Bleeding Heart Tightwads

By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times - Opinion

This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.

Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, “Philanthrocapitalism,” by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.

(Looking away from politics, there’s evidence that one of the most generous groups in America is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family.)

When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn’t helping the poor, but simply constructing lavish spires.

It’s true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.

According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.

In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It’s great to support the arts and education, but they’re not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.)

Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

So, you’ve guessed it! This column is a transparent attempt this holiday season to shame liberals into being more charitable. Since I often scold Republicans for being callous in their policies toward the needy, it seems only fair to reproach Democrats for being cheap in their private donations. What I want for Christmas is a healthy competition between left and right to see who actually does more for the neediest.

Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn’t on the top of anyone’s agenda. Yet the financial ability to contribute to charity, and the willingness to do so, are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class.

So, even in tough times, there are ways to help. Come on liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are.

Paedobaptism vs. Credobaptism

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily



Although I am a Calvinist, I disagree with John Calvin on paedobaptism. Even my favorite preacher, John Piper, is a huge follower of Jonathan Edwards and agrees with him on everything except his paedobaptism as well. So clearly, one can be very much in agreement with someone while objecting to a few points. That, I think, shows true discernment and thinking, not just wholesale, uncritical acceptance of another person’s thoughts. I am not a credobaptist by virtue of my Calvinism; in fact, quite the opposite — so I must have a good reason to hold my position. Throughout church history, most people have been paedobaptists, so I (and others like me) hold a historically “unpopular” position, despite the prevalence of credobaptism in the United States. People who practiced believers’ baptism were often disparagingly called Anabaptists (those who “baptized again”), or simply Nonconformists. The Magisterial Reformers (like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) were persecuted by the Catholics, but they in turn persecuted the Radical Reformers (like the Anabaptists). The Radical Reformers, for their part, thought that the Magisterial Reformers were still too Catholic and didn’t take the Reformation far enough. The famous British pastor Charles Spurgeon (nicknamed the “Prince of Preachers”) recognized that credobaptists have to stick to our guns and not be swayed by what others think about us, but rather be faithful to Scripture:

“If I thought it wrong to be a Baptist, I should give it up and become what I believe to be right… If we could find infant baptism in the word of God, we would adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would take away from us that reproach which is attached to us — that we are odd and do not as other people do. But we have looked well through the Bible and cannot find it, and do not believe it is there; nor do we believe that others can find infant baptism in the Scriptures, unless they themselves first put it there.”

Lest I misrepresent my own position, let me also clarify that credobaptism is not a new thing; it is found all over Scripture, and the first historical reference to paedobaptism was not until 206 A.D. (mentioned by Tertullian). Credobaptism fell out of favor for much of church history, but I am thankful that it has been restored as a viable position to hold. And being Calvinist and Baptist is also not an untenable position, as people like Spurgeon, Andrew Fuller, William Carey, John Bunyan, Benjamin Keach, Roger Williams (briefly), John Piper, Al Mohler, Mark Dever, and others are Reformed theologians who hold to believers’ baptism.

Abraham Lincoln grew up a Baptist, Jimmy Carter is a Baptist, and William Carey (the father of Modern Missions), Adoniram Judson (the first missionary from America), A.J. Gordon & Russell Conwell (the founders of Gordon-Conwell Seminary), Carl F.H. Henry (the greatest evangelical theologian of the 20th century), Kenneth Scott Latourette (the greatest church historian of the 20th century), Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Graham, Timothy George, and Rick Warren are all Baptists. We are in good company!

I should also give two notes of clarification: first of all, credobaptism means “believers’ baptism,” it is not adult baptism we’re talking about here! As long as you are old enough to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (e.g. you can be a teenager), that’s good enough. Secondly, even paedobaptists believe in credobaptism. Clearly, if someone is evangelized as an adult, and becomes a Christian, he or she must have believers’ baptism done to them. So paedobaptists are people who accept both infant and believers’ baptism, it’s just that if, given the choice, they default toward infant baptism.

Now let me lay out why I am a credobaptist:

1) Infant baptism is found nowhere in Scripture. Not one example of it exists. In the Bible, baptism always, always, follows repentance and faith (e.g. Acts 2:37-38, 41), and only adults can turn from their sin and profess allegiance to Christ. Of course, paedobaptists would counter with “the entire household” being baptized and saved (e.g. Acts 11:14; 16:15,31-34; 18:8). However, this is an argument from silence. Do you really want to hang your hat on the argument that “there might have been infants in the household”? That’s putting a lot of weight on something that may or may not be there. Adoniram Judson, when he set sail from Boston in 1812 to become the first American missionary, left as a (paedobaptist) Congregationalist. Along the sea voyage to Burma, he read his Bible over and over, and realized that there was nothing about infant baptism in all of Scripture. So, without the influence of anyone else, just by reading his Bible, he became a credobaptist. Judson landed in Asia and sent word back to his mission board that he was now a Baptist, much to their surprise!

2) The word baptizo, in Greek, originally was a pagan word that means to soak, wash, dip, submerge. In the ancient world, it was often used in reference to dying cloth, or a ship sinking into the ocean. Would you do that to an infant? Highly unlikely. When I was in seminary, two of my seminary professors (one a credobaptist and one a paedobaptist) went to Israel and saw the ancient Israelite miqvahs (Jewish baptismal tanks) which were about four feet deep. The credobaptist professor turned to his paedobaptist colleague and said, “I’d like to see you try to baptize an infant in that!” Of course, Jewish baptism wasn’t the same as Christian baptism, but it was a precursor to it. Based on the usage of baptizo in the ancient world, and the size of the baptismal tanks, sprinkling/pouring is definitely not the right mode of baptism, and is only allowed for (see The Didache) in the case of insufficient volume of water. Not submerging the baptized person is a concession, not the norm. Of course the mode of baptism isn’t the same as determining who you baptize, but it certainly seems to rule out the possibility of infants.

3) If you baptize an infant, it’s like flipping a coin. Who knows if this child will become a Christian? It is just as likely that you’ve just baptized a future non-Christian as a future Christian—and at that point, what does baptism mean anymore? It seems kind of cheapened because it doesn’t seem dependent on faith but rather on being born into the “right” family. Now, I understand that the parents and the church will all have a hand in raising this child in the faith until adulthood, and this increases the likelihood that the person will be a Christian. But I’ve seen far too many instances of people who grow up culturally/nominally Christian, or rebellious to the ways of their family, that it just seems like such a crapshoot. If the person confesses with their own mouth and believes in their own heart that Jesus is Lord, and chooses of their own accord to make this public with their baptism—yes it is true that there is the possibility of backsliding, but overall it is far more likely that the person is a genuine Christian and will stick to it. Plus, what a wonderful evangelistic testimony to the grace of God that is!

4) I think that confirmation is basically paedobaptists admitting that they are unsure about the salvation of their baptized infants! Confirmation is done when the child reaches a stage where they are mature enough to understand and articulate their faith, but why is that necessary if the salvation of the person is sure? Or, I could also ask, why not just wait for the person to be baptized at the same time as confirmation, instead of jumping the gun on baptism when the person is an infant? However, to be fair, on the flip side, paedobaptists would argue that infant dedication is what credobaptists do to imitate the covenant community. So maybe this argument is a quid pro quo, showing that both sides are more alike than either would care to admit—paedobaptists do confirmation (which resembles believers’ baptism), and credobaptists do infant dedication (which resembles infant baptism).

5) The two sacraments, baptism and communion, represent the first two parts of salvation: justification and sanctification, respectively (the third and final part is glorification which doesn’t happen until we get to heaven). This is why baptism is only done once, but the Lord’s Supper is taken over and over again. However, if we are justified by faith alone, then why practice infant baptism when the child has no ability to have faith? It seems premature, because the paedobaptism is not matching up chronologically with the faith of the believer, and the two are meant to correspond. Also, why don’t paedobaptists give their infant children the Lord’s Supper? If they are already baptized, then they should not be denied communion, right? It seems inconsistent.

6) Probably the strongest argument for infant baptism, I think, is the theory that baptism is the New Testament form of circumcision (this view is promoted strongly by Presbyterians). This is based on passages such as Acts 15:1-2, 21:21 and Col. 2:11-12 which seem to equate the two, which further implies baptism as being a sign and seal of the Covenant and thus God’s grace. According to the Belgic Confession (sec. 33), sacraments are “visible signs and seals of an inward and invisible thing, by means whereof God works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, baptism is seen both as the means of initiation into the covenant, and a sign of salvation. Millard Erickson writes, “For adults, those benefits are absolute, but the salvation of infants is conditional upon future continuance in the vows made.” This Covenant, which goes back to Abraham, seems to encompass children as Gen. 17:7 makes a reference to Abraham and his “seed.” Ex. 2:24 and Lev. 26:42 open the Covenant to other generations beyond Abraham, and passages such as Acts 2:39, Rom. 4:13-18, Gal. 3:13-18, and Heb. 6:13-18, further seem to extend the promises of the Covenant to New Testament Christians.

