The Scroll

I was delighted today to find the new blog of Christians for Biblical Equality, called The Scroll. From reading the profile section of this blog I have found the blogs of Brandon Withrow, Mindy Withrow, Craighton, Disert Paths, Hugo Schwyzer, and many others. If you would like to read some funny, upbeat egalitarian blogs, then check these out. Here is an example from Ron Smith, called "Susanna Wesley not a complementarian".

My pastor travelled throughout England visiting the significant John Wesley sites. While in Epworth, he learned that Susanna Wesley used to sit young John and Charles down after church during their youth. She would commence to correct all doctrinal strangeness heard in that day’s sermon. Susanna Wesley not a complementarian.

This really rang a bell with me because my mother used to read and talk about all the Wesleys quite a bit. It seems that Susanna Wesley, like my mother, did a little more than simply respond to the theology taught by the men.

I remember my mother regularly, at the Sunday dinner table, analysing and evaluating the Bible teaching heard earlier that morning.

Joyce Meyer

I don't watch TV very often. A little sitcom now and then, that's about it, sometimes a history show. However, I left my husband at home last Sunday with a hockey injury and as I left I saw that he was already engrossed in his morning sermon from Joyce Meyer. I'm not sure that she exactly represents our beliefs but she is one more in a list of great female preachers that we have watched on TV.

I was browsing her website tonight and as I didn't know anything about her I just clicked on the first article I came to and read the following.

Abuse and the Miracle of Recovery

During my childhood, I was abused sexually, emotionally, verbally, and physically.
Many of you reading this article have also been abused, or you deal with someone in your life who comes from an abusive, dysfunctional background.

What is abuse? It means to misuse, to use improperly, to use up, or to injure by maltreatment. Let me give you a brief definition of the four types of abuse.

Sexual abuse: considered to be the most degrading and offensive. It consists of molestation, rape, incest, exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, etc.

Emotional abuse: withholding of love, attention, loving touches, or words of acceptance. Love is only given based on acceptable performance, etc.

Abandonment: would fall under the category of emotional abuse and can occur when one or both parents leave the child physically or mentally. Adults can also experience the devastating effects of abandonment if important people in their lives leave suddenly or violently.

Verbal abuse: People must hear loving words of acceptance to develop properly. Verbal abuse can be overt or covert. Overt: aggressive, angry words which tell you that you are flawed or unacceptable Covert: loving words withheld

Physical abuse: beatings, unfair discipline, locked in closets or dark rooms, food withheld, etc.
The effects of abuse can be devastating and long lasting. Many people never recover from abuse.

Although I functioned as what appeared to be "normal" in society, I had multiple inward problems and complicated personality disorders. I will name a few of the things going on in me at that time that prevented me from righteousness, peace, and joy that Romans 14:17 declares is the kingdom. God the Father sent Jesus so we could have and enjoy "the kingdom."

I was bitter about my past and had a chip on my shoulder, which caused me to have the attitude that everyone owed me preferential treatment. I was full of self-pity, especially if things did not go my way. I was controlling, manipulative, fearful, insecure, and harsh. I was just plain hard to get along with and often downright obnoxious. I was judgmental, suspicious, and very negative.

I experienced a lot of guilt and condemnation. I had a shame-based nature; therefore, everything I attempted was poisoned. Since I did not like who I was, I spent many years trying to be like someone else—I am sure you are getting the picture that I was quite a mess.

Now, what I am getting ready to say is important. I WAS BORN AGAIN AND ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN CHURCH LIFE. We attended church regularly and did church work. Our lives revolved around the church, but I was not getting victory over my problems. In fact, the really sad part was that I did not even understand that I had a problem. I thought everyone else had a problem; and if they would change, I would be happy.

In 1976 1 received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:8 speaks of receiving the power to be witnesses. Notice it does not say to do witnessing, but to be witnesses. The Bible says we are to be living epistles read of all men, light in a dark world, and the salt of the earth. Doing is a different thing than being. I had my outside polished up, but my inner life was a wreck. Quite often the inner turmoil exploded, and then everybody could see I was not quite what I appeared to be.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in my life gave me a real love for God's Word and an ability to understand the Word like never before. Second Corinthians 3:18 (paraphrased) says that as we look into the Word of God, it is like looking into a mirror; and we are transformed into His image from glory to glory.

I have been changing ever since. I have changed, and changed, and changed; and I am still changing. Most of those problems are completely gone and the rest only flare up occasionally. I even look differently—I look younger, happier, and more peaceful.

Second Corinthians 5:17 (paraphrased) says if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new. But that really does not mean everything from the past just vanishes. The Amplified Bible brings it out this way, "Behold, the fresh and new has come!" In other words, without Jesus there is no hope of newness of life; the past always affects the future without the power of God to overcome it. But even with Jesus, it is not automatic. When the fresh and new comes, there is opportunity; but we must give the Word of God an exalted place in our lives. We must face the truth as revealed to us in His Word, and then the truth will set us free if it is acted upon.

I want to encourage you! Keep pressing on. You will keep changing if you stay in the Word. Philippians 1:6 (paraphrased) says He that has begun a good work in you is well able to bring it to completion. Hebrews 12:2 (paraphrased) says look to Jesus who is the author and the finisher of our faith.

Now I am enjoying kingdom living: "Righteousness, peace, and joy." And no matter what your past has been or how many problems you have, God will do a miracle for you. He will change you into the image of Jesus Christ and give you a new life worth living.

Women's Speaking: 1666

Here are a few excerpts from a pamphlet written by Margaret Fell in 1666.

And first, when God created Man in his own Image, in the Image of God created he them, Male and Female; and God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply: And God said, Behold, I have given you of every Herb, &c. Gen. 1. Here God joyns them together in his own Image, and makes no such Distinctions and Differences as Men do; for though they be weak, he is strong; and as he said to the Apostle, His Grace is sufficient, and his Strength is made manifest in Weakness, 2 Cor. 12. 9. And such hath the Lord chosen, even the weak things of the World, to confound the things which are mighty; and things which are despised, hath God chosen, to bring to nought things that are, 1 Cor. 1. And God hath put no such difference between the Male and Female, as Men would make.

