Truth Unites - Rick Warren on Female Pastors: About That SBC Debate

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

In this video I do theological triage on complementarianism and egalitarianism, responding to recent events in the Southern Baptist Convention regarding Saddleback Church, Rick Warren, and the question of female pastors. Thomas Kidd's article on Baptist confessions of faith: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/confessions-of-faith-and-the-baptist-tradition/ Sam Storms' article on female pastors: https://www.samstorms.org/enjoying-god-blog/post/a-complementarian-case-for-women-as-pastors My book on theological triage: https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Right-Hills-Die-Theological/dp/1433567423/truthunites-20 Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Recently, the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention voted to affirm a decision made earlier in the year to remove Saddleback Church, a huge church here in Southern California, pastored by many years by Rick Warren on this issue of having female pastors. Now, I've been planning on doing a video on this issue for about a year now, had it scheduled. So it's like right here. So I was kind of thinking, okay, you know, is this helpful still to address this or is it more helpful to wait? I go into this topic with a bit of fear and trembling because it's so controversial.

But precisely for that reason, I was thinking, you know, I actually think it would be cowardice to not talk about this because it's really important. And, you know, as we're, when something's going on, we need to talk about it. Truly, truly, I'm trying to submit this in a spirit of what will be helpful and edifying in line with the purpose of my channel. As you'll see, I have some challenges for both sides, for my own side as well. You're wondering what my side is maybe. Oh, man, you'll find out. Here's what I want to do. I want to do theological triage on this issue. What I, what that means theological triage is ranking different doctrines in terms of how important they are. I've done a series

of videos on this. I've covered creation, the end times, baptism, Calvinism, and spiritual gifts. All the all the controversial stuff, you know. So because when things are controversial, you have to do triage all the more, right? Because that's where we're fighting. So we need to know how much should we fight and that kind of thing. If there's another topic in this series, you want me to do a video on, let me know in the comments. I was planning on this being the last one, but I really value doing theological triage. It's one of the great needs in the church right now, I think, in the polarization we face. And it really fits in with the purpose of my channel, which is to draw from church history especially, but also, of course, scripture, ultimately,

to try to bring gospel assurance. That's my goal of my channel. And actually, theological triage is really relevant to that. So I'm happy to do other videos on triage. I don't. I don't have anyone in the queue right now. Let me know what you think. Four goals in this video. First, I want to interact with Rick Warren's case. Second, I want to situate this issue on triage. And I'll talk about what it means to be a second-rank doctrine, which will be my proposal. Thirdly, I want to say that egalitarianism is not necessarily liberal. And fourthly, I want to argue that complementarianism is not necessarily abusive. I'll define those terms when I get there. And you'll see in those last two points what really is my heart in this video is to try to offer some reflections about where this discussion is escalating and polarizing in both directions. So you'll see what I mean as we get into it. Let me start with a clip from Rick Warren at the convention.

The chair recognizes Rick Warren for three minutes and following his conclusion, the chair will recognize the executive committee and credentials committee for three minutes to respond. For 178 years, The SBC has been a blend of at least a dozen different tribes of Baptists. If you think every Baptist thinks like you, you're mistaken. What we share in common is a mutual commitment to the inerrancy and the infallibility of God's Word

and to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. No one is asking any Southern Baptists to change their theology. I'm not asking you to agree with my church. I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines in order to share a common mission. Since Southern Baptists have always allowed disagreement on doctrines of including the essential doctrines of salvation,

why should this one issue cancel our fellowship? In 2013, when the Calvinists were under fire, Baptist agreed to disagree and the split was averted. Now, 10 years later, will we treat egalitarian Baptist with the same grace we showed the Calvinist? We should remove churches for all kinds of sexual sin, racial sin, financial sin, leadership sin, sins that harm the testimony of our convention. But the 1,928 churches with women on pastoral staff have not sin. If doctrinal disagreements between Baptists are considered sin, we all get kicked out. You'll never get 100% of Baptists to agree 100% on 100% of doctrine.

That's why our Constitution says that churches must closely identify, not completely identify, with our confession. Now the Baptist faith and message is 4,032 words. Saddleback disagrees with one word. That's 99.99999999 in agreement. Isn't that close enough? No disrespect intended to Rick Warren in this video. I'm sure the Lord has used him very powerfully over his life and may the Lord bless him. May the Lord continue to use him. I just want to explain why I do respectfully disagree with him on this.

