Pastor Joel Webbin and Zachary Garris dissect the Fifth Commandment, arguing modern Reformed theology deviates from 16th-century patriarchs like Calvin by compromising male headship. They critique Boomer-era feminism and financial incentives driving women into debt-ridden seminary programs at institutions like Princeton and Westminster, contrasting this with Greenville Presbyterian's strict five-year experience rule for male-only professorships. Ultimately, the discussion posits that natural law dictates distinct gender roles, asserting female leadership undermines church discipline while promoting Garris's book, Honor Thy Fathers, as a call to recover traditional biblical masculinity. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I'm privileged to welcome back to the show.
It's been a while, but Zachary Garris.
The last time we had him, I think it was somewhat shortly after he'd written his first book, which was Masculine Christianity.
This is now his second book that he's written.
It's called Honor Thy Fathers.
Honor Thy Fathers.
And so we're discussing the importance of the fifth commandment in light of some of the challenges with our generation.
And some of the older generation preceding us, and some of the mistakes that they've made, and yet still the importance of trying to honor our immediate fathers.
In my case, that would be boomers, but not at the expense of honoring ancient fathers, all those who came before them.
So, we're talking about the fifth commandment, honoring fathers, and particularly honoring our ancient fathers, centuries of Christendom, and what they believed about the biblical view of men and women, because that is one of the big theological topics.
Where recent generations, our immediate fathers, such as the boomers, have gotten off the rails into not just first and second wave and third wave, but just absolute head over heels rank feminism, of which the last 2,000 years of church history and our ancient fathers would not even begin to be capable of recognizing.
So that's the discussion that we're talking about today roles of men and women, the nature of men and women.
The Reformed tradition and what has been taught historically about men and women, and how to honor ancient fathers when your immediate fathers are telling you you should disagree.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and in this episode, I am Privilege to welcome to the show Zachary Garrus.
He's published a couple books that have both been very helpful.
One was Masculine Christianity, and his most recent book, Honor Thy Fathers, which he published with New Christendom Press, has just recently come out.
And it's been a hit, I think, for a lot of people because a lot of the problem that we're experiencing today is that we are spurning our fathers, especially as Thomas Watson, I believe it was, would say, our ancient fathers, and just adopting so many things that are modern.
Progressive and not going back to the biblical roots and the rich heritage that we have before us.
So, Zachary, welcome to the show.
Thanks for coming on.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
All right, so let's start with this.
Just give us a real quick synopsis and, you know, the I know it's a little bit cliche, it's always the question you get asked, but why'd you write the book?
What's your purpose?
What are you trying to accomplish with it?
And why do you think a book like this is necessary today?
Yeah, Honored Eye Fathers is essentially a historical look at.
Reformed teaching on male headship, but it discusses male rule in the home, in the church, and in the commonwealth.
And my other book, Masculine Christianity, was more exegetical, got into scripture, though it had some history, of course.
But this is more of a historical angle, but it's also polemical.
Honor thy fathers is comparing the first section is looking at the older Reformed theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries.
And then the second part of the book is kind of contrasting them with modern.
Theologians, especially those who would call themselves Reformed.
And yeah, I think that's needed because, I mean, part of the book is showing that we've departed from the earlier tradition on these matters.
Right.
Yeah.
So, on that note, you know, we talked about this a little bit offline, the two of us, but I got in a little bit of trouble recently, a couple of days ago.
And I think that it, I'm sure it's not exactly what you would say.
And so, feel free to disagree with me wherever, you know, you and I would differ.
But I tweeted something out the other day.
And got a little bit of pushback, but I think it's in the vein, the overarching vein of what you're communicating with your book, Honor Thy Fathers.
And just, I was talking about the fifth commandment.
I wrote this The fifth commandment, which is honoring our fathers, is vital to all those who desire to live a long life in the land and be blessed by God.
However, it is wise to hold as a respectful suspicion toward all those who advocate for honoring our immediate fathers at the expense of honoring all the centuries of godly fathers who preceded them.
Careful obedience to the fifth commandment is similar to the thinking that we had to apply during COVID.