.......

It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the Mother of James, and the other Women that were with them, which told these things to the Apostles, and their Words seemed unto them as Idle Tales, and they believed them not. Mark this, ye despisers of the Weakness of Women, and look upon your selves to be so wise: But Christ Jesus doth not so; for he makes use of the weak: For when he met the Women after he was risen, he said unto them, All Hail! And they came and held him by the Feet, and worshipped him; then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid, go tell my Brethren that they go into Galilee, and there they shall see me, Mat. 28. 10. Mark 16. 9. And John saith, when Mary was weeping at the Sepulchre, that Jesus said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? what seekest thou? And when she supposed him to be the Gardner, Jesus said unto her, Mary; she turned her self, and said unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master; Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my Brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God, John 20. 16, 17.

Mark this, you that despise and oppose the Message of the Lord God that he sends by Women; What had become of the Redemption of the whole Body of Mankind, if they had not cause to believe the Message that the Lord Jesus sent by these Women, of and concerning his Resurrection? And if these Women had not thus, out of their Tenderness, and Bowels of Love, who had received Mercy, and Grace, and Forgiveness of Sins, and Vertue, and Healing from him; which many Men also had received the like, if their Hearts had not been so united and knit unto him in Love, that they could not depart as the Men did; but sat watching, and waiting, and weeping about the Sepulchre until the time of his Resurrection, and so were ready to carry his Message, as is manifested, else how should his Disciples have known, who were not there?

.....

More might be added to this purpose, both out of the Old Testament and New, where it is evident that God made no difference, but gave his good Spirit, as it pleased him, both to Man and Woman, as Deborah, Huldah, and Sarah. The Lord calls by his Prophet Isaiah, Hearken unto me, ye that follow after Righteousness, ye that seek the Lord; look unto the Rock from whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the Pit from whence ye were digged; look unto Abraham your Father, and to Sarah that bare you; for the Lord will comfort Sion, &c. Isa. 5. And Anna the Prophetess, who was a Widow of Fourscore and Four Years of Age, which departed not from the Temple, but served God with Fastings and Prayers night and day; she coming in at that instant, (when old Simeon took the Child Jesus in his Arms) and she gave Thanks unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them who looked for Redemption in Jerusalem, Luke 2. 36, 37, 38. And Philip the Evangelist, into whose House the Apostle Paul entred, who was one of the Seven, Acts 6. 3. he had four Daughters which were Virgins, that did prophesie, Acts 21.

The Discovery of Women Preachers: 1641

Antonia Fraser wrote The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in seventeenth century England, 1984. This is a favourite period of history for me. I once went to the National Portrait Gallery in London, and collected postcards of all my most loved characters from the English Civil War. As a teen I was indiscriminate and admired Puritan and Royalist alike. Here is Fraser on women preaching during the era of the English Civil War.

Women probably first began to preach in Holland in the 1630s in the Baptist churches, whose congregations had always included a large number of their sex. ... In the New World - Massachusetts - women were known to have preached by 1636. In England in the 1640s women preached weekly at the General Baptist Church in Bell Alley, off Coleman Street, in the city of London. Anne Hempstall was described as preaching to 'bibbing gossips' in her house in Hoborn, and Mary Bilbrowe, wife of a bricklayer of St Giles-in-the-fields, preached in her parlour, although the pulpit, which was made of brick, was so high that only her tippet could be seen. A early as 1641, a tract, The Discovery of Women Preachers, referred to their existance in Kent, Cambridge and Salisbury.

Now consider this piece of writing from the TNIV and the GNBC,

Egalitarianism historically originated from non-Biblical sources, especially the French Revolution. The French Revolution enthroned Reason as a goddess. But when people do not acknowledge God but only Reason, the differences that God ordains among people seem not to be “rational.” Hence, they must be denied or abolished. Since human sexual differences today do not seem to many people to be “rational,” they too must be overcome.

The French Revolution was some 150 years after the English Civil War. The emergence of women preaching dates back to the Puritan movement in Europe at the time of the English Revolution not the French Revolution.

I have to continue the dialogue with the contents of this book for a little longer. I cannot bear to allow such ahistoric writing to go unchallenged.

First, I was under the distinct impression that the American Revolution itself owed much to the Age of Reason, and that in America too there were ideas about equality. It went something like this.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." - Declaration of Independence

If in France it was liberté, égalité, fraternité, in America there were also these vague notions of equality that were slow in their realization but significant nonetheless. I can only assume that by associating egalitarianism with an event remembered for its brutality and disregard for human life, as well as its foreign quality, this book is hoping to portray egalitarianism in a negative light.

Next, the authors say that the differences that God ordains between humans seem not to be rational. I would simply like to comment that it is the authors of this book who feel the need to rationalize the differences between men and women.

In the older non-rational ethic, like the Brethren, women were to be silent in church. However, this was just the way it was. No one taught that women were not gifted as men were. No one said that women were different in their nature from men. A community whose beliefs are based on the Bible does not need to label women to keep them silent. They can simply say, sorry, we know you are equal, but the Bible says ... , and carry on.

However, an organization like the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood tries to rationalize the silence of women. They talk about the different natures of men and women and the different roles, the different giftedness and so on. One man said it was a matter of fulfillment. Women can only be fulfilled by remaining within the women's sphere. So the CBMW owes much of its teaching to the need to rationalize doctrines about women.

An American might respond, but the religious ethic in America owes more to the era of the Mayflower than to the Age of Reason. And that would be my point. It was during the Puritan movement in England that women began preaching. Modern egalitarianism dates back to the early 17th century in England and came to the United States at that time. It was in the polity of a Puritan Christian ethic that women challenged the old scholastic repressions.

Oops

Okay, sticky keys, or what? I guess I was posting in triplicate this morning.

David Warnock has a few recent posts of interest. Here is one from Maggie Dawn that seems to be going around. Also We blog cartoons and this one about Adrian Warnocks blog.

