Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

by Wayne Grudem
Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

by Wayne Grudem

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Overview

Wayne Grudem expresses his concern that evangelical feminism, or egalitarianism, is becoming the new path by which evangelicals are being drawn into theological liberalism.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781581347340
Publisher: Crossway
Publication date: 09/13/2006
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Wayne Grudem (PhD, University of Cambridge) is Distinguished Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary. He is a member of the Translation Oversight Committee for the English Standard Version of the Bible, the general editor of the ESV Study Bible, and the author of over twenty-five books.

 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I am concerned that evangelical feminism (also called "egalitarianism") has become a new path by which evangelicals are being drawn into theological liberalism.

When I use the phrase "theological liberalism" I mean a system of thinking that denies the complete truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God and denies the unique and absolute authority of the Bible in our lives. When I speak of "evangelical feminism" I mean a movement that claims there are no unique leadership roles for men in marriage or in the church. According to evangelical feminism, there is no leadership role in marriage that belongs to the husband simply because he is the husband, but leadership is to be shared between husband and wife according to their gifts and desires. And there are no leadership roles in the church reserved for men, but women as well as men can be pastors and elders and hold any office in the church.

In the following pages, I attempt to show several things:

(1) that liberal Protestant denominations were the pioneers of evangelical feminism, and that evangelical feminists today have adopted many of the arguments earlier used by theological liberals to advocate the ordination of women and to reject male headship in marriage

(2) that many prominent evangelical feminist writers today advocate positions that deny or undermine the authority of Scripture, and many other egalitarian leaders endorse their books and take no public stance against those who deny the authority of Scripture

(3) that recent trends now show that evangelical feminists are heading toward the denial of anything uniquely masculine, and some already endorse calling God "our Mother in heaven"

(4) that the history of others who have adopted these positions shows that the next step is the endorsement of the moral legitimacy of homosexuality

(5) that the common thread running through all of these trends is a rejection of the effective authority of Scripture in people's lives, and that this is the bedrock principle of theological liberalism

As I have taught for nearly thirty years in Christian colleges and seminaries, people have often asked me, "How do Christian colleges that were once Bible-believing, conservative colleges become so liberal, eventually denying the Bible in what is taught on campus?" Others have asked me, "How have so many denominations that used to be Bible- believing denominations now abandoned belief in the Bible? Why do liberal pastors now preach whatever is popular in the current culture rather than proclaiming the truth of the Bible as the Word of God?"

There are several different reasons, of course. But giving in to cultural pressure is often a significant factor. In every generation there are popular views in the culture that contradict what the Bible says, and it is so easy to compromise at one point or another.

In the early twentieth century it was so easy to give in to the liberal emphasis on "the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" and say that people are essentially good, and they don't need a Savior who died for their sins, and there is no such thing as hell. By following this reasoning many Christian churches followed the culture and drifted into liberalism.

Through much of the twentieth century it was easy to give in to the dominant "scientific" worldview and say that genuine miracles can't happen because they violate the "laws of nature," and so the virgin birth of Christ and other miracles in the Bible did not really happen, but that does not matter because the Bible still teaches us how to live a moral life. By following this reasoning many Christian churches followed the culture and drifted into liberalism.

Today, for scholars who work in the scientific community, it would be so easy to give in to the dominant view in the culture and say that all living things simply "evolved" from nonliving matter through random mutation and did not come about by direct design and creation by God. But those who adopt evolution as their explanation for the origin of life just follow the culture and drift into liberalism.

It can happen in any area. It happens when people grow weary of defending Jesus' words, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Then it can be so easy to give in to the pressures of our tolerance-riddled culture and say that "all religions are different paths to the same God." And then the unique message of the gospel that alone tells us how our sins can be forgiven is lost, and Christian churches just follow the culture into liberalism.

I believe the same thing is happening today with evangelical feminism. There is tremendous pressure in present-day culture to deny male leadership in the home and the church. To prove that, just ask any pastor if he enjoys preaching and teaching about male headship in marriage and the church today. Almost nobody wants to tackle the subject! It is "too controversial," which means it will stir up objections and many people will be upset. It is not easy to stand against the culture. It is much easier to give in and say women can do whatever men can do in the church and in the home.

