The Gundrys and Me, by Ruth Tucker

Stan and Pat Smith Gundry. Where would my life be today without them? This little series began with A. B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Last week, I continued with Elisabeth Elliot’s influence on my life. Like Simpson and Elliot, Stan and Pat have left very large footprints on the evangelical world and on my life in particular. Where would I be today had Pat not written Woman Be Free! and had Stan not been fired from Moody Bible Institute? Forced to leave his teaching position in Chicago, he would spend the next decades at Zondervan Publishing House in Grand Rapids, and that is where I first encountered him.

In last week’s post I recalled how I was flying by the seat of my pants developing college-level courses on subjects I didn’t know anything about. But I successfully turned a History of Missions course away from mind-numbing facts into a biographical history.  It made the subject matter interesting and stirred up class discussion. After teaching it a second year, I put together a proposal and sent it to Stan at Zondervan. I told him that, having taught the course for years (I didn’t say it was only two), I had discovered that it was best taught through biography. He got back to me confessing that History of Missions had been the most boring course he had taken in seminary and that he would be interested in seeing chapters—chapters that would become my text, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya.

Stan passed me on to a good editor, Mark Hunt, and through him (with Stan’s encouragement), I was connected with Walt Kaiser, academic dean at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where I would teach part-time for seventeen years, flying back and forth from Grand Rapids. It was there where I became acquainted with Scot, so the line of influence comes right up to this post.

But back to my first teaching job at Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music. Another course that fell into my lap because the regular teacher wanted out was Women in Ministry. The previous teacher had taught how to be a proper pastor’s wife and hostess as well as how to put together a mother-daughter banquet and an assortment of other practical tips. Although I had been a pastor’s wife for six years, I did not shine in that arena. Much of my time had been devoted to writing a doctoral dissertation. So again I was trying to figure out how to teach a course. And then I laid my hands on a book published a year earlier in 1977, Woman Be Free!  My life would never be the same.

I learned from Pat and then from others that a woman could do much more in ministry than be a pastor’s wife. So, I would feature strong women of the Bible and in church history and we would dig into passages that had been wrongly interpreted to keep women out of ministry. The students were startled by my course material, but I was getting the information from actual books so it must be true. Fortunately, the president of the school seemed to have no problem with my budding feminism, having known women preachers, including his Methodist grandmother. Just don’t start teaching Calvinism, he warned me.

After having taught this course several times, utilizing my training as a historian, it was a natural step to begin team-teaching a course at Trinity on women in ministry with Walt Liefeld, a New Testament expert. Then together we pitched a book proposal to Stan—a volume that would become Daughters of the Church.

Again, Pat’s foundational research was critical. And I realized how much I resonated with her personal perspective. Responding to an interviewer, she answered:

I had always been a feminist and egalitarian, before I knew those terms. I’d been raised to be an independent thinker, confident in my ability to do and be whatever I set out to do or be. It came as a shock to me as an older child to realize that some people would want to limit my opportunities solely because I was female.

We were both raised on farms, Arkansas and Wisconsin, though Pat’s family moved to California when she was young. She gravitated to the domestic side of life, whereas I preferred driving a tractor or milking cows—anything but the kitchen where Pat was a natural. In fact, once when Pat and Stan had been hosting Moody students in their home, two young men on noticing her shelves of cookbooks were surprised that a feminist would be handy in the kitchen. Indeed, she has since published a cookbook of her own. But it was Woman Be Free! and subsequent books, including Heirs Together, that would shape the conversation for Christian Feminism. Also decisive was her role in founding Christians for Biblical Equality (and her naming the CBE journal, The Priscilla Papers, contributing some of the early articles).

As a Moody professor’s wife, she had considerable freedom, and during that time was actively involved in the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment into law. Hers was hardly a radical stance. There was bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress as well as from Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter. It would go on to be ratified by 35 states, only three states short of the necessary 38. But that is when STOP ERA was bringing out its big guns—that of trashing ERA supporters, or, in this case, the husband of a supporter. Opponents “wrote letters to Moody administrators denouncing me, and my husband,” writes Pat. “The letters were full of distortions and downright lies, which Moody administrators said they knew were fabrications.” But as the volume of letters increased so did the fear that the school would lose financial support. Thus, the decision to fire a fine professor, a brilliant scholar and writer.

Before teaching at Moody, Stan had been a Baptist minister as had his father. Women’s roles in the home and in ministry were simply assumed to be secondary to those of men. Stan’s father, in fact, kept a stash of John R. Rice’s Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives and Women Preachers, giving away copies to fellow travelers. During his college and seminary years, and even after marriage to Pat, Stan held the traditional view with no inclination to defend bossy wives or women preachers. But it was in the following years as the children were growing that Pat had begun studying the Bible to see if Rice and others had actually interpreted passages correctly. Her questions and further study led to long discussions with Stan, and he credits her for his slow change of mind.

