Update: All of my Women in Ministry Silenced or Set Free? DVDs are available for downloading or viewing online here.
The DVDs also include audio bytes from those who disagree with women in ministry and we break down the arguments and compare the arguments to the Scriptures.
The 4 DVDs are broken up into scriptural passages as follows: …
The comments on the original post have gone over 400 comments and for some reason the original page is not properly loading just by the link so I will need to find out what the problem is. It does look fine when one goes to http://mmoutreach.org/wim and then scroll down to the March 26, 2010 post called “Adam and Eve and the sin nature that comes through the man – how does this affect the issue of women in ministry?” It is loading okay that way so that one can read the post but when one tries to read the comments that page won’t load. **update – It looks like the 175 pages of comments was just too much for the blog post and there is nothing I can do to get the comments to show up. In future I will try to start a second page sooner so that this doesn’t happen again** (Note – Dec 2012: I have updated the blog and I think all the comments are now back.)
The dialog has been lively and Mark our regular complementarian blog visitor has been going through his Calvinist proof texts with me as we dialog on John 6 verse by verse discussing sin and free will. Future comments should continue on this new part 2 post.
CBMW (Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) has set itself up as a go-to organization for those complementarians who have not been able to figure out from the Bible which things are allowable for women and which things are not. But does their counsel exceed the Bible? I would like to present the evidence and then let you decide.
In a sermon preached by J Ligon Duncan III and reproduced on CBMW’s website, Ligon Duncan writes that the “teaching office” of the Church is restricted to men. But what is the “teaching office” of the church? According to Ligon, the “teaching office” is the ministry of preaching and teaching in the church that is undeniably “vested in the men who serve as the elders of the church.” So the on-going preaching and teaching to the body of Christ is to be done by men. The problem really gets sticky for complementarians when it comes to women teaching other women. …
The path of the last Adam was a path that took Him from Heaven to earth, from the earth to the grave and from the grave to resurrection power on display as our Lord, Savior and King. But a study in contrast with the first Adam shows us the stark contrast to the faithfulness that the last Adam offers us in the place of the failure that we have experienced with our first earthly father.
1. Sinner vs Sinless …
The question has come up on this blog about whether Adam had a sin nature at the fall that would have been passed on to all of us, and if this is an issue that is important regarding women in ministry. After all, we need to know why it is that only Adam would bring sin into the world and if all of us have something “hanging” onto us from just on man, why is that? We need to know why sin didn’t come into the world through the woman. Is this because she was “under” the man so that anything she did was not placed on her account but on his account? These questions and more will be answered in this post. …
In our discussions on Genesis, there has been one puzzling question. If Adam alone sinned willfully and the woman fell into sin through deception, then why did God punish Eve so severely for her sin?
I would like to propose that we have had a misunderstanding of what happened when God dealt with Adam, the woman, and the serpent. There are only two acts by God that deal with guilt and curses and not three as tradition has taught us. Let’s look carefully at the passage. First of all, let’s look at how God dealt with the serpent:
Genesis 3:14 (NASB) The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life;
God speaks of blame by saying “Because you have done this…” and the result of the blame to the serpent is a curse. It isn’t a guess that God cursed the serpent because the inspired text says “cursed are you…”
Adam is also blamed by God in a very similar way:
Genesis 3:17 (NASB) Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
Notice again that God says “Because you have…” This is God’s blame and with the blame brings a curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” The “you” here is singular masculine, and the ground was cursed because of only one man’s sin. …
I am creating a new post to continue the great discussion that we have been having on a previous post while I am out of the country. The original discussion is on this post https://mmoutreach.org/wim/2009/07/05/wayne-grudem-part-2/ and since we have grown to over 240 comments, I would ask that we continue our discussions with Mark the complementarian here.
Many people think that God was especially hard on Eve after she was deceived by the serpent in the garden. In fact hierarchists have determined that God was so hard on Eve by punishing her with a multitude of lashes for her sin, that some might get the idea that God punished the one who was deceived in a more severe way than the one who sinned willfully and without remorse. Others are so confused about what God said to Eve many think that sexuality is a necessary evil that came after Adam and Eve left the garden, since Eve experienced no pregnancy before they left the garden. Understanding exactly what God did say to Eve can help to remove the misconceptions.
God’s words to Eve gives us the reason why Eve did not get pregnant in the garden after her marriage to Adam. It would not have been because Adam and Eve did not have normal marital relations. After all God blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply and marital relations is the normal way of making that happen. However Adam and Eve were created to live without dying and in that original creation, Eve’s rate of conception was not the same as it was after she ate the fruit and became subject to death. Let’s look at the first part of God’s words to Eve in Genesis 3:16. …
One of the most bizarre teachings of CBMW is the one taught in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in chapter 3 written by Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. Here Mr. Ortlund states that God pronounced the death sentence on Adam alone so that Eve died not because she ate of the forbidden fruit. According to Ortlund she died because of Adam’s sin. On page 110, Mr. Ortlund writes:
The fourth point here is that God told Adam alone that he would die. But Eve died, too. Why then did God pronounce the death sentence on Adam alone? Because, as the head goes, so goes the member. [emphasis mine] …
We have been looking at Genesis 3 and the fall of man. In this post I want to concentrate on Genesis 3:22-24 to see what we can understand from God’s words that result in God’s actions and why God judges differently between the man and the woman by bringing sin into the world only through the man.
