Biblical Feminists vs. Secular Feminists – Part 1...Feminism represents a crucial aspect of their...

Ministering to Women in the Church

Transcript - ML505 Ministering to Women in the Church © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 05 of 24ML505

Biblical Feminists vs. Secular Feminists – Part 1

Ministering to Women in the Church

This is lecture number five—a discussion of biblical feminists and secular feminists, part 1. We’re going to discuss in two lessons the traditionalist and feminist view concerning women. We will discuss the various camps within the feminist perspective and see how they use or do not use Scripture.

Feminism is a scary word to many and confusing because it encompasses such a broad spectrum of ideas, philosophies, and vast religious ramifications. Some Christians have embraced the feminist cause entirely; others reject it entirely, having been incensed by the heresies to the point that they are blinded to its worthier aspects. That leaves most Christians in the middle, struggling in their debate with one another to find the middle between the two extremes. Some lean to one pole; others to the opposite pole. But most seem to be searching to find the point of balance where they can embrace the good aspects of feminism while rejecting the bad. That search is especially difficult because of the sheer number and complexity of the issues and because of the emotional overtones of the debate.

In the beginning, it is necessary for us to define some key terms. The term feminist will be used to denote those who wish to eliminate all gender-based roles in society, up to and often including roles that are purely biological in nature. Their slogan is “Anatomy is not destiny.” The term traditionalist is one who wishes to maintain gender-based roles in society. The traditionalist argues that gender is a valid basis for defining social, not to mention biological, roles; that males and females are not equal in the sense of being interchangeable; and that society can and must observe gender differences.

There are basically three broad subgroups to be distinguished among the feminists. First, there are the secular feminists who come to their feminism by way of straightforward humanism that disallows any voice in the matter to God, revelation, or religion. Feminism represents a crucial aspect of their humanistic vision of what the world should be, and they advocate it with a great enthusiasm.

Lucy Mabery-Foster, PhD Experience: Professor of Pastoral Ministries,

Dallas Theological Seminary (1990-2002)



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Second, there are the liberal religious feminists. Susan Foh refers to this group as Christian feminists who maintain various ties with the Judeo-Christian religious establishment and who view themselves as moving somehow within that tradition. Although their feminist agenda is virtually indistinguishable from that of their secular counterparts, it is usually set forth within a liberal Jewish or Christian theological framework.

Third, there are evangelical feminists. Susan Foh refers to this group as biblical feminists who hold to conservative views of the Bible and theology, but who nevertheless embrace the feminist proposals to abolish gender-based roles in society, church, and home. Evangelical feminists believe that the Bible, which they consider authoritative, is congenial to feminist ideas when rightly understood, and they use it constantly to buttress their feminist proposals. The theological underpinning of the evangelical feminist view is Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This passage is perhaps the keystone of the entire evangelical feminist position.

Paul Jewett, a prominent evangelical feminist, calls it the “magna carta of humanity.” According to the feminists, Galatians 3:28 teaches that God has created in Christ a whole new order of relationships. The hierarchical view of social relationships is a product of the old order stemming from the fall. In the new order, all discrimination based on race, economic status, or sex is to be eliminated. In Christ, relationships between men and women should transcend the male/female division, so gender becomes irrelevant in shaping social roles and relationships. Evangelical feminists insist that the apostle Paul is speaking here not merely about an ontological equality of men and women in their standing before God, but of the practical outworking of that standing in society. Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty, also evangelical feminists, say that men and women do not lose their biological distinctives by becoming Christians, of course. But in the light of Galatians 3:28, all social distinctions between men and women should be erased in the church.

Taking such a view of Galatians 3:28 places the feminist in a pure conflict with numerous other passages of the New Testament, which seem to teach that Christians are to maintain gender-based roles. They handle their conflict in three ways. One, sometimes it is handled on the level of meaning or exegesis. Some feminists simply deny that the New Testament anywhere teaches a hierarchical model of male/female relationships. Evangelical feminists Herbert and Fern Miles, authors of Husband-Wife Equality, say, “There is nothing in Ephesians 5 that would even



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remotely indicate that wives are responsible to submit to their husbands.” Most of the feminist writings handle biblical passages with a bit more subtlety and sophistication than this, but the basic tactic remains the same. It is to change the meaning of the text from what it traditionally has been thought to teach to something that is more compatible with the feminist understanding of Galatians 3:28. Even Mollenkott says, “Although there are some feminists who think that all of Paul’s words and attitudes can be explained in a completely harmonious egalitarian fashion once we achieve a full understanding of the cultural conditions and the Greek usage involved, to date I have not found their interpretations convincing.”