Responding to a request for an article in Priscilla Papers, Stan wrote:

I have agreed to tell my story for two fundamental reasons. 1) I want to give tribute to the person who opened my eyes to a new paradigm through which to view Scripture and who did not allow me to be satisfied with the easy answers. These were answers that had been drilled into my head as a youth and were assumed throughout my college and seminary training. 2) Arguments alone often do not convince. This is especially so with theological and exegetical arguments on this subject that for many has so much emotional baggage associated with it. So, when people come to me asking questions and searching for answers on the “women’s issue,” I often just tell them my story—where I have come from, where I have landed, and how and why I got there.

Stan tells how in the early 1970s be began seeing the Bible more holistically. He “began to see that the passages that were barriers to . . . moving to a fully egalitarian position needed to be understood in terms of the big picture.” It is the big picture “that establishes the context for understanding the difficult passages.” His position slowly changed. “By 1974 in my lectures and discussions with students at Moody Bible Institute, I was affirming a view that was essentially egalitarian.”

Stan goes on to say far more than can be recounted here, but I take three critical things from him: He was willing to learn from a woman (even as Apollos had learned from Priscilla); he looked at the big picture of Scripture; and he recognized emotional baggage. This final point should stop all of us in our tracks. Whenever we hear someone pontificating on their precise exegesis and hermeneutical expertise related to a particular passage, we do well to wonder what kind of emotional baggage is hiding inside their heads.

My connections with Stan have continued over the years and I was privileged to contribute an article for a Festschrift in 2017 honoring him on his 80^th birthday and his decades of ministry at Zondervan where he continues to serve today. My relationship with Pat has continued as well. I love her wry sense of humor, as when she related to an interviewer her baptism at thirteen:

Unlike most Baptists, though, I was immersed twice. Just as I was catching my breath, the pastor dipped me under again. Later, he explained that he’d not immersed some part of me completely, and he knew there would be objections if he didn’t do it again. I don’t know what kind of Baptist that makes me, maybe a DuoBaptist.

That sense of humor, along with her wise counsel, helped me survive two very difficult times in my life—after escaping a violent marriage in 1987 and again nearly two decades later after I had been terminated from Calvin Seminary.

Thank you, Pat and Stan, for your generosity of spirit in all the ways you have profoundly influenced my life.

Postscript

I “borrowed” these photos from Pat’s Facebook. Neither she nor Stan have known of my intentions to post any of this on Jesus Creed.

What a little beauty is Pat Smith. I would have loved to have had her as my BFF when I was growing up. She looks like she’s ready to take on the world. Below, daughter Ann is kissing her Mom, who sure doesn’t look like some sort of radical women’s libber to me.

By Ruth Tucker

When I learned recently of John MacArthur’s criticism of the SBC, I immediately thought of Charles H. Spurgeon and the “Downgrade Controversy.” MacArthur, as was recently highlighted in a post on this blog, accused the SBC of losing its faith in biblical authority. The denomination, by MacArthur’s account, had taken a “headlong plunge” toward women preachers: “When you literally overturn the teaching of Scripture to empower people who want power, you have given up biblical authority.”

MacArthur himself is not above criticism. But hands off Spurgeon. If Amy Carmichael is the Protestant Virgin Mary (as I suggested in a recent post), Spurgeon is the 7-point Calvinist’s Apostle Paul. They all praise him sky high. John Piper simply gushes. Mark Driscoll says he was “arguably the greatest Bible preacher outside of Scripture.” Al Mohler delivered the second annual Spurgeon lecture, “God’s Lion in London” in 2014, at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando. The previous year MacArthur presented the first address at the Midwestern Seminary inaugural Spurgeon Lectureship where he maintained that during the Downgrade Controversy, “Spurgeon’s defense of the truth and concern for integrity follow the pattern set by Paul in dealing with his opponents in Corinth.” And for all the rest of us, we can always go out and purchase a leather-bound KJV Spurgeon Study Bible—only $53.65, Amazon Prime.

Spurgeon, like MacArthur, cited fellow Baptists for giving up biblical authority, particularly on issues related to his staunch Calvinism. “Arminian perversions,” he railed, will “sink back to their birthplace in the pit.” The belief that a person could lose salvation was “the wickedest falsehood on earth.” MacArthur’s focus has been most recently on women’s ministry. His two words for Beth Moore were: “Go home”—where she belongs.

