The following interview was with Jeff Worbach, pastor of Christ Alone Presbyterian Church, about the female pastors. Due to its length, it was split up into three parts with the first portion dealing with more abstract conversation about the image of God in men and women. The second portion deals with the texts of the issue in question, and the third installment discusses the nature of preaching itself
Thought Butter: Jeff, welcome, thanks for being willing to sit down and be grilled about this completely benign topic that has zero emotional interference in culture.
Jeff Worbach: (laughs) Yeah, I’m sure.
TB: This one is fun because you get hit from both sides. You get the feminists pissed off, which I suppose isn’t that hard to do, but also those evanjellyfish Christians who do the same thing that the rest of culture does, except five months later and lamer.
JW: And the verse, you forgot tacking on the Bible verse to make it look like it was their idea all along. Yeah, dude, seriously, you take it to the face from the culture and meanwhile your own church is tenderizing your kidneys.
TB: Alright, let’s jump into it. I got to tell you, this is one of those topics that I have rolled over in my brain for years. I feel like more than a few times I have said, “Alright, I’m gonna sit down and figure this out” and then I tucker my little self out arguing with myself and then inevitably shelf the whole thing. And, one of the reasons why it has been frustrating, is because…okay, full disclosure here, I would have a problem if I found out that God’s word emphatically and clearly stated women are to be pastors right alongside them men. Sorry, I would. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t conform to it eventually, I would just need some extra Holy Spirit up in this piece. Does that make me a misogynist? I admit that I would have a hard time with that. So for me, what frustrates me when I study this is that I feel like it is hard to get out of my own way and to see things clearly. So what do you think, am I just hoplessly misogynistic?
JW: (Laughs) You might be. But just because you have a gut reaction to a woman elder doesn’t necessarily mean that you are, though. Could be a good thing. You gut may be telling you truth that your mind can’t grasp just yet. We’ll see. Plus its real easy to be accused of misogyny today, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.
TB: Well thank you for that. And, the thing that is even more frustrating is that I can’t exactly pinpoint what my problem is with it, but somehow it feels like…hmm. It just seems like the whole idea of it resonates off key but in away I have not yet been able to identify. Like its not something on top of the earth that needs to be rearranged, but the very tectonic plates of the earth that would be upended. Like its not moving a house from here to there or even a city, but a fundamental aspect of reality, a way that I have understood life, the world and even how God chooses to make himself known would be upturned. Its neither pleasant nor easy. So let the trial of my misogyny begin, I suppose.
JW: Its hard, man. Its a hard topic. And even though there are some what I think as some very, very clear passages about God’s mind on this, it is also, I think we also will miss the grander picture about what God is intending. It would be like, if you are reading like, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, trying to figure out if Sam is considered a ring bearer along with Frodo by scrutinizing a few portions of text, while missing the entire plot of the story. Yeah, there are texts that deal with the topic, we have examples of Sam with the Ring, but clearly Tolkien didn’t intend for us to scrutinize a few passages but step back and look at the plot, the meaning of the characters and the glory of each one according to the part he has them playing and how Sam’s supportive role is was equally necessary.
TB: Yeah, some things in the Bible you can point to and say, “There is it, that is how we are to do things,” and in other places the truth needs to form and be informed by the whole council of the Bible, looking in various places for hints and such. Or like an impressionist painting, up close you don’t have as much clarity as you would like, can’t really figure out the image, but as you step back and see all the strokes taken together over time, a beautiful picture emerges.
JW: That’s good, that’s good
TB: Yeah, and the fact that we don’t have a whole lot of time here means that, probably, not going to be be able to cover all the ground, but I have a couple of challenges I want to pose to your view, although when it comes down to it, I think we would find ourselves on the same side of this thing. But first, maybe take a second and help to guide us in, not only how, but why to even think about this idea of women pastors or women preaching.
JW: I think its wise, starting with the why, because most time these sensitive topics just jump right into the prescriptive and wrench the debate out of the context, not only of the time when it was written, but also the purpose behind it – what is God’s mind in these interdictions? Is He just causing trouble? Did men read something into the text so they could keep the pulpit a boys club, no girls allowed? Or do we hermetically seal the meaning of the text in the past and are therefore free to interpret it how we want in the present?