In a previous post we saw that the original Hebrew reveals that God said “Behold, the man was like one of Us….” There is no justification in the original Hebrew for the translation that man became like God when he ate the fruit. This is a very significant point. God said that man was created like God and now he has added to that creation the experience of evil. In his fallen state his inclination would be to partake of what now is forbidden to him which previously was given freely. The tree of life was given to Adam to enjoy the fruit but must now be taken away to fulfill God’s word that “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die”.
Would Adam reach out to take of the fruit of the tree of life in his sinful state? The actions of God prove that this would be the case. …
In our continuing discussion about the fall of man, we have seen that there are no witnesses and no charge of sin against Eve for adding to God’s word. Therefore we must conclude without any charge of sin, that the woman did not add to God’s word. Can the same be said about Adam regarding his charge to guard the garden? Is there also no witness to Adam’s “sin”? Let’s have a look at the scriptural account.
In Genesis 2:15 we find out why God put Adam in the garden in the first place. Remember that man was made outside the garden and then brought into the newly planted Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. The Hebrew word “shamar” means to guard or to protect. Obviously if a garden needs to be guarded and God set forth a watchman over the garden, there was a need for protection. Let’s move on to God’s interaction with Adam to see what we can learn from God’s words.
Genesis 3:9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
In the Hebrew it clearly shows that the LORD God is calling out to the singular man not to both Adam and Eve. Here we can see God calling out to the watchman. What is God’s appointed watchman doing? The watchman is hiding. Will this watchman be called to account? …
In the last article we saw that God gave additional information to Adam and his wife regarding what they were allowed to eat and God gave freedom for them to be fruit inspectors as he gave them a test to know what was good food. In another post we will talk more about Eve’s words to the serpent and what happened that caused her to change her method of testing fruit.
In this article we will be discussing God’s requirements for Adam as watchman and the reason why God held Adam accountable for bringing sin and decay into the world. In Genesis 2:15 God sets up Adam as the very first watchman of the garden of Eve. God said:
Genesis 2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
The Hebrew word translated as “keep” is “shamar” which means guard or protect as a watchman or doorkeeper.
Darby’s translation renders Genesis 2:15 this way:
(Darby) Genesis 2:15 And Jehovah Elohim took Man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to till it and to guard it.
In the next of Matt Slick’s articles on women in ministry that I will be reviewing is his article called Primogeniture found at http://www.carm.org/womeninministry/primogeniture.htm
Matt gives what he considers to be the meaning of primogeniture:
“Primogeniture, the biblical teaching that the firstborn has preeminence and authority over those that follow in the family.”
I would like to ask where he gets such a definition from the bible? The correct definition of primogeniture from the dictionary is:
Where does it say that the firstborn has authority over those that follow in the family? The bible doesn’t say this and Matt seems to have picked up an error from CBMW that primogeniture is about people having the right to rule others just because they are first born.
While the first one born had the right to the inheritance from the Father, God bypassed man’s system at times to give the rights to one who was not firstborn. For example God calls Ephraim his firstborn in Jeremiah 31:9 even though Ephraim was the second one born and it was Manasseh who was the first one born. Jesus is the ultimate first born and he is called the first born of or over all creation as he is the pre-eminent one because he created all things. However the bible never says that a human creature is given the right to rule others just because he is the first one born.
The issue of primogeniture would not even come into play regarding men and women since Adam was not the first of siblings. Eve was his wife, not his brother. There is no place in Genesis that God gave Adam the right to rule over his wife and it wasn’t until sin entered the world that God told Eve in prophesy that this is what Adam would do to her, but God never said that it was his will nor did he tell Adam to rule Eve. His words were to Eve prophetically, not to Adam as a command or the giving of a right.
Matt’s article fails the test of truth in his effort to prove that God has given man the right to rule over women because man was created first. There is no right in primogeniture to rule over others and Jesus said that lording over others was something that was not to be heard among the followers of Christ. Matt’s article proves that those who seek to dominate and control others will grasp at straws to try to prove biblically their “right” to do so. However Matt’s “proof” of a man’s right to rule has no biblical basis at all.
In dealing with women in ministry, the question has been asked of me, isn’t circumcision a proof that God only wants men to minister through leading and teaching since God gave the sign of circumcision for males only to his people in the Old Testament? Did God give preferential treatment to males when he brought them into the Abrahamic covenant in the Old Testament through circumcision?