It was harsh, but MacArthur, as he writes of Spurgeon, “could no longer refrain from criticizing the church’s alarming departure from sound doctrine and practice.” Spurgeon, like Paul, faced opposition from those who “hated the gospel,” those in the Baptist Union—the same kind of dangerous opponents MacArthur encounters among Southern Baptists. Spurgeon had a “godly conscience,” and was waging “a battle for doctrinal purity”—just like MacArthur himself. It was a battle for the Bible, a battle for Truth.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was London’s most celebrated megachurch minister of his day. The son and grandson of independent nonconformist ministers, he had a mediocre childhood education. The first-rate studies available to Anglicans were not accessible to him, nor did he have the desire or mentality for such an education. He often told of the simple sermon from Isaiah 45 (“Look unto me and be ye saved”) that led to his conversion as a teenager: “Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. . . You may be a fool and yet you can look. . . but if you obey now, this moment you may be saved.” He began preaching shortly after this, and his reputation as a mesmerizing speaker spread quickly. At eighteen he was a pastoral candidate at the prestigious New Park Street Chapel. After listing to boring sermons from other candidates, the congregation chose him.

In 1861, still in his twenties, his congregation moved to the new Metropolitan Tabernacle. Here his preaching ministry continued to thrive. He paced the platform and turned biblical figures into real life heroes or villains. He was the best show in town, and crowds lined up early to get good seats.

Fifteen years ago, John and I made a quick visit on a weekday afternoon to the Metropolitan Tabernacle while we were in London. I particularly recall coming up to the grand stairway entrance and finding it blocked by a temporary metal pipe fence. Very few people were around and we found our way to a locked back door where we rang a bell and were buzzed in. We spent a short time browsing the shelves of a good-sized bookstore, finding nothing besides writings either by or about Spurgeon. The main auditorium had burned twice since Spurgeon’s day and had been significantly downsized. We left with the feeling that we’d visited an empty museum—a dry-bones skeleton of megachurch entertainment of a bygone era. After an era of a small dwindling congregation, numbers seem to have grown in recent years, though still a barebones ministry.

Spurgeon no doubt had an engaging style. But he was also an authoritarian leader. Once in power, no one overruled his decisions. This was true amidst the “Down-Grade Controversy” of 1887-1888 when he, under the name of an associate, accused fellow Baptist ministers of “down grading” the faith. His own astonishing claims soon followed in his monthly magazine, The Sword and the Trowel, warning that the matter required spiritual warfare. Though failing to name names he insisted that pastors and churches connected with the Baptist Union were denying Christ’s sacrificial atonement, the inspiration of Scripture and justification by faith.

The solution was separation from those who denied the pure doctrine. Although he was essentially a lone ranger, he wielded power due to his popularity, his name recognition and church size. His accusations, according to an observer, “landed like a bombshell,” sending “shockwaves” among Baptists and far beyond, leaving lasting scars among Evangelicals. Even some of those who had studied at his preachers’ college were stunned by his accusations.

He was a schismatic who had simply carried his fight too far in his conviction that the heresy was bubbling up right under the surface: “How much farther could they go?,” he demanded. “What doctrine remains to be abandoned? What other truth to be the object of contempt? A new religion has been initiated, which is no more Christianity than chalk is cheese. . . . Avowed atheists are not a tenth as dangerous as those preachers who scatter doubt and stab at faith.”

Okay, Mr. Spurgeon, name these preachers. Quote them on their heresies. He had no answer. He didn’t have to. He was pompous—the Baptist Pope, some called him. He accused fellow Baptist pastors of not preaching enough gospel to save a cat. Actually, that was a clever line. I sometimes used it to rouse an otherwise distracted seminary student with this question: How much gospel does it take to save a cat? It served to liven up the student—and the rest of the class. Well, Mr. Spurgeon, how much does it take?

Late in 1887, Spurgeon announced his disassociation with the Baptist Union, and some months later the Union Council voted 95 to 5 to accept it. Spurgeon had been convinced that he would win the battle. He was popular and how could the Union go on without him? But at the end of the day, nobody won. Spurgeon had struggled with physical ailments and depression, now even more so as his preaching and reputation suffered during the final four years of his life. It was this “fight for the faith,” his wife Susannah declared, that “cost him his life.”

But in the generations since his death, Spurgeon’s name has risen higher than any other in the minds of ministers who believe that they like him must send out the alarm of heresy in the church. The issues are different, but the players—mostly megachurch pastors and seminary presidents—are similar. Thus, Beth Moore, just “Go home!” And to unnamed members of the Baptist Union, just get out!

One of the reasons that Spurgeon became so popular in the years after his death and since, was, interestingly, the power of a woman—the invalid Susannah Spurgeon. Years before he died, she had started a book and sermon fund. Church members gave liberally, and soon his books and other writings were sent to pastors all over the UK and far beyond. What she established is in some ways reminiscent of what Mark Driscoll did with his books in an effort to turn them into bestsellers. His efforts, however, were thoroughly dishonest and the whole scheme backfired. Susannah Spurgeon’s efforts did not. Her work during his lifetime and in the years after his death would do wonders into turning him into one of the most celebrated and influential preachers of all times.

Jesus can only be comprehended as someone in a story that is resolved by who he is and what he accomplished. But which story? Nicholas Perrin asks this question in The Kingdom of God: A Biblical Theology.