So one of the ways I approach this with my congregation is that I want us all – man and woman – to be equally as vigilant and vigorous at understanding and obeying the word of God. In other words, if I had a woman come and preach a Sunday service, I would want the women to be as equally tizzied as the men that this was happening, because God’s word was being disobeyed. I don’t want only the men to be indignant and the women secretly fist pumping in the pews. I want us all to be on the same page and to know why this is the case, and I want us all to love it, love the Word of God. Just like if I had a pastor in my church who has three wives, I wouldn’t want only the women to be indignant at the spectacle while the men look on in envious admiration, right?
TB: Right, you don’t want obedience to the word of God to be gender selective. And I think right there that is the feeling I get in general, and I don’t have any hard data to back this up, but it feels like there is a group of Christians in Bible believing churches, both men and women, who don’t seem truly convinced that this is God’s best for us, though they wouldn’t say it because they respect the Word of God. Like the case for women in ordination seems clear, impassioned, well-stated and has the clout of western reasoning and values to back it up, where the case against it still seems like it is shrouded in mystery, tradition, you know, instinct. Or maybe a vestigial remnant of the patriarchy, like an appendix, that really serves no purpose other than to get infected. Consequently I think good hearted Christians are trying to take Paul’s teachings on this in faith while not being able to sign on with gusto yet, maybe hoping for more convincing scholarship, or some archeological discovery to push them one way or the other. But, okay, well why don’t you prepare the canvas for us before we start finger painting about women pastors. Oh, and real quick, there are a lot of words that we could use here, pastor, elder, preacher, ordination – we…I’m just going to assume they are synonymous for our purposes, yeah?
JW: Works for me, yeah. Okay, so, as far as the canvas goes, we have to remember that God is in the business of making His name known. That is what He is doing, that is why we are here, and that is preeminent. We must have this idea of the image of God as the foundation or backdrop or canvas on which this entire conversation is had. We are made in God’s image and He gets to tell us what His intentions for that display should look like. The pottery doesn’t get to tell the potter what he ought to make it into, and the image doesn’t get to tell the real thing how it ought to look. He’s got the copyright, He’s got the trademark of His name, all the intellectual property of what it means to be masculine or feminine belongs to Him.
Of course, this is precisely what the world is challenging as we speak – queer is nothing if not a targeted attack on the very image of God on display in creation. So we see a challenge of these roles not only in the world but also within the church, where you would expect to see the fullest display of the glories of gender in their differences. And so the reason why we need to hash out this important and controversial part of scripture is because what is at stake is the image of God, not merely sexism or gender equality or whatever.
TB: And that would actually be a great segue into some of the cultural backstory of how these gender lines became blurred and how that eventually bled, and is bleeding, into the church. So maybe you could briefly sum up how the feminist movement led to this conversation happening in the church, and then I want to challenge you on something.
JW: Oh, I can’t wait. Yeah, so everyone is pretty familiar with first, what is called first wave feminism with Susan B Anthony and the suffragette movement, the right for women to vote, etc. I don’t know too many people who have an issue with that, though I don’t think it was as banal as we have been led to believe. Second wave feminism came thundering to shore in the 1960’s and looking to demolish the sandcastle patriarchy that had been built and maintained through a presumed inequality and discrimination against women. And I wouldn’t disagree that those things were present, they weren’t perfect and I don’t think, like some do, that the fifties were some kind of placid utopia of the family that we need to recreate. One of the weapons forged during this second wave, the one ring so to speak, was “the pill” which doused the female system with so much hormone so that it thought it was perpetually pregnant and therefore wouldn’t become pregnant. Suddenly you have one of the main reasons that kept women from living like a man – pregnancy and child rearing – out of the picture. They could have childless sex just like men, and they could now move into the workforce into those roles which men had typically monopolized, like STEM, C-suite jobs that took commitment and high work hours. I think the best summation of feminism I have heard is that it has two funadmentals, one, men are jerks, and two, we should be just like them.