Scot McKnight on Jesus Creed has had a series on husbands and wives. Part I and Part II are here. I am still waiting for the punchline. He does discuss the different kinds of feminism, radical, liberal, evangelical, etc. There is a good question in the comment section, "If one disagrees with the subordination of women, must one wear the label of feminist?" Good question.

It depends on whether feminism is for the equality of women, or for the domination of women. Or woman as 'Goddess'. Or women as 'Domestic Goddess'. Or woman as the 'Knitting Goddess'. This is the slippery slope.

PS There are lots of blogs that I read by blog hopping. I infrequently update my blogroll. Sorry. Just laziness.

Christians for Biblical Equality

I would like to post something cheerful this morning like an image of the pansies I am suppposed to be planting. But if I am going to plant flowers I need to get on with it.

However, here is the CBE statement of faith, in full, thanks to Ruud of Equamusic. What a great title for a blog.

We believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, is reliable, and is the final authority for faith and practice.

We believe in the unity and trinity of God, eternally existing as three equal persons.

We believe in the full deity and full humanity of Jesus Christ.

We believe in the sinfulness of all persons. One result of sin is shattered relationships with God, others, and self.

We believe that eternal salvation and restored relationships are possible through faith in Jesus Christ who died for us, rose from the dead, and is coming again. This salvation is offered to all people.

We believe in the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation, and in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers.

We believe in the equality and essential dignity of men and women of all ethnicities, ages, and classes. We recognize that all persons are made in the image of God and are to reflect that image in the community of believers, in the home, and in society.

We believe that men and women are to diligently develop and use their God-given gifts for the good of the home, church and society.

We believe in the family, celibate singleness, and faithful heterosexual marriage as God's design.

We believe that, as mandated by the Bible, men and women are to oppose injustice.

Sorry. Got to run. Check out Patchouli Ponderings for something truly beautiful. Thanks for sharing that, Patchouli.

Cowgirls and Cowboys

Well, I don't spend my day in serious study. I teach children who have difficulty with reading how to enjoy reading. This month the topic is cowgirls and cowboys.

The children always ask why they are called cowboys and cowgirls. If you ride a horse, why would you be called a cowboy? What do the cows have to do with it?

Fortunately my first teaching job was in a high school in a small town in central B.C., just outside the Douglas Lake Ranch, the biggest ranch in British Columbia. Cattle are allowed to run free in this part of B.C., which means that if they cross the road in front of you, it is up to you to stop, the cows have right of way. They don't have to stop, look both ways, and point, either. Twice a year the cows are rounded up by the cowboys.

On sports day, we all went off on our prearranged sporting activity. Mine was to go with a group of teenage girls on a trail ride to a remote lake where we built a fire and ate lunch and enjoyed a lazy afternoon, and then back to groom and feed the horses, before returning home. I was given a graphic description of branding calves and other realities of ranch life.

So now my younger students read about Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley every year. Sometimes I get bored with these two heroes but their stories are well-written at the grade 2 level and what more can you ask for.

Bill started working for the Pony Express when he was 14 years old to earn money to support his widowed mother. He carried the responsibility of the family on his shoulders. The letters he sent home to his mother minimized the dangers he experienced and the excitement of his daily encounters with risk and hardship - robbers, wolves, cougars, weather, illness - you name it. The children love it.

Annie Oakley took her deceased father's gun from the house when she was 9 years old and went out to hunt for food. She supplemented the family diet with fresh meat, squirrels I think, but later minks and foxes, whose skins she sold for income to buy clothes and books for herself and her siblings. She too learned her trade, that of being a crack shot, without her mother's full consent.

Both of these characters stepped into an adult role at an early age. Fortunately for Annie, a few years later an older sister gave her a chance to live in the city where she was discovered and became famous, eventually touring in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

I bring in a bunch of furs - beaver, mink and wolf - given to us by trappers, and a beautifully carved wooden rifle. Usually this is no problem, the fur trade is part of our curriculum and a beaver skin was a unit of currency in Canada at one time. Nontheless many teachers are astounded to learn that some people in the north continue to make a living from furs, although this has its ups and downs.

One year I had the whole Annie Oakley display up in my room, the hat, vest, bandana, skins, gun, boots, rope, etc. especially for our school accreditation week. At the end of the week the visiting dignitaries met with us in the library and we sat in a solemn circle waiting for the word that we had passed.

By chance I sat next to the chair of the accreditation team. She opened with the news that we had indeed passed but it was with 'reservations'. We had to get rid of the 'dead animals'! From her angle she could not see the flush of red that flooded my face but the rest of the room could. I had so lovingly and naively prepared that display just for them. After the team left this instruction was simply ignored.

The children still read these stories every year. They love to hear about children who have stepped up to the plate at an young age. Some of these children have experienced that already, getting up early to feed and dress younger siblings and get them to school. Some have come in as refugees and others are sent here to live with relatives and learn English, while their parents save up funds to move here as a family.

So what has this to do with cows? Lucky for us, nothing at all. I don't have to teach about cows -I have to make these children want to read.

Poythress and Grudem: Prominence

I feel called tonight to blog on the book, The TNIV and the Gender Neutral Bible Controversy by Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem. I do not write for your edification but simply that the truth would be brought to light. Certain circumstances have brought me to this.

"In sum, there are profound spiritual issues involved here – and ultimately, two very different ways of looking at the world. On one side stands feminism and egalitarianism, promoting its own way of salvation and distorting the truth, insisting that there should be no gender-based differences between status, prominence, or authority of one person and another. On the other side stands the teaching of the Bible that God affirms both the honor of all human beings and the God-ordained differences among them, including differences in men’s and women’s roles in marriage (Eph. 5:22-33; Col. 3:18-19; 1 Pet. 3:1-7) and in the church (1 Tim. 2:8-15; 3:2; Matt. 10:2-3).

Of course, many other ideologies and religions oppose the Bible in other ways, by serving false gods, or by endorsing human oppression. We focus on feminism here, not because it is worse than other false ways, but because it has generated the particular controversy in language that we are discussing."

