A transcript of very helpful video by Alastair Roberts.

Paedobaptism’s Utter Failure to be Objective

My online acquaintance Alastair Roberts has written a piece on the “passivity” of the baptizand. I agree wholeheartedly with much of what he says. But like all paedobaptists, he sees only what supports his errant paradigm, and fails to comprehend the other half of the story.

(If the opinions expressed below seem uncharitable, please take them in the way we all take Paul’s condemnation of circumcision in Galatians, because I believe these rites are equivalent at a fundamental level.)

Yes indeed, Jesus was “passive” in His death. But why, oh why, is there no mention whatsoever of the crucial fact that Jesus willingly laid down that life. There is no mention of this because paedobaptism vanishes in a puff of logic. Still, Roberts does see half the story, so I will take the liberty filling in the blind spots in his otherwise helpful material. He writes:

Christians, even those who say much about ‘incarnational’ faith, can say surprisingly little about the way that God claims our bodies. Perhaps this is most striking in treatments of baptism, where the intensely bodily character of the rite would especially seem to invite comment. Even if the term ‘baptism’ were to be regarded as synecdochal for a rite that contains various other ritual elements, it is noteworthy that the core ritual from which the rite derives its name involves such direct action upon the body.

Agreed. My Federal Vision friends’ teaching is a good antidote to the gnosticism of modern Christianity. Baptism, communion, anointing of the sick and the washing of feet are all strikingly physical rites which offend modern sensibilities. But I would makes two points here: Firstly, if God claims our bodies, why are paedobaptists most often content with sprinkling a little water on the head, even when it comes to adults? Their arguments for this are ridiculous, and rate around the same level as Roman Catholic arguments for the divinity of Mary or the popery of Peter. Start with a tradition and defend it with all your might. But there is a more serious problem here, and that is the failure to identify what this bodily claim actually means. It is not merely that the baptizand is sealed for resurrection. The baptizand is sealed for resurrection via martyrdom. Baptism is not merely about claim. It is about legal witness, and this is where a baptism that is entirely “objective” hurtles off the biblical rails into the abyss.

The action of the ritual of baptism isn’t the act of the candidate, but of a minister of Jesus Christ, performed upon the candidate’s body. In contrast to the Lord’s Supper, where the communicant ‘takes’ and ‘eats’ in an actively bodily manner, the body of the baptismal candidate is passive in the act of baptism. While the body’s personal and purposeful activity and our bodily absorption of that which is external to us into our interiority are foregrounded in the Supper, it is the objectivity and exteriority of the body and self that are foregrounded in the rite that necessarily precedes it—baptism.

Full marks. But how did the baptizand get to the water? Was he carried as an uncomprehending infant? Was he dragged kicking and screaming, or under threat of ostracism, inquisition or even public execution? That is where an isolated “objectivity” leads, and it looks a lot like the Law of Moses and its errant counterpart in Medieval Christendom. Jesus’ baptism was nothing like His circumcision. Besides the fact that these rites involved totally different Fathers, the whole point of baptism was submission. How can this fundamental fact be so deliberately ignored by such educated people?

Because they are blind to all the actual instances of baptism in the Bible, and think that baptism instead looks like what they have seen in their churches, I have to use non-biblical analogies to explain my point. Knighthood is the best example I can think of. Is the rite of knighthood passive? Yes, it is. But what does that passivity mean? Well obviously, the person kneeling under the sword of the monarch is demonstrating willing submission to that sword, a symbolic form of death. These things are blindingly obvious in all the biblical instances of baptism, but once you relate it to heredity, it morphs into something else entirely, a rite which has no place under the New Covenant.

My body defies the distinction between subject and object: it is both the site of my interiority and subjectivity, yet also an object that exists in continuity with the world and as a part of nature that others can act upon. My body is the site of my consciousness, my sense of self, and my action, but before these come into being, my body receives meaning and identity from other sources. My ‘self’ is never simply my subjectivity: it is also my bodily objectivity and in this objectivity my body is the bearer of ‘given’ meanings that precede me, my subjectivity, my choices, and my actions.

Most certainly, but this only makes sense if we conflate “Christian baby” with “baby Christian.” Is baptism a social demarcation first, or an ethical/spiritual one? Is it actually transforming an infant into a “Christian” or is it just sacralizing the familial identity which the child already possesses? The real questions here are these: Is infant baptism the second birth? Is “Christian identity” just a souped up version of Jewish cultural identity? And is it remotely possible that, like the body, the rite of baptism defies the distinction between subject and object, just like a knighthood? These questions are not profound, yet they seem not to occur to people who only see what they expect to see. (It’s no accident that some autistic children draw photorealistic images of animals and people: they simply draw what they see, without any of the filters employed by normal children. I have a dash of autism, and I generally see things as they are, which is a sure fire means of annoying everybody, but especially paedobaptists.)

I am biologically related to other persons in a manner that entirely preceded and bypassed any decisions on my part. I am the bearer of resemblances and distinctive features that relate me to others and distinguish me from them. My body is the recipient of a particular genetic inheritance. I am called by a name I did not choose. My body is culturally located and assigned a place within social and cultural matrices of meaning and identity. My body is claimed by nature’s laws, which are powerfully operative within me, binding me to the physical and cosmic order beyond me. My male body, for instance, distinguishes me in a fundamental respect from—yet orders me towards relationship with—women, identifying me as a man, shaping and situating my sense of personhood. As part of the natural order, my body contains a life that ‘goes on without me.’ In all of these respects, the objectivity of my body means that I am ‘spoken’—by nature, culture, tradition, etc.—before I ever ‘speak’ as a subject: indeed, I could not speak were I not first spoken.