Baptists, especially Calvinist Baptists, do not deny everything that Presbyterians believe. Much of the above holds true in the minds of Baptists (in fact, you might be surprised to hear me say that I do think baptism and circumcision are parallel—but I don’t think that the former replaces the latter!), but where Baptists differ is in the trajectory and conclusion of the data. Is baptism representative of merely purification, or death & resurrection (which includes the idea of purification but is so much more)? All Old Testament forms of ablution—immersion, pouring, sprinkling—represent purification, which needs to be repeated time and again (thus, the Lord’s Supper is more akin to OT baptism than NT baptism is). The New Testament form is death & resurrection, as seen in passages like Rom. 2:29, 6:1-11. In other words, baptism is an assurance of God’s promises, and it is given not to heirs of physical descent but to those who have been spiritually transformed (John 1:12 makes this clear). And how does one become a spiritual heir as opposed to a physical heir? By faith. And infants can’t have faith! To contrast this with circumcision, the Apostle Paul dismisses it as nothing in passages like Gal. 5:2-6; 6:12-13,15. Why would we continue a practice which the Apostle Paul calls “worthless” if indeed that baptism and circumcision are the same thing? Millard Erickson, himself a Baptist, observes that, “While faith is possible without baptism, baptism is a natural accompaniment and the completion of faith.” This cannot happen with infants since “Baptism of infants rests on either the view that baptism is a means of saving grace or the view that baptism, like OT circumcision, is a sign and seal of entrance into the covenant.”

Two final objections to the Presbyterian paedobaptist view: first, if baptism is the New Testament form of circumcision, then it should follow that only males should be baptized since only males were circumcised. Second, clearly baptism didn’t replace circumcision, because both occurred in the early church.

I’m not saying that infant baptism is a bad idea through and through. There are actually some things I really like about the Presbyterian view. For example, there is something powerful about the covenant community, because truly “it takes a village to raise a child.” Also, a community vitiates against excessive Western individualism which is rampant in our society today. But, despite these attractions, the arguments for paedobaptism are still not convincing enough to me compared to the compelling evidence on the other side.

7) And finally: Jesus was baptized as an adult, and if that was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!

Let me end with this: though I may have come across strongly in this blog (why take a side if you can’t defend it, or feel passionately about it?), let me now extend the hand of fellowship to paedobaptists as my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Baptism is not a salvation issue. It is not a heresy issue. It is a command of Christ, and all Christians do it. So in that sense, it should bind us more than tear us apart. It is a sign upon us that we belong to Christ. So, to my friends and colleagues who are paedobaptists (and/or complementarians and/or Arminians), Soli Deo Gloria. That is what is most important.

Can Animals Be Gay?

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

The New York Times Magazine offered a photograph of bunnies on the cover of its Easter Sunday edition, but the paper was asking a rather unusual question: “Can animals be gay?”

“Various forms of same-sex sexual activity have been recorded in more than 450 different species of animals by now, from flamingos to bison to beetles to guppies to warthogs,” reported Jon Mooallem. Well, that’s a rather surprising statistic on many levels. It seems that researchers have been attempting to document these activities and to explain them. Thus far, there has been only a smattering of documentation and significant controversy over how to explain it.

Mooallem explains:

Within most species, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadically, and there appear to be few cases of individual animals who engage in it exclusively. For more than a century, this kind of observation was usually tacked onto scientific papers as a curiosity, if it was reported at all, and not pursued as a legitimate research subject. Biologists tried to explain away what they’d seen, or dismissed it as theoretically meaningless — an isolated glitch in an otherwise elegant Darwinian universe where every facet of an animal’s behavior is geared toward reproducing.

The magazine’s cover story begins in Hawaii, where observers are documenting the behavior of albatrosses. One researcher, Lindsay C. Young, noted the existence of some single-sex pairs of the birds, some of whom have “been together” for several years or more. Are these lesbian birds?

Young refuses to speak of “straight” or “lesbian” albatrosses because these are human terms. Nevertheless, she does use the term” homosexual animals” to discuss the albatross colony. “This colony is literally the largest proportion of — I don’t know what the correct term is: ‘homosexual animals’? — in the world.” She added, “Which I’m sure some people think is a great thing, and others might think it is not.”

Well, at least one Denver-based gay group celebrated the colony’s status, referring to the group’s “extensive lesbian albatross parent community.” Stephen Colbert reported the story on Comedy Central, referring to the birds as “albatresbians.”

The whole enterprise of animal sexology is likely to raise some eyebrows. To her credit, Lindsay Young seems quite clinical, speaking of activities like “supernormal clutches” — hardly explicit. One fascinating aspect of this research is the fact that determining the gender of some animals can be rather difficult. When scientists observe two animals in a sexual behavior, they generally assume the pair to be heterosexual. One biologist referred to this as “heterosexist bias.” Bruce Bagemihl said, ‘There is still an overall presumption of heterosexuality. Individuals, populations, or species are considered to be entirely heterosexual until proven otherwise.”

The magazine’s coverage is both interesting and generally even-handed. As Jon Mooallem acknowledges, this is a relatively new area of animal research, but one that has attracted a great deal of attention. The reason is obvious — the issue of homosexuality is one of the most controversial debates in our culture. Both sides in the debate are vitally interested in the data, and even more interested in the interpretation of the data.

Those pushing for the normalization of homosexuality are eager to make the case that homosexual behavior is natural, or at least not unnatural. The documented existence of animal homosexuality would presumably help that case. On the other hand, opponents of the normalization of homosexuality have long pointed to the central biological fact that homosexuality does not lead to reproduction — which is the goal of every species.

The scientists making these observations are committed to an evolutionary worldview, so their findings on animal homosexuality have to be fitted within the structure of evolutionary thought. Given the non-reproductive aspect of homosexual behaviors, this poses a significant challenge. Put bluntly, homosexual behavior in any form seems to run counter to the logic of evolution.

Mooallem tries to explain:

Something similar may be happening with what we perceive to be homosexual sex in an array of animal species: we may be grouping together a big grab bag of behaviors based on only a superficial similarity. Within the logic of each species, or group of species, many of these behaviors appear to have their own causes and consequences — their own evolutionary meanings, so to speak. The Stanford biologist Joan Roughgarden told me to think of all these animals as “multitasking” with their private parts.

The political implications of the issue are clear — those pushing for the normalization of homosexuality want to be able to point to research that would prove the normality of homosexuality in nature. This is where Christians need to think very carefully. Some believers will be tempted just to dismiss the research as bogus or irrelevant. This would be a mistake.

The world we know is a world that shows all the effects of human sin and the curse of God’s judgment on that sin. Though the glory of God shines through even its fallen state, nature now imperfectly displays the glory of God. Because of the curse, the world around us now reveals and contains innumerable elements that are “natural,” but not normative. Illnesses and earthquakes are natural, but not normative.

Evidence of homosexual behaviors among animals is just another reminder that we live in a fallen world — one in which every dimension of creation bears evidence of the Fall. This new research points all the way back to Genesis 3.

Efforts to claim a genetic basis for homosexuality are rooted in the assumption that our genes tell us what God’s intention for us is. In a fallen world, that is a faulty assumption. Only the Word of God can tell us what God’s intention is. We cannot derive our sexual morality from a laboratory — much less from observations of an albatross colony.

“What animals do — what’s perceived to be ‘natural’ — seems to carry a strange moral potency,” suggests Jon Mooallem. That is understandable, given the highly contested battles over sexuality that mark our times. Indeed, the Apostle Paul warns us that homosexual behavior is indeed “against nature.” [Romans 1:26-27] But we did not gain that insight by observing albatrosses. We have that knowledge because God spoke it to us in his Word.

C. H. Dodd and Realized Eschatology

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

C. H. Dodd (born this day, April 7, 1884; died 1973) was a major twentieth-century New Testament scholar. He wrote on many topics, but his name is mostly associated with the idea of realized eschatology.

If eschatology is the doctrine of the final things (eschaton being the Greek word for “last”), then realized eschatology is the teaching that those final things have already happened. Realized eschatology replaces “the end is near” with “the end is here,” and Dodd argued that we should understand Jesus’ message that “The kingdom of God is at hand” with an emphasis on the kingdom’s actual absolute presence: “The kingdom of God is right here, at hand, at your fingertips, reach out and you’re touching it.”

There is much to be said in favor of realized eschatology. Jesus knew that certain things were going to happen at the end of the world:

The Messiah would come
God would pronounce final judgment on the sins of the world
The dead would rise
The Son of Man would be seen in the clouds of heaven
The Spirit would be poured out on all flesh

As the New Testament makes clear, these things all happened in the ministry of Jesus himself: He was the expected Messiah, his cross was the place of God’s judgment on the sins of the world, he rose from the dead as the firstfruits of the general resurrection, he was raised to the right hand of the majesty on high, and he poured out the Spirit on the basis of his finished work.

In the Revelation, Christ identifies himself as the first and the last, the protos and the eschatos. Just as he said, “I am the resurrection,” Christ can legitimately say, “I am eschatology” or “eschatology is realized in me.”

