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Responses (3): It all depends on whose ox is gored...

(This is the third in a series responding to critics of my post pointing out Denny Burk is wrong and the Atlantic got it right in their reporting that Southern Baptists' Christian Standard Bible is gender-neutered.)

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up!

Seven years ago, back before the Holman Christian Standard Bible was neutered and "Holman" was taken out of its name, Denny Burk saw things more clearly. Follow this.

Back in 2010, Denny's preaching pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Jim Hamilton, wrote a blog post explaining that he had been asked to contribute an article to a new dictionary and the publisher had sent him these rules his article was to conform to:

[Your] articles should avoid referring to “man” (likewise “mankind,” “men,” “he,” “his” and so on) generically. Language often regarded as patriarchal should be modified to avoid giving wrong impressions. Similarly, translations of biblical and other texts, when made by the contributor, should be no more gender specific than the originals are judged to be. Citations of standard translations of the Bible should not be altered, of course, but where contributors create their own translations of the biblical text, they may find strategies for effectively and responsibly avoiding gender-specific translations by consulting the New Revised Standard Version.

"Who pays the piper calls the tune," the old saying goes, so Jim Hamilton was going to avoid the male inclusive if he wanted his publisher to pay him. And if he was going to do any of his own Bible translating for the article, he needed to delete the Bible's male inclusives "adam" and "adelphoi." 1 

This got Pastor Hamilton thinking and he asked this question... 


Responses (2): but "brothers" often means "brothers and sisters"...

Here is another argument against my post pointing out Denny Burk is wrong and the Atlantic got it right in their reporting that the Christian Standard Bible is gender-neutered in hundreds of places.

A reader writes:

[The translators] are simply trying to communicate the Scriptures in a clear way. Adelphoi does often mean brothers and sisters, so it's not wrong... There is an example in Euripides, Electra, line 536, where adelphos refers to both brother and sister...

...lexicography and semantics can be tricky... When Paul refers to the churches by adelphoi, he clearly has the whole congregation in mind. ...This is common in the ancient languages, where the masculine is the so-called "standard" linguistic gender.

...we are wrong when we assume that grammatical gender and biological gender are always the same thing

The one thing obvious is this man hasn't read the very post he is criticizing...


Responses (1): quoting Revelation's warning was over the top...

One man writes:

I am wary of suggesting (much less actually stating) what [Bayly] did at the end of the article, equating what was done to editing and changing the word of God in presumably a damnable fashion. This particular paragraph is what I have in mind:

"Denny Burk should warn the translators and publishers of his denomination's Christian Standard Bible that their removal of hundreds and hundreds of words with a male meaning component from Scripture places their souls in jeopardy of having their part in the tree of life and the holy city removed by God."

Say that is badly translated? Certainly. Call on them to change it in future editions? Sure. Say that the translators/editors are in danger of the fires of hell because of it? Why go to that extent?

Why go to that extent?

Because this is the explicit warning of the Holy Spirit. In the Word of God, He Himself warns us that those who do this very thing are in danger of not inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven. If this warning doesn't apply to the removal of...


Christian Standard Bible: the Atlantic got it right...

The current president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is indignant over an Atlantic Monthly piece pointing out that his denomination's Christian Standard Bible has gone "gender-neutral."1

Denny Burk says it's not true.

Sadly, it is. 2

We could get lost in a discussion of a host of Hebrew and Greek words in the Old and New Testaments, but two words will suffice: one is the Hebrew word...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (9): Joey Pipa at the lowest pitch of expression...

Back in the study, I asked Solzhenitsyn about his relations with the West... "[Y]es, it is true, when I fought the dragon of Communist power I fought it at the highest pitch of expression. The people in the West were not accustomed to this tone of voice. In the West, one must have a balanced, calm, soft voice; one ought to make sure to doubt oneself, to suggest that one may, of course, be completely wrong. But I didn't have the time to busy myself with this. This was not my main goal.” (Solzhenitsyn, quoted in the New Yorker, February 14, 1994, p.74.)

It saddened me to read Joey Pipa's response to the Report of the PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church. As president of a South Carolina seminary offering a more conservative option to the PCA’s Covenant Seminary, I’d been hopeful his response, when published, would sound an alarm within the church against the Committee's 60,000 words conniving at the feminist heresy.

Apparently others hoped the same because Dr. Pipa begins by telling his readers that "many friends and former students" asked him to respond to the Report.

