It's time to finish with the word "evangelical"
Years ago, many Bible-believing Christians gave up using the word "evangelical" because it was associated with an over-triumphalistic "happy-clappy" Christianity. Today we must abandon the use of the word evangelical for another reason: it is being used by liberals who do not quite want to lose - for some strange reason - their connection with orthodox biblical Christianity and so insist on calling themselves evangelicals.
Bible Christians - a little clumsy perhaps - may be a better title for us to use now on in.
This book, a prime example
If ever a book was misnamed...
If ever a book was misnamed it is this one.
The contents are anything but a rediscovery of Scripture's vision for women. Instead the book is an excercise is obscuring, hiding and burying what the Scriptures so plainly teach, by hills (easily cleared away; not mountains) of pseudo-scholarly jargon.
Peppiatt tries to show that Christian men and women are equal in the sense that they can both serve in exactly the same way and in the same offices in church and family. Apart from physiology, men and women are therefore identical creatures.
She attempts this conjuring trick by taking the Bible verses and passages that, on the surface, plainly teach exactly the opposite and then after designating them “disputed texts” attempts to give them a “fresh perspective.”
On the one hand, Peppiatt has good things to say. She points out the many ways God is described as possessing female attributes (p.20) and reminds the reader of the many women who served the Lord in the Scriptures.
But on the other hand the book is deeply flawed in every other way. In no particular order...
#1 Biblical Christians don't assume that to lead or have authority is something more desirable than to serve
The supposition running throughout this book is that to “lead” or “have authority” over someone else is a desirable thing and those who have it are somehow on top and to be envied.
Men (apparently) have these things and Peppiatt wants women to possess them too. So she complains about hierarchies that place “men permanently at the top of the structure by virtue of being men, and women below them by virtue of being women.” (p.7). But this, one of the underlying assumptions of the book, runs contrary to Scripture and to a Christ-like attitude.
In the Scriptures, it is servanthood that is extolled, not bossing people about. We should be seeking servanthood more than leadership, for it is the meek who will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5) and “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20:26)
Peppiatt has simply adopted the unbiblical secular assumption - that the powerful are at the top and this aboveness is something desirable - instead of viewing everything from the Bible's point of view. The Gospel is about a crucified Saviour who surrenders power and authority and becomes a servant to accomplish God's purposes.
#2 Biblical Christians don't assume that the findings of all scholars are valid
Peppiatt quotes from scholars without enough
discrimination. The assumption is that if someone is a scholar, his or her work
is to be trusted. "Of course, they know their stuff!" (This is a much bigger issue in Peppiatt's thinking: you get the impression that the church is sub-section of the academy and should function much like that sort of institution in the way it trains and arrives at truth).
Two problems with this approach are, first, that our universities are filled with unbelieving scholars. It does not follow that a “biblical scholar” is a Christian scholar. (I personally sat under Biblical scholars who would not have regarded themselves as Christians).
Secondly, truth is not found in the academy but in the church, which is called the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Truth can only be discovered by church teachers who share truth in the living church of Christ; truth cannot be found in a university research department.
Strangely, Peppiatt’s wide acceptance of scholarship does not extend to well-known evangelical Christian scholars like Sharon James or Rosaria Butterfield.
#3 Biblical Christians believe that doctrine comes from within Scripture
Peppiatt is an advocate of what we might call trajectory theology. What really matters according to trajectory theology is the general direction Scripture seems to be taking (according to some human judgement.) So, for example, if we can discern that Scripture is running from a more patriarchal view to a more emancipatory view over its course from OT to NT (or even within the NT) we can extrapolate what God’s will might be after the canon closed.
So, for example, if we discern that the NT (AD 100) is starting to give women some of the roles men have, we can be sure that by now (AD 2000), God wants women to be able to do everything a man is called to do. This methodology is dangerous for two reasons.
First, because it would surely be possible to project any desired destination back into Scripture by finding a verse here or there that supposedly contained the seeds of that desired destination: the process is far too subjective.
Second, it means that the Scriptures themselves are no longer the final source of authority – indeed, with trajectory theology we can openly reject passages that disagree with the supposed terminus as irrelevant relics of an earlier part of the upward curve!
Classical orthodox and evangelical hermeneutics, by contrast, revived by the Reformation, teaches that every doctrine must be proven from within the Scriptures, Sola Scriptura.
#4 Biblical Christians distinguish between hierarchy and order
This, I regard as the greatest error of the book. Peppiatt fails to understand the universe of difference between hierarchy and order.