Certainly, but the faith through which we are “born of the Gospel” comes by hearing, by Word, not by baptism. Baptism is all about the response to that Word. If there is no response of any kind, then there is no Christian. The concern of circumcision was physical life and physical offspring. The concern of baptism is spiritual life, and not potential spiritual life. A paedobaptism is the Word returning void. Roberts, like Leithart, desperately wants to sacralize human birth, but human fathers are not the heavenly Father, which is why circumcision ended and baptism began, and why such childish, elementary rites were left behind. Baptism does not speak of the beginning of the earthly body, but of its end. It pictures the death of the saint, but more specifically the death of the saint, the “twice-born,” at the hands of the once-born. So why on earth are they baptizing the once-born? Because paedobaptism is a carnal rite. These are strong words, but any rite which promises salvation based upon familial, tribal, civic or cultural grounds is — technically speaking — an abomination. This is exactly why Paul got the knives out in his letter to the Galatians, to circumcise the hearts of those who had begun to rely on the circumcision of the flesh. Bap-cision is utterly opposed to the Gospel of Christ.

It is common in certain quarters to speak of baptism as our ‘act of obedience’ or the ‘expression of our faith’ and, in some respects, these claims aren’t entirely mistaken. Yet what they disguise is that, to the extent that baptism could be referred to as our ‘act of obedience’, it is the ‘action’ of passively submitting to the action of another; to the extent that it can be referred to as the ‘expression of our faith’, the faith ‘expressed’ is not primarily our subjective faith, but the Church’s one catholic and apostolic faith—faith in its communal and objective aspect. Baptism addresses itself directly to the objectivity of the body and seals us with a new identity. It speaks to the very foundations of our selves, to that which preceded the first sparks of our subjectivity (‘expression of faith’) and activity (‘act of obedience’). In salvation, God plucks us up by the roots.

Great to hear, at last, that baptism is not entirely objective. But do baptists really overlook the fact that baptism involves passivity? If they do it is because they understand this passivity as the voluntary, conscious submission of the baptizand. The claims of “passivity” here are the clever disguise, with the intention of sneaking infants into the gamut of those who qualify. An infant baptism involves no submission on the part of the baptizand.

Then follows an allusion to the idea that baptistic thinking is individualistic, like modernism, and that this somehow has led to the failure of modern American culture. Modernism is certainly individualistic, and this individualism, which includes the secret ballot, can be traced right back to the beginnings of Christianity. As Regis Debray has written, “We didn’t realise it, but Gide’s ‘Families-I-hate-you’ and Breton’s ‘Let-it-all-go’ are signed Jesus Christ: ‘Whosoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children … cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26). The true fraternity will be the voluntary one, the ekklesia. One does not inherit; one is co-opted.” (See An Atheist Gets Baptism.)

But unlike modernism, baptism does not end with individualism. Repentance and conversion are indeed interior events, but the rite of baptism is what “adds” the believer to the Church. It is the act which takes the transformed individual and joins them to the Body. Modernism and paedobaptism have something in common: they are both missing the heart of the New Covenant, which is voluntary submission, a willing response to Jesus’ “Follow me.”

So, in salvation, God plucks us up by the roots. But paedobaptism simply sacralizes the roots. It is not salvation. It is not anything at all. And it robs Christians of the rite which actually does join them to the Body. A “paedobaptized” Christian is in fact unbaptized. Paedobaptism is a forgery, a lie, a fraud of the worst kind, as ineffective and insignificant as a circumcision. It gets me riled up because circumcision got Paul riled up. Paedobaptism and circumcision are all about roots. Baptism is about spiritual fruits.

In Romans 6, Paul relates baptism to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, events through which Jesus was brought into a new life ‘by the glory of the Father’ (verse 4). We should notice that in these events it is Christ’s bodily objectivity—not his subjectivity or activity—which is most prominent and significant. Arguably the primary New Testament paradigms of baptism—death/resurrection and rebirth—both present the objectivity of the body at their heart. In baptism we are united together with Christ ‘in the likeness of his death’ (verse 5). In death activity ceases and the body is dispossessed of its subjectivity, surrendering the body to pure objectivity. Baptism corresponds to such surrender, a dispossession through which we are given a ‘new’ body, which provides the basis for a new mode of subjectivity and activity.

Nothing to disagree with here. It just makes me wonder how paedobaptists fail to see that subjectivity and objectivity are not opposed to each other, any more than Word and response are opposed to each other. Look at Jesus’s baptism! Paedobaptism is out of step with Reformed “Trinitarianism.”

The body’s objectivity, materiality, exteriority, and priority, and its embeddedness in the natural order, in tradition, society, and culture are simultaneously preconditions for, yet also resistance to, the freedom of my subjectivity and action. The body constantly alerts us to the givenness of the self, to the fact that I am neither autonomous nor self-defined, but that I receive my identity in large measure from without. My freedom to ‘speak’ my own self necessarily presupposes that self has always already been ‘spoken’. I must always express myself from the unchosen site of identity and meaning represented by my body.

But Christianity is not an “unchosen” identity. That was circumcision / uncircumcision. Again, see Regis Debray, linked above. Baptism is a public declaration of allegiance which makes all “unchosen” identities irrelevant, much like becoming a Communist. Nobody is born a Communist. Nobody is born a Christian. Anybody can become a Communist. Anybody can become a Christian. Allegiance transcends identity, which is why Paul refers to all those things as dung. Baptism is the act of “putting off” heredity. The claim from some paedobaptists that paedobaptism “puts off heredity” is laughable. They will be offended by this, but their myopia here is astounding. God did not replace the old exclusive order with a “new” exclusive order.

Once again, this reveals problems with some popular language about baptism. When we speak of baptism as expressive of the candidate’s ‘decision,’ we either implicitly resist the givenness of our selves, or we fail to address God’s salvation to the most basic dimension of our humanity. Insistence upon the reality of original sin is, in part, insistence that alienation from God is an aspect of our givenness in a fallen world, not merely a result of our subjectively chosen action. The waters of baptism run deeper than action, deeper than choice, and even deeper than consciousness and subjectivity. They declare a new givenness, that my body is now defined by its relation to Jesus Christ and his body.

Hang on, what happened to surrender? Is “Choose you this day…” not a call to make a decision? What about “Follow me?” While I believe that all faith is a gift, it is the response to such an exhortation that demonstrates that gift. Moreover, any “faith” that does not include some comprehension of sin, some degree of repentance, some level of trust in the unseen God, is a fantasy. Is salvation something that can happen to you without you being aware of it? Adam was created without being conscious of it, I presume much like a human birth. But his intended “second birth” was a moral, ethical decision, and only something which later involved his physical body. As usual, the paedobaptist has to argue their way to a presumed destination, the defence of a superstitious rite, rather than allowing the Bible to speak for itself. The first birth and the second are different kinds of gifts. The first is “being” (Genesis 1) followed by “knowing” (Genesis 2) and then “doing” (Genesis 3).

