Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 108

New Wave Complementarianism: A Question and a Concern

 I’ve watched with great interest over the past few weeks as a constellation of blog posts have come out calling for a fresh complementarianism. The articles seem to be advocating for a third way between complementarianism and egalitarianism, or at least for an awareness that traditional complementarians have many weaknesses and egalitarians are asking a lot of good questions. The message often has an apologetic edge: we are complementarians, but not the ones you’re used to.

The most explicit post along these lines is Wendy Alsup’s article on new wave complementarianism. The piece struck a nerve, prompting many women to write comments to the effect, “I agree with everything you’ve said. I’ve been wanting someone to say this for years.” Alsup’s article, and others like it, have been recommended and retweeted by some of my good friends. There is something about the idea of a “new wave” of complementarianism that some—I’m not sure if it’s few, several, or many, so I’ll stick with some—find attractive.

I’ve been wrestling for a couple weeks now about how to respond to Alsup’s post (or if I should respond at all). I don’t want to turn something small into something bigger than it needs to be, and I don’t want to discourage new complementarian voices (often women) from being heard. And yet, something about these posts, and Alsup’s in particular, leaves me unsettled. With that in mind, I’d like to ask one specific question and raise one general caution.

One Specific Question

Here’s my specific question: If this is new wave of complementarianism, what was the old wave? Alsup lists eight characteristics of this new movement.

1.      1.  Belief in the trustworthiness of the Bible.

2.      2.  A belief that the Bible interprets itself.

3.      3.  A respect for Church history and creeds.

4.      4.  Strong disagreement for Susan Foh’s interpretation of Genesis 3:16.

5.      5.  Identifying with some aspects of feminism.

6.      6.  Viewing complementarity through the lens of Genesis 1:27 more than Genesis 2:18.

7.      7.  Not setting up marriage and family as the end all for women.

8.      8.  An understanding that men should be elders and women can be deacons.

Surely, there are no “old wave” complementarians who disagree with points 1-3. Let’s cross those off the list (they may be aimed mostly at egalitarians).

Points 7 and 8 are not new either. The very first chapter in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (RBMW) was a chapter from John Piper for single men and women. And the last page of Chapter 1 includes a list of more than 100 things women can and should do in ministry, only a handful of which pertain to traditional “women’s work.” Moreover, neither CBMW nor the complementarian movement as a whole has ever made women deacons (or the prohibition thereof) a mark of their ministry. Indeed, in 2010 Alsup wrote a piece arguing for women deacons in which she mentions a number of older complementarians who think Phoebe held the office of deacon. She also notes that CBMW considers the issue of women deacons nonessential to its core mission.

That leaves 4, 5, and 6 as possible new tenets for this “new wave.” Let me comment briefly on each.

Susan Foh – Her argument that the “desire” in Genesis 3:16 is the women’s desire to domineer over her husband makes sense to me from the parallel passage in Genesis 4:7 (cf. Claire Smith’s defending this view). Alsup believes this is an entirely new interpretation that was never before heard of until Susan Foh argued for it in 1975. Even if this were the case—and my quick perusal of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture shows that Johannes Brenz (1499-1570) wrote about “when women aspire to dominate their husbands in running the household” in his commentary on Genesis 3:16—it doesn’t do much to alter the central point; namely, that the blessing of the male-female relationship has been twisted into a burden by sin. Husbands, who can be tyrannical, need to love their wives; and wives, who can chafe at submission, need to respect their husbands (Eph. 5:33). This basic point is hardly dependent on Foh or her almost 40 year old article, which no one but a handful of scholars has heard of or references.

Feminism – In another article Alsup contends that much good has come from feminism. In the plus column she mentions raising awareness and changes attitudes on sex trafficking, female genital mutilation, sexual exploitation, and the subjugation of women in third world countries. She also notes that feminism is the reason women in America can vote. But surely Alsup doesn’t imagine that old school complementarians are against any of this. The argument seems to be about salvaging the word feminism, rather than any serious disagreement over policy.