But what about all those Bible verses that talk about male leadership in home and church? Something has to be done with them, so for the last thirty years evangelical feminist scholars have devised thousands of pages of arguments attempting to show that those parts of the Bible don't apply to us today, or don't mean what people have always thought they mean, or aren't part of the Bible, or are contradicted by experience, or are simply wrong. And so, as I explain in the following pages, the authority of the Bible is undermined.

When that happens, little by little, step by step, colleges and churches and denominations start to slide toward liberalism. This is because the claims and arguments that evangelical feminists adopt about these specific passages in the Bible set in motion a process of interpreting Scripture that will be used increasingly to nullify the authority of Scripture in other areas as well. One by one, the teachings of Scripture that are unpopular in the culture are rejected, and, one issue at a time, the church begins to sound more and more like the secular world. This is the classic path to liberalism. And I believe that evangelical feminism is leading Christians down that path one step at a time today.

The late Francis Schaeffer, one of the wisest and most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, warned of this exact trend just a few months before his death in 1984. In his book The Great Evangelical Disaster he included a section called "The Feminist Subversion," in which he wrote:

There is one final area that I would mention where evangelicals have, with tragic results, accommodated to the world spirit of this age. This has to do with the whole area of marriage, family, sexual morality, feminism, homosexuality, and divorce. ...

The key to understanding extreme feminism centers around the idea of total equality, or more properly the idea of equality without distinction. ... the world spirit in our day would have us aspire to autonomous absolute freedom in the area of male and female relationships — to throw off all form and boundaries in these relationships and especially those boundaries taught in the Scriptures. ...

Some evangelical leaders, in fact, have changed their views about inerrancy as a direct consequence of trying to come to terms with feminism. There is no other word for this than accommodation. It is a direct and deliberate bending of the Bible to conform to the world spirit of our age at the point where the modern spirit conflicts with what the Bible teaches.

My argument in the following pages demonstrates that what Schaeffer predicted so clearly twenty-two years ago is increasingly coming true in evangelicalism today. It is a deeply troubling trend.

I am not the only one who has reached this conclusion. In the widely influential blog "Together for the Gospel," Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., recently wrote:

it is my best and most sober judgment that this position [egalitarian-ism] is effectively an undermining of — a breach in — the authority of Scripture. ... it seems to me and others (many who are younger than myself) that this issue of egalitarianism and complementarianism is increasingly acting as the watershed distinguishing those who will accommodate Scripture to culture, and those who will attempt to shape culture by Scripture. You may disagree, but this is our honest concern before God. It is no lack of charity, nor honesty. It is no desire for power or tradition for tradition's sake. It is our sober conclusion from observing the last 50 years....

Of course there are issues more central to the gospel than gender issues. However, there may be no way the authority of Scripture is being undermined more quickly or more thoroughly in our day than through the hermeneutics of egalitarian readings of the Bible. And when the authority of Scripture is undermined, the gospel will not long be acknowledged.

On a more personal level, I want to say that I consider a number of the authors whom I name in this book to be my friends. And I consider a number of the executives at many of the colleges, seminaries, and publishing houses that I name in this book to be my friends as well. I want to say something to you at the outset.

I realize that many of you have not personally moved along the path toward liberalism that I describe in this book. You simply decided (for various reasons) that you thought the Bible does not prohibit women from being pastors or elders today, and you have changed nothing else in your theological system. You haven't moved to liberalism and you wonder why I wrote this book arguing that evangelical feminism leads to liberalism.

In fact, I agree with your strong desire to see women's gifts and ministries developed and encouraged in our churches, and I have written elsewhere about the many important ministries that I think should be open to both men and women.

In addition, I realize that most of you do not think you are leading churches and schools toward liberalism at all. After all, you personally love Jesus Christ and love the Bible and teach it effectively. How, you might think, could that contribute to liberalism? And furthermore, you know others who take the same approaches, and they haven't become liberal, have they?

In fact, I have a number of egalitarian friends who have not moved one inch toward liberalism in the rest of their doctrinal convictions, and who still strongly believe and defend the inerrancy of the Bible. I include among this number strong defenders of biblical inerrancy such as Stan Gundry (senior vice president and editor in chief of the Book Group at Zondervan Publishing Company); Jack Hayford (founding pastor of the Church on the Way, Van Nuys, California); Walter Kaiser (former president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary); Roger Nicole (former professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and at Reformed Theological Seminary–Orlando); and Grant Osborne (professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois). These men are respected senior scholars and leaders in the evangelical world. If they can hold to an evangelical feminist or egalitarian position without moving toward liberalism themselves, then how can I argue in this book that evangelical feminism is a new path toward liberalism?

I do so because of the nature of the arguments used by evangelical feminists, arguments that I explain in some detail in the following pages. I realize that a person can adopt one of these arguments and not move any further than that single step down the path to liberalism for the rest of his life. Many of these leaders have done just that. But I think the reason they have not moved further toward liberalism is that they have not followed the implications of the kind of argument they are using and have not taken it into other areas of their convictions. However, others who follow them will do so. Francis Schaeffer warned years ago that the first generation of Christians who lead the church astray doctrinally change only one key point in their doctrinal position and change nothing else, so it can seem for a time that the change is not too harmful. But their followers and disciples in the next generation will take the logic of their arguments much further and will advocate much more extensive kinds of error. I think that is happening in a regular, predictable way in evangelical feminism, and I have sought to document that in this book.

Therefore, to all of my egalitarian friends, I ask you to consider care fully the arguments and the pattern of arguments that I discuss in this book. You may think you are doing nothing wrong, or you may think that if you adopt a doubtful or questionable interpretation here or there, it won't matter much. But I am asking you to stop and consider what is happening in the evangelical feminist movement as a whole, how the trend is to undermine the authority of Scripture again and again at this verse or in that phrase or this chapter or that context.

You may think your own role in this does not influence the larger debate, but, like the soldier in a battle line who thinks that his place is not that important, if you give way at one point you may provide a huge opening for an enemy to flood in and overrun large sections of the church.

It is easy to pick up a new article or book, skim through the argument, and think, "Well, I can't agree with his (or her) approach to this verse, or that argument, but at least the book is supporting what I know to be right: the inclusion of women in all aspects of ministry. Maybe this argument or that one is not acceptable, but I can approve the result just the same." And so, one after another, the egalitarian arguments that I list in this book accumulate and the Christian public accepts them.

But what if the assumptions made, and the interpretative principles used, actually do undermine the authority of Scripture time and again? Does that make any difference to you? If you allow arguments to stand that undermine Scripture again and again, just because you think the author "got the right answer for the wrong reason," isn't that eroding the foundation of your church for the future? If Scripture-eroding arguments go unchallenged in your circles, how can you protect your church or your organization in the future? While you personally may not change much else in your beliefs, your students and others who follow your leadership will take the principles you have used much further and will abandon much more than you expect.

Please consider what I say in these pages. I hope you will be persuaded, and will perhaps even change your mind on some of the arguments you have used, or even on the conclusions you have drawn. But even if at the end you are still convinced that an egalitarian position is correct, will you at least decide to challenge publicly some of the evident steps toward liberalism that other egalitarians have supported? With all of the steps toward liberalism that I detail in these pages, it surprises me to see how few egalitarian leaders publicly object to any of these arguments. I hope I can count on some of you to do so.

To other readers who are undecided on this question or who are already complementarians, I would say this: As you read this book, if you become increasingly troubled about the trends I describe, then I hope you will pray and speak up and serve in your own churches in such a way that any trends toward liberalism can be stopped, so that your church will remain faithful to God's Word for the next generation.

But I also want you to be careful not to overreact and start to become more "conservative" than the Bible! This would lead to a wrongful legalism that would restrict mature, godly, gifted women from rightful ministries, as has too often been done in the past. Such legalism can lead to a loss of God's blessing as well, and it can destroy churches as readily as liberalism (see Gal. 2:4-5; 5:1; Titus 1:10-11). I have explained elsewhere in some detail where I believe the Bible gives freedom and encouragement for women to minister in many different ways in churches today, and I will not repeat that discussion here. Stated briefly, I believe that "some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men," but apart from those specific governing and teaching roles all ministries are open to both men and women alike. We must obey every part of the Bible that applies to our situations today, but we also must be careful not to add to the rules of Scripture and place more restrictions on others than the Bible itself teaches (see Rom. 14:110; 1 Tim. 4:1-5; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; Ps. 119:1; Prov 30:5-6). It is possible to make a mistake in both directions.

"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" (Deut. 4:2).