It’s too easy to impose our own stories on what Jesus accomplished — whether it is a story of human dignity or progressivism or liberalism or conservatism or Calvinism or Anabaptism or whatever… Perrin offers a sound approach to the story inside the story about Jesus:

When Jesus appeared, preaching the good news of the kingdom, he was providing his own answer to this question. In fact, it was an answer that was in many respects like the story shared across Judaism. In the distant past, Israel had hopes of occupying the land, keeping the law, and sitting under the leadership of David’s seed line. But then Israel had squandered its elective privileges, broken its covenant with Yahweh, and been forced as captives into exile. Eventually Yahweh brought Israel out of geographical exile, but this only presaged the still-future moment when the eschatological promises of the prophets would be more fully cashed out. Especially with ten of Israel’s tribes still unaccounted for, there was far too much still wrong with the status quo during the postexilic era to suppose that return from exile had completely taken place. Return from exile still remained at the top of Israel’s agenda. In all these respects, the story lines touted by Jesus and first-century Judaism matched.

But here comes the twister: for the early Christians, the climax of redemptive history had arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. Until Jesus’s return, in this “in between time” before the close of history, it fell to Jesus’s followers to preach him as Israel’s Messiah and risen Lord. In these respects, the early Christians had their own distinctive answer to the “What happened?” question, which in turn illuminates their answer to our “what” question. By following the story line of Israel, from Abraham down to the Second Temple period, we will be a big step closer to answering both questions, but most importantly, “What is the kingdom of God?’

One’s biblical hermeneutic comes into play and the most common hermeneutic goes covenant and explains everything through the lens of covenant theology. The problem with covenant is how little Jesus actually uses the term. He did not “think” with that term; he thought with “kingdom.” So it is really encouraging to see Perrin work covenant into kingdom and kingdom into covenant. Cleverly, he begins with Matthew’s geneaology:

Conversely, for anyone who already knows the story (i.e., most first-century readers), a rehearsal of a who’s who in redemptive history—such as we have in Matthew 1—would bring to mind the redemptive plotline. As the evangelist parses it, it is a plotline made up of three acts or three eras: from Abraham to David (w. 2-6a), from David to the exile (w. 6b—11), and from the exile to the Christ (vv. 12-16). In his concluding remark, Matthew notes that each of the three eras is marked off by fourteen generations (v. 17). Whatever the meaning of the number fourteen (and there are several good explanations here), if Matthew partitioned redemptive history in this way in preparation for his story of Jesus and the kingdom, we might be off to a good start if we follow suit.

He examines a number of major plotline developments. He focuses on Abraham, adds Moses to Matthew’s own narrative plotline, then moves to David — and does a good job using the theme of exile. Here is Perrin’s summary:

In the Abrahamic covenant, the promise of the seed entailed the prospect of sacred space, providing a beachhead in opposition to the kingdoms of this world (Babel), thereby holding out promise for a restored humanity;

In the Mosaic covenant, Israel is established as a “kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6), a kingdom which, having been initiated through suffering, retained the potential for ruling the nations of creation (Deut. 28:1-10), but only as they imaged God through keeping his covenant;

In the Davidic covenant, the full flowering of the kingdom now becomes closely aligned with the royal and priestly figure of David, the Son of God, whose rule would ideally embody the righteousness and justice appropriate to the image of God;

Because the kingdom purposes have been frustrated by idolatry, Yahweh removes the wall of protection separating his people from gentile incursions and exile ensues;

The prophets envision the restoration of the kingdom taking place through a Davidic figure and/or Adamic figure, but only through suffering.

I’ve been traveling – with little time to write. This is a repost – but it joins with the series looking at leadership within the church. John Walton has an interesting analysis of the question of women in ministry included in the Contemporary Significance section of his commentary on Genesis 2 (The NIV Application Commentary Genesis). This is worth some serious thought and discussion.

Commitments. He suggests several steps and commitments we should take. First, the commitments quoted from pp. 189-191.

Methodological Commitments.

1. We must allow the text to pursue its own agenda, not force it to pursue ours.
2. We must be committed to the intention of the author rather than getting whatever mileage we can out of the words he used.
3. We must resist over interpreting the text in order to derive the angle we are seeking.
4. We must be willing to have our minds changed by the text – that is at least part of the definition of submitting ourselves to the authority of the text.
5. We must be willing to accept the inevitable disappointment if the text does not address or solve the questions we would like answers to.

These are all important guidelines to keep in mind. We shouldn’t hijack the text, commandeering it for our own purposes. I would temper this, though, with the realization that the New Testament authors did feel free to reinterpret texts based on what they knew of the gospel of Jesus Christ. While it is essential to understand the intention of the author, the gospel can change our understanding.

Personal Commitments.