If a lesser civil official is demanding that we submit to that which God calls wicked, it becomes necessary to appeal to a more righteous civil magistrate above them.
Likewise, while it is important to still exercise respect for our immediate fathers, it is good and proper to appeal to generations of fathers who preceded them if our immediate fathers have spent their lives spitting on their legacy.
In short, beware of those who demand that you only honor one generation of fathers, especially if it happens to be the very generation of fathers that has been marked by rebellion towards their own fathers since the beginning of their lives, aka the boomers.
Now, obviously, part of the pushback that I got was well, it's a generation that's still alive and could see the tweet and respond.
I wasn't saying everybody, but I am saying that in a general sense, I really think, and it's not like all our problems start with the boomers, that's an oversimplification.
I get that.
But I think of the 1960s.
I think of the civil rights movement.
I think of protesting on the White House front lawn and those stick it to the man and all these.
The boomers, I think it's a fact, not every single one of them, but to say that they, from their teen and early adulthood years, were kind of the rebellious generation long hair, hippies, smoking weed, those kinds of things.
And they had the benefit of getting to be rebellious, go against the system.
Live in a van, you know, and do drugs.
And in their 30s, when they wanted to have normal lives, everything was waiting for them.
They could still get a house with a great mortgage and they could get a good job and they could have retirement and vacation time and all those kinds of things.
And that's, I mean, I think that that's fair to say.
I'm not talking about every individual.
Obviously, there are older members of the older generation who have been godly and faithful and XYZ.
But I'm saying in general, speaking of group dynamics, I have noticed, and I want to see if it's your experience as well.
But I think that particular generation, the reason I tweeted this out is I regularly see them disparaging, in my opinion, young men and saying that they're misogynistic or they're this or they're that because of their theological views, a biblical patriarch or whatever it is.
And then whenever they get pushback from the younger generation saying, no, I think this is what the Bible teaches, there's usually some kind of quip of honor your elders or you're not keeping the fifth commandment.
And it's like, Listen, we want to be as respectful as possible, but you're not honoring your fathers.
You would excommunicate John Calvin.
You would excommunicate John Knox.
You would ex all these guys, Guj, all these guys.
You have to edit their books.
You can't even publish them without censoring them because it says superiors and like you dishonor your fathers every day.
Your generation is marked, it is marked in American history as dishonoring fathers.
Um, and and I, I, I don't know what, what I don't think it's fair to say to a younger generation that wants to, we're not wanting to progress forward, we're wanting to actually go back and to get to biblical masculinity, biblical femininity, biblical views on all these theological subjects.
And, um, And it's the older generation that's telling us that we're rebelling when, in reality, if you look at a chain in each individual link, our generation is actually matching up with all these prior links except for one.
That's the rebellious generation, in my opinion.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think the first thing I'd say is there are a lot of great boomers, that generation, obviously.
I think even in my church, people in that age range, Lots of great men and women, and so we should honor them.
I mean, that's part of the fifth commandment, um, you know, understood in its broader scope, which something like the Westminster Larger Catechism does this.
Uh, and so I mean, I take this up in the book, which is they even ask the scope of the fifth commandment, right, which is to honor your father and mother, and they include not only natural parents but superiors and age gifts, uh, and then those in authority, family, church, and commonwealth.
But yeah, when you read.
The reformers on these kind of things, they would of course include spiritual forefathers and prior generations.
It's not limited to those.
It's not limited to those who are living.
So we need to honor both, right?
And I mean, there's also a sense in which those who are older are still to honor and treat respectfully those who would be considered their inferiors in age.
And the larger catechism gets into that kind of thing as well.
So, yeah, there's a lot of great boomers, but I think just when you look at the history of, at least we can say, the West or the United States, is our country's been in decline for some time.
And I surely wouldn't say it started with the boomers.
I mean, there were problems with prior generations.
But there definitely has been a big shift in the last, say, 50 or so years where.
I mean, feminism has really become a massive problem.
I mean, I argue feminism was around with like the first wave women's rights movement, but that didn't really come to full fruition until I think like the 1960s and 70s, you started to see this dramatic shift.
