ChristianGovernance Report – December 10, 2010
Why is an influential Christian leader condemning a call to Biblical manhood?
By Tim Bloedow

This commentary refers an irresponsible and superficial condemnation of comments on Biblical manhood made by popular Seattle Pastor Mark Driscoll by Prof. John Stackhouse. Prof. Stackhouse’s comments are posted below.

What a disappointment that someone as influential in the Evangelical church as Prof. John Stackhouse wants to condemn a call to manhood, and does so in such a superficial manner. Manhood and womanhood, and the nature and roles of the different genders is such a crucial cultural, theological and ethical issue in our day, including when it comes to family relationships. That is why I was drawn to this blog post when I saw it in which Prof. Stackhouse condemns Mars Hill church pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife for their objections to stay-at-home fathers – because ChristianGovernance is organizing a “Titanic 2011-Women and Children First” banquet in April of next year on the theme of Biblical manhood and Biblical womanhood. This issue is, therefore, very much on our minds at ChristianGovernance these days. You can listen to Mark Driscoll for yourself if you click on the link to visit Prof. Stackhouse’s blog because he has it embeded there or if you click on the link in his commentary below.

I don’t have issues with Pastor Driscoll’s interpretation of the I Timothy passage in question, but whether or not his interpretation is perfect, Prof. Stackhouse’s criticism is, in too many places, remarkably petty for a professor. For example, he insinuates that Pastor Driscoll’s comments on the passage and on this issue are not informed by any other Scriptures and, therefore, as Pastor Driscoll talks about his view on the responsibility of husbands to provide for their families, anything in his comments that aren’t explicitly defensible from that one passage reflect errant exegesis. That’s the kind of criticism I would expect from a first year college student. I mean, come on…

Prof. Stackhouse admits from the outset to being a “feminist.” He indicates later that he uses cultural realities as his starting point, fitting the application of Scripture into cultural experience, rather than calling Christians to develop Biblical culture and to reform the culture around us to conform to Scripture. So, because post-Industrial urban society supposedly makes it impossible for a family to survive on a single income, we should accept that as our starting point, and as a legitimate reason for modifying our application of Biblical principles regarding the roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We shouldn’t recognize our cultural realities as expressions of ethics – unbiblical ethics – so we shouldn’t attempt to change these realities as part of our commitment to a Biblical worldview, even when they push up against Biblical roles for husbands and wives. We should just accommodate them in the way we understand the roles and responsibilities of married men and women! For example, we shouldn’t address the massive levels of taxation which have risen faster than the typical family’s expenditures for housing, food and clothing, as a reason for the inability to live on a single income! And this despite the fact that this taxation is used to fund activities that are no business of the state! We shouldn’t use the damage being done to families as an argument in our case against a centralized state that is operating well beyond its legitimate sphere of jurisdiction.

Prof. Stackhouse’s approach to ethics and the culture require him to take the position that he does on Scripture, including the passage in I Timothy referenced by Pastor Driscoll. What is to be lamented is Prof. Stackhouse’s commitment to culture and perhaps other sources of information as of greater authority than Scripture. He is willing to be unbiblically flexible with the Scriptures in order to tolerate, if not embrace, unbiblical notions that are popular in the culture.

On Mark Driscoll’s primary message here, he is bang on as he calls men to be men, especially in the God-ordained responsibility of being the provider for his family. Most self-respecting women have no time for any other man. And most men would rise to this challenge if they weren’t mollycoddled and theologically pandered to by professionals like Prof. Stackhouse. Men need a challenge. They need to be called to step out and rise above their present circumstances, to accept the challenges of life and show leadership, respect, dignity and personal responsibility. This issue is not something that can be addressed in isolation from the real-world attitudes and ideas that lead men and women to think differently and make other choices. What other poor choices were made that led young people to think they had to reverse their roles – so as to help each other through post-secondary education, for example. What other capitulations to cultural norms are confounding husbands’ and wives’ ability to order their families Biblically? You don’t take all other cultural norms as given and try to change only one thing. That’s impossible. But that is exactly the intellectual posture that Prof. Stackhouse takes to the issue in his incredibly superficial response to Pastor Driscoll below. You have to look at worldview comprehensively. It’s hard work, and it can be scary and overwhelming at times. But people indwelt by the Spirit of God are up to the task. We don’t need to be dissuaded from it by influential Christian leaders.

ChristianGovernance calls Christian men to be Biblical men and Christian women to be Biblical women. As an organization committed to apologetics and Biblical worldview, we seek to help serious Christians explore these truths and implement them in their daily lives, both by providing our own special events such as our Titanic 2011 banquet (click here for more information and tickets for this exciting event) and by providing other excellent resources and recommendations for wisdom on these matters.

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Read Prof. Stackhouse’s complete post here.

Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog – October 25, 2010
Time to Give Mark Driscoll a Sabbatical?

There’s a lot to like about what Mark Driscoll has done in his pastoral work at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Sadly, however, there’s a lot to dislike, too.

Brother Mark is right, for example, to bemoan the lack of clear preaching of the Bible that calls people to intellectual and moral account, rather than merely entertaining them or confirming them in their blithe consumerism.

He’s also right to worry about the feminization of much North American Christianity-a trend noticed by church historians also that reaches back to the nineteenth century. (I say this as a feminist who sees this trend as unhelpful for both men and women. A good popular-level roundup of these concerns can be found in David Murrow’s Why Men Hate Going to Church – a book that I judge to be about 80 per cent right, 10 per cent not right, and 10 per cent wildly wrong – mostly in its John Eldredge-inspired recommendations – which is a pretty good average for a book on such a contentious and wide-ranging subject.)

Alas, Brother Mark responds to these valid concerns too often with bad preaching of a bad message. Recently he managed to demonstrate both problems in all of six minutes. This video clip shows Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll answering a question about the legitimacy of stay-at-home husbands (HT: J. Barrett Lee). In these six minutes, a number of theological problems, in fact, emerge.

For a man who preaches that women aren’t supposed to teach men, it seems immediately odd that Brother Mark has his wife offer Scriptural teaching in their church, which she does as this clip starts off. I expect that he legitimizes what to many of his ilk must appear to be disobedience to Scripture (“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” – I Tim. 2:12) by claiming that his wife is under his authority, or perhaps under the authority of the elders of the church. This is a common expedient among evangelicals, the “Under Authority Arrangement,” as I call it, that doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the Bible, nor is it taught anywhere in Scripture, but is certainly something for which a pragmatic feminist such as I am is grateful: It lets women speak, even if under strange (and unbiblical) constraints.

We are thus told, by Mrs. Driscoll as well as then by her husband, that a man who does not provide for his wife and children is flatly disobeying God. If she is out working and he isn’t – save only in extreme cases of injury, sickness, or other physical debility (unemployment is not mentioned as an excuse) – he is “worse than an unbeliever.”

That last phrase comes from the text – the one and only text-adduced by the Driscolls on behalf of their forbiddance of men staying home and women working: I Timothy 5:8. And now a cascade of basic exegetical, theological, and homiletical problems begins:

1. The passage in question has nothing to do with gender roles. The context clearly has a single, very different, issue in mind. Widows in Timothy’s church were not being looked after by their relatives and so were posing a financial hardship for the church. Some were also apparently exploiting their status for charity they did not deserve. So Paul warns the Christians, via Timothy, that they must do what even non-Christians understand to be a matter of basic obligation: support your kinfolk.