ROLE DISTINCTIONS WITHIN THE CHURCH

One Facebook respondent has posted links that argue that Paul’s teachings about women’s submission to men was just relative to certain churches and specific circumstances. I responded that this just doesn’t seem to be the case:

“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:11-14)

Paul also provided his rationale against women leading men:

1.    Verse 13: The creation order

2.    Verse 14: The woman had been deceived, not the man.

Paul NEVER based his verdict on what was happening in the churches of his time.

I don’t like this teaching any more than you do. However, it is God’s Word. We therefore must conform ourselves to the Word rather than conforming the Word to our tastes and cultural preferences. This strategy might please the culture, but it cannot please God.

Elsewhere, Paul explicitly stated that this prohibition pertained to ALL of the churches, not just Jewish ones but also the Gentiles churches and in whatever culture:

·       …As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.  Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 14:33-37)

Nor did Paul claim that this teaching had anything to do with his own personal judgment. Instead, he wrote that this teaching was a “command of the Lord.”

What goes on in the Church will not remain in the Church. To suppose that women can lead adult men in the Church is also to suppose that wives can lead their husbands at home, once again, in opposition to the Word (Ephesians 5:24).

THE MAD DASH TO SUICIDE

The West has rejected the principles that had once elevated the West – the freedoms of speech and religion and even justice and equality before the law. In a recent ruling:

·       The European Court of Human Rights — which has jurisdiction over 47 European countries, and whose rulings are legally binding on all 28 member states of the European Union — has effectively legitimized an Islamic blasphemy code in the interests of "preserving religious peace" in Europe. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13204/european-court-human-rights-sharia

Such a ruling accords neither with justice or equality. It is biased and will only breed cynicism, discord, and a lack of trust in justice and all our principles of fairness. If we can no longer question a religion that promotes honor killings, jihad, rape, and world conquest, we should no longer be allowed to criticize other religions and worldviews. Why should the most violent of religions receive a “free pass” and special protection under the law?

This is happening all over the West, where certain groups have become more favored than others. This will create massive cynicism and distrust of the system and those who maintain it. The favored will become arrogant and un-favored will become defensive and resentful. It is a great prescription for division and conflict.

When certain groups are marginalized before the law and not endowed with the same rights and respect, these embittered ones will be inclined to take the law into their own hands.

Under the banner of true justice and equality, we can all stand together as brethren who share the same fate and are working together to preserve it. However, when justice and equality are scuttled, humanity is dispersed. Only coercion and violence can then hold them together. Historian Rodney Stark warned that:

·       Without a theology [or philosophy] committed to reason, progress and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to the age of five…The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a “secular” society – there having been none. And all the modernization that has since occurred outside Christendom was imported from the West, often brought by colonizers and missionaries. Even so, many apostles of modernization assume that…similar progress can be achieved not only without Christianity…(The Victory of Reason, 233).

EVOLUTION, CREATION, THE FALL, AND THEIR HISTORICITY

How should we regard Genesis 1-3, which describe the creation and the Fall of humanity into sin and death? Is it historical or non-historical, as the theistic evolutionists (TEs) maintain?

TEs have a vested interest in claiming as non-historical all of the chapters which contradict evolution. For one thing, they believe that death and the survival-of-the-fittest are God’s original plan for evolving us from one-celled life. However, these contradict the plain historical accounts of Genesis 1-3.

Not only do we not find any evidence for evolution – gradualism, random mutation, natural selection through the survival-of-the-fittest – in these chapters, we find the exact opposite thing. God spoke creation into existence and each species as a separate creation.

Genesis 3 claims that there was no sin and death until Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit. This is consistent with the creation account in which God states that everything He had created was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Did this proclamation preclude sin and death? Evidently! The creation account is explicit that animals were not intended to eat other animals (1:29-30), and that there had been such a state of comfort and peace that Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed (2:25), because they had not yet sinned. But when the rebellion against the Word of God came, so too did death:

·       “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

Sin and death entered the world together BY Adam and Eve, contrary to the evolutionary account. The NT also affirms its historicity:

·       For the creation was subjected to futility [corruption – the Fall] not willingly, but because of him [God], who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8:20-22)

The “groaning” hadn’t been part of God’s design, but He allowed the Fall “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption.”