1. We must be willing to preserve a godly perspective on the issue and accord Christian respect to those we disagree with, refusing to belittle, degrade, accuse, or insult them. Ad hominem arguments and other varieties of “negative campaigning” should be set aside.
2. We must not allow our differences of opinion to overshadow and disrupt the effectiveness of ministry and our Christian witness.
3. We must decry the arrogance that accompanies a feeling of self-righteousness and portrays others as somehow less godly because of the position they hold.

This is an outstanding list of commitments — the kind of commitments that we attempt to maintain on this blog when discussing a wide variety of issues, from the age of the earth and evolution to women in ministry, male headship, to hell, Calvinism, and more. But the next list is even more important.

Values Commitments.

1. We must determine that individual “rights” and the pursuit of them will not take precedence over more important values, as they have in our society at large.
2. We must resist any desire to hoard or attain power, though our society and our fallenness drive us to pursue it above all else.
3. We must constantly strive to divest ourselves of self, though we live in a “What about me?” world.
4. We must accept that ministry is not to be considered a route to self-fulfillment; it is service to God and his people.

John completely won me over with this list. Whatever conclusions we come to concerning women in ministry, if these values are not at heart we are wrong. Period. Christian leadership, teaching, and “authority” is only for the benefit of others as we follow the call of Jesus. It is grounded in self-sacrifice and love. There is nothing in this about rights or power. No alpha males or flaming feminists here. This is the heart of the matter.

John suggests that if we agree with these commitments “the debate will become largely academic” and “fade into oblivion.” I’ll dig into this more below, but it is worth pointing out that the same applies to marriage. If a marriage honors the counterpartnership of Genesis 2 and the teachings of leadership, mutual submission, respect, and love in the New Testament, the question of male headship in marriage is relegated to dusty academic journals with little to no impact on everyday life.

What Difference Does it Make? John continues his discussion digging into the consequences of the controversy over women in leadership by posing two questions.

First, what is the cost if women are restricted when they should not be? He suggests that some ministries will be done less effectively or lost, because the best gifted people won’t be able carry them out. But in the long run God will still prevail, and the gifts lost in one area will be redirected into others. He also suggests that individual women may feel unfulfilled and disrespected. This last is not insignificant, but isn’t really the heart of the matter. John doesn’t add this – but I think the other consequence of this situation is that it would give a undeserved boost to male ego and thus foster an unhealthy environment.

Second, what is the cost if women are not restricted when they should be? John suggests that these are far less dire than some assume. A God who can speak through an ass a donkey, who can and has worked through male pastors living lives of adultery, and often works through faulty preaching grounded in sloppy interpretation, can certainly speak through women in the church whether this is his ideal or not. No human voice is perfect, yet it is still God’s church and he will prevail.

Some will suggest that when women exercise leadership or teach and preach that men have lost their control, are being forced out of a “feminine church.” But this “is an ego/power issue and does not belong in the discussion.” This cannot be an issue of power and control from either side. Women can be equally guilty of a thirst for power baptized in God words. “As Christian men or women, the only power is Christ’s power … those who yearn for it most are the least worthy of having it.” Christ is head of the church – not men or women, whether lay people, pastors or elders/deacons/whatever.

John doesn’t see Genesis 2 speaking to this issue at all and we err when we bring Genesis 2-3 into the discussion. Genesis 2 offers insight into human roles in partnership but doesn’t get us to the specifics beyond this. “Genesis 2 proclaims God’s gracious provision for the blessing to be procured. In addition the text addresses the interdependence that exists between man and woman.” (p. 192) On this we can all agree.

So what now? I would like to conclude this post with some thoughts. My position is similar to John’s, perhaps why I found his analysis so refreshing. Although what follows is my take alone, he may or may not agree.

Personally, in our 21st century western culture I think shared leadership between men and women, including in preaching and teaching, should be our preference. The answer could be different in other times and places. However, anyone who is convinced that the biblical ideal is male-only leadership should prefer such a church for regular fellowship. It certainly isn’t intrinsically wrong to seek out, belong to, or lead such a church.

But there are ways in which an insistence on male-only leadership can be destructive. This is true in any time or place.

For example, if it leads a man to feel or argue that it is demeaning, or worse yet, sinful, to sit in the audience of a female teacher on occasion; that it undermines his manhood to so place himself “under the authority” of a woman. (I have heard and read these arguments.) Such arguments are governed more by the ego and power culture of the world than by the gospel of Jesus Christ. If a man feels that he and his group cannot cooperate or fellowship with a Christian group that accepts women as speakers/teachers because he would sin in participation … well that is just dead wrong. Frankly, I don’t think this is grounded in a fear of the Lord, but in human ego and stubbornness. It seems to me that we should consider any people who believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth; in Jesus Christ who crucified, dead, and buried then rose again; in the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting as brothers and sisters, fundamentally with us rather than against us. No matter what they believe on other less important issues.