Complementarity – There’s certainly no shortage of discussion in the older literature about Genesis 2:18 and Genesis 1:27. Both are key texts for understanding the dignity, worth, and roles of men and women. But Alsup’s contention that “It takes two distinct though obviously overlapping genders to reflect the fullness of the image of God” is a departure from complementarian theology. It’s actually the egalitarian view of Genesis 1:27 that Ray Ortlund Jr. argued against (vis a vis Aida Bensancon Spencer) in Chapter 3 of RBMW. Alsup’s view is reminiscent of Karl Barth’s theology of the imago dei, a theology evangelicals rightly rejected because it implied that the God-Man Jesus Christ, a single male, was incapable of fully reflecting the image of God.

So I’m left with my original question. I don’t mean it as a challenge or an insult, but as an honest question: Who are the old wave complementarians we should leave behind? Are we talking about the complementarianism of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood? Are we talking about CBMW? What is new about the new wave other than the rejection of Susan Foh’s article and a dubious understanding of the imago dei in Genesis 1:27? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m trying to understand the attraction to a new complementarianism. Are there specific authors or books in mind? Or are we really talking about the abuses of complementarianism that we know of through painful personal experiences?

Some things are new because they’ve never been seen before. Others things are new because they recover old things that have been lost. But this “new wave complementarianism” seems to suggest that it is leaving some of the old stuff behind. Other than the interpretation of Genesis 3:16 (which Alsup has written on thoughtfully and frequently), what ideas, people, or movements are the new folks leaving behind? I’m not trying to be pushy, but it would be helpful to know the specific documents and people from the “old wave” that have missed the boat.

One General Caution

My one specific question leads naturally to a note of general caution. I hope that younger complementarians will not define themselves by the complementarians they’re not. I don’t doubt that complementarianism can be perverted, just as every other theology or practice can be perverted. I’m sure many points of doctrine could use a power wash every now and then, just to make sure we can see what the clean version is supposed to look like. But in a world awash in sexual confusion and deliberate gender ambiguity I wonder if the main thing we need to do is really convince people we’re not that kind of complementarian.

My caution, then, is that we don’t make a new version of complementarianism that has for one of its main objectives appeasing egalitarians. Let’s be winsome. Let’s answer honest questions. But let’s not think that any amount of apologizing or differentiation will win over those who think everything about complementarianism is backwards, oppressive, and mean. I get nervous when our passion seems less about the theology we say we want to celebrate and more about the ways our theology is a stumbling block to others. The impulse to rescue counter-cultural doctrines from their own unpopularity is one of the first steps to losing the doctrine altogether.

Job Postings at URC

[image error]University Reformed Church currently has two ministry positions open.

The International Ministries Director is a new, full-time, fully-funded position, who will be hired to equip and encourage the church body to do the ministry of evangelism and discipleship with internationals.

URC is also looking for a full-time, fully-funded, Associate Campus Director (ACMD) to make disciples on campus, to help with the overall vision of SCF, and to oversee the women’s ministry.

The Secular Salvation Story

We all live by some meta-narrative. We can’t help but try to make sense of our lives. We don’t just live life or experience reality, we constantly interpret it.

We all believe in a salvation story.

The Christian message of salvation tells the story of sin, repentance, and forgiveness.

The secular salvation story is a derivative and deviant version of the older Christian narrative. It tells the story of self, authenticity, and acceptance.

Instead of sin committed against a holy God, we have infractions committed against the self. We don’t struggle to keep God’s law. We struggle to keep our own internal sense of right and wrong. The problem is not God-offendedness, but personal integration and identity.

Instead of repentance before a holy God, we have authenticity of self-expression. We don’t bewail being so much less than we should be. We lament not being in touch with who we really are. The confession is not “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips,” but “Woe to me if I think myself unclean.”

And instead of forgiveness from a holy God, we have the casual acceptance of simply being the way we want to be. We don’t see the demands of justice met by the cries of a crucified Christ. We see the voice of conscience silenced in the cries of a thousand well-wishers. The good news is not grace and mercy, but tolerance and enlightenment.

We are all telling a story, living by a story, evangelizing a story. One story is ancient and rugged. The other modern and banal. One confronts. The other caresses.  One truly saves. The other falsely succors. Choose your story wisely. For one starts grim, but ends in life. The other looks cheery and ends in death.

