Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

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	• Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? Wayne Grudem Crossway Books, 2006 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

Wayne Grudem has written a timely book to address a timeless issue. Evangelical Feminism was written to address the specific issue of the contemporary rise of the Egalitarian practices within the evangelical church. However, in broad terms, Grudem is dealing with the same old issue, challenges to the authority of God.

Grudem describes this book as "an expression of deep concern about a widespread undermining of the authority of Scripture in the arguments that are frequently used to support feminism. It is also a way of posing a question: can a movement that espouses this many ways of undermining the authority of Scripture possible be right?" The book's contention is that evangelical feminism sets those who affirm it on a dangerous path leading ultimately to liberalism.

Grudem helpfully defines terms for us in understanding exactly who he is aiming at in the book. With reference to evangelical feminism Grudem says that he is referring to "a movement that claims there are no unique leadership roles for men in marriage or in the church." (also called egalitarianism). With reference to theological liberalism Grudem says he is referring to "a system of thinking that denies the complete truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God and denies the unique and absolute authority of the Bible in our lives."

The book is extremely helpful in helping you become familiar with the common arguments which are employed promoting the acceptance of women functioning as teachers, elders, and pastors in the local church. Most are familiar with the Apostle Paul's inspired words in Second Timothy when he wrote: I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (2 Tim. 2.12). Many of the arguments attempt to change the natural meaning of this passage and others like it.

Here are some examples:

"Paul was Wrong"

"Later Developments trump Scripture"

"We should ignore the disputed passages"

"A pastor's authority trumps Scripture"

"Tradition trumps Scripture"

"Experience trumps Scripture"

"Calling trumps Scripture"

In each case Grudem presents the argument as advanced by evangelical feminists and then answers it from Scripture, history, reason, and or logic. Each chapter closes with a phrase similar to, "Therefore, the argument that Paul was wrong is another step on the path towards liberalism."

A helpful section of this book is the frightening consideration of where evangelical feminism is taking us (part four). The chapters include: "The Next Step: Denial of Anything Uniquely Masculine", "Another Troubling Step: God our Mother", "The Final Step: Approval of Homosexuality".

This is truly frightening. If one can make the natural sense of a passage mean something completely opposite (cf. 1 Tim. 2.12) then they can make any passage mean anything they want it to. Therefore, Wayne Grudem serves us well in exposing us to the popular and painfully troubling trend of evangelical feminism and also equipping us to refute its errors and promote that which is true and biblical.

Wayne Grudem has written extensively on this topic. Some of his other books include, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism which he co-authored with John Piper. He has written Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions and then two collections of essays he edited, Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood and Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and Womanhood.

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A standard against feminism in the church

This book is essential in arming Christians against the march of feminism on the church. Wayne Grudem argues brilliantly from the Bible against the unscriptural view of egalitarianism. Step by step grudem address popular arguements in favor of egalitarianism and then refutes them establishing the Biblical view of complementarianism in the process. This book will help Christians understand what it means to celebrate our gender differences and recognize the different roles God has established for men and women in the home and in the church.

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A Sobering Warning

Wayne Grudem has produced a timely wake up call to evangelical believers. With grace, but relentless logic, he shows the slip-shod arguments that evangelicals are using to overturn the clear teachings of Scripture in regard to male leadership in the church. I write as one who studied at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the the mid-80s. I had selected Gordon-Conwell partly because I was very open to egalitarian views. However the weakness of the egalitarian view became clear as I listened to brilliant men, notably Roger Nicole, break basic hermeneutical principles in order to support their chosen view. The Bible simply does not support the egalitarian position. Since returning to my homeland, Australia, and now having ministered for more than a decade in New Zealand, I have seen the slide Dr. Grudem is warning about taking place. New Zealand Christianity was devastated by liberalism in the first half of last century and then again by the charismatic movement in the second half of the century. In that part of the Christian church which remains evangelical feminism is a major force leading believers away from trust in God's Word. There are only small groups of reformed and some fundamentalist believers who continue to teach what is recognizably the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most evangelicals are being entertained to death by leaders, male and female, who have little regard for what Scripture teaches. Dr Grudem writes on the basis of very thorough research and his conclusions are irrefutable.
My prayer is that his writings will be read, taken to heart and that repentance will result in a return to diligent, expository preaching of the whole counsel of God. For countries like New Zealand the hour is very late. Please pray for this needy nation.

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Stellar

A great book, with all of the usual academic and theological rigor that you would expect from Wayne Grudem.

Where Is Egalitarianism Leading Us?

The focus of this book by Wayne Grudem is his concern that evangelical feminism will prove, over time, to draw people into theological liberalism. By liberalism, Grudem is referring to a system of belief that does not accept the Bible as the supreme authority in the lives of believers, or accept the absolute truthfulness of what is written in it.