God can speak through any vessel as John notes in his commentary. In fact every human speaker/teacher fails in some fashion of their lives. Pride, ambition, ego, sexual sin, anger, greed, and so on, some combination of these stains us all. Every pastor at every church, every speaker at every conference, every writer of every commentary, is a fallen, fallible human being. Whether male or female. There is no place for hero worship in the Christian church. We don’t follow Paul, Apollos, or Cephas … or insert more recent names here. Christ isn’t divided. We would do well to remember this as we listen and learn, always testing the teaching by the Spirit and Scripture.

And this leads to a second point. Our only ultimate authority is God and his Son, Jesus, the Messiah. We are never permanently or absolutely under the authority of another human. Because of this there is no question of being under inappropriate authority. All humans are fallible and we are all individually answerable to God. It can never demean us to listen to another Christian, whether rich or poor, slave or free, male or female, educated or uneducated, urban or rural, of my race and ethnicity or another. And the list could go on.

Of course, there are a multitude of ways in which an insistence on shared leadership between male and female can go wrong as well. If a woman feels it is her right to power, position, and audience, if it is cast as a feminist battle of the sexes. The ego and power culture of the world is a trap for all humans … male and female.

One of the handicaps of the Christian (if you want to think of it as a handicap) is that we are called to effect change in both our church and our world by living in a kingdom fashion of service and love, not by using the tools of power and manipulation common in the world. We serve a Lord whose call is to take up our cross daily and follow him, to love and serve others. We are all called to ministry, and to take advantage of the opportunities that come, to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ using the gifts that God has given to build up his church.

The way we deal with this issue will make a big difference in the witness of the church to our culture.

What do you think of John’s analysis?

How should we approach this issue? What kind of a stand are we called to take?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

How odd that in the span of a few months two books by well-known American pastors appear with the title “Irresistible”? Well, the one for this blog is called Irresistible Faith. (The other one is too frustrating for me to blog about.)

Scott Sauls, who in some ways has worn one of the mantle’s of Tim Keller, is a Nashville pastor with a new book called Irresistible Faith, with the subtitle Becoming the Kind of Christian the World Can’t Resist. His Amazon bio says:

Scott Sauls is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville. Before this, he served with Tim Keller at New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church as a lead and preaching pastor. In addition to his books, Scott’s work has been featured in Christianity Today, Relevant Magazine, Qideas, Catalyst, Leadership Magazine, aholyexperience, OnFaith, The Gospel Coalition, Key Life, as well as other publications. Scott can be found on Facebook and Twitter/Instagram at @scottsauls. He also blogs regularly at scottsauls.com.

Sauls is a pastor and he writes like one; he’s intelligent so his church-oriented books have insight. A little fun first: there’s an irony here. I’ve been at this for too long to hear a Presbyterian use “irresistible” and not think of irresistible grace, one of the classic points in 5 point Calvinism, but everything about the theme of this book seems to lean in another direction, and that’s OK — the more the church becomes “irresistible,” which it never will master, the better. At least the church ought to lean in the direction of a compelling embodied faith.

I like this set of questions:

What would it look like for Christians to be reignited in this kind of faith for our time? What would it look like for us to become those who live most beautifully, love most deeply, and serve most faithfully in the places where we live, work, and play? What would it look like, as Tim Keller has said, for us to live so compellingly and lovingly in our neighborhoods, cities, and nations that if we were suddenly removed from the world, our non-believing neighbors would miss us terribly? What would it look like for Christians to become the first place people go for comfort when a life-altering diagnosis comes, when anxiety and depression hit, when a child goes astray, when a spouse files for divorce, or when a breadwinner loses a job? What would it look like for a woman with a crisis pregnancy to see the local church, not the local clinic, as her trustworthy source for love, non-judgment, practical support, wise counsel, and much-needed encouragement? What would it look like for the local church to become the most diverse and welcoming—rather than the most homogeneous and inhospitable—community on earth? What would it look like for Christians to become not only the best kind of friends, but the best kind of enemies, returning insults with kindness and persecution with prayers? What would it look like for Christians, en masse, to start loving and following the whole Jesus and the whole Scripture, the whole time, into the whole world?

And this:

It is heartening to see contemporary observers take note of how Christian belief, in its purest form, produces beautiful lives. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof frequently writes of how today’s Christians outnumber the rest of the world in volunteer hours and dollars given toward the alleviation of poverty and human suffering. The gay mayor of Portland, Oregon, Sam Adams, has spoken publicly about how positive his experience was partnering with local Christian churches to serve the vulnerable communities of Portland. Here in our Nashville community, an abortion provider who is beginning to engage with the claims and ways of Christ recently told a member of our church, “I want your God, whoever he or she is, to be my God”—which appears to be his way of saying, “I like your Christ, not in spite of your Christians, but because of them.

