Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. By William J. Webb. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001. 301 pp. n.p.

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes I wonder if egalitarians hope to triumph in the debate on the role of women by publishing book after book on the subject. Each work propounds a new thesis which explains why the traditional interpretation is flawed. Complementarians could easily give in from sheer exhaustation, thinking that so many books written by such a diversity of different authors could scarcely be wrong. Further, it is difficult to keep writing books promoting the complementarian view. Our view of the biblical text has not changed dramatically in the last twenty five years. Should we continue to write books that essentially promote traditional interpretations? Is the goal of publishing to write what is true or what is new?

Are you interested in women's ministry at your church?
I'd like to highlight some things against which we all need to guard ourselves in women's ministry.

So, if you want to ruin a women's ministry, here are 4 helpful tips.

1. Make women's ministry your first priority.
I'm not saying to forget your husband and kids. I'm just saying to think of them as less fulfilling than women's ministry. I had a time in my life when I would drive to church praying intently that the Lord would bless my ministry there, guard my words, and guide my responses. Then one day, the Holy Spirit convicted me that I never prayed the same as I drove toward my house. Women's ministry at church had assumed the place of God's Big Thing in my life. And yet I knew that my ministry to my husband and boys was even more important than my ministry at church. Why was I allowing myself to find fulfillment in one and drudgery in the other?

She Ministers Grace to Others (Both Within and Without the Body of Christ)
This is the final installment of this series, satirically titled the Ideal Christian Woman. We've tried to break down the stereotypes of Christian women and replace them with the things that Scripture teaches should characterize us all. First and foremost, the Ideal Christian Woman must be honest about her sin. Women who put on pretty faces and fake their way through the Christian life are of no value to the church. Confession and repentance are key to our growth in Christ. Secondly, we must deal with this sin in light of the gospel. We never graduate past a need to meditate on and avail ourselves of the benefits of the gospel. If we're honest about our sin and find our identity in Christ through the gospel, we are equipped to reflect the character of God as He originally intended. In particular, women were created in God's image as Helpers suitable to the needs of their male counterparts. It is a high and worthy calling to reflect the image of God in our lives by supporting, defending, and comforting those in our care as an ezer, or strong helper.

In Her Body and Life, She Seeks to Reflect the Image of God
We've established that the Ideal Christian Woman is honest about her sin and finds her identity in Jesus Christ. She understands that His punishment on the cross bought her peace, healing, and restoration, and she meditates regularly on the benefits His death has purchased for her. As the prophet Isaiah said, "By His wounds, we are healed." Christ's death on the cross and the forgiveness and cleansing we have through Him enable us on to part 3 of this series: we restore and reflect the image of God in our body and life.

Her Identity and Security Are Found in Christ
In part 1 of this series, we discussed the need for women to confess their sin and be honest about their struggles. Instead, the norm in most churches is that the majority of us wear plastic smiles each Sunday, hoping that no one will notice what's really going on in our hearts. But what do we do with this sin we confess? How does repentance take place? And how can we possibly forgive those who have committed heinous acts against us? In a word, the gospel.

I have had several women recently come to me concerned that they don't match the stereotype of the Ideal Christian Woman. That got me to think--what is that stereotype? When I hear others discuss the "Christian Woman" at our church, I think I know what they are talking about. I'm not going to describe her here, because I don't want to hurt any woman who may fit that stereotype. But I do want to shoot down the main myth I hear about the stereotypical Christian woman.

Covenant Promises
The basic context in which we bring children into the world and do all our work in caring for children is the covenant God has made with all who love him and who seek to walk in his ways. He has promised to love not only us, but also our children (Gen 22:15-18; Ex. 20:5-6; Acts 2:37-39). But do these wonderful promises mean that our children will not go through difficulties and even times of turning away, rebellion, and dissolute living? Consider the reality that we are not perfect ourselves — our own lives are damaged deeply by sin in every area. We do not pray as we should for our children. We do not live before them in full obedience to the Lord in everything we do. We do not teach them perfectly the glorious truth that we know touches every area of life. In addition we do not bring perfect children into this world. They bear the stain of Adam and Eve's sin etched right through them —though they also bear God's glorious image. C. S. Lewis captured this double reality with the words of the centaur in Prince Caspian. Our children also bear the inheritance of our particular brokenness.

The present paper will evaluate "Subordinationism in the Godhead, A Re-emerging Heresy," a transcript of a lecture given by Gilbert Bilezikian at the National Conference of Christians for Biblical Equality at Wheaton College in August, 1993, and distributed by the same group. Dr. Bilezikian was assigned the title (p. 17).