Grudem bases this concern of his in many of the arguments made in support of egalitarianism. They are, he says, often exactly the same arguments used first in liberal Protestant denomination--arguments that deny (although sometimes in subtle ways) that the text of scripture is completely error free, and that what we find written there is the final arbitrator of things in a believer's life and in the life of the church.

Grudem's first argument is from history. He makes the case that, generally speaking, denominations that ordain women are also denominations that at least tolerate liberalism. The lists are interesting, and it does seem that the ordination of women and a denial of the inerrancy of scripture (or at least a tolerance of those who deny the inerrancy of scripture) tend to go hand in hand within denominations. I'm ot sure exactly what this proves, but the correlation is worth noting.

The second section of the book is a collection of short chapters (fifteen in all), with each one examining a single argument put forward by evangelical feminists. Each arguments examined is one that Grudem believes undermines the authority of scripture. I won't run through the various arguments, but I will give you one example, and a summary of Grudem's reasoning for his charge that this particular argument undermines scripture.

The first chapter in this section deals with a couple of arguments that put forward the idea that the account of creation given to us in Genesis 1-3 is not exactly accurate. One of the arguments, made by William Webb, is that the priority of Adam's creation, with instructions given by God to Adam alone, is not the way things really happened; but rather, is a literary device, perhaps used to foreshadow the curse, or used by Moses to make things easier for people of his time and culture to understand the story, or used to anticipate life in an agrarian society. The point of denying the historicity of the text that says that Adam was created first is that this makes it possible to argue that when Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2:13, where he argues from Adam's creation before Eve that women are not to exercise authority over a man, the argument he uses is merely a cultural one, and not one rooted in the actual events of creation. At the very least, it's an odd way for someone with a high view of scripture to handle the text; but further, it seems a little like toying with the evidence for the purpose of coming to one's desired conclusion. Grudem's point is that this argument iss a step on the road to denying the inerrancy of scripture by denying that the Genesis account represents the historical events of creation.

There are many more troubling arguments in this section. Some, like the example above, deny the authority of scripture by claiming that the text is wrong in some way. Other arguments simply claim that there are certain things that trump the authority of scripture, like experience, or "calling" or individual circumstances.

The next section of Evangelical Feminism deals with arguments that are based on claims that come mostly from conjecture, either about what a certain word really means, or what the particular circumstances surrounding a text really were. These conjectures allow for whole new interpretations of some passages, but the unsubstantiated nature of the claims upon which these interpretations are made make the interpretations themselves speculative at best, and yet the claims are not presented as speculations, but as already proven facts.

There are ten chapters in this section dealing with various unsubstantiated claims. You've heard some of them, I'm sure. There's the claim, for instance, that the women in the church of Corinth were particularly unruly or disruptive. Did you know there is really no evidence, either internal to the text of 1 Corinthians or historical, that this was so? Yet you will hear it repeated--I certainly have--as if it were historical fact/

Have you heard that the women of Ephesus were uneducated, so that's why Paul forbids them to teach? There is no historical evidence that this was the case, and what historical evidence there is points to the existence of educated women there--like Priscilla, for one. Nevertheless, you will hear this unsubstantiated theory bandied about as if there were something more than guess work behind it.

That last section of the book deals with Grudem's prediction of where it is that evangelical feminism is leading: toward the denial of the uniquely masculine (or feminine) except the physical differences; toward a God whom we can address as "our Mother", even though he never describes himself this way; and toward an approval of homosexual practice.

The last chapter is a summary of the argument of this book: that the evangelical feminist arguments persistently undermine the authority of scripture, and ultimately, it is the high view of scripture that is at stake in this debate. Perhaps you are thinking, as I was, that there must be egalitarians who do not use any of these sorts of arguments. Grudem's response is that every egalitarian author that he knows uses at least some of these arguments.

It should be noted that Grudem is not saying that all (or even most) egalitarians are liberals, or moving personally toward liberalism. What he is saying is that, while many egalitarians may affirm the authority of scripture, many of their arguments undermine scripture's authority, so that it is toward liberalism that egalitarianism is likely leading, with each successive generation going further in that direction.

Like all of Grudem's books, there are extensive footnotes that allow you to check out everything he says to see if his claims are really so. I also appreciate his care in presenting the arguments of those whose ideas he is opposing. He seems to go out of his way to get their position exactly right without any exaggeration, and I like that.

Even though I've written reviews of a couple of books on the subject of egalitarianism, this is not a subject I am naturally interested in. I'm a complementarian, and I know why I believe what I believe, but I've not been fascinated by the ins and outs of all the arguments. But I do think it's an important subject, perhaps more important than I understood previously, and Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? is an important book on the subject, and one that is easily read and understood by a non-expert reader like me.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

By critically examining the writings of egalitarians, Grudem shows that, while egalitarian leaders claim to be subject to Scripture in their thinking, what is increasingly evident in their actual scholarship and practice is an effective rejection of the authority of Scripture.

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