Silencing Techniques

Have you ever had an entire conversation that was not about the thing you wanted to talk about, but about why you needed to stop talking about it?

It's called silencing.

Silencing is when rather than addressing the substance of whatever it is being talked about, someone tries to dismiss, trivialize or derail the conversation, so that the topic, whatever it is, stops getting discussed.  The person who started the conversation ends up focusing not on the issue at hand, but on defending the validity either of the topic or of his or her own voice.  Here are some categories of silencing, with specific examples from things that have been said to me or that I've heard said to others.

Suggesting you're being frivolous or the issue is not important.

"How can you waste your time talking about this when there are so many more important problems in the world?

"Shouldn't you be: a) spreading the gospel; b: helping the poor; c) taking care of your children instead of focusing on these issues?"

"The Bible is a toxic book riddled with errors and contradictions.  Discussing what one of its verses means is a waste of time."

Questioning your motives.

"You're only talking about this because you want personal power/you're overly ambitious."  (for an example, see Are Women Seeking Ministry "Demanding Rights"?)

"The reason you're saying all this is that in your heart you don't want to obey God."

"You're just trying to find a way out of following the Bible."

"What it comes down to is that you resent your God-given role as a woman."

"Deep in your heart you know there's no God; that's why you're arguing so much about it."

"Othering" you.  ("Othering" is defined as "a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an 'other.'" In other words, "you're not one of us, so we don't have to listen to you.")

"You're not really an evangelical/you don't believe the Bible is inerrant [therefore, we can't trust anything you say]."

"You're one of those feminists, aren't you?"

"That's a bleeding-heart liberal response."

"That's a knee-jerk conservative response."

"What can you expect from a Christian?"

"This is all part of the homosexual agenda."

"No one who takes a different view on this position could really be saved."

Assuming you just don't understand, or you would agree with them.

"Sorry, sister, but you're deceived."

"Let me explain again why you're wrong, and maybe you'll get it this time."

"Try to consider this rationally."

"As any reasonable person could see. . . "

"Gaslighting" you.  (The term "gaslighting" comes from the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which a young wife is manipulated by her husband into believing she is going insane.  It now means any attempt by one person to make another doubt his or her perception of reality by "telling the other that there is something wrong with the way she sees the world or there's something wrong with who she is.")

"You're overreacting/too sensitive."

"You're getting emotional about this."

"I can see that you're bitter."

"You've clearly been a victim of abuse, so you can't look at this issue objectively."

"Someone in your past misused authority in a way that hurt you, and that's why you don't like hearing what I'm telling you."

Telling you to "lighten up" or "let it be."

"You're being strident."

"Why can't you just enjoy this sermon/movie/song for what it is?  Why do you have to analyze it?"

"You're the one trying to silence us through insisting we be 'politically correct.'"

"Can't you take a joke?"

Privileging their position/appealing to authority.

"The Bible is very clear on this."

 "The church has believed as I believe for 2000 years."

"But that's never happened to me."

"Most Christian women believe as I do and are happy."

"I'm a Greek scholar, and I know what I'm talking about."

Telling you to ignore the problem.

"It was a good sermon.  If anything that was said bothers you, just forget that part."

"Don't be so negative. Do you always have to focus on that?"

"Just eat the meat and spit out the bones."

Telling you that the upset you're causing is more important than the problem you're pointing out.

"You're being divisive."

"Don't rock the boat/make waves."

"Stop making a fuss."

"Christians should be focusing on what unifies us, not on our differences."

Telling you that you talk too much about the issue.

"This is getting boring. Enough already."

"Stop beating a dead horse."

"Do you have to bring this up again?"


Anything sound familiar?

I'm pretty sure that almost everyone has had someone attempt to silence them, about something or other, at some time or other.  But the point is that as soon as you start arguing with a silencer about whether or not you should say something, you've been effectively stopped from actually saying it.

I think we all need to learn to recognize these techniques, so that when someone attempts to silence us, we can simply point it out and then get back to the substance of the issue.  And if we're responsible for attempting to silence someone else, we need to see that we're doing it and back off.

Issues need to be addressed on their own merits.  Trying to shut someone up ultimately doesn't solve anything, and it's actually just another weapon in the arsenal of spiritual or verbal abuse.

The only words that need to stop are the silencing ones.