I mean, you can even see it in the birth rates and all of those kind of things.
And so we have to recognize that America has been in decline and it didn't start with people under 50.
So that I think just needs to be recognized.
And when you look at things in like the church, I mean, there's just been a lot of compromise in this period.
You could bring up the complementarian movement, which really took off in the 80s and 90s, especially.
And that's had its fracturing to the point where people speak of narrow and broad complementarianism.
And as I argue, even in this book, Honor Thy Fathers, there's been a lot of deviation, even amongst some of the broader complementarians.
They've deviated from our forefathers.
So I just think it needs to be.
Understood that we're to honor not only those who are living, but also the dead.
And so there's going to sometimes be conflicts and views there.
And so, in our manners and how we speak with older Christians with whom we disagree, we should be respectful, but they shouldn't talk down to us because we disagree or we think that actually the older guys got it right, the old dead guys.
I mean, that's a lot of times the way I think it is.
But that's what it is.
It's a debate between the young whippersnappers who are not making up novel doctrines.
We're simply like, we just went back.
And we read, we did the reading.
That's all it is.
So it's the young whippersnappers who read William Googe instead of John Piper.
You know what I mean?
On domestic duties, like biblical manhood and biblical womanhood.
And then we're just repeating those arguments, old arguments that were common.
It's what people believe, it's what the church believed for centuries and centuries and centuries.
And then we're being chastised, but being chastised from a standpoint of, I'm older.
And wiser and more experienced.
And the irony is what I'm trying to communicate is the irony is the younger guys are actually the ones who are holding to the older position.
And so we're saying, well, no, no, your view is the novel view, your view is the misnomer.
I understand that I'm half your age, I get that.
But the views that I'm espousing are not on the basis of my own personal credibility and life experience.
That's not the foundation for my view.
The foundation for my view is the Word of God as articulated and interpreted throughout the witness of church history for centuries instead of just since 1988 with the origin of complementarianism.
Right?
Is that fair?
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
And they shouldn't look down on us who want to go further back.
I think that's not a bad thing.
I mean, I think part of this is there's the assumption that there's been progress.
Progress in ideology, progress in the United States, culturally, politically, theologically.
And I would challenge that in most ways.
I think there's been a lot of regress.
And so, you know, theology doesn't really change much.
I mean, sometimes there's like new insights, but for the most part, we should be, I think, fairly traditional and continuing what was passed down from our spiritual fathers.
And so when there are new things or deviations, Uh, most of the time, those are wrong, and it's good to criticize those.
It just happens to be that many of the guys who made up some of those deviations are still alive and leaders in the church and whatnot.
And so, um, like even with my book here, I don't want to disrespectfully engage them, but I do want to engage them and I want to tell them I think they're wrong and here's why.
And I give my reasons, and I would, I mean, the best thing I think would be they say, Yeah, those are really good points, and let me think about it, and um, and they can change their views.
Breaking Down Complementarian Distinctions00:11:00
And honestly, I think it's kind of arrogant to go against.
The entire reform tradition.
I mean, that's kind of the thing with this book it's showing it wasn't just one guy.
I mean, I'm not just going to like John Calvin or something.
I'm going to the entirety of the tradition and showing that actually they all were very patriarchal, held to a very strong view of male rule.
This idea of a tie breaking vote in marriage, none of them fought like that.
That's totally modern and unbiblical, I would say.
It doesn't use that kind of qualification in the scripture.
So, yeah, I think, I mean, some of this is, you know, there's ties even with politics in the sense that if we include culture and the like, I mean, you get into kind of this older conservatism.
And so this ties in with some of these even historical debates and whatnot.
And there is kind of like a lot of neoconservatism politically, but also in the church where I think a lot of people have just shifted left on a lot of issues.
And so then they hear something that's like more.
Right wing, and like it's more on the right, it's like a paleo conservative take or something.
And they freak out, it's like they've never heard it before, and maybe they haven't.
But that's not because people didn't used to hold a lot of these views before, it's just I don't know between the media and the education system.
I don't know, they have this like very narrow window of what's acceptable.