Here we learn that feminism is not worse than serving false gods, or endorsing human oppression.

“He” includes both men and women, but does so using a male example as a pictorial starting point. In a subtle way, this use brings along with it an unequal prominence to men and women. Thus feminism attacks it as “unfair.” But in doing so, feminism relies on an egalitarian standard antagonistic to the Bible, for the Bible maintains some gender-based differences between men and women, and, in particular, it uses many male examples and male sample cases to express general truths. Of course, it also uses female examples, though not with the same frequency.

And we must emphasize again that the Bible does teach the dignity of all human beings. Men and women alike are created in the image of God, and all have fallen into sin. But the Bible also indicates that there are differences in the gifts that God gives them and the roles that he assigns to them in this life. Feminism and egalitarianism fight against those differences.

Here we learn that there are differences in the gifts that God gives men and women, as well as the roles that he assigns them in life. We also learn that 'he' is important because it brings along with it unequal prominence to men and women.

Husbands are imitators of Christ, and wives of the church which is subject to Christ (Eph. 5:22-33). Yes, the Bible gives honor to all members of the body of Christ (note the importance given to all members of the body in 1 Cor. 12), but it also refutes the erroneous aspects of feminism. Feminism replaces biblical honor with a misguided attempt to wipe out the differences in people with respect to prominence, order, leadership, and representation.

Here we find that men are to be imitators of Christ but women are to be imitators of the church. We learn that biblical honour makes a difference between men and women with respect to prominence, order, leadership and representation.

The quotes above are from the online TNIV and the GNBC. In order to locate these quotes within the text, you can follow the link and using edit>find on page> and input two or three words from the quote.

The Bible teaches,

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5 - 11 NIV

Ben Witherington

Ben Witherington has posted a detailed description of The Eternal Subordination of Christ and of Women

Evangelicals of Opposite Opinion

Paradoxically, in this same thirty-year period in which the co-equality of the divine persons has been powerfully reaffirmed and the implications of this teaching for our human social life recognized, many conservative evangelicals have been moving in the opposite direction. They have argued that the Trinity is ordered hierarchically, with the Father ruling over the Son. The Father is eternally “head over” the Son just as men are permanently “head over” women.

In this model of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity, rather than being a charter for emancipation and human liberation, becomes a charter to oppose social change and female liberation.This novel teaching was first enunciated by G. Knight III in his highly influential 1977 book, New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women (Baker, 1977). He argued that the God-given permanent subordination of women in role and authority in the church and the home was supported and illustrated by the Trinity. For him, the Son is eternally subordinated in role and authority to the Father, despite the fact that the Father and the Son are both fully divine. He thus spoke of a “chain of subordination” (33) in the Father-Son and the man-woman relationship, and of an eternal subordination of the Son that has “certain ontological aspects” (56).

This new teaching on the Trinity came to full fruition in 1994 with the publication of W. Grudem’s, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Zondervan, 1994). Two chapters in this book outline his doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son in function and authority. The impact of this book on evangelicals cannot be underestimated. Over 130,000 copies have been sold and the abridged version, Bible Doctrine (ed. J. Purswell; Zondervan, 1999), with exactly the same teaching on the Trinity and women, has sold over 35,000 copies.

For Grudem the Son’s role subordination, like that of women, is not a matter of who does certain things as we might expect on seeing the word “role,” but rather a matter of who commands and who obeys. He writes, “the Father has the role of commanding, directing, and sending” and the Son has “the role of obeying, going as the Father sends, and revealing God to us” (Systematic Theology [Zondervan, 1995] 250) These words disclose the key issue; that is, the Son is eternally set under the authority of the Father. Grudem insists that this understanding of the Trinity is historic orthodoxy (cf. his latest book, Evangelicals, Feminism, and Biblical Truth [Multnomah, 2004] 405-43). It is, for him, what the creeds and the best of theologians have maintained throughout church history.

This hierarchical understanding of the Trinity has now almost won over the conservative evangelical community. Most evangelicals seem to believe this is what the Bible and “the tradition”—that is, the interpretive tradition—teach. However, I am also an evangelical, but I am convinced the opposite is the truth. The Bible (Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:13; etc.) and the interpretative tradition summed up in the creeds and Reformation confessions speaks of a co-equal Trinity where there is no hierarchical ordering. Grudem and the many evangelicals who follow him say they are only advocating the eternal functional or role subordination of the Son, not the ontological subordination of the Son.

Indeed, all Christians believe that the Son voluntarily and temporally choose to be subordinated for our salvation in the incarnation (Phil 2:4-11). The problem arises with the word “eternal.” If the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father, and cannot be otherwise, then he does not just function subordinately, he is the subordinated Son. His subordination defines his person or being. Eternal functional subordination implies by necessity ontological subordination. Blustering denials cannot avoid this fact.

Witherington offers a good summary and analysis of this view here.

What has to be noted in all this is the circular nature of this reasoning.

1. A novel theology was first devised to theologically ground the permanent subordination of women based on the argument that men and women are equal yet differentiated by their God-given, unchanging roles; and then

2. the wording and ideas used to develop this novel case for the permanent subordination of women were utilized to develop a novel doctrine of the Trinity that spoke of the Son as equal, yet eternally subordinated in role or function; and then

3. this novel doctrine of the Trinity was quoted to theologically justify and explain the permanent role subordination of women.

Afghanistan

Yesterday the Afghan ambassador to Canada and the Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan addressed an audience at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver on Canada's role in Afghanistan. (The venue was slightly different from what was presented in the notice.)

A woman in the audience was able to confront the Afghan ambassador and ask him why Canada should continue to support Afghanistan if it does not share the same values as Canada. This was asked in view of the fact that Rahman Abdul, a Christian convert, is being held in Kabul and the judge has stated that if he is convicted of converting to Christianity he faces execution.

The Afghan ambassador answered that the government of Afghanistan fully respects the teachings of both Jesus and Moses. He said that he did not have a concrete answer but that he hopes that his governement will live up to its obligations under international law.

