Don’t swallow your teeth, but…

Don’t swallow your teeth now, but there are portions of Ware’s essay with which I concur.  No ,really.  “Honest injun.”  An example:

“There can be no competition, no fundamental conflict of purpose if we are to function as the image of God.  Adversarial posturing simply has no place between the man and woman who are both image of God.  The reason for this is simple: both man and woman, as image of God, are called to carry out the unified set of responsibilities God has given.  Since both share in the same responsibilities, both must seek to be unified in their accomplishment.”

I concur with the competition, adversarial and conflict part.  What gives me cause for pause is the seemingly endless stream of “howevers,” “buts,” and the “unity, but only within a top-down hierarchical structure” and similar qualifications within this essay.  It’s as if Ware, et. al., are trying to straddle both sides of the fence at the same time – “equal, but….” and so on.

What’s with that?

Isn’t it troubling – even saddening – that so many men and women who self-identify as “Bible–believing, Evangelical Christians” swallow so much of this material as “biblical” or “divinely designed” without batting an eye?  Or thinking twice?

At the outset of this series (shortly after the discovery of fire, was it? , I said:

I was so stunned by some of the claims and dogmas proffered in this essay – that are routinely lapped up and widely circulated within the `Bible believing, Evangelical community’ sans second thought -  that I felt a review and discussion of some of the salient points was in order.”

Additionally, the implications of Ware’s permanent subordination of women to men views go beyond “stunning” or troubling.  Varnished with a thin veneer of proof-texts and questionable exegesis, they are startling and staggering.  The implications are sobering.  Did Christ come to exchange one straight-jacketed set of rules and restrictions for another?  Did He die and rise again to enact a spiritual apartheid system in which men reign supreme and women are spiritual wanna—bees, “becoming the image of God through the male”? Is not one’s capacity for ministry based on Christ’s victory at Calvary rather than failure at the Fall?  Is spiritual segregation what New Testament Christianity – for either gender – is all about? 

For further reading:

Summaries of the Egalitraian and Complementarian Positions on the Role of Women in the Home and in Christian Ministry. by Bruce Ware

Be Careful Ware You Aim (Note the comments)

  Biblical Womanhood in the Home, ed. by Nancy Leigh DeMoss  (Where’s the companion volume,  Biblical Womanhood Outside the Home?)

  Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. by John Piper & Wayne Grudem

  Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, ed. by Wayne Grudem

  Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, ed. by Ronald W. Pierce, et al.

  Equality in Christ, by Richard Hove

  Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, by Wayne Grudem

  Finally Feminist, by John Stackhouse

  God’s Word to Women, by Katharine C. Bushnell

  Good News for Women, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

  Heirs Together, by Patricia Gundry

  Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective, by James B. Hurley

  Men and Women in the Church, by Sarah Sumner

  Paul, Women, and Wives, by Craig S. Keener

  Recovering Biblical Ministry by Women, by George & Dora Winston

  Sacred Marriage, by Gary L. Thomas

  Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, by William J. Webb

  Two Views on Women in Ministry, ed. by James R. Beck and Craig L. Blomberg

  Who Said Women Can’t Teach?, by Charles Trombley

  Woman Be Free, by Patricia Gundry

  Women Caught in the Conflict, by Rebecca M. Groothuis

  Women in Ministry: Silenced or Set Free?, DVD series by Cheryl Schatz

Stay tuned for a slight digression and some special Birthday Greetings next time!

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