Reformed world

If you love those who identify as gays and lesbians and you want to learn to see through their eyes and lies, other than Scripture, there's no better source.

I'm referring to the survey of the literature titled, "Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences." I've been intending to post on it for quite a while now.

The survey was authored by Lawrence S. Mayer and Paul R. McHugh, and with or without an education, you can understand the things in this report that are important for our work with those suffering LGBTQ temptations.

The authors are eminently qualified. Mayer is a scholar in residence and McHugh is a prof of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For twenty-five years, McHugh also served as psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

A couple years ago, Al Mohler came out on the national stage saying he now no longer believed in reparative/gender identity counseling. He also "repented" of his former denial of homosexual orientation, stating that he now believes homosexual orientation is a real deal. Mohler goes on to...

The grace mantra is the Reformed man's rosary. - Simper Reformanda

Back in the study, I asked Solzhenitsyn about his relations with the West... "[Y]es, it is true, when I fought the dragon of Communist power I fought it at the highest pitch of expression. The people in the West were not accustomed to this tone of voice. In the West, one must have a balanced, calm, soft voice; one ought to make sure to doubt oneself, to suggest that one may, of course, be completely wrong. But I didn't have the time to busy myself with this. This was not my main goal.” (Solzhenitsyn, quoted in the New Yorker, February 14, 1994, p.74.)

It saddened me to read Joey Pipa's response to the Report of the PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church. As president of a South Carolina seminary offering a more conservative option to the PCA’s Covenant Seminary, I’d been hopeful his response, when published, would sound an alarm within the church against the Committee's 60,000 words conniving at the feminist heresy.

Apparently others hoped the same because Dr. Pipa begins by telling his readers that "many friends and former students" asked him to respond to the Report.

What a disappointment they all must have felt watching as Dr. Pipa preciously declines to engage the enemy. Reading his very short response—1,500 words is about one-third of a sermon—you get the feeling you’re watching...

(This is eighth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth.)

The primary need is the encouragement and respect of the church’s male leadership who can either nourish or break the heart of a woman who is trying to serve God. ...There is additional benefit to churches finding ways to deploy gifted women teachers in their midst. ...When churches recognize a gifted woman’s teaching ministry and incorporate it into the church’s ministry, the expansion of that ministry is an expansion of that church.

- Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church 1

[June 3, 2017: this post has been edited to turn its focus away from one individual.]

Does the Report acknowledge any Scriptural limitations on women teaching and exercising authority over men?

Yes it does, and for most that will be the end of it. As one southern pastor of my acquaintance effused in a fawning tweet, "how very grateful we all are for the wonderful work this wise and faithful Committee has presented to the church!"2

Stopping right there is what the Assembly will do: "Look, they said there are some things only men should do. Isn't that enough? What does it take to satisfy you? Must every last woman be married, barefoot, and pregnant?"

For a long time now, the pastors who posture themselves as conservatives during PCA general assemblies have specialized in avoiding the battle by giving private assurances of their manliness and Biblical convictions while publicly issuing...

(This is sixth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth.)

Now Herod and Pilate became friends with one another that very day... (Luke 23:12)

The first thing Presbyterian officers will note about this Report is that it is a consensus report. All Committee members signed off on it, agreeing with the Report as written:

We debated all the matters put to us by the General Assembly and were, by the grace of God, able to arrive at an overwhelming consensus. 1

A consensus isn't a mere majority. Merriam Webster lists "unanimity" as a synonym, yet the Committee feels the need to assure the Assembly their consensus is "overwhelming."

Why speak of an "overwhelming consensus?"

In an earlier post I warned against this Committee's exaggerated...

(This is the fourth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth.)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Princeton's Benjamin Warfield argued for deaconesses, writing that the office of deaconess would help bring women's leadership in the church into direct accountability to the church's male officers.

The study committee's Report cites Warfield several times in their attempt to get the PCA finally to normalize the Kellerites' practice of woman officers. What they don't explain...

(This is the second post in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth.)

On to our examination of the Report itself. We'll use screen shots so we can refer to line numbers.

In the first sentence of the Report (Line 10), readers are assured each of the Committee members are "joyfully committed" to "the Bible's teaching on the complementarity of men and women."

First, that word "complementarity." "Complementarian" is a shibboleth, a word used to communicate the man entering the camp is not the enemy. Among most Evangelicals, saying you're a "complementarian" makes you OK whether or not you can spell it.

Trust is important in our age when sex is such a bloody battlefield.

Many pastors and elders opposed this study committee because they were concerned it would lead to capitulation to the forces of feminism. Then, when the Committee's members were announced, they were even more concerned watching Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, seated as a voting member.

In direct violation of Scripture and the PCA's Constitution, Tim Keller has long had women officers in his church, so the appointment of his wife to the Committee was a clear statement...

NYT's David Brooks is so very precious about buggery. My friend Mark Albrecht forwarded a link to Brooks's latest piece dissing Rod Dreher's exquisitely titled "The Benedict Option" while flattering Dreher for writing the most important book on religion in ten years. He points out twice in his three-minute read that he disagrees with Dreher's opposition to buggery.

Noted.

Noted again.

Dreher thinks the inspiration for his book's title is the sixth century founder of the Benedictine monastic order who wrote...

...if I were to sum up my principal objections to most forms of feminism, it would be in the contention that feminism privileges dogmatic ideology over close and receptive attention to reality.  - A. Roberts, link

In Scripture, authority is symbolically masculine, as it originates with a God who stands over against us ...and who refers to himself with masculine pronouns.  - A. Roberts, link

I have some fairly far-reaching criticisms of complementarianism as most understand it. I believe that it unjustly marginalizes women within the life of the Church and society in many and various ways and tends to devalue them. I believe that women need to exercise far more prominent roles in the life and teaching of the Church, not just as a matter of permission, but as a matter of necessity.  - A. Roberts, link

We need more female spiritual directors, lay teachers, theologians, commentators, scholars, churchwardens, vestrywomen, treasurers, vergers, sacristans, elder women (different from elders), deaconesses, lay chaplains, leaders of Bible studies, missionaries, etc.  - A. Roberts, link

Justin Taylor works for Wheaton publisher Crossway. Now, just prior to their release of a book Heirs Together by UK Ph.D. Alastair Roberts, Justin got Gospel Coalition to run a piece on their blog introducing what Justin assures readers is a "big book." The GC blog post introduced by Taylor is written by Roberts and titled "How Should We Think About Watching Women Fight Women?" 

The post gives us an idea what Roberts's book will be like. He writes about "the particular subjective and objective otherness of the other sex," saying it is an "otherness that should excite wonder, love, responsibility, and care," A few sentences later he writes: "the strength and athleticism of women such as Rousey and Nunes is worthy of admiration in many respects." Then this...