In spite of this hopeful comment, it is important to remember that Afganistan is currently trying to create a judiciary system that encorporates both international law and Sharia law.

In another situation in Ontario last year, Sharia law also became a concern. A group of Canadian women, both Christian and Communist, got involved in the protest against Sharia law when it was being considered as one possible basis for settling family and other disputes in the Arbitration Act. The BBC has a detailed report here on the mixed reaction to the consideration of using Sharia law in Ontario,

In a peaceful Toronto park, as the rain began to fall, several of these women told me why they are so viscerally opposed to the idea of Muslim religious law being used in Canada.

"I came here to escape Sharia," one woman told me. "Under it, a woman is worth half a man. He can divorce her and she has no rights."

Another woman who was tortured in Iran told me the very word Sharia made her shiver. To her it is synonymous with a brutal form of authoritarianism, which discriminates against women.

We need to continue to stand up against all forms of repression and human rights offenses.

Edmund Gosse

I have been writing about the Plymouth Brethren and their attitudes toward literature and a university education. These can be much better understood by reading Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperments by Edmund Gosse. Gosse became a recognized literary critic in England and wrote this biography of his early years. It is one of the few Plymouth Brethren biographies that I am aware of.

A well-written and touching story, this book is essential reading to those who would like to understand the deep dual commitment of the early Brethren to the Bible and to scholarship. It also represents the conflict which I have been writing about. This little anecdote is a good introduction to his book.

It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, acquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, The Tempest, in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces. This I read through and through, not disdaining the help of the notes, and revelling in the glossary. I studied The Tempest as I had hitherto studied no classic work, and it filled my whole being with music and romance.

This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and a volume there. I completed The Merchant of Venice, read Cymbeline, Julius Caesar and Much Ado; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for along time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise.

It was while I was thus under the full spell of the Shakespearean necromancy that a significant event occurred. My Father took me up to London for the first time since my infancy. Our visit was one of a few days only, and its purpose was that we might take part in some enormous Evangelical conference. We stayed in a dark hotel off the Strand, where I found the noise by day and night very afflicting.

When we were not at the conference, I spent long hours, among crumbs and blue bottle flies, in the coffee room of this hotel, my Father being busy at the British Museum and the Royal Society. The conference was held in an immense hall, somewhere in the north of London. I remember my short-sighted sense of the terrible vastness of the crowd, with rings on rings of dim white faces fading in the fog.

My Father, as a privileged visitor, was obliged with seats on the platform, and we were inthe heart of the first really large assemblage of persons that I had ever seen.T he interminable ritual of prayers, hymns and addresses left no impression on my memory, but my attention was suddenly stung into life by a remark.

An elderly man, fat and greasy, with a voice like a bassoon, and an imperturbable assurance, was denouncing the spread of infidelity, and the lukewarmness of professing Christians, who refrained from battling with the wickedness at their doors. They were like the Laodiceans, whom the angel of the Apocalypse spewed out of his mouth.

For instance, who, the orator asked, is now rising to check the outburst of idolatry in our midst? 'At this very moment,' he went on, 'there is proceeding, unreproved, a blasphemous celebration of the birth of Shakespeare, a lost soul now suffering for his sins in hell!' My sensation was that of one who has suddenly been struck on the head; stars and sparks beat around me. If some person I loved had been grossly insulted in my presence, I could not have felt more powerless in anguish.

No one in that vast audience raised a word of protest, and my spirits fell to their nadir. This, be it remarked, was the earliest intimation that had reached me of the tercentenary of the Birth at Stratford, and I had not the least idea what could have provoked the outburst of outraged godliness. But Shakespeare was certainly in the air. When we returned to the hotel that noon, my Father of his own accord reverted to the subject. I held my breath, prepared to endure fresh torment.

What he said, however, surprised and relieved me. 'Brother So and So,' he remarked, 'was not, in my judgement, justified in saying what he did. The uncovenanted mercies of God are not revealed to us. Before so rashly speaking of Shakespeare as "a lost soul inhell", he should have remembered how little we know of the poet's history. The light of salvation was widely disseminated in the land during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and we cannot know that Shakespeare did not accept the atonement of Christ in simple faith before he came to die.'

The concession will today seem meagre to gay and worldly spirits, but words cannot express how comfortable it was to me. I gazed at my Father with loving eyes across the cheese and celery, and if the waiter had not been present I believe I might have hugged him in my arms.

I will write more about Edmund Gosse and his parents later. This book presents one view of the culture and social context of the early Plymouth Brethren. It is also an excellent literary text, a worthwhile read for anyone interested in Christianity in England in the 1800's.

Plymouth Brethren and a Faith-Based Scholarship

I wrote a few days ago about the different approaches to a university education that are found within the Plymouth Brethren. I was trying to recall whether I had any sense of a faith-based scholarship when I was young.

The degree to which the Brethren engaged in tertiary education was determined by certain principles. The first of these was separation from the world. This was a corrolary of the premillenialist position. The world was not going to get better, the true church would be taken out of the world at the rapture and it was the duty of the church to long for this event.

A consequence of a strict adherence to this teaching would be withdrawal from the human enterprise. Faithful Brethren would rather study the time of Christ's return than discover a new medicine, or plan an improved sanitary system. They did not see themselves called to improve social conditions. This distinguished them from men like Wilbourforce and Shaftesbury, and women like Nightingale and Booth. Many Brethren did, however, engage in charitable missions and helped the poor. Compassion was an honourable motivation for action.

However, the Brethren did not, in fact, live completely separate from the world. The Brethren believed that they were 'in the world but not of the world.' Unlike the Amish and Hutterites, we lived in the city, among the general population. We blended in and were not visible in our difference. But at school, we stood silent during the Lord's Prayer, because it was taught to the disciples before God sent the indwelling Spirit. The Lord's Prayer was for those times, not for the church.