So realized eschatology is a great conceptual tool for understanding what’s happening in the New Testament. But it’s not enough, and Dodd’s theology came under some deserved attack for being one-sided. Realized eschatology has to be kept in tension with future eschatology, or, in New Testament terms, “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) Jesus may be the eschatological man, but that doesn’t mean his eschatological work is complete yet.

If all you can say about eschatology is that it was realized in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, you have nothing to say about our future. Inevitably this will lead to confusion of terminology (the end of the world was 2,000 years ago, the future is in the past, etc.) and will require you to ignore the unfulfilled prophecies of the Old Testament and the futurist passages of the New Testament –or at least offer gymnastically contorted reinterpretations of them. The first coming of Christ was eschatological, but the second coming will be eschatological… eschatologically eschatological!

Dodd put realized eschatology on the map of twentieth-century theology in a very helpful way, and as later scholars came to term with his arguments, they tended to balance his one-sidedness by integrating more of the full biblical witness. George Eldon Ladd was probably the most influential voice for evangelicals in coming to terms with the tension between realized eschatology (a biblical idea) and futurist eschatology (also a biblical idea). If “realized eschatology” is the slogan for Dodd, then Ladd’s slogan is “already / not yet.” The biblical tension between already (Christ brought the final things in his own person and work) and the not yet (this world shows all the expected signs of unredeemedness, and we await the return of Christ) is pervasive. In some ways, this clear biblical tension is so much a part of the intellectual furniture of evangelicalism that we’ve had Dove-award-winning pop songs about it since the 80s, and Russell D. Moore has recently shown how it serves as a consensus position for united social engagement.

As for C. H. Dodd, who did justice to the realized eschatology side of things, his theology did suffer from its one-sidedness. If eschatology is over and done with, then when we pray “thy kingdom come,” all we can really mean is “may your kingship be manifested in my life.” That is a great prayer, and people like Dallas Willard have been eloquent about how transforming it is for Christian life to acknowledge the reign of God here and now. But without the counterweight of a future kingdom of God, this “present reign of God” theology can be privatized. That’s certainly what happened in the wake of Dodd: The message of Jesus could easily be transformed into the message of Bultmann, a call for ultimate existential decision. In complex ways, his thought was folded into the English-language neo-orthodoxy that dominated mainline theology for the middle of the twentieth century, enabling academic theologians to hold on to Christian confession in the face of liberal denials, but limiting their ability to make much headway. Seminarians of that era were uniformly amused by the great commandment of Anglophone neo-orthodoxy: “Thou shalt love the lord thy Dodd . . . and thy Niebuhr as thyself.”

And as long as I’m reporting jokes based on what his name rhymed with, here’s a limerick that circulated for a while:

There was a professor called Dodd,
Whose name was exceedingly odd;
He spelled, if you please,
His name with three “D’s,”
When one was sufficient for God.

F. F. Bruce praised Dodd as having ” a brilliant intellect, a sober judgment and (not least) a reverent humility.” And Bruce has a wonderful, short account of how to think of Dodd’s position in his own time:

His earliest writings reflect something of the climate of theological liberalism in which he was brought up. It would be inaccurate to say that his later writings reflect a different climate; they helped to create a different climate. For Professor Dodd was a leading pioneer in the ‘Biblical theology’ movement; indeed, so far as Britain is concerned, he might justly be called the pioneer.

Why the Great Books Aren't the Answer

By Patrick Deneen
Minding the Campus

For several decades, conservative critics of higher education have argued against trends toward the elimination of "core" curricula and with equal ferocity against their replacement by "distribution requirements" or even open curricula. They have, in particular, defended a curriculum in "Great Books," those widely-recognized texts in the Western tradition authored by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Mill, and Nietzsche, among others. This curriculum - preserved still in some of the nation's leading universities such as the University of Chicago and Columbia University - as well as at the heart of the longstanding Great Books approach of St. John's College - is seen as a bulwark against contemporary tendencies toward relativism, post-modernism, and political correctness.

More recently, even some faculty who would eschew the "conservative" label have sought to restore sustained study of the Great Books to some place of pride in the curriculum. Some twenty years after the height of the "culture wars" over the Western canon - during which the phrase "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go" was chanted on the Stanford campus - there seems to be a growing sense among some moderate faculty that the curriculum has become too fragmented, and that something valuable was lost in the politically-motivated elimination of a common core. Notably, at Harvard an ad hoc effort by some faculty to establish a Great Books track in the "Gen Ed" requirement was advanced before crashing on the shoals of Harvard's new fiscal reality (as well as the opposition of some faculty).

This reassessment has been most articulately argued by Anthony Kronman - a moderate liberal - in his recent book Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Kronman, a professor and former Dean at the Yale Law School, laments the abandonment of a serious engagement with the Great Books. Their neglect has led to the decline of an examination of "the meaning of life," an activity that he argues should be at the heart of the university experience. He praises a period in the history of American universities which was dominated by what he calls a worldview of "secular humanism." This period of "secular humanism" followed the widespread disaffiliation of traditionally religious institutions and preceded the rise of the modern research university and the concomitant rise of political correctness in the humanities. He urges modern institutions of higher education to adopt something like the Yale program in "Directed Studies" - in which he teaches - which requires students to engage in a concentrated study of the Great books ranging from Homer to Luther, from Machiavelli to Kant, from Plato to Nietzsche - over a two year span.

While there is much to admire in Kronman's arguments - especially, in my view, his penetrating critique of the scientific basis of the university and his critique of "political correctness" - his defense of the "Great Books," and its basis in the worldview of "Secular Humanism," is deeply problematic and reveals the deep flaw of this longstanding tack by conservatives. Indeed, his argument suggests not that study of the Great Books is a true alternative to the relativism among professors of humanities on today's college campuses, but in fact was the breeding ground of the very relativism that a curriculum in the Great Books purports to combat.

The Great Books have long been recommended by figures ranging from Allan Bloom to William Bennett as the basic texts of a liberal education and for containing essential knowledge about the Western tradition. An education in the Great Books was seen as essential in the cultivation of the educated person, and as the source of ideas that gave rise to many of the treasured inheritances of the West - including constitutionalism, liberal democracy, separation of Church and State, individual rights, a free-market economy, and the dignity of the human person. Knowledge of the constitutive texts of the West was seen by many of its defenders as the prerequisite for the informed citizen, someone not only who would believe in the traditions of the West, but be able to muster an articulate defense of the same.

However, for anyone with even passing familiarity with those constitutive texts, it is readily evident that these texts provide nothing of the sort. These texts are hardly primers on liberal democracy or any other political, ethical or economic system, but rather contain a wide and ranging set of debates over the nature of the good and best life, the good and best polity, the good and best economic system, and so on. The texts typically listed in such a course of study are marked by severe and profound disagreements. For example, on the list of books provided by Kronman that have been recently assigned in the Yale Directed Studies Program, they have included such radically distinct books as The Hebrew Bible, The New Testament, Aristotle's Politics, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Machiavelli's Prince, Rousseau's Social Contract, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, the Federalist Papers, Mill's On Liberty, Marx's Communist Manifesto, Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, and Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. Thus (to be somewhat reductionist), students are exposed to arguments on behalf of Judaism, Christianity, Teleology, Pessimism, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Utilitarianism, Progressive Liberalism, Communism, Deontology, and Nihilism (among many other alternatives). On point after point and issue after issue, basic elements of each theology or philosophy contradict some fundamental aspect of all the other philosophies listed here (and others that go unlisted). An education in the Great Books is a potpourri of conflicting views, a set of strongly articulated arguments that continuously strive to refute other views that purportedly comprise a single "tradition." The "Western tradition" is a ferocious and ongoing set of disagreements about the most basic human beliefs.

What Does it All Mean?

Any student confronting such a wide variety of texts will be driven to make some sense of them, to evaluate their strong and contradictory claims. It's not enough to state that higher education should consist of an exposure to the Great Books and leave it at that: students will need some way of negotiating their way through the philosophical thicket into which they are being thrown. For Kronman, this is exactly the point: exposure to this diversity of views encourages a probing examination of the best way to live, or "the meaning of life." Any student confronting these texts in even a remotely serious way cannot be left complacent -he must confront his own presuppositions and articulate a response to the many challenges to which he will be exposed.

A confrontation with the Great Books, according to Kronman, is to disrupt easy assumptions about the meaning of life and force students to more deeply articulate their beliefs. But Kronman is quite explicit that arriving at life's meaning will be the result of an individual's negotiation between these various texts. The "meaning of life" will be developed from each person's own capacity to arrive at a personal response to the many challenges these books represent. Confrontation with these texts reveals the expansiveness of possible ways of life, beliefs, ethics, and economics: they teach us that "each of us can make, and wants to make, a life uniquely our own - a life that as no precise precedent in all the lives that have gone before and that can never be repeated exactly." These books reveal the "plasticity of human nature."