UPDATE:  Dianna Anderson over at Faith and Feminism has written an amazing piece called  White Lady Feminism, Christian Blogging and the Worst of Both Possible Worlds, where she provides an excellent example of how "Don't rock the boat" and "Let's only focus on the good things" are used to silence dissenters within a movement-- with a corollary of "We have to present a united front, so quit bashing your brothers!" which really should be considered as a silencing technique in and of itself.


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Note: Saying "that's racist" or "that's sexist" or "that's homophobic" are not silencing techniques, because they do in fact address the conversation/topic of discussion, when the person saying this can point out how the prior remark is racist, etc.  However, "You're a racist/sexist/homophobe" is a silencing technique because it's about the person making the remark rather than the remark itself.

What About "Women Be Silent in the Church"?

So far on this blog I have addressed nearly every Bible verse used to restrict women or keep them under male authority-- except 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 The passage states:

The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

The main reason I have left this verse alone is that I'm not completely sure how best to interpret it myself.  There are so many different positions about it, among complementarians and egalitarians alike.  The position of many complementarians is similar to the one presented in Got Questions.Org: that since 1 Corinthians 11:5 expects women to pray and prophesy aloud in church, the verse cannot require complete silence by women in church-- but that the verse should be interpreted through the lens of 1 Timothy 2:12, in which Paul's words "I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man" are interpreted to mean "God forbids any woman to ever teach or exercise any sort of authority over any man in church." Thus,  in this view,1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is read closely with its immediate context of receiving and interpreting gifts of tongues and prophecy:

1 Corinthians 14:34 is not commanding women to be absolutely silent in the church all the time. It is only saying that women should not participate when tongues and/or prophecy is being interpreted and tested (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22;1 John 4:1). This is in agreement with 1 Timothy 2:11-12 which says that women should not teach or have authority over men. If women were involved in deciding whether a prophecy was truly from God, they would be disobeying what the Bible says in 1 Timothy 2:11-12. Therefore, Paul tells women to be silent when tongues and prophecy are being interpreted so that they will not be disobeying God’s Word.


Another complementarian viewpoint is that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is to be read as virtually synonymous with 1 Timothy 2:12 -- that it forbids women only from authoritative or pastoral speaking in church.  Wayne Jackson's article in The Christian Courier states:

This does not demand that a woman be absolutely silent at church. Rather, in harmony with what the apostle taught elsewhere (1 Tim. 2:12), the woman is not to speak or teach in any way that violates her gender role. She is not to occupy the position of a public teacher,in such a capacity as to stand before the church and function as the teacher (or co-teacher) of a group containing adult men. In assuming this official capacity, she has stepped beyond her authorized sphere, and she violates scripture.

Both of these interpretations aim for consistency between 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.  However, they both tend to gloss over the fact that 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 really aren't talking about the same things.  The Greek words for "silence" are different in the two texts, for instance:  the Timothy verse is about women "learning" with quiet hearts and minds, while the Corinthians verse says nothing about learning and uses a word for "silence" which really does mean "shut up."  They also ignore the fact that the word used for "authority" in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 is not used anywhere in the New Testament to mean the normal exercise of legitimate authority, such as would be used to test prophecies or teach publicly.*  Additionally, Paul's first letter to the Corinthians was written many years before his first letter to Timothy, so how could he expect the Corinthians to use 1 Timothy in order to understand what he meant?

Hard complementarians/patriarchalists are much stricter.  They conclude that the reference to women's prayer and prophecy in 1 Corinthians 11:5 must be interpreted in light of "women be silent" in 14:34-35, and not the other way around.  Thus, women can speak aloud in small-group meetings or prayer meetings, but are not to speak aloud in a regular Sunday meeting of the church at all-- not even, apparently, to make a prayer request or give an announcement.  M.Div. Steve Atkerson at the NTRF website states:

[W]omen are to remain silent with respect to speaking to the assembled church. The context is clear about what is being regulated: situations where only one person is up addressing the whole church (“one at a time,” 14:27 & “in turn,” 14:31). . . that which is being prohibited is public speaking intended for the whole church to hear. . . In God’s household, it is disgraceful for a woman to speak to the gathering of the church. . . . Women may evidently pray in prayer meetings and speak or prophesy at evangelistic events. However, during the regular, weekly, Lord’s Day meetings of the whole church they are not to speak out publicly.

He does, however, give this qualifier:

The silence requirement would therefore not apply to congregational singing, whispered comments not intended for the whole church, laughing, playing an instrument, chatting during the fellowship of the Lord’s Supper, etc.