The second approach is that many handle passages like this on the level of significance or application, saying that even though the writer sometimes taught a hierarchical model of male and female roles in several key passages, these teachings are no longer binding on twentieth- century Christians. This approach attempts to separate the merely cultural and temporary in the New Testament from that which is universal and timeless. As Scanzoni and Hardesty note, “An interpretation that absolutizes a given historical social order is unacceptable. Since the New Testament teaching of female subordination in the church and home is viewed as a given historical social order, it is therefore dismissed.”

The third approach is the conflict between Galatians 3:28 and the hierarchy passages is also sometimes handled on a theological level. This approach, which is clearly growing more popular among evangelicals, says in effect that Paul did teach a hierarchical model of male/female relationships, but he was simply in error. Mollenkott, in her article, “Pauline Contradictions and Bible Inspiration,” summarizes the problem by saying, “For Bible believers, the problem is that the apostle Paul seems to contradict his own teachings and behavior concerning women, apparently because of inner conflicts between the rabbinical training he had received and the liberating insights of the gospel.” She goes on to say that “any passages teaching hierarchy should be viewed as distorted by human instrument, reflecting merely Paul’s rationalizations rather than God’s truth.”

The obvious explanation concerning Galatians 3:28 is not something evangelical feminists will consider, but it needs to be said here that this passage says nothing explicitly whatsoever about how male and female relationships should be conducted in daily life. The feminists do acknowledge, however, that the context of Galatians 3 is theological not practical.



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Paul is here making a theological statement about the fundamental equality of both men and women in their standing before God. So any ideas about how this truth should work itself out in social relationships cannot be drawn from Galatians 3:28, but it must be brought to it from one’s broader understanding of the nature of things. There is nothing improper in suggesting such practical implications. Traditionalists do not claim that the truth of Galatians 3:28 is without social ramifications. They insist that the fundamental oneness in Christ of all Christians does carry profound implications for how Christians are to relate to one another. Where the traditionalists depart from the feminists, however, is in specifying what those implications should be. The feminists insist that the implication must be the elimination of all gender-based roles. Traditionalists ask simply, “Why?” This conclusion is not logically required at all. Ontologically, quality and social hierarchy are not mutually exclusive. Just as in the Trinity, the concept of ontologically quality and hierarchy of authority submission roles exists without conflict, so also may ontologically quality and hierarchy exist in the church and in the home without being logically incoherent.

We might ask ourselves at this point, “What are the social implications of Galatians 3:28?” Instead of jumping to eliminate all gender-based roles, we might let the Scriptures define what inferences should be drawn. Traditionalists find New Testament writers regulating rather than eliminating the hierarchical roles to prevent them from being abused. Wherever there is properly constituted authority, there is also the potential for abuse. Remember our consideration of the oracles in Genesis 3 as a result of the fall. Man would dominate woman. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, this domineering situation is replaced by loving leadership. Paul regulates these roles rather than eliminating them. This authority is to be used in such a way as to honor Christ, so those in authority—husbands, elders, parents, employers—are instructed in how to use their God-given authority in a godly way. Conversely, those who find themselves under a properly constituted authority—wives, servants, children, members of the congregation, citizens—are also instructed in how to fulfill their roles in a godly way. The result is not a society without authority-submission roles, but a social hierarchy ordained by God and carried out in a manner that fulfills the teaching of Christ in Matthew 20:25–28, “But Jesus called them to Himself and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not so among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”



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We can certainly make proper sense of the Bible, and there is no need to accept the extraneous inference that feminists bring to Galatians 3:28. Instead, we can objectively retain the general harmony of the various passages on male/female relationships. Duane Lifton says that “all of these passages fit together like a fine puzzle—fit together in a coherent pattern, but along comes another who is turning one of the pieces and insists that the puzzle does not really fit together at all. Rather he insists that most of the pieces must now be rejected because they form an unacceptable pattern; and in their place a whole new pattern must be designed which is more compatible with the piece that was twisted from its original position. He asks, “What prompts the feminist to insist on such a drastic redrawing of the pattern of New Testament teaching despite the fact that it’s necessary to do so?” In other words, since Galatians 3:28 does not demand the elimination of male/female roles in society, what does?”