TB: (laughs) I like that. Yeah man, now they could do all the spreadsheets they want! Give up building the future of civilization at home and being the wellspring of goodness in life, and you get to retread tires for six-ninety-five an hour just like a man. Good trade, yeah?
JW: Exactly, yes, now they could spreadsheet til their heart’s content. And we have since had the misfortune to see feminism devolve into the 3rd and 4th waves and things, you know, have kinda taken a turn into the creepy.
TB: One thing I have noted is that even feminism is ultimately unable to separate itself from its divine image. Even as it rejects motherhood the maternal drive is intact by dint of the image that is immutable, and I think feminism supplied the nourishment for all that followed. We see all her children growing and thriving – the LGBT movement, in my opinion, is the child of feminism. Its like, you can take the womb out of the woman, you can dry it out, you can even take the baby out of the womb, but you can’t take the mother out of the woman. Because that is the image.
JW: I think that is right, or at least I think you could make a good case for it. And it also has that sharp irony that true things seem to have. And this struck just as, or because of, the weakness of the American church began to show. Mainstream Christianity, just, you know, effervescing with winsomeness and hot for relevance, followed suit with culture and we got the category of ‘egalitarianism’. With the approbation of culture, the cool kids in the church began dismantling the gender boundaries which God had set up, most notably in the pastorate, allowing women to preach in direct disobedience to the Bible’s command.
TB: Or at the very least, the kind of contortion of the texts that would make small Chinese girls of Cirque du Soleil jealous. Okay, so I get that the feminist movement bled into the church, and I think as much is obvious in any number of ways, but now might be a good time to challenge you on, oh I suppose we could call it women’s equality. And maybe how we can do this is talk about the plot kind of stuff first, then get into the passages? Sound good?
JW: Ok, but importantly, it isn’t just that feminism crept into the church, but the feminine. And I want to be careful here because the feminine is absolutely just as necessary as the masculine, both are the divine image of God. But what I am talking about here is ratios. When men leave the church, the feminine expands, and I wouldn’t say this is sinful or intentional or wicked or anything per se, its just the way things go. When you have mostly women in the church, the preaching changes to accommodate the female, the worship changes to accommodate more feminine sentiments. The stats are pretty clear that in nearly all categories women outnumber men in religious activities.
TB: So just like if you had a school that was half group A and half group B, and a bunch of group A left, then the school would naturally teach and assign and cater towards the group B with the higher numbers?
JW: Yeah, thats a good way to put it, and that much, like I said, doesn’t seem necessarily wrong or intentional, just a natural response to the atrophy of one group. But nonetheless, if that group whose numbers stay high and they are, say, Hispanic, then the language, the decorations, the…I don’t know, the history or the way things are taught would take on more of a tone which caters to the numbers. I think its natural, but also exponential, right? The more men leave and the feminine influences the atmosphere of a church, further attracting more women and fewer men, and so each group grows or shrinks respectively.
TB: And importantly, the church is the bride, right? And so you have the church, the female, which is made up of males and females. And there is a delicate balance that needs to be struck here, because for women they are in the same place in both scenarios, brides in both places, where the men are in the position of Christ in marriage and the position of the bride in the other. So already there is a built in challenge for one group more so than the other.
Okay, so here is one of the challenges I want to toss your way and see how you deal with it. I once read this book called Slaves, Women and Homosexuals by a gent, last name is Webb, I forget his first name. First, I got to say, that title kind of sticks out, it’s like…what would the subtitle of that book be? A southern baptist Saturday night?
JW: (laughs) Yeah, probably wouldn’t see that advertised on a church’s changeable letter sign.
TB: Yeah, right above Tuesday Night Bingo. Sorry, anyway, um… so the book basically took those three groups and described each in three time periods and how the cultural contemporaries also viewed those groups. So you have slaves, for example, and Webb looks at how they were treated in Israel based on Mosaic law and also how they were treated in the cultures surrounding the Israelites – like the Moabites, Amalekites, etcetera. He did the same for women and homosexuals. And then he took those three categories in the first century AD and compared how the church and the Roman culture viewed them, and lastly the same comparison in current day, or modern times. It was very interesting. And what you saw was basically in the ancient near east women and slaves were treated much better in Israel than how they were treated in the surrounding cultures. If you were a woman and slave, you would want to be in Israel as opposed to some Canaanite tribe. And the same was true in Roman times. Women and slaves were treated better in the Christian view than the surrounding Roman culture practice. And what is more you also see a trend line between those two epochs of increasing freedom or rights, I suppose.
