Feminist Theology and Worthless Paper
The above podcast, hosted by LCMS pastor, the Rev. Dr. Tim Ahlman, has a provocative title: “How Porn Culture Shapes Church Leadership — Without Us Knowing.” It’s not about how pornography is impacting the Council of Presidents, the Praesidium, or the CTCR. In fact, it has nothing to do with our church’s leadership, and not very much about porn. They eventually talk a little bit about it, but the theme of this podcast is really the “toxic masculinity” that plagues the Christian church - especially those church bodies (like the LCMS) that have a “glass ceiling” that limits the ability for women to take the lead.
The guest on the program - a counsellor and an ordained Baptist minister (and author of the book Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities) who has a doctorate in counseling - Dr. Andrew Bauman, explains that this stems from nearly two thousand years of the church misunderstanding the Bible. This explains why women are not permitted to be pastors in some churches, though this injustice has been corrected in other churches in recent years.
Dr. Bauman explains (minute 12:39):
When you look at the early writings of Paul, when you look at at what the church, the early church was, it was in a patriarchal society, right? It was based, if you look at the early church fathers or you look at some of the Greek and Roman influences. It's wild to look at some of the stuff they wrote about women. There was a deep hatred for women, right? And so, a lot of the early church is based on that [emphasis added]. And the church, we can get into this much more in depth, and read about [it] in the book, but the church was actually on the cutting edge of gender [sic] relations. It was so pro-women, right? Paul called them co-laborers and it was, and women felt so free to actually begin to speak up and voice their opinions. Whereas when you look at so many of our churches, it's so the opposite of the way Jesus engaged women and the way the early church engaged women…. 35.1% of women reported suffering from sexual harassment or some form of sexual misconduct while serving in their ministry position or they answered it was complicated. So 35.1%. And the final thing, the question was ‘I feel opportunities in ministry have been limited to me solely because I'm a woman.’ 77.9% of women felt that the opportunity in ministry had been limited due to their gender [sic]. So there is a firm glass ceiling in place. [emphasis added].
As an interesting aside, the first time I ever heard the word “misogynist” was from my 9th grade theology teacher, a Jesuit priest whom I greatly respected, who said that St. Paul was one. My teacher was not only an advocate of women’s ordination, but when I ran into him years later, he had taken to calling God “She.” So the argument that Paul was a misogynist is nothing new. It is just warmed-over radical feminist theology. Dr. Bauman believes that we are misogynists, and also brings race into the matter.
Dr. Tim Ahlman (14:13) responds:
It’s so sad because it, like you were just getting into, it's so counter to the way of Jesus and the way he engaged women and very, very countercultural. And I don't think we realize how, not just Jesus, but how countercultural it was to have not a few (I was reading in Acts chapter, I think it was, 17, in Thessalonica the conversion of some of the Jews and the Gentiles there in Thessalonica. And it says, ‘And not a few of the leading women came to faith in Jesus.’ Like even in the book of Acts you've got the apostles, you got Luke saying, ‘Hey man, there were so many women who were co-laborers with us. And then not to mention you've got Lydia, I think right around in the same area. She's a businesswoman. She's a seller of purple goods and she comes to faith with her whole household. I'd love to get your take on this: Paul's words around women being silent in the church. I'd love to get your take on this. And we have built a whole theology [emphasis added] around kind of putting women, and I I'm speaking even in some of our circles in our Lutheran circles, putting women underneath, women don't speak ever. They don't exercise their gifts and, I'm painting with a pretty negative brush here, but I've experienced it in some circles in in my tribe, and I don't think it's healthy. So what would you say to those, how do we rightly read Paul's words about women being silent in the church?
And now, Drs. Ahlman and Bauman get into a discussion of specific texts, and examining the Greek. Dr. Bauman’s analysis follows (15:47):
So basically [a] couple of the texts that so many women have been harmed by is 1 Corinthians 14:34 through 35. ‘Women should be silent in churches for they are not permitted to speak but they are to submit themselves as the law also says that if they want to learn something then they should go to their own husbands at home since it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church.’ So you have that one and then you also have 1 Timothy 2:1-12. ‘As woman is to learn quietly with full submission, I do not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man. Instead, she is to remain quiet.’ So you have these two verses when you read those, it seems pretty clear, right? And yet, if you actually do the work, which I would encourage everyone to do, that these are not what they seem on the surface. They are not what they seem on the surface [emphasis added].
