Last Tuesday, 29 August, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood released a manifesto they titled the Nashville Statement. Likely they balked at calling it the Nashville Creed, ’cause even though
In short, the statement is a declaration against
Nor does it refer to the Holy Spirit. Whatsoever. Supposedly any repentance and transformation is gonna be achieved by “the grace of God in Christ,” i.e. the force of
Obviously the Statement’s been getting pushback from
I’m not theologically liberal. (Though people who consider me more liberal than they are, will certainly take issue with that statement.) Nor am I gay. Nonetheless I have two issues with the Statement which prevent me from signing off on it, much less signing it.
The most obvious, and the one that’s not gonna need a lot of commentary from me, is its divisive intent. Like I said, it’s an attempt at a creed: This is how they figure all true Christians should believe, and if you agree
Yeah, I know. Many a Christian will insist the kingdom’s gotta be pure. By which they mean as little sin in it as possible. I agree. How do we go about doing that? Discipleship. We encourage people to follow Jesus’s teachings and the Holy Spirit’s leading. It’s the Spirit’s job to sort all that stuff out.
The reason Christians swap the job of loving our neighbors, for the job of denouncing sin? Obviously they hate sin. Less obviously, they don’t so much care for their neighbors. The neighbors sin, and they hate sin. Their “good news,” which is no longer so good, becomes about how the neighbors are sinning, and the world is perishing. The only bright spot is how Jesus saves us from perishing,
Well, enough about that. The other issue I have is how the Nashville Statement is a subtle declaration against
The guys behind the Statement.
Egalitarianism is the reason the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood exists in the first place.
In 1987, a number of prominent
That was and is the
One of the
1 Corinthians 11.3 NASB - But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.
—and others where Jesus talks about doing his Father’s will. created begotten. (Whoops; almost went
If subordination is how God himself functions, complementarians wanna claim it’s likewise how men and women function. Humans are made in God’s image, the Father’s the head of the Son, and similarly man the head of woman. Not because the first humans went wrong, and part of the woman’s consequence was the curse of subservience:
Genesis 3.16 NASB - To the woman He said,
- “I will greatly multiply
- Your pain in childbirth,
- In pain you shall deliver children;
- Yet your desire will be for your husband,
- And he shall rule over you.”
That’s where complementarians and I part ways. Jesus came to undo the Edenic curses on humanity. Obviously the curse of death
Jesus’s kingdom has come to restore humanity to the paradise Eden represented, to the state where we were first created. But complementarians insist the curses predate the fall. The woman was created to be the man’s
Okay. This theory about the Son’s eternal subordination to the Father? Heresy.
Technically it’s
It’s semi-Arian because Grudem never said (and I expect never will say) Jesus isn’t God. But when you make the Son, or the Holy Spirit, a lesser person in the trinity, you’ve made a lopsided trinity. Really not a trinity at all, ’cause the persons aren’t equal. They aren’t one. There’s just the Father, and the Son’s his right hand, and the Spirit’s his left.
Thanks to Áreios’s belief spreading like wildfire through the Roman Empire, the Council of Nicea had to convene in the 300s, investigate Arianism, and conclude the contrary—that scripture and commonsense reveal the persons of the trinity to be equal. Same substance, same honor, same authority, same majesty, same God.
True, not every complementarian has signed off on Grudem’s idea. Some did, briefly. After respected theologians pointed out the fact it’s heresy, they recanted. Others of them haven’t recanted one bit; they’re quietly teaching this idea of God, and hoping no one notices. That’s just how far some people are willing to go to defend patriarchy: They’re willing to redefine God himself if it helps ’em keep women out of church leadership. And keep their own positions secure.
Like biblical scholar Scot McKnight put it, “Those we can’t trust for orthodoxy on the trinity can’t be trusted when it comes to morality.”
I might add Grudem’s one of the translators of the English Standard Version, the 2007 update of the Revised Standard Version which isn’t gender-neutral. By
Yep, that’s how far the
Slipping patriarchy into the Statement.