These views all agree that women are to be restricted from speaking to some degree.  However, they cannot agree on the extent of the restriction.  To some extent, though, all of the above interpretations forbid women's full participation in the ministries and giftings of the church.

On the egalitarian side there are three basic camps.  The first is that since Paul's context here is order in church services, he enjoins silence upon women because they were disrupting the service in some way: possibly by asking questions aloud which interrupted the speaker, which would be why he asks wives to wait and "ask their husbands at home."  This is the position taken by Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith
in his blog The New Creation and the Ministry of Women.  He says:

But the word Paul uses for “remain silent” is sigaō, and . . . we can now make better sense of Paul’s statement in its context.

This part of 1 Corinthians is about maintaining good order in worship: “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” And so Paul says about those who would speak in tongues, “If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet (sigaō) in the church and speak to himself and to God.” Rather than confuse the group with unintelligible speech, would-be speakers should refrain from saying what they otherwise might. . .

We should understand Paul’s comments about women speakers in this light. It’s not that Paul is calling for “silence,” the absence of speech or sound, but rather for propriety and good order. Apparently there is something the women in Corinth would otherwise “want to inquire about.” (We’ll explore in our next post what this might have been.) But the community gathering is not the time or the place for this, so the women should refrain from questioning or challenging the speaker. Instead, Paul says, “let them ask their husbands at home”—a third-person imperative, granting them permission to do something that was not typical in this culture. In other words, rather than this being a restriction on women, it’s actually an empowerment of them.

This view allows women's full participation in the church on the basis that the New Testament passage reflects a temporary, situational restriction that need not continue now that the specific situation has ceased.

A second egalitarian position is that these two verses were actually not in the original text.  This is the view held by Dr. Philip B. Payne, who has online articles here showing his detailed textual scholarship.  The fact is that our earliest dated manuscripts of this portion of the New Testament date after 300 AD.  All of these contain verses 34-35, but several manuscripts omit them from just after verse 33 and insert them at the end of verse 40.  This would indicate that they probably were written in the margin at some point after the original text was written.  Theologian Todd Derstine (who is actually a complementarian!) of America's Prophetic Destiny endorses Philip Payne's position that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is actually an interpolation:

The hypothesis that that these verses were not in Paul’s original letter helps to explain why none of the Apostolic Fathers—Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Polycrates—or Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Shepherd of Hermas, the Gnostic Gospels or second century pseudepigraphae, Tatian, or Clement of Alexandria or Hippolytus ever make reference to them. Clement of Alexandria has it in his head that both men and women should “embrace silence” at church, but extols Miriam as Moses’ associate in commanding the host of Israel as a prophetess, which together implies his text of I Cor 14 did not have vv. 34-35. Tertullian (Bap. 15.17) [early 3rd century], then, is our first Christian writer to clearly show his awareness, not to mention wholeheartedly acceptance of, this pseudo-Pauline policy of feminine silence. . . 

It is as if whoever invented these verses wanted the church of God to disqualify the role of women in the church and reinterpret the inclusiveness implied in 14.5, 14.18, 14.24, and 14.31. We are led to ask the question, “What part of all didn’t he understand?” If v. 34’s unqualified silencing of women were true, then the “all” and “every one of you” in vv. 5, 18, 24, and 31 force us to understand Paul’s letters as being only addressed to the men in the congregation, which is ludicrous in the extreme and contrary to the prominence given to women throughout his epistles and in the book of Acts written by Paul’s most faithful companion, Luke. Ironically, it reflects the same kind of thinking towards women reflected in Talmudic literature which had its inception during the second century, that women were somehow not endowed by their Creator with the same ability as men to appreciate the Torah or truth in general. And frankly, the church fathers, beginning with Tertullian and culminating with Jerome, display this very same kind of perverse marginalization of gender, sex, marriage, and women characteristic of all false religiosity.

This view says we needn't take this passage into account because it wasn't in the original text, and thus reflects a rule that God did not intend to be there.