On “attaching” infants to the Body of Christ, I believe this is fiction. There is no rite required that somehow makes a person more susceptible to the Gospel, or gives them a “Christian identity” and special favour with God. Paedobaptism is the “name it and claim it of Reformed Theology. These notions are entirely carnal.

From the moment we are conceived until the moment we die, our bodies are situated in a vast web of social meaning and relations that define and identify us in various ways. When we die our bodies are disgorged from this symbolic order—or ‘law’—of society, falling back into the realm of dust (cf. Romans 7:2). Resurrection, in reclaiming bodies from the dust, results in persons who are freed from the bondage that the symbolic order of a sinful world entails. Baptism is a reality-filled promise, sealing us for such deliverance.

Baptism seals us for resurrection, but only via willing martyrdom (“martyr” being the Greek word for “witness”). That is the picture we are given in the Revelation. Jesus unseals the New Covenant scroll, and the saints are sealed as little scrolls, little books. They are living epistles, and their seals will be broken as they deliver their message, their testimony, in their deaths. Testimony is only possible for legal representatives, blameless sacrifices, so baptism is only for the regenerate believer. Baptism is indeed a step of obedience, a step onto the altar as a sacrificial lamb. The “passivity” which turns the world upside down is not the passivity of the infant but the refusal to retaliate of the witnesses who bring the testimony of Jesus. This is why paedobaptism is such an offence to the Gospel of Christ. It completely undermines the meaning of “Word,” the biblical definitions of “faith,” “Church,” “new birth,”, “regeneration,” and also the means of the conquest of the world.

Resurrection isn’t rescue from ‘givenness’ as such, but from a form of givenness in which we are alienated from God, from each other, from ourselves, and from the creation. Resurrection is not the basis for pure autonomy, but a release into a new liberating superabundant givenness. In baptism, God declares that, whatever human families or backgrounds we may come from, we are now claimed for his family, sealed for adoption.

Once again, if baptism frees us from the existing “web of social meaning,” why does paedobaptism simply give these a stamp of divinity? Besides the fact that the entire world is now “claimed” by Christ, why do paedobaptists refuse to understand the chasm of difference between the womb and the tomb?

Whatever human loyalties and identities our bodies embed us within, these are at most penultimate to the ownership that God now claims of us. However deeply we may feel our bodies weighed down with the bondage of a creation subjected to futility, that creation—and our bodies with it—will one day be released into our liberty as the resurrected children of God. In baptism, God declares that, whatever histories our bodies once belonged to or possessed, they now belong to the great scriptural History that baptism evokes and encapsulates. This story arrived at its telos in the threefold baptism of Christ: his baptism in the Jordan, the baptism of his death and resurrection, and his baptism of his Church at Pentecost.

Baptism as telos was the circumcision of heart, not flesh. Circumcision of flesh was to lead to circumcision of heart. Baptism begins with repentance. It is the hearing of the Gospel, nothing else, which cuts human hearts. Our hearts either respond with some kind of profession of faith, or with gnashing of teeth, with blessing or with cursing, with life or with death. If there is no response, there is no baptism. Every true baptizand desires baptism because God has given new life. If there is no new life, then that person is still in Adam.

The meaning of baptism is principally prospective, rather than retrospective. Baptism is a pledge and seal that anticipates future resurrection, adoption, and the redemption of our bodies. In baptism God publicly and visibly marks out our bodies for this coming deliverance. As we have been baptized in the likeness of Christ’s death, we believe that we will also share in the likeness of his resurrection. In baptism God declares a truth and a promise about my body. He declares that the objectivity of my self—the bodily ‘me’ that precedes and lies beneath all of my consciousness, self-knowing, acting, and deciding—is in his hands. In my very frailty and mortality, I can entrust myself to him, assured in his promise to raise me on that Last Day.¹Alastair Roberts, Sealed for Resurrection: Baptism and the Objectivity of the Body.

Here is where the carnality of this theology is exposed. Jesus Christ rules all nations. In His death, He “circumcised” “all flesh,” the entire world, not some Judaistic concept of Christianity. All bodies are already His, just as all bodies came under judgment in the Great Flood. The division of flesh between Jew and Gentile, between “Abrahamic” bodies and non-Abrahamic bodies, is gone. Paedobaptism supposedly cuts off the old carnal body, but all it does is reassemble its parts on the altar as dead, bloody flesh. Pentecostal fire, the indwelling Spirit of God whose first sign is verbal profession, a legal testimony, incinerates the old body entirely and creates a new body of fragrant smoke, a memorial of good works before the throne of heaven. Jesus took circumcision, and all other carnal demarcations, into the grave. It is gnosticism to speak only of the Spirit, but it is Judaism to speak only of the body. A New Covenant saint is an individual burning with the Spirit whose flesh is not consumed, a burning bush from whom the voice of God speaks with authority. It is time to put away childish things and the sophistry required to maintain them.

Alastair Roberts points out for us that both sides of the debate concerning women in ministry have missed one salient point. From his post, Why A Masculine Priesthood Is Essential:

Most of the debates about women in the priesthood presume that we always know what priesthood is, the only question is whether women are permitted to exercise it. My argument cuts across this, claiming that the debate is generally operating in terms of a radically distorted notion of priesthood and that women are not able to exercise priesthood in the same manner as men—it isn’t just a matter of permission.

Debates about women ‘in leadership’ are fraught by the imprecision of our terminology, and the misleading pictures that implicitly govern our notions of what ‘leadership’ looks like. Near the heart of our problem is the fact that modern paradigms of leadership that are employed within the Church tend to be drawn largely from business, academic, and therapeutic contexts. Consequently, the skills that we look for from our ‘leaders’ are principally academic, management, and counselling skills. Of course, if this is what we are looking for, we will easily find them among women, often to a much greater degree than among men. Women can be incredibly gifted theologians, exegetes, teachers, guides, counsellors, managers, and directors. These skills are incredibly valuable in the life of the Church and should be recognized and affirmed and exercised in the life of it. Contrary to what people might think, at no point have the value and importance of women’s gifting in these areas been denied. However, priestly or pastoral leadership requires something more.