And I think that's what's going on right now for a whole host of things.
And I mean, I'm doing it somewhat on the theological front.
Is trying to take us back to the older Reformed theologians.
Right.
And not just do theology in the 20th century.
I mean, that's, it doesn't make sense.
You shouldn't do that really in any field, but especially not theology.
Right.
So, for our listeners, could you just articulate briefly?
I've done this probably a number of times, and I think I may have even done it with you once upon a time, shortly after you published your first book, Masculine Christianity.
But, For those who maybe haven't heard it or are unaware, could you articulate just some of the distinctions between complementarianism and patriarchy?
Because I think a lot of people are underneath the impression that, well, you know, complementarianism is patriarchy.
It's just that patriarchy has become, you know, it has negative connotations and viewed as derogatory.
And so, you know, we just are replacing, you know, just a new placeholder, a new term.
But it's the same doctrine.
Whereas I would say, no, it's not.
And the guys who coined the term were very clear.
About, you know, by their own admission, flat out said that this is a halfway house in between egalitarianism and patriarchy, and that it was based, you know, I mean, the intention, it has been said by the framers of complementarianism that it was meant to kind of be a, you know, to hold back the floodgate of feminism,
that maybe this will be enough to appease the egalitarians and the feminists so that we don't lose everything.
So, could you do your best to just articulate what are you arguing for when you say patriarchy?
Why is complementarianism not sufficient?
Yeah, well, first let me say obviously, some people don't like the term patriarchy.
I mean, it's just referring to father rule.
And so, if we're talking about godly biblical patriarchy, I don't see how you could have a problem with that.
Though I will say, in this book, I use more of the language of just like the traditional reform position.
So, there are various terms we can use for these things.
So, complementarianism really was a reaction to egalitarianism in the 1980s, really, is responding, I think, to these things.
And if we were to summarize complementarianism, there's really two points that were essential.
They affirm male headship in the home.
And then in the church, they would say only men can be, well, hold the office of elder or pastor.
And those are fairly like minimal affirmations because.
What that allowed is people to hold maybe some other more egalitarian views.
So, like some what we call narrow complementarians would say, well, I think only a man can be a pastor, but I think a woman could preach.
I mean, I've heard people articulate that position because she does it under the authority of the session.
Well, that's really out of line with the tradition.
And I think also makes an arbitrary distinction between office and tasks.
Right.
Sproul said that just real quick.
I got to say it.
R.C. Sproul's.
He allowed for women to preach.
There is a video and audio recording that you can find on Renewing Your Mind.
It was a QA that he did in a small group, probably in the Ligonier studio where he had finished lecturing and was allowing people to ask.
And it was funny because there was a woman, I forget her name, because he names her.
And she says, Are you implying that a woman could preach?
And he said, So and so, I didn't imply it, I said it.
And he laughs and, like, so, but basically, he said he doesn't believe that a woman could be a ruling elder, but that she could teach R.C. Sproul towards the very end of his life.
And I love R.C. Sproul, you know, but I'm just saying, yeah, the boomer generation really started folding.
The best of them started folding on this.
Yeah, I obviously like R.C. Sproul.
I'd be curious to see the details and what the context there was.
Because, I mean, some of these guys do make distinctions.
You know, sometimes we might be talking about, well, it's a woman teaching in a women's setting or something.
That might be different.
But unfortunately, no, it was not.
Yeah, I wish it was.
It was not.
That is concerning if he said something like that.
But let me just say, I think so.
So you have like the narrow complementarian strand, but then you have the broader complementarians who would say, no, a woman can't preach.
And, you know, I mean, in general, they would say that the Worship service should be led by men.
But that's the thing some of this starts to break down, where some complementarians even think women can read scripture or in public worship or lead certain prayers in public worship.
And yeah, the worst of them think that women could even preach.
And then you get outside the worship service, and then there's the question of women teaching in Sunday school to like mixed groups with men.
And some of these narrow complementarians, especially, would say that they can.
So you've got that, but then.
You also have kind of the softening of male headship, where, you know, this is this whole tie breaking vote where scripture just speaks of the husband as the head of his wife.
