Tell Her Story

I've just finished reading Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay K. Gupta.  I really liked some aspects of it, and found some others seriously lacking.  The following is not a full review by any means (though by your leave I'll label it as a review), but just a series of thoughts and reflections.  I would welcome push-back if you've read it and liked it more (or less) than I did!

Things that I liked:

The survey of women in the Greco-Roman world (chapter 3) is great at showing that there was significant variety to the experiences of women in the first century.  It is certainly not true that first century women were universally restricted to the house, or that they never had roles outside the domestic sphere.  If in your imagination the background to the New Testament is a world of very rigid gender roles, I think it's helpful to see that things were more varied than that.

One line of argumentation that I've never heard deployed in person, but have witnessed on the internet and therefore gather is current in American Evangelicalism, is the idea that "women can't perform such and such a role in ministry because they are too..." (10) - fill in the blank as you please.  This sort of argument, based on the (demonstrably false) idea that there are immutable traits which mark out all women (and all men) is never advanced in Scripture, and this book takes it apart rather well.

Highlighting the role of women in the narrative of salvation history - whether that's a character like Deborah in the Old Testament (ch 1), the women who encountered and often accompanied the Lord Jesus (ch 4), or the women named by Paul as co-workers (chs 5-9) has the potential to enrich our understanding of God's work.  There will also certainly be points at which meditating on these women and their stories will point to changes that need to be made in the thinking and practice of the church today.

Things that I found frustrating:

The chapter on Genesis 1-3 is seriously underdeveloped, given the importance of the contents for this whole discussion - and placing it after the portrait and discussion of Deborah seems a little tendentious to me.

Much of the proposed reconstruction of women's lives and ministries in this book is very speculative, and involves more reading between the lines than I think responsible exegesis can support.  I lost track of the number of times we were told that we couldn't be certain of something, but then that same something was used to develop the argument as if it were certain (or the other way around; we are told that "it is more certain" that Euodia and/or Syntyche held the title of episkopos or diakonos (104), but then later we find it is only "quite possible" - and even then no particular evidence is offered in support (106).  Was Phoebe tasked with reading the letter to the Romans publicly?  We don't know (124), but we're asked to imagine it anyway.  The three chapters on Phoebe, Prisca and Junia seem to me to be trying to do far too much with the scraps of relevant text that we have, and consequently I can't see them convincing anyone who didn't already want to be convinced.

There seems to be some indecision or confusion at one key point in the book's argument, relating to offices in the early church.  Gupta endorses Wayne Meeks' conclusion that "Acts and the Pauline letters make no mention of formal offices in the early Pauline congregations." (81)  The rest of this chapter, however, discusses the nature of the diakonos, episkopos, and presbyteros in some detail.  These are described as 'roles' rather than 'offices', but I'm not sure I see the difference.  This becomes of great importance when a central plank of the complementarian position is that women did not serve as overseers or elders in the early congregations.  (As an aside, I appreciated Gupta's clear evidence that women did serve as deacons - although this was somewhat undermined by the vagueness about whether this was a formal office or not - and also his insistence that 'deacon' was a leadership position, with significant authority and responsibility).  I think Meeks' conclusion is completely unsustainable, and overall the presentation here seems to fall into a slightly 19th century way of contrasting an informal, charismatic early church with 'early catholicism' emerging (to the church's detriment?) a little later.  Given Titus 1 and other passages, I think it is clear that the appointment of elders was a central part of the Pauline mission, and that these elders were genuine office holders.

There also seems to be confusion about the extent to which the apostles were able to break from their own sociological background.  So we are told that "I don't think it is the case that the apostles blindly followed 'culture' when it comes to sexual anthropology" (49), but the chapter on the household codes assumes that the authors of these texts couldn't have imagined a more egalitarian setup, and so were limited by their cultural horizons (195).  I'm not sure the latter perspective fits comfortably with the inspiration of Scripture.  It's a shame, because there's a lot in the reading of the household codes here which seems evidently correct to me.  There's a similar confusion going on about householders hosting church - they must have been elders, because sociologically it would have been impossible for them to play host and not be church leaders.  But sociologically, the criteria for eldership would have been largely different from those laid down by Paul, who is obviously not thinking in sociological but theological terms here.

