that the problem is not in re examining a verse that places women as a class under the authority of men as a class in light of the gospel message that we are all one in christ jesus the problem is in bullying other christians with threats of god s displeasure if they dare to re examine what you a fellow human being have decided is plain the next section of leeman s article goes like this complementarians imagine a different kind of home and church than egalitarians they are just as acquainted with authority fallen but they can better imagine authority redeemed they know that being in authority is no better than being under authority because both are assignments given by god for the sake of serving him and his praise they know that redeemed authority creates enlivens and empowers and it s a shade short of silly to argue over who gets to empower and who gets to be empowered in god s kingdom in fact if there is an advantage to be had it doesn t belong to the person called to lay down his life it belongs to the person who receives life because the first person lays his down the calculations of justice change just a bit in a kingdom where the king gives his life as a ransom for many where he calls all of his citizens to surrender their lives so that they might gain them and where he calls out a class of his citizens to specially demonstrate this self sacrifice is there any advantage to climbing upon a cross not by any of this world s tape measures the trouble with egalitarianism is that it continues to measure advantage and authority and over under with the tape measures of this fallen world it s stuck believing that even if there are occasional advantages to being under authority for training purposes in the final analysis it is always better to be over like the mother of the sons of zebedee egalitarianism asks jesus can my son sit at your right hand while my daughter sits at your left when you enter your kingdom and jesus replies ah my child you still do not understand how authority works in my kingdom but are thinking about it like the gentiles do where authority is always used to lord it over others not to give your life as a ransom see matt 20 20 28 the true danger is that of believing it s always better to be over if that were true its logic would apply to god happiness will finally elude us until we are over god as someone intimated a very long time ago and so we return to the caution against idolatry which rests behind all the debates over gender and sexuality hermeneutics what do the horrors of history really root in they root in that one moment when all the authority in the universe was turned upside down because a man and a woman believed they could be like god emphases in original here is where leeman appears to redefine authority but without actually succeeding in doing so he says truly enough that the new testament calls those in authority and particularly husbands in ephesians 5 remember that in first century ephesus men culturally already had this authority to lay down their lives to self sacrifice and to raise up those under them but what he seems to lose track of is that what this actually involves as described in ephesians 5 is a surrender of the authority itself when jesus allowed himself to be captured by the roman authorities and nailed to a cross as a criminal he was in that act letting go emptying himself of all his power and authority see philippians 2 5 8 it s true that god restored christ s authority to him afterwards but the text of ephesians 5 does not tell husbands to imitate christ in the re assumption of authority but only in laying it down also in matthew 23 11 jesus did not say the greatest among you shall become your servant leader he said the greatest among you shall be your servant if leeman believes that those in authority are to empower those under them the best way to empower someone is to raise them out of subordination to be your equal not to keep them in subordination to you leeman glosses over the subordination of the one under authority as if it no longer existed in a christian concept of authority but if the subordination no longer exists then in what sense does the authority even exist authority cannot simply be redefined so it no longer means authority and indeed his emphasis on the danger of wanting to be over god makes it clear that this is not what leeman really means to leeman a wife desiring to be equal in authority to her husband is the same sort of thing as wanting to usurp and depose god christians who believe jesus taught that the family of god consists of equal brothers and sisters all under one father and one elde...