Thus, even as each student will be encouraged to arrive at a deeply informed and highly articulated "meaning of life," a deeper lesson is advanced by such a curriculum: the "meaning of life" is always highly personal and relative to each person. A person may arrive at a "philosophy of life" that is not itself relativistic - for instance, finding in the Biblical texts a religious basis for their beliefs - but overall, such a conclusion will take place within the context of a curriculum that is itself fundamentally relativistic, in which each student is encouraged to come to their own conclusion about the meaning of life, and thus to arrive at a personal set of criteria by which to evaluate all the respective arguments.

Indeed, such an approach in fact suggests that there is a single "meaning to life," and that meaning is fundamentally "decisionist." Most curricula in the Great Books offer the various philosophies as inherently coherent and valid systems, suggesting to each student that there is finally no basis on which to decide which philosophy to adopt other than mere preference. One must simply decide. This Nietzschean (or Schmittian) lesson is reinforced by the typical organization of such curricula (where they persist), which is typically chronological. Given that most students today have deeply ingrained progressive worldviews (that is, the view that history has been the slow but steady advance of enlightenment in all forms, culminating in equal rights for all races, all genders, and all sexual preferences), a curriculum that begins with the Bible and Greek philosophy and ends with Nietzsche subtly suggests that Nietzsche is the culmination of Enlightenment's trajectory. The fact that his philosophy is reinforced by the message that an education in the Great Books consists in exposure to equally compelling philosophies between which there is no objective basis to prefer only serves to deepen the most fundamental lesson of a course in the Great Books, which is a basic form of relativism. The choice of a personal philosophy is relative, and the basis on which one makes any such choice is finally arbitrary, the result of personal preference or attraction. De gustibus non est disputandam.

A Brief History

This basic feature of Great Books draws attention to the curious feature of Kronman's chronology that goes unremarked upon. According to Kronman, religiously-affiliated institutions with a longstanding emphasis on a classical education (particularly Classics and Biblical studies) dominated the American landscape until the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Then, he argues, there was a brief flourishing of "secular humanism," during which the study of the Great Books was a central component of the curriculum. This period marked the rise of a view that life's meaning was not regarded to be unified in a religious creed, but rather that meaning was to be increasingly fashioned by individuals in an age of "pluralistic" belief. This phase lasted less than a century, followed in the mid- to late-twentieth century by the rise of the science-dominated and politically correct research university.

If we extend Kronman's analysis chronologically into the past, however, we would need to acknowledge that in one form or another, the religiously-affiliated university has dominated the scene in the West since the Middle Ages, persisting roughly for a millennium or more. By contrast, the age of "secular humanism" lasted not even for a century, a scant blink of an eye compared to the longer tradition of the religious university. Seen in this light, we need to ask why the very ideal recommended by Kronman was so fleeting and unstable in the light of the longer history of the Western religious university.

The irresistible conclusion is that the age of "secular humanism" was a brief period of transition between the decline of the age of the religious university to rise of the age of the scientific and "politically correct" university. Secular humanism sought briefly to provide a different kind of "scripture" to that which had been displaced - now the Great Books - but lacking any kind of philosophical or theological principle by which to assess the competing claims advanced by those texts, this period was destined to usher in a period of philosophical relativism and the rise of the science as the only form of knowledge that could provide certainty and true knowledge.

Many conservatives have long argued for the reinstitution of the Great Books without acknowledging that this is to serve as a kind of "replacement scripture," in the main satisfied that some common knowledge of the great texts of the West could constitute a common culture and supply the appearance of agreement in the absence of a deeper set of religious and cultural commitments. But, by the time this became a "conservative" argument, the more traditional defense of a more constitutive system of belief by which competing philosophic claims could be judged had long been displaced from the heart of the university. By the time Allan Bloom wrote of the thirty elite universities in the United States in the mid-1980s, he was writing of long-since religiously disaffiliated institutions that were already well on their way to complete relativism. Bloom argued not for belief in something, but on behalf of "the Socratic knowledge of ignorance," a kind of middle-point between skepticism and certitude. For Bloom, an education in the Great Books was to be at best a perpetual kind of suspension of belief, an eternal kind of play of ideas by philosophers. If Bloom resisted the "decisionism" that one sees in Kronman, at the same time he rejected the idea that there could be, or ought to be, any criteria by which one ought to judge between various philosophies. In the end, his peculiar understanding of Plato was to be recommended - the knowledge that we do not know.

This might be an appropriate goal for philosophers (though I doubt it), but it cannot exist as a reasonable curriculum for students who will enter the world wondering how they should live. Where they exist, contemporary arguments on behalf of the Great Books are often as pernicious, and even indistinguishable from, the forms of value relativism that they purport to combat. Many conservative academics have become lazy in the defense of the Great Books, content to let the phrase stand in for a deeper and potentially more contentious examination of the various arguments within those books and the West itself, and of the need for university faculties to provide some kind of organized and well-formed guidance to students on how best to approach these texts.

In my view, the reinstatement of the Great Books would accomplish little in the contemporary academic context. What is needed is a more serious and potentially contentious discussion of the underlying philosophy within which these books would be read and taught. Teaching as I do at a Catholic and Jesuit university, I would like to see these books taught explicitly within the context and in the light of the standards that the Catholic tradition would provide (I would be satisfied if this were done solely within the context of my own institution, leaving aside for the moment the sticky issue that I may merely propose a set of internally coherent institutions between which students would have to choose. This is merely to push relativism from the individual to the institutional level, but I would regard this as "progress"). If this would mean that the arguments of Marx and Nietzsche would be subject to severe critique, it would mean also that the writings of Locke and even the Founding Fathers would not escape criticism for their highly individualistic and Enlightenment basis. It would mean, too, that the work of Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas would receive special pride of place. The Great Books would and should be taught, but not as if the faculty is indifferent to the ways that they should be received. Students should at least know that these books cannot be rightly approached from a basis of "neutrality," since that approach itself contains a teaching, and that teaching is one that reinforces the relativist orthodoxies of our age. Better to rub against the grain than - in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson - go with the flow.

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Patrick J. Deneen is the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, and is the Founding Director of The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy.

Albrecht Dürer, Northern Renaissance Man

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

Albrecht Dürer (born 1471, died on this day, April 6, in 1528) was widely hailed as the greatest artist of his generation in the northern renaissance. All kinds of voluptuous shenanigans were going on in the wonderful world of the southern Renaissance, but if you want that stern northern sensibility, it’s hard to beat Dürer .

His artistic accomplishment is especially memorable for the range of visual media he mastered. He made enough large paintings to prove he could do it as well as anybody, and the big oil painting has always been the preferred medium for masters. But he also took up the challenge of the print media, from woodcuts to copper engravings. Compared to the richness of oil painting, woodcuts are incredibly limited in their expressive possibilities: the artist is basically restricted to lines and shapes. But Dürer was the kind of artist who responded well to the challenge of limitations, and made the restriction itself into an element of his self-expression. If anybody looked down on the humble woodcut, so useful for mass production and basic communication by craftsmen and printers with no artistic aspirations, Dürer exalted the medium to make it the vehicle of serious artistic intention.

Hundreds of Dürer images can be browsed here.

An 1889 book on Dürer gives a good summary of his views on the Christian vocation to art:

In all his doings Dürer felt himself to be under the directing power of God. He says he will return from Venice “when God helps him home.” He will accomplish a thing “if God will.” The name is lightly used in his earlier years, but later it is introduced within a halo of reverence. “The more we learn,” he somewhere says, “the more closely do we resemble the likeness of God, who knoweth all things.” “From God we receive all things.” ” God is perfect in goodness.” These and the like phrases are of constant occurrence. Many of them are taken from the New Testament, which Dürer studied diligently both in Latin and German translations. He held that the artist’s duty to God was especially great. The youthful apprentice is to be “brought up in the fear of God and taught to pray to God for the grace of quick perception and to honour God.” Great artists he held to be God-inspired. “God only knoweth what is the perfect figure of a man, and he knoweth it likewise to whom He revealeth it.” “God granteth great power to artistic men.” Again, “Painting is a useful art when it is of a godly sort and employed for holy edification. It is useful because God is thereby honoured, when it is seen how He hath bestowed such genius upon one of His creatures, in whom is such art.” The artist must therefore be pure, for “nothing so blunts the understanding as immorality.” He must work as in the sight of God, remembering that “work well done is honouring to Him.” A fine work of art is well-pleasing to God, and He “is angry with such as destroy the works of great mastership, for that is bestowed by God alone.” Such are some of the statements bearing on religion found in Dürer’s writings up to the year 1513.

Tooley Debate

By William Lane Craig
Reasonable Faith

Michael Tooley has developed a very complicated argument against God’s existence based on concrete examples of terrible evils in the world like the famous Lisbon earthquake. Alvin Plantinga has remarked that Tooley has thereby done us a service, for if an argument as carefully developed as his fails, it’s very unlikely that any better argument from evil against God’s existence will be found. Here is part of my response to Dr. Tooley’s argument:

Dr. Tooley argues that the evil in the world renders God’s existence improbable. I disagree. I think his argument has multiple weaknesses.