In contrast to much of the Church today, the paradigms of leadership in Scripture tend to be drawn from a more military context. Practically every one of the major figures in Scripture wielded a weapon and shed blood, or took life in other ways. While many want to argue that Jesus is some exception to this, in terms of which the whole pattern is redrawn, this is not the case. Alongside the images of Christ as the one led silent like a lamb to the slaughter, the New Testament presents us with the prominent image of conquering Lamb, who crushes his enemies. Just as Paul teaches that Christ judged the ancient Israelites, leaving their dead bodies scattered in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:1-11), so he teaches that Christ is taking the lives of unfaithful people in the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 11:27-34).

The Bible is largely written by warriors and about warriors. These were men who made life and death decisions, who knew that the pull of pity could be very dangerous, who understood the vulnerability and fragility of life, who recognized that life is an activity with extremely high stakes and fraught with peril, who saw themselves as being involved in a huge conflict, called to fight and contend for things, who had thick skins, who protected the weak and vulnerable, who knew that there were boundaries to be guarded, who appreciated that we are surrounded by grave threats to the security and health of our communities and their moral integrity, who know that we need the nerve to take radical and painful action. These are the values that shape the biblical notion of pastoral and priestly leadership.

The Bible does not glorify war in itself, nor does it value the powerful over the weak. However, it recognizes the reality of war and the necessity of power: our world is shaped by conflict. The people of God are compared to sheep and the paradigmatic person at the heart of the kingdom is the little child, weak, defenceless, dependent, and vulnerable (Matthew 18:1-5). Those who value vulnerability and weakness in a deeply hostile world must be prepared to defend it. The priesthood is charged with this task. The shepherd who loves his sheep and tenderly carries them in his bosom must be prepared and equipped mercilessly to fight the wolves, the bandits, the thieves, the bears, and the lions. He must be prepared to lay down his life in their defence. Those who perform this calling are servants of the sheep, not lords over them. The shepherd must put his life in jeopardy for the sake of the lives of his sheep, valuing them above himself. In a strange inversion of values, some Christians seem to have the notion that being a priest somehow means that you are greater than others.

This model of priesthood is a profoundly masculine one, involving combat and guarding at its heart. The association between martial virtues and masculinity is a close one. It doesn’t merely arise from the fact that men are generally more powerful, physically stronger, more combative, and that they naturally possess a greater drive and aptitude for the exercise of dominance and mastery, although these are all part of the picture.

Although women can and have fought and killed in exceptional, extreme, or fortuitous circumstances—a few such incidents are recorded in the Old Testament (e.g. Judges 4:21; 9:53)—the normalization of women fighting and killing is quite contrary to biblical and Christian values. In contrast to our contemporary society, Scripture never presents men and women as fundamentally androgynous individuals, whose identities are purely contingent upon their varying individual characteristics and aptitudes. Men and women are different kinds of persons, the bearers of different symbolic and relational meaning.

Women are associated with the most intimate bonds and communion of society. Every woman, by virtue of her sex—irrespective of whether she is married or has children—is the bearer of a maternal form of identity. The very form and basic processes of her body declares this meaning and—again, whether or not she is married or has children—everything that she does and is is inflected and elevated by the fact that she represents this reality. It is within her body that the marriage bond is consummated. It is within her body that the bond between parents and children are forged. It is within her body that the child grows and upon her body that it feeds. A society that truly honours this reality will not send women to fight its wars. A civilized society values and fosters the beautiful vulnerability of its most intimate bonds and seeks to protect them as much as it can from subjection to the harshness of conflict and struggle.

This principle is applied more broadly. We do what we can to avoid fighting with women, not just physically, but also verbally, and in other manners. Although men are often rough with each other, we aren’t rough with women. When we come into opposition with women, we take a gentler approach than we do with men. We don’t personally attack women more generally and seek to protect them from attack. We treat women as non-combatants.

This instinctive sense of the need to treat women differently when it comes to combat is deeply wired in every civilized man. I have already remarked upon the way that it functions as a driving force, albeit in distorted ways, in egalitarian approaches to these conversations. The push for women in the priesthood is often framed in terms of women’s need for protection, the fact that they need to be affirmed, valued, listened to, and protected from marginalization. The ugliness of the debates on this issue are also shaped by egalitarian men’s drive to protect women from what they regard as attack (as C.S. Lewis once sagely observed, battles are ugly when women are involved—suddenly, everything becomes much more personal, because men hate seeing women hurt).

The problem, of course, is that the priesthood is a combative role. Opposition to women in the priesthood is driven by, among other things, our refusal to put women into combat for us. While many of us strongly share egalitarians’ concern to see women affirmed, listened to, respected, honoured, and prominent in the life of the Church, there are many ways that this should be pursued without putting them into the priestly/pastoral office.

One of the chief causes and effects of women in priesthood is a dulling of our sense of the priesthood as a role involving conflict. Women, as many supporters of women in the priesthood have argued, ‘bring their own styles of leadership.’ And these styles of leadership are typically light on the martial virtues. Opposition to women in the priesthood should not be confused with opposition to women’s exercise of these styles of leadership within the life of the Church. Rather it is opposition to the reshaping—and consequent abandonment—of the priestly ministry.

The stakes here are very, very high.

