Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (2): they are "joyfully committed"...

(This is the second post in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth.)

On to our examination of the Report itself. We'll use screen shots so we can refer to line numbers.

In the first sentence of the Report (Line 10), readers are assured each of the Committee members are "joyfully committed" to "the Bible's teaching on the complementarity of men and women."

First, that word "complementarity." "Complementarian" is a shibboleth, a word used to communicate the man entering the camp is not the enemy. Among most Evangelicals, saying you're a "complementarian" makes you OK whether or not you can spell it.

Trust is important in our age when sex is such a bloody battlefield.

Many pastors and elders opposed this study committee because they were concerned it would lead to capitulation to the forces of feminism. Then, when the Committee's members were announced, they were even more concerned watching Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, seated as a voting member.

In direct violation of Scripture and the PCA's Constitution, Tim Keller has long had women officers in his church, so the appointment of his wife to the Committee was a clear statement...

both in her being a woman and her husband being a very public rebel against Scripture's doctrine of sexuality. Those in submission to Scripture and the PCA's Book of Church Order knew the Committee was not to be trusted. Anyone with discernment would expect the committee to lead the denomination to normalize the capitulations to feminism Kathy's husband has practiced and promoted.

This is why the committee trots out the shibboleth of complementarianism in its very first sentence. They're working hard to reassure everyone:

All of us are "joyfully and confessionally committed to the Bible's teaching on the complementarity of men and women."

Trust us. Nevermind Tim Keller's head deacon being a woman. Nevermind his church having women officers for decades, now. Nevermind his long practice of women taking part in his session meetings. Nevermind Kathy teaching Scripture's doctrine of sexuality to the men of her church. Everyone can be at ease because all of us on this Committee joyfully affirm complementarianism.

So what is complementarianism?

It's a word invented almost forty years ago by a group of Evangelical academics who wanted to limit the application of male authority to the privacy of the Christian home and church. Thinking they would be better able to defend Biblical sexuality in the private Christian spheres of home and church if they abandoned it elsewhere, they announced they were "complementarians" and capitulated everywhere other than the Christian home and church. From the beginning Wayne Grudem led this compromise saying over and over (and for four years I listened to him say it) that "the Bible is silent on male headship outside the church and the home."

Of course, as two-thousand years of church fathers have preached and taught, the Bible is anything but silent about male headship outside private Christian spheres. The universal doctrine of the Church has been that God made Adam first, then Eve, and thus His decree of male headship is the universal principle of authority across His creation. Male headship is God's Father-authority writ large across His creation. Thus "in Adam we all died." The Bible does not say "in Adam and Eve we all died."

Similarly, it is "through one man"—not one man and one woman—that  "sin entered into the world" (Romans 5:12).

Yet somehow, to our utter shame, the Evangelical church has come to see the complementarian compromise as the golden standard of Biblical faithfulness concerning the meaning of manhood and womanhood. Thus the Committee can think of nothing more reassuring to say in their first sentence than that they are "joyfully and confessionally committed to the Bible's teaching on the complementarity of men and women."

Their reassurances continue with the second sentence:

As a denomination, we believe that this teaching is true, good, and beautiful.

And the third:

We affirm the full dignity of men and women as created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28).

And again, the fourth:

We also humbly and happily embrace Scripture’s clear teaching that the eldership is to be composed of qualified men (1 Tim. 2:12; 3:1-7; 14 5:17), who are entrusted by Christ with the ministry of the authoritative teaching and ruling of the church for the building up of the whole body (Eph. 4:11-13).

This report needs careful exegesis, more so considering it's neither inspired nor inerrant.

Note how over-the-top the committee's verbiage is. Committee members affirm Scripture's doctrine of sexuality "joyfully" as "true," "good," and "beautiful." They "affirm." They believe in "full dignity." "Humbly" and "happily," they "embrace" Scripture's doctrine of male headship."