First, in general, Dr. Tooley’s argument is based on a theory of logical probability which is highly controverted and irrelevant to real life situations. His premiss (16)—that the probability of the wrong-making properties of an action’s outweighing its right-making properties is greater than ½—that premiss is based on a theory of probability which is rejected by almost all probability theorists today, in part because the probabilities that it yields are dependent upon arbitrary choices made by the theorist and are therefore not objective. Many other approaches to probabilistic reasoning have been developed which do not share the failings of Dr. Tooley’s approach,1 and these do not support his key premiss.

Secondly, consider Dr. Tooley’s first premiss, that if the action of choosing to permit some state of affairs is morally wrong, then God would never perform that action. I want to challenge this premiss on two grounds.

(i) Whether some action is wrong depends on the person involved. For example, it would be wrong for a mother to choose to permit her child to throw a tantrum in the grocery store. She should discipline her child. But it wouldn’t be wrong for you to choose to permit her child to do that. On the contrary, it’d be wrong for you to try to discipline her child, since you have no right to. So we always have to ask, “Wrong for whom?” This is crucial because God, I think, has the right to do or permit things that we do not. For example, it would be wrong for Dr. Tooley to pull out a gun and kill me; but if God wanted to end my life now, that’s His prerogative. So Dr. Tooley’s first premiss is malformed and therefore cannot be true.

(ii) Naturalism can’t make sense of moral rightness/wrongness. Rightness and wrongness have to do with our moral obligations and prohibitions. But these arise as a result of moral imperatives. As we saw in my defense of the moral argument, atheists can make no sense of moral imperatives because they lack a moral lawgiver to issue such imperatives. That’s why on atheism there are no objective moral duties. So Dr. Tooley’s first premiss makes sense only if God exists. So his argument against God’s existence presupposes God’s existence and therefore can’t even get off the ground.

Thirdly, consider Dr. Tooley’s premiss (12):

The property of choosing not to prevent an event [like the Lisbon earthquake] is a wrong-making property of actions.

Dr. Tooley just takes this premiss for granted. But I don’t think it’s clearly true at all. Again, I have two reasons:

(i) Even though the event of all those people dying is horrible and even bad, it just doesn’t follow from that that it’s wrong for God to permit it to happen. Badness doesn’t entail wrongness.

(ii) More fundamentally, we shouldn’t think of the wrongness/rightness of an action as a sum of wrong- and right-making properties. Consider the property of sticking a knife into somebody’s heart. That might seem like a wrong-making property. But suppose we’re given the additional information that the agent involved is a heart surgeon. Suddenly, the property doesn’t seem wrong-making after all. Yet being a surgeon is not a right-making property which somehow balances out the wrong-making property of sticking a knife into someone. Rather it’s a context in which we now see that what we thought was a wrong-making property may not have been wrong after all and may even be good! If it’s right for someone to permit some event, then his action is just right as a whole. So it doesn’t make sense to think of the wrongness of an action as a sum of known and unknown wrong- and right-making properties, as Dr. Tooley does.

Fourthly, consider Dr. Tooley’s premiss (15) that we know of no right-making property of the action that would outbalance the known wrong-making property. I’ve already rejected this whole approach to assessing the moral worth of actions. But waiving that, on the moral theory I’ve defended I do know of such a property. On my view the wrongness of an action is determined by its being forbidden by God. An action is morally permissible if it is not forbidden by God. Now obviously, God didn’t forbid permitting the Lisbon earthquake. So it has the right-making property of being permitted by God. Dr. Tooley has to assume that my view is unjustified, which is what he’s supposed to be proving. His argument turns out to be reasoning in a circle.

It seems to me, then, that Dr. Tooley’s argument, despite its complexity, has at least three false premises. It’s therefore a bad argument for atheism.

Render Unto Caesar? On Paying Taxes After Obamacare

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

We do not “render unto Caesar” because of our confidence in Caesar. We render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, because we are committed with our lives and confidence and consciences to render unto God that which is God’s.

A significant number of Christians are now wondering about the moral implications of the Obama health care overhaul. While any number of moral questions will demand attention, the question of abortion stands at the center of concern. And with the question of abortion comes the question of taxes.

Without the legislative remedy of the Hyde Amendment or similar protections, it is almost certain that the new health care legislation will lead to tax-supported abortions. At the very least, the legislation will lead to either direct or indirect taxpayer supported subsidies for some abortions. At the extreme, it could mean outright coverage of abortion services.

Though President Obama’s Executive Order offers some limitations on taxpayer support for abortion, both sides in the abortion debate recognize that his order cannot take precedence over statute, can easily be removed by a court, and does not cover all arenas in which abortions will be provided or subsidized.

So, should Christians defy the government and refuse to pay taxes if some involvement in abortion is almost certain? The answer to that question reaches far beyond the issue of abortion — and far beyond the question of taxation. The answer to that question must be “no.”

The relationship of the Christian to the secular government is fraught with moral questions. Nevertheless, even though the New Testament does not offer a complete primer for Christian citizens on all matters of politics and policy, it does contain clear affirmations to which all faithful believers are obligated.

The New Testament clearly takes a positive view of government as a divinely-ordained institution. “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities,” Paul wrote the church at Rome. He added: “For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” [Romans 13:1]

This command was originally issued to the young church that was fighting for the faith in the capital city of the Roman Empire. The New Testament clearly affirms that the presence of a functioning government is one of God’s gifts to his human creatures, leading to peacefulness, rightful order, and human flourishing. The absence of a functioning civil government is a disaster and a curse to humanity. Paul here affirms that Christians are to be found subject to the government — even to the government of Rome.

The background to this is the sovereignty of God over all things. God retains his absolute sovereignty, but he delegates some degree of rightful sovereignty to human rulers, governments, and institutions who are, in return, accountable to him and judged by him. God has ordained government and invested it with rightful authority. One who defies the authority of the government thus runs the risk of defying God’s own authority.

Thus, Paul warns: “Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and those who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.” [Romans 13:2]

Clearly, this command has limits. Daniel and the faithful Jewish youths were honored for refusing to bend the knee to a king who set himself up as God. They refused a command that involved the performance of an idolatrous act. They did not launch a tax revolt.

To the Romans, Paul was clear — they should pay their taxes. “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” [Romans 13:7] In the previous verse, Paul had reminded the Roman Christians that they pay their taxes out of the fear of God’s judgment and the operation of the Christian conscience.

As J. C. Doggett rightly explains, “Paul gives no support to Christian citizens who might be minded to hold back part of their tax liability because they disapprove of the way in which the government might spend the money or because they doubt its fairness. In happier times than Paul’s, Christians nowadays are free to pursue their objections by political means.”

A similar message comes from Peter, who wrote: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” [1 Peter 2:13-14] By such faithful acts, Christians “may silence the ignorance of foolish men” and be found as good citizens.

Without doubt, the payment of taxes to Rome would involve the subsidy of acts and policies the early Christians would have known to be morally repugnant and wrong. Nevertheless, the believers were commanded to pay their taxes as an act of their own accountability and faithfulness to God. They would give an answer for their rightful obedience to the lawful authority of the government to tax. The rulers will eventually answer to God for their use of those funds.

Jesus Christ also commanded the payment of taxes, setting forth the principle that has become the most familiar expression of the Christian obligation to government. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” [Mark 12:17]

Jesus spoke these words even as He had been challenged by a strange coalition of Pharisees and Herodians, who were attempting to lure Jesus into a trap. The payment of taxes was contorted into a question of lawful authority and the rightful determination of that authority. Jesus answered their question in a way that left his opponents speechless and amazed. “Give Caesar what belongs to him,” is the effect of Jesus’ words. Caesar does not own their souls — which bear the image of God — and he has no ultimate claim upon them. But, a quick look at the coin reveals that it is Caesar who has his image on the coin. That is a small thing, Jesus implies. Give Caesar back his coin.

As Pheme Perkins explains, the issue of taxes in the New Testament emerged in “a political and social context in which taxation was a sign of subordination and oppression.” Add to this the graft and corruption almost universally associated with the tax franchise in the ancient world. Even so, Jesus’ instruction is clear — Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

Luis E. Lugo puts this text and command in proper perspective when he writes: “While Jesus clearly intends to affirm his followers’ obligations to the state, even a pagan state, the main thrust of his statement is to underscore the fact that these obligations are rooted not in the presumed ultimacy or autonomy of human political institutions but in the absolute sovereignty of God, the creator and sustainer of all things.”

With the power to govern comes the power to tax, and government is a divinely-ordained institution. Christians are commanded to pay taxes, and were commanded by Christ and the apostles to pay taxes even to a pagan government involved in immoral and ungodly policies — including the oppression of the Jews and the nation of Israel. Thus, the question of paying taxes after Obamacare is put in its proper perspective.

We cannot and must not bend the knee to Caesar, accepting the government as our ultimate sovereign. We cannot submit to accept idolatry and idolatrous practices. But paying taxes is a matter of our Christian obligation.