The third egalitarian position is that verses 34-35 were actually Paul's quotation of words written or said to him by the Corinthians themselves, which he then decisively refutes.  This view is explained beautifully by Pastor Wade Burleson of Istoria Ministries Blog, as follows:

Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians in Greek. The written Greek language does not use "italics" like we do in our English to identify a quote. To know that something is a quotation: (a). The author must identify that what he is writing is a quotation (something Paul does elsewhere), or (b). the quotation must be so familiar to the audience that no identification of the quote is necessary, or (c). the author uses a Greek eta after the quotation to then refute it. I believe the latter two ways are precisely how the Apostle Paul identifies he is quoting someone else in I Corinthians 14:34-35. . . 

The quotation in I Corinthians 14:34-35 is consistent to the law of the Jews in Corinth, but it is absolutely contrary to the teaching and the practice of the Apostle Paul.

Paul REFUTES the Jewish quotation in I Corinthians 14:34-35 twice in the very next verse (v. 36) by using the Greek letter eta. Go look in your interlinear Greek/English Bible and find the stand alone Greek letter eta in v. 36. You will see the eta twice in that one verse. It looks like this: η The Greek eta has two possible markings that cause it to be translated with either the English word "or," or with the English equilavent of what we mean when we make a sound with our mouths like "PFFFFFFFFFFFFT!" This means "That's ridiculous!" or "Are you kidding me?" or "Nonsense!" This latter meaning, in my opinion, is precisely what Paul is saying (twice) in I Corinthians 14:36 in response to the Jewish quotation he has just given I Corinthians 14:35-36. The original Greek text has no markings, so the translation of η must be made by translators based on other facts than the markings of the Greek letter. I believe the context, the culture of Corinth, and the radical nature of New Covenant worship taught by Paul (and resisted by the Corinthian Jews zealous for the Law) demands the η be translated with a "PFFFFFFFFFFFT!" instead of "or" (as is done in the NAS).

M.Div. Dennis J. Preato, whose article on the God's Word to Women website does an excellent job of summarizing the various positions on this verse, also holds to the quotation viewpoint.  He explains why the textual variant of the verses having been moved in some manuscripts might be compatible with this view:

David W. Odell-Scott, Professor of Philosophy at Kent State University, offers a possible solution to the interpolation debate. He suggests that the editors of the Western manuscripts deleted the verses from their normal location between verses 33 and 36, and moved them in order to shield the verses from Paul's rebuke that begins in verse 36. He suspects "the editors shrewdly manipulated the text to serve their purposes," and that they "sought to render the text in such a way that it would be consistent with what the editors expected to find in scripture," meaning that the editors of the Western text did not view Paul's rebuke of the silence and subordination of women as a "viable possibility" given the historical culture and society's norm of that day. Odell-Scott actually views verses 34-35 as a quotation that Paul repeats word for word in order to rebuke. . . .

A substantial body of internal and external evidence exists to conclude that verses 34-35 could not have been authored by Paul. Internally, there is not one verse in the Old Testament that Paul could quote to support such a declaration. Nor is Paul alluding to any general Genesis passage to support a view opposite from his stated declaration in 1 Corinthians that women can pray and prophesy in church.

As previously discussed, Paul is quite specific when referring to the Old Testament to prove his point. The extensive, eternal evidence points to the fact that Paul is quoting a saying from the Oral Law of the Jews that prohibited women from speaking in the synagogue.

Oral Jewish laws do not constitute Scripture and are not authoritative for the body of Christ. Scholars also point out that Paul never appeals to the "law" as guidance for the Christian Church. Scripture tells us that God calls and uses anyone to minister regardless of gender. Paul has just finished telling the Corinthians that women can pray and prophesy in church. In verse 36, Paul corrects the Judaizers' error. Therefore, interpreting verses 34-35 as a quotation with an immediate rebuke remains a contextually viable and the preferred option.

This view shows that the rule need not be followed because Paul never intended to make the rule at all, but instead intended to refute it.

Each of these positions has reasons why they disagree with the others.  The hard-complementarian/patriarchal NTRF site linked above has extensive material attempting to show why all of the other positions, including those of softer complementarians, are wrong; you're welcome to review his material further if you like.  But all of these views, as far as I can see, have one thing in common:  they accept (at least for purposes of argument) that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 should be read as some sort of rule that the New Testament sets forth, which either needs to be either followed in whatever sense it was intended, or dismissed as unintended.