Some Brethren were pacifists and did not vote. Engagement in the state was on a pragmatic level. Those who did attend university studied business or a profession. If we were not going to cure the world of some dread disease at least we could acknowledge the need for dentists and lawyers.

Among a certain class of Brethren there was an intense drive to study and participate in scholarship. They were not anti-intellectual. They believed in studying God's two books, the Bible and Nature.

Historically Brethren scholars were not only interested in the study of languages, above all the Biblical languages, but they were also deeply involved in the study of botany and geology. They committed themselves to learning about God from nature. For some this extended into the study of physics. Many Christian traditions today support and encourage this kind of intellectual commitment. The American Scientific Affiliation is a product of this.

What is more difficult is to engage in the study of philosophy and literature. Some girls did study these subjects. However, I remember hearing teaching that steered us away from this engagement in the university, in studying human knowledge and literature. One of our friends was not even allowed to read novels. It may have been a small minority who held such narrow beliefs but it seemed to me to represent a strict adherence to a certain ideological position which many Brethren gave lip service to.

There was no place at a university level for Exclusive Brethren to engage in Christian scholarship. A variety of accomodations were made and knowledge was integrated by the individual.

Our own family had a deep commitment to education for several generations and there were many families with this same attitude. However, there was a strain of anti-academic teaching that recurred at different times, and it presented a real conflict for some. On the whole I would say that there was little concept of a contemporary faith-based scholarship on the original texts of the Bible for Exclusive Brethren young people.

This post is intended to present a more reflective analysis of the Brethren position on education than my last post on this topic. Many exclusive Brethren did not live in a manner that was significantly different from their neighbours, but there was nontheless a core set of teaching that kept the Brethren from more extensive engagement in Christian scholarship.

This post refers to a particular group of Exclusive Brethren. There are some well-known Brethren scholars in Biblical Studies today. I would like to learn more about them.

Somebody's Son

We kissed our son goodbye.
We embraced and prayed
For God's care and blessing
As he set off for the Arctic.
Back from the oilfields,
And off again - to experience life.

The sun was brilliant and the air cold
Daffodils and periwinkle trimmed the walk
So we drove down to the beach
Where lycra clad runners celebrate health
And fathers bring pails and shovels
Following their sons barefoot.

Families were playing baseball
Lasers raced across the surf
In the way of parasailers
Under multicoloured banners.
Dogs galloped through the puddles
And tankers sat at anchor.

We rounded the point
And sat on a log
Taking in the dark mountains
Powdered with snow.
Ski trails reflected the sun
Banks stretched half a mile before us.

Washed up by last night's surf
In a tidepool six inches deep
He lay face down.
Water lapped on denim
And the breeze ruffled
Short brown hair.

Somebody's son.

Patchouli's Plaint

Patchouli has posted It Got an "A" in honour of Women's History Month. Patchouli, I am with you 200%.

First, as you say, I do not hate men. I am daugther, sister, wife, mother and friend of men. I also love being a women, having children, sewing, knitting, making jam, oh yeah, making jam. Come round my place some time. I am the quintessential traditional housewife and proud of it.

But some days the misogyny is unbearable. So thanks for what you have written here, every word.

My problem is that I don't believe that the people who promote the teachings of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which I find to be the most heretical set of doctrines created in the Christian community in our time, are open to argument, and this is why.

Many men and women have communicated with members of the Council and they do not respond. I have spoken out on the Better Bibles Blog, and Justin Taylor, formerly of Desiring God, writer for the Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and now with Crossway, wrote to me to ask me to not say the things I was saying.

Taylor accused me of falsehood. I asked him to tell me what I had said that was false. He did not respond. I wrote him again, pointing out that he had even accused me publicly, and he promised to respond. He has not responded. He told me he was momentarily too busy. But he has posted about 20 times since he wrote that email. These people are not honourable. They do not keep their word.

One thing I wonder is why these men want to subjugate women. What is their need? I have no thoughts on this that can be expressed in public. Maybe when I cool off.

Here is a statement from Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,

AT THE HEART OF MATURE MASCULINITY IS A SENSE OF BENEVOLENT RESPONSIBILITY TO LEAD, PROVIDE FOR AND PROTECT WOMEN IN WAYS APPROPRIATE TO A MAN'S DIFFERING RELATIONSHIPS.

AT THE HEART OF MATURE FEMININITY IS A FREEING DISPOSITION TO AFFIRM, RECEIVE AND NURTURE STRENGTH AND LEADERSHIP FROM WORTHY MEN IN WAYS APPROPRIATE TO A WOMAN'S DIFFERING RELATIONSHIPS.

This is John Piper's understanding of Biblical complementarity. Block caps are his own, not mine.

The truth is that if a man actually thinks that this applies in some general way to the relationship between men and women in the Christian community, and if I figure this out about them, which isn't too hard, I won't shake hands with that man again. It simply makes me feel sexually harassed.

If a person truly believes, along with the CBMW, that every encounter between a man and a woman is sexual, then women should not only be sequestered in the domestic sphere, they should not have contact, any contact, with any men other than their husbands.

The Christian community which upholds these kinds of beliefs must either take on the practices of Islam, or they must accept the potentially sexual nature of every encounter between men and women and, I suppose, take some preverse pleasure in this.

In my opinion, a woman should not ever, in a way defined by their sexual nature, ever, ever, ever, affirm, receive, or nurture strength and leadership from a man other than her husband.

These doctrines are not in the Bible; the marriage relationship is sacred, and within marriage one may see a metaphor, if one wishes, to the relationship between God and Christ. Otherwise, women are to be treated as sisters, of the same womb, of the same essence, as men, and older women as mothers, sources of strength, I would assume, not receivers thereof.

Patchouli, the translators of the King James Bible may have been men with a wrong view of women, but a certain group within the present generation has added their own perverse twist. They have debased women to a condition where they can only respond to men, although only 'worthy' men. What irony, how puffed up are these silly creatures.

I do have to thank Piper and Grudem on one account. I read some of their book out loud to my husband many years ago, and that was the last either of us ever had to do with this brand of Christianity. We wrapped the book in brown paper, and handled it with tongs and disposed of it. Okay, call me old fashioned, but I 'averted' my eyes.

