The Church Is Failing Women - Part 3

 

 Even John Gill recognized that Adam wasn’t deceived **and therefore committed the greater sin.**   Those who believe as Dr. Pipa need to explain how it is that Adam sinned the greater & in him all males move from the sex/gender test to the moral test.    

Here’s how that argument works:

Women	Men
In Eve	In Adam
Created Second	Created First
Was Deceived	Was Not Deceived
Ergo	Ergo
Creation Hierarchy Indicates Less Authority	Creation Hierarchy Indicates Greater Authority
Easily Deceived	More Discerning
Not Prone To Sound Judgment	Better Judgment Skills
Office Auto-Denied	May Continue to Morals & Skills Test

What’s missing?  How about some sound reasoning about what Adam’s sin actually indicates about Adam’s judgment skills & some acknowledgment about its consequences.   After all, if Eve being deceived demonstrates that all women are easily deceived then what does Adam’s high-handed action say about all men? 

In John Gill’s day, women were barred from rulership over men in the home, church, and society, insofar that theologians believed that the 3 Uses ought to be harmonious (true). On that view, denying women churchly authority also meant they were denied in the home and in Government.  

John Gill on 1 Timothy 2:13

…Adam never was deceived at all; neither by the serpent, with whom he never conversed; nor by his wife, he knew what he did, when he took the fruit of her, and ate; he ate it not under any deception, or vain imagination, that they should not die, but should be as gods, knowing good and evil. He took and ate out of love to his wife, from a fond affection to her, to bear her company, and that she might not die alone; he knew what he did, and he knew what would be the consequence of it, the death of them both; and inasmuch as he sinned wilfully, and against light and knowledge, without any deception, his sin was the greater: and hereby death came in, and passed on all men, who sinned in him: 

After that, he basically says that the serpent was on to something & alleges that women (ie the constitutionally weaker sex) are prone to deception & therefore bad judgment & are just not up to snuff when it comes to leadership. 

According to this view, women are just plain prone to being deceived & therefore constitutionally prone to poor judgment, therefore ecclesiastical (and other) offices ought to be denied to all women —no morals test is required.    

***Yet Adam was not deceived, is portrayed in Genesis as not even engaging the serpent himself (and if there not intervening) saw what was happening &/or the results thereof, & decided that he’d put himself & his wife first — not God (and God forbid that the LORD be warning him privately about the eschatological results upon us all, the animals, & the cosmos) did the deed anyway, plunging us all into several thousand years of sin, condemnation, death, Apocalypse, & Armageddon — but nevertheless men universally pass the sex/gender triage test & get to move forward to the morals test. ***

When you understand this argument from the pattern of creation & the outworking of God’s decretal will, it begins to look like men have been blaming women for at least 7500 years — just like Adam blamed Eve — and they are willing to disempower women to enforce Male Hegemony.   One might even think that somewhere down in the male psyche, the competition with women has led some to think that male only leadership in churches (&/or elsewhere) has been understood as God giving men a shot at replicating & restoring & doing right by Him — but their hegemonic hivemind seeks to deny women the opportunity to do the same. 

That’s what you get when you reject Romans 1:18 - 32’s teaching that we are to do ethical reasoning out of God’s image & authority— not the human image (the (alleged) pattern of creation as Dr. Pipa does). 

God has no sex/gender.  God’s essence is infinite, eternal, & unchangeable as to God’s being, & God’s attributes are moral as to wisdom, power, justice, holiness, & truth.  The 3 Members of the Godhead are co-equal, a se, & authotheos.  

Ergo, men & women are co-equal.   There is no sex/gender test for ecclesiastical office, because that requires reasoning from the human image to Ecclesiastical Ethics &, given God’s attributes, which lack sexual characteristics, there is only a morals test. 

This is really simple:  What is the profile for women who exercise power & authority over men in the OT in a destructive manner that is incongruent with God’s image & authority?  They are depicted as witches/idolaters &/or prostitutes.   

What of the NT?  It’s the same profile.  

Therefore, if she doesn’t fit the profile, she can move to the rest of the morals & skills test.  The same is true of men. 

What was happening in Ephesus & Corinth when this issue arose?  Predominantly Gentile women, who were viewed as weak, vindictive, irrational, and self-indulgent. Women lacked courage. They were credulous and superstitious. Arrogance, deception, ambition, and lust for power were also especially feminine vices.   

Thanks to Male Hegemony, they did what they had to do in Artemis, Isis, & Aphrodite temples, & in other spaces, where  they had sexual & ecclesiastical power over men.  

There were women in Ephesus & Corinth showing up to church dressed like Queen Galleia in Doctor Who, &  it sounds as if some were challenging the elders & others in the churches.   This was disrupted, especially in churches with multiple problems (like Corinth).  

Paul therefore sought to quell these disruptions in order to help these women & men learn monotheism in general & for them all to learn how to follow and lead and live godly lives in the home & churches (and, over time, in civil government).   

Paul isn’t teaching that males are preeminent because Adam was created first & because women are constitutionally prone to deception & poor judgment.  That POV agrees with the Greco-Roman view of women as well what was happening in 2nd Temple synagogues.   It also qualifies as naturalistic reasoning (deriving abstract moral principles from the state of the created order).  Rather, Paul is pointing out that men & women need each other & analogizing from the pre-& post-lapsarian Garden to his present day.   

Recall that Adam sinned the greater, yet he was formed first.   The serpent targeted Eve, seducing her, & she was the first to fall.  Then, rather than think like Abraham (who reasoned God would raise Isaac from the dead), he didn’t engage the serpent, he chose to do the deed & join her. 

Paul is pointing out that these two people failed each other, & since Adam was not deceived, and bears greater responsibility,  this  responsibility to replicate & restore had passed on to the men in those churches to protect the women who were bringing pagan practices into the churches & misusing or abusing their newfound liberty in Christ.  The men were to nurture & protect them from the misogynist, patriarchal, gluttonous, at times violent world system & from demons who underwrote the idols in the Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Parthian, & other pagan temples.  After all, the serpent went for Eve, & Adam was created first  - ergo to whom much was/is given much is/was required.   

That also meant that women who weren’t doing these things were  asked to put aside the exercise of their general co-equal right to hold ecclesiastical office as a means to paraclete these other women  & model good & godly behavior for them in order to further the growth of the Way / Christianity in a deeply misogynistic world until the day would come that humanity in general & the churches in particular were grown up enough for women to hold co-equal ecclesiastical office not just on paper but also in practice.

Christus Victor! Amen.