A Last Word From Andrew Bartlett

Followers of Veracity will observe an ongoing dialogue that I have had with Andrew Bartlett, the author of Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts. A barrister from the U.K., Andrew has written a very thorough treatment of the complementarian/egalitarian controversy which continues to divide evangelical churches today, regarding how men and women are to relate with one another in the family and in the church.

Andrew lands on what might be considered as a “moderate egalitarian” position, whereas I am more of a “moderate complementarian,” though I prefer the term “sacramental complementarian.” I can positively recommend his book as it offers a number of thoughtful critiques of my position, even though I am not fully persuaded by his.

I originally wrote a review of Andrew’s book posted here on Veracity. About a month or so ago, Andrew wrote a very engaging rejoinder, which I posted on Veracity. In that blog post, I also offered a response to Andrew’s rejoinder.

I extended an offer to Andrew to “have the last word” in the discussion, and I am posting that here below, which he emailed to me this morning! I originally thought about simply appending Andrew’s final response to the previous blog post, but that was already rather long. So instead I am posting his last rejoinder here in full. Hopefully, I have formatted everything correctly!! As you will see, Andrew and I have much in common, but there are significant differences in our views. But as agreed, I will resist the temptation for further comment here, and refer the reader to our previous engagements in earlier blog posts for my interactions with his view. To get the full-breadth of my engagement on this very important topic, see this introduction with an index of blog posts which I began in 2019. 

Happy Reformation Day, everyone!  I hope that everyone will look for “fresh light from the biblical texts,” just as the Protestant Reformers did, and just as Andrew Bartlett invites us to do, while simultaneously striving to heal the rifts which divide Christians today, some of which were sadly exacerbated by even the Reformation itself.

Thank you, Andrew Bartlett, for such an engaging conversation!! Without further ado, here are Andrew Bartlett’s “concluding words.”

Andrew Bartlett’s concluding words

Clarke has very graciously invited me to “have the last word”. I will stick to the central issue of whether Scripture permits women as teaching-elders in the church. Even on that topic, I will restrict my remarks to some main points rather than correcting every misunderstanding of what I wrote.

I am grateful for Clarke’s candid acknowledgment: “If we did not have 1 Timothy and Titus within the canon of New Testament Scripture, there would be effectively little difference between Andrew Bartlett and I.” Allow me to spell out what that effectively means. It means Clarke accepts there is no significant support in Scripture for male-only eldership except in 1 Timothy and Titus, as interpreted by him.

Sacramental eldership as fatherhood?

Clarke proposed what he calls a “sacramental” view of eldership, based on arguments about “fatherhood” and buttressed by church tradition. He wants to insist on functional divisions by sex in the spiritual tasks of Christian ministry, even though in Christ there is no male and female, and spiritual gifts are given to men and women alike (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 12).

Clarke has correctly pointed out a problem in the sentence where I wrote: “This is a novel approach, for eldership is neither a sacrament as understood by Protestants nor a sacrament as understood by Roman Catholics.” I should have explained more clearly. In the Roman Catholic understanding, the “sacrament of Holy Orders” comprises the ordination of “bishops”, “priests”, and “deacons”, and those offices are open only to males. But Clarke would permit deacons to be female (as in the New Testament), while he considers that eldership is a sacrament, which somehow makes it necessary for elders to be male. That is a novel analysis, which differs from the Roman Catholic understanding of the sacrament of holy orders.

However, that clarification is a side issue. The fundamental difficulty with Clarke’s sacramental view of eldership, which he has not answered, is that it is in conflict with Scripture, for the reasons which I gave.

Clarke gives excessive weight to tradition. He refers to a lecture by the Roman Catholic scholar Peter Kreeft on why women cannot be “priests”. But the Catholic use of tradition to drive the bus, putting Scripture in the back seat, too often sends the bus off the road. In his lecture, Kreeft criticizes Protestants for departing from church tradition (“the deposit of faith”) by “denying Mary’s assumption” and declares that “she is crowned Queen of Heaven” with “great glory and power”. Nearly all Protestants would regard Kreeft’s view as unfaithful, even blasphemous.