Book Briefs

Arthur Herman. How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It (Three Rivers Press, 2001). Written in the same vein as How The Irish Saved Civilization, this book focuses on 18th century Scotland and the influence of those Scots in the Western world. From Hume to Hutcheson to Lord Kames to Adam Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment shaped our world more than most people realize. Herman has written an accessible and well told narrative of the most important events and most important Scots in the early modern period. I especially enjoyed the two chapters on Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Rebellion of 1745–fascinating history that most Americans know nothing about.

 

Willem J. Van Asselt. Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Reformation Heritage Books, 2011). Get this book, especially if you are Reformed, and especially if you are a Reformed pastor. At 250 pages, you won’t find a better introduction to the subject–a subject about which most Reformed Christians and pastors are largely ignorant. The important thesis of this book–and it is very much in the Richard Muller school of thought–is that “scholastic refers above all to method, without direct implications for content” (8). So Reformed Scholasticism is about orthodox Reformed theology (i.e., that which coheres with the Reformed confessions) explained and defended using the particular form scholastic method. For my money, the most important chapters were the ones tracing the development of Early Orthodoxy (1560-1620), High Orthodoxy (1620-1700), and Late Orthodoxy (1700-1790), with representative examples from each time period (Franciscus Junius, Francis Turretin, and Benedict Pictet respectively).

 

William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, eds. Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Zondervan 1990). It’s hard to find a competent critique of theonomy. This out of print book–with chapters from the likes of Waltke, Frame, Poythress, Gaffin, and Keller–is one of the few resources worth getting. I found Tremper Longman’s chapter on penology, Godfrey’s chapter on Calvin, and Sinclair Ferguson’s chapter on the Westminster Assembly especially helpful.

 

Jack C. Whytock. An Educated Clergy: Scottish Theological Education and Training in the Kirk and Secession, 1560-1850 (Wipf and Stock, 2008). The title tells you what you need to know. If you are not particularly interested in Scottish theological education from 1560-1850 this book ain’t gonna float your boat. But if you need to know something in this subject area, you’ll be mighty thankful for the excellent research and documentation Whytock has provided. A critical piece of scholarship for specialists in the field.

 

Jon D. Payne and Sebastian Heck, eds. A Faith Worth Teaching: The Heidelberg Catechism’s Enduring Heritage (Reformation Heritage Books, 2013). This new release is a handsome hardcover with an excellent line up of scholars, including Lyle Bierma, Mark Jones, Danny Hyde, Cornelis Venema, Mike Horton, and Joel Beeke. Here’s my blurb: “This is a wonderful collection of articles, both practical and scholarly. There is much here to help us understand the history, the theology, and the continuing relevance of the Heidelberg Catechism. As we preach through the Heidelberg in our church, I will certainly consult this book often. It prompted me to think again and again, ‘Isn’t the Catechism remarkable!’ and, more importantly, ‘Isn’t the gospel amazing!’”

 

Sam Storms. Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative (Mentor, 2013). I’m really excited about this book and grateful to Sam for the years he put in to this significant volume. Here’s what I say on the back cover: “This is a remarkable book which will surely become the standard bearer for Amillennialism for years to some. This is a book I will return to many times in my personal study and in pastoral ministry. Storms has given us a model for accessible, relevant, warm-hearted scholarship in service of the church.”

 

Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney. After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology (Oxford University Press, 2012). Yes, I know, another meaty book on Jonathan Edwards. But this one, like many other recent volumes, is a good one. Three chapters stood out to me. I continue to find Mark Noll’s insistence that Edwards was the good guy that later Presbyterian bad guys ignored or dismissed to be overwrought. I found Darryl Hart’s chapter on Edwards and the Young, Restless, and Reformed to be more balanced than I might have expected, with a healthy does of caution that Edward’s soaring theology tends not to mesh well with popular forms of evangelicalism. And finally, I found Paul Helm’s chapter comparing Edwardsianism with older forms of Reformed thought to be a much needed essay for those who only know Reformed theology through the lens of the great, and sometimes peculiar, theologian from Northampton.