What a disappointment they all must have felt watching as Dr. Pipa preciously declines to engage the enemy. Reading his very short response—1,500 words is about one-third of a sermon—you get the feeling you’re watching...


The church's witness on sexuality: too cute by half...

Remember, the goal of my writing on sexuality is not to demean women and promote male privilege. Every brash woman and effeminate man who hates Baylyblog never stops repeating these accusations, but they couldn't be further from the truth. Manhood is not privilege, but its opposite: responsibility. As Christ died for His Bride the Church, so man takes up his own cross and dies for the mother of his children, his lover, his bride.

The story of marriage is man dying so woman may give life and nurture it. Where that story is not told, marriage doesn't exist. It's not a private story for Christians. It's the timeless, transcultural story of sex written by God in the very DNA of His universe. To preach and live this story is to preach and live the Gospel.

Among the perishing, this Gospel witness is the stench of death. This is why worldlings outside and inside the church never stop scorning, mocking, hissing, and shaming those who try to be faithful witnesses to God's holy heterosexuality.

There can be no middle ground on sexuality, although many of us are frantic...


Flattery never brings reform...

...if I were to sum up my principal objections to most forms of feminism, it would be in the contention that feminism privileges dogmatic ideology over close and receptive attention to reality.  - A. Roberts, link

In Scripture, authority is symbolically masculine, as it originates with a God who stands over against us ...and who refers to himself with masculine pronouns.  - A. Roberts, link

I have some fairly far-reaching criticisms of complementarianism as most understand it. I believe that it unjustly marginalizes women within the life of the Church and society in many and various ways and tends to devalue them. I believe that women need to exercise far more prominent roles in the life and teaching of the Church, not just as a matter of permission, but as a matter of necessity.  - A. Roberts, link

We need more female spiritual directors, lay teachers, theologians, commentators, scholars, churchwardens, vestrywomen, treasurers, vergers, sacristans, elder women (different from elders), deaconesses, lay chaplains, leaders of Bible studies, missionaries, etc.  - A. Roberts, link

Justin Taylor works for Wheaton publisher Crossway. Now, just prior to their release of a book Heirs Together by UK Ph.D. Alastair Roberts, Justin got Gospel Coalition to run a piece on their blog introducing what Justin assures readers is a "big book." The GC blog post introduced by Taylor is written by Roberts and titled "How Should We Think About Watching Women Fight Women?" 

The post gives us an idea what Roberts's book will be like. He writes about "the particular subjective and objective otherness of the other sex," saying it is an "otherness that should excite wonder, love, responsibility, and care," A few sentences later he writes: "the strength and athleticism of women such as Rousey and Nunes is worthy of admiration in many respects." Then this...


Amanda Nunes beats the excrement out of Ronda Rousey...

A couple days ago, I posted the headline "Amanda Nunes beats the shit out of Ronda Rousey...". The headline introduced a post in which I unequivocally condemned the 48-second rout of Ronda Rousey by Amanda Nunes in their Las Vegas mixed martial arts fight last week. And being the son of a prophet, I wrote "Undoubtedly you were more offended by the headline of this post than the pic accompanying it, and that's the point."

The accompanying pic was obscene, but no one objected to it. Beyond the pic though, no one thought to say what's wrong with women beating the shit out of each other. Instead, Godly men had a hissy-fit over the use of the word "shit."

The gnat was strained, the camel escaped.

Since no one else bothered to say it, let me do the dirty work...


UK's Christian(ity) Today: blasphemy does not bother God...

Leaving religious freedom to the side, it is profoundly disturbing that the UK's Evangelical voice Christian Today published this servile tripe:

There's something profoundly disturbing about the idea that God should require the services of an executioner to protect His honour. When Christians stand up against blasphemy laws, we aren't denying God's glory, we are affirming it: we're saying he is untouchable by human ignorance, scorn or abuse.

The writer of these two sentences is in the thrall of human ignorance. Has he never read the Bible? Shall we start with the Flood? With Sodom and Gomorrah? Maybe he's a New Testament-only man and we need to start with Herod and move on to the Corinthians God killed because...


Bill Hybels has an LGBT dream...

Just listened to Bill Hybels talk about his dream that one day people will no longer be judged on the basis of the...