For me, the fact that there is no actual place anywhere in the Old Testament that Paul could have cited as "law" where God commands women to be submissive to their husbands or forbids women to speak publicly; that Anna spoke publicly in the Temple on the occasion of Christ's infancy dedication, and was not rebuked for doing so (Luke 2:36); that women such as Phoebe (Romans 16:1) would have had to speak publicly in the church in order to read Paul's letter aloud to the church at Rome (and probably authoritatively answer questions about what Paul meant!); and that the words of Mary, Mother of Christ, are included in our New Testaments as definite speech that we receive as God-inspired and therefore authoritative-- all do seem to indicate that Paul could not have intended to forbid women from speaking in church, and with teaching authority.

Another issue is that when we read these verses, we somehow miss what is happening in terms of the reason being set forth for the supposed rule.  But the passage actually says "FOR [the reason that] it is shameful [or disgraceful] for a woman to speak in church."  And due to our historical and global distance from the passage, we tend to miss what was really being said.  The Middle East at the time of Paul was an honor-shame culture, and by definition, this meant that behavior was viewed in terms of "the opinions and norms of one's group" rather than according to our more individualistic ideals of right and wrong.  No matter who wrote the words in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 into our Bibles, these phrases actually reflect a very real fact of the time/place in which they were written: it was actually considered shameful in the ancient Middle-Eastern honor-shame culture, for a woman to speak in a public place so that anyone but her husband or other immediate family members could hear her.

David A. DeSilva's book Honor, Shame, Patronage & Purity examines 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 in light of this misunderstood dynamic: 

Readers living in the United States or Western Europe may recognize immediately that we live at some distance from the honor culture of the first-century Greco-Roman world (including the Semitic peoples in the East). . . Typically we do not talk about honor and shame much. . .

[W]e should mention the ways in which gender roles impinge on conceptions of honorable behavior. In the ancient world, as in many traditional cultures today, women and men have different arenas for the preservation and acquisition of honor, and different standards for honorable activity. Men occupy the public spaces, while women are generally directed toward the private spaces of home and
hearth. When they leave the home, they are careful to avoid conversation with other men. . . [W]e do find a good deal of space given over to promoting (or simply reflecting) the larger society’s view of female honor within the pages of the New Testament.

[Passages like 1 Cor. 14:34-35] continue to be the topic of endless debate, but relevant for our concern here is the fact that they reflect the same conviction articulated by Plutarch, namely that a woman’s words are for her husband’s ears, not for the public ear.

I would consider it likely that the passages limiting women’s public voice and presence are introduced as part of the early church leaders’ attempts to show outsiders that the Christian movement is not subversive but inculcates the same “family values” (with regard to women, children and slaves in the household) as the dominant, non-Christian culture. The reason for this is first to diminish the slander against the Christian group (namely that it “turned the world upside down” and was a source of instability and trouble for “good” people), and second, to make the group more attractive to the people around it.

The fact is that in modern Western cultures such as that of the United States, it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that it is actually "shameful" or "disgraceful" (which again are by definition references to human social values, not to moral standards, whether divine or human) for women to speak in church! Even in Christian subcultures like evangelicalism, we may have some sense from the text that a woman standing up in church to speak may be breaking some sort of divine rule-- but we have no deep-seated, culturally inbred sense of human shame or disgrace-- no feeling that something dishonorable in the sight of society is happening.   In fact, what really brings shame on the church in the eyes of the surrounding culture today is when women are forbidden to speak.   Christians in fact often feel defensive or protective of women-silencing traditions precisely because we know how bad these practices look to outsiders. Our sense of shame, as far as it goes in our non-honor/shame society, works against silencing women, not for silencing them.

When the reason for a rule ceases, what does/should that mean for the rule?  If whoever wrote these words was trying to prevent cultural shame and disgrace upon the church, should they now be used as a reason for the church to incur shame and disgrace?

So I don't think this verse should be read as restricting or silencing women today.  But the real issue for me goes even deeper than this.  The fact is that not even the strictest hard complementarian reads this verse as forbidding women to say anything in church at all.  And yet this is what the "plain sense" of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 does in fact say.  Women are to "keep silent" for they are "not permitted to speak."  Not "not permitted to speak publicly."  Not "not to participate in the interpretation of tongues."  Not "not to speak as a teacher of adult men."  Not to speak.  That's what it says.