I’ll clear the air first: as Sandage knows and has said, correlation and causation are not the same, but correlation remains correlation. Correlation requires thoughtful consideration not knee-jerk condemnation. I know Scott Sandage, and he’s a reliable reporter and an exceptional scholar. He has published theological studies as well as sociological research.

From Boston University Today (BU Today):

In June, Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided that domestic violence is inadequate grounds for granting asylum.

Sessions’ announcement followed President Trump’s defense of aide Rob Porter, accused of abuse by two ex-wives (subsequently amended with a presidential condemnation of domestic violence).

Citing these news stories, psychologist Steven Sandage asks, “How can some people take positions that seem to minimize the problem of domestic violence?” The Albert and Jessie Danielsen Professor of Psychology of Religion and Theology and research director at BU’s Danielsen Institute, Sandage thinks he’s found one answer outside of politics: religion sometimes justifies or rationalizes violence against women.

In particular, he says, that attitude is a danger in Calvinism, a word that may conjure notions of a God who preordains every human for salvation or hell, unalterably, before time began. But Calvinism—“a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy,” according to one writer—is enjoying a resurgence.

… Sandage says many of his Calvinist clients derive “a very clear social and moral structure” from their worldview.

In several recent research projects with colleagues at BU and elsewhere, he has explored aspects of Calvinism, including “domestic violence myth acceptance.” Domestic violence myths are beliefs “that function to rationalize, justify, and/or perpetuate men’s violence against women,” in the words of one study, published in the Journal of Psychology and Spirituality.

For that study, the researchers had 238 seminary students complete an online survey, probing for correlations between their theological beliefs and ideologies about gender, hierarchical relationships, and belief in God’s control and protection of them. The students were from Minnesota’s Bethel Seminary, an evangelical Protestant school where Sandage once taught.

Sandage summarizes the upshot of his research: “Many Christian theologies emphasize the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, but the New Calvinism seems to promote a rather stoic and un-empathic attitude that valorizes suffering, particularly among women.… Calvinist beliefs were related to higher levels of domestic violence myth acceptance and lower levels of social justice commitment.”

In the Calvinist view, “God causes all things, including hierarchical social structures and all suffering,” he says. “Domination by the powerful,” be it God or men, “is just and appropriate, and submission to suffering by the less powerful is virtuous and redemptive.”

He doesn’t contend that all people embracing Calvinism endorse domestic violence myths: “There are many contemporary Calvinists who hold progressive views of gender and other social issues. But our research does offer some data suggesting the ‘New Calvinism’ that combines Calvinistic beliefs and very conservative, binary views of gender may be a kind of theological risk factor for the acceptance of domestic violence myths and other socially regressive attitudes.”

Indeed, evangelical seminary students who believe that humans have some free will “do not show this pattern,” he says.

In his brand new book D. Bruce Hindmarsh (The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism) sets out to describe the heart or “spirit” of early evangelicalism, and then to clarify its socio-cultural connections. What he’s onto is what was then called “true religion,” so his subtitle is True Religion in a Modern World.

He opens this academic book — laced, tied, and double-knotted with evidence — with the “one needful thing” text that was preached on frequently by both John Wesley and George Whitefield.

Now you can see how he defines “evangelical” and it is not the same as “Luther” or “Calvin” or Reformation nor is it “New Testament.” It is the movement arising from the powerful voices and spiritual visions of Wesley and Whitefield.

This is not a book about the “theology” as much as about the “devotion” or the “spirituality” of early evangelicals, Whitefield and Wesley. It’s about personal experience, it’s about the presence of God in the life of the believer, it’s about knowing one is a believer and indwellt by God’s Spirit. He calls this a “distinctive form of Christian spirituality” (3).

His first chapter is a wonderful chapter about George Whitefield. Evangelicalism in those days was about being a real Christian with true religion vs. nominalism and favorite terms were awakened, converted, serious and real. He sketches a biography of Whitefield and then gets into major themes in his spirituality.

Oxford Methodism: Discipline.

Those who know the Wesleys know about the Oxford meetings, the Holy Clubs, of the very intense and devoted. They kept what he calls an “exacter,” a diary or journal that tracked one’s spiritual condition — devotion, ardor, flame, fire — by the hour. They recorded what they read and prayed about and how they felt in each hour of the day. (Check out p. 16 for a figure of a page from Whitefield.) There is in this evangelical devotion a clear connection to monasticism and asceticism.

Pietism: Fearlessness

From Francke, the German Lutheran pietist, Whitefield absorbed the call of God to be fearless in devotion and to turn from worldly pursuits of reputation, honor and prestige. This is Oxford and this is a man who had the chance to climb the ladder. But Francke summoned Whitefield from such honors and “preferment.” Along with Francke, Whitefield absorbed Arndt’s True Christianity and this mixture led to a combination of asceticism and justification by faith.