Kind of as a matter of procedure first and then we'll talk about the theology. It seems as though he has changed his view on the issue of female pastors, and that change does fall a foul of the Baptist faith and message, which is the statement of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, I am not Southern Baptist myself, our churches in ABC Church, American Baptist, but if I was, and I changed my view to something that fell a foul of the Baptist faith and message, I would think that I'd need to at least be somewhat aware and open to the fact that this might now—I mean, this is how doctrinal standards work, right? It's not wrong to have doctrinal standards and to let them function as doctrinal standards. One of the things that Rick Bourne was arguing is that what unites Baptists is a commitment to biblical inerrancy and that churches should be removed for sin, but not other things. And certainly churches should be removed for issues of sin and a commitment to biblical inerrancy is definitely one of the unifying points for Baptists, but it's not the only one.

There's other doctrinal issues as well that unite Baptists, our view of baptism, our view of church government, more central doctrines. So Rick Warren is making this appeal. And elsewhere, he said this too, that the original Baptist vision of unity is through mission, not through a confession. But I don't think this is historically accurate. Baptists have always had confessions as doctrinal standards from the get-go in the 1600s up to today. there's lots of different significant confessions. Of course, we've all heard of the London Baptist Confession in the 17th century, but many others as well. I think what Warren is talking about is the fact that in the SBC, for the first 80 years of its existence, there wasn't one denomination

confession of faith. But one of the things that Thomas Kidd points out in a response article he wrote is that when the SBC was founded, most of the people already subscribed to a particular Baptist confession of faith. He says, all the delegates who formed the SBC in 1845, have belonged to churches and or associations that adhered to a confession of faith, usually either the Philadelphia Baptist Confession or the New Hampshire Confession. I'll try to remember to link to that article. It's so hard to remember to link to things, but I'll try. Let me know in the comments if I forget.

I'll put it in. So, you know, the original Baptist vision does have confessions of faith that function as doctrinal standards. And I think the idea that it should be unity based upon mission rather than confession. I understand the appeal a little bit. I do appreciate some of the things that Rick Warren may be reacting against. There is such a thing as being too doctrinally nitpicky. But as stated there, I think this is a false dichotomy. You know, here's the thing.

For practical reasons, we shouldn't pit these two things apart because we actually need some doctrinal parameters to know when we're on mission with someone. What if the Baptist Church in the town, three towns over, comes out affirming a particular social view or doctrinal issue that your church believes undermines the gospel. This happens. Happens a lot. Now you need to figure out how, you know, here's the thing.

Having a confession of faith is actually a way to serve one another because it just brings clarity and clarity is valuable to know where we all stand. You know, it's kind of like if you get a new job and they don't give you a job description or clearly communicate what you're supposed to be doing, that actually, the ambiguity there is actually not helpful to you. If they're really informal about things, there's a way that certain things that are more formal can be an act of serving someone to make things clear. And confessions of faith to my mind are like that. However, this raises this question that now gets us into the larger doctrinal question. Should the SBC make the issue of female

pastors a dividing issue? In other words, even if this was procedurally understandable, is it actually theologically correct. Okay? Let me go into this now, and this will be the second section of this video where I just want to make an appeal that it's reasonable to see the issue of complementarianism versus egalitarianism as a broadly second-rank issue. Now, I just threw out some terms. Let me explain those. What is second rank? What do these words mean? I have a book called Finding the Right Hills to Die on where I cash this out a little more. One way of doing triage, not the only way. You can have more numbers to, is to kind of have four different buckets we put things in. So first-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel. Something like the Trinity would

be going to this. Third-rank doctrines, skipping over second-rank just for now, are things that do matter. They're not what we call Adiafra or the things indifferent, basically things we shouldn't care about. But you don't need to divide over them. In the book, I argue that something like the millennium of Revelation 20 and differences for how you understand that. and the sequence of events leading up to the second coming, that that's third rank. A fourth rank issue just doesn't matter at all. And then the second rank that is large and very complicated, kind of variegated group of doctrines that may be worth dividing over from other Christians, but they don't make you

