I hope our next President of the United States is a woman. Plain and simple, I think it's about time that we crossed that milestone as a nation. Of course, more than that, I hope we elect the most well-qualified and wisest candidate. I just hope it's a lady.
So I need to start out by saying that I have no bias against women in leadership.
But what should a Christian do with the fact that the Bible teaches that men are to be the heads of their households and the local church?
I've wrestled with this question for years. I've tried to balance the cultural aspects of passages like 1 Timothy 3, Ephesians 5, and 1 Corinthians 14 with my belief in biblical inerrancy, but I've never been able to shake the fact that I believe Paul really does want men to be the leaders in both the home and the church.
Is this because men are always the most qualified? I don't think so.
Is it because they are more naturally gifted leaders? Probably wrong again.
Was Paul's teaching given simply to accommodate the male-dominated societies of first century Palestine and Rome? I believe there is good reason to reject this notion as well.
There is in fact something unique about Christian marriage and about the church that require these particular (even if peculiar in our culture) gender roles. The gospel. Christian marriage is a picture of the spiritual union between Christ and His Bride, the church, and in turn a picture of the gospel.
No biblically faithful Christian would ever argue that anyone other than Christ Himself is the Head of the church. There is no egalitarianism in the Christ-church union. The church submits to Christ as her head without ever thinking to herself, "I only wish I had a more important role." Christ died for her! What else could He do to prove her great worth?!
Not only that, but Christ gave His life as an act of selfless, sacrificial love, the same love that a husband is to have for his wife. There was no thought of insisting on His own way as Jesus was accused falsely, beaten brutally, and mocked bitterly. The witness of the gospel is that the Head of the church consistently suffered loss for the sake of what was eternally best for His Bride. There was not a single shred of oppressive dominance in His love.
Now we could argue for gender-based roles in marriage and the church from other angles, but I believe that this angle helps explain things the most clearly.
In this respect, the roles of husband and wife in Christian marriage and the structure of leadership in the church act very much like baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are all visual pictures of the truths of the gospel.
So if the most qualified candidate for president in 2016 is a lady, I'll be the first in line to vote for her; but in marriage and in the leadership of the church, I still believe wholeheartedly in the model laid out for us in the New Testament.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
4 comments:
In reading the qualifications for elders, my ESV study Bible said that the description of qualifications seems to be describing character traits (for example, when it says "man of one wife", they suggest that one interpretation is that this means the man would have the character of being faithful to one wife, whether he was single, married, or divorced). Could this also be used as an argument saying that in the same way, a woman could be an elder is she had the characteristic of being faithful to one man?
Genuinely asking :)
I completely agree Laura! That's the reason why I think that if a deacon in a church is functioning like a biblical deacon, there is no reason why a woman can't be a deacon.
The issue with elders goes beyond 1 Timothy 3 though. You'll notice in 1 Timothy 3 that the primary difference between elders and deacons is that elders are teachers. If you back up then to the whole of Paul's instruction on the matter, I believe that he is assigning the role of "doctrinal guardian" to the elder. The reason elders have to be able to teach is that they have to be able to guard the doctrine of the church, and they do that through teaching, affirming those who teach rightly, and correcting those who teach wrongly.
Now, all of a sudden, we can make sense of the fact that women were praying inside the church (1 Cor. 11) and prophesying outside the church (Acts 2:17) but were not being allowed to preach (in the very narrow sense of doctrinal preaching in the context of the local church, in my opinion) or prophecy in the church (1 Cor. 14:33-35). Paul's comments in 1 Cor. 14 may sound like an overarching rule, but I don't think that's the case. The context is specifically about prophecy. We could argue about what he means by prophecy, but it seems to be primarily the exposition of God's Word by the power of the Holy Spirit. Notice in verse 35, the issue at hand is "learning." So this breed of prophecy wasn't about telling the future.
That bring me back to what I consider the most important and clear verse about the matter - 1 Timothy 2:12, which says, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." Interestingly enough, we again see the two primary roles of an elder, to exercise authority and teach, being the two things that Paul excludes women from practicing in the context of the local church.
Were their some cultural concessions that Paul was making in these different writings. Probably - hence 1 Tim. 2:9's "braided hair" and "pearls" comments. The obvious difficulty we run into is where to draw the line between universally applicable teaching and culturally relevant teaching for Paul's day.
I believe that if you put all of what I've said above together, along with Paul's argument from creation order (1 Tim. 2:12-14), and my argument in the blog that gender roles preach the gospel, the best conclusion is that women are allowed to function in any role in the church except elder.
That's probably about the best I got for ya' :)
Maybe I'm just stuck on the question of "why". I 100% understand about the man being the head in the marriage - I agree with that and would WANT that. But as far as leadership in the church... I guess I don't see why women cannot provide a well-rounded viewpoint to a group of elders. I know that the Bible says so, but WHY does it say so? I'm sure that there is a reason or else God wouldn't put it in there.... I've heard arguments that this is Paul saying what HE does not permit (and therefore it is not a command from God?) and that Paul always wrote in response to letters, so he was probably addressing a particular issue regarding women in that time period or in that church who were not acting appropriately.
With your picture of it portraying the Gospel, I get that on a husband-wife level, but I haven't seen leadership in the church as a picture of the Gospel.
I guess first off I should say that I don't think we're dealing with a first-tier issue here. A church's decision about this issue does not determine whether they are orthodox or not. WHY they choose to go one way or the other may point to whether they are biblically faithful or not, but I don't think the decision itself is a make-or-break one.
I agree with you. I don't think any group of elders would be wise to ignore the counsel of women. At issue in all of the passages mentioned in my post and comment is the PUBLIC WORSHIP of the church and the FINAL AUTHORITY in decisions made by the church. I would say that this corresponds directly to the home/marriage. Men are to have the FINAL AUTHORITY because, practically speaking, SOMEONE has to make the call and SOMEONE has to be accountable for the final decision.
So, in a marriage, if the husband and wife differ on a matter, the husband would be a fool to not listen to the wisdom of his wife, but I would argue that if they still differ in the end, he alone will stand accountable to God for the decision; therefore He must act according to His conscience. Obviously, in a good marriage, most decisions are pretty easy to come to a consensus on, especially after years of growing together in unity. For me, I don't think it's wise for me to make any decisions outside the day-to-day without consulting Heather. This is mostly because she usually has a better perspective on many of these issues. And I usually end up going with her opinion. But I believe that I, not she, will ultimately stand before God responsible for the spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being of my family.
I also believe that the same is true in the church. I believe that the men (and particularly the elders) will stand accountable before God for the well-being of the church. For me this is just a natural extension of the family. We now have the "Family of God" congregated, and the system should be consistent. As you said, we should ultimately decide whether women are allowed to be elders based on whether or not we believe that this is what the Bible teaches. All my ramblings are simply trying to get at another REASON WHY I think God set things up this way.
We are holy/"set apart" people. Why God asked Israel to not eat pork is, honestly, a mystery to me. I mean... bacon for crying out loud! We can speculate, but the truth is that He didn't always give the WHY. He just said, "This sets you apart as my holy people."
In our case, I think He does give us at least a couple of WHYs: Creation order, the practicality of having to have SOMEONE responsible for the final decision (like I said above), and... the point of the blog post... I believe it is a picture of the gospel to a lost world.
I hope this second book-of-a-comment was at least mildly helpful.
:)
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