My Grand Re-Opening...

Well, so it's been almost two months since I have posted to the good ol' blog. I think I lost most of my good material from April and into May. I think I also lost most of my regular readership, which at last count, was up to about 4.7 faithful readers. But I have to get back into the swing of things, so I should start somewhere.



My first semester of seminary ended on May 7th. The last five weeks of the semester were brutal. I'm not sure how I pulled it off, but I made it through, and I actually got A's in all of my classes. Hard work paid off in this case, and hard work, I did... lots of it.



I'm in a unique position considering the school I attend and the church I attend. They have differing positions on the roles of women in ministry. I will give a brief synopsis, because this will provide a roundabout path toward my current spiritual "predicament".



In many places in the New Testament letters, it seems as though the author forbids women from serving in certain roles within the church, namely pastoral roles and as elders (1 Tim. 2:12, 1 Tim. 3:1-2, Titus 1:6-9). In other places, the author seems to give household codes that place the man in a role of authority over the woman in the house (Ephesians 5:22, Colossians 3:18, 1 Tim. 2:8-12).



In other places, we see instances in which these regulations are possibly contradicted. Depending on how the text is translated, Priscilla and Aquila were teachers mentioned in three places (Acts 18, 1 Cor. 16, and 2 Tim 4). Phoebe is called (in the Greek) a diakonos in Romans 16:1, and Paul had referred to himself as a diakonos in other places. Hmmm. So should diakonos be translated merely as a deacon? Probably not. Maybe Phoebe had a much higher role of authority. And... POSSIBLY... depending on how you read the text, Junia in Romans 16:7 may actually have been an apostle... a female apostle. Without getting too wordy, the household codes may not be so clear either, when the codes are written along a backdrop of submission to each other mutually. Secondly, there is evidence that the author was addressing some specific abuses females were committing that the time, so the author may have been dealing with specifics and not setting universal rules.



OK, so here is what we are left with. Whether we are talking about the positions of the genders in society or in the church, there are differing opinions. My church teaches that men are to serve in pastoral and elder roles; women serve in many other capacities, but not those specific positions. My seminary teaches that the scriptures affirm the role of women in ministry without restriction, and the equality of men and women socially and in marriages.



There is so much more scholarship going into this debate, and for my purposes, I don't really need to get into it here. Here is my problem: I tend to agree with my seminary on the issue. But as we read all of the historical circumstances into the texts, and soften the apparent "hard lines" the authors seem to draw regarding the gender roles... I'm left wondering what biblical manhood really is. On this side of the debate, we have to emphasize the equality of the genders and the mutual submission of the two to each other. But the two genders were created differently, with the intent of being complementary to each other....



I don't feel right saying that the "complementary" differences between man and woman are strictly anatomical, but there are biological differences. As much as women have mystified me over the years, I still have figured out that the differences between man and woman are biological and then some. But as we search the scriptures and assert the roles of women in the church and world, I fear we are cutting down some of the unique traits of each gender. So, I'm left again with this question...



What is Biblical masculinity? If I am to live biblically as a man, how should I live? Who is my model? Are my masculine personality and masculine traits something to be suppressed or celebrated?



Regardless of the reasons, the vast majority of world leaders, politicians, church leaders, and business leaders have been men. And across these landscapes, we see problems. We see a high divorce rate, so men running the household hasn't proven to be the cure-all. My point is not that women should have been in those roles, but that by and large, the leadership of men have failed.



There's a lot too this, and I'm going to be working on, and probably blogging on, this one for a while.



What does a true, Biblical man look like?