Pure Linkage...

1. The Use of Tradition - Material in the Epistle of Jude. (HT: James H. Grant)
2. Sproul review former atheist Anthony Flew's book, There is a God.
   
3. Phil Gons points us to the New Covenant Commentary Series.
   
4. Karl Barth on Sickness, Health, and Doctors.
5. Cosmology and the New Testament (quite pricey, but looks interesting)
6. Drew Buell breifly reviews Through Western Eyes by Robert Letham.
   
7. Pain: God's Megaphone, by Alistair Begg. Excepts from TableTalk magazine.
   
8. Lasting Divergence, new site devoted to parents and churches to partner for their children.
9. Evil in the Millennium? from the Riddleblog
10. Few Churchgoers actually Tithe...
    

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The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief

As I finish chapter 7 of Dr. Rollins' book, "The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief" (Paraclete Press, 2008), I am left a bit reticent about the overall proposal at this point, since I have several questions that I cannot seem to reconcile. First, I want to say that I think Rollins is onto something when he asserts that Christians have, at times, been a bit overly-ambitious to speak about God's essence and his supposed future actions in concrete terms. At the same time, I wonder if Rollins' view represents a polarization that goes too far in the opposite direction. One very important thing that Rollins does, as I have mentioned previously, is that he does seek to come to grips with the Biblical text itself, and to develop his perspective from that vantage point. This is one thing that I have not seen done nearly as well by anyone else involved in the Emergent Movement.

At the same time, the problem, it seems, is that while Rollins does want to move beyond a critical, academic reading of the text (the second naivete), he does so by first presupposing that their are grave inconsistencies in the text; the inconsistencies are the ruptures that testify to God to the extent that they also show how the finite cannot capture the infinite with the bounds of a text. Now, I am not about to make an apologetic presentation for the consistency of the Biblical text, but I would say that as much as we do want to move beyond a critical reading of the Biblical documents, it is virtually impossible to do so without first stopping briefly to consider their nature; and it is that consideration that inevitably undergirds our reading in one way or another. This is the point where I think Rollins may have run into a problem.

Before I elaborate, let me first reaffirm and underscore Rollins' suggestion that our theological constructs are almost certainly, at times, an overstatement of what can truly be said about God's essence and future actions. Allow me to offer a rather lengthy quote by John Webster as an acknowledgement, but also as a way forward beyond Rollins' suggested metaphysical inaacessibility:

"In this sense, postmodernism is quite correct to reject what Taylor calls, 'the realized eschatology of the system'; authientically Christian eschatology needs to be distinguished from what we might call futurism, that is, the elaboration of a satisfyingly coherent narrative scheme on the basis of which we may come to possess and control the outcome of human history, assigning roles and predicting outcomes in what is no more than a kind of eschatological technology. Postmodernists rightly deplore the false homogenization and singularization of history which this entails. But the protection against this predictive abuse of eschatology is not to abandon teleology, but to specify its character with the right kind of Christian precision. Two things above all are of critical significance here.

First, the fundamental content of Christian eschatology is the personal identity of the one who was and is and is to come, and only by derivation is it teleological. Its core is not the elaboration of a scheme of historical purposes, but the coming of Jesus Christ. His being, his presence and activity, now known in a hidden and yet real way in the activity of the Holy Spirit but to be manifest in the last day, is the content of Christian eschatological belief, and only on the basis of that coming as the transfiguring event of human history may we speak of history's telos.........Eschatology is the forward expansion of the name of Jesus; it is the confessor that he will be, that he will come; only as such is it a confession of the future of humanity and its history. The object, therefore, of Christian eschatological speech is the perfect, that is, complete, and utterly self-sufficient, reality indicated by the name of Jesus."

From this vantage point, we are left with a much more modest proposal about Christian belief about God and his actions; but it also still leaves us with the critical question about the text unanswered, which is needed in order to move beyond a critical reading as Rollins proposes. While Rollins may want to deny, perhaps rightly, the Bible's ability to substantiate a comprehensive theological structure for Christian belief about God's essence and future actions, the question is whether he would want to take it so far as to deny the Bible as a mediator of reliable knowledge of God's revelation of himself, which is Jesus Christ. To the extent that the Bible does in fact reliably attest to Jesus Christ as the manifest presence of God, it also seems reasonable to assert that it is possible make both ontological inference about God (to some degree), and consequently, to assert that he is not totally metaphysically inaccessible.

Now, while the divergent, historically contingent nature of this variety of texts that make up the Bible may make a conprehensive super-structure a bit ambitious, it seems equally ambitious to assert that the Bible does not allow for one to make any ontological assertions about God; let us not forget, Jesus represents God's ontological presence or manifestation in this world. This cannot be denied as a concrete fact unless one takes a posture on the critical academic debates that is opposed to any substantial coherence in the Bible; and, in the case of the Emergent Movement, I have yet to see one person (and this is not offered in a spirit of arrogance) who argues sufficiently with regard to historical-critical issues, so as to defend the point that the Bible is primarily a document characterized by error. This, in my opinion, is the major obstacle in the postmodern church for developing a credible position with regard to the Biblical documents.

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What Would Jesus Deconstruct: A Comprehensive Re-post

Some of our more recent readers here at Christians in Context may not have been around when we reviewed John D. Caputo's recent book, "What Would Jesus Deconstruct" (Baker Academic, 2007), so I thought I would create a single post with links to the reviews of each chapter. Much like our current review of Peter Rollins' book, which is soon to be released, "The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief" (Paraclete Press, 2008), our review of Caputo's book is an attempt to interact, in detail, with Dr. Caputo's thesis. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Here
Chapter 2: Here
Chapter 2 (Part 2): Here
Chapter 3: Here
Chapter 4: Here
Chapter 5: Here
Chapter 6 (Concluding Thoughts): Here

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Has Westminster Seminary Muddled a Truly Reformed Christology?