Apparently even hard complementarians today recognize the dehumanization and disenfranchisement from their own centers of worship and Christian community which women would experience if they were required to be completely mute from the time they walked into the church meeting until the time they walked out again.  So-- no one takes this verse at its "plain sense."  Everyone decides that that can't be what it means.  Everyone allows some compassion, some feeling for women, some sense of Jesus' commandment "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Luke 6:31) to soften the absolute prohibition set forth in the "plain sense" of these verses.  In short, we allow ourselves to be guided by a sense of right and wrong, as Jesus Himself taught right and wrong, in our reading of these verses-- no matter what the actual words say about what is shameful.  Because the fact is that though Jesus often ignored His society's assessment of what was shameful-- from the woman at the well to the woman who cried on His feet, He did it to affirm women and lift them up, not to silence them.

So here's what it boils down to for me.  Did Paul, in writing his letters, really intend to impose a new, much stricter Law on the people of the New Covenant-- particularly with regards to the behavior of women-- than ever was pronounced by Moses to the people of the Old Covenant?  And if all of us find a particular supposed "law" to be so harsh/unjust in its literal understanding that we find some way to soften it and make it at least a little more equitable-- could obedience to law really be what the New Covenant is about?

Should we even be reading the New Testament in this way? 

Christian author and minister Frank Viola probably says it best:

The New Testament should never be handled as a manual of floatable doctrines and isolated teachings. The New Testament is a whole. It’s essentially a story. What is written in the letters of Paul and others is part of that story. The New Testament story contains a consistent message. It’s the message of the New Covenant. This covenant is not an updating of the Old Covenant. It doesn’t include a new set of rules to replace the old set of rules. . . 

In short, the New Covenant erases all social and class distinctions. And it has afforded all to receive the Spirit and serve as priests in God’s house. That includes women. . . [W]hatever the “limiting passages” mean, they cannot in any way overturn the New Covenant. Neither can they contradict the entire thrust of the New Testament. Hence, the idea that women are excluded from speaking in God’s house is a catastrophic breach of the New Covenant.

Isn't Christianity supposed to be about following Jesus?  Jesus said, "A new commandment I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, you are also to love one another."  John 13:34.  And then He showed how He loved us-- by going to the Cross.  Not by making restrictive rules to silence women.  In fact, His first act in the New Creation He had inaugurated with His Resurrection, was to commission women to testify of Him.

His commandments are not burdensome, because they are about love, not law.  His yoke is easy-- because it's about love, not law.  Who were the ones who tied up heavy burdens for others to carry?  The Pharisees.  Not Jesus.

"Women be silent in church" is a heavy burden.

So how can it be from Christ?

Therefore, I will take my stand here in the same place I took in my post "But That's What the Bible Says":

[T]here's something wrong with the way we look at the Bible, when we read a small set of texts in ways that jar with its overarching truths. There's something wrong with holding the nature or treatment of women, or the character of God, hostage to a verse.  There's something wrong with righteously standing on obedience to the Bible while treating fellow human beings less than righteously.

Women shouldn't have to "keep silent in church."  It's contrary to "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:17).  And it's contrary to "love one another, as I have loved you."

For me, that's all there is to it.


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*For my own take on 1 Timothy 2:12, see my four-part series beginning here.

Taking the Week Off

This last week I got a terrible cold and was in bed for four days.  I'm well again, but today is my son's 14th birthday party, and-- well, you know how it is.  I haven't been able to prepare anything for this blog this week, and I'm not going to get a chance today either.

So here's a picture of my cats, for your amusement:

Their names are Trinket (the calico) and Bandit (the gray with the mask).

Have a good week, and I should have something more next Saturday.

Why I'm Not a Calvinist

Calvinism/Reformed Christianity is all the rage nowadays:  the belief that humans have no free will, and that God predestines some to be saved and some to be separated from Him forever, and that He only died for those He "elects" (chooses for salvation), whom He draws to Himself by irresistible grace.

I have never been able to believe this.  Not that I just don't want to believe it.  I literally can't.

It's also not that I think I am incapable of error or that I have this perfect grasp of spiritual truth.  But the person I am, with the best heart attitude I can ascribe to and the best reasoning powers I can summon, has to believe in human free will.

Here's the way I see it. 

If God alone is responsible for saving humans, and humans really have nothing whatsoever to do with it-- then all He would have to do to save all human beings is exercise irresistible grace, and they would have to be saved. Oh, I know all the arguments about how we all deserve eternal separation from God*, and it's gracious enough of God if He just chooses to save some.

But to me, it's not. Not gracious enough. 