a heretic if you're wrong. And they don't make you, it's not like Christianity, Orthodoxy versus heresy or something like that. They're important. And it may, for practical reasons or for theological reasons, be a point where it's a dividing line, but it's not distinctively Christian. Okay. So in the book, I give three reasons why the complementarian, egalitarian discussion can broadly function in the second rank category most of the time, I think. You know, maybe there's exceptional circumstances where it could be like a third-tier

issue, where we can keep an open mind and kind of consider. But generally speaking, I think that's where it falls. Let me define the terms, by the way. So this discussion has to do with whether there are distinct roles for men and women in two spheres, the church and the family, the marriage relationship and government of a local church. It's not necessarily about other things like the role of men and women in society. It could have implications for that, but that's not directly in view. And basically, as most people will know, complementarianism holds that they're the higher office of teaching and authority in the church. There are multiple terms for that office. In this video, I'm going to mainly use the word elder, that that office is only for men.

Egalitarianism holds that both men and women can serve in that office and basically in any other way as well. Now, a couple qualifications I need to give. Four qualifications. Number one, those are not the only views that are out there. There's other options as well. Number two, there's lots of variation within each view. So like there's, you know, I call myself a gentle complementarian. Some people call themselves soft complementarians. That'll come out. Reasons for that will come out. I'm just saying there's definitely variation within each view.

They're kind of big. Also, third qualification, not everybody loves these terms. They're very recent terms. So there's plenty of people who won't call themselves either of those things, but they might be similar to those who would use those terms. And here's the fourth biggest qualification that's really a wrinkle in this conversation, I think in the SBC world, and that is there are, complementarians who believe that women can be pastors but not elders. And the reason for that is they

think of pastoring as more of a spiritual gift in how that is used in the New Testament rather than an office in the church. There's an article by Sam Storms, which I will link to in the video description. If you'd like to learn more about that view, that's obviously very relevant to the SBC conversation. So I'm going to limit my comments here to this issue of having female elders. I'm going to use that term. That's, in my opinion, the more clear-cut case. Why would that issue maybe be in generally in the second-rank category? In other words, it doesn't make you a Christian or a heretic or anything like that. It's not like the first-rank stuff.

It's not essential to believe to be a Christian. But it can be understandable, for example, that it'd be included in a denomination or a church's statement of faith. So that it'd be like a dividing issue. I give three reasons in the book. I'll just mention two very broad reasons here. The first one is just a practical consideration, and that's that. With respect to the government of a local church, the two options are mutually exclusive. You just can't do both.

There's lots of people who want to say, well, I'm not really a complementarian or an egalitarian, and as I mentioned, the terms are sometimes have really good or bad associations. But when it comes to this simple question of do you have in whatever you call, I'm using the word elder, that higher office of teaching and authority in the church, Do you have women in that office and men or do you have just men? You kind of have to make a decision. I don't know how you can do a both and on that. And so ultimately, there's this kind of practical thing.

This is one thing I've thought a lot about with triage issues is that a lot of times it's not just based upon the importance of an issue that determines where it will fall. So there's plenty of issues where, you know, it might be pretty doctrinally important, but it might still fall into the third rank because you're saying, hey, our unity in the gospel is more important. But a lot of times there's things that maybe are similarly important, but they fall into the second rank because they're practically unavoidable. So issues of ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church, things pertaining to church government, the sacraments, the administration of the sacraments, the nature of the sacraments, and then spiritual gifts issues, and then this one, the complementary and egalitarian difference. those issues tend to fall more into the second rank category, if not for other reasons, though

those can also exist, just for practical reasons of you just have to do it one way or the other. And any decision you make will offend some people, you know, it's kind of unavoidable. And that's where, by the way, second rank doesn't mean that like, oh, it's second rank, therefore we don't trust and love people who disagree with us. I'm going to come back to that. The second reason, I think it makes sense thinking at a very broad level to see this in the second rank category. is because this issue intersects with other areas of our theology in important ways.

Particular doctrines are never like an island where it's just isolated. Particular doctrines are always a part of a larger spider web. You move one part, another part's move. And that's because doctrine has to do with truth, and truth is ultimately one. So different doctrines are interrelated into one whole. And a lot of times a movement or change in one area will affect other areas. Now, I'm not trying to say too much just from that right now. I'm not trying to say that, like, therefore, you know, die on every hill.

Because if you make a change somewhere, it's, you know, not at all. But we just have to ask and be sensitive to this question when we're dealing with triage on any given area is, what's the ripple effect outwards, you know? And I think all of us on all sides can recognize that with regard to this discussion, the complementarian, egalitarian, and I guess I can also just. include other views as well. This has important implications for at least three areas. One is our stance towards scripture. There are concerns about hermeneutical trajectory. Now, that's true in both directions. The egalitarians think the complementarians are kind of stuck in ways exegetically

that are wrong. And that has effects on how you're going to treat something else. Like, how do you understand polygamy and slavery in the Bible? They're going to have to have have concerns about that's going to show up again, those hermeneutical approaches, the way you interpret scripture is going to show up again, similarly in the other direction. And so you can't deny that's a part of this conversation. It's a huge piece. Secondly, this discussion has implications for basic Christian discipleship in our families. For anybody who's married, if you're the pastor of a church, part of what you have to do is disciple people in their faith. Part of that will mean marriages in your church. You'll be performing weddings, you'll be doing premarital counseling,

you'll be discipling couples that are having struggles in their marriage, and you know, you can say that we've got Ephesians 5, we've got to interpret that passage and apply it to people's lives. And so that's, you know, it's not, in other words, this isn't just a technical matter of who's in what, like what term do we use or something like that. This actually plays out in significant ways for just practical questions of what does it look like to follow Christ? And it's not hard to imagine scenarios where if you don't have clarity about an issue like this, and this happens a lot, it's very explosive sometimes. The third reason would be this issue touches into larger questions that deal with the transition from the pre-modern era to modernity. We are in a time in which

one of the driving cultural questions is about gender and how that relates to identity. Is gender a social construct, for example? Increasingly, what's controversial is not the idea that there are different roles for male and female, but just the idea that there is such a thing as male and female. Now, I'm not saying that complementarians and egalitarians can't stand together on a lot of these larger things that our culture is going through, like how we define the institution of marriage, for example. or how we respond to the transgender movement.

We can. But I'm just saying this issue ties into those questions and it affects how we think that through. Because how you think about gender is really important right now and it's one of the big controversial things that we've got to work through as the church. So I'm not trying to say anything too much to settle all that right now as much as just try to flag.

We should be careful not to be naive about how these doctrinal issues can be really important. In everyday life, you know, as a pastor, these things come up. So what that all amounts to as I'm just trying to say, it's not wrong to try to take this issue seriously. And it's not wrong, in my view, to have a doctrinal stance that sets parameters around, hey, here's how we're going to function, even while we recognize Christians over there, can still be Christians, even while we differ with them. Some people say, ah, but shouldn't our unity be in the gospel? Not on this other thing, right? And I think all of us, though, can recognize this is at the heart of this idea of second rank.

this is a whole reason why we have four buckets, not just two, the gospel and everything else, because there are some issues that are not themselves the gospel, but they affect how we live out and uphold the gospel. And anybody can feel that if I were to just ask you to say, what's an issue you think is so important in the church right now? And then you named it. And then I said, oh yeah, but our unity shouldn't be in that. It should be in the gospel. depending on what that issue is for you, you might say, yeah, but that issue affects how we have unity in the gospel. It affects our witness to the gospel, right?

That's what second-rank doctrines are. They affect, they influence how we understand, how we apply, and live out the gospel. And so, you know, we don't want to be doctrinal minimalists who just minimize everything outside of, like, the Apostles' Creed, and act like, well, just believe the Apostles' Creed and just throw everything else out the window. In my book, I talk about that danger, but I also try to give a lot of correctives in the other direction, too, about the feistiness and self-righteousness that can come in with this topic. Now, another objection some people have is, honestly, there's fear in addressing this topic because a lot of people, there's a lot of negative energy that

comes at you if you even talk about this. One of the things people, I know will say, so I guess I have to speak to this is, aren't issues of abuse so much more important? why aren't we focusing on that? And I really wanted to just say a quick word on that to acknowledge that. I'm not, I'm not in the broader, like I'm not in the SBC. I'm not in a lot. I'm actually kind of feel like I'm a little bit out here on my own in Ohio because Ohio is a very rural place. So I don't always know all the conversations going on everywhere. But I know there are real issues in the church today of just dysfunction, leadership dysfunction. A lot of people have, have seen serious issues of abuse in the church.