Other thoughts and reflections:

The particular arguments and scenarios that this book is written against are not ones that occur directly in the context I know best, and I believe it is very important that complementarians distance themselves from the extreme forms of patriarchy that are, apparently, being endorsed in parts of the church.  (One is sometimes tempted to think cutting off all cross-Atlantic communication might be a blessing, to be honest).  I will say that careless language, and perhaps behind it careless thought, can sometimes give the impression that we hold positions we do not in fact hold, or at least are not consistent with our deepest convictions.

If the key question is 'ought women ordinarily to serve as elders in churches?', I don't think this book successfully proves the affirmative, and I don't think it is correct to insist that the burden of proof lies with the other side (91 and other places).  The reason, it seems to me, that Gupta thinks the burden of proof lies with the complementarian camp is that he doesn't offer any sort of theological anthropology in this book.  The Scriptures do tell us some things doctrinally about the nature of humanity, and specifically the nature of humanity as gendered, which are absent from this discussion, and which to my mind swing the burden of proof back the other way.

If it is correct that elders ought ordinarily to be men - and I haven't given any argument for that here, I know, but I think it's true - then one thing that is clear from this book is that ministry, including Word ministry, authority, and responsibility must not be limited to the elders.  The diaconate should be open to women, and should not be restricted to administrative tasks.  There should be leadership and ministry opportunities for women at every level in the church, notwithstanding the restriction of the eldership.  There is a dangerous tendency in some churches I know towards an increased focus on the elders as ministers - such that they do all the teaching, almost all the leading, etc. - which when combined with a male-only eldership ends up denying complementarianism and falls over into outright patriarchalism.  I think we also need to think hard about how the elders hear female voices, and what it looks like for there to be Mothers as well as Fathers in the church.

So, that was 2018 then

Just a brief retrospective from me this morning.

Personally, 2018 has held a number of challenges.  Many of these have been related to my position at Cowley Church Community (although on balance this continues to be a joy!), on which see below.  The year ended with a bit of a shock, as I had a curious episode which has been diagnosed as a probable transient ischemic attack (TIA) - essentially, a mini-stroke.  The episode was very brief, and no harm done, but it's certainly a shot across the bows from my own mortality.  So, roll on the statins, roll on the low-dose aspirin, roll on the 'lifestyle changes'.  I can report, having been forced to take a closer interest in such things, that all the food you like eating is poisonous, and that it is a sad business to have to moderate one's cheese intake over Christmastide.  Most fundamentally, I'm happily surprised to find that I really do look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come; one never knows, it seems to me, how much one really believes something until pressed a little to put some practical weight on the belief.  I am reassured.  However, I hope and intend to be with you all for a long while yet.

In terms of ministry, 2018 has been a mixed bag.  I continue to feel the fragility of our little church in Cowley - we are too small to be sustainable, and that comes with a degree of financial uncertainty - but on the other hand I see spiritual growth in so many of those who gather with us regularly.  The year has hit many of our church members with really hard things, and in the midst of them it's been a privilege to minister the gospel and see the Lord supplying faith, and with faith comfort and the ability to endure.  But whilst genuinely rejoicing at God's work amongst his people, can I be honest and express frustration with the slowness and difficulty of our evangelistic efforts?  Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?

In wider culture, I think one of the most important currents of 2018 surrounds the transgender debate.  It is striking that the elimination of the Christian doctrine of creation, having wreaked havoc in the sphere of human sexuality, now seems to be eroding something more basic: the idea of gender as a given, and thus human 'nature' at its most foundational level.  David Robertson at the FIEC Leaders' Conference opined that Satan may have over-reached here; certainly the reaction is interesting, and places biblically-oriented Christians in odd alliances with radical feminists and others.  One thing to note about the wider cultural debate is the effort to create an ideological space for those (particularly feminists) who disagree with the transgender agenda (so to speak) but do not see themselves as 'transphobic'; one wonders whether a similar space might not have been created in the sexuality debate, except that it was not politically expedient at the time for anyone to allow it.  We will see whether there is greater success here.  For the church, it is important to distinguish the wider debate - into which we must be free to speak boldly - from the pastoral response to gender difficulties which will inevitably crop up in a fallen world.  The church needs to learn to speak at two levels, but with one essential message.