So let's just take the 1 Timothy passage 2:12. So this is the one [that] support[s] gender [sic] hierarchy. The word quietly here [in the] letter to Timothy isn't actually silence. It's the word hashua [sic - the word is ἡσυχία - hesuchia] . Okay. So it was interpreted women be silent. Here's what hashua [sic] actually means. Stillness. Women be still. So more along the line of peacefulness or minding your own business. Being still is very different than quieting all women for all time. Do you see how big of [a] difference one interpretation says be quiet women versus be still? Well, I can get behind being still, right? And so, a lot of the the examples are that there's a couple women that were disrupting the services and they were so pumped up because they could speak. They're like, "No, stop. Go, you know, be still. Go home. Talk to your husbands about it." But that turned into this huge thing Hashua [sic] be still.
And then you look at the word authority, so when he says, ‘I do not permit a woman to have authority over a man,’ the word is authoritian [sic - the word is αὐθεντεῖν - authentein) it's a loose translation of the Greek word and the origin of the word relates to abusing one's power or misusing authority. So do you see how that changes the reading altogether: I do not permit a woman to misuse use or abuse her authority over a man. What authoritanian [sic] means abusing your authority. So it's actually saying women do have authority which then completely goes in line with all the other scriptures, right? [emphasis added]. But there's no hierarchy in Christ, right? Galatians 3:28 that you just said, right? Acts 2:18, I'll pour out my spirit. Both men and women will prophesy. So, if you jump through hoops with some of these interpreting these scriptures as basically just kind of what it says on the surface and you don't actually do the in-depth research that needs to happen, [emphasis added] you're going to have problems with being consistent with your biblical interpretation. Consistency is vital because if you think that 1 Timothy 2: 8-15 is about silencing women and keeping them from teaching or preaching, [emphasis added] then it contradicts so many other passages: Luke 24:9, John 4:39, Judges 5:7, Exodus 15:20, Esther 7:3, like you are going to have difficulty making sense of where Paul writes in Romans 16, Priscilla was outstanding among the apostles, right? Other examples, prominent roles, Anna, who was named a prophet in Luke 2:36, Philip had four daughters who prophesied in Acts 2:19, right? Phoebe was a deacon in Romans 16:1. Junia was described as outstanding. We have read this incorrectly. It has been interpreted incorrectly [emphasis added].
To which Dr. Ahlman replies (19:36):
So yeah, this is this is good. I'm I'm with you [emphasis added]. What do you say to those who would go back to 1 Timothy 2:12 and when Paul says, "I do not permit a woman to teach." Now, I get the submissive quietly, but then the teaching role there. What would you say to those who are like what Paul is, can't be any more clear about a woman not being permitted to to teach? And I do agree with you in the story like once we see Paul at eternity he's going to be like, ‘Man you guys built like a whole thing about this. There was just a lady that was overstepping her bounds and being disrespectful and the whole community kind of saw it.’ Or maybe there was a community of women who were kind of getting beyond even the apostles - which can happen to a man too. We can rather seek the office rather than the office kind of seeking us, and think we're we're rising up, when no, the way of Jesus is going down. I mean, trying to [exert] an inappropriate use of power and authority. This can hit women and men. So, I think that's more [to] what he's speaking about.
Of course, there is more. You can listen for yourself.
As to this interesting take on men, women, and the interpretation of these texts, I find it interesting that Dr. Bauman is outside of his wheelhouse when it comes to exegesis. He’s not even pronouncing the Greek words correctly. And if he is correct, the church - including the apostles, the apostolic fathers, the early church, the medieval church, the Reformation fathers, the Lutheran church of every age, and the LCMS - have been in error (not to mention our Lord Jesus who could have sent out women apostles, but didn’t - at least we got Him straightened out). All of our translations have been wrong: Jerome, Luther, the King James, and all of our modern English translations. But everyone’s error has, in fact, been corrected by 20th century feminist theologians including those in the ELCA - who base their radical feminist theology on this very biblical hermeneutic.