With the loss of this model of priesthood, we have lost something fundamental in our understanding of the tenor of the Christian faith more generally. We have reduced discipleship from the uncompromising and costly loyalty expected of the soldier to a looser appreciation of Jesus as a moral guide. We have lost sight of the threat of hell and judgment. We have defanged the world, the flesh, and the devil in our imaginations. We have reduced God, displacing images of God as Judge, Sovereign, Ruler, King, Avenger, Father, and Lord. Instead of a fatherly authority that stands more over against us, we want a more cosy, maternal figure, still ‘authoritative’, but in a considerably weakened sense. Christ’s Lordship is now something that we think that we establish in our lives, rather than a public truth and reality that we must submit and bow the knee to. We have airbrushed divine violence out of Scripture. We have reduced divine authority as exercised in Scripture to the level of an illuminating text for selective consumption in the private spiritual life. We have sentimentalized the cross. We have lost sight of the deep weight—the dreadful yet profoundly joyful solemnity—of Christian worship, seeing it as more casual. We have abandoned or attenuated beyond usefulness the notion of spiritual warfare. We have abandoned church discipline (when was the last time that an Anglican church delivered someone to Satan for the destruction of the flesh?). We no longer see the world as being in cosmic spiritual conflict and don’t conduct ourselves as those in the dangerous realm of occupied territory, readily compromising with the surrounding culture instead. We don’t believe that our souls are in peril and so are indifferent to the fitness of the leaders who are responsible to guard us. We value their personability and academic credentials over their backbone, refusal to compromise, and commitment to do whatever it takes to present us whole and with joy before God’s throne on that great Last Day.

With the loss of a male priesthood—or, more particularly, with the loss of a masculine priesthood—we have attenuated the reality of the Christian message. We have no effective symbolization of the authority of God within our churches. When that goes, all else is enervated. The empowerment and valuing of women—an imperative for any Christian church—will best be served, not by putting women in the office of guardians of the Church, but when we appoint strong guardians for the Church who are committed to empower and value women, to hear their voices and to recognize their gifts, and to exercise their own calling as the servants of all.

The Bible’s laws concerning slavery are frequently used by atheists (perhaps this is one reason why both Hitchins and Dawkins recommend that people not remain in ignorance of the Scriptures). But an unyielded heart will never understand the Bible. One can be familiar with all of the Scriptures and still remain in the dark.

Alastair Roberts has a very interesting rundown on slavery. Here is an excerpt:

The state of slavery to men is not celebrated in Scripture. It is a state of immaturity akin to that of childhood. YHWH’s intention is always that people gain maturity through obedience. The biblical expectations of the slave were similar to those upon children: to grow in responsibility through faithful obedience. Like childhood, it is very negative for people to return to the state of slavery: rather, people must grow beyond it and the strict law-bound character of slavery, like that of childhood, can provide a means of maturation. Biblically, slavery is oriented towards manumission and blessing. Slave-owning is a means by which the righteous and provident man can come to provide for and protect many dependent people, training them towards responsible independence, or fully absorbing them into the life of his family.

While we have clear continuing forms of dependency relations in society, it is very good that we have moved beyond slavery in many respects. The sort of slavery spoken of in Scripture was necessary and served good purposes in a less developed society. However, as society matures, such an institution fitted for a more childlike stage in humanity’s life should be left behind…

Peter Leithart has made a persuasive case (The Priesthood of the Plebs fills out this argument) for regarding priests as household servants. The story of the Exodus is the story of the movement from slavery to Pharaoh in the Egyptian house of bondage, building store cities, to service as royal priests in YHWH’s house and building the tabernacle.

In Exodus 21:5-6 and Deuteronomy 15:16-17, we encounter a strange ritual in which the servant who loves his master and wants to bind himself to him from that point onwards, beyond the period of his appointed service, has his ear pierced against the doorpost with an awl and is adopted into his master’s household as a homeborn slave. The bloodied doorposts of the Passover relate to this. The servants of Pharaoh are judged with all of his household. However, the Israelites, by applying the blood representing its commitment to be YHWH’s firstborn slave-son to the doorposts, comes under the refuge and protection of YHWH’s house and is not judged with the household of the dragon, Pharaoh.

In Numbers 3, as we have seen, YHWH will claim the Levites in exchange for the firstborn of Israel as his primary servants, concerned with the priestly running of YHWH’s tabernacle and the house of Israel. The establishment of the priestly ministry is one of the purposes for which YHWH released Israel. The bored ear of the adopted servant relates to part of the ordination rite (and also to circumcision), in which the ear of the priest was bloodied.

Jordan also suggests the possibility of a relationship between this rite and the incarnation:

The incarnation of the Second Person of God is spoken of in terms of this provision. Psalm 40:6 states, “Sacrifice and mea1 offering Thou hast not desired; My ears Thou has opened;” the NASV margin notes that “opened” is literally “dug, or possibly, pierced.” This verse is cited and paraphrased in Hebrews 10:5 thus, “Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me.” The boring of the ear, making a free person into a slave, is here a figure for the incarnation. As Paul puts it, He “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men” (Phil.2:7).

You can read the full article here. Also, James B. Jordan’s Slavery in Biblical Perspective is a must read (available from www.biblicalhorizons.com)

Alastair Roberts has some wise things to say about rational public debate on important issues being hampered by the new culture of “tolerance.” Of special interest to me are his observations concerning the nature of the recent spat involving Doug Wilson, Jared Wilson and Rachel Held Evans. I have had similar experiences in online discussions. I’m relying on and presenting facts and somehow the other side is irate that facts are being presented. And the fact-free, vitriolic, ad hominem comebacks would make my hair curl if I had any.

A perfect illustration of this is the fact that the best argument those lobbying for same sex marriage had against the ACL’s and Sydney Archibishop’s statements this week concerning the health risks of certain behaviours boiled down to, “Those statistics are offensive.” Illogical as that statement is to me, there is a weird “shark-hat” internal logic at work after all. Here’s a (rather lengthy) excerpt from Alastair, which not only reveals the problem but also explains to me the complete lack of a sense of humour (or playfulness) in our opposition.

Contrasting Forms of Discourse

In observing the interaction between Pastor Wilson and his critics in the recent debate, I believe that we were witnessing a collision of two radically contrasting modes of discourse. The first mode of discourse, represented by Pastor Wilson’s critics, was one in which sensitivity, inclusivity, and inoffensiveness are key values, and in which persons and positions are ordinarily closely related. The second mode of discourse, displayed by Pastor Wilson and his daughters, is one characterized and enabled by personal detachment from the issues under discussion, involving highly disputational and oppositional forms of rhetoric, scathing satire, and ideological combativeness.