In contrast to the Biblical account, the TE narrative undermines the flow of the Bible. For instance, if death had originally been part of God’s creation, then He couldn’t blame Cain for killing his brother Abel. Because survival-of-the-fittest was God’s chosen tool, Cain was simply following God’s design, right? In fact, any murderer or rapist would be able to justify his behavior with a survival-of-the-fittest rationale. In light of this, to impose paradigm of evolution upon the Biblical account is to upset almost all of the Bible’s teachings.

The history of the Genesis accounts are determinative. For one thing, the genealogies, which include Abraham and even Jesus, argue for the historicity of Genesis. However, if Adam and Eve weren’t historical, then there would be no reason to regard others in Adam’s genealogy as historical.

Besides, all of the subsequent Biblical commentary regard these chapters of Genesis as historical. Here is a sampling from the NT affirming the historicity of the creation account:

·       When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” (Acts 4:24 citing Genesis 1 as history; 2 Kings 19:15; 2 Chronicles 2:12; Nehemiah 9:6)

·       He also says, "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” (Hebrews 1:10 citing Genesis 1 as history; Psalm 102:25)

·       By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3 citing Genesis 1 as history)

·       Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3 citing Genesis 1 as history)

Does the TE know better than all of these Biblical commentators who attest to the historicity of the first chapters of Genesis?

Adam is consistently regarded as the first man instead of a primate gradually evolved from other primates:

·       For Adam was formed first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:13 citing Genesis 2:7 as historical)

·       Created in the image and likeness of God. (1 Corinthians 11:7; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24; 2 Peter 3:9; Genesis 5:1; 9:6; each citing Genesis 1:26-27 as history)

·       So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45 citing Genesis 2:23 as historical)

·       [Jesus] the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. (Luke 3:38 citing Genesis 5:1-)

·       Enoch, the seventh from Adam. (Jude 1:14 citing Genesis 5 as history)

·       Jesus replied, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Mark 10:5-9 citing Genesis 1:26 and 2:24 as history; Matthew 19:4-6)

·       “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. (Acts 17:26 alluding to Genesis 1 as actual history; Malachi 2:10)

·       For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 11:8-9 citing Genesis 2:18, 23 as history)

Adam as the original sinner and the cause of the Fall:

·       For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22 alluding to Genesis 3 as actual history)

·       Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:14 alluding to Genesis 3 as history)

If Adam’s work had merely been a matter of myth or parable, likewise should we regard the work of Jesus, the second Adam. All of these verses demonstrate that it is not enough to merely strip the first several chapters of Genesis of what God had historically accomplished, the rest of the subsequent Biblical commentary affirming their historicity must also be forcibly stripped away.

Other verses regard even the serpent/Satan as historical:

·       “You [Pharisees] are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44; Jesus affirms that the devil was the originator of lies, alluding to Genesis 3; 1 John 3:8)

• And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. (Romans 16:20 alluding to Genesis 3:15)

To deny the historicity of Genesis 3 is to undermine the integrity of the entire Bible. It is to disregard the Bible’s own commentary in favor of an alien evolutionary worldview imposed on the text. It is also to add and to subtract the historicity from God’s Word:

·       You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19)

When the TE denies the historicity of Genesis 1-11, he takes away from God’s Word. When he imposes evolution upon it, he adds to God’s Word.

The TE claims that he is salvaging the Christian faith for the educated who find themselves in conflict once introduced to the theory of evolution (ToE). However, even atheist Dale McGowan, Managing Editor of the Atheist Channel at Patheos, and author of Atheism For Dummies, is skeptical. He quotes Tullio Gregory who expresses his concern:

• Once you cast doubt on man’s place in creation, the entire Biblical story of salvation history, from original sin to Christ’s incarnation, is also threatened.