Maybe this is the kind of result that “innovative” and “entrepreneurial” and “creative” ways to educate, train, and form pastors would bring forth. Instead of a monolithic interpretation of these texts that we see among our exegetes and scholars at our seminaries and our Concordia Universities (with the possible exception of the woman-led Discordia - Texas), we can “raise up leaders in the local context” and get this kind of teaching. Is this what these guys have in mind? I mean, this scholar was chosen to speak to this issue and to present his hermeneutic - and was largely lauded for it.
Is this what we want? Is this what we can expect in bypassing or attenuating our seminaries’ involvement in pastoral education and formation? I have largely focused on the formation rather than the education element of the issue, mainly because I think a lot of people who have not been formed by residential seminary largely think that seminary is really all about the classroom, overlooking the other formative elements. But education is also part of it. Do we really want some pastor somewhere “in the local context” to say, “I heard this Dr. Bauman, and he’s really good, so I’m going to use him to mentor my apprentice pastor”?
This Bauman guy is teaching falsely. His analysis of scripture is wrong. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. Maybe he’s a fine counselor, but lest anyone think I’m being harsh, what do our own exegetes have to say about this? What would our seminary presidents and professors think if one of their faculty were teaching this exegesis? Would they be pleased to “partner” with a pastor “in the local context” to form pastors with this kind of education, this kind of Neo-Seminex hermeneutic? Let’s be honest. That’s what it is. It is the damned Ghost of Seminex Past, and it’s about time for an exorcism.
This is what you can expect our seminarians (your future pastors) to be formed by if we decentralize and adopt the “diversity is our strength” mantra. This is what we will get if we farm out our pastoral formation to the Luther House of Study of Kairos University (as is being touted by some) - which is headed up by an “ordained” woman. This is what we get if pastors are formed “in the local context” by “innovative” pastors, whose expertise is organizational management as opposed to exegetical, systematic, or historical theology: a push for synodwide change based on a desire for “more women in leadership” that grows out of this erroneous reading of scripture.
The term “gold standard” has been floated about (and challenged) as a way of describing our traditional residential seminary formation. And it is a fitting term. It comes from the world of economics. A dollar that is backed by gold has actual value. The paper is convertible into hard currency on demand. But the U.S. dollar was taken off the gold standard in three gradual steps: 1913, 1933, and 1971. We now have currency that is backed by nothing. And this is why we have monetary inflation, which results in rising prices. We see the same inflationary phenomenon in education. I have lately seen ads pop up in my feed for one-year no-dissertation doctorates.
A man (or a woman) can now get an MDiv degree entirely online. We have ordained ministers with doctorate degrees who cannot even pronounce the Greek words correctly, let alone read our confessions in the original German and Latin. We have alternative online seminaries that claim to be confessionally Lutheran that have women enrolled in their online MDiv programs.
This is the equivalent to inflation of the money supply that is made possible by fiat currency, that is, money that is not backed in gold. Of course, even with a gold standard, you can have crop failures, bad investments, and banks going under. Even under a gold standard, business still have to produce, and laborers still have to earn their keep. And in the fallen world, things do go awry. But what you don’t have in a gold standard is hyperinflation, a phenomenon that we saw in post-WW1 Germany and early 2000s Zimbabwe (in the case of the latter, it got so bad that the government was printing one hundred trillion dollar notes).
I have a better idea: the gold standard, that is, our seminaries. Let’s back our seminary education and formation with real value, real exegesis, real biblical scholarship. Let’s trust our own exegetes and professors to continue to form our pastors. If we do make any changes, let’s make it more rigorous, not less. Let’s trust God that He will take care of us without dumbing down the curriculum, turning to crackpots with popular - but wrongheaded - theology. Let our pastors be both formed and educated. Let a Master’s Degree be a Master’s Degree, and a Doctorate a Doctorate. Let God’s Word have its way without being tampered with by woke, feminist theologians.
Enough is enough! I’ve seen and heard enough. Have you? To appropriate an expression from our confessions, “Satis est!” It’s enough. How much more of this are we expected to put up with? We need to quit profaning the sacred, subjecting God’s magisterial Word to the ministerial approval of men, and (as Luther has been paraphrased from his retort to Erasmus), we need to “Let God be God.”
Let’s not debase the value of our pastors with worthless paper - unbacked by the Word of God, rightly understood, and rightly confessed.