There is no Christian mandate against tax avoidance — which is the use of lawful and legitimate measures to limit tax exposure. In other words, Christians are not mandated to seek to maximize their tax bills. But tax evasion is another matter, as is tax resistance. Those who seek by illegitimate and illegal means to resist or evade taxes run into direct confrontation with the commands of Christ and the teaching of the apostles.

Abortion is a moral catastrophe. The murder of the unborn is one of the greatest sins any society can tolerate, much less subsidize by taxation. The impact of the new “Obamacare” health care legislation is not yet fully clear, but the legislation lacks any adequate protection for the unborn. Immorality is added to immorality when the power of the government to tax and confiscate the funds of citizens is involved in such a catastrophe.

For this reason, Christian citizens should be involved at every level in the political process, seeking to use legitimate means to establish full protection for the unborn and for all other vulnerable persons. Elections have consequences, and this new legislation is a reminder of the power of government to do both good and evil.

But to refuse to pay taxes is to deny the legitimacy of the government itself, and to declare it beyond political remedy. Even to Christians suffering under the repressive, murderous, and dictatorial yoke of Rome, Jesus instructed the payment of taxes. Caesar, Christ knew, will one day face the judgment of Almighty God. Rome would one day be brought under his own feet and made subject to him.

We do not “render unto Caesar” because of our confidence in Caesar. We render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, because we are committed with our lives and confidence and consciences to render unto God that which is God’s.

Complementarianism vs. Egalitarianism, Part 2: A Theological Perspective

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily

A couple of months ago, I wrote this blog comparing complementarianism and egalitarianism from a non-theological perspective (culturally and sociologically). This current blog is Part 2, looking at the issue biblically and theologically.

Let me preface my blog with this: John Piper is one of my favorite pastor-theologians, and I agree with him on just about everything except his complementarianism. Bill Mounce was my former Greek professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary and I am close to him and his family (in fact I used to babysit his kids) — but he is complementarian though the seminary is mostly egalitarian (yes, you heard that right — one of the top evangelical seminaries in the country is mostly egalitarian). Me disagreeing with Piper and Mounce (amongst others) on the egalitarian-complementarian debate does not imply that I dislike them as people or theologians. In fact Piper is probably my favorite preacher, and Mounce is a good friend of mine. Piper himself agrees with Jonathan Edwards on just about everything except infant baptism. So, clearly one can very much admire someone else, agree with them on 99% of their thoughts, but still cordially disagree with them on a little part of their thinking, causing no rift in that relationship. That’s how I view my complementarian brothers and sisters who are evangelical — yes, we debate on one non-essential point of theology, and let’s put our cards on the table, but I hope it’s not a hill we’re willing to die on.

Also let me lay out what I hope to accomplish from this blog. For those who are unsure on the issue, perhaps this will give you more information for you to consider, to help you make up your mind on this issue. For those who are avowed complementarians, I don’t think I’m going to change your mind. Yet, I also don’t hope that this will be a forum for nasty exchanges back-and-forth. I am not trying to prove egalitarianism without doubt from Scripture. I think it is impossible to prove either egalitarianism or complementarianism without doubt from Scripture, which is why it is considered one of these indeterminate nonessential things, like paedobaptism vs. credobaptism, premill vs. amill vs. postmill, and Calvinism vs. Arminianism. What I hope to do is show that a case can be made from Scripture about egalitarianism. I’m afraid that some complementarians often hold the Scriptural “high ground” as if somehow egalitarianism is a non-Biblical position. All I want to do is show that it is not as clear-cut as all that; that a case can be made for egalitarianism; and hopefully we can be more charitable toward each other recognizing that good evangelicals can hold various interpretations on such disputed nonessential, non-heretical matters.

Some preliminary things to consider:

-Greek nouns, like in Spanish and other Romance languages, have genders. When referring to people in the plural, Greek always defaults toward the masculine (again, like Romance languages). So a masculine plural does not mean it refers exclusively to men, but rather that the collective could include both men and women. Likewise, if a pronoun is in the singular but is applicable to all people, it also defaults toward the masculine (we even do this in English, e.g. James 5:13, “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.” Clearly it’s not saying that only males should pray, but the “he” can refer to any singular man or woman!)

-Ephesians 5 calls for mutual submission. It is a case of proof-texting to only point to v. 22 (“wives, submit to your husbands”) but not v. 21 (“submit to one another”). In fact, I would say the husband’s responsibility is much heavier than the wife’s. Any man who thinks his wife needs to be doing whatever the husband wants forgets that the husband is called to die for his wife (lit. “as Christ … gave himself up for [the church]”). Any attempt to soften that makes the cross impotent (like when I hear people interpret, “Take up your cross and follow me,” as just bearing a heavy burden — no, it’s much more than that, the cross was death for Jesus!). You want to be a real man? The Bible calls men to die, not to lord it over their wives. Jesus never sought power for himself, and that’s precisely why he’s worthy to be praised. If we want to be real men, we shouldn’t demand obedience, but obedience will come out of respect for our humility.

-When it comes to biblical interpretation, one must decide whether each passage is prescriptive or descriptive. The latter applies to historical things that are no longer applicable to us today, but merely describes what happened back then. The former applies to things that still hold for us today, what the Bible is prescribing for us to continue doing. Clearly not everything is prescriptive, unless you literally go around giving people holy kisses, cutting off your hand and plucking out your eye whenever you sin, and baptizing the dead. As is the case with the role of women (such as remaining silent), our task is to determine whether it was descriptive of the culture at the time but is no longer applicable to us today, or if it is prescriptive for us even now. It is a sloppy hermeneutic to assume that it is all prescriptive.

On women’s exclusion from the pastorate:

Often the case against women preaching is that they cannot be elders, and pastors are a subset of elders, and pastors preach, therefore women cannot preach since they are not elders (and hence cannot be pastors).

-First of all, there are three different church offices listed in the New Testament, and pastor is not one of them. The three offices are (in Greek): presbuteros, diakonos, and episkopos. The word “pastor” in Greek is poimen which is always used in the Bible exclusively for Jesus himself. The only exception is Ephesians 4:11 where it lists “pastor” as one of several roles alongside apostles, prophets, evangelists and teachers. But if we say that pastor is a church office, then we also have to say that apostles, prophets, evangelists and teachers are as well. I don’t think that’s the case. There are only three clear church offices: presbuteros (often translated “elders”), diakonos (“deacons”), and episkopos (often translated “overseers” or “bishops”).

-Secondly, the words prebuteros and episkopos are synonymous. Look at Titus 1:5-7. In v. 5 Paul calls them “elders” and in v. 7 he calls them “overseers.” It’s clearly the same group he is referring to, and he uses the two words interchangeably. Also in Acts 20:17, Paul addresses the “elders” and in v. 28 he calls them “overseers.” Yet another interchangeable use of the two words. Finally, in 1 Peter 5, v. 1 uses the word “elders” and v. 2 uses “overseers.” These are three separate and, I think, conclusive cases to show these two words are equivalent.

However, it has been argued that in the latter two passages, the word “pastor” is used also synonymously with “elder” and “overseer.” That’s actually not the case, as both times (Acts 20:28 and 1 Peter 5:2) it’s used as a verb (“to pastor”), not a noun (“the pastor”). While it’s true that a verb may imply the noun in role, it’s not absolutely necessary that it implies the noun as a job. Just because I can garden does not make me a gardener (as a temporary role, yes; as an official vocation, no). So saying that a pastor is the same as an elder or overseer is not accurate. I would say that elders and overseers are called to pastor, but since “pastor” is not a church office, I’d say that people other than elders and overseers can pastor (as a verb) as well, just as people other than gardeners (those who have that official job) can garden.

-There are two lists for qualifications of elders: 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. The Timothy passage says that overseers “must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect … He must not be a recent convert … He must also have a good reputation with outsiders…” And the Titus passage says that an elder “must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient … blameless — not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.” What’s notable about these two lists? To some extent, nothing. These are characteristics that all believers, whether elder or not, whether male or female, should be held accountable to if they call themselves mature Christians. What complementarians often single out is this: that elders/overseers must be “the husband of but one wife” and thus it implies that an elder must be a man.

However, that phrase can mean many different things. Of course implying that an elder must be male is one interpretation. But keep in mind my first injunction above regarding the ambiguity of male pronouns. So technically “husband and wife” could be translated as “spouse and spouse.” Therefore, another interpretation of this passage is that it could be a prohibition of polygamy (e.g. an elder must have only one spouse). Or it could be a prohibition of remarriage (e.g. an elder must never remarry if there is divorce due to spousal infidelity or spousal death). To quickly jump to an “elder must be male” interpretation is reading one’s agenda into it and not allowing for the possibility of other interpretations of “an elder must be the husband of but one wife.”

On women as deacons:

I said above that there are three church offices: elder, overseer, and deacon, though the first two are the same. Deacon is something else entirely, as seen in the separation of roles in Acts 6:2-4. Deacons minister by waiting tables, distributing food, serving as treasurers, and taking care of the poor. Literally, the word diakon means “minister” or “servant.” I want to argue that the qualifications for deacon are no different from that of elder (though they are distinct roles), therefore if women can be deacons they should also be allowed to be elders.