Abecedaria

I have gone back to my writing systems blog, Abecedaria. I stopped posting on Abecedaria around Christmas time because I had acquired a worm of some kind that prevented access to secure sites, email, downloads, connecting with the scanner and so on. Eventually the worm shut down our internet connection for the entire house.

I was finally able to reinstall the OS and reset everything else. In the meantime I began posting on the BBB, where I didn't need downloads, and here. Blah, blah, blah.

I will continue blogging here and simply write down whatever comes to mind. This is not really a focused blog, but a whimsical blog. I don't feel to constrained by it, even though I have seen it in a feed somewhere as writing about books relating to Biblical studies. I think I can come up with a few more of those. Forgive me for the rest or dump me out.

On Abecedaria I have recently written about Hebrew Searches, where I also mention the Hebrew online keyboard with vowels, no software, free, etc. and the Left-to-Right Marker and a few other things. In looking back one of my favourite finds is this little item. I am sure that someone will want to recommend it to their first year Hebrew students. Other languages are here. Klasse, nicht wahr? If you do not know the answer, then click on 'Keine Ahnung' which means 'no idea' and the answer will display. 'Hilfsubersicht' will call up help.

Darby on Post-Millenialism

I have been following DyspraxicFundamentalist for a while reading his Darby quotes. We grew up on Darby but I don't remember reading much of his Collected Writings myself. So here is a question put to me that I cannot answer. Is there an online archive of his Collected Writings. I have seen the Synopsis of the Bible online, but not the rest. Help appreciated.

Let me ask you a question: you seem to know John Nelson Darby's works very well. I remember reading somewhere an essay by him in which he attacked the idea of Christian moral suasion being used to reform a whole community. I think his point was to show the absurdity of the post-millennial idea of a truly Christian world. I remember it was very well argued. Do you have a web-source for it?

Shelby Steele

I have been following Justin Taylor's blog because he quotes a lot of interesting authors, possibly from a different perspective, but that's okay. Today he posted a quote from Shelby Steele. I am not familiar with this book but I have had to deal with similar issues many times. Both the quote and the accompanying comments on Justin's blog give food for thought. Here is a snippet.

I’ll give you my bottom line: We’ve done worse in freedom than we did in segregation. It’s abominable that we made more advances between 1945 and 1965 than we have since, but it’s the truth.

The problem I see is that segregation, if voluntary, can be a way of sequestering a group and giving individuals within the group a chance to excel. This is sometimes experienced by women and First Nations' groups. They often want separate insitutions, Native schools and Women's hospitals. These things should not be made illegal or disallowed. At the same time, if they are coercive either from the inside or the outside then it is injustice.

The sequestered group becomes a ghetto and a dead end experience. This is very tricky issue. Should there be separate programs and schools for certain groups, if one can prove that they thrive under segregation, or should we all be treated in an identical fashion?

It seem to me that there is a role for a variety of different approaches. In some cases segregated institutions do offer more, but ultimately, if the minority group does not, cannot, interact as an equal with appropriate power, relative to its needs, then injustice ensues.

I have no doubt that institutional injustice exists in our society. However, I would hesitate to say that there is one clear way to deal with it. I think we need to look at how we can contribute to overturning power differences and unequal opportunity on every hand.

It is also as precarious to hold up the writing of one person of a particular nationality or race as an example of their group, as it is to hold up the writing of one woman who talks about her own experience, and extrapolate from that to the experience of women in general.

Poet and Peasant

I have posted about understanding Greek on its own terms and I have an interest in Hebrew although it is mostly restricted to reading what others have to say and being able to handle the lexicon and basic grammar.

However, the role of Syriac in Biblical studies was not always evident to me. It was intriguing but not obvious. It has IMO one of the most beautiful writing systems and it is being revived today. I have linked here to a blogsearch of Abecedaria since I have 11 posts there about Syriac in Unicode. They are probably of trivial interest, I don't really know.

In any case, I have been rereading Poet and Peasant, 1983, by Kenneth Bailey. He emphasizes the need to use the Oriental, Syriac and Arabic, versions of the NT to understand the gospels.

Briefly the method we have evolved is to make use of four tools. The first is to discuss the cultural aspects of the parable with a wide circle of Middle Eastern friends whose roots are in isolated [essentially illiterate] conservative village communities and try to find how the changeless Middle Eastern peasant sees things. The second is to examine carefully twenty-four translations of the NT in Syriac and Arabic to see how Christians in this part of the world have understood the text from the second to twentieth centuries. The point here is that translation is always interpretation. The translator must decide what the text means before he can translate it. A parable passes through the translator's mind on its way to the new language. Through a careful reading of a series of such translations one is able to learn a great deal about how Middle Easterners themselves have understood a given text. The third is to look for parallels in literature as close to the NT as posssibe. Finally, the literary structure of the parable or parable passage must be examined with care. Through Peasant Eyes. p. xiv.

Here is a summary of his method in Poet and Peasant,

Knowledge of the culture that informs the text of the Gospel parables is crucial to a full understanding of them. The impact of such cultural elements has, in the past, been discerned only partially. Significant elements of the cultural setting of the synoptic parables can be delineated more precisely through discussion with contemporary peasants, through minute examination of Oriental versions of the Gospels, and by a careful study of pertinent ancient literature. These three tools must be used in addition to the standard critical tools of scholarship. The present study seeks to combine the use of these four tools, conjoining them with an analysis of various literary structures used in parables. To this matter of literary structure we now turn. p. 43

Bailey's book is possibly the most timeless book that I own on Bible translation. The others seem full of ideas that come and go, good but ephemeral.

Poirot on Gardening

I badly needed to relax tonight so I picked up an Agatha Christie novel that my son gave me for Christmas. Just yesterday I had read a post about how women should stay at home and make clothes and garden while men went off to be professors or clergymen or whatever they wished. Well, that was how I understood it. The man can commune with his colleagues and impress his students and the woman can commune with the vegetables.