Is there someone who is willing to transcribe his dream, starting around 19" and ending around 32"? I'd like to write about Bill's rhetoric, showing why everyone, including the most conservative among us, will listen to what he says about the LGBT community in his church and will consider it faithful to Scripture. But I need a transcript and am about to board the plane where I'll sit for half a day (Incheon to O'Hare).

If you're willing, would you please say so in a comment? I'd be very grateful.


Hermaphrodites: trotting out the exception to gag the rule...

The primary goal clinching can achieve is to slow down and tie up your opponent to stop his or her momentum. There are times when you need to slow down what your opponent is doing and change the pace more to your liking.  - Clinching, Boxing Tips

In an earlier post opposing an Evangelical ethicist promoting the moral virtue of multiplying sexual identities from two to as many as anyone wants, I spoke of God creating only two sexes. As I wrote the number "two" and quoted Jesus in support of that number, I prepared for the commenter who would trot out hermaphrodites to gag God's two. It always happens. Sometimes, the reader knows he's opposing God's two; other times, he thinks he's helping Him.

Sure enough, as soon as I'd written "two," a reader trotted out hermaphroditism...


We apologize for the previous apology...

When a friend was on a Fulbright in Switzerland, he and his wife were assigned a church by their address. Those who live in the parish go to the parish church and that's that.

Nothing so simple in other places. We choose our church, and choice is a burden older and wiser men find burdensome and seek to avoid if the avoidance is not abdication of responsibility.

"Honey, you want to go out to eat?"

"Sure, I'd be happy not to have to cook."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know. Where do YOU want to go?"

"Wherever YOU want to go. Pick a place."

Aarrghhh!

Choosing a church is much worse...


Every two people are not on fire...

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
                                                                - Mark 10:6

Joining scientists' in their giggling excitement over fashion, journalists are pleased today to report the latest study that purports to prove God did not make them male and female from the beginning. A couple scientists did MRI scans of 1,400 brains and are excited to tell us they found male aspects of brains in female brains, and vice versa.

The news pieces don't specify what those male and female brain markers are, nor why they labelled the markers with the simplistic binary classifications of "male" and "female." But having categorized the bodies and the differing characteristics of those bodies' brains, "male" and "female," they announce the death of...


Trick or treat...

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a Mother and didn't love her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.

Read the wish-list Peter Leithart put together for all his fellow Christians in the Roman Catholic Church. He was asked to write a short piece on the subject, "What I Want from Catholics," and he utterly failed.

Start with his claim that the wish list is "terribly old-fashioned," then that it's "terribly assertive." Read on, though, and you'll recognize it's neither. Peter is the master of misdirection. [NOTE: Thinking about this later, it came to me that Peter was likely speaking to Roman Catholics in acknowledging their perceptions of his piece, not Reformed Protestants. To Roman Catholics his piece might well appear "old-fashioned" and "assertive," although any Roman Catholics with even a smattering of knowledge of the Reformation would have been gobsmacked that this "Reformed theologian" failed to be old-fashioned or assertive enough to remind them of the chasm between their false teaching concerning how a man is saved, is declared righteous before God.]

Dr. Leithart is also a master of flattery. Reading his stuff makes men feel...


Millennials: Generation Wuss...

Vanity Fair may be the most wicked publication in the world. At least I've thought so for several decades now, but foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, you know, and I kinda think if I've made exceptions for Christianity Today and linked to them now and then, I might take the liberty of just this once linking to Vanity Fair. For an article on "Generation Wuss." Michael Foster pointed me to this piece by Bret Ellis, forwarding this paragraph...


Why Planned Parenthood is still standing...

A mother in our congregation passed on an article titled, "Reflections on Pro-Life Protest Rhetoric" by doctoral candidate John F. Brick published yesterday on the website of the Roman Catholic publication, Crisis Magazine. She explained, "...I would be interested in thoughts on this Catholic's article advocating a newer rhetoric in the pro-life movement that doesn't include shock and outrage signs. We had a discussion yesterday at PP about being effective as protestors and I think it's an issue that we need to continue to discuss." For what it's worth, here are my thoughts.

I teach first-year rhetoric and composition to freshmen at a fairly large university squarely in the center of the American Midwest. In September, as part of the introductory unit, we cover some basic rhetorical concepts, including the famous “triangle” of rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos, I explain, is the appeal to reason: does the argument make sound logical sense? Ethos sounds like ethic and it’s a short jump from there to credibility: do the elements of composition suggest a levelheaded, trustworthy arguer? Pathos, the emotional appeal, is the easiest for my students to remember and deploy in their own writing. But, I caution them, it’s also the weakest of the three. Without the other two appeals, emotional rhetoric will do an argument more harm than good.