Politically, 2018 has been a depressing time to be a British subject.  It is hard not to feel that the Lord gives us the leaders we deserve.  The interminable negotiations around Brexit seem to have reached a conclusion which is designed to aggravate all parties, and meanwhile much bigger issues (like domestic poverty, or the need to respond to a changing balance of global power) are ignored.  Personally, I've gone and joined a political party, for the first time since my teens.  (I think I recall then briefly being a member of the Conservative party, although I may be mis-remembering).  The SDP is looking to push its way back onto the political scene, and I felt inspired to join up.  The reasoning?  Well, it seems to me that when everything in politics is going to pot the responsible thing for concerned folk to do is not to disengage but to lean in, to put a shoulder to the wheel.  I don't think it's appropriate for a Christian minster to make too much of party politics, but I'll just take this opportunity to suggest you read through the SDP's New Declaration and see what you make of it; for me, the explicit rejection of intersectionality/victim discourse, coupled to the effort to find a sensible and pragmatic economic model, is compelling despite my doubts about some other elements (I remain, for example, unconvinced about PR).  But if not this party, could there be a party that you might join, and seek therein to have an active influence?

One thought I have going into 2019 is the importance of relating the passage of time to eschatology.  That is to say, to explicitly recognise that the sands of time are sinking; whether we're talking about personal endings or the grand ending of all history, each passing year (and month, week, day, hour...) is another step towards the breaking in of that dawn of heaven.  It is not in the past, nor the present, nor even the conceivable human future that we find our hope, or solutions to the great problems and issues of our times; but our hope is in the "fair sweet morn" of Christ's appearing.

Dark, dark hath been the midnight, but dayspring is at hand;
And glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

At Cowley Church Community, we've just finished a little series in 1 Corinthians 12-14.  I wrapped up yesterday with 14:26-40, which is mostly about orderly worship.  But there are a couple of verses there (34-35), really quite detached from the main flow of the argument, which express the fairly controversial (!) suggestion that women should remain silent in church.  As if in mockery of my previous post, I found it impossible to preach these verses with precision.  So, here is an attempt to write up what I should have said yesterday, with apologies to the congregation which had to put up with my verbal faffing around the point.

Firstly, it's worth saying that part of the difficulty comes from the almost unique textual problems around these verses.  Many commentators have concluded that they aren't original, and there are strong arguments for their rejection: in one manuscript family they appear after our verse 40, which is hard to explain if they're original; read at face value, they flatly contradict what Paul has already said in chapter 11; and the subject matter interrupts Paul's discussion of prophecy and tongues, to which he returns in v36.  I feel that on balance these arguments are not conclusive.  Although the idea that these verses were added later would make sense of the way they move about in the manuscripts, it doesn't explain their universal presence (i.e., although some manuscripts have the verses after v40, no manuscripts omit the verses altogether).  I find Daniel Wallace's suggestion that Paul may have added the verses in the margin of the manuscript himself to be very interesting.  It would explain the manuscript evidence, and it makes sense of the topic: it's related to orderly worship, but not directly related to the aspect of orderly worship that Paul is mainly talking about here.

However - as a preacher, I dislike standing up to expound a text which I feel so unsure about.  I like to be able to say 'this is the word of the Lord' when Scripture is read, and I dislike having to say 'I think this is probably the word of the Lord'.  For your reassurance, I can't think of any other passage that would cause the same difficulty.  For now, let's assume Paul wrote these verses and that we have to deal with them as Scripture.  What do we do with them?