When these two forms of discourse collide they are frequently unable to understand each other and tend to bring out the worst in each other. The first form of discourse seems lacking in rationality and ideological challenge to the second; the second can appear cruel and devoid of sensitivity to the first. To those accustomed to the second mode of discourse, the cries of protest at supposedly offensive statements may appear to be little more than a dirty and underhand ploy intentionally adopted to derail the discussion by those whose ideological position can’t sustain critical challenge. However, these protests are probably less a ploy than the normal functioning of the particular mode of discourse characteristic of that community, often the only mode of discourse that those involved are proficient in.

To those accustomed to the first mode of discourse, the scathing satire and sharp criticism of the second appears to be a vicious and personal attack, driven by a hateful animus, when those who adopt such modes of discourse are typically neither personally hurt nor aiming to cause such hurt. Rather, as this second form of discourse demands personal detachment from issues under discussion, ridicule does not aim to cause hurt, but to up the ante of the debate, exposing the weakness of the response to challenge, pushing opponents to come back with more substantial arguments or betray their lack of convincing support for their position. Within the first form of discourse, if you take offence, you can close down the discourse in your favour; in the second form of discourse, if all you can do is to take offence, you have conceded the argument to your opponent, as offence is not meaningful currency within such discourse.

I also don’t think that sufficient attention is given to the manner in which differing forms of education prepare persons for participation in these different modes of discourse. There is a form of education – increasingly popular over the last few decades – which most values cooperation, collaboration, quietness, sedentariness, empathy, equality, non-competitiveness, conformity, a communal focus, inclusivity, affirmation, inoffensiveness, sensitivity, non-confrontation, a downplaying of physicality, and an orientation to the standard measures of grades, tests, and a closely defined curriculum (one could, with the appropriate qualifications, speak of this as a ‘feminization’ of education). Such a form of education encourages a form of public discourse within which there is a shared commitment and conformity to the social and ideological dogmas and values of liberal society, where everyone feels secure and accepted and conflict is avoided, but at the expense of independence of thought, exposure to challenge, the airing of deep differences, and truth-driven discourse.

Faced with an opposing position that will not compromise in the face of its calls for sensitivity and its cries of offence, such a mode of discourse lacks the strength of argument to parry challenges. Nor does it have any means by which to negotiate or accommodate such intractable differences within its mode of conversation. Consequently, it will typically resort to the most fiercely antagonistic, demonizing, and personal attacks upon the opposition. While firm differences can be comfortably negotiated within the contrasting form of discourse, a mode of discourse governed by sensitivities and ‘tolerance’ cannot tolerate uncompromising difference. Without a bounded and rule-governed realm for negotiating differences, antagonism becomes absolute and opposition total. Supporters of this ‘sensitive’ mode of discourse will typically try, not to answer opponents with better arguments, but to silence them completely as ‘hateful’, ‘intolerant’, ‘bigoted’, ‘misogynistic’, ‘homophobic’, etc.

A completely contrasting mode of education, one more typical of traditional – and male-oriented – educational systems, values internalized confidence, originality, agonism, independence of thought, creativity, assertiveness, the mastery of one’s feelings, a thick skin and high tolerance for your own and others’ discomfort, disputational ability, competitiveness, nerve, initiative, imagination, and force of will, values that come to the fore in confrontational oral debate. Such an education will produce a mode of discourse that is naturally highly oppositional and challenging, while generally denying participants the right to take things personally. Deep divergences of opinion can be far more comfortably accommodated within the same conversation by those accustomed to such discourse. While the first form of education risks viewing persons as passive receptacles of knowledge to be rewarded for their conformity to set expectations, which are frequently measured, this form of education prioritizes the formation of independent thinking agents.

This form of discourse typically involves a degree of ‘heterotopy’, occurring in a ‘space’ distinct from that of personal interactions. This heterotopic space is characterized by a sort of playfulness, ritual combativeness, and histrionics. This ‘space’ is akin to that of the playing field, upon which opposing teams give their rivals no quarter, but which is held distinct to some degree from relations between the parties that exist off the field. The handshake between competitors as they leave the field is a typical sign of this demarcation.  It is this separation of the space of rhetorical ritual combat from regular space that enables debaters, politicians, or lawyers to have fiery disagreements in the debating chamber, the parliamentary meeting, or the courtroom and then happily enjoy a drink together afterwards.

This ‘heterotopic discourse’ makes possible far more spirited challenges to opposing positions, hyperbolic and histrionic rhetoric designed to provoke response and test the mettle of one’s own and the opposing position, assertive presentations of one’s beliefs that are less concerned to present a full-orbed picture than to advocate firmly for a particular perspective and to invite and spark discussion from other perspectives.

The truth is not located in the single voice, but emerges from the conversation as a whole. Within this form of heterotopic discourse, one can play devil’s advocate, have one’s tongue in one’s cheek, purposefully overstate one’s case, or attack positions that one agrees with. The point of the discourse is to expose the strengths and weaknesses of various positions through rigorous challenge, not to provide a balanced position in a single monologue. Those familiar with such discourse will be accustomed to hyperbolic and unbalanced expressions. They will appreciate that such expressions are seldom intended as the sole and final word on the matter by those who utter them, but as a forceful presentation of one particular dimension of or perspective upon the truth, always presuming the existence of counterbalancing perspectives that have no less merit and veracity.

In contrast, a sensitivity-driven discourse lacks the playfulness of heterotopic discourse, taking every expression of difference very seriously. Rhetorical assertiveness and impishness, the calculated provocations of ritual verbal combat, linguistic playfulness, and calculated exaggeration are inexplicable to it as it lacks the detachment, levity, and humour within which these things make sense. On the other hand, those accustomed to combative discourse may fail to appreciate when they are hurting those incapable of responding to it.

Lacking a high tolerance for difference and disagreement, sensitivity-driven discourses will typically manifest a herding effect. Dissenting voices can be scapegoated or excluded and opponents will be sharply attacked. Unable to sustain true conversation, stale monologues will take its place. Constantly pressed towards conformity, indoctrination can take the place of open intellectual inquiry. Fracturing into hostile dogmatic cliques takes the place of vigorous and illuminating dialogue between contrasting perspectives. Lacking the capacity for open dialogue, such groups will exert their influence on wider society primarily by means of political agitation.