Yes, we need to talk about that. Yes, we need to address that. But I have a worry here that sometimes people play things off of each other. Again, just run it through like this. Mention any doctrinal issue you really care about. And then imagine somebody said, oh, but isn't it so much more important to talk about abuse? And this is uncomfortable because it's kind of unfair

because it's throwing the issue of abuse at you and it makes it seem like, well, you don't care about that if you're talking about this other thing. But that's not helpful. And I'm going to kind of come back to that at the end. But the fact is we can do both. We can talk about doctrines and we can also address that we need to do both. Okay.

Now, let me address this concern. I want to speak some, as someone who's a gentle complementarian, I want to address some problems and concerns I have about things that can happen in complementarian contexts. And this is to the effect to say that this is a second rank issue. It's not a first rank. Not all egalitarians are liberals. And I want to address this because my, My perception is that in our society in general, we're going through polarization.

And on this specific issue, the complementarian, egalitarian, other conversation, it's also polarizing. And it's really easy to treat an issue as second rank technically but first rank emotionally, especially in the heat of controversy. Or another thing you could do is treat it second rank technically and third rank emotionally. You know, you can kind of like say, well, technically it matters, but, you know, it's not worth thinking about. that actually happens a lot.

You know, if you, if you, like, study something, people act like you're over- overthinking it. It's like, no, it's not, doctrine is good. We should think about our doctrine. But also, people can make it first rank to where we just have no trust, you know. Oh, it's really bad right now. The escalation of things is such that I'm not saying everybody does this. And I'm not trying to be obnoxious to act like if you really care about this or something to correct that. It's good to care about it.

I'm just saying there's an increasing and escalating distrable. trust at a personal level between these different camps. And that's why in these last two points, I want to try to, I guess you could say carve out space for reasonable people to be in both sides. Not all the egalitarians are liberals, not all the complementarians are sexist, abusive, and or embracing a sinful expression of power. These are the worst things that get associated with each view and they get increasingly thrown out there. You know, with egalitarianism, for example, lots of ungenerous comments to Rick Warren, like, oh, how long will it be until Rick Warren comes out as affirming of gay marriage? That's not fair.

Not every egalitarian does that. You might have a concern about harmonetics and that kind of thing, but you have to recognize that that's not an inexorable path, and that's actually not fair to him. That's not his view. He's been in ministry a long time. That's never been his view. And I think the better approach would be to try to recognize there's a variety of different expressions of each view. and there's ambiguous ones in the middle.

And so you want to try to look for points of contact between the more thoughtful and careful proponents of each side, even while we don't minimize the differences, but there are godly, intelligent Christians on both sides. At the end of the day, we have to be able to recognize that's my brother or sister over there, right? I'm going to be in heaven with them, so that should restrain us a little bit

in how we talk about each other. I'm going to say it the other way, too, but first to start in this way, there's a lot of complementarians who I think are a little undersensitive to this. Not all, but a lot. So let me try to speak to two areas where I see this, some pushback here first. A lot of times I think complementarians underestimate the harmonautical complexity of the scripture on this topic. I'm not saying it's totally unclear. I have a position on it, but it's not as simple as sometimes it's made to be to sound like. So for example, you know, Paul, people would just quote this like, look,

says, wives, submit to your husbands, Ephesians 522. If you don't believe in that, you just don't obey the Bible, you don't care about the Bible, you just don't want to obey, you know, you're just unsubmissive to the text of Scripture. And we need to go, that's not fair, because even just right there, you just keep reading and you get to bond servants obey your earthly masters a few verses later. So you can't just quote, I've done some work on the issue of slavery in the Bible and a little bit on polygamy. That's a tough one. Now, I think we can make a defense of our views. argue for that as an accommodation to certain cultures, and I argue that the sum teaching of scripture is against slavery as an institution. And I'm tempted to go into that. I won't go into

that. Maybe another time I'll make a video on that. That's a tough issue, though. I mean, whatever you think about all that stuff, the one thing that is clear is that it's not simple, because what we're doing is we're engaged in cultural translation. We're taking verses about social institutions like marriage from one context and then applying them to a different context. And so you have to kind of get into that more. And it's not helpful if you just act like anybody who doesn't interpret Ephesians 5 the way you do. You can so disagree with them, but just don't act like there's nothing to be worked through there. It is more complicated than that. Another issue is where 1st Timothy 2, Paul grounds his prohibition of women