I suggested on Sunday that there are two approaches to these verses which in the end are just too simplistic.  On the one hand, we can just write them off as hopelessly outdated, a product of an earlier sexist age which we have now transcended.  Then we can just ignore them.  The problem is, it's not just these verses.  I know there are people, including some outstanding theologians, who disagree, but speaking for myself I cannot see any way to make the Bible's presentation of gender anything other than sexist in the eyes of our culture.  We'd have to be prepared to edit Scripture from front to back to get a version of gender that was acceptable - and the way things are going, we might have to re-edit every couple of years to keep up with the changing zeitgeist.  Nor would this be tinkering around the edges.  Obviously in some places (e.g. Ephesians 5), but implicitly throughout, gender is tied to the creation design of God for humanity and ultimately to the gospel.  We need to be careful that our reaction to the apparently unacceptable sayings of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 isn't to throw off the whole of God's revelation.

On the other hand, we could just insist that women be silent in church.  That is to say, we could take the command at face value and enforce it.  This is also easy, in its way.  Of course it will make us unpopular in the surrounding culture, but there is a certain ease to being an odd sect: strong identity markers, confident in the knowledge that we know what is right and everyone else is on the outside.  This would be, in its own way, easy, but I think it would be wrong.  We need to think about what the apostle Paul is doing when he writes his letters.  He isn't handing down isolated and arbitrary commands, but is thinking through the implications of the gospel for his readers.  He is doing theology.  So if Paul wrote this, it is reasonable to ask why, and to seek out his logic.  The difficulty here is that the logic is not obvious.  Nor is it obvious how we can reconcile it with chapter 11.

So what is to be done?

I think we have to take a step back and recognise a number of things. 

We have to recognise that we want these verses to go away, and that there are several different reasons for that.  We want them to go away because they are embarrassing in the face of our culture.  We want them to go away because we fear (rightly) that they can be used in oppressive ways, and indeed we suspect they may have been written to be used in those ways!  We want them to go away because they seem to contradict other passages of Scripture.  We want them to go away because, in our experience, there are women who appear to be gifted to speak in church.  Recognising that we have many motives, some noble and some not so much, to get rid of these verses, we should probably be cautious about actually doing so.  If they cause us difficulty, we should probably wrestle with that rather than just dispose of the difficulty.

We have to recognise that whilst we may not be able to easily make sense of these verses, they are not the only verses on the subject.  There is a whole Biblical exploration of the concept of gender, starting in Genesis 1 and proceeding to the marriage supper of the Lamb.  I am convinced that the overall picture is of difference and complementarity between men and women, and I am convinced that the various restrictions on the roles of women in the churches in the writings of Paul are part of that picture.  Recognising that doesn't make it straightforward to work out what our practice ought to be, but it does give the appropriate context for thinking these things through.

For what it's worth, I'm a sort of 'soft complementarian'.  That is to say, I think Scripture does teach that men and women are different and that this should be reflected in family life and church family life - but I don't think Scripture provides hard and fast rules for how those differences should show up.  I think in the Bible itself the expression of complementarity changes over time.  I think it's a mistake to try to draw up lists of essentially 'male' and 'female' attributes or roles; rather, I think complementarity is a dynamic thing, expressed differently in different cultures.  Having said that, I think the suppression or denial of these differences and their expression is part and parcel of a culture in flight from reality and subject to serious decline.  All in all, I'm happy with the line we've adopted at CCC: elders are all male, because of their role in the church family, but under that headship we want to encourage women to be involved in all aspects of ministry.

Finally, we have to recognise that unless we go for one of the easy answers, we are going to have to do a lot of bearing with one another in love.  On Sunday I used the language of 'fudge' - that was a mistake.  We're not fudging anything.  We're seeking to be faithful to God's word as we understand it, and we need to recognise that in this area as in many others that is not as straightforward as 'read and obey'.  In our seeking to be faithful, we need to recognise that we could be wrong in some of our applications of God's truth - or indeed, that there might be multiple ways of being faithful in a given context.  We should, of course, try to show each other from Scripture where we think we're going wrong - but primarily we should be loving one another.  I think the recognition that it is complicated helps here!  We can give one another more leeway where interpretation and application are difficult.