While some believe that the entrance into the Abrahamic covenant of blessing through circumcision gave preferential treatment for males, the fact is that only the males had a necessary ritual of entrance into the covenant and without this ritual, they were rejected as part of the covenant. Females entered the covenant without restriction and without rejection. To understand the reasons why, we need to look at the biblical requirement for circumcision.
Circumcision was performed on babies when they were 8 days old and if the parents did not circumcise their baby boy, the baby was rejected.
Gen 17:14 “But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
While some believe that Adam was the representative head of the human race and merely brought sin into the world because he was “head” (i.e. some say he was the covenantal head of humanity) the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin was more serious than Eve’s and it was the seriousness of his sin that brought humanity along with him into inherited sin.
Before we consider the seriousness of Adam’s sin, let’s make sure it was only Adam who brought sin into the world.
Romans 5:18, NASB says:
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men
Who was the one who committed this one transgression? Romans 5:14, 15 NASB: …
In Genesis chapter 3 God speaks to Eve about her future. Unfortunately God’s words have been interpreted by male expositors in a way that makes God out to be a false prophet. In Genesis 3:16 in the NASB, God said “In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband”
After the fall, God speaks about the future. In the quote above, God says “you will”. This is a prophetic utterance about the future and about the desire that Eve will have for her husband. What is this desire? In the Hebrew the word desire means a stretching out for – a longing for. The Complete WordStudy Dictionary describes this as the strong feelings of desire one had for another, but it wasnt always a healthy one. So is the “desire” of Genesis 3:16 a healthy desire or not? The word translated as “desire” is only found three times in the Old Testament.
In Song of Solomon 7:10 it says “I am my beloved’s, And his desire is for me.” This desire is a very healthy desire of a husband toward his wife. This desire is between a man and a woman.
In Genesis 4:7 it says “And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” This desire is a figurative desire of sin wanting to control a person.
So which kind of desire is God prophesying about in Genesis 3:16? Is it like the figurative desire of sin to control and to destroy? Or is it like the longing of one person for another? Almost every commentary you read, the male commentator says that God gave a judgment on the woman so that she will desire to rule over the man. But is this true? Can scripture be properly interpreted that way? First of all the fact that the woman will desire her husband is not God’s judgment against her. It is a prophecy that would be shortly fulfilled and the desire for the man is the natural longing of the woman in spite of the pain that she experiences from having his children and in spite of the domination that the man has over her. She will long for him in spite of all the reasons for her to want to stay away from him.
In a recent bible study class the instructor brought up these verses and said that it was God’s judgment that women would desire to rule their husbands. When we broke up into groups for discussion, the first thing that the women said was “I have no desire to rule or control the man.” Every one of the women in our group said the same thing.
If we take the interpretation that the male interpreters have put onto this passage, then it puts God into dire straits because he has predicted something that on the whole simply is not true. Perhaps the male expositors should have taken the time to ask women what their desires are and then they would have known for sure the proper way to interpret this verse. So what do women really want?
Women want men to love them emotionally. Women long for their men to hold them and speak tenderly to them and to be treated as if they were the only woman on this planet. Yes women want sex too, but sex is an outworking of the emotional bond between man and woman. Women are not like men. Women do not use emotions to get sex. Women throughout the centuries have naturally used sex to get emotional love. So what is it that women want? Women want and desire emotional love. Women’s innate desire is not to rule men.
I have spoken to many women about this verse and most think the concept about them desiring to rule men is abhorrent. They can’t even conceive of it. Think about the women in all the third world countries. Do they desire to rule men? No. They dream about and long for freedom from being dominated and controlled. Women just want to be free to be themselves, they aren’t looking to rule the men, and above all they want to be loved.
So why have men chosen to believe that God said that the woman would desire to rule her husband? It is only because they are men who don’t know the internal nature of women.
Now think about it this way- if God’s intention was to punish women by making them want to rule their husbands, then why is it world-wide that women are not trying to rule their husbands? Why is it that the womanâ’s natural state is one of being easily controlled? It is because the woman’s natural tendency is to please the man and to want to do whatever will get emotional love from him. God’s words about her desire are not a curse on the woman, they are a prophetic statement concerning the innate longing that the woman will have.
And within a very short time, God’s prophetic words will come to life. Think about this – God kicks Adam out of the garden of Eden. He does not kick Eve out. Why is that? Because God knows that Adam in his rebellious state will desire to eat from the tree of life. Eve was deceived into eating the forbidden fruit – she did not eat because she was acting in a rebellious way. So God kicks out the rebellious one.
Genesis 3:23 and 24: therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
God kicks out the rebellious Adam and he is forced out of the garden. So if God doesn’t kick Eve out, then why did she leave? It is so simple. God has already told us. He prophesied what was going to happen. Eve left because she desired her husband.