What John Piper Said . . .

. . . has sent shockwaves through the blogosphere, the twittersphere, and every other sphere. My Facebook feed has been punctuated by alarm, by groaning, by reasoned responses, and by all-out debate. Did you miss it? You can listen here.

But I am not surprised.

John Piper has been saying it long and loud in a myriad of ways. In his universe, where Christianity is essentially masculine and God has appointed only men to leadership both inside and outside the church, and has appointed women to the joyful task of following, it is only logical that women should not be seminary professors. He clarifies,

"Just to be clear, the issue is not whether women should attend seminary in one of its programs and get the best biblical grounding possible. The issue is whether women should be models, mentors, and teachers for those preparing for a role that is biblically designed for spiritual men." 

In other words, women can attend seminary, but since seminaries are designed for training men for pastoral ministry, all the professors should be men. He goes on to say,

"If it is unbiblical to have women as pastors, how can it be biblical to have women who function in formal teaching and mentoring capacities to train and fit pastors for the very calling from which the mentors themselves are excluded? I don’t think that works."

I appreciate Piper's logical consistency. But is he right? All three of his premises deserve comment.

1. Is Christianity Essentially Masculine?

I can't get away from passages that compare Yahweh to a nursing mother (Isa 45:19) or say that God has given birth (Deut 32:18). Notice how fluidly the prophet moves between masculine and feminine imagery for God in Isaiah 42:13-14. Even Jesus compares himself to a mother hen protecting her chicks (Matt 23:27). These are metaphors, of course, so they don't make God female any more than speaking of him using masculine pronouns makes him male. But even Paul is not above using feminine metaphors for his own ministry! See 1 Thess 2:7. Why, then, must Piper privilege masculine modes of talking about the spiritual life? Are the passages that use feminine imagery for the life of faith somehow less accurate? I think not.

2. Is It Unbiblical to Have Women Pastors?

I used to think so. Thanks to male college and seminary professors who patiently showed me the biblical and theological case for women in pastoral ministry, I changed my mind. I feel no need to reproduce here the excellent arguments for why women can teach and preach in the church and can exercise their pastoral and leadership gifts. A good starting place is Alice Mathews' new book, Gender Roles and the People of God. She deals with all the key passages well. You might also appreciate the autobiographical approach of How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership. For those of you who are getting nervous, consider this: To conclude that women can teach and preach does not necessitate the abandonment of conservative exegesis. I teach at a 95-year-old Canadian institution that has been unabashedly conservative since it's founding, but which has also had women teaching Bible to men since 1923.

3. Should Women Be Seminary Professors?

This question follows closely on the heels of the previous one. If women may serve in church leadership, or at least as teachers, then my answer is yes. Michael Bird has made a good case for why women in seminary need women professors, as role models, as advocates, as encouragers. He has listened well to the women in his circles, and I am grateful. But he left something crucial unsaid:

Men need women as seminary professors, too.

Female students are not the only ones who benefit from having female professors (in seminary or at any level). Male students benefit. Male colleagues benefit. I believe it is critically important for men to hear a women's perspective in the classroom. Having an intelligent woman at the podium calls into question the ill-formed assumptions of students -- both male and female -- who might have thought that anything and everything worth knowing about comes from men. Young male pastors who meet brilliant and articulate women in seminary will be far less likely to overlook them in their churches. They will be far more likely to encourage young women to cultivate their gifts of leadership and invest in education.

Several years ago I watched a powerful documentary that argued this thesis: if we want to break the cycle of poverty, the key is to educate women. In developing nations all over the world, the education of women is a game changer. Educated women make sure their own children -- both sons and daughters -- know how to read. Sons of educated mothers don't fall prey to the lie that women are only useful in the kitchen or in the bedroom. The same is true in seminary.

It seems to me that having female professors goes a long way toward breaking a cycle of gender disparity in church leadership. Not only does it model for female students that female leadership is possible (which in itself is critically important), but it models this for men as well.

John Piper on interracial marriage

John Piper and I don't always see eye to eye. But I, like many others, have learned a lot from him, and I'm grateful for his ministry. His has, time after time, pointed the church to the vision of God's Glory.

Today I simply want to share a link to a wonderful chapel message he gave at Wheaton on October 3rd on interracial marriage. Piper was honest about his own racism while he was an undergraduate student at Wheaton, and during his growing-up years in the 50s and 60s. But his story includes several key moments where that racism was challenged. Now he insists that the Bible does not condemn interracial marriage, and neither should we. In his words:

"Our oneness in Christ is profound and transforms racial barriers into blessings."

"Few things - I think - are more beautiful than when a Christian couple across racial lines, overcomes every racial prejudice, every ethnic slur, every gospel-contradicting fear, and then display in a marriage the covenant-keeping commitment and love of Christ for his church. That's what marriage is for."

"Marriage is mainly displaying to the world the covenant keeping love of God between Christ and this church and this church and Christ (Ephesians 5). Dream that dream, and it will profoundly affect whom you marry."

"Christians are people who move towards justice, who move towards beauty. They don't move towards security at every point."

"Don't underestimate the challenges of marriage. . . .When it comes to interracial marriage, celebrate the beauty of it."

In the end, Piper called interracial marriage "good for the church, good for the world, and good for the glory of God."

Amen to that!

is Christianity essentially masculine?

John Piper says so.

(let that sink in for a second)

Certainly no one would argue with the assessment that current church leadership is predominantly male. But Piper is going much further than this by saying that the church not only ought to be led exclusively by men, but that their leadership ought to be thoroughly masculine because God prefers masculinity. Masculinity, as Piper defines it, is best for everyone.

Ben Witherington III of Asbury Theological Seminary thoughtfully disagrees. Click here to read his excellent response to Piper. (Thanks to James-Michael Smith for bringing this post to my attention.) I am intentionally not trying to replicate his exegetical arguments here because his are very well expressed, but I will add some reflections from two other sources along with my own.

Christians for Biblical Equality put together a chart that shows the disparity between church attendance and church/academic leadership in terms of gender. I'm sharing it here with their permission because I found it fascinating. They are tracking seminary enrollment and membership in the Evangelical Theological Society, rather than pastoral ministry, but the numbers would be comparable. As a female member of ETS with a seminary degree, I can say that this chart fits my own experience.

A few weeks ago I read a very thought-provoking book by Carolyn Custis James, entitled Half the Church. This is one book about women that every man should read, especially those in church leadership. Carolyn calls into question the idea that Christian women, who make up over half the church, ought to sit back and let men do the hard work of leading, ministering, and reaching the world. In light of the global slave trafficking problem, where women and children are the primary victims, can women afford to sit idle and assume that it is up to somebody else to take care of the problem?

Carolyn James would agree with Ben Witherington that the church needs men and women, working alongside each other as leaders, if we want to see the mission of God carried out in the way He intended. Men need our strengths. They need our perspective. They need our help. Together we can fulfill the purpose for which we were created. Remember God's diagnosis for Adam's problem? "It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen 1:18). God solved this problem by creating a woman to stand alongside him to "help" him. This is not a subordinate role, as Carolyn James insists. God is assigning woman alongside man the task of subduing the earth. Most of the other times this word "help" occurs in the Bible it describes God himself as Israel's "helper" (see, for example, Psalm 70:5).

It doesn't sound like Piper welcomes this kind of "help" from women. And that's really too bad. Because while I would certainly not want to exclude masculinity from the church, I am firmly persuaded that men are not more suitably equipped to further the kingdom of God, nor is masculinity somehow spiritually superior. On their own, men will only ever be half the church.