Several years ago, I attended a national biblical conference where the keynote speaker for one portion of the conference was a world-renowned radical feminist. As I sat in the audience of close to two thousand people, I was astounded at her blatant heresy and the charisma with which she had captivated her audience. I began praying that God would strike this woman down because of her obvious swaying powers over so many people. As I began to pray and as she continued to speak, I noticed an increasing amount of agitation in her voice; and she stopped her lecture and asked, “If there’s anyone in the audience who believes in Pauline theology, I want you to get up and walk out.” Needless to say, I didn’t move, but continued praying. My prayer continued, asking God to at least mess up her concentration so that she would be exposed for who she was. She stopped her lecture a second time, saying in a very loud voice, “I don’t understand it. I can’t feel free to express myself.” She went back to her now blasphemous presentation of how one’s traditional views of God as Father Sovereign were too binding. I continued to pray, and she stopped her lecture a third time, shouting this time, “It must be the walls of this hotel, because I can’t find the freedom to express myself fully.”

This was very interesting to me, especially since she had claimed to have mystical powers. She never was able to single me out of the audience of around two thousand people. From that meeting, there emerged within me a curiosity to understand how so many Bible-professing people could be so mesmerized by obvious heresy. The feminist movement has come a long way from those initial days where the parameters were so easily defined. In 1963, Betty Friedan helped define modern feminism with her book The Feminine Mystique. In 1968, Mary Daly wrote her book The Church and the Second Sex.



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These were but parts of the current wave of a tide that has been encroaching on male dominion for over two hundred years. Yet that current wave is broader and more powerful than any of its precursors, and it seems to be part of a worldwide trend that may now be inexorable.

In the decades to come, this dismantling of distinctions between male and female will continue to surge forward. This certainly creates a dilemma for modern Christians as to how to respond to feminism. We must answer some very basic questions before we start.

Number one, “Can we believe the Bible?” Psalm 119:160 says, “The sum of Thy word is truth, and every one of Thy righteous ordinances is everlasting.” The next thing that we would to ask is “How much of it do we believe?” 2 Timothy 3:16 in the Amplified Version says, “Every Scripture is God-breathed, given by His inspiration and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, and for training in righteousness,” that is, the holy living in conformity to God’s will in thought, purpose, and action.

The whole of Scripture is authored by God. In 2 Peter 3:15–16, Peter says, “So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him.” Speaking of this, as he does in all his letters, there are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do other Scriptures. And in 2 Peter 1:20–21, Peter says, “First of all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

What is the extent of the Scripture’s authority over us? Christ said in John 8:51, “If anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.” And in John 14:23, He says, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.” Susan Foh says that if the Bible is God’s Word, only God can testify to it in His Word and by the eternal witness of the Holy Spirit in believers. In addition, all other doctrines of Christianity are derived from the Bible. If we cannot believe what the Bible says about itself, how can we believe what it says about the nature of God, the way of salvation, and other doctrines crucial to our faith? A major problem Christians face stems from a profound ambivalence towards feminism. On the one hand, Christians sense that there is much there to be embraced. If you know anything about history at all, you cannot deny that females have often been abused and oppressed at the hands of males.



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How could you not be angry at the prospect of a woman being paid a fraction of what a man earns for doing the same work? We are probably all embarrassed at the words of Tertullian which described women with these words, “You are the devil’s gateway. You are the unsealer of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image—man. On account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.”

We are probably equally surprised anew when reminded that it has only been since 1920 and the initiation of the nineteenth amendment that women were permitted to vote. Most of us at one time or another have probably espoused unbiblical views which were harmful to women. So I’m sure that we can find much in the feminist movement to be praised and supported. The problem comes because the worthy goals of the movement do not stand alone. They occur as part of a structure of thought that is so antibiblical that the boundaries are difficult to wade through. The question arises as to whether a Christian should embrace the movement with its heresy or reject it with its truth.

There are three important areas of theological debate—the doctrine of Scripture, the doctrine of God, and the doctrine of man. Your view of the Bible is crucial in determining how you will approach the feminist debate today. Secular feminists, of course, have no time for the Bible at all and are irritated at the very mention of it, so they consider the Bible to be a relic of antiquity that is useful only in providing more examples of how men have oppressed women through the years. They rule out all attempts to appeal to the Bible.