I first became aware of the Nashville Statement ’cause I have friends on the Christian Left. They started raging about it immediately.
’Cause here’s yet another bloc who thinks Christianity needs a purge. Time to declare what God’s for and against, once and for all. (Well okay, as many times as it’ll take till somebody finally listens to them, ’cause they’re important, dangit. After all, they put the city’s name in their statement, just like the early Christians did with their creeds.) Time for fellow Christians to take a stand for righteousness, and sign off on their statement, and prove they’re real Christians, who refuse to be all things to all people so they might save some.
You getting the idea I don’t care for manifestos? I really don’t. They’re some special-interest group’s attempt to speak for the entire church, and even if I totally agree with them, the hard fact is they don’t speak for the entire church. Nobody does but Jesus. The time of a single universal church has been over for more than 10 centuries.
We all have our particular peeves. Sexism is mine. So when I found the link to the Nashville Statement, I started looking for any subtle little statements the
WE AFFIRM that divinely ordained differences between male and female reflect God’s original creation design and are meant for human good and human flourishing.
WE DENY that such differences are a result of the Fall or are a tragedy to be overcome.
While they never did spell out all the “divinely ordained differences between male and female” they’re thinking about, they do deny these differences—namely the sexism and subservience—are the result of humanity’s fall. They’re not a curse to overcome; they’re meant for human good and human flourishing. Women need to shut up, stop agitating for their rights to be heard, and rejoice in their lower status. Just like slaves, back when American slavery was legal, needed to stop fighting for abolition and freedom, ’cause supposedly God meant for them to be in bonds.
This, I explained to my conservative friends, is why I can’t possibly sign off on the Nashville Statement.
Of course, not all my conservative friends are egalitarian. And even some of the egalitarians didn’t think Article 4 was all that bad. Men and women are physically different, after all. Different plumbing. Different hormones. Different ways we respond to those hormones. Not every difference between men and women is culturally mandated. Some of ’em are nature-ordained, and the usual assumption is that since God created nature (forgetting it kinda rebelled against him when humanity fell), that makes ’em God-ordained.
Okay, I concede men and women are physically different. And ain’t nothing wrong with these differences. But when the
Their group’s entire raison d’être is to defend that view—and in so doing, promote patriarchy. To claim the bible’s descriptions of ancient patriarchal behavior are how God intends his kingdom to function, both in the present, and arguably even into the age to come. To fight it so vigorously, they even oppose saying, “Deliver me… from evildoers”
It’s a profoundly paranoid way to look at the world. ’Cause it’s based on fear. Not love.
But like I said, the egalitarians don’t necessarily see the problem. Can’t taste the poison in the fruit. And figure they have bigger fish to fry: They have serious concerns about homosexuality, transgenderism, and every
Fear’ll get us to do all sorts of awful things.
Oh yeah… homosexuality.
The rest of the Nashville Statement is, frankly, a mess. Theological declarations made without any presentation of the biblical basis for these views. Which turns out to be kinda problematic.
Article 2, fr’instance. It presumes the existence of such a thing as nonmarital sexual activity. A way better biblical case can be made for the idea all sexual activity is marital, whether that’s your intent or not.
Y’know, I just wrote a rant last week
It is, I repeat, a stance that’s not good enough for a lot of people. They want me to take a stand, and either vindicate their stand, or give ’em someone new to denounce. I figure if they’re just looking for someone to denounce, I’m never gonna win with such people. They might agree with me on one particular stance, but some other stance is gonna wind up outraging ’em regardless. When people really wanna burn witches badly enough, they’ll look for any clue you’re made of wood.
So yeah; not gonna go there today either. I’ll only say that steering clear of such manifestos, no matter the peer pressure, is more in line with grace than not. If I’m trying to share Jesus with a gay man, and he finds out I’ve signed off on the Nashville Statement, and is so outraged he won’t listen to me further,