To give primacy to Scripture, Clarke needs to let go of his “fatherhood” theory of eldership.

How to interpret 1 Timothy

Clarke now says: “There should be clear contextual reasoning for limiting the time scope of the Greek present tense. Otherwise, you risk suggesting that the teaching of the New Testament has very little for us today.” He says we should “assume that Paul’s use of the present tense stipulates a universal, timeless character to it, by default. Contextual evidence is otherwise needed to indicate a localized or temporal situation.”

But this is misconceived, because it proceeds on the basis of a false dichotomy: where Scripture makes a statement that is not time-bound, this is a guide for our conduct, whereas where Scripture describes a temporary or local situation, it is not a guide for our conduct (!)

That dichotomy does not reflect how we interpret and apply Scripture.

We sometimes conclude that a general statement, which has no limitation of time, does not apply and need not be obeyed. For example, in many passages, Paul and Peter instruct the believers to greet each other with a holy kiss (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26; 1 Peter 5:14). In form, these are timeless instructions. And the contexts of these statements provide no specific limitations of time or of culture. But I do not know of any church which holds that we should do the same in today’s circumstances.

Conversely, we often conclude that an apostle’s response to a temporary and local situation provides us with principles that we can apply in a different context. When Paul instructs Philemon to receive Onesimus back not as a slave but as a brother (Philem 1:16), we may infer that Paul is deliberately subverting the evil institution of slavery, and that Christians should be opposed to it. When Paul instructs Timothy to take a little wine because of his frequent gastric problems (1 Tim 5:23), we note the obvious point that ill health hampers Timothy’s ability to promote godly living and to combat the false teaching in Ephesus, and so we infer that ministers should not neglect their bodily health but should use available physical means to take care of their bodies in order to facilitate their ministry.

In the first century AD, communicating by letter was an expensive and laborious undertaking. As far as we can tell, every New Testament letter was written because a particular set of circumstances gave rise to it. What gave rise to 1 Timothy? (A) Was Paul concerned to combat the spread of false teaching in Ephesus, in which misguided and misbehaving women were involved? Or, (B) was Paul concerned that in Ephesus, when the church met for worship, faithful women (rather than faithful men) were teaching faithfully? If we read from 1:1 to 2:11, we find it fits with (A) rather than (B). At 2:12 Paul gives no indication that he is suddenly changing to the entirely different subject of (B).

Clarke holds that Paul’s focus in chapters 2-3 is on giving instructions about the ordered conduct of public worship, despite multiple contrary indications in the text. In support, he claims that the expression “the household of God” (3:15) refers to the public worship assembly. But none of the instructions in 3:1-13 are instructions on how to conduct public worship. And there is no example of Clarke’s meaning anywhere in the New Testament. Does Clarke believe that in Eph 2:19, Titus 1:7 and 1 Peter 4:17, Paul and Peter are referring to the public worship assembly? No, in every case they are referring to the church as God’s family.

Clarke’s view also requires that in 2:13-14 Paul is not calling up a supporting illustration, where Eve went astray and taught Adam falsely, but is referring to a created difference between men and women that is relevant to the ordered conduct of public worship.

In Genesis 3:17, God pronounces judgment against Adam expressly because he listened to the voice of his wife and ate from the tree. Clarke now says that Paul does not have in mind false teaching by Eve because “listened to” means merely that Adam “overheard” what she said; so, she did not teach him. But that is not a viable interpretation. God’s complaint to Adam is not that Adam listened in the sense of overhearing but that he listened in the sense of heeding. He heeded her words, received the fruit from her, and copied her action of eating. (And don’t forget that this matches Paul’s concept that teaching involves both example and words, as in Philippians 4:9.)

A woman overpowered a man with false teaching. That is what Paul is not permitting at Ephesus.