In a thought provoking article, Dr. Bruce McCormack of Princeton Theological Seminary examines the findings of the Historical and Theological Field Committee Report, which was issued by Westminster Theological Seminary in the wake of Peter Enns' dismissal; McCormack suggests that their findings were not consistent with Traditional, Reformed Christological constructs, and that there was an alterior motive shaping the nature of their conclusions. The article definitely calls the legitimacy of the Enns' expulsion into question. Check out a few of McCormack's intriguing comments below:

"The issue for the writers of the Historical and Theological Field Committee Report [hereafter HTFC] does not seem to lie in the use of a Christological analogy for assessing the relation of divine and human “causality” in the production of Holy Scripture; the writers are quite willing to argue for their own version of the analogy in question. The real issue is: which Christology counts as “orthodox” for Reformed Christians? The presumption throughout is that a simple and straightforward equation can be made between the Chalcedonian Formula and Reformed Christology. But can it? I will state my conclusion at the outset and then seek to explain how I arrived at it. My conclusion is that the Christology of the writers of HTFC is certainly “orthodox” in the ecumenical sense of the word, but – ironically, given the current situation at WTS - it is not Reformed.

For Reformed Christians, it is not simply Chalcedon which defines “orthodoxy” within the realm of Christological reflection; it is Chalcedon as interpreted by the Reformed Confessions. Or, in the case of denominations like the OPC and PCA, it is Chalcedon as interpreted by the Westminster standards. Westminster’s Christology stands, however, at the end of a long history of confessional reflection on the person of Jesus Christ and cannot be rightly understood without careful attention to that history...."

Later in the article, McCormack voices another rather incisive and polemical critique:

"It is clear what has led the writers of this report down this path. They want a Christology which will allow them to argue (by analogy) for an asymmetry in the relationship of divine authorship to human authorship of the Bible. But in their haste to reach this end, they have unwittingly abandoned the tradition they claim to defend."

For a closer look at the entire article, click Here

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Colossians 2:1-4 and Epistemology

I get nervous about even using words like "epistemology" to talk about how Biblical authors thought about knowledge if only because of the blatant terminological anachronism. But I could not help this morning as I read Col. 2:1-4 but wonder about the way the Emergent/post-foundationalist Christian movement(s) handles Paul's words in this text. Here is the passage from the ESV, italicized where I think it presents a challenge:

"For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knoweldge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments."

I remember reading in the exchange between Tony Jones and Colin Hansen (here is the link to the last day of it, which has links embedded for the whole) that Jones wanted to press epistemological humility. But is this not exactly what Paul doesn't want to happen here, and that expressly for the sake of the spiritual well-being of the Colossians? Paul explicitly says that the mystery of God is Christ, and it seems best to connect the "knowledge" of that to the preceding reference to "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (1:27) and probably the larger Christological affirmations of Colossians, especially 1:15-20.

Just a thought, and I am curious for how those who tend to think "Emergently" would respond. I certainly hope I am not misconstruing anyone's positions.

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Culturally Relevant?

On her blog, In Pursuit of That Which is True, Sarah Scott offer us some counsel on the Gospel.

"Many Christians believe that we can and should make the Word of God culturally relevant. However, due to its very nature, Christianity is countercultural to all cultures in all ages, and is also already highly relevant to the same. To act as if we can "make the Word relevant" is to falsely assume it has no living power, and further, it is to arrogantly claim that mere human beings have power over it. Instead, Christians must remain humbly but steadfastly faithful to the Word, and in doing so, speak the timeless and culturally transcendent truth in love to others (Ephesians 4:15)."

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10 Ways to know whether a blog is Reformed.

10. There is a weekly hat tip to a Justin Taylor posting.
9. 50% of the blog posts critique the Emergent church movement.
8. The subtitle mentions grace or mercy.
7. John 6 or Romans 9 is readily accessible.
6. They look for someway to mock Rick Warren.
5. Tim Keller or John Piper is their hero.
4. The “currently reading…” section contains at least one John MacArthur book.
3. When searching their blog for John Calvin there is over 100 entries.
2, Somewhere on the blog is a link for TableTalk magazine or Monergism books.
1. Tim Challies is in their blog roll.

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Leadership According to the Gospel

For a while now I have been reading "Word and Church", by John Webster, which I highly recommend by the way. I just finished the book, and I wanted to share a couple great quotes from chapter 6, which I think are very helpful in reminding us of what church leadership is supposed to look like. If we are not careful, it can be easy to lose our focus on what the gospel has to say about leaders in the church; not by appeal to authority of one's office, but through the example of submission to Christ, and servanthood motivated by love.

"The issue therefore not whether we can do without episcope, but whether oversight can be exercised in a way that is sufficiently 'loose' that 'all encroachment on the lordship of the One who is alone is the Lord is either avoided or so suppressed and eliminated in practice that there is a place for His rule.'" (pgs. 203-204)

"But as teacher, the bishop is not to be considered as in possession of something other than the truth of the gospel which is set before the whole congregation; it is the task of the office simply to encourage and defend by functioning as an exemplary instance of submission to the gospel's claim." (pg. 207)

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Blood Shouldn't Be Thicker Than Baptismal Waters

Wise words I stumbled across from Ben Witherington's Conflict & Community in Corinth, 180, on seeing the church as a family:

"What is desperately needed and seldom found in the church is an adequate theology of the family of faith. Paul believes that being brothers and sisters in Christ and sons and daughters of God transcends all other loyalties and should transform all other social relationships. Blood should not be thicker than the baptismal waters in the church. Rather, Paul calls for a 'relativized' view of all this-worldly institutions, including marriage. His idea of a family 'church' is actualized where God's people treat each other as their primary family, not just as some secondary social gathering that happens once a week and that promotes the agenda of the nuclear family. This is not to say that Paul is against the physical family. He does, however, believe that in the eternal scheme of things one's loyalty to Christ comes above and before one's loyalty to any other group or entity and that therefore one's loyalty to the body of Christ should likewise be at the top of one's priorities."

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Hot Links

1. Matthew Montonini interviews Ken Berding about singing through Greek (I took Berding for a number of classes at Biola- he's a genius, and the most disciplined person I have ever met. If he says it works, it works).
2. Alex Chediak blogs on the reThink conference (here).
3. James K. A. Smith has an intriguing article called Teaching a Calvinist to Dance.
4. R. C. Sproul now accepts a literal 6-day creation (here) [HT: Patton]
5. Want to review the Greek you learned in Seminary? (here) [HT: Harold Simmons]
6. Derek Thomas interviews D. A. Carson on his new book Christ and Culture Revisited. (here) [HT: JT]
7. James White in Theology Matter - comments on God, Marriage, and California (here)
8. John Frame briefly answer the Open Theist (here)
   
9. McCain now rejects Hagee, and Hagee withdrawals endorement. (here)
10. Romans 1:25?
    

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A natural-order theodicy: but is it biblical?

