Male-female differentiation in egalitarian teaching

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Kevin Giles (What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women) repeatedly complains that Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger (and other complementarians) accuse evangelical egalitarians of teaching undifferentiated equality between the two sexes.

Giles insists:

‘Evangelical egalitarians do not deny male-female differentiation, they affirm it.’

‘Yes, in Gal 3:28 Paul speaks of the equality of the sexes in salvation but this does not negate male-female role differentiation.’

‘The Köstenbergers and all complementarians argue that evangelical egalitarians reject the authority of Scripture, embrace cultural relativity, and deny male-female differentiation, arguing for “undifferentiated equality.”

…

Romans 16:7 – ‘Junia…well known to the apostles’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Romans 16:7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my compatriots and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.

The main issue to be discussed here is whether Junia (along with Andronicus) is being described as ‘well known to the apostles’, or ‘outstanding as apostles’.

A cluster of issues surround this commendation:

1. What general background can we infer about this couple?

Along with Prisca and Aquila, Epenetus, and Miriam, Andronicus and Junia would have quite recently returned to Rome after Claudius’ decree of banishment of Jews and Christians from that city had been reversed. …

1 Timothy 2:11f – ‘I do not allow woman to teach or exercise authority over a man’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

2:11 A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. 2:12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She must remain quiet. 2:13 For Adam was formed first and then Eve. 2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression. 2:15 But she will be delivered through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control.

This is a much-debated passage. …

Sex and culture

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Nestling at the back of what I fondly call my mind has been a reference, by O.R. Johnston (in his 1979 book, Who Needs The Family?) to an important but neglected piece of research which presented evidence for a positive correlation between sexual restraint and cultural achievement.

I was pleased to track down Johnston’s book, and his discussion of the research in question.  Here is what Johnston has to say:

I turn now to the various types of marriage pattern in different societies and ask what advantages scholars have perceived in the different types of sexual regulation.…

1 Samuel 16:14 – ‘An evil spirit from the Lord’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

1 Sam 16:14 – ‘Now the Spirit of the LORD had turned away from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.’

See also: 1 Sam 18:10 – ‘An evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul and he prophesied within his house.’

Also 1 Sam 19:9 –  ‘Then an evil spirit from the LORD came upon Saul.’

Bergen describes this as a very unusual form of expression.

It could equally be translated, ‘troublesome’ spirit.…

Eternal submission of the Son – key texts

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Key texts include:

John 6:38 “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”

John 14:28 “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.”

John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life—that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.”

…

Aimee Byrd: confused, or what?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Perusing the 2nd edition of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology (Zondervan Academic, 2020), I was struck by his complaint that his (and Bruce Ware’s) position on the Eternal Submission of the Son has been ‘seriously misrepresented’ by Aimee Byrd (in her book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, published earlier in 2020 by Zondervan).

Byrd, writes Grudem,

‘falsely claims that Bruce Ware and I, in advocating the doctrine of “eternal relations of authority and submission,” are making a serious doctrinal error because “this doctrine teaches that the Son, the second person of the Trinity, is subordinate to the Father, not only in the economy of salvation but in his essence,” and we are therefore “unorthodox teachers that are not in line with Nicene Trinitarian doctrine.”’

…

Eternal submission of the Son – bibliography

Walking With Giants Posted on by

The literature (especially online literature dating from 2016 onwards) is huge.

Here, however, is a selection.

Books

Bird, Michael F. and Harrower, Scott (eds).  Trinity Without Hierarchy.  Kregel, 2020.

Byrd, Aimee.  Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  Zondervan, 2020. (Not primarily about ESS, but of some relevance, given Byrd’s involvement in the debate)

Butner, D. Glenn, Jnr: The Son Who Learned Obedience: A Theological Case Against the Eternal Submission of the Son.  Pickwick, 2018.…

Trinitarian distinctions

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Morton Smith:

There is an order in the mode of subsistence of the Three Persons, which cannot be reversed, and properties that cannot be interchanged, an order of relationship. This is not to be construed as subordination, however. These distinctions between the Persons are not distinctions of essence, but of person. They are “the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” The essence of God involves infinite, eternal, and unchangeable being and perfection. The fact that we recognize each of these persons as deity implies that there can be no subordination of essence.…

1 Corinthians 15:28 – ‘The Son himself will be subjected to [God]’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

1 Corinthians 15:28 ‘When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.’

Donald MacLeod refers to the ‘formidable difficulty’ contained in these words.

‘They seem,’ he writes, ‘to teach blatant subordinationism: the Son himself will be subject to the Father.  Does this not place him very clearly on the side of creation rather than on the side of the Creator?’…