God created human beings-- all human beings.  If God holds humans responsible for their salvation, then they have to be capable of choosing salvation.  If they are incapable of choosing salvation, then their fate, whatever it is, is God's responsibility.

If humans are incapable of resisting His saving grace, then He is responsible for not saving them all, since it's completely within His power to do so, and no one else has any say in the matter. It's not a matter of what we humans deserve so much as a matter of impartiality in justice, and completeness in mercy. I can't believe that God exercises partiality in justice and limited mercy.  I can believe God could be infinitely better than I am able to conceive; I cannot believe that He could be worse.  That I, who love my children equally and would never set one up to receive my love and the best inheritance I can leave her, while consigning the other to total abandonment, could in my refusal to do this, be better than the God I worship.

But this doesn't mean I think humans can save themselves. (Non-Calvinists are often accused of believing this, but it isn't true.)  I don't think there's anything we can do or add to God's grace in order to be saved.  But I don't think grace is irresistible.

I think we can't come to God unless He draws us-- but when He draws us, we can choose to come towards Him, or resist and insist we don't want God. Simple as that. I think the image of God remains in us, distorted though it may be by sin. We are capable of responding to the Holy Spirit's influence for good, though incapable of moving towards the good on our own. But there are moments in our lives-- probably many, many more than one, for each of us-- where God draws us towards Himself, and that act of drawing suspends us momentarily between good and evil, allowing us to be capable of choosing -- either giving in to the drawing of God, or falling back towards wrong. He alone can make us free to choose, but He does make us free, and the choice is ours.

Could not God have enough skill and finesse to move a human heart into a state balanced between two choices so that we are in that moment free to make a choice?  Is God really incapable of drawing human beings gently enough that they don't have to come?

The idea that we have nothing whatsoever to do with it, that it's all God and there is no free will, as far as I can see, turns God into something awful. I have examined the argument that God's justice is so high above ours that what looks like injustice to us, really isn't; but I can't buy that-- especially for we who are redeemed. We can see what justice is-- and if it totally looks like something else, even after our eyes are opened to God's ways-- how can we call it justice? A God who makes creatures, claims to love them all, and then refuses to save some, is not a God of love or justice. I have tried, but the Reformed perspective simply makes no sense to me. In fact, it seems like an example of what Michael Spenser was talking about in his iMonk post, "More, Better, Most, Highest":

What I see happening . . . is an escalation of terms into the potentially useless. . . And the person willing to say the most, to make the highest claim. . . feels justifiably proud that he's climbed further out on the limb of faith than anyone else. . . 

We're justified by faith, right? Not works? Not any kind of works?

Not by saying "I believe in justification" MORE and LOUDER and with BIGGER WORDS and MORE ARGUMENTS than the other guy?

The language of the Reformed seems like that to me.  Do we believe grace alone saves us? Apart from any works? I mean ANY works? The highest we can go is to believe that it is somehow a "work" even to just give in when God draws us-- and therefore we can't even believe in humans just giving in to God, as part of grace.  No, He has to cause us to give in, or it's not grace.  But I don't think it's necessary to go that far in my belief that grace alone saves us. In fact, I can't.  My brain won't go there.

But some Reformed believers say that if I'm not willing to go as high as that, I must not really believe in "the doctrines of grace." Because they can do one better than me, with my insistence on free will.  That even surrendering to the grace of God is too much of a "work" on my part.  But I just can't see surrendering to grace as salvation by works.  It doesn't make sense to me. 

You see, I would call what I adhere to "the doctrines of grace," too-- so I disagree with appropriating that term for one particular expression of Christianity, with the implication that other traditions (such as the Wesleyan/Arminian) don't really understand grace.

The question then arises, what do I do with Romans 9:18-24? 

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.  You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

Fortunately, I don't have to try to figure this out on my own.  Arminius and Wesley, and many other free-will believers, have gone before me.  (Roger E. Olson is a well-known modern example.)  I agree with them that this passage is not about salvation-- not in terms of individuals going to heaven or being with Christ in eternity. Arminians start at the beginning of chapter 9 instead of at verse 18, and note that after Romans 8, which is about individual salvation, Paul switches focus. He begins talking about Israel as a nation, and Israel's original covenant with God. Then Paul goes on to talk about Jacob and Esau, and then Pharoah-- but in terms of where their respective nations fit in God's earthly plan. The passage then begins to speak of Christians as God's new "nation," which is actually comprised of people from every nation. 