After finishing chapter 5 of the book, I finally feel that I'm getting to the bottom of Hasker's overall analysis and framework for a theodicy. Not that I mean he has presented all of his evidence in light of his thesis, but that the foundation was built in the preceding chapters and we're starting to see the fruit of it all.

In my last 2 posts I sought to expound a little on two positions which Hasker evaluated with respect to natural evil. As noted before, he casts the idea that the natural evil came as a result of sin (i.e. the Fall). His reasoning: simply that the earth is "scientifically" proven to be billions of years old; and since their is also 'evidence' that natural evil (hurricanes, tornado's, disease, death, etc) existed before that time, Adam's sin could not be considered as a viable option to deal with this. The second position by Diogenes Allen, though somewhat accepted by Hasker, nevertheless left much to be desired as well. So midway through the chapter Hasker finally gets to building his position for a theodicy.

As the post title suggests, Hasker sets forth what he calls a natural-order theodicy. He builds on this by noting the requirements for a [cogent] theodicy. What are they? First he says their must be a justifying principle which he defines as a moral principle stating that under certain conditions God is morally justified in permitting some evils of a certain sort to occur. Secondly he says there must also be a justifying circumstance which he notes is a state of affiars which is claimed to obtain which is such that, were it to obtain, the conditions for God to be justified in permitting the evil in question would be satisfied. Essentially they are wrapped up in his overall definition of theodicy, which is to show that God is not morally at fault for permitting the evil in question-that God's permission of the evil is morally justified, even if the events in question really are evil in themselves.

Okay, now that we've gotten this far Dr. Hasker: We know that you have established your position on free will in that in order for the creature to be relatively autonomously free, God must have some "limit" if we are really to be free. We know that you are convinced that omniscience is nothing more than God being able to know true propositions in their logical possibility, and that because the future is logically impossible to know, it wouldn't be illogical to say that God doesn't know the future. Finally, we know that you take the theistic evolutionary position with respect to the natural world. Lets tie it altogether now, shall we?

Enter the first step, Hasker's natural-order theodicy. After establishing his grounds for what he feels is scientific proof of an extremely old earth, the evolutionary position which he adopts nearly grounds his whole system. He goes on to explain from pages 127-137 his defense for this natural order. To make it short and sweet, Hasker basically asserts that God placed the natural world into existence by setting everything to occur and react with fixed laws which were inherent in the matter themselves. Said another way, the evolving world is acting in accordance to the original plan (design) of God, much like a the way a clockwork, though with potential for progress and evolution. His conclusion: nature is not evil. Humans consider it evil based on the fact that it can cause damage and distress (even death and destruction), but because it is not a being and has no purpose within itself, it cannot be considered evil, even though evil manifests itself through them. And since God created these things without forethought to the "consequences," that gets God off the hook. In his own words, nature operates according to its intrinsic, God-created laws, which are impersonal in form and do not have regard to the lives and welfare of particular individuals. Surely the events are not evil within themselves, I grant that. But what we do have are events that, from a biblical perspective, God apparently takes credit for, at least in some cases.

Hasker attempts to substantiate this claim by an appeal to Scripture by referencing Job 39:27-30 and Psalm104:21-22. Surely these verses speak to God's creative acts which allowed for the animals to obey their intended purpose. Problem is, how would Hasker interpret those verses to which speak to God's deliberately changing the natural course of the world to conform them for special purposes? For example, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked out of a fiery furnace as recorded in Daniel 3:26. Clearly nature wasn't acting in accordance to the set laws there. Or for that matter when Jesus walked on water as we are told in Matthew 14:22-33. Are these just instances which God used to "override" the previous notions of inherent natural laws? I guess that could be the case, but how do we understand these things in light of the many different passages where God caused the earth to open up and consume Korah for his rebellion in Numbers 16. Was this just a natural event that just so happened to take place at the time which Korah rebelled and was coincidentally timely?

While I'm sure Dr. Hasker has dealt with some of these objections before, he doesn't seem to do so through chapter 5. Perhaps he will in the final three chapters. He does raise a few objections with respect to how can we take this seemingly fixed set of natural law in light of Christian theism, but asks the reader to be patient as he will attempt to answer them in chapter 7...so I guess we'll have to wait for that as well. Lastly, he does bring up the objection early in his defense of the natural-order theodicy in regards to heaven. The question we might all ask is first, if heaven is to be a perfect place and state of being, why didn't God just make this place and not the evil infested place in which we now live? His answer, to me, is pretty much the same answer that the determinist (Calvinist) offers, it is unknowable. It must rest in the original purpose of God to want to have created the world in the way in has come about. Obviously there is another side to the heaven debate which was neither addressed nor hinted at, that of how one defines free will in light of the fact that in heaven we will not be able to choose between evil or good. But I suppose that's for another time; perhaps the next post. Reason being, Hasker titles chapter 6 Why is life so hard. And from a quick scan of the subtitles, it seems he plans to set forth his defense of free will.

I look forward to it.

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McCain, Hagee, and Hitler

I'm not one to write on politics. I usually steer clear, mainly because I think its difficult to weigh all of the evidence being presented, not just by the Politicians, but also by the masses. To me, there are just too many opinions being thrown around. However, this morning I was listening to the Brad and Brit show on FM 101.1 in Raleigh, and couldn't help but blog about it.

As many of you know, recently John McCain proudly accepted the endorsement of Reverend John Hagee, Pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Well, in the political arena, this is somewhat of a ballsy move. Mainly because its pretty obvious that McCain is doing this to gain the support of the conservative Christian right. But more so because of the fact that Hagee has a some well known controversial doctrine he upholds. While Hagee is a well known Christian Zionist, some have considered his interpretations a little tough to swallow. Hagee has gone on record asserting that God sent Hitler to persecute the Jews through the Holocaust in order to get them back to the Promise Land, which Hagee believes is a direct fulfillment of Jeremiah 16:15.