So please only read this if you consider yourself a vegetable ... or if you consider a woman a person.

I have decided to follow Poirot's advice tonight.

'And how is my good friend, your father?' said Poirot.

'The old man's fine,' I said. 'Very busy with his hollyhocks - or is it chrysanthemums? The seasons go by so fast I can never remember what it is at the moment.'

'He busies himself then, with the horticulture?'

'Everyone seems to come to that in the end.' I said.

'Not me,' said Hercule Poirot. 'Once the vegetable marrows, yes - but never again. If you want the best flowers, why not go to the florist's shop? I thought the good Superintendant was going to write his memoirs?' Agatha Christie. The Clocks.

There is a lot of wisdom in Agatha Christie's novels. There are many times when I wanted to quote her, but I have never sat down and taken the time before. Like Poirot, I can say that once I did garden (and sew), and sometimes I still do. But the novelty has worn off and now, more often than not, I go to the shop.

Understanding Greek on its own terms

Here is an article by Dr. Conrad via Idle Musings of a Bookseller.

"When I came to teach Greek in a classroom on my own, I quickly became aware of the problematic nature of grammatical knowledge both as something necessary and as something having curiously little connection with ability to read Greek successfully. I’ve seen too many students who knew the paradigms and the rules but couldn’t read sequential Greek textual material, and I’ve also seen some who could read Greek texts pretty well but weren’t very good at grammatical analysis.

"Why is that? I think that two not-unrelated factors are at work:"

(1) Students who have learned by the traditional textbooks and pedagogy know the paradigms and the rules of grammar and have learned the vocabulary, but they attack the Greek text as a problem to be analyzed, as a step-by-step hunt for the subject and the verb and the modifiers and then a synthesis of the pieces rather than as an integrated whole: they readily discern the Greek trees by genus and species, but they are lost in the forest of Greek discourse."

(2) Another metaphor I’ve met with frequently of late is that these students view a Greek text as a sequence of cryptograms to be deciphered: for them, reading Greek is a process of DECODING an alien script — and that involves transcribing an alien script into an intelligible script. Generally that means TRANSLATING the Greek text into the student’s native language, more or less item-by-item. The false assumption here is that UNDERSTANDING a Greek text is fundamentally a matter of producing a corresponding text in one’s native language such that each item in the Greek text has its corresponding term in one’s native language. But in fact, nothing could be much farther from the truth; TRANSLATING is by no means the same as UNDERSTANDING the Greek original text. Accurate translation does presuppose the understanding of the original text, but that text must first be understood on its own terms: unless one can grasp the thought of the writer/speaker in its own format, think that thought as the writer/speaker thought it and as the original reader/listener read/heard it in the original Greek, one will not be able to re-express the sense in the intelligible idiom of one’s own native language. Reading Greek is not a matter of decoding a script and it is not a matter of converting the elements of a formula into another script; rather, it is a matter of THINKING in Greek.

"In the course of my own teaching of Greek I tried several different textbooks. I came to feel more and more that traditional instruction focused on learning rules and vocabulary lists and paradigms and then TRANSLATING sentences from Greek to English and English to Greek (sentences all too often composed by textbook-authors in quite unidiomatic Greek and English) would work only with the exceptional students who actually went beyond those procedures and internalized the language in a manner not altogether different from the way children learn their native tongue. I knew that I myself had acquired as much fluency as I had in Greek and Latin through reading long sequential texts of good (and some less good) ancient authors. I felt that what was needed was a textbook that moved as soon as possible into sequential discourse in the Greek or Latin. Of the traditional type of textbooks the best I ever found for classical Attic was Hansen and Quinn (the sentences were written with authentic understanding of both Greek and English idiom). But I was really looking for something that focused on getting the student to THINK IN GREEK..."

I later discovered and for the rest of my teaching career I used the JACT “Reading Greek” course, delighted to have a textbook that begins from the outset with sequential readings: dialogue and simple narrative all in good, solid idiomatic Attic and moving quickly into barely altered original texts from Aristophanes and then from Demosthenes and Plato and Herodotus and the Odyssey, all in the train of a single course. Like the Ruck text, Reading Greek had exercises in manipulating phrases and understanding words in contexts, and the testing was in terms of sharply re-paraphrased narratives based upon the readings of the preceding lesson. The entire focus of the course was upon reading skills. Grammar was introduced as necessary in order to explain the constructions introduced in the reading passages of the new lesson, but it was rather minimal and was in fact a sort of metalanguage used when necessary to TALK about the language and how it works AFTER experiencing through confrontation with the text the language in pragmatic application."

I confess that in the course of my teaching from the JACT Reading Greek I found it necessary to construct my own supplementary grammatical materials to distribute to my classes to assist them to use traditional grammars to answer their questions and to be able to talk about how the language works in courses with other instructors to which they would move on from my Beginning Greek course. I always had mixed feelings about this grammar: that it is a necessary evil: both necessary and an evil. What one needs the grammar for is analysis of HOW a Greek text works; one doesn’t really need it in order to learn to read or speak the language. The grammar is a metalanguage to be used to discuss how the language works. Frankly, I have come to think that Randall Buth is right in thinking that, insofar as this metalanguage of grammar is necessary, it really would be better to use Greek for the grammatical metalanguage if the language one is trying to learn is Greek."

Why? One reason for it is that the grammar that we use most to talk about Biblical Greek is a metalanguage that aims at facilitating translation into English or some other target language. The categories in BDF or Smyth, all the more those of Wallace’s GGBB, are phrased in terms of how to convert the Greek construction into an idiomatic English equivalent construction RATHER than how to understand the Greek construction in its own terms. How can that be improved upon? Probably the grammar to be used for studying Biblical Greek should be written in a Greek that is as close to Biblical Greek as possible even if vocabulary must be added to accommodate concepts about the language not adequately dealt with in the grammar of the Hellenistic schools."

I particularly appreciate the idea of simply understanding Greek in its own terms. Like Idle Musings it seems to me the best method is to read as much as possible of all kinds of things.