JW: Yeah, the trajectory of women in history changed forever with Jesus Christ.
TB: Yes, certainly, and slaves too. You know, Paul tells them there is no slave or free, male or female but everyone is one in Christ. So you had a slave owner and his slave, perhaps part of the same church. But the point I want to make here is that these trend lines of increasing equality between all three epochs have been true for both of the categories of slaves and women, but it seems like the prohibition of women preaching stopped that trend. Like, yeah, no more slaves at all. Women, equal rights, same jobs and we are all cool with that until…nope! No preaching! We are arbitrarily stopping that trending of equality right here. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange?
JW: Well the first thing I would say is that women preaching is not the first red light we blew through, there were many many before that, but we either forgot about them or have adjusted to them. And this conversation could very easily veer into the whole equality vs equity thing, equal outcome and equal opportunity. Which, we can talk about if you want but I think…
TB: No, let’s not go there, um… But what would you say to that idea that we didn’t stop with ending slavery, we also ended the Jim Crow laws and continued to stamp out racism on the books. But when it comes to women, yeah we did the whole suffrage thing and saw the value of women as greater than mere home trophies or baby factories, but when it comes to pastoring, that’s where the equality stops. Just seems pretty arbitrary.
JW: I would say that if that were the whole story then it may be seen as arbitrary. The question really is does God give us any reason to stop the equality, as you put it. And, if I could just take a second and say that ‘equality’ probably isn’t the best word to use. Two things can be equal and have different uses. A hammer and a screw driver are both equally useful tools but very different applications. So it’s important not to obfuscate equality with a ‘good/not-as-good’ value system. That is not the point. In fact, the more you insist on making two unlike things ‘equal’ the more the ‘good/not-as-good’ divide grows. A hammer and screwdriver do not pound nails equally. But if you insist equality means ‘doing the same thing as’, you are introducing a comparison that didn’t and needn’t exist before. We have nails, we have screws, so both tools are needed and equally valuable for their purpose.
More to your point, if we look at the Bible and the reasons given for why women are not to preach or, as the text says “teach or exercise authority over a man”, we see that the reason given is outside of this trend, or increasing equality line that you were talking about.
TB: So what would you say it the purpose of each tool?
JW: Well, to do it justice we would need quite some time, but to be brief, men building the structure of civilization to protect and provide so the seed of civilization, the most important valuable aspect of life can flourish.
TB: Ok, you’re going to have to unpack that.
JW: I know that is a different way to look at it, but it gets more to the heart of the truth. Most people don’t have hard time understanding the first part about the man’s job, but when it comes to the women and children, protecting, providing, we are built for that. But with women, as a church, we don’t know what to do with them. Think of it…here is how I like to think of it, how I illustrate the problem. I take for granted that both genders are equal, right? So you got male and female, they are equally made in the image of God. So pretend you have a chart and you want to see how the image of God in each gender is used. Say each gender has one-hundred image of God units, let’s call them, that can be utilized to reach their full potential. And we want to see all one-hundred units allocated for each gender. Okay, so you look at the image of God in men, they are protectors, providers, leaders, fighters in battle, they are also the pastors and teachers within the church, okay, so all the image of God units, all one-hundred are allocated, they are being used, and I think everyone can see that, I think its pretty evident. Then you go over to the female side. You have mothers, helpers, being a wife, maybe teaching other women in some small capacity. But generally not soldiers, certainly fewer in higher positions of authority, then you get to the church and they are not teaching or pastoring. So you got like, maybe thirty image of God units being used.
TB: And these numbers are arbitrary
JA: Yeah, completely arbitrary, its just an illustration. So we look at women and are like, well, you got seventy units left, doesn’t look like there are any other jobs, maybe we can use some of them up in the church to be pastors and teachers? I mean, looks like thats what the outside world is doing, maybe that is the way for us to feel like they have as much purpose as us. We don’t see the practical use and we are getting some serious pressure from the culture to give an account for these missing seventy units.