The hosts were taking calls from people with the intention of getting feedback on whether they thought this was as damaging to McCain's campaign as was Obama's relationship with Reverend Wright. As you can imagine, however, the callers were not calling in to comment on that. Rather they were calling in to comment on Hagee's interpretation, some to defend it, some to criticize it. From the 20 minutes I listened to, three people called in to offer an explanation to Hagee's analysis. It was clear that these were Christian people who sought to defend the sovereignty of God. They weren't agreeing with Hagee's overall construal but were saying that in accordance with what the Bible says about God's previous dealings, this would not be a far fetched interpretation. Well, Brad and Britt were not buying it. They expressed their how appalling it would be for God to deliberately "permit" the Holocaust, to allow millions of Jews to be killed just to get them back to Israel.

So here's my two cents:

With respect to Hagee's interpretation, I think its very difficult to substantiate. Can this fit within the framework of the overall drama of redemption, I don't see why not. In Isaiah 10 God did use Assyria as the rod of his anger against rebellious Israel. However I find it a very daunting task to attempt to authenticate or verify this method of modern cultural/biblical exegesis. Those biblical authors who did so in the past were clearly prophets of God. And I dont' think Hagee considers himself among those.

As far as McCain's campaign being tainted, politically speaking I think they might be right. I don't think that this was the best move particularly because of the controversy that has surrounded Hagee in the past. Do I think its as bad as Obama's affiliation with Reverend Wright, no I do not. Mainly because Hagee is a supporter of this country and of Israel. Wright has consistently and constantly ripped this country for its oppression of the black community, among other anti-patriotic comments. Remember, I'm speaking politically here, not my personal opinion on which candidate is the best. To me, voting for the president is choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Needless to say, this is not a conversation that will be limited to simply this radio station, or this blog for that matter. I'm sure you'll read much more about this in the coming days on Yahoo, CNN, or MSNBC.

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The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief

As I come to the end of chapter 6 of Peter Rollins' forthcoming book, "The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief" (Paraclete Press, June 2008), I am left with much to consider. Rollins continues his march toward developing a conception of Christianity, contrary to western Christendom, whose tenability is not dependent on the conceptual viability of a particular set of truth claims regarding God's essence. Previously, Dr. Rollins has explained that while this type of epistemologically and metaphysically confident, propositional, and analytic approach to describing God's essence has roots in earlier times in the church, this view was crystallized by the work of Descartes, which tried to establish, with assurance, the truth of God's existence. This, Rollins went on to claim, has been the undergirding for both secular and religious thought ever since; despite the fact that it has been employed in differing ways, both have been aimed at the procurement of ultimate meaning. This, Rollins asserts, undermines a true, radical, life transforming faith.

In order to drive this point home both conceptually and historically, Dr. Rollins calls on the thought of Hobbes and Pascal. First, Rollins points out that even Descartes questioned his own conclusions, reflecting on the conceptual incoherency of the finite comprehending the infinite. While, as I said, Rollins cites the thought of both Hobbes and Pascal, I found one particular quote and reflection on the work of Hobbes to be particularly effective in making the point:

"Thomas Hobbes noted that,

God is conceived as infinite; that is, I cannot conceive or imagine limits to him, or uttermost parts beyond which I can image none further; but from this it follows that the term infinite gives rise to an idea not of God’s infinity but of my own bounds and limits . . . to say God is infinite is just to say that he belongs to the class of things whose bounds are not conceivable. This rules out any idea of God; what sort of idea can be without origin and without bounds?

Thus, for Hobbes, Descartes’ definition of God as an “infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful [being] and the creator of myself and anything else that may exist,” actually turned out to be a way of claiming that God was beyond definition. In short, the idea that God is infinite was, for Hobbes, a way of saying that God is beyond any ideas we can come up with: to say that God is infinite is to say that God is not finite and thus to make a merely negative claim. To make this claim is thus to really say nothing concrete at all about God but rather to offer up a veiled means of commenting upon the finitude of the one who speaks—it is a description of our own limits."

This, it must be admitted is a powerful argument. Before we render judgement on this issue, I think it is helpful to see how this establishes a platform for the next component of Rollins' argument. What Rollins is careful to avoid is to allow the criticism or assertion that his proposal suggests God is somehow distant and detached from this world. On the contrary, Rollins affirms God's intimate presence and interaction with his creation; the difference is that, contrary to traditional conceptions, Rollins suggests that God's presence does not allow us to reduce the nature of that presence to something objectifiable. This whole chapter, in one sense, is a louder and clearer echo of the message in chapter 3, since his idea of the "eschatological wHole" comes to the fore, at least implicitly. It is this idea that although many things are present to our experience, we cannot capture cognitively the inner coherency of what we experience in a way that is objectively describable. For example, we experience the reality of our own life, but we do not experience, or connot capture the interior details of that existence. It is both present and absent to our conciousness, at least as it pertains to some comprehensive and descriptive knowing. In the same way, God is present to us in events, not essence. In that way he is both close, while remaining beyond our finite conceptual capacities to describe and experience God's ultimate reality; "a presence beyond presence". Also consider the following quote, which helps to crystallize Rollins' idea,

"However, it is not simply the life of those around us that lies beyond the realm of our experience; at a much more radical level we cannot even experience our own life. Our own life is not something we can experience, for it is that which allows us to experience in the first place. Our life is not approached as an object in the world that can be experienced; rather it is an opening that allows us to experience objects in the world. Any deep reflection upon our own life leads to the dizzying conclusion that this life that we are, while present in the moment of reflection, is radically absent to the world of our experience."

Rollins ultimately calls God's action in this world, which is the way we encounter God through an event, the divine rupture in this world that both testifies to God, while also reminding us of our inability to capture his essential being. Consider the following illustrations, which are based first on Rollins' definition of revelation, and also draw from the gospels. First, Rollins defines revelation as "rupture",

"This idea of God as that which dwells beyond our ability to objectify, and the previous exploration of God’s Word as hinted at as an inaccessible wound within, but not of, Scripture are each exposed and expressed in the Christian idea of revelation. Within the Bible we encounter revelation as the felt concealment of God. Rather than God being rendered manifest in revelation, this term can be seen to define a tight web of three interrelated features. First, a revelation worthy of the name involves epistemological incomprehension. In other words, part of the evidence that a revelation has occurred lies in the fact that what we have encountered cannot be understood within our currently existing intellectual structures. Second, there is experiential bedazzlement. Here the incoming of revelation is evidenced in a type of oversaturation in which our experience is overcome. One is overwhelmed by the incoming and short-circuited by it. Third, there is an existential transformation. When a revelation occurs, the person who is receiving it is never the same again."