The fear of conflict and the inability to deal with disagreement lies at the heart of sensitivity-driven discourses. However, ideological conflict is the crucible of the sharpest thought. Ideological conflict forces our arguments to undergo a rigorous and ruthless process through which bad arguments are broken down, good arguments are honed and developed, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of different positions emerge. The best thinking emerges from contexts where interlocutors mercilessly probe and attack our arguments’ weaknesses and our own weaknesses as their defenders. They expose the blindspots in our vision, the cracks in our theories, the inconsistencies in our logic, the inaptness of our framing, the problems in our rhetoric. We are constantly forced to return to the drawing board, to produce better arguments.

Granted immunity from this process, sensitivity-driven and conflict-averse contexts seldom produce strong thought, but rather tend to become echo chambers. Even the good ideas that they produce tend to be blunt and very weak in places. Even with highly intelligent people within them, conflict-averse groups are poor at thinking. Bad arguments go unchecked and good insights go unhoned and underdeveloped. This would not be such a problem were it not for the fact that these groups frequently expect us to fly in a society formed according to their ideas, ideas that never received any rigorous stress testing.

As I will argue in more detail as I proceed, the problem does not lie with sensitivity-driven discourses per se – there is a genuine need for such discourses – but rather with their immodest demands upon public life and interaction and academic discussion. The expectation that all public and intellectual life must be ordered in terms of the sensitivities of the members of such groups or reformed in terms of the ideas of such groups cripples society, preventing it from engaging adequately in the searching and difficult task of intellectual inquiry. Both confrontational and sensitive discourses are essential in their own place, but both can endanger the other and, by extension, the healthy functioning of society when they have ambitions beyond that place.

I believe that, within the recent debate, such a distinction between modes of discourse and the training appropriate to each could be seen. A deeper appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches is important here. When the sides in a debate are operating using entirely incompatible modes of discourse communication between the two is quite unlikely. What we need are means of communication and translation between the two, and an appreciation of the strengths, weaknesses, and place of each. The common expectation that challenging conversations must yield to the demand of ‘sensitivity’ is unreasonable, but we should seek to provide some degree of protection for those emotionally incapable of participating in such challenging discourse from its combat.

Full article here.

In 1 Corinthians 11:7 we encounter a verse that many might find perplexing.

For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.

I believe that careful attention to the logic of this verse is absolutely crucial to unlocking the puzzle of the difference between the female helper apostle, and the male helper apostle.

If one were reading without paying too much attention, one might fall into the trap of reading ‘man … is the image and glory of God; but woman is the image and glory of man.’ However, the text does not say that the woman is the image of the man. The woman is the glory of the man, but not his image. We will return at a later point to the question of whether women are also the images of God.
Who then is the image of the man? The image of the man is the priestly son. Eve was the glory of Adam, but it was Seth who was his image, the expression of his authority in the world: ‘And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth’ (Genesis 5:3).

The blessing of the father is given to the sons who bear his image in the world. The firstborn’s blessing generally involves the laying on of hands. As the father leans upon the head of his son, he impresses his image upon him. His son then represents him and his authority in the world. The chief blessing of the right hand naturally belongs to the firstborn son, who is the chief image of the father. In Genesis 48:12-22, for example, we see Isaac giving Joseph the firstborn’s double portion (v.22), through laying his hand on both of Joseph’s sons’ heads (but reversing their birth order), thereby giving Joseph two tribal portions in Ephraim and Manasseh in contrast to the single portions received by his brothers.

As N.T. Wright and others have observed, Scripture’s use of the concept of ‘image’ should be understood as the visible representation or expression of a person’s authority and rule. The conceptual connection between image and authority is a tight one, and sheds considerable light on our current questions.

The relationship between image and sonship is clear elsewhere in Scripture, especially in references to the person of Christ. For instance, in Colossians 1:15 we read of Christ: ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.’ It is the son who represents – who is the embodiment – of the authority of his father. The man’s possession of a son is his possession of authority, much as having a wife is having glory. Hebrews 1:2ff. reveals the same connection between the firstborn, image, and authority: as God’s image and firstborn Son, Christ is God’s strength and authority at work in the world.

All of this leads to an important conclusion: women cannot represent, or image, the authority of the man, as that is not the form of representation for which they were created.

Alastair Roberts, Representation and Ordination.

Art: Adam and Eve by Tamara de Lempicka

In his post You Will Never Guess Who Is Really Responsible For The Softening of Males In The Church, Mark Sayers shifts the blame for the current “sea of passivity” in modern males from feminism to men like John Newton.

To rescue masculinity in the West we must remember that we stand on the shoulders of giants. One such giant was John Newton, a man whose debauched life as a slave trader ensured that he had inhabited the old world of male violence. Yet Newton was thoroughly transformed by his encounter with the truth of the gospel. Newton operated as a template for the new evangelical mode of masculinity. He chose to champion others rather than simply build his own empire. A committed calvinist, he collaborated with and encouraged other believers who thought differently to him, maintaining a warm friendship and working relationship with John Wesley.Newton was not a prim and proper Georgian dandy, often he was described as uncouth. Newton was passionate and dedicated, his communication of the gospel was uncomprimising. Yet what entranced his contemporaries was that his gospel communication was described as having an almost ‘womanly tenderness’.  Newton was pointing the way forward to a new mode of being male, one shaped by the Gospel not the code of honour and violence. Newton would act as a father figure to a whole generation of evangelical leaders who would not just transform culture’s idea of masculinity but culture itself.

So what are we to do with our current crisis of masculinity? What advice should be given to young men who find themselves looking for male role models, who wonder what it is to be a Christian man in today’s culture of passivity and indecision. I think that if you want to be a man, stop trying so hard. Instead look to Newton’s advice, understand that you are a wretch who has been transformed by a grace that is amazing. Allow yourself to daily mediate upon and live out of that reality and one day you will get up to shave and the face in the mirror looking back at you will be the face of a man.