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Evangelical Feminism"
by .
Copyright © 2006 Wayne Grudem.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

PREFACE,
PART I: SOME PATHS TO LIBERALISM IN RECENT HISTORY,
1 INTRODUCTION,
2 THE HISTORICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN LIBERALISM AND THE ENDORSEMENT OF WOMEN'S ORDINATION IN THE CHURCH,
PART II: EVANGELICAL FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE OR DENY THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE,
INTRODUCTION TO PART II,
3 SAYING THAT GENESIS IS WRONG,
4 SAYING THAT PAUL WAS WRONG,
5 SAYING THAT SOME VERSES FOUND IN EVERY MANUSCRIPT ARE NOT PART OF THE BIBLE,
6 "LATER DEVELOPMENTS" TRUMP SCRIPTURE,
7 "REDEMPTIVE MOVEMENT" TRUMPS SCRIPTURE,
8 IS IT JUST A MATTER OF CHOOSING OUR FAVORITE VERSES?,
9 CAN WE JUST IGNORE THE "DISPUTED" PASSAGES?,
10 DOES A PASTOR'S AUTHORITY TRUMP SCRIPTURE?,
11 TEACHING IN THE PARACHURCH?,
12 TRADITION TRUMPS SCRIPTURE,
13 EXPERIENCE TRUMPS SCRIPTURE,
14 "CALLING" TRUMPS SCRIPTURE,
15 "PROPHECIES" TRUMP SCRIPTURE,
16 CIRCUMSTANCES TRUMP SCRIPTURE,
17 CALLING A HISTORICAL PASSAGE A JOKE,
18 THE RESULT OF REJECTING THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE IN THESE WAYS,
PART III: EVANGELICAL FEMINIST VIEWS BASED ON UNTRUTHFUL OR UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS,
INTRODUCTION TO PART III,
19 DISRUPTIVE WOMEN IN CORINTH?,
20 WOMEN HOMEOWNERS AS ELDERS?,
21 WOMEN DEACONS WITH AUTHORITY?,
22 UNEDUCATED WOMEN IN EPHESUS?,
23 WOMEN TEACHING FALSE DOCTRINE IN EPHESUS?,
24 WOMEN TEACHING A GNOSTIC HERESY IN EPHESUS?,
25 DOES "HEAD" MEAN "SOURCE"?,
26 STRANGE MEANINGS FOR "AUTHORITY"-ARE THEY RIGHT?,
27 IS THE SON NOT SUBORDINATE TO THE FATHER IN THE TRINITY?,
28 WOMEN BISHOPS IN THE EARLY CHURCH?,
29 THESE TEN UNTRUTHFUL OR UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS ALSO UNDERMINE THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE,
PART IV: WHERE IS EVANGELICAL FEMINISM TAKING US?,
30 THE NEXT STEP: DENIAL OF ANYTHING UNIQUELY MASCULINE,
31 ANOTHER TROUBLING STEP: GOD OUR MOTHER,
32 THE FINAL STEP: APPROVAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY,
33 SOME COMPLEMENTARIANS HELP EVANGELICAL FEMINISTS BY BEING HARSH, MEAN, OR ABUSIVE,
34 SOME COMPLEMENTARIANS HELP EVANGELICAL FEMINISTS BY BEING COWARDLY OR SILENT,
35 PLACES WHERE EVANGELICAL FEMINISM ALREADY HAS MUCH INFLUENCE,
36 WHAT IS ULTIMATELY AT STAKE: THE BIBLE,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Biblical authority is at stake in the debate between complementarianism and egalitarianism-because if you can get egalitarianism from the Bible, you can get anything from the Bible. The weight of Grudem's cumulative argument is considerable, and cannot easily be dismissed."
—Ligon Duncan, Chancellor and CEO, Reformed Theological Seminary

"While authors and scholars sympathetic to egalitarianism may be loath to consider they may in fact be wrong, Grudem pleads with his readers to reconsider their positions."
—Michael Easley, Pastor, Fellowship Bible Church, Brentwood, Tennessee

"The entire Body of Christ owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Wayne Grudem for his courage in taking on what has become a Goliath within the camp of modern-day evangelicalism."
—Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author; Founder, Revive Our Hearts and True Woman

"Wayne Grudem takes a vital stand and encourages us to join him. He tackles the issue firmly and fairly and with the clarity we have come to expect."
—Alistair Begg, Senior Pastor, Parkside Church, Chagrin Falls, Ohio

"However fervently we hope that the answer to this book's question is a resounding no, Grudem furnishes evidence that cannot be lightly dismissed."
—Robert W. Yarbrough, Professor of New Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary

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