Then Rollins explains how, in one sense, Christianity is God's rupture in Judaism; by reflecting on the unusual circumstances of Jesus' ancestral lineage as portrayed in Matthew's gospel, Rollins claims,

"On the one hand Matthew understands the incoming of God through Jesus as directly related to the Jewish tradition, yet on the other hand he speaks of this event as one that ruptures the tradition, that cannot be contained within it. Jesus simultaneously is inscribed within, and tears apart the narrative. Here there is a respect for the ancient narrative and an affirmation of a new beginning within it, a beginning that ruptures the tradition that it respects and within which it is inscribed. Here Christianity is shown, not simply as the continuation of the Jewish tradition, but as an incoming that breaks the tradition wide open. Here we again witness the self-conscious parallactical structure of the text. The event of God is presented here as arising from, yet not contained within, the tabernacles of our traditions. This process by which Matthew relates Jesus to the very tradition that his presence ruptures helps to expose the sense in which Christianity is structured as an irreligious religion. We can see here how the revelation of Christ forms a fissure within Judaism itself. While this has since been taken as the beginning of a new religion (Christianity), there is a sense in which Jesus is actually introducing (or re-inscribing) a wound into the already existing religion. In this sense Christianity is not that which comes after the rupture of Jesus but rather is the name that one ought to give to the rupture itself.What we witness here is a beautiful example of the Judeo-Christian notion that when revelation takes place, with the full power of its overabundant luminosity, our religious ideas, important as they are, break open to new and vibrant possibilities."

It is from this overall conceptual vantage point that Rollins calls the reader to rise above the conceptual framework of our domestication of God's essence. It is from this place, Rollins claims, that we open ourselves up to the transforming work of God. It is through God's rupturing our present reality; the rupture where the finite encounters the infinite, that we are forever transformed according to God's radical call.

All of this is presented very enticingly, especially for those, I think, who may be disenchanted wtih the status quo. There are a couple thoughts I have at this point. First, I think there is much to be taken from Rollins' proposal, and I can't wait to see how he concludes it. One question I have is related to Rollins repeated appeal to the fact that athough critical issues are important and relevant, they must be placed to the side for the moment. I guess I wonder how they are relevant, according to Rollins' proposal; in other words, if we take Rollins' approach to the biblical text, which requires a "second naivete", then it also seems that we must begin with an approach that accepts the text at face value. This, in turn seems, in one respect, like the approach of dogmatic theoogians, such as John Webster, for example. What then is the actual value of critical issues, and if we are to take them seriously, how and why do we divorce them from our perceptual horizon? Secondly, I wonder if perhaps Rollins has oversimplified the landscape of modern theology. Clearly, his criticism that theology is confident about making assertions related to God's essence can be argued when speaking of dogmatic or systematic theology, but can this be so easily asserted with regard to other sub-disciplines within theology? For example, the work of biblical theologians, I would say, is more closely oriented toward the actions of God. At the same time, I do understand that much of their work is undergirded by the conceptual frameworks of dogmatic theology, but it still remains a question for me as to whether Rollins' proposal may be a simplistic on this point.

I look forward to his response and corrections....

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Autographed R. C. Sproul Cards...?

This is just a reminder to our readers and visitors that we are now just 10 days away from the end of our May '08 giveaway of 4 autographed, prototypical R. C. Sproul theologian trading cards (click here for details)


Also, don't forget to sign up for email updates to receive your THEOLOGICAL WORD OF THE DAY via email!

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Thoughts on Women in Ministry, Part 2: Doing Church Then and Now

Imagine Timothy on a Sunday morning in Ephesus. He goes to church after a week spent studying Jonah 2 in his office (of course following the standard one-hour-of-study-per-one-minute-of-preaching rule) and is ready to deliver the second sermon in his four week series on the book (which he's cleverly titled "Belly-Aching in a Bulimic Fish"). 10 a.m. rolls around and Timothy sits in the front row and enjoys the first song, which he and everybody else knows is really just a warm-up. When that finishes, he goes before the congregation, makes the announcements with a smile, dismisses the children to go to Sunday School (which is in another wing of the church building), makes sure the guests know that they're welcome and asks them to fill out a Connection Card, then tells everybody to give a holy kiss to someone they haven't met before. After worship Timothy delivers his sermon, another song finishes the service, and everyone leaves until the next week.

I think not. I bring up the situation as a reminder that church in the first century looked a lot different than church does now. Scholars are almost entirely agreed that the earliest Christian churches were house churches (thus "in every place" in 1 Tim. 2:8 probably means "in every house church"). The idea of a "worship leader" would have been entirely foreign (despite that hymns were most definitely sung congregationally) and each house church would need at least one teacher. Further, 1 Cor. 14:26 (and probably Col. 3:16 and Eph. 5:19) gives the impression that church was a time for everyone to participate in some way or another. And if you can find me a New Testament church ministry specifically to kids, young adults, or any other niche group, I would be learning something new.

Too often when we try to apply NT ecclesiology to the modern church, we fail to recognize the vastness of the structural and sociological chasm between them. This comes to the fore in the gender debate especially when we consider that major difference between the number of voices contributing in a regular church meeting. Think about it like this: if a woman cannot teach or have authority over a man and the only (or almost only) person that gets to edify the congregation when it gathers is the one preaching the sermon, then it is easy to understand why women feel slighted for being born with two X chromosomes. What role do they have if they don't want to do children's ministry?

There are a few things that ought to be considered to remedy this problem, but I will focus on one that I think is especially important and invite you to share any others you think relevant. One of the most important things we can do to recover the proper place of women in the church is to rediscover the importance of the charismatic spiritual gifts (i.e. those charismata that Paul addresses in 1 Cor. 11-14). 1 Cor. 11:4-5 makes quite clear that women contribute with prophecy and prayer in edifying ways in the congregation. But except in overtly charismatic churches today, most women will simply not have that medium for edification.

And that is a shame on any number of levels, at least two of which are worth enumerating here: (1) I am an unabashed charismatic and cannot help but remind the reader that if the charismatic gifts are for today, our not pursuing them is essentially a denial of the importance of the Holy Spirit's ministry to us. (2) If women should be contributing in certain ways and we stifle that, we are hurting both them and ourselves. They need the opportunity to minister and we need to be edified by them. It's that simple.