The doctrine of Scripture—let us look at that for a moment. Liberal religious feminists by contrast vary widely in their approach to the Bible. Some, like their secular counterparts, reject it altogether as an oppressive, patriarchal burden that must be cast off before any real progress can be achieved. Others of a less radical bent seek to retain from the Bible some semblance of the role it has placed in the church throughout the centuries, yet perhaps for motives more historical than theological. From such feminists, the Bible often receives much attention, but with feminist conclusions accused from the outset.

Many liberal religious feminists do not hesitate long before dismissing large portions of Scripture as being inauthentic, unhistorical, mythological, sexist, or simply erroneous. The freedom with which the liberal feminists revise or reject the Bible’s teaching stems from their view of the very nature of the Bible.



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Modern concepts of biblical revelation lend themselves to a pick-and-choose approach that allows the interpreter to accept what is congenial and leave whatever seems deficient. So, the liberal case for or against some point in the feminist debate, although often couched in biblical terms or concepts, is seldom dependent on biblical authority since such an argument from authority requires precisely the kind of Bible liberal views disallow.

In view of most modern theologians, revelation must not be equated with the Bible. Rather, revelation is viewed as the product of a personal encounter with God’s acts in history, preeminently in the act of God in Christ. The Bible may, therefore, be a fallible human witness to God’s revelation in history, but it is not itself revelation. To the liberal, all past Christian ideas, including those in the Bible, are open to evaluation, reformulation, or even rejection in the light of fresh encounters with God’s redemptive acts. Consequently, revelation is never finished and complete. It is always continuous, unfolding, building out of the process of culture and experience. With such a view of the Bible, it should come as no surprise that liberal Christian feminists show little patience with attempts to establish biblical concepts or patterns as normative for contemporary Christians. The Bible is merely a human witness to God’s dealings with His people in the past, not a handbook for the church today. To view the teachings of the Scriptures as God’s will for all times and places is according to that view absurd and represents a misunderstanding of the nature of the Bible. Therefore, liberal Christian feminists, although not ruling biblical arguments out of court, nevertheless set them aside as irrelevant whenever they contract established societal insights.

Evangelical feminists typically take a much less critical approach to the Bible. Admittedly, some are willing to question the Pauline genuineness of the Pastorals and the historicity of Genesis 2. For example, Paul Jewett raised doubts about the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy and distinguishes those epistles in this way. He says “both those that are directly from the apostle’s pen, and those that are indirectly so.” Both Jewett and Virginia Mollenkott speak of the story of Adam’s rib being poetic narrative, myth, or saga rather than history. Yet judged against the theological spectrum as a whole, even Jewett and Mollenkott must be placed in the conservative camp. But the question remains, “How do evangelical feminists square their feminism with a commitment to the authority of the Bible?” Since the traditionalists, the secular feminists, and most liberal religious feminists alike believe the Bible teaches the subordination of women, how is it that the evangelical feminists alone find their authoritative Bible upholding feminism?



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They have proposed a variety of complicated solutions. Number one, some have attempted to solve the problem exegetically, arguing that both ancient and modern readers have been reading the subordination of women into the text rather than deriving it from the text. Number two, other evangelicals have suggested that the problems must be seen as largely hermeneutical, having to do with the relevance of key biblical passages to a modern audience. According to that argument, the cultural baggage of the Bible must be discarded rather than set up as normative for today.

Their third argument: another position argues that even though the Bible does affirm the subordination of women, that aspect of biblical teaching is simply an error. This approach begins to blur any clear distinction between the evangelical and liberal feminists by requiring a canon within a canon view of inspiration. The Bible is no longer viewed in its entirety as God’s Word; rather, it is God’s Word mingled with elements of error contributed by the human authors, and the two must be sorted out by the interpreter. Traditionally, evangelicals have rejected such a view of the Bible, but evangelical feminists who resort to that means of squaring their feminism with conservative biblical commitments usually insist on retaining their evangelical credentials.

