Posted by Tim Bayly
In the comments section of our new blog location, Mr. Conklin asked: "Hi. Could someone please give me a definition for "feminism" as used around here? I'm afraid I might trip in this minefield, and I'd rather know what's being talked about without unduly offending folks. Especially if it's regarding women serving in the military."
Feminism is an ideological political movement that denies the order of the sexes God wrote into creation and reinforces through the word of His Holy Spirit recorded all through Scripture. The Holy Spirit puts this order most succinctly: "A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint" (1Timothy 2:11-15).
Women are not to teach or exercise authority over men. God forbids it.
Among believers who hold to a high view of Scripture, the most usual ploys to escape God's prohibition take one of two directions...
Either it’s claimed that this delegation was after the Fall, and therefore the product of sin and obsolete in the Kingdom of God among those who are truly indwelt by the Holy Spirit; or it’s claimed that history is filled with terrible examples of the abuse of this authority by man, and that man’s repentance is the order of the day"not woman’s submission. The second group is willing to grant that, in theory, authority and submission grounded in sex are still binding, but finding an exercise of authority by man over woman that can be commended is next to impossible. It’s never sufficiently servant-like, Christ-like, loving, considerate, kind, gentle, self-effacing, humble, and godly.
The first group explicitly denies Scripture. For a good example of their rebellion against God, search on Google for the Christians for Biblical Equality web site where you will find many explicit denials of the plain meaning of the Word of God. But as you read, remember that these men are wolves and are out to destroy souls through many, many lies. Be on guard against them.
The second group implicitly denies Scripture by never finding an exercise of authority they like. With lots of talk of “servant leadership,” they put up hurdles for the exercise of leadership by a fathers and husbands that are so high no one but Jesus Christ could clear them. This is not accidental.
In a day that hates all authority, but reserves a special hatred for the authority God delegated to man over woman, one way to escape persecution for God’s Truth while claiming to believe and submit to that truth is to teach and preach in such a way that the truth is rendered innocuous. Then, although one’s opponents still hate the truth, they realize someone who has little to no heart for it and leave him alone.
Those in the first group are feminists proper. Those in the second group could be labeled many things, including halfway feminists, crypto-feminists, or feminists’ willing helpers. The usual label they hide behind, though, is “complementarian.” (In other words, even though many calling themselves "complementarians" have done yeoman's work defending God's order of sexuality in the Church and home, not everyone using this label is to be trusted.)
Ironically, a great number of those who call themselves “complementarian” join the feminists in denying any application of Scripture’s doctrine of sexuality outside explicitly Christian contexts. Many who call themselves “complementarian” claim to hold to male authority in the Church and home, but deny any connection between sex and authority in the secular worlds of law, politics, the military, and business.
This is the halfway covenant that confuses many of good conscience.
It is good that these souls still accept the order of the sexes in the home and church, but they are on a collision course with themselves, biblically. Scripture is clear that the order of the sexes is a product of God’s creation, not the Fall. So it’s binding on all men and women through all time. That means it’s no private revelation to Christians"or Jews and Christians. Just as Adam being given Eve (not Steve) demonstrates that heterosexuality is universally binding on all men and women through all time, so God’s creating Adam first, and then Eve, demonstrates that patriarchy (or whatever you want to call it"I sometimes call it “father-rule”) is universally binding on all men and women through all time.
Down through history, there has never been a matriarchal culture. Never. In other words, man has followed God’s order of the sexes all through history"until, that is, the past couple of decades. But even now, women leaders in the secular world are the exception, not the rule. Those exceptions, though, are part of God’s judgment:
The expression of their faces bears witness against them, And they display their sin like Sodom; They do not even conceal it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves. Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, For they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, For what he deserves will be done to him. O My people! Their oppressors are children, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And confuse the direction of your paths. The LORD arises to contend, And stands to judge the people. (Isaiah 3:9-13)
A couple clarifications before I stop.
First, servant leadership is the only kind of leadership Scripture recognizes as godly. To say that one believes in servant-leadership, then, is similar to saying that one believes in servant submission. Every act of the believer is to be modeled after our Lord Who came, not to be served, but to serve. So yes, I believe very much in servant-submission and servant-leadership. Yet not in such a way as to obscure or oppose male authority or to connive at female rebellion. There’s a reason the Holy Spirit almost always addresses marriage by calling husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, His Bride, and gave Himself up for her; and wives to submit in everything.
On this blog, we typically oppose those who oppose the plain Word of God concerning authority and submission in the relationship of the sexes, not because we believe sin is more frequent among those called to submit, but rather because the doctrinal attack, today, is not against man loving woman, but against woman submitting to man. In our pastoral care, my brother and I are always harder on men than we are on women. To whom much is given, much shall be required. But in the realm of doctrinal controversy"which is the realm this blog normally inhabits"we focus on the breaches in the wall. And the attack of feminism on God’s Truth is one breach that is clear and growing.
Second, the outworking of the principle of father-rule in the secular world is exceedingly complicated and difficult. The world rejects this principle and any believer who believes and seeks to follow it will find himself in very troubled waters. It is anything but clear when and how believers ought to speak up or to act on this principle in the military, for instance, where superior officers are often women.
Let me be clear, here: I am not saying that Christian men should rebel against authority when, contrary to God’s Creation order, it is exercised by woman. If a female police officer pulls me over and tickets me, I’ll respect and submit to her, not because she has a gun and a radio, but because she has been placed over me by God, bearing the sword in His behalf.
Still, I will recognize that her authority is contrary to God’s creation order in the matter of sexuality, and it will grieve me causing me, like Lot, to gnash my teeth. And this is how every biblical Christian should view the exercise of authority by woman over man no matter where it occurs. As the Holy Spirit said, woman is not to teach or exercise authority over man because Adam was created first, and then Eve.
Years ago, my friend, David Wegener, was interviewing Marvin Olasky for a newsletter of the organization we both worked for, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. David asked Marvin whether he’d ever vote for a woman for president and Marvin responded, saying that he might vote for a woman, but it would be a shameful thing. I forget his exact words except that he did use the word ‘shame.’
That’s about right. If I’m faced with Hillary Clinton on one side and Rudy Guilaianni on the other, I might well vote for Mrs. Clinton if I believed, for instance, that she would do a better job of defending the unborn children. But I’d bear such a vote with shame.
For now, I’ll leave it at that. There is much left unsaid and many clarifications needed, undoubtedly, but my time is up. I’ll trust our good friends who possess great wisdom to take up their keyboards in my behalf, now, in explaining and applying what I’ve written.
Dear friends, please help! Please join David and me in using the gifts God’s given you to teach everying Jesus commanded. Thanks.
(By the way, a lengthy paper on the outworking of these principles in the military may be found here at the Presbyterian Church in America Historical Center.