The Gospel of John, more clearly than any other book, perhaps, shows that there can be order without the hint of hierarchy, and this is taught through the intratrinitarian relationship between God the Father and God the Son. John’s Gospel reveals that the Son of God who is in every way equal in divinity and glory to the Father, is in constant submission to him, summarised in 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”
Here is the supreme example of two Co-equal Persons in loving union with each other, the one, however, in loving submission to the other. The Scriptures never teach a hierarchy between men and women, but they do teach an order and the relationships in the Godhead are the greatest illustration of this order. The Father sends the Son, but the Son does not send the Father. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit never sends the Son or the Father.
Order is found in God's great salvation project. Father plans salvation, the Son accomplishes salvation, the Spirit applies salvation. The three divine Persons all have different roles, and some of those roles could be called subservient – the Son obeys the Father, the Spirit obeys both the Father and the Son. But there is no hint of hierarchy in the Godhead.
Peppiatt assumes that if one person lovingly and willingly submits to another, they are below them in a hierarchal system. The Son of God turned that worldly thinking on its head and demonstrated that his obedience to the Father, coming into the world not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many, did not flow out of an hierarchal relationship of unequals, but out of an ordered relationship of loving equals.
In the same way, it is possible for a husband and wife, co-equal in worth, salvation, value and being, to be in a non-hierarchal relationship of order in which, as Paul teaches in Ephesians 5, the wife submits to her loving and sacrificial husband.
#5 Biblical Christians speak respectfully about God's Holy Word
Time and time again Peppiatt writes most disrespectfully of Holy Scripture. She complains that in the Bible “encounter androcentric and patricentrism everywhere.” (p.10) And concerning the Gospels, “We find in these narratives the most glaringly obvious androcentrism and patricentrism.” (p.23)
No Bible Christian slanders God's Word like this.
#6 Biblical Christians are not "hierarchilists"
Time and again, Peppiatt misrepresents her opponents’ viewpoint by calling them “hierarchilists”. Peppiatt therefore sets up an odious “straw man.” She terms all those who take the view that while men and women are equal in salvation, dignity, and value there is an order between them, as “hierarchicalists,” an epitaph whose effect can only be to denigrate their point of view.
I have personally never met a Christian who regards the husband as above the wife and found the attribution “hierarchilist” insulting. She avoids the term Biblical Christians opponents prefer to use, which is “complementarian.” We believe that men and women, while equal in dignity and value, nevertheless are designed by God with wonderful differences which compliment each other.
#7 Biblical Christians believe in the clarity, the "perspecuity" of Scripture
The main exegetical tactic Peppiatt employs in this book is to make out that the interpretation of plain texts which teach the historical orthodox view is so problematic that the reader (hopefully) comes away thinking, “I can see why there are so many different views and why there can’t be a single coherent one.”
She wants the reader to conclude that certain texts can be read in “different even opposing ways.” (p.44). “One of the most complex and complicating factors in this discussion is that God chose to reveal himself to the world through a man.” (p.15)
Of course, unwittingly, this strategy undermines her own view as well: why should we accept her findings if the texts themselves are so confusing?
And against the idea that the Bible is baffling stands the long-held doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, that the Scriptures are clear, not least because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
#8 Biblical Christians do not believe that "new knowledge" can change the interpretation of Scripture
In line with many revisionist attempts taking place today (gender, sexuality), Peppiatt believes there is “knowledge that is now available” (p. 2) that wasn’t available in the past, and this new knowledge forces us to interpret Scripture in new ways.
The "household codes", for example (Ephesians 5 and 6), we now know were widely used in first century society and so we can discount them as the relics of a bygone age, not relevant for establishing principles for relationhips in our modern society today.
But the Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures is divine and has always known all things. New findings (new to tiny humans, that is) cannot trump Omniscience.
#9 Biblical Christians glory in God's unique gifts to women
This is perhaps the saddest aspect of a book
written by a woman. All the wonderful and unique gifts that God has bequeathed to women are largely ignored in the crazed pursuit of gifts regarded as far more important - such as leadership, authority and power.
Women alone can bring children into the world. With their unique gifts they can nourish and shape the characters of little ones in the early years of their lives, for example.
Why did Moses know who he was when he grew up? Because his mother nursed him and instilled in him a knowledge of God and his people by the time he was weaned. What a mighty leader came from Jochebed!
And Mary! And Susanna Wesley! And…! This book diminishes women by ignoring these high, noble and totally unique God-given gifts.
An Jude-an book
I could not help thinking of the book of Jude when making my way through Peppiatt's pages. Jude warns the church about folks who will smuggle error into the church.
Don't be led astray into thinking this book contains truth.
If the attack on truth in the first few centuries was Christology (the divinity of Christ, Athanasius), and in the Middle Ages, Soteriology (Justification by faith alone, Luther), the attack on the church today is Anthropology (what is Mankind?)
And this book, in my opinion, is tragically part of that attack.
A far more reliable guide on these matters is “God’s Design for Women” by Sharon James, below:
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