The next point of focus is the doctrine of God. For most feminists, the God of the ancient Christian creeds will not do. As feminists Elizabeth Clark and Herbert Richardson put it, “The emancipation of women, we are sure, will demand a new understanding of God. Traditional Christian concepts of deity are too patriarchal to support a feminist ideology.” Clark and Richardson argue, “So those concepts must be replaced with views more amiable to egalitarianism, which is the unquestioned first principle to which all else must be accommodated.”

To secular feminists, of course, egalitarianism, the first principle, requires the elimination of God altogether. Since secular humanists believe man must be his own god, feminism is free to flourish in this environment. Liberal religious feminists by contrast are more interested in redefining God and eliminating Him. Actually, God is not a “Him” at all. The overwhelming masculinity of the Bible references to God is merely another evidence of male-dominated patriarchal thinking throughout the centuries. Quite literally, the feminists believe men have made God in their own image. Conceptions of God as Father, Master, Lord, and King are resisted by feminists. They are, to put it bluntly, sexist.



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A more balanced approach that draws on the insights of women will see God to be something quite different from traditional portraits. Such modern definitions of God are infinitely more congenial to feminism. With those open-ended views of deity, the remaking of society becomes a constant priority. There is no divine pattern or design for the creature to discover or fulfill. God’s love is always on the side of liberation from structure and stereotypes, moving men and women toward freedom from all forms of oppression—overt or covert.

So the feminist movement becomes one of God’s most noble causes. The freedom to redefine God at will is a direct result of liberal views of revelation. So how do evangelical feminists who claim a finished and authoritative revelation in the Bible manage the conflict between the biblical picture and their egalitarian views? The answer is that although evangelical feminists sometimes find their conservative view of God to be heavy baggage, their commitments to the inspiration of the Bible prevent them from casting it aside. Liberal feminists find oppressive the biblical notion of a sovereign, immutable, personal God whose design and will is to be obeyed by His creatures, and they dismiss it as a typical projection of the long dominant male imagination.

A conservative view of Scripture, however, prevents such an easy dismissal, leaving evangelical feminists to the precarious task of balancing an ancient biblical view of the Creator with a modern egalitarian view of the culture. Since the two do not mix easily, both the ancient writers and today’s liberals appear more consistent in their divergent visions than the evangelical feminists who attempt to synthesize the two. Nonetheless, the difficulties have not dissuaded the evangelical feminists from trying; and the result has been a vast outpouring of literature over the past twenty years. In this literature, you’ll find that such doctrines as sovereignty, authority, and immutability, which are less agreeable to their egalitarianism, are usually ignored, and some of the more strident egalitarian demands, such as the elimination of all authority submission roles in society, are avoided or repudiated. In this way, the problems are minimized. But the main approach of the evangelical feminists is to argue that in Christ a new order was instituted in which all sex roles are swept away, as we saw in Galatians 3:28.

Egalitarianism is, therefore, a direct and necessary deduction from Christ’s redemptive work, a deduction that transcends or supersedes whatever social patterns may have existed before. Needless to say, how such a sweeping deduction would have been lost on Christ’s apostles—for it is nowhere taught and often contradicted in the New Testament—requires and receives a great deal of attention.



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The third point is the doctrine of man. Psalm 8:4 asks, “What is man that Thou dost take thought of him?” Secular feminists have little difficulty in responding to the question, but they can claim no authority but their own for the worth of their answer. Man, they believe, can be whatever he wants to be, but they insist that mankind be measured against no other yardstick but that of his own potential.

Liberal religious feminists, on the other hand, often speak of man as God’s creature. Man made in the image of God and even of God’s work in history to bring man to his full potential as typified in Jesus Christ. Yet beyond such God language, the scenarios of the secular and religious feminists sound much the same. What they share is a commitment to an egalitarian society that emphasizes unity rather than polarity, sameness rather than distinctiveness, wholeness rather than dichotomy.

For both groups, the goal is the transcendence of maleness and femaleness in the quest of an androgynous ideal. All stereotypes in society that emphasize sexual differentiation are viewed as pernicious and are to be resisted. According to the feminists, the healthiest people, the ones who are most acceptable and capable of handling the fullest range of human experience are those who can manifest both male and female responses. That is what it means to be androgynous. They draw from age-old ideas of mythology concerning Zeus, who split powerful androgynous beings because they attacked the gods; so to them dualities represent estrangement. They are unnatural and exist only to be overcome. Such crippling polarities as object/subject or reason/emotion or male/female, each so indicative of the alienation of the human situation in general and of Western culture in particular, must be integrated and correlated to find the deeper wholeness and unity that undergirds them. Therefore, the feminists emphasize egalitarianism, interchangeability, and freedom from sex roles in the social realms, which results in attacks against traditional concepts of hierarchy, authority, and obedience.