But, and here is the thing, where are the other seventy units? They are underneath the entire graph holding the whole thing up. This is a lot more dramatic when I actually have the graph to show people.
TB: Under the graph? Like underneath the X axis?
JW: Yes, its just a way of saying that these seventy units of the image of God in women are not wasted or missing, the image of God in women is the foundation of civilization. We can’t see it for the same reason you can’t see Manhattan from Central Park. You are standing on it. We can’t see it because we are standing on it and in it.
TB: Wow. That is very flattering. You think women are the foundation of civilization? In what way?
JW: Well, when I see Christians pushing for women ordination, its like, why? Don’t you see your job is so much more vital and important that just doing the same thing as men? And as men, we don’t appreciate and treasure and value and protect this reality, even in the church, and that added to the reason for pushing for total functional equality in the church. We have let culture dictate to us how the image of God units ought to be used within our own ranks instead of displaying to the world the interdependence of the image.
TB: Its like the Avengers and you got the Hulk and Spider Man, and the the Hulk is doing his smash thing and then Spiderman comes along and wants to smash too, like the Hulk, and they all decided together that he should. And its like, yeah, you can smash too, I guess, but not nearly as good as the Hulk and besides you have awesome powers that are way cool and necessary, why don’t you use those instead? I have two boys so most of my analogies have Avengers in them somewhere. But your saying this is a problem for the men, the men in the church specifically. Like we do not honor and recognize what the image of God in women is doing, what it is meant for, and therefore women do not want to do it either?
JW: Yeah, if we did understand and recognize the importance and value of the image of God in women, then neither they nor the men would be as inclined to be looking for something for them to do, and that would preempt this women pastor thing.
TB: But what do you mean by the foundation of civilization? Talk more about that.
JW: Look, eggs are expensive, sperm is cheap. There is a book written by that title. Women are much more valuable than men, just by the numbers. Men make billions of sperm daily, women make one egg a month. I mean, strictly by the laws of supply and demand alone, eggs are way, way, way more valuable than sperm. But more than biology alone, all the good things that we stay alive for – families, community, relationship, beauty, home, goodness – this is what the image of God in women builds, that is what she does. When we think of the goodness of the home, the central reality of our day to day lives, and the comfort and goodness and warmth, this is the central truth of physical reality across the board – women bring this, they make this. How is it, then, a knock to women to say that the very thing that is most important and central in our lives comes from you and, if you please, we want that heart of civilization to keep beating in the chest? And men ought to recognize centrality of the heart, and lay down their lives to make sure, at all costs to me, it can continue to beat. Plus, a woman ties men to their future through children. Her sexual drive is the gas pedal for society, her…
TB: Wait, hold on a sec. So neither men nor women, know the value of the woman, is what it sounds like you are saying, or at least maybe we did know that at one point?
JW: I think we are as a society and as humanity continuing to grow in an understanding of the value of the image of God and in the past they had some things in place but maybe not for the right reasons and maybe the feminism of the twentieth century has helped us see by way of antithesis a better way that God’s images ought to interact and value each other.
TB: Okay, and before I forget, what is this deal about the sexual drive and gas pedals you just mentioned?Say more about that.
JW: This is not my illustration, but if you have the sexual drive of men as the gas pedal of society, what you would get is something like a viking ship – kids everywhere, unattached, no families, because they just want to hump all the time. But women, if their sexual drive is dominant, you get rhythm, patience, you know, if men want sex they need to commit to provide, if they want kids, they need to provide. When men submit their sexual energies to the rhythms of the female, civilization happens. When the male sexual energy is dominant, what you get is chaos, destruction. Another way to put it is the male energy is like a shotgun shell going off in your hand, undirected, destructive, unchanneled. But if you put that same shell into a shotgun, it has direction, the strength is channeled and it can be a useful tool. That is what happens when men submit their sexual drive to the female, when her’s is dominant. George Gilder writes about this in his book Men and Marriage and I think it is spot on. And part of this is because of the fall, but also it is the way men and women are made. And all of this is related to the topic in question, but we need to see the grand design and picture or else we will get prescriptive about the minutiae.
