Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

by Collin Hansen

She argued that when God prohibits women from teaching or usurping authority over men, it’s not because women are incompetent or lacking in giftedness. Rather, church and home show us how God in the Old Testament relates to his covenant people, and how in the New Testament Christ relates to his bride, the church. Both relationships require subordination. “The Church has always seen such imagery as highly important, not random, accidental, or trivial, and therefore not to be tampered with,” Elliot said. She saw male and female as woven into the creative fabric of the world. “It is the very magnetism of two opposite poles which not only signifies vast eternal verities but also lends interest, fascination, even a certain glamor to our earthly life which those who agitate for equality and-or interchangeability seem completely to ignore—or what is much worse, to hate.”