Thing about ethos is that perceived level-headedness and trustworthiness shift according to the wickedness and spiritual bondage of the audience. According to how jaded or "given over" they are. Who would have sounded trustworthy to the people of the Third Reich after they had invaded their neighbors and butchered millions of minorities, lives-not-worth-living, and Jews from among their own countrymen?

Precious few, and likely only those who tried the fool's errand of arguing against the slaughter by appealing to the glory of the Aryan race and the fatherland.

Try out perfectly logical analogies between abortion and Roe v. Wade and slavery and Dred Scott. People will look at you as if you’ve grown a third eye and turn away from you. In our decadent day, about the only thing that “works,” as the author defines it—particularly in the logos and ethos spheres—are appeals to self-love and comfort, and maybe choice. So yes, you can, for instance, speak of the absence of “choice” in China, and how none of the feminists in our country seem to be upset about it. But even among Christians, the argument falls to the ground with a thud. Pat Robertson famously said that if we lived in a country with a population of a billion, we might not be so quick to judge...


The coddling of the Presbyterian pew...

A brother forwarded a link to an Atlantic Monthly piece titled "The Coddling of the American Mind" reporting on the prevalence of emotionally pampered college students who are using emotional blackmail to imprison their profs and fellow students. It's an excellent article...


NEWS FLASH: Ranger female grads were "absolutely physical studs!"

Behold, your people are women in your midst! The gates of your land are opened wide to your enemies; Fire consumes your gate bars.  - Nahum 3:13

I knew a pastor whose main method of the sort of self-abnegation that characterizes hipster-pastors who prefer "brokenness" to "sin" was telling the congregation how he was a jerk of a husband. He'd say this all the time during his sermons, but he'd never really 'fess up to anything major. It was stuff like he wasn't sensitive enough. He was selfish. He didn't give her enough backrubs and sometimes he didn't get up at night to bring the baby to her to be nursed. This was how he publicly processed his own brokenness, especially during his sermons. He'd try to get us to see and join him in admitting we were all broken, just as he was; and therefore, we all needed Jesus, just like he did. For stuff like being insensitive to our wives and not going and getting the baby so she can stay in bed to nurse him.

When I stand before the judgment seat of God, serious as it surely is, I suspect I will have much more to answer for and to plead my Lord's righteousness as a covering for than not giving my wife backrubs. Too, I don't think the female sex—women and wives—are the only people we sin against. This man, though, only ever talked about sinning against his wife. My take was that she was a master at her critical work of building up her own self-esteem. She did a good job of keeping her husband impressed with her excellence and did so by continuously pointing out his insensitivity, selfishness, all-round brutishness and churlishness. Of course, this man wasn't particularly insensitive, really. And he was anything but a brute or churlish. He simply knew what his wife wanted him to cop to during morning worship and he did it over and over again.

This pastor is an example of the way brash women manipulate men into passivity and weakness...


The death of sodomy and sodomites...

For over a decade on this blog, I've used the word 'sodomy' to refer to... well... sodomy. One of the first to explain to me that the word was offensive was my seminary advisor, Dan Jessen. Since responding to Dan, I've been forced to respond continuously,1 and do still. On FB this week a young woman faulted me for using the word. She pronounced what I'd written to be "extreme," adding helpfully that "extremism of all kinds is dangerous."

What's really dangerous, though, is sodomy. Sodom shows how dangerous it is. God rained fire and brimstone, executing all the people of the city for their indulgence in "gross immorality." And what are we to learn from this? Jude tells us God killed the Sodomites so they would be "exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire."

But at the time, I'm guessing Sodomites would have laughed at being called "sodomites." They would have thought it extreme and pointed out that extremism is dangerous. They would have been tight with Darryl Hart and David VanDrunen's call for the nakedness of their public square. They liked naked...


Tom Brady: church and the football field...

Arguably, Tom Brady has been the best quarterback in the NFL for years now. Recently he had this to say about the distinction between church and the football field:

We’re not choirboys, I know that. You bring us up to a certain level of intensity to the game, your job is to go out there and physically, emotionally, mentally dominate the game. You don’t do that at church on Sunday. You’ve got to go to the football field for that.