Even though he is a strong advocate for evolution, McGowan confesses that he is “conflicted” and troubled by message of The BioLogos Foundation, a TE organization peddling evolution to the church:

• In a BioLogos video titled, “Adam and Eve: Engaging the Tough Questions,” an advisor notes that there are “a lot of proposals out there of when the first sin might have happened, what it might have looked like… we don’t have a simple answer on the question of the historical Adam…who were Adam and Eve, when did they live?”

• This is always the first step in a crumbling theology – the suggestion that the answer is out there, it’s just very, very complicated. The problem is our ability to grasp the answer. But no worries, there are a lot of proposals. It all makes for an impressive simulacrum of rigor, an army of question marks in search of meaningful questions.

As McGowen points out, Biologos has undermined both the clarity of the biblical message and the church’s assurance about it. TEs have often warned that “we must be humble about our interpretations of Scripture.” However, they are not at all humble about their dismissal of the first eleven chapters of Genesis as history. Nor are they humble about dismissing the NT’s clear assertions that Genesis is history.

What happens when Christians bite into the ToE apple? Kreeft and Tacelli have written:

·       If the Fall really didn’t happen in history, then God rather than humanity is to blame for sin, for God must have created us as sinners rather than as innocents. If there was never any real unfallen state, then we were sinners from the first moment of our creation, and God was wrong to declare everything he made “good.” (Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 213)

TE overturns the theology of the Bible. If the survival-of-the-fittest had been part of God’s glorious plan, then who can blame Cain for killing Adam or even Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit so that they could be as God! Perhaps, then, we too should live according to God’s initial plan and to attempt to prevail over any opponents, even to rape so that our superior genome will more generously passed on!

In light of this – imposing an evolutionary worldview upon the Bible – the Fall was God’s doing, and He is to blame. However, the destruction of the Biblical worldview is far more extensive.

TE also represents the destruction of apologetics, the defense of the faith. How? Since the TE denies that the Bible is about history and science – the physical world – it has deprived the faith of any evidential support. Proof is derived from what is generally known about the physical world to what is disputed, especially about the theological. Consequently, we apply the historical evidence that Jesus died on the Cross to the theological – the Bible’s assertion that Jesus died for us. However, since the TE deprives theological assertions from their necessary historical and physical underpinning. Consequently, TE Ron Choong, the head of Academy for Christian Thought in New York City, has written:

• Darwin suggested that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of God. That is correct!

Choong’s words parallel those of many other TEs. However, can we take such a stance in light of the Scriptures, which teach us that we are “without excuse” if we deny the plain physical evidences for God’s existence?

• The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

Besides, there is no basis to believe in the theological message of the Cross and the Resurrection apart from the fact that Jesus was historically crucified and rose. His disciples had needed to be convinced of His resurrection if they were to continue in the faith. However, the Lord provided physical evidences:

• He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

TE leads to the destruction of the Christian faith. In “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and an Evolutionist,” the former co-head of The Biologos Foundation, Karl Giberson, was candid about the impact of evolution on his faith:

·       Acid is an appropriate metaphor for the erosion of my fundamentalism, as I slowly lost confidence in the Genesis story of creation and the scientific creationism that placed this ancient story within the framework of modern science. [Darwin’s] universal acid dissolved Adam and Eve; it ate through the Garden of Eden; it destroyed the historicity of the events of creation week. It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to the stories—the fall, “Christ as the second Adam,” the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred.” (9-10)

However, Giberson assured his readers that Darwin’s acid of evolution would cease to dissolve anything further. However, Giberson had stepped onto a slippery slope and wrote a few short years later that he believed that the God of the Old Testament, Jesus’ “Father,” was a “monster.” This was the result of Giberson having made evolution his guiding light. No wonder Jesus warned against having two masters (Matthew 6:24).

TE  also leads to the destruction of any confidence about the teachings of the Bible. How? In order to empty the Biblical account of any argument against evolution, TEs claim that the Bible isn’t about the physical world but the spiritual, while evolution is about the physical and not the spiritual. Hence, all possible conflict is eliminated, right? However, the physical and the spiritual are inseparable. Consequently, to deny the physical (historical) teachings of the Bible is also to deny the spiritual. Consequently, to deny the historicity of Christ dying for our sins on the Cross is also to deny the theological or spiritual messages of the Cross. No historical death of Jesus, no atonement and payment for sins! 