in the doctrine of creation. So a lot of people act like that just completely settles things. But again, it's a little more tricky because in 1st Corinthians 11, Paul also grounds his teaching on head coverings in the doctrine of creation. And what that tells us is the mere appeal to creation doesn't tell us what is a transcultural principle versus what is a cultural application. Example, I could say don't wear a hat in church because God is holy. That's a a reasonable thing to say. It's an intelligible sentence, but the principle is God is holy. So someone who say, oh, look, the principle is God is holy. Therefore, that must apply to every culture.

Not necessarily. It's kind of a cultural dynamic to where I happen to church that might have a different meaning from one culture to another. So don't get me wrong. I do believe that there are transcultural principles in passages like 1st Timothy 2, Ephesians 5. I'm a complementarian. But I'm just saying a lot of times we don't show sufficient respect for this issue, the complexity of it and the people on the other side. More humility, more assuming the best is helpful. Okay, a second thing where we need to recognize that not all egalitarians are liberal and the issue,

and sometimes we can be a little undersensitive to the complexity of this is where, oh man, I've got to speak to this one. We do damage to our sisters in Christ when we are overly restrictive with this view. And when we fail to recognize the ways that the Holy Spirit is gifted women and their importance in the church.

And it is just a tragedy when we're undersensitive to this. I'll put it like this. Many people seem to be more afraid of affirming what is forbidden than of forbidding what is affirmed. So affirming what is forbidden, this is seen like, oh, no, we can't do that. But forbidding what is affirmed, it's kind of like, we're probably fine.

We don't need to worry about that as much. And there's a greater sensitivity to the one than the other. But both of those things are actually wrong. You know, throughout the Old Testament law, there's this principle of neither add to it nor subtract. Adding on to the rules of Scripture is wrong, just like subtracting from them is wrong. We need to be sensitive to both. And the fact is that the scripture has a lot to say about the importance of women. One of the reasons I call myself a soft or gentle complementarian is because I actually think the Bible is incredibly

subversive to most other kind of patriarchal mindsets in elevating women. I just happen to think that that one particular office, and there are differences in that one office should, but, you know, give a few examples here. Women prophets, female prophetesses throughout the scripture, it's all over. Miriam, Deborah, Holda, Noah Daya, the Acts 2, the Spirit's given to both men and women, your sons and your daughters, Philip and his four daughters in the book of Acts. In 1st Corinthians 11, there are female prophets prophesying during the church service. A lot of complementarians are undersensitive. to obeying that strand of biblical teaching

as in relation to say 1st Timothy 2. Women do ministry with Jesus. Luke 8 1 through 3, for example. They play an important role in his ministry. Women deaconesses, I think there's a strong case for women deaconesses in the New Testament, but a lot of Baptist churches don't have female deacons.

I think you build that from the New Testament from Phoebe and Romans 16 and then from 1st Timothy 3. in the triage book I wrote, I go into reasons why I think those are compelling reasons, but also just church history. Female deaconesses are all throughout church history. This is relevant because I'm going to talk about church history in a second to defend the complementarian views.

But the fact is, it's all over. If you value the first council of Nicaea, 325 first ecumenical council defending the deity of Christ, Canon 19 talks about female deaconesses. Same with Council of Chalcedon as well. It's giving like age limits, you know. Here's, I'll put up a picture of Olympius, a prominent fifth century deaconess, one of John Christostom's supporters and friends, amazing woman of God, who built an orphanage, built a hospital, God used her powerfully.

It's all throughout church history. It's not everywhere, but you see it a lot. So both from scripture and from church history, I think the case for female deaconess is strong. Proverbs 31. You know, a lot of people have these stereotypes. They think of complementarianism in terms of stereotypes. So like the husband has to be the one to work and the wife has to be the one who does the cooking. That's something like that's like that's totally a cultural stereotype.

