John MacArthur and Beth Moore

God does not have opinions.

 

Oh my goodness. Your rigidity is impressive.

 

Your lack of understanding is impressive.

”Opinion :A belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge”

Now, do you see why the omniscient, omnipotent, Creator if the universe does not have "opinions"?

 

Congratulations, you have become the first person I ignore at the Baptist board.

 

I am truly thankful for that.

 

Yet the problem for female teachers and pastors and Elders remains that there is NO single support for any of that anywhere in the NT scriptures! What verse would you rely upon to prove otherwise? And God does gift women to be His servants, just not in those areas ordained for men alone....

 

Pastors and Elders are the same thing. I have already stated that leadership of the fellowship is given to men who love the congregation as Christ loves the church.
I have already explained how Paul states that he did not presently, at that moment, allow women to teach. The grammar suggests that a time would come when women could teach.
My point is always that God very clearly has gifted women with all the spiritual gifts that men have. He calls all Christians to use the gifts He has given. Since God does gift some women with the gift of teaching, do you stand against what God has given and deny women the opportunity to use their God-given gift?
It is important to me that we differentiate between leadership roles and teaching roles. I contend that they are different and that God gifts women as teachers, but calls men to leadership.
W

 

Women will lead and teach when the Genesis Curses are done away with and Paradise is restored to earth.

 

With all due respect, you are making a correlation and assertion that is not made in scripture.

 

In the 1980s the SBC passed a resolution proclaiming that "Paul...excludes women from pastoral leadership (1 Tim. 2:12) to preserve a submission God requires because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall (1 Tim. 2:13ff)," and declared "pastoral functions and leadership roles entailing ordination" off limits to women.

Albert Mohler joined other Louisville-area Southern Baptists in taking out a large newspaper ad expressing their disapproval of the resolution.

 

I listened to a study on the role of women in the church recently. 1 Corinthians 15:34 is justification for the restrictions on women in Corinth. The only command the pastor doing the study found in the Law that applies is Genesis 3:16. 1 Timothy 2:13-14 lays out the created order as why women cannot teach or lead men but reinforces it with the Fall. There is no marriage in heaven sinced women will be like the angels. Of course, this combined with a rescinding of male dominion will mean women will lead and teach.

 

That is a whole new can of worms. Yeah, the debated questions I know of are: What is pastoral leadership entail? And is teaching the scriptures and the doctrines they give what is meant by teaching?

We may have to do another post to discuss those questions.

 

A.T. Pierson preaching at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, 1892:

Hebrews 13:7
Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.

"This text, whatever may be its other value, is mainly of importance, because it indicates three tests of a genuine, God-sent leader. In the first place he speaks the word of God, in the second place his faith is fixed on a personal Saviour; and, in the third place, his life conforms to the Word of God and to the faith in Christ, and ends in a glorious immortality. Wherever we find those three indications meeting in any man or woman, we may recognize the heaven-sent leader, and it is at our peril if we do not follow such leadership." —A.T. Pierson

 

Pierson clearly went too far. That quote opens women as leaders, that is what he said, in a congregation if a woman is the only one holding to right doctrine and right application of the Word. This enhances the question of what is an elder.

 

Reformed Journal

"Women in public Christian ministry is a historic distinctive of evangelicalism....no other large branch of the Christian family has demonstrated as long and deep a commitment to affirming the public ministries of women – not theologically liberal traditions,...not Anglicanism or other mainline Protestant traditions. I am defining 'public ministry' as Christian service to adult believers – including men – that takes one or more of the following forms: preaching, teaching, pastoring, administering the sacraments and giving spiritual oversight."

"the first Calvinist denomination to arise from the evangelical revival was led by a woman, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-1791)....The denomination still exists today and still has as its official name 'the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion'."

"in conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the late 19th and early 20th century....women were trained for public ministry by the theologically conservative Bible colleges. Moreover, women faculty members at these institutions taught Bible and theology....
Official Moody Bible Institute publications proudly boasted about women graduates who went off to ordained ministry and to full-time, senior pastorates. A similar story can be told about Northwestern Bible School, an institution run by W. B. Riley (1861-1947), a towering fundamentalist leader in Minnesota."

"Edith C. Torrey...taught Bible at Wheaton from 1919 to 1958....Esther Sabel taught Bible at Bethel Seminary 1924-1958....institutions uncompromising in their affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture and the power of the gospel to convert sinners. By way of contrast, Harvard Divinity School, a bastion of theological liberalism, did not even admit women students until 1955, let alone women faculty members."

 

First, Paul did not permit a woman to teach. He used the Greek present tense for “I do not permit” (epitrepō). This tense indicates that Paul was delivering authoritative instructions for the situation he encountered at Ephesus, but it is tenuous to decide for or against the permanence of Paul’s injunctions based on the evidence of tense alone.

Thomas D. Lea and Hayne P. Griffin, 1, 2 Timothy, Titus, vol. 34, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 98.

 

Do you have the actual text of the resolution?

 

Precisely, that Paul appeals to the created order, the Fall, apostolic tradition, and I argue the Genesis Curses reinforces that the situation is the way it is for deeper reasons than culture.

 

Just because you can find historical people affirming women in ministry of teaching and pastoring doesn't make it biblical.