Each of these words is carefully chosen to reassure the members of the Presbyterian Church in America that all the Committee members' motives are as pure as pure can be. Not one of them has even the slightest inclination against male headship. Among them, there is nothing but joy and happiness and affirmation of God's Order of Creation of Adam first, then Eve. They celebrate Scripture's commands to wives to submit to their husbands with joyful abandon. Scripture's prohibition of women teaching and exercising authority over men is the very thing they absolutely adore!

Can this be true?

Of course not. Their first paragraph is a classic example of the lady protesting too much:

Oh my dear, my sweetheart, my darling, my splendid and awesome and handsome lover! Of course I didn't sleep with your best friend. How could I ever hurt the man I love so very, very, very, much?

Men and women today who claim they have nothing but "joy" over the "true, good, and beautiful" doctrine of male headship, and that they live to "affirm" it, to "humbly and happily embrace it," are one of two things: they're either liars or they are completely lacking in self-awareness—take your pick and it's hard to tell which is worse.

Every last one of us, myself and my wife included, resents having to live, teach, and preach male headship today. We have none of that highly vaunted "passion" for the doctrine. Husbands are not joyful about the Bible's requirement that we "command" our wives to "to keep the way of the Lord" (Genesis 18:19). Wives are not joyful about the Bible's requirement that they submit to their husband "in everything" (Ephesians 5:24).

Truth be told, if the reader has any discernment at all, the Committee's many flowery assurances will do the very opposite of what they intend them to do. Instead of softening us up to trust the tens of thousands of words to follow, they will put us on guard. They'll leave us on guard against a deceptive admixture of truth, equivocations, and lies promulgated by men (and two women) who, both corporately and individually, lack awareness of the rebellion and deceitfulness that remain in their hearts.

It's time to sew this one up, but here's one last observation before we end. Did you notice the Committee spoke for you when they used all that flowery verbiage? They're not only claiming for themselves that they joyfully, humbly, and happily embrace male headship as true, good, and beautiful. They're claiming it for every last member of the Presbyterian Church in America!

Everyone in the PCA joyfully, humbly, and happily embraces male headship as true, good, and beautiful, so to bed, to bed, you sleepyhead. 

Shhhh. Night-night. Lay your head on the pillow and close your eyes. Now then, let me sing you a lullaby:

The Presbyterian Church in America is joyfully and confessionally committed to the Bible's teaching on the complementarity of men and women. As a denomination, we believe that this teaching is true, good, and beautiful. We affirm the full dignity of men and women as created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). We also humbly and happily embrace Scripture’s clear teaching that the eldership is to be composed of qualified men (1 Tim. 2:12; 3:1-7; 5:17), who are entrusted by Christ with the ministry of the authoritative teaching and ruling of the church for the building up of the whole body (Eph. 4:11-13). In marriage, this mutually-edifying complementarity is displayed when a Christian husband expresses his responsibility of headship in sacrificial love to his wife (Eph. 5:23-31) and when a Christian wife welcomes her husband's headship with respect (Eph. 5:22-24, 33).

Within this framework of our common and principled commitment to complementarianism as defined by our confessional standards and polity, the 44th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America approved the formation of a study committee on the issue of women serving in the church’s ministry in ways that are consistent with those standards. 

Here in our pristine ecclesiastical fellowship there's nary a danger. No unfaithfulness. No disobedience. Certainly no rebellion. No attack upon Scripture's doctrine.

There's no enemy to be fought within the church—except of course the enemy of the elder brother who never stops parading his moralism and negativity. Isn't he sad? Pathetic, really. He's so insecure in his masculinity that he can't handle women being all they can be. But you and I, we're different, aren't we?

We want women to use all their gifts everywhere they want.

Except when it comes to tie-breaking authority in the privacy of the Christian home and voting on the discipline of men in the privacy of church elders meetings.

Maybe preaching and teaching in the privacy of the church's sanctuary also, although the members of our committee don't all agree on that one.