And, you know, Ephesians 5 even says the wife should submit to her husband in everything.
You know, it says in everything, not in an occasional tie breaking vote.
It's the idea that the man is to actually lead.
Like they use that language, but he's actually a leader.
And that means he leads in everything by example and decision making.
His wife is his counselor.
He consults her on things, but he's still the leader.
He doesn't let her lead most of the time, and then he only leads if there's a disagreement.
I mean, that's not what the scripture says.
It's not what the Reformed tradition ever said about male headship in marriage.
So you've got that.
And then most complementarians probably wouldn't go to the issue of civil leadership, where they might allow women to.
Or more likely, it's probably they just don't say anything about women in political office.
Where you go read, obviously, Knox had the strongest statements against this, but even Calvin said, yeah, that shouldn't be normative.
It's not ordinary for women to hold political office.
That should mostly be men.
And so, you know, that's pretty much the, I would say probably the most standard view would be Calvin's.
But complementarians probably aren't going to say much about that.
And obviously, we have it now where we have a woman running for president of the United States.
And so that has just, that issue's kind of exploded where they, you know, we don't just have occasional women running for office.
They like push for half the candidates being women, and then it goes beyond that.
Where it's, I don't know, the men are just getting drowned out in a lot of these things.
So, but there's other issues where, you know, complementarianism, many of them were, not all, but many of them were getting into the whole ESS thing, eternal subordination of the Son, rather than just saying that the Son, you know, post incarnation submits to the will of the Father.
But because they were saying, well, it's an eternity because they're trying to say, look, you know, in the Trinity, you have, Equality between the persons, but still submission.
And they're wanting to say, look, so the husband and wife are equal, but the wife submits to the husband.
And the thing is, the scriptures, well, one, I don't think they teach eternal subordination to the son, but two, they don't compare husband and wife to father and son in the Trinity.
That's just not a comparison the scripture makes.
So, and in one sense, I mean, so we have to qualify these things.
I mean, in one sense, a man and a woman are equal, right?
They're made in God's image.
They're equal worth and value, but in another sense they're unequal.
And that's that's even like the, you know, tied with um, male headship is, is the husband?
Actually, husband and wife don't have equal authority in the marriage relationship.
They don't.
They're unequal.
I we, for some reason, a lot of these guys just are uncomfortable saying that um, even though that's the obvious implication of of submission.
So uh anyway uh, i'm trying to think if there's some other issues, but I, I think that kind of shows like, even if somebody holds a broader complementarian position And some people would maybe call me that, you know, say that's my view.
But, and there's going to be overlap.
There are going to be some of these things where, you know, the patriarchal or just traditional reform position is going to just be more robust, more consistent, and certainly more rooted in the history of Christian thought and theology.
Authority, Creation, and Role Reversal00:17:07
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Right.
Yep, agreed.
Yeah, it seems like another distinction with complementarianism between that and biblical patriarchy or whatever you want to call it, gendered piety, or the reformed tradition contains a lot more than just its views of men and women.
So, even if you call it that, then it's like the reformed tradition on patriarchy.
That's what I would want it.
So I don't know, however you slice it, but I think just one more distinction between complementarianism and patriarchy is the emphasis, the Bible's emphasis in the patriarchal view on nature.
And that's part of what keeps God and his character from being capricious and arbitrary.
And so I think a lot of the complementarian ethos is the woman, whether it be in the house or in the church or society at large.
The woman is basically looking to the man and saying, Anything you can do, I can do better.
I can do anything better than you, but I won't.
I remember a pretty well known woman who is considered to be conservative.
I don't think so, but people consider her to be conservative.
The bar for being conservative is pretty low these days.
You can do swimsuit modeling and stuff like that.
Conservatives are a joke.
So, anyways, you know that.
But she said, That she could preach better than most men, but she won't.
And she won't because she recognizes that the Bible does not permit that her preaching to mixed groups, men being present on the Lord's Day.
And I appreciate her holding the line in that sense, but I remember hearing that and thinking, well, I think that's the root of the problem.
I know what she meant.