That is not necessarily biblical mandate. And when you actually see what is in the scripture, you know, one of the things that's amazing is how subversive it is to other ancient patriarchal societies. Even something as simple as the Fifth Commandment. Is it the Fifth Commandment? I think it is. honor your father and your mother. One of the things I remember preaching a sermon on that once, and I was amazed at how many other ancient law books only say honor your father, not mother, or creation in the image of God, basic things. Right out of the gate, the biblical picture is

subversive to other ancient patriarchal mindsets. So actually, the biblical teaching, it's not just pushing in one direction, actually. It's going to push against overly restrictive views as well. just a good check upon us to ask the Holy Spirit to correct us to say, hey, we need to be open to dangers in multiple directions here. It's so possible to go too far. When we go too far, we hurt the cause of Christ and that we should take that seriously. I think there's just sometimes an undersensitivity to that. Okay. In the other direction, I'm also really concerned about the way the term complementarianism, it seems like every year, you know, from 2019 to 2020, 2020 to 2021. Every year it goes more to be this way that this term is associated with abuse and or a sinful

expression of power. And basic, you know, if you're a complementarian, you're a bad listener, you want power, you're suspicious, and it's increasing. And I'm concerned about this, and I want an appeal that we just be more kind to each other in the body of Christ. Those supporting the SBC's decision are often kind of told basically your legalists, you're functioning from fear. This is a concern I had about some of the tweets that Rick Warren was putting out that didn't feel very kind because he's making it sound like complementarians don't really think you can learn from women, you know, like one of his tweets he put up. He said, I truly feel sorry for men who deprive their souls of learning profound spiritual truth from godly women, hindered by the belief that no

woman can teach them anything. Grateful for my grandma, mom, wife, sister, daughter, and books my sisters in Christ who've taught me so much. That was a tweet on June 8th. You know, it's like, I don't know too many people who think you can't learn from women in general. I mean, that's a pretty extreme version of this idea. There's lots of reasonable people who are more in the middle who will say, no, you learn from women.

Amen, absolutely. These women of God are so important to us. It's just saying they shouldn't be in that office. And it's just kind of unfair. You know, it's like, it just, things like this contribute to this escalation. of negativity to the complementarian side. Another tweet had a reference to angry legalistic showmen. Now, there's certain cultural narratives that we're all swimming in that influence us profoundly.

And one of the things that happens is they incline us to think about all relationships in terms of power. And it tends to be a little reductionistic, actually. you know, there was an article about the SBC situation in the New York Times, and it was so just painting the complementarian side in such a negative light. They're hyper-conservatives, made them seem so far out to the right. And so in other words, all of this should make those of us who are followers of Christ very careful about how we talk about each other to not play into this larger escalation that is happening. One of the ways I'd like to give some pushback to this idea that all complementarianism, it has this kind of intrinsic. I'm not saying that it can't be like that.

Look, there's a lot of ugly expressions of it. Yes, I get that. That's the thing I'm usually saying in these conversations. But the necessary, the idea that there's an inherent association between a complementarian view and a sinful expression of power and or a sexist mentality and or, you know, we don't learn from women and these kinds of things that you hear more and more very unhelpful. and one of the ways you see that is historical perspective. Here's a simple fact.

Take the term complementarian off the table and just take this basic idea that the higher office of teaching and leadership in the church, whether you call it priest, presbyter, bishop, elder, etc. is restricted to men. That is characteristic of all pre-modern Christianity to my awareness. Maybe there's something out there as an exception, pretty much all that I know of. It's characteristic of all the non-Protestant Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church, they only have male priests, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, the old Catholics, everywhere you look, that's the idea, male-only priesthood.

It's also more common throughout the non-Western world in non-white Christianity than it is common in the Western white Christian world. And so if you want to start saying this is necessarily associated with abuse or a sinful expression of power, this can become culturally elitist very fast because it's like everybody got it wrong, but now we've got it right. And that's a deep concern that I have.

Take C.S. Lewis as an example. Was C.S. Lewis a kind of power, you know, was he playing into the power structures of the day? He wrote an essay in 1948, priestesses in the church, and he's using the metaphor of a uniform to say that you can salute the uniform other than the person.

And he says, only one wearing the masculine uniform can provision. until the Perusia represent the Lord to the Church, for we are all corporately and individually feminine to him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. Now, look, a lot of people are going to be reacting to C.S. Lewis. One of the things that is so interesting to observe is just how much our cultural instincts have changed on this kind of question even in less than a century. That was in 1948, not that long ago.