Many doctrines depend upon what God has done historically. Consequently, when Jesus was asked about the permissibility of divorce, He based His answer on what God had historically accomplished, the historicity of Genesis 1 and 2:

·       He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [Genesis 1:26-27], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Genesis 2:24]?  So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

Based upon God’s actual and historical past judgments, Peter argued that the promised future judgment would also be actual:

·       For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;  if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. (2 Peter 2:4-9)

If these historical judgments had not actually happened, there would be no reason to believe that the future judgment would also be actual. However, Peter claimed that these prior judgments had been a matter of actual history. Therefore, the promised future judgment would also be actual and not a metaphor for something else. If the world had been destroyed during the worldwide flood, then we have to seriously consider the promise of a future destruction. However, if the flood had merely been a parable used to make a theological point, then we might also assume that the promised future judgment was also parabolic.

If all of Peter’s citations were not actual historical events, what interpretation can we take away from Peter’s warning? Who knows! When we are deprived of the historical context, interpretation becomes uncertain. Perhaps Peter’s citations merely served as a scare tactic? Perhaps then the Cross was also no more than a scare tactic? In any event, we are left with Biblical agnosticism, a slide into uncertainty regarding the teachings of the entire Bible.

Am I exaggerating the effects of the ToE upon the Church? I don’t think so. My many dialogues with TEs have shown me:

·       They don’t know the Scriptures very well; nor have they derived a systematic worldview based upon the Scriptures.

·       They are always cautioning me that we have to be humble about our interpretation of the Scriptures. Why? Because they are uncertain about them! I only wish that they would be equally humble about the ToE.

·       Their views are almost indistinguishable from the professional or university communities to which they belong. Why? Being agnostic about the teachings of Scripture, they have no defenses against other worldviews and the pressures for peer acceptance.

After some dialogue, it is usual for the TE to become highly defensive and accuse me of judging them and dividing the Body of Christ. However, the division is already there and must be exposed. I just pray that they might become aware of it and how it is separating them from God and His Word.

WISDOM, IGNORANCE, AND FREEDOM

No one has an excuse for ignorance. Why not? We are surrounded by wisdom. It is a tree filled with fruit for the taking:

• Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: "To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense. Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find knowledge. Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate...My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries.” (Proverbs 8:1-13, 19-21)

If wisdom is so precious, why don’t we snatch it up by the truckload? Because, even though it is free, it comes with a price. It can hurt by revealing things we don’t want to know or see. It reveals the truth about ourselves and humbles us. However, unless we are first humbled to see ourselves, we cannot see anything else.

Humility is the cloth that removes dust from our lens. It teaches us self-control by revealing our foolishness. However, many reject the voice of wisdom but might later lament:

• "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin..." (Proverbs 5:12-14)

Wisdom is a dictator. It tells us what to do and what not to do. It is a disturbing alarm, an uninvited taskmaster, and we find many ways to reject it. 

Some have embraced the idea that certainty about such things is not possible. In this way, we find freedom from the counsel of wisdom. Others find their “freedom” in the shadows of postmodernism, which denies that truth and wisdom are either knowable or existent.

However, real freedom lives within its limitations, as a fish lives within the limitations of water, which maximizes its freedom. The mountain goat remains on rock-covered mountains, free from its predators.

Wisdom and truth provide the water within which we must remain to be free. Serving our Maker and Lover is a game with rules to be followed. As long as we follow the rules of a chess game, the game is meaningful and satisfying. Once we reject the rules in favor of “freedom,” and insist that we should be free to move the pieces wherever and whenever we want, the game becomes meaningless and unsatisfying.

Instead, we were created for relationship, for love, but for a love which has rules. To reject the rules is to reject love and the very meaning of life. Instead of freedom, we condemn ourselves to eternal homelessness.