Sola 13: A Gospel Conference for the Great Lakes

I’m very excited to announce a project that has been in the works for over a year: Sola 13.

Sola Fide! Sola Scriptura! Solus Christus! Sola Gratia! Soli Deo Gloria! These five Latin phrases articulated the foundation of the Reformation and called the church back to the primacy of the gospel and the word of God.

On December 6th and 7th in Lansing, Michigan thousands will gather to celebrate and promote these cries of the Reformation. University Reformed Church and Riverview Church (a large Acts 29 congregation in our area) are working together to put on Sola 13. We’ve asked five of our favorite preacher friends to speak on the five solas.

Sola Fide – Matt Chandler
Sola Gratia – Leonce Crump
Solus Christus – Stephen Um
Sola Scriptura – Albert Mohler
Soli Deo Gloria – John Piper

In addition, I will be speaking, along with Noel Heikkinen from Riverview.

You may think there are already too many conferences to choose from. But few of the folks in our churches are able to attend out of town conferences during the week. So we wanted to bring a great conference to our people on a Friday and Saturday. We hope you’ll make plans to attend and sign up soon. The registration rates are impressively low.

You can learn more about the conference and register here.

Preparing College Students for Graduation

This is finals week at Michigan State University. Soon students will be heading home for the summer, starting summer internships, or enrolling in summer classes. Other students will travel overseas for short-term missions, work at a camp, or get ready for a summer project filled with training and ministry opportunities. And then there are the students leaving school for good. Over the next few weeks thousands of Christian students will graduate from college and start the rest of their lives.

Will they be ready?

I’m not talking about being prepared for interviews and applications. That’s not the church’s responsibility. I’m talking about being ready for Christian maturity. What should Christian students know about the Bible, the church, and themselves as they leave the friendly confines of campus ministry? As a church with a strong outreach to students, it’s a question we ask ourselves often. And as a pastor with the privilege of welcoming new graduates from other schools and ministries every year, I know firsthand how important the question can be.

What do I like to see from graduates who land at our church?

Or to ask the question another way: what do I hope our students will be like when they land somewhere else?

Let me give you the ABC’s of a brief response.

Attitude – Our students need good theology, but just as importantly they need a good attitude. If they have the best theological training and the worst ways of relating to people, we’ve created monsters, not mature Christians.

In particular, I think of three key attitudes for our students take with them when they graduate:

Eager to serve – Does the student show up at church expecting the red carpet or looking to help others?
Eager to commit – I love new people who visit our church, decide on our church, and then throw themselves in to being a part of our church.
Eager to learn – This may be the most important point (after the gospel) in this entire post. No matter the other deficiencies, pastors can work with young Christians who are hungry for good preaching, open to correction, and above all, teachable.

Basics – College students need to know the same essential truths that every Christian needs to know. They should know the importance of prayer and daily Bible reading. They should be able to articulate the gospel. They should have some experience with personal evangelism and an exposure to world missions. They should be familiar with the storyline of the Scriptures and basic contours of the Old and New Testaments. Ideally, I want college students who are with us for four years to be rooted in Reformed theology, know the basic categories of systematic theology, and know a few key events and persons from church history. I also think it’s helpful for students to learn about a tradition bigger than themselves. For us this means teaching about the Reformation and exposing students to the Heidelberg Catechism.

Church – This is the hardest element to pass on because it is more easily caught than taught. Some campus ministries which do quite well on A and B struggle with the C because the form and feel of the ministry mitigates against it.

It’s hard to get students to land in a church when they graduate if they floated among three different churches while in school and committed to none of them.
It’s hard to get students to accept that church does not revolve around them when for four or five years every song and every style has.
It’s hard to get students to see that church is not simply plural for Christians when they have been taught almost nothing about ecclesiology and have seen even less of it modeled.