Nonconformist Practical Divinity

A third theme at work in Whitefield’s early evangelical devotion is that he was into nonconformist leaders and literature (that is, non-Anglican, non established church). He was into those thinkers and writers and preachers who were into the affections (Alleine, Baxter, Janeway). He had not yet, however, moved into Calvinism or Puritanism.

Before long he collided with Wesley on Calvinism.

Whitefield and Matthew Henry’s commentary on the Bible go hand in glove; Whitefield’s sermons were rooted in Henry. With Henry Whitefield spent hours on his knees reading Bible, reading Henry, and praying. He was an “experimental” Calvinist.

But what most impressed me in this opening chapter was Whitefield’s discovery of Henry Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man, the measuring of his faith by the presence and witness of the Holy Spirit, and his belief that knowing the presence of God in your life through the indwelling of the Spirit was the measure of true religion.

Oxford Methodism had taught him discipline. Pietism had inspired him with a spirit of fearlessness and enterprise. Puritan-Nonconformist writers had schooled him in practical, devotional Bible reading, and prepared him to embrace Protestant doctrines of grace with confidence. But it was the immediate sense of the Holy Spirit, above all else, that drew these influences together to light a fire and inspire and ardour of evangelical devotion in Whitefield, preparing him for the public ministry that was to come (34).

His belief in the indwelling Spirit was a mark on all his early devotion and preaching and ministry, and this theme filled his letters and advice to others. He combined passivity with activism, reception of Spirit with active zeal for the Spirit. We need more on the Spirit today.

Belief in the Spirit is one thing; knowing the reality of the Spirit in one’s personal life and daily walk with Christ was the singular mark of early evangelical devotion.

What unnerves many Anabaptists about the Kuyperians is the locating of the church — the Body of Christ, universal or local or both — in a sphere no different than Economics or Education. In other words, the church gets diminished from the center of God’s mission in the world to flank other spheres in the world.

So, when Craig Bartholomew coms to his chapter on Kuyper’s theory of the church, I get interested. And I do not because I have anabaptist leanings, which I do, but because as an Anglican (in the USA, where there is no such thing as a state church) I believe in the church. And because many today are devaluing the church for the sake of political activism or privatization of religion. We are looking at Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition.

Early on Kuyper longed for a purer version of the church. That is, he echoes the anabaptist theory of a more radical reformation. No need to push the button here, Kuyper was never part of the radical reformation. He was coming out of a more liberal (Schleiermacher) approach into a more orthodox approach.

In his “Confidentially” Kuyper … From then on I have longed with all my soul for a sanctified Church wherein my soul and those of my loved ones can enjoy the quite refreshment of peace, far from all confusion, under its firm, lasting, and authoritative guidance.

An image Bartholomew develops is that for Kuyper the church is our Mother.

In his inaugural in the church in Amsterdam, Kuyper returns to this theme cf the church as our mother: “‘She is a mother’—to use Calvin’s beautiful expression—whose womb not only carried us, whose breast not only nursed us, but whose tender care leads us to the goal of faith. … Those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be Mother, and apart from her motherly care no one grows
 to maturity.’ The church is our mother!”

Important section in this chp. Kuyper’s ecclesiology develops over time and here are the three phases he develops.

James Bratt identifies three phases in Kuyper’s evolving theology of the church. [I now reformat.]

(1) From his graduate studies at Leiden until his pastorate in Amsterdam, Kuyper developed a theology of the church, moving from an emphasis on inner spirituality to an assertion of the fixed forms of Calvinism.

(2) From 1875 through to the Doleantie [an attempted formation of a reformation of the church, a new denomination in the Netherlands] he emphasized soteriology over ecclesiology and focused on church law in particular.

(3) In the third phase he concentrated on Calvinism and on culture rather than church. As a theologian Kuyper began with the church and concluded with culture, with Calvinism as the glue connecting the two.

One must not forget that Kuyper’s ecclesiology stands within his broader theology, one that was strongly trinitarian and God-centered, focused on redemption in Christ, emphasized personal and cosmic renewal or palingenesis, and celebrated the kingship of Christ.

That first phase was more low church, more focused on local church autonomy, which he never gave up, but more personal and private and less external, structural and institutional. But he grew out of this into an embrace of both the church as organism and institution, with both needed for the church to be what it can be in a modern society. His theology moved toward seeing the church as a catalyst for change in society, culture, state.

He eventually embraces much of what we would call institutional features of the church: calendar, liturgy, and he struggled with one-man ministry, he wanted personal experiential religion and he liked church architectural aesthetics.

But the church is mission: the church is called to influence and shape society. And this has become a major element of the Kuyperian theory of the church, and sphere sovereignty here is one again affirmed.

For both, the institutional church is indispensable as a sphere within society and as the place where we encounter God in Christ and hear his Word.

At the same time, through their masterful articulation of church as organism and institution, they articulate a vision of the church as truly catholic in the sense of influencing all of life.