Where does that leave us on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35?  Let's be frank: we're not going to silence women in the church, and for some that will look like disobedience.  If they're right, God have mercy on us.  I don't think they are right.  But I hope we will receive verses like this - even if we can't see how they should be applied to us directly - as brakes to prevent us from easily accepting our own culture's view of things.  Because they are hard, and at first glance offensive, they make us stop and think about the broader Biblical picture, and about our own practice.  And in that way they serve us, they open us up with their sharp jagged edges to the full spectrum of Scriptural critique and teaching.  In that sense, I hope we can get something from them.

Gender issues

This morning I read an article from the BBC about transgender children.  This is a very rare phenomenon, but apparently instances are growing very rapidly, which the article attributes to growing social acceptance.  There is a lot that could be said about the article - I'd like to deconstruct the idea that people have an internal identity which they need to be allowed to discover, for example - but the bigger question on how my mind is this: how do we, those of us who believe that gender is a good gift, respond to a society that increasingly sees things otherwise?  Here are a few of my thoughts this morning, but I can't pretend to have done nearly enough work on the topic.  Perhaps you have better thoughts you could share?

Firstly, in terms of our fundamental teaching in churches, we need to present a robust doctrine of creation in the context of the gospel.  That gospel context is all important.  If we teach creation without the gospel, all we do is hold up an ideal picture of reality which clearly doesn't match our experience of the world or ourselves.  In the area of gender specifically, we need to teach that God made gender, and gives it to us as a gift, but also that we, fallen people in a fallen world, do not experience that gift as he intended - and finally, we need to teach that we can look forward to the redemption of gender and our experience of it in the new creation!

Secondly, we need to make sure we teach and model the range of legitimate expressions of gender.  We need to avoid taking a particular cultural expression of masculinity (for example) and absolutising it, as if this and only this is the way to be a man.  I think a lot of complementarian literature, particularly coming out of the States, falls into this trap.

Thirdly, we need to recognise that gender is a calling as well as a gift and we need to acknowledge that (as with every calling from God) it is not something the individual is meant to work out by themselves.  Church communities need to be places where people are able to admit to finding gender a difficult calling, and places where people can ask for, and receive, help.  My guess is that quite a lot of us - maybe most of us - find gender difficult in different ways and to a greater or lesser extent, and honesty about this would surely help.

Fourthly, we need to ensure that in our teaching there is no implicit contradiction between a good gift and a cross.  The prevailing culture insists that if something feels like death, it must be death - if it feels hard to bear, we shouldn't bear it.  The gospel insists that cross-bearing - which is hard, and which feels like death - is part and parcel of the path to real life.

Fifthly, all of this needs to happen in a fellowship of people who believe that Jesus, and Jesus alone, defines who we are.  Gender, although important, is not the absolute foundation of our identity, which is found in Christ.

Gender and stereotypes

There was a story on the news this morning - I haven't been able to find an online version, although I haven't looked very hard - about a couple who decided not to let anyone beyond close family know the gender of their child until he was five years old.  Their stated aim was to avoid the stereotyping which they feel often goes on.  They didn't want their son forced to conform to the societal norms for little boys; they therefore elected to keep his gender under wraps until such time as his true character had begun to develop, independent of expectations related to gender.  There have been more extreme stories than this floating around - I saw one recently about a couple who told nobody the gender of their child, and deliberately dressed him/her (I can't remember which) in clothes which would normally be associated with different genders on different days.

I think this is pretty seriously wrong, but also a little bit right.

It is wrong because gender is a given, in at least two senses.  Firstly, gender is biologically given.  We are gendered creatures, and it is not given to us to decide to which gender we ought to belong.  It is true that there are people who do not seem to be clearly gendered physically, but I would suggest that this class forms the limit of human experience - to be taken seriously, to be treated with respect, but not to be used as a source of norms.  The attempt to escape from all forms of 'given-ness' is a part of our society's carrying on of the Enlightenment quest for autonomy.  (Another way this shows itself is the desire to be disembodied, something which we see in the preference for digital media over face to face interaction.  I heard someone on the BBC a little while ago say that she thought that our vestigial attachment to being in the same physical place as someone would soon wither and die.  I doubt it).  For the Christian, of course, these 'givens' - embodiment, gender - are given by God, and therefore to be taken doubly seriously.  If I am male, I am called by God to be male, and to seek to do otherwise is disobedience.