I should close by making a specific point of asking for more input on this point (especially by women!). I would be interested to hear in particular what other ecclesiological differences you see that make the application of complementarianism difficult, and what other ways you think your and my solutions could help.

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Natural Evil (part 2): According to Diogenes Allen

In my last post on I dealt with somewhat of a side issue to the purpose of the book, though important to Hasker's discussion nevertheless. This time I want to continue this subject with Hasker's evaluation of Diogenes Allen's position. The next post will be dedicated to discussing and assessing Hasker's own formula for developing a theodicy, particularly focusing on natural evil.

Diogenes Allen was the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1967-2002. He wrote much in the way of dealing with the problem of evil. So much so that he warrants the appraisal in Hasker's book. Hasker breaks down Allen's position on natural evil as having three "actions," or responses. First, Allen calls us to a renunciation of egoism exemplified by the Stoicism of Epictetus. That is, we need to take into account the cosmological whole and realize that we are but one item among many in a vast interconnected whole. As such, not everything that takes place goes according to our will, and we must see our individual role with the larger framework of universe; thus our mindset must begin here.

Secondly, Allen states that we must accept (and acknowledge) the suffering that besets us because we can find comfort in God's loving presence. According to Allen, suffering can teach us that we are a very small part of the universe and that we are not to expect as much as we do from its workings. He goes on to say, when this is learned, we can then see more soberly and accurately what it does provide for us. In other words, God's working through the universe contain suffering, but we can rest easy that he cares for us through them (perhaps an allusion to Romans 8:28).

Thirdly, Allen goes on to utilize the influence of Simone Weil, who attributed the various affliction and degradation as the opportunity for God to display his love. Allen approves of her position in which takes the superlative act of God's love to be the affliction of Christ. That is, God showed his Son just how much he loved him through this act of suffering.

The first two actions which Allen's purports we should take a stance toward I think have merit. There is a sense in which we should look at the grand scheme of things and see ourselves in light of it. I also believe that we should see the current sufferings of the world in light of our loving Father in heaven (Rom. 8:18). And while I'm sure the third action is much more fully developed by Allen himself through various writings and lectures, I have a difficult time understanding how it lines up with Christian theism. She along with Allen attempt to justify the evil as part of God's original plan, though, it appears, not in the sense that Calvinist's may understand. Apparently for God to show his love, he is to do so through permitting affliction. That is, it is "in the act of suffering" that God shows his love; not his redeeming us from, or comforting us through, the suffering. I, along with Hasker, find this untenable, though for different reasons. Hasker notes that it would be difficult for an individual to look at the holocaust with all of its horrendous affliction as an "act" of God's love, and I agree with him. Hasker also notes the inapplicability of this to small children; again, I agree. But to me there is another issue at stake. It seems to assume that God cannot show his love otherwise. Could God not show his love through the means of creating good image bearers which would enjoy his presence [and creation] through all of eternity? Now I'm not sure whether Allen or Weil see the permission of evil by God as the "only" way in which God can express his love, but from Hasker's evaluation it appears to be that way.

In the end, Hasker takes Allen's view as inadequate for dealing with the philosophical problem of evil, which I would agree, especially on action 3. Though Hasker does praise Allen's take on natural evil in which nature operates according to its intrinsic, God-create laws, which are impersonal in form and do not have regard to the lives and welfare of particular individuals. Seeing where Hasker plans on going with his overall development of a theodicy, I suspected this would be the road he was planning to take. I'm going to stop here for now and refrain from offering my own evaluation of how one might understand natural evil, mainly because I want to discover how and where Hasker plans on developing it. The next twenty pages of his book he plans to offer not only his requirements for a theodicy, but also his explanation for natural evil.

Stay tuned.

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Worthy Links...

1. Great wisdom (and writing!) from Sean Lucas on considering ministry or a Ph.D.
2. Prodigal Jon on Christians being good at ultimate frisbee (it really is true- just ask my Biola intramural team!).
3. Fred Sanders briefly reviews Michael Ward's Planet Narnia (I saw Ward lecture on it last night at Biola and his case is bulletproof).
4. If you're interested in "Stuff White People Like"
5. More G. K. Beale resources.
6. A chart of the Two Views of Regeneration.
7. An Ecclesiological Assessment of the Emerging Church Movement by John Hammett (here)
8. Don Carson on The Openness of God.
9. Scott McKnight on Faith Based Scholarship.
   

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The Soup Nazi would have made a great pastor.

I'm finishing up a book called "Selling Out the Church" by Philip D. Kenneson and James L. Street (Cascade Books, 1997). I picked it up last year at ETS and haven't had time to read it until now. It is a pretty quick read and worth the time.
The authors do a few things that are especially helpful.

First of all, they provide a clear, concise picture of how our whole culture has become a marketing culture. They say that we have gone through the following cycle: production, sales, marketing. In the production period (up to about the 1920's), companies produced quality goods and people had to come to them to buy them. In the sales period (through the 1940's), companies produced goods and then sent out salespeople and advertisements to sell the goods. In the present period, the marketing period (through the present time), companies find out what the customers felt needs are and then they produce something to meet them.

Second, Kenneson & Street take on George Barna and others who, recognizing that we are in a marketing culture, say that marketing is a "value neutral" tool that churches not only can, but should use to do ministry. The assumption is that we can separate how we communicate the gospel (medium) from the gospel itself (message). The authors flatly deny this distinction. Instead, they say (and I believe rightly so) that a marketing approach conveys something to those whom the marketing is targeted at. First of all, it tells the person being marketed at that they are customers. Second, it communicates certain things about the church:

• The church is a business of sorts: a religious organization that creates "spiritual profit" by offering certain "products.
• The church is an instrument to achieve other ends. We ask of the church: what is it good for? That is, the view of the church is very, very pragmatic. The church is a means to an end, and we market it as so: it helps our family be stronger, it offers an experience of community, it gives us a sense of meaning so we can feel happy. This idea of the church meeting predetermined needs is why we get all caught up about a church being "relevant." This is why the church is increasingly viewed as a "full-service" organization designed to, in the words of Barna, "be responsive to the needs of their members and constituents, and repsonsive to the needs of society." Barna goes on "A responsive congregation is one that makes ever effort to sense, serve, and satisfy the needs and wants of its members and participants within the constraints of its budget."
  