According to the lecture, it was St. Augustine who provided "a definitive statement on the Trinity" in the fifth century (p. 2), putting an end to Subordinationist tendencies found in some earlier patristic writings (pp. 2-4). As Dr. Bilezikian sees the matter, the "historical Biblical trinitarian doctrine that has been defined in the creeds and defended by the church" was the affirmation that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are co-eternal, interdependent, and one in substance; their identity of essence, he stresses, precludes "any form of hierarchy, order or ranking" (p. 5) and establishes "the functional equality of the persons of the Trinity" (p. 9). All statements in scripture that seem to place the Son under the Father refer to the Son's temporary, incarnate state of humiliation, which he assumed voluntarily in order to redeem the world (pp. 6-9). The idea that the Son's obedience was appropriate to his position within the Divine Triad raises, in Dr. Bilezikian's view, the specter of "some coercion or obligation by reason of superior force or authority" (p. 6), by which he would have been "dragged to his death against his will--kicking and screaming" (p. 8), and entails projecting on heaven our "pathetic dysfunctional human hierarchies" (p. 20). It may be inferred that Dr. Bilezikian thinks any trinitarian doctrine that specifies an hierarchy, order, or ranking among the Divine Persons, to be a "pagan infiltration" into Christianity, a "weird procession of three divinities lined up by order of seniority" (p. 6), indeed, a form of Subordinationism.

Jumping Right In
We live in an interesting time of twisted confusion regarding the nature of gender. Men and women wonder how to relate to one another in the home, the workplace, and in the churches of Jesus Christ. In many ways our world is more just, more equitable, and more open than any society in history. Great strides have been made to afford freedom in the workplace, political participation, and education for women in our culture. Yet our understanding of ourselves has also greatly eroded with many social struggles and aches. What began in western culture to bring equality has led to a world that despises our differences, sees gender as a mere social construction, with both biblical masculinity and femininity cast aside. To be honest, it is simply an affront to the modern mind that God created us uniquely and distinctly as male and female, both biologically and psychologically. Though modern research is showing that down to our very brains, we are different, many persist in believing that men and women should occupy the same roles and spaces in the home and culture. We live in a time when men are thought to be capable of being as good a mother as a mother and fatherhood is quickly becoming an endangered art. Take all this into the dating world and many just scratch their heads. In this paper my goals are not ambitious. I want to look briefly at our struggles with being a man or a woman in our society. Second, I want to look at some of the confusion which is displayed both in pop culture and in academia regarding gender. In doing so I will look at the word Feminism and strike fear into the hearts of the men – just kidding, but we will look at the strengths and weaknesses of feminism. Finally, I will close with a very brief treatment of gender according to the Bible with application to the family and the church. This will not be an in-depth research paper; just some analysis which I hope will assist us forward in our discussions of being men and women. So let us begin with our struggles…with each other, with ourselves.

An evangelical feminist is one who has a high view of Scripture and believes the Bible teaches the full equality of men and women without role distinctions between the two. Their principles for interpreting Scripture differ markedly from those of the advocates of role differences for men and women. A comparison of evangelical feminists' principles with the grammatico-historical method of interpretation clarifies what and how great they deviate from traditional views of a woman's role in church and at home. The disputed principles include the issues of ad hoc documents, interpretive centers, the analogy of faith, slavery as a model for the role of women, culturally biased interpretation, cultural relativity, and patriarchal and sexist texts. An examination of these issues shows evangelical feminist hermeneutics to fall short of the grammatico-historical method of interpretation.

DEFINITIONS AND DIFFERENCES

The significant changes for women in society that began about thirty years ago have not bypassed the church. The changes have meant a challenge to the Christian community to consider afresh the role of women in their relationship to men in the church and in the home. The instigators of this challenge call themselves "feminists."

"Feminist" is a broad term that includes several groups. "Secular feminists" are those who do not accept the Bible as authoritative.¹ "Religious feminists" are "individuals who do not identify with Christianity, but whose beliefs nevertheless include a religious worldview."² "Christian feminists" work from the standpoint of a commitment to the Christian faith but accept the authority of Scripture in only a limited way.³ A final classification of feminists includes those identified as "evangelical feminists." An evangelical feminist has a high view of Scripture and is "one who believes that the Bible teaches the full equality of men and women without role distinctions based on gender."⁴ The focus of this essay is on this last group.