Some churches and ministries need to ask themselves the hard question: are we setting up our students to flounder or to flourish when they leave school and leave us? The goal of campus ministry is not to have a dynamic, growing campus ministry. Everyone working with college students wants that, and God may bless in that way. But our aim must be farther out. We have to work with students with an eye toward their future more than our present. And this means helping students understand the importance of membership and spending lots of time on what to look for in a good church. It means giving them a steady diet of expository preaching so they won’t be as pleased with the taste of anything else. It means teaching them about worship and not tailoring everything in our services to meet the whims of 18-23 year-olds.

I know there is a tension here. On the one hand, it will be (and should be) noticeable that we are ministering to college students and not to retirees. The themes, the tone, and the teaching will take into account the context. But on the other hand, we do our students no favors when we do everything to meet them where they are instead of taking them where they need to go. Again, our goal must be forward looking. It’s great for students to have an amazing college experience with us. Even more important is that they know what to look for (and what to expect) in a church, and they land in a good one, when they graduate.

I’m so thankful for our campus ministry, Spartan Christian Fellowship. Check it out here.

Monday Morning Humor

The Law Combats Legalism

Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, writing in A Puritan Theology (p. 570):

The third use of the law combats both Antinomianism and legalism.

Antinomians wrongly appeal to justification by faith alone, which, though granted apart from works of the law, does not preclude the need for sanctification. One of sanctification’s most important elements is the daily cultivation of grateful obedience to the law.

Moreover, neglect of the third use of the law can result in legalism, and often does, for we cannot live without law. When, as an alternative to God’s law, an elaborate man-made code is developed for believers to follow, covering every conceivable problem and tension in moral living, no freedom is left for believers to make personal decision based on the principles of Scripture. In such a context, man-made law smothers the divine gospel, and legalistic sanctification swallows up gracious justification. The Christian is brought back into bondage akin to that of medieval Roman Catholic monasticism.

Equally enslaving is the freedom that allows the Christian to follow his own emotions and impulses. Healthy Christian spirituality arises from careful meditation upon the principles of the law of God combined with heartfelt consecration to do the will of God (Rom. 12:1-2).

God Did Not Save Us On A Whim

Many Christians do not really grasp why God has forgiven us of our sins. It’s not as if God the Father woke up one morning and was having a great day, just feeling terrific about being the Sovereign of the universe, then decided on a whim to have mercy on his elect and look past their iniquities. God did not save us because the loving part of him finally out balanced the justice part of him. We must not picture God up in heaven muttering: “You know your sin? And all your rebellion and failures and disobedience? You remember all that? Well fuhgettaboutit. It don’t bother me. I love youse guys and I ain’t gonna mention your sin no more.”

Without giving it much thought, many of us picture the atonement as nothing but undeserved mercy from a loving God. We forget that the mercy we receive is a mercy merited on the cross. God has not saved us by the removal of justice, but by the satisfaction of it.

Justice is shot through the entire plan of redemption. God never once set aside his justice. There is a hell because God is just. And people go to heaven because God is just. Our sins are counted to Christ, so that he died in our place. His life and his death counted to us, that we might live.

We are not forgiven and given eternal life because God waved a magic wand and decided he would just overlook our sins. He has not overlooked the smallest speck of your sin. The good news of the cross is that the tiniest little speck of your sin, and all of the great big sins as well, have been paid for by the perfect and final sacrifice.

We were not saved on a whim because God decided one day he might as well have mercy on sinners. We are saved because God sent his Son to become the curse for us. Every last lustful look, every proud thought, every gossiping tongue, God demands justice for all of it. And the resurrection of Jesus bears witness to the glorious good news that all the demands of justice have been met so that Christ would be the first to conquer death, but not the last. Divine satisfaction through divine self-substitution.

Thoughts on the Trip to South Africa

The last couple weeks have been a blur. On April 5-6 we had Alistair Begg at our church for a conference. On April 7, after preaching in the morning, I flew to Orlando for The Gospel Coalition conference. I got home on Wednesday and then turned around on Thursday, April 11 to fly to Johannesburg. I returned home yesterday afternoon. The trip to South Africa was 12 days, 9 flights, 10 panels, and 14 sermons (plus the world’s longest commercial flight).

Here are a few reflections, observations, and highlights.