• The church must be novel. We live in a culture of "planned obsolescence," and so the church must always be reinventing itself and changing to conform to people's newly realized "felt needs."
• The church can be engineered through proper techniques. Church marketers, though they make comments to the contrary, leave no room for the church to be a miracle of the Spirit. Instead, in true Western fashion, we engineer everything. I love the question: "if God ceased to exist today, could your church go on functioning and growing normally?" If the answer is yes, you don't have a church.
• The church should be homogenous. Marketing means you are aiming to meet "felt needs." Church marketers are unanimous that you must "target" your marketing, meaning that you are going to market to a certain niche of people's felt needs. As a result, the church can't help but be homogenous in some sense.

Finally, the authors make the simple-yet-profound point that if we cater to felt-needs we have a significant problem: what do we do when those needs are wrong? Indeed, the authors assert, we are guaranteed that their felt needs will be wrong, since humanity is fallen and in no shape to determine their needs. The result is that a church who attracts people through catering to their felt needs must continue to satisfy the felt needs (protecting my wealth, making me feel good about myself, fostering my nationalism, et al.) and never address the real needs (needs for Jesus, repentance from sin, faith in God, generosity, humility, etc.). Or, the church can lure people in through marketing and, all of the sudden, turn on them and tell them that their felt-needs are illegitimate and ludicrous. This will usually result in disappointed and bitter people.

I could go on and on and on, but all this brings me to my conclusion: The Soup Nazi would have made a great pastor. You see, the Soup Nazi had something to give to the world; namely, soup. And the Soup Nazi knew his soup was good, and he knew how it should be prepared, he knew what is should come with...you get the picture. And when people came in and started whining about it, he simply said, "No Soup for You!"

I mean, before anyone thinks I'm saying pastors should be mean and demeaning, I'm just joking. But seriously, as I think about my future life in ministry, I think the Soup Nazi is going to be an ongoing hero of mine. He knew his calling, he defined the needs, and he met the needs in the way he saw fit.

• I've got to know my calling: to preach and model the gospel, to confront myself and others with the truth of God so that we can submit in the confrontation and be changed by God into what he wants us to be.
• I've got to define people's needs for them: part of being a pastor is pointing out that their "needs" for comfort, fun, and wealth are sham needs and that what they really need is redemption, justification, and sanctification.
• I've got to meet people's needs on the terms previously defined by God: urging repentance, faith, prayer, and a growing knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

So hey, pastors, channel the courage of the Soup Nazi! You know what people's needs are, you have the knowledge of the path of Life. Stop trying to identify "felt needs" and get on with gospel ministry!

And, don't forget to hang a picture of the Soup Nazi on your wall; perhaps it'll give you that added chutzpah the next time a disgruntled customer, errr...parishioner, steps into your office.

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The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief

I just finished chapter 5 of Peter Rollins forthcoming book, "The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief" (Paraclete Press, 2008), and I have one bit of advice for the potential reader as I continue; you better have "guts" when you decide to pick up this book because it challenges the very foundations of Western conceptions of Christianity. Rollins continues to offer powerful argumentation for his position, and unless you possess a sort of beligerent confidence in what you think you know, you can help but grant that many of his points have substance, even if you do not end up argeeing with the breadth of his proposal.

Chapter 5 is primarily aimed at expanding on, and adding specificity to his critiques of the church described in chapter 4. We saw in chapter 4 that Rollins sought to highlight the idea that because of the way man's inquiry into the nature of truth has developed, at least in the western world, we have come to domesticate the notion of God. In other words, our method inquiry has led us to be inappropriately ambitious and confident about our ability to describe God's ultimate reality. We have reduced God to ways in which we describe his supposed essence. We have reduced God to what can be described as a set of facts, appropriate for examination and contemplation.

In chapter 5, Dr. Rollins shows a number of parallels that this type of thinking has in common with the approach used in the empirical sciences, while also making a number of provocative statements in the wake of the implications. Consider the following comments:

"As soon as Christianity is thought of as something that makes claims to a set of facts that exist in the world, then it becomes subject to a whole range of critiques. This does not in any way imply that we must reject specific claims in the Bible, any more than it implies that we must embrace them; this is another question entirely, one that can be approached in relation to the best evidence that we have. It merely points out that if we take such claims as the “truth” of faith then we predicate that truth upon claims that will always be open to question. Of course within the Bible there are various claims to historical events; the point is that these claims, like all claims, are open to question, and so, if the truth of faith rests upon them, then it is also open to question.

Thus the truth affirmed by Christianity ends up being treated like any other set of factual claims, claims that are provisional and open to being proven wrong. Even if one believes that the various claims within the Bible are wholly accurate, it is always possible that a new discovery in archaeology, history, or biblical scholarship will overturn the current body of evidence. Apologetics, in its attempt to defend the factual claims of the Bible through the use of reason, thus implicitly affirms the very philosophical outlook that undermines its own project, placing the truth of Christianity in the realm of rational reflection and thus into the realm of reasonable doubt and provisionality."

From this vantage point, Rollins sets out to substatiate his claim that this approach to the Christian faith only undermines it by employing a number of strands of argumentation; first, Rollins explains that this type of rationalistic approach places the substance of Chrsitian faith in the hands of the academic. He also claims that this type of of supposedly objective inquiry places distance between the inquirer and Christianity's moral substance. In other words, this mode of inquiry allows one to examine the claims of the Christian faith at a distance, without being subject to moral claims it makes on our lives.