"Jacob I loved and Esau I hated" (v. 13) is not about God literally hating a human being that He created-- any more than when Jesus said we must "hate" our father and mother and even our own life in order to follow Him (Luke 14:26), He was speaking of literal hate.  This is part of a kind of poetic hyperbole which is a common feature in the Bible. Also, it's my understanding that the word "hardened" referring to Pharoah's heart would better be rendered "strengthened."  In Exodus 9:12 God strengthened (in the Scripture-4-All Online Interlinear, "made steadfast") Pharoah's resolve to do what Pharoah had already chosen to do.  But the Romans 9 passage is about Paul's looking back to the Old Covenant (which was with a nation, not individuals), and about whether God's plan for Israel as a nation has been nullified.  Paul's answer is "no."

The "vessels of wrath" are not individuals facing eternity, but nations in God's plans on the earth-- and the "vessels of mercy" are "us whom he has called" into a new covenant nation.  The destinies of these vessels are destruction vs. mercy on earth as nations-- but even though earthly nations may be "vessels of wrath," Paul goes on to show in Chapter 10 that "whoever believes in Me will not be disappointed" -- whether from the Jewish nation or a Greek one, any individual can receive eternal salvation and become part of the new covenant. Nor is this something they accomplish on their own-- but "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Chapter 10:17). Then Paul talks about how some form of "the word of God" has gone forth to everyone on earth-- through nature, when they cannot hear the the gospel (10:18).

In Chapter 11 Paul goes back to talking about Israel's calling as a nation again, and how a partial hardening has happened to that nation while mercy is being extended to the Gentiles to become part of the new "holy nation" which is the kingdom of God.

In other words, Arminians believe that God's earthly callings of nations, not the eternal destiny of individuals, is the topic of Romans 9. I think we miss this because of our overly individualistic mindset in the West. We tend to think it's all about individuals going to heaven-- but God is also interested in His kingdom, His holy nation, spreading on the earth.

With regards to other verses, this website briefly summarizes the Calvinist and Arminian positions on various Bible verses about predestination and calling.  There's no reason why any of the Reformed "clobber verses" have to be read as denying all human free will. 

The other issue I have with Calvinism has to do with "sovereignty."  I believe God is sovereign.  But I think Christians can at times get over focused on one attribute of God to the exclusion of other attributes. I think Reformed movements sometimes focus so much on God's authority and sovereignty, that they hardly have any room to think about God's humility and the freedom that Christ came to bring us. Ask some Christians what they are free from, and they'll simply say, "I'm free from bondage to sin. I'm free to live the way God wants me to." But the fact is that that we are also free from having to live in bondage to what Paul calls "the elements" of this earthly life, "do not handle, do not taste, do not touch" (Col 2:21) or the observation of "days and months and seasons and years" (Gal 4:10) or other things that are "destined to perish with the using."  Not understanding this can result in rules-based living-- though of course not all Reformed believers are legalists.

I find that sometimes a focus on God's sovereignty to the point where it almost shuts out any other attributes, seems related to a certain hierarchical view of the world-- a view that focuses on who is in authority over who, more than on service and love.  We can come to think God is all about enforcing His own authority, and that proper submission to authority is what the Christian walk is all about-- rather than, "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." But I see God as One who would deliberately choose to be born in a manger, the Son of a lowly carpenter in backwoods Galilee. I see a Kingdom of mutual submission and service, of each of us having a mind like Christ's-- in lowliness of mind considering others better than ourselves, as per Phil. 2.  I see a God Who limits His own exercise of sovereignty, by His own free will-- in order to allow us ours. 

And I believe this spirit of humility which is a true characteristic of Kingdom living, can be manifest just as much in the Reformed tradition as anywhere else.  Just because Calvinism doesn't make sense to me doesn't mean I think I have a corner on the truth and I couldn't possibly be wrong.  You see, I am not saying all this to condemn Calvinists or Reformed theology. I am simply explaining my own journey, the way my mind works, and why limited atonement and irresistible grace do not sync, in my mind, with the God Whom I have, in my human, limited way, come to know and love.

When Christ returns and we become "like Him, for we will see Him just as He is" (1 John 3:2), then these sorts of disagreements will be over and done.  But for now, I'll believe in free will.  There isn't anything else I can do. 

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*Note: as an annihilationist, I don't think eternal separation from God involves eternal conscious torment, either-- but that's a post for another day.