Secondly, gender is socially given.  It is a false model of human existence to assume that I can construct my own identity apart from the norms and expectations of society.  I am born as part of a family, in a specific geographical, temporal, and cultural context.  Many of the most important things about me are decided by these 'givens'.  To try to escape them altogether is to try to be less than fully human.  Again, this is all about the quest for autonomy, and it relates to the first point.  The societal norms surrounding gender are about the regulation and expression of the biological differences.  To deny society a voice altogether is to deny the basic biological difference, and in the Christian framework to deny the Creator.

But these people are also a little bit right.  Unlike the God-given biological differences, the societal norms surrounding these differences are open to critique.  The expression of masculinity and femininity is not the same everywhere and at all times, nor need it be.  Moreover, there are certainly aspects of these norms which inculcate wrong (sinful) attitudes and aspirations.  Whilst we cannot completely discard society's norms, neither ought we to accept them uncritically.  There is a real masculinity and femininity which can only be disregarded by disobeying God; the ways in which these are expressed in a particular culture will vary, and indeed there will and must be variation between individuals within a given culture.

It is this point which I think is often overlooked by evangelical Christians when they talk about gender.  Particularly amongst our North American complementarian brethren, there is a tendency to assume that when God calls men to be men he calls them to be rugged, individualist, North American men.  Well, perhaps he does, in that culture, but perhaps not.  Taking social norms and enshrining them as the only way to express God-given differences seems pretty risky to me.  Perhaps we need to be a bit more open; to accept that masculinity and femininity are there, to be embraced and enjoyed, as part of our God-given identity - but then to think carefully about the way in which we are accustomed to express those identities, and to engage critically with our culture.

Jesus and Gender

or "Being a Pretty Princess"

It is a documented fact that evangelical Christianity struggles to attract blokes, and does much better with women. Various theories have been advanced as to why this might be. Probably the most popular one is that we're just not doing church right - our songs are overly sentimental, our preaching isn't action-packed enough, our vision of Jesus isn't macho enough. Church doesn't feel very blokey.

Some of those things might be valid concerns, to a certain extent. But I've been wondering whether the Christian message is stucturally anti-male, and I suspect it is - and I suspect that isn't a problem.

Psalm 45 is my jumping-off point here. The Psalm celebrates a royal wedding. It celebrates the greatness of the King, and the beauty of the Princess he is about to marry. If read Christologically (and it must be, both as a general hermeneutical principle and because of the juxtaposition of verses 6 and 7), this is a celebration of Christ's love for the church. And it's magnificent - he the Royal Lover, she the Beautiful Princess wooed away from her people.

A combination of this Psalm and John Owen's insistence that marriage is the primary image for understanding our relationship with Christ leads me into Ephesians 5:22-33. In this passage, two things become clear. One is that the roles of husband and wife in marriage are not symmetrical or reversible; the other is that in the relationship of Christ and the church, he is husband and we are bride.

So the gospel assigns the church a feminine part. It would be interesting to explore exactly what that means, but for now suffice to say this is going to be a problem for people who want a more macho, man-friendly church.

Is this a problem for the gospel? I guess not. Maybe Christianity is more attractive to women - well, so be it. You don't have to follow the modern feminist critique all the way (and I wouldn't recommend following it very far), but it is clear that women have been kept at the margins in most societies most of the time. And doesn't the gospel speak mainly to the sidelines? For me as a man, the question is: can you accept that you are beautiful to your divine Lover and Husband, and not need to be the man in this relationship? Because ultimately, The Man is the man.

Interesting to compare the reactions of the church and the Bible. The church says "we need to man up, we need to appeal to men"; the Scripture says "if it helps, He does think you're a very pretty Princess".