-The list of qualifications for deacons is found in 1 Timothy 3:8-13. It says, “Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons. In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything. A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well.” It seems like the qualifications for deacon seems practically the same as that of elder/overseer, namely being a mature Christian.

However, even complementarians acknowledge that women can be deacons, e.g. Phoebe and Priscilla in Romans 16:1-3.

-Yet, the language here used for deacons is “men” and “the husband of but one wife.” Clearly this language cannot prove that deacons must be male, otherwise Romans 16:1-3 doesn’t make any sense. And if this language is inapplicable to mean “male” in 1 Timothy 3:9-13, then why must it mean “male” in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 when it is referring to elders?

-Though deacons do not rule like elders, they are still people in authority. It is a church office, after all, and people in authority have other people subordinate to them. I find it hard to believe that female deacons would only have females and children under their authority. No, most likely they would have men under their authority too.

On the importance of women teaching men:

-I understand that complementarians don’t have a problem with women teaching, but “merely” with women teaching men. However, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen male pastors who listen to the sound advice of elderly ladies in their church. With age often comes wisdom, and middle-aged male pastors would do well not to disregard the wisdom of elderly people in the church, whether they be male or female.

-This also holds for older women in the family. Whether males are boys or men, to disregard the teaching (wisdom and advice) of a mother or aunt or grandmother would also be foolish. In the Bible, Timothy clearly derived his faith from the women in his family — his mother Lois and his grandmother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5). Notice he mentions nothing about his father. The same goes for St. Augustine’s mother, Monica, who was a great influence on his life, and the Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena. Don’t underestimate the power of women to influence men for the good.

On women being silent:

1 Timothy 2:11-12 is one of the “classic” texts that complementarians use to prove their point, so it’s worth looking at to see if the “plain reading” of the text holds. It says that women must “learn in quietness and full submission” and that they are not permitted to “teach or to have authority over a man: she must be silent.”

-As I said above regarding Ephesians 5, it’s easy to just take v. 22 but disregard v. 21. Likewise, it’s easy to take vv. 11-12 but disregard vv. 9-10 which says, “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.” I have encountered far too many complementarians who do not permit women to teach but have no problems with them wearing jewelry or braiding their hair. Be consistent! Either demand both (women not teaching and women not getting dolled up) or write off both as being merely descriptive of the culture of Paul’s time. But more often than not, women in complementarian churches look good (nice dresses, great hairstyles, makeup, jewelry and the like) and the men don’t seem to mind; but oh, let them teach, and it’s a completely different story!

-Also, what does it mean to be “silent”? 1 Corinthians 14:35 says something similar (“If they want to enquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church”). Really? How many people take this literally, even in complementarian churches? You mean a woman can’t even ask a question in church? Before using 14:35 as a trump card, don’t ignore the fact that, just a few chapters earlier, Paul describes women praying and prophesying in church (1 Corinthians11:4-6), which further casts doubt about the injunction for women to remain “silent.” In fact, prophecy could even be a form of teaching, depending on the content.

-1 Corinthians 14:35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-12 both use the Greek words aner and gune. The former can mean “man” or “husband”; the latter can mean “woman” or “wife.” In the NIV, 1 Corinthians translates the two words as “husbands” and “women” whereas 1 Timothy translates them as “woman” and “man.” Why does aner mean “husband” in the former case and “man” in the latter case? It is a matter of translation. The 1 Timothy passage could also be translated “wife” and “husband,” in which case these verses only apply within the nuclear family, not within the church, which totally changes the application of this.

-I think the best defense of the complementarian view is actually 1 Timothy 2:13-14 which is the creation argument: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived: it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”

However, the “plain meaning of the text” is somewhat untenable if you think about it, because the creation order does not imply superiority (otherwise animals would have superiority over humans); and Adam was just as guilty in being deceived as Eve was (cf. Genesis 3:17-19).

-In addition, let’s compare this to a similar passage, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. First of all, notice that, similar to 1 Timothy 2, there are what I see as cultural injunctions here: women must pray with their heads covered, men must pray with their heads uncovered, women must have long hair, men must not have long hair. So already the creation argument here of being prescriptive is “suspect,” because it’s interwoven with lots of descriptive cultural things (unless, of course, you actually think that, for example, men should not have long hair and women should. But last time I checked, almost no Christians have problems with hair length in either gender.)

-Why do I bring up 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2 in parallel? Because in the former passage, it similarly links the seeming “superiority” of males over females to creation: “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.” So at face value, it seems that 1 Corinthians 11 is right in line with 1 Timothy 2.

Yet look what 1 Corinthians 11 says next (vv. 11-12): “In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.” Interdependence! This reminds me more of Ephesians 5. Though it is easy to point out that woman must submit to man (Ephesians 5:22), it is easy to forget that man and woman must submit to each other (Ephesians 5:21). Likewise, it is easy to point out that women should have a sign of authority on their heads (1 Corinthians 11:10) but it is easy to forget that interdependence is the key (1 Corinthians 11:11-12) because ultimately everything comes from God.

Descriptive and prescriptive seem to be inextricably woven in 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2. Paul seems to go back and forth between head coverings and woman being created from man; and between jewelry and woman’s primacy of sin. Either we have to take it all as prescriptive, or all as descriptive; picking and choosing seems arbitrary. As an egalitarian, I’d take it all as descriptive; however, if you take it all as prescriptive, you better be ready to have your women cover their heads when praying, not to have short hair, not to braid their hair, not to wear jewelry, and not to wear any nice clothes. Only then can you have any right to say that women should be silent and not have authority over men.

-Here’s an argument for why 1 Timothy 2 might be descriptive. Timothy, if you will remember, ministered at the church in Ephesus (cf. 1 Timothy 1:3 and Acts 19:22). Ephesus was the center of feminist goddess-worship, as in Acts 19:34 (“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”). The reason for Paul’s suppression of women teaching in Ephesus was to quell this female cult. The reference to Eve’s deception in 1 Timothy 2:13 was for this reason: Paul forbade women in Ephesus to speak because they were deceived by the feminist cult of Artemis and by the local Gnostics. After all, the Pastoral Epistles deal, in large part, with false teachers. The same reason can hold for the Corinthian church: It was a stronghold of Aphrodite worship (which is why Paul counters with his famous “love” passage of 1 Corinthians 13 re. what true love really is, as opposed to perverse Greek love), so he was countering the goddess cult in that city. This is how some biblical exegetes see it; and though it is not definitive, neither can we prove that this was not the reason.

-Why do evangelicals often hold a complementarian view of women’s roles, but “conveniently” ignore the issue of slavery? I would say if you take the plain meaning of the text, you ought to support slavery as well, e.g. 1 Timothy 6:1. Is it fair to say that the references to slavery were descriptive, but the references to women are prescriptive? I think that’s being inconsistent.

Conclusion:

I know that this blog is not exhaustive, that there are other passages we can point to, other issues that we can tackle. However, I think this gets at the heart of some of the main issues and Scriptures that address the complementarian-egalitarian issue.

Let me say a final word to complementarians who may read this blog: you may disagree with me, but I don’t think you can say I didn’t make a good attempt here! There are Scriptural arguments which may support egalitarianism, and I hope nobody writes this off as fluff. You may say that I am wrong (and, by all means, feel free), but you can’t say that I have no biblical case for my position. That’s all I am trying to do: to show that one can be egalitarian, and in no way does it make one unbiblical or unevangelical. If complementarians can recognize that (and I certainly recognize that in complementarians), then I think that’s the beginning of a good relationship between people who cordially disagree but who are still brothers and sisters in Christ.

A Response to Egalitarianism vs. Complementarianism, Part 1

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily

After I wrote this blog on egalitarianism vs. complementarianism from a non-theological perspective, I was actually surprised it engendered so little feedback. I thought for sure that this is an issue that would cause volleys of people firing at me from all quarters! Well, I finally received a good response from David Nilsen, who wrote this blog on “Evangelical Outpost.” What I mean by “good” is not that I agree with all his points, nor do I think he makes an airtight case, but at least it was an honest effort to engage me on this topic, for which I appreciate. I do not mean to endlessly drag on this debate (especially since Scriptorium Daily and Evangelical Outpost are both Biola- and Torrey-related, so it’s a bit like siblings squabbling in public — so this will be my final and only response to Part 1 of this debate), but I do want to respond to his points to clarify any misunderstandings.

Firstly, Nilsen asks:

Last week on The Scriptorium Dr. Allen Yeh made a non-theological case for egalitarianism. The theologian in me immediately wants to respond by asking, “Why bother? If there is a theological case to be made, who cares what culture has to say?” Indeed, I am concerned that Dr. Yeh chooses to lead with the non-theological case (his theological case will follow shortly). Perhaps he is allowing his cultural cart to be put before the theological horse.

