I personally think there are more important issues facing the church today, but some view this issue as of bedrock theological importance, determining who will truly follow the teachings of the Bible, no matter what contemporary culture calls for.

Thanks for your comment, Wayne, and I think I want to underline a couple of things. While I feel very strongly about the role of women in church leadership, and believe that leadership roles for women are mandated by the core of the gospel message, I also believe people can honestly disagree. I don’t want my passoinate beliefs on this subject to be read as implying that complementarians are stupid, dishonest, or evil. Just as with Revelation, there are honest, well-educated, well-intentioned, spiritual people who are striving to obey God, but who have multiple points of view, and we’re going to have to live with that, and debate the issues as brothers and sisters in Christ.

The tone of your comment is absolutely appropriate on this, and I hope that more of the debate can sound like you do!

The principle I would suggest is that we observe both the men and the women, as well as our children and young people, and simply choose for leadership roles those whom God has gifted for those roles. If we do so honestly, I think we will find that God is, in fact, calling many women to leadership and wonderfully gifting them for it.

I totally agree with this as well as your final paragraph, Henry. And I think many complementarians would agree with you. Where they would differ is that they would say that God may give a woman the gifts of teaching or administration, but those gifts must not be used in a way that Scripture prohibits. They view the writings of Paul about two local congregations, at Corinth and Ephesus (the epistle of 1 Tim.), as having “clear” commands that prohibit women from teaching men, at least in church assemblies. They view those comments as being normative and timeless. As you know, there are exegetes attempting to be just as biblical who do not understand the verses in question as do complementarians. And some people who take Scripture seriously view Paul’s comments as being geographically and temporally localized, written to specific church situation which were experiencing problems.

It seems to me that if God had intended women never to have teaching or administrative roles over men, he would have included more and clearer commands on the topic. I would think Jesus would have addressed the issue as well as New Testament writers other than Paul. And I would think that God would have included commands on the matter where so many other commands have been listed, in the Levitical laws, and other places in the Hebrew Bible. That’s what it seems to me, logically. But I understand the devotedness to the “literal reading” of the biblical text of complementarians, even though there are such few passages on the matter and the ones that are there have exegetical issues. It’s the same issue that underlies your post about LaHaye and a “literal” understanding of the book of Revelation.

Unfortunately, I think that this period of time in church history may be viewed as one in which conservative Christians wrestled over what roles women can have in the home and church. I personally think there are more important issues facing the church today, but some view this issue as of bedrock theological importance, determining who will truly follow the teachings of the Bible, no matter what contemporary culture calls for.

Thanks for writing on this topic.