And yet, a lot of people, if someone said that today, my gosh, they would just get obliterated. I mean, you have to, I'm trying to ask for a sensitivity to how nasty this conversation gets. even if you do think that complementarians are all sexist or inherently it's a kind of playing into a sinful power structure there's a historical awareness that can moderate how you express that it's amazing to me how in the modern west we're changing things so much and then despite the fact that it's so recent there's this mentality of like how could anyone not see this and the historical perspective will give us caution We could go through the biblical text for why I'm a complimentarian. You could talk about the Levitical priesthood, for example, in the Old Testament.

Is that a sexist system that God set up? What about Jesus? Here's where, you know, the ultimate thing would come to Christ. Here's the thing. Jesus was radically socially subversive in how he treated women. He elevated women incredibly. He gave women so much more dignity and honor than the would be typical among his other Jewish contemporaries. but he only had male apostles.

And you could say, oh, he was just adapting to the culture in doing that. I hear that. Well, he didn't adapt to the culture on these questions. He challenged the culture. And I think we just, at a certain point, we can't sit in judgment on Christ himself. He's our authority. He's God. So if he did that, you can't say it's inherently sexist to limit one particular kind of office

to one gender. And I'm very concerned about kind of, you know, I won't even get into the Pauline texts and some of the other New Testament texts. One of the things I heard from Rick Warren is that this all comes down to just one word. I wouldn't agree with that. I think there's actually a, there's about six other texts in Paul and Peter, First Peter 3, that we have to work through. And there's a lot of words involved. But so anyway, bottom line, here's, I guess I'll wrap it up. You know, when you're talking about something controversial, don't run.

ramble on. You know, if I say something offensive, at least it'll have been what I intended to say in my notes. Here's my heart at the end of the day. Complimentarianism is not necessarily abusive and legalistic and fear-mongering and that kind of stuff, this dark, twisted thing that it's made to seem. Just as egalitarianism is not always, you know, just one step in the slippery slope either. And actually, though we can find, there's a reason why stereotypes exist, and we can find nasty complementarians and egalitarians for whom that is one step in a further trajectory toward liberalism. So I'm not saying that doesn't exist. I'm saying we shouldn't assume that. We should assume the best.

And I guess my final heart and my final appeal and why I want to speak to this in a video is to say, can we try to be kinder amidst our disagreements? The escalation that's happening right now is not healthy. This is not good. The way our culture is polarizing, it's like, here's my feeling. Final thought. Have you ever walked into a room and you walk in midway through an argument and you can tell that the way the argument is going, the way they're getting angrier, it's like nothing good can come from this. We should just kind of take a break and come back once we've caught our breath, you know,

that you can kind of feel that. That's happening in our whole civilization. nothing good can come from this intense escalation. And as the body of Christ, we've got to model a better way. We've got to assume the best in each other. We've got to treat people as human beings, not as caricatures. And that means listening carefully and not assuming the worst. And we're not doing so great on this.

I think, you know, I'm concerned about it more recently with the way complementarians are just, You know, like these ideas that we're all, we're all just out for power that really, you might just say that I'm not self-aware. Honestly, I don't think that's why I'm a complimentarian. I'm pretty sure. Like my natural personality, I know my limitations. I'm more drawn to the values of compassion. I don't think that's like the more comfortable option for me. I don't see a lot of pressures toward that.

You know, you might say I'm just not aware of them, but I don't, I really don't think that. But then in the other direction, too, there's a lot. There's a lot of, anyway, I guess the simple point is we need to love each other and talk amidst our differences. Don't take away anything from your theological convictions. Let your theological convictions echo at full volume, but see the other people as human being. Slow down a little bit. Listen, I think in this issue, we have a need for greater listening and just a sensitivity to the way forces outside of our control are causing all of us to escalate in the way we're relating to other people. Social media

does it. Cable news does it. It's a weird time we live in and we have to be sensitive to that. I'm burdened about it. That's a large part of what I'm trying to do in my YouTube channel. That's why things like Theological Triage are helpful. Anyway, if you find this video helpful in any way with all this stuff, help me share it, like the video. You can subscribe to my channel. I do stuff like this all the time. Hit the bell button and you'll get noticed. is about new videos. Hope this video is helpful and edifying in the body of Christ. I'm not perfect. I might be wrong here or there, but I hope this is helpful and edifying as we work through all these issues. All right, thanks for watching everybody. God bless.