1. I had a great time in South Africa with the rest of the guys from the States: Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, CJ Mahaney, Bob Kauflin, and Brad Wheeler. Despite very different personalities, every single one of these men was funny, friendly, and easy to get along with. It was a joy to sit under their teaching, pray with them, share meals with them, and watch Brian Regan clips with them. These guys made this trip one I’ll never forget.

2. As with any international trip, receiving is just as important as giving. Although I did a lot of teaching, I also did a lot of learning. It was great to see the reformed churches in South Africa, though small, yet growing. I left the country with a great deal of respect for the pastors I met: Tim, Al, Dez, Clint, Grant, Doug, Ken and many others. These are sharp men, committed to sound doctrine and expository preaching, and committed to seeing the gospel advance in South Africa. The “gospel-centered” movement in the country is, in many ways, still the size of a man’s fist, but I sensed clouds of blessing gathering overhead.

3. I understand the good news of Revelation 21:25 better than ever. Violent crime is rampant in South Africa. Almost everyone I talked to had been robbed, broken into, or threatened at some point in recent memory. One church we preached at had a sign saying they were not responsible for injury, theft, or death on the premises. Many South Africans shared with me that the most surprising thing about America is the absence of security walls, fences, and guards around our homes. You simply don’t find many buildings in the city without some serious security in South Africa. What good news that the New Jerusalem will be so gloriously safe that “its gates will never be shut by day.”

4. Although tensions still remain, I was encouraged to see the gospel bringing together whites and blacks in a way that would have been impossible (and illegal) twenty years ago. Our contacts were with white churches, but in each of them we saw more racial diversity than you find in most American churches (which is not entirely surprising since whites are less than 10% of the population in South Africa). At the pastors conference in Joburg it looked to me like the split between whites and blacks was roughly fifty-fifty. And at the same gathering there were dozens of first languages other than English. Isn’t it remarkable that the gospel does more for diversity than diversity for its own sake can ever do by itself?

On a related note, we were privileged to have Conrad Mbewe travel from Zambia to host the events in Joburg for us. What a wise, capable, and godly man. I’d gladly have him for my pastor.

5. Bad theology destroys and keeps the gospel from people. South Africa, like most of sub-Saharan Africa, is overwhelmingly Christian. The state of the church can seem impressive, but mature Christians in South Africa will tell you a different story. The Dutch Reformed Church is weak and getting weaker, awash in theological liberalism and secular agendas. The black church is beholden to the false gospel of health, wealth, and prosperity and the worst kinds of syncretistic charismania. South Africa is “reached” with the gospel in a technical sense, but the need for good teaching and sound doctrine is tremendous. If you want to serve the Lord in a Bible-starved location in the English speaking world, there are many places in South Africa for you to go.

6. There is a great need for theological education in South African and in the Global South. We came across a number of evangelical institutions working hard to train pastors, but not nearly enough for a country of 50 million. While the first priority in the missionary endeavor is, in many places, for pioneering church planters and evangelists, in many places the church is weak for want of solid teachers and educators. If there is anything we take for granted in the American church more than money it’s our easy access to the best books, training, and theological education. Let’s pray for the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his field, and to help make sure the seed that is sown is good seed and the crops that have been planted are strong enough to endure.

7. Christian publishers should consider what they are doing to further or frustrate the Great Commission. Everywhere we went we saw pastors and churches influenced by books coming out of America. Without much (that I could tell) in the way of indigenous theological writing and with (often) a great theological vacuum to fill, many South African leaders look to U.S. authors to fill the gap. When they get hold of Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, or some pragmatic book about ministry methods, the results can be disastrous for generations. To my surprise, even the influence of the emergent church is still significant in South Africa.

Conversely, when good books get in the hands of good pastors, healthy churches can be established and grow. I was particularly thankful for the legacy of John MacArthur in South Africa. With his radio programs airing for decades in the country, many Christians have been introduced to expository preaching and good theology. A number of pastors have gone to The Master’s Seminary for training. Invariably, the “MacArthur men” were leading some of the strongest churches. Newer resources from the YRR movement seem to be having a salutary effect as well. If only publishers would consider more than profits and furthering “conversations” when they send their books out into the world.