Male only eldership causes people to leave the church. Does this make the doctrine wrong?
This question may be the wrong question. Doctrine is offensive to the flesh. If someone is not abiding in the Holy Spirit and makes decisions based on their own emotions and personal feelings rather than by the direction of scripture and the Holy Spirit, then they are acting in the flesh. Their is not one doctrine of scripture that is not offensive to the flesh at some point. For example, the doctrine that teaches “love one another” sounds good to the flesh until it is pressed to love a particular person that they don’t want to love.
Feminism has taken root in popular culture as well as many churches in todays world. By letting in what sounds like equality we may be superceding the Biblical doctrines. If scripture teaches order and uniqueness in gender (which I believe it does) then we have got to let scripture clarify things for us rather than the cultural norm. If the culture is surrounding us with sexual immorality then we best reject that sexual immorality rather than say, “Well, Paul was wrong or in a different culture. I can ‘sleep’ with whomever I want, and do whatever I want with them sexually.”
As a last point on this question I would point to the passages in scripture that says we should maintain fellowship with other believers for our spiritual health and maturity (Ephesians 5:19-21; Colossians 3:16 for example).
I have to respond on this handling of the issue of female eldership / Apostolic ministry.
Firstly, what you completely fail to tackle is the FACT that not once does JESUS (remember Him?) even hint that women cannot be elders.
Please at least add a section on where you see Jesus concurring with this very important stance.
Secondly, and building on this, is God Almighty not capeable of being EXPLICIT about such a wide-reaching – and divisive – piece of doctrine? I think He is. Yet no where does God, or Jesus, directly say that WOMEN CANNOT SERVE THE CHURCH AS ELDERS. What IS said is that men can – which is taken for granted – God could have sent Angels to lead the church on earth, but He entrusted us with His Holy Spirit for help.
Lastly, if we build our churches on what God has NOT said, we are in deep trouble. It was Paul who said these things. And they were fitting and appropriate to his culture. He was also not a fan of marriage, or females entering the sanctuary for worship, nor wearing of gold or having braided hair. I believe that if Paul were alive today, he would have no issue with the gender of our elders and Apostles, so long as they demonstrated the fruits of the Spirit and gifts appropriate for sound Leadership.
God does not exclude on the basis of gender, colour, creed, status – he excludes only on the basis of unrepentant sin, disobedience and lack of faith.
Gender, in the context of Godly Church leadership is simply irrelevant.
Concerned,
There are a lot of assumptions in what you have pointed out here that I would love to tackle, but I would prefer to address some of them in separate blog posts because they’re important enough for an entire statement on the doctrine rather than just a quick jotting of things. I appreciate your concern because this is an important issue.
First I should point out that as a dispensationalist I do not subscribe to the idea that we use the “What Would Jesus Do” motto. Instead, dispensational theology identifies that the church did not start until Acts chapter 2, and that there was a period of transition as the Jews and Gentiles became aware of the gospel message. God was perfectly capable of clarifying gender, and he did.
The reason that Jesus didn’t have to be explicit was because it was culturally and historically a presupposition. It would be like you and I engaging in conversation today and saying, “you’re drinking milk, it comes from the utter of a cow that has calved,” every time that we mentioned needing milk at the grocery store. One of the rules of hermeneutics (as linked to in the above article) is that you look at history and culture and language during the observation stage of your Bible Study process. Historically speaking it was assumed that the male had a leadership position in the Synagogue when Christ was speaking. Culturally speaking the man was the leader of the household and the religious organization. God put men in charge in the Old Testament Law, which Christ fulfilled by the direction of the Holy Spirit. It was a given, and Christ was not operating under the New Testament, but under the Old Testament Law.
The Apostles are all dead now and eldership is NOT the continuation of apostleship.
Paul gave us various mysteries that were new revelation that had been kept from the church up until that point and in doing so Paul never once removed the gender difference. If anything he was emphatic about it in I Corinthians 14:34 where women are forbidden to speak in a disruptive or teaching fashion in the church. Furthermore if an elder must be able to teach in II Timothy 3, how can she teach the body if she is forbidden to teach in 2nd Corinthians. Either Paul was inconsistent, or you’re forcing a gender issue where there was not one.
The Greek language is very gender specific and if the Holy Spirit, in writing through Paul, wanted to be inclusive of both genders He would have done so. Every mention of elders in the New Testament is masculine without exception. You will note that gender is very explicit in the First Timothy 3 passage [look it up here and check out the language tools by clicking the C icon next to the verse in question: http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=1Ti&c=3&v=1&t=KJV ]. You state that if we develop our theology from things God said we’re in trouble, which I agree with, but by this very statement you have disproved your own proposition.
Where do you get the idea that God does not exclude based on “…gender, colour, creed or status…”? God created Adam & Eve in a very specific order with specific gender roles. Not in a nasty hateful way, but with perfect selection and intent. Being a man doesn’t give me the right to be a jerk to my wife simply because I’m the man, but instead Paul wrote that I should treat my wife with special care as if she were of my own body [Ephesians 5:28]. Colour of skin is of no consequence, I agree with that completely. Creeds are clearly important because if we don’t differentiate between good and bad theology we have nothing to operate with when it comes to expelling bad theology. In fact by this merit alone you should have no concern if I were sexist (which I am not). As for status, there is very specific calls for status in I Timothy 3 as being married to only one woman, and that with great devotion.