The secular or liberal feminists’ social views here are merely the visible manifestation of their deeper philosophical or theological commitments. The idea of God as being a nonauthoritarian leads naturally to feminist conclusions. They reject God as Sovereign Father and Lord, saying that this concept leads to alienation, polarity, and hierarchy and is responsible for much of the oppression history has known.



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Sheila Collins in her book Toward a Feminist Theology says, “The feminist theology does not cease then as an event that happened or is something that people do. Rather, it defines sin as a basic alienation within the psyche of failure, if you will, till they claim to that part of one’s humanity which makes them endogenous.” Sin is not so much a falling away from God or a deliberate transgression of a divine being’s order, as it is a failure to recognize the God within us and in our fellow creatures. For the feminists, salvation is that discovery in celebration of the other type—the male and female concept in ourselves. When men discover their femininity and women discover their masculinity, then perhaps we can form a truly liberating and mutually enriching partnership.

So how can we as evangelicals, holding as we do to traditional views of God, take hold of an unreserved feminism so deeply rooted in liberal ideas of God and reality? The answer must be that we cannot. Most of the evangelical feminists are not aware of the philosophical roots of their pleas for the elimination of gender-based roles. What it appears that they have done is to have appropriated their culture’s political and social goals uncritically and are now striving to overcome the resulting inconsistencies.

Not all evangelical feminists have opted for their feminism naively, of course. One who has not is Jewett. Jewett is a respected evangelical theologian and as such has attempted to avoid major inconsistencies by rejecting some of the more radical feminist ideas on the one hand, and by fudging on his evangelical views on the other. For example, he rejects as unbiblical the concept of the androgyny, but on the other hand, he hedges on a traditional evangelical view of Scripture by holding that some of Paul’s teachings in the Bible are in error.

The greatest difficulty for the evangelical feminist is that in the end the Bible does teach sex roles, the Bible does teach hierarchy, the Bible does teach male authority, and the Bible does teach female submission. To be sure, the biblical versions of those concepts must be distinguished from both their sinful abuses throughout history and their caricatures as found in feminist rhetoric. Liberals largely reject the biblical worldview and traditionalists largely embrace it. But both agree that it comes from the Bible. Only the evangelical feminists attempt to have it both ways, pleading at once for a traditional theology and a feminist society. But is this not a house divided against itself? How long can it stand?

Is the problem with evangelical feminism bound by the spirit of the New Testament alone, or is it bound by the spirit of this present age? What is our worldview? What is the worldview of the evangelical feminists?


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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Our worldview is a definition of reality which is based on the assumption that a sovereign, personal God designed and ordered the universe to function in a particular way, and the finest achievement of the creature is to discover that design and fulfill it. At its essential level, this design is not open to change or redefinition. God has revealed His authoritative will in a finished revelation to man; and each person’s task is to obey that will by fulfilling the appropriate role God has assigned to him or her in the overall design of creation.

Crucial to this worldview, according to the Bible, are the concepts of authority and hierarchy. God is the source not simply of all authority, He is the source of the very concept of authority. As Romans 13:1 says, “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” This concept is woven throughout the entire Bible. Far from being something extraneous to the Word of God—a kind of excess baggage that can be jettisoned while retaining the essential truth of the Scriptures—these ideas are the essential truth of the Scriptures. We cannot reject them, for we must adhere to the Bible in its entirety. It is what Christians have consistently discovered in the pages of the Bible from the beginning.

Even more significant is the observation that most secular and liberal Christian feminists find these things in the Bible as well. They usually portray this biblical worldview as unattractively as possible and then reject it. Yet in the essentials, they and the traditionalists agree on the basic worldview that the Bible seems to be teaching.

What we are doing, it seems, is going back to the book of Genesis and doing what happened in the garden of Eden. We are looking at the Word of God, we are asking ourselves, “Is God really teaching these things?” and then as we question the Word of God, we begin to reject it. We reject it, and we walk away from a sovereign God who has given us His Word for all time.

In our next lesson, we will investigate further what our humanistic society does adopt as its basis of action.

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