Great advice. But Newton and those of his time understood that men need a mission, something to construct and some to conquer. With the rejection of Christianity by our culture, that mission was replaced first with the empty quest for wealth, but now has been lost altogether. People, men in particular, are rebels without a cause. With everything else now shown to offer false hopes, the only real cause left is the New Covenant. [1]

Two Women for Every Man

In his post Old style evangelical gender politics, Steve Holmes tries to shore up the gender imbalance with some history of great evangelical women who followed this “transformation of masculinity.”

This evangelical generation changed the world, or major parts of it at least: they broke the international economic system of the day because it was unjust; they reformed prisons, factories, poor laws, and anything else they could think of; they saw major revivals, and huge numbers of conversions; when it came to gender politics, they taught men to be gentle, and women to be active in ministry.

Besides the few radicals he mentions, a lot of good was most certainly done, but how did that lead to the situation we are now in, where many men wouldn’t be found dead in a mainline Western church. Or, in reality, they might only be found in such a church if they were actually dead. Here’s a clue:

Methodist and holiness movements provided a particular intensification of this theme, as a woman who could lay claim to the experience of entire sanctification was in a demonstrable position of spiritual superiority to men who could not, a situation creating a significant pressure to reverse cultural-normative gender roles. Phoebe Palmer’s astonishing evangelistic ministry is the most obvious example of this, but there are many others (Hannah Whitall Smith’s entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals notes that, at the Brighton Convention for the Promotion of Christian Holiness in 1875, ‘[t]he most popular sessions … were those in which Hannah preached her practical secrets of the happy Christian life to audiences of 5000 or more, mostly clergymen who were theologically opposed to the preaching ministry of women’).

There was a deep-seated structural problem in this “transformation.” We might say that well-meaning evangelicals fell off the other side of the horse.

The Stigmatization of Male Traits

My friend Alastair Roberts’ comments after this post are the reason why I am posting this at all. He’s very familiar with the “liturgical” roles for men and women laid down in Genesis. [2] Modern evangelicals either don’t believe Genesis, or don’t know how to apply the Bible’s types, and so are left bumping around in the dark regarding gender roles in the Church, and in the interpretation of their history. Roberts makes a lot of sense, so I’ll post it in full. He writes:

It seems to me that the picture is rather one-sided. More probably needs to be said about the manner in which disempowered women and disempowered clergy joined forces to bring about the reformation of men’s morals, epitomized by such things as the temperance movements of the 19th century. This alliance between women and the clergy was coupled with a sentimentalization and feminization of religion, as in many quarters religion became conformed to dominant forms of cultural sentimental femininity, operating on the assumption that women had a greater affinity with religion and according to the narrative of the woman who reforms wayward men by making them see things more like them.

This wasn’t the only thing that was going on at the time, of course. There was also the ‘muscular Christianity’ of such as Kingsley, with its commitment to an imperial model of masculinity, and the refined and aesthetic masculinity of the Oxford movement. However, this ‘feminization’ and ‘sentimentalization’ trend has had a significant effect upon the worship, piety, theology, image, and demographics of the Church in many quarters.

It led to a stigmatization of many stereotypically male traits, along with a celebration of many stereotypically female traits. Within such a context, Christian spirituality was increasingly colonized by the sort of sentiments that are usually reserved for cheap romantic paperbacks. The agonistic and martial language of much biblical piety was increasingly abandoned in favour of a rather sickly emotionalism.

The problem is that, in the process evangelical spirituality drifted further away from the sort of biblical patterns of spirituality that one finds in the psalms, which do not exalt sentiment and sentimentality to the position of dominance that it often possesses. Churches also lost contact with men, as churches increasingly ordered themselves around disempowered women and children and their forms of piety (in a related movement, Christian piety started to disconnect from the wider world of society, life, and work to focus ever more narrowly on the individual soul and its private spirituality). The expectation that men conform themselves to a culturally feminine sentimental model of spirituality (rather than the expectation that both men and women conform themselves to a biblical model of spirituality) encouraged men to view the Church as emasculating and irrelevant to their lives, or as an unwelcome imposition upon them to be borne grudgingly and passively.

If the full story of the evangelical transformation of masculinity is to be told, we need to take this part of the picture into account. The evangelical church has often tended to neuter its men in order to empower its women. Its celebration and empowerment of women within its walls has gone hand in hand with its cultural marginalization and disempowerment. It has also fallen prey to a gross distortion of biblical piety in the form of sentimental piety, which still prevails in many quarters. This sentimentalized evangelical church has proved more effective at producing milquetoasts, who are culturally ineffective, than it has at producing men and women of firm character who make a powerful impact in the wider society.

The ‘masculinization’ of the church championed by Driscoll and others is obviously not the answer, but the Church is generally ‘feminized’ in a profoundly unhealthy manner, and something needs to be done to address this. What we have at the moment is a culturally marginal or irrelevant institution where there are almost twice as many women as men, where men are more inclined to be passive, and where piety is overly fixated on sentiment and emotion. I hardly think that this this qualifies as a success in terms of the transformation of gender norms and the shape of society…

[I will] explain in more detail what I mean by the ‘feminization’ of the Church here. Gender identities are indeed largely socially constructed (which perhaps should not surprise us if our most fundamental identity as human persons is a symbolic one, rather than one of biological essence, as we are created images of God). The problem comes when a particular social construction of one gender, which has little to do with Scripture and is at odds with it at various points, becomes a norm that is increasingly imposed upon all within the Church. For instance, I think that it is fair to say that Mark Driscoll is attempting a ‘masculinization’ of the Church, without suggesting that the gender norms that he is working in terms of are anything but ones contingent upon the surrounding culture.

I believe that the last couple of centuries witnessed just such a conforming of the evangelical church to norms of a particular cultural gender identity, in the form of sentimental femininity. I don’t see this particular development in piety as having much to do with an attempt to conform to biblical patterns of piety. Rather, it seems to me to arise primarily out of particular set of historical circumstances in which the interests of clergy and women aligned against a dysfunctional masculinity, and men were increasingly expected to conform and submit themselves to a cultural form of femininity, rather than to Scripture.

____________________________________
[1] If you don’t understand Covenant-as-cause, please read my book, Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.
[2] See Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman.