evangelical feminism

Adrian Warnock is interviewing Wayne Grudem on his newest book, Evangelical Feminism. The key question is if this is the new path to liberalism. I agree that it is. Warnock has seven interviews so far. All of them are excellent although at points they deviate from the topic of the book - even that however is good stuff.

part 1 - Part One (I like the clever title)
part 2 - Systematic Theology and Controversy
part 3 - Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism
part 4 - Ethical Trajectories, Feminism, and Homosexuality
part 5 - Must a Woman Always Remain Silent in Church?
part 6 - Did Steve Chalke Blaspheme About the Atonement?
part 7 - Things We Can Agree to Disagree About?

Warnock promises that there is more to come. The book is now available on-line.

Since in previous posts I've noted my whole-hearted agreement with Grudem, I should say he got me with one in "part 5". I agree with him but I sure haven't practiced it and even though I believe he is correct, I want to ignore him. I'll have to deal with this.

I [Grudem] would be completely happy with women giving personal testimonies or sharing some things that God had brought to their minds (what I would call prophecy), or almost anything else that didn’t involve Bible teaching to the whole congregation.

But I want to be careful. I don’t think Paul says, “I don’t permit a woman to give authoritative teaching, but she can give non-authoritative Bible teaching to the church”! I don’t even know what non-authoritative Bible teaching would be! The point is we should just follow what Paul says, and in that context “teach” means to teach the Bible. That is what women should not do for Paul restricts it to men. But other speech activities are fine and should be encouraged.

And, no, I don’t think a pastor can give a woman “permission” to do Bible teaching before the church, because the Bible says not to do that. Would we say a pastor, or a board of elders, could give a woman “permission” to violate the command, “You should not steal”, or to violate any other command of Scripture? No pastor or elder board has authority to give permission to anyone to disobey the Bible. It’s God’s Word and we need to obey it.

I'm particularly struggling with applying this to small groups. In the past I have released several women to lead groups. I "felt" it was right but had to do a lot of rationalizing to get my brain to come along with it. I think I may have fooled myself.

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