Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2006-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

III. Authority and Female Teachers

No legitimate question exists with reference to either the adequacy or the acceptability of a woman serving in some teaching roles. Apollos profited not only from the instruction of Aquila but also from that of Priscilla (Acts 18:26). Women are expressly commissioned to teach younger women (Titus 2:4), and Timothy, as a child and presumably even as a young man, was taught by his maternal mentors—Lois and Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5; 3:14). 29 Neither should there remain any uncertainty about the opportunity extended to women to participate in public prayer or prophecy (1 Corinthians 11:2-16). Any suggestion of an ontological inferiority of women cannot survive the first declaration of Adam, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23), or the statement, “In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27).

Yet Clark Pinnock observed:

. . . I have come to believe that a case for feminism that appeals to the canon of Scripture as it stands can only hesitantly be made and that a communication of it to evangelicals will have difficulty shaking off the impression of hermeneuti-cal ventriloquism. . . . If it is the Bible you want, feminism is in trouble; if it is feminism you want, the Bible stands in the way. 30

Why would a theologian of Pinnock’s stature and egalitarian sympathies arrive at such conclusions in light of the acknowledged truths stated above? The answer is that for many evangelicals the Bible is intractably hierarchical. It teaches definite role assignments, together with their corresponding mandates, opportunities, and limitations. Great scholarly efforts have been made to prove this, but—as with other crucial truths—it seems obvious to average readers.

Careful scholarly analysis of the concept of love, for example, benefits the church. Such arduous research and thought will inevitably enhance our understanding of the nature of God’s love and the love required of believers. But even in the absence of such noble research, an obvious sense of the nature of love can hardly be missed by even a cursory reading of the Bible. The spiritual leadership role of men in both home and church is obvious to many average Bible readers in the same way.

Equally obvious is it that role assignments and submission to various authorities are demanded in Scripture with no essential estimate of worth or value implied for the one in authority or the one who is subordinate. For example, Christians, who are after all the salt of the earth and the light of the world, are instructed by Paul to submit to the authority of magistrates (Romans 13:1-5). This mandate is not designed to depreciate Christians, much less suggest that a humble believer is in any sense inferior to the civil authorities. Instead, it is a matter of the nature of an ordered society in which the magistrate is to be viewed in his role as minister (diakonos ) of God. By the same token, children are not of less worth than parents; yet they are counseled to obey and to submit to their parents.

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