My response:

Leading with the non-theological argument does not necessarily mean a judgment of priority. Jonathan Edwards, in his book Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, wrote the first half of his tome as a philosophical/logical defense of his argument, and the second half as a theological/Scriptural defense. The first half was based completely on human reason. It would be incomplete without the second half, surely, but he starts with the human side. The same goes with the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 as he preaches to the men of Athens on the Areopagus. He appeals to their pagan poets and culture before he gets theological on them. To only go theological is to exclude reason, culture and all those other “human” things that God has also gifted us with — and that is a form of Gnosticism. While Scripture should have preeminence, the other things are not without weight. Now, one might argue that Edwards and Paul only included philosophy and reason because they were speaking to non-Christians. That may be partly true, but I think that since everything on earth is given by God, we must figure other factors into the debate.

One of the differences between evangelical theology and liberation theology is that the former makes its starting point Scripture while the latter makes its starting point the situation. Unfortunately, evangelicals have often reacted against perceived liberalism by throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In order to not travel down the “slippery slope to liberalism,” evangelicals will sometimes completely discard the situation or context as being relevant in any way because that reeks too much of liberation theology. However, this is a fallacy, as the point is to make Scripture preeminent, not to make Scripture the only factor to take into account. It is a misunderstanding of Sola Scriptura to think that it does not include any consideration of our cultural context or situation.

Let us also not forget that Calvin, the one who was deeply committed to Sola Scriptura, actually was very much influenced by and steeped in Renaissance humanism. Jonathan Edwards, America’s greatest theologian, was very much influenced by Locke’s philosophy. Culture and the Gospel are analogically like a vessel carrying water, respectively. Though they are not the same, the former shapes the latter. Water, though it never changes in its essence, changes shape depending on the vessel it’s carried in (depending on whether it is a bowl, a mug, a swimming pool, etc). In other words, all theology is occasional, i.e. it arises from occasions. Why did Moses write the seemingly humorous passage of Deut. 25:11-12? Because it happened! In fact, it probably happened more than once, to the point where Moses decided, “Look guys, this has been going on long enough, I have to include it in the Law to stop this nonsense.” Why did the Apostle Paul write all his epistles? Because of situations that were going on in the churches (e.g. the immorality going on in the Corinthian church), and these things prompted his letters. The epistles didn’t just drop into his lap from heaven like the Koran to Muhammad or the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. Fully God and fully man does not just apply to Jesus, the living Word, but also to the Bible, the written Word. It’s immanent situation and transcendent theology working hand-in-hand. In fact, it is often heresy that breeds good theology in the church, i.e. it is situations of controversy, and occasions of disagreement, that give rise to theology (see my blog on that)

I often say that the difference between theologians and missiologists is that the latter know the difference between contextualization and syncretism. There is no such thing as “pure” theology, “uncontaminated” by culture. Culture pervades us. To use language is to engage in culture, and thus the Logos himself, Jesus Christ, was cultural, as is the Bible, as is theology. It is twentieth-century dichotomistic thinking that derives from the culture wars and the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy (see my blog on that) that creates this theology vs. culture mentality. It is fundamentalists reacting to evolutionists. It is J. Gresham Machen reacting to Harry Emerson Fosdick. It is Westminster reacting to Princeton. Because Nilsen seems to belong to one stream of 21st-century evangelicalism (conservative) and I belong to the other stream (radical evangelical), I’m afraid to some extent we are actually at cross-purposes in trying to see eye-to-eye on this issue just because of our presuppositions.

Secondly, Nilsen makes this claim:

This is a bad analogy. It would indeed be ridiculous to say that all women (or men) should do only one type of activity, if that were the complementarian position. But complementarians argue that there is one type of activity that women are not called to do. The question would then be whether it is ridiculous to exclude women from this particular activity.

My response:

It is not a bad analogy. The analogy is fine. The problem is that Nilsen disagrees with my application of the analogy. This is because he holds one of several category views of complementarianism. On the chart in my initial blog, I outlined five different positions that Biola professors hold, with the vast majority adhering to Category 3, which I called either an extremely soft complementarian position, or a bipartisan vote. If that’s the case, what Nilsen is objecting to is my criticism of more definitive complementarians. Perhaps this is my fault, that I didn’t specify which category I was criticizing, but clearly my analogy doesn’t apply to bipartisans.

Thirdly, Nilsen says:

Second, suppose a church has to make a choice between two preachers, one who is not so gifted but will faithfully bring good exposition of the Scriptures each week, and one who is a very gifted speaker but does not agree fully with the theology of the church. Which should they choose? Depending on how significant the theological differences are, it seems clear that the church ought to choose right theology over good speaking ability. Likewise, theology should always be a higher priority than the perceived gifts of an individual (it is the Holy Spirit, after all, who gives the Word of God power, not man). Yeh seems implicitly to agree with this when he notes that ability cannot be the “sole criteria” here, but he doesn’t allow his admission to actually inform his argument, since he takes the case of Anne’s superior ability in and of itself as an argument for egalitarianism.

My response:

Nilsen is implicitly implying that egalitarianism is wrong theology, in order to prove his point that egalitarianism is wrong. That’s a fallacy of trying to define something by itself. And I did not say that Anne’s superior ability in preaching is my sole criteria of why she should be allowed to preach, but it should be a consideration.

Fourthly, Nilsen argues:

The only thing that this comment proves is that many evangelicals don’t follow their theology consistently. It doesn’t constitute support for egalitarianism. Moreover, it confuses the office of church elder with that of seminary (or college) professor, which is not even a New Testament category. I am a complementarian, yet I have no scruples about female professors because I do not believe that the Bible prohibits women from teaching in such a capacity. According to complementarianism, the Bible’s restriction of female service in the church is actually an extremely limited one, and thus any honest debate must be equally limited.

My response:

I don’t see how you can be OK with female seminary professors but exclude women from preaching in the church (from all arguments I have heard from complementarians, pastors/preachers are subcategories of elders, so if the latter is something that women must be excluded from, so must the former—see Mark Dever’s writings for some of the arguments to support this view, such as A Display of God’s Glory: Basics of Church Structure). First of all, as I said in my blog, Biola has both female seminary professors (in Talbot School of Theology) and often has female preachers in chapel, so it’s not like only one but not the other is allowed. Secondly, I see seminary professors as analogous to generals in the army. Generals (professors) train their captains (pastors) who train their troops (laity). So why is it OK for the professors (who are teaching theology) to be female, but not for pastors? Theology, which is taught by seminary professors (who are sometimes female), reaches the minds and hearts of male pastors, and trickles down to laypeople via sermons. These are not categories that are mutually exclusive. Can you say that generals and soldiers in the army can be female, but captains can’t? It doesn’t make sense.

Fifthly, Nilsen says:

Dr. Yeh is actually making two points here. First, he is arguing that many women function as pastors (if only of women’s or children’s groups), but aren’t called “pastors” by name. This is true, and I agree with Dr. Yeh that they should be recognized by name for the work that they do. I have no problem referring to a woman as a “Women’s Pastor” or “Children’s Pastor.” The issue is whether she serves in the specific role of exercising authority over men. Remember that the New Testament only mentions two offices, Elder and Deacon. Any other unofficial offices that we create to meet needs in the church (youth group, women’s group, etc) should not be closed to women unless it serves the same function as Elder (it is not at all clear to me that women should be excluded from serving as Deacons).
Second, Dr. Yeh argues that women need women to minister to them. As I have already pointed out, complementarians would agree, and would not deny that women can be teachers/pastors over other women (or children).

My response:

Again, Nilsen is articulating a bipartisan, or at best, a “soft” complementarianism. Many complementarians would argue that pastor is a subcategory of elder, so that women cannot therefore be either. To stronger complementarians than Nilsen (again, refer to Mark Dever’s writings), you just cannot call a woman a pastor because that would make her an elder. So they would call her a “minister,” which I think is just semantic dancing. So, since Nilsen is a soft complementarian, and I would call myself a soft egalitarian, I don’t actually think we disagree very much on this point at all. He advocates using the terms “Women’s Pastor” or “Children’s Pastor” which I think are perfectly valid terms.

Finally, Nilsen points out:

This is probably Dr. Yeh’s weakest argument. While it may be true that some complementarians are guilty of this sort of proof-texting, it is certainly not true of many of the better defenders of complementarianism such as Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and Biola’s own Robert Saucy, all of whom deal directly with the passages that Dr. Yeh mentions. In the near future, I hope to respond to Dr. Yeh’s second post (which is forthcoming), defending Egalitarianism from a theological perspective.

My response:

It probably is not fair to call this “weak” until Nilsen hears my whole theological exposition. But this is partially my fault, as I probably should not have just shown a “preview” of my Biblical support without revealing the rest, as it is by definition incomplete. As for Saucy and other Talbot professors, the Biola “Gender Climate Study” that I mentioned in my last blog showed that Talbot is more conservative than the rest of Biola, and thus is not accurately representative of what the University in general thinks, as seen by the poll of faculty. My theological defense will be featured on November 8, so stay tuned!