Ultimately, Rollins uses, quite brilliantly, the writings of Nietzsche, in order to show the deeply rooted affinity that a rationsalistic, apologetic, and at times, morally disconnected breed of Christianity has with its supposed antithesis; atheism. Rollins begins by quoting the parable in which Nietzsche coined the famous phrase 'god is dead', and then offers some very insightful commentary (I have to warn you that this is a relatively long quote, but its very important):

"For Nietzsche the idea of God had become inextricably linked with claims to do with the idea that there is an overall meaning and purpose in the universe, i.e., with factual claims. Indeed, he judged this approach to be so embedded in the culture of his time that anyone who believed that the world had some overarching meaning accessible to the human mind, was actually affirming this God even if they denied it .... (NB: Descarte's God)

This helps to explain why the people who the madman is speaking to in the parable are actually described as not believing in God. For while they had given up on church, prayer, and even the word “God” they implicitly affirmed and were comforted by the idea of overall cosmic meaning, a view rooted in the affirmation of Descartes’ God. For Nietzsche God was dead, not because some entity “out there” had ceased to exist, but rather because the idea of God had become synonymous with Descartes’ God, and Descartes’ God had no positive transformative power. In many ways Nietzsche was pointing out that both the religious believers of his day and those who called themselves atheists were methodological theists and practical atheists. In other words, for Nietzsche God is nothing more than an idea that comforts the individual with the belief that the world has some overall meaning. God was directly affirmed by the believer and indirectly evoked by the so-called enlightened scientists of his day, but this belief had no real effect upon either of them. Such an intellectual belief did not evoke a radically transformed life of loving enemies, giving away worldly goods, and standing up against injustice. Belief in God was now just a type of crutch, an ideological system divorced from life. For Nietzsche God had gradually become nothing more than a guarantee of meaning, and this meaning seemed to serve no other purpose than the rather selfish one of making us feel secure in the universe.

If the traditional religious philosophers asked that we remain faithful to our objective understanding of God, Nietzsche asked that we betray such understandings because they offer us nothing but an ideological drug that enables us to live without embracing existence. Hence, Nietzsche equated drugs and religion, for both provide ways for the individual to avoid facing up to life in all its beauty and horror.

Nietzsche looked to a time when people would be able to live without such ideological crutches—a time when they could embrace life without this Cartesian God. This would not, however, signal the reign of some kind of traditional atheism, for if God had become synonymous with the affirmation of ultimate meaning, then Nietzsche was saying that the atheism of his day was still too interested in playing the same game, affirming a meaningful universe without God. Atheism had to embrace its own message and overcome itself, recognizing that there was no privileged position to judge what the world was all about either scientifically or religiously. Nietzsche was thus attempting to show how Cartesian theology lay deeply embedded within the thinking of modern Western philosophers and scientists, even though they often claimed to have nothing to do with theology. The time that he looked toward was one when people would simply accept the world as it is and create meaning from the raw materials of our everyday activities."

Overall, I must simply say that I found this chapter to be the most cogently argued, and provocative thus far. I don't think I am in a position to offer criticism, nor do I want to at this point; rather, I simply wish to see the direction in which Rollins will take an alternate proposal.

At the same time, I must admit that I do not yet understand how denying that we can know anything about God's overarching meaning for this world is healthy for the Christian faith. I understand Rollins' point that total certainty about the outcome of things can breed complacency, but it seems, in some sense, that our reading of the Bible, for example, causes us to wrestle with what God's overall purposes with respect to man might be. Perhaps I am just the perfect illustration of his point, but it seems that to garner some degree of meaning with respect to God and faith is what renders our faith intelligible.

I look forward to Dr. Rollins' corrections to my understanding.

Very intersting....

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Bad Book Blurbs...

I recently accumulated some rewards points on my American Express card. As my reward, I chose a $50.00 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. Upon receiving my reward I ran down to my local store. The first thing I bought was an expensive cup of coffee (the only time I buy the lattes or mochas is when they are free or when someone else is buying). Next, I moved over to the Barnes & Noble classics section where I picked out a cheap copy of Homer's Odyssey. This was just one part of my effort to overcome my deficient high school education. Upon reaching the "Christian" section, and after puking up my coffee because of some of the disgusting literature therein, I located Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics. I'm looking forward to exploring Bonhoeffer when things settle down here in a couple of months. Lastly, I bought a paperback copy of Augustine's The City of God, which I've been devouring voraciously over the last few days (I must confess: I very rapidly skimmed most of books III and IV).

One thing about the Augustine book has had me chuckling for the last 3 days. It is a publication of Barnes & Noble (part of the "Library of Essential Reading"). Some woman named Kim Paffenroth wrote the introduction. What I can't find anywhere is who in the world wrote the blurb for the back of the book. It is one of the most ridiculous, anachronistic, comical blurbs that you could possibly think of for the book. Let me give it to you here:

"The City of God addresses the thorny but perennially relevant issue of how Christian are to live in this world while preparing for the next. Saint Augustine presents us with a model of two cities: the City of Man, based on human self-love; and the City of God, based on grace, humility and [my note: drumroll please!] religious toleration. He claims that those who make judgments on other people's faith distance themselves from the City of God."

OMG. LOL. WTH?

I just can't believe that whoever wrote that blurb actually read the book. I mean, Augustine is all over the place saying that the gods of Rome are none other than wicked demons. The blurb just couldn't be a worse representation of the book.

Anyways, have you seen any bad blurbs? Any all-time worst?

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Thoughts on Women in Ministry, Part 1: The Irrelevance of Galatians 3:28

Here begins the first in a series of posts that will highlight some of my most recent thoughts on the women in ministry issue (although I suppose my post on the use of the term "pastor" actually was really my first, but it wasn't intended for this series). This all comes from spending the last couple weeks and a good part of the semester on a paper for a Talbot class. I will not defend all of this as thoroughly as I have in my paper itself, so if you happen to want the paper, feel free to ask and I'll send it to you.

Also, I will make a point of limiting my observations to stuff that you probably will not as readily find in the standard sources. That is, I won't give you the standard arguments on the standard texts. Given the medium of a blog I think it best to stick to the fresher, more provocative stuff.

So without further delay, we commence with some thoughts on the use of Galatians 3:28 in the gender debate.

In his Galatians commentary, F. F. Bruce wrote, "Paul states the basic principle here; if restrictions on it are found elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, as in 1 Cor. 14:34f...or 1 Tim. 2:11f., they are to be understood in relation to Gal. 3:28, and not vice versa."

Strong words, especially from so notable a scholar. Yet anyone who has read much on this issue realizes that such statements on the import of Gal. 3:28 are easy to find from egalitarian sources. The only surprising thing is how little Bruce himself, normally such a cautious exegete, actually defends that statement.

In any case, I do not intend here to tell you how I think egalitarians have misused Gal. 3:28 generally (I think Robert Saucy's article in Women and Men in Ministry and his follow-up response in JBMW to Fee's article in Discovering Biblical Equality handle that well). Instead, I will simply contend this: the nature of this debate ends up making Gal. 3:28 moot for coming to major conclusions about women's ministry roles. Let me explain.

Complementarians see Gal. 3:28 as primarily referencing the equality