TB: So already, on a cultural level, you would say women or the image of God in women, has a deeper, more profound role than we realize.
JW: I absolutely do. And I would rather spend my time bringing people to see this rather than cheapening the image, ignoring their powers, and solving the problem stupidly by just having them do the same thing as the men. And that is why I am carefully and explicitly trying to use the phrase ‘the image of God in man’ and ‘the image of God in woman’, because it takes the conversation out from the cultural litter and flotsam that can becloud our understanding. I want to understand the image of God like learning the positions on a football team that we were assigned, with a measure of detachment, and then when we begin to play the game we begin to own and understand why we were chose for that position.
TB: Sounds like that could be an entire conversation on its own. But do you think there are any other cultural, or plot, design things we need to consider before we move to the text?
JW: Yeah, um… a couple of things, just the proliferation of woman pastors in the past couple of decades. I think it is something like fifty percent of M div, Master of Divinity students are female today. In the sixties there was something like two percent of ordained clergy were women and now we are nearing one third. So to the person who says they are using the Biblical text alone and not the sociological factors to make their case, it seems oddly to coincide with massive cultural movement and pressures, while the text hasn’t changed in two thousand years. So, any objective observer is justified in asking some questions about that. Secondly, if we look at the denominations that are spearheading women pastors we find like the Episcopal church, the unitarian churches, the methodist churches – not known for being conservative. I think the Episcopal church ordained the first openly gay bishop at my alma mater, actually. Unitarians, I mean, come on. So these things go together, they don’t have to but they very often do. Sins, like grapes, grow in clusters.
TB: Yeah, I agree with that. When you all of a sudden you stumble upon a reality that the church has miraculously overlooked in antiquity, and it just so happens to coincide with what the godless culture is doing, I would be dubious of the incurious. Do we now see a gospel truth to which all our ancestors were blind? And, to your point, we have some precedence for what happens when we take down the gender boundaries because we have the havoc that feminism has created in culture over the past fifty years. And we think that somehow magically it will be different when we do the same thing in church.
JW: Yes, and the other thing I will say is that we have to be careful not to fix what was not broken. The distinctions of the genders and their roles remains intact from before the Fall. So when we read Paul’s phrase in Galatians that their is neither male nor female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile but we are all one, Paul leveled all distinctions of humanity in terms of access to the Father. We are all equally sinful and all equally saved by grace through faith. But he did not level the distinctions of the image of God between the genders, rather he magnified the distinctions by revealing the mystery of marriage. He reveals that ancient institution of marriage as really a giant metaphor of Jesus and his bride, the church. Men are the christ figure in the marriage, women are the bride, the church. To see gender distinctions as an inequality erased by the gospel is to misunderstand the entire purpose behind gender distinctions. They are not the result of the fall. God’s authority, strength and protection is part of his image he wanted to display, and he did so in the vehicle of a man. Equally, his love, creation, beauty, grace and unity of his image we displayed in the vehicle of woman. Their oneness is the fullest expression of the image of God on earth.
TB: Another way I have heard it put is that we confused natural law from natural rights. Natural law is the unbending, unchanging reality of the image of God, the creational differences in both biology and mental dispositions are sufficient reasons for them each functioning in different roles. Natural rights, on the other hand, are an emerging reality in history that seeks to see equal rights apply to all people as people – an equality which Christianity is clearly the biggest contributor. And so we see see natural law meeting natural rights in the topic of women ordination and we mistakenly have natural law submit to natural rights, but it ought to be the other way around. Natural rights bows the knee to natural law, and if you get this backwards, this is the first step in a man menstruating and a woman having a penis. Which is where we are today.
JW: Yes, and we could keep going on like this for a while, considering the cultural factors and foundational principles that we need to lay as a foundation before we get into the Biblical texts, but I think so long as we take this in order, it helps to understand the instructions Paul gives. We must have the image of God and on the forefront of our minds and under our feet in this conversation.
TB: So Okay, then, lets jump into the texts stating with the 1 Timothy passage.
The interview continues in Part 2
Thought Butter 