She meant that women are capable of theological competence.
If that's the statement, then I agree.
I think women are capable of theological competence.
I think women can learn.
In fact, I mean, that's one of the things that we see in 1 Timothy 2.
Not only is it permissible, but you could even argue that there's an insistent with apostolic command a woman must learn.
And then he begins to outline in what manner and what heart posture she should learn, learn with submissiveness and quietness, but she should learn.
And the chief context for learning, I would argue, is not sending all of our daughters to seminary, but the chief context for learning that was in the mind of the Apostle Paul, you know, as he's writing this is.
The church, you know, on the Lord's day, women are learning right there with their husbands sitting on the pew next to them from those who are biblically qualified to preach and teach who are men.
And so, but the point is, women should learn and women can be competent.
But I don't think it's merely that a woman is not allowed to preach.
I honestly believe because of what I know about the scripture on this matter and because of what I know about the character and nature of God, it's not that God, you know, like fish can fly just as good as birds, but God has designated and determined that fish should swim.
Just because, you know, and birds can swim just as good as fish, but God has determined and designated that, you know, that birds should fly.
I know it, the role of creatures extends from their design and their nature.
And so I would say that there is something about preaching that is not mere theological competence or mere oration and the ability to articulate and compel, but there's something in the very nature of, I think it's a misunderstanding of the nature of men and women.
And a misunderstanding of the nature of preaching.
I think there's something in nature, not just role, but role stems from nature.
And there's something in the design of preaching and the design of men and women where it's not just that a woman can preach, and as it was said by this particular woman, can preach better than most men, but won't because I'm conservative.
No, the reason you are not permitted in scripture to preach is not merely because you're not allowed to, but because you are unable to.
You can't preach.
It's not just that Sally shouldn't preach, Sally can't preach.
She can't because the preaching of the nature of preaching and the nature of Sally are incompatible.
And I think I can argue that.
I'm curious what you would say.
So, I this is a good point you raise about nature, and it's actually the one I forgot to raise as far as problems with complementarianism.
So, I do think this is one of the big problems with complementarianism they detached the command.
Which would be a prohibition of women being pastor or preaching.
They detach that from God's design and the nature of man and woman.
And so I do think this is essential you have to understand those things go together.
The very nature of the thing or person and the telos, right?
The goal, the end for which it's made.
And so God's commands are not arbitrary.
And the reason he places restrictions on women.
That he doesn't on men is because of his design for men to lead.
And so this gets into like natural law.
And I realize people like to argue about that when it comes to like the political realm and everything.
But when we're talking about male and female relationships, duties, gender roles, as some people like to say, we have to understand that God designed men to lead and he formed man this way.
So even when we get into the very biology of man, testosterone, all of these things. that make a man different from a woman, that has ties with God's commands for leadership.
So both to be the head of the household, right?
The very constituency of a man is different from a woman, personality to some extent, right?
And how they think and function.
And this stuff goes down deep.
And so when Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, that's 1 Timothy 2.12, he's not just making that up.
God told me this, so I'm going to repeat this command.
No, he knows that this flows from and is tied from the different constituencies of man and woman.
And in fact, what did we see?
What's his reasoning in 1 Timothy 2?
He actually goes to creation, he's actually making a sort of natural law argument.
Yes.
As he says, for Adam was formed first, and so he's going to the very fact that he was created first.
There's something about creational priority.
I think it's tied with headship.
And then we could even go elsewhere, like 1 Corinthians 11.
He says that man was not made for woman, but the woman for man.
She's the helper to her husband.
It doesn't mean she's lesser worth or value, of course.
We always have to tell egalitarian that's not what we're saying.
But it does mean, as far as her work and God's design for woman, she is there to help her husband.
She's a life giving being.
So she's a mother.
I mean, that's so important, right?
And speaking of hierarchy, my kids are not of less innate value.
We're talking about the innate dignity and value of a human being made in the image of God.
I have four kids and a fifth on the way.
They are not of less value than I am.
But God has a created order and a hierarchy.
They are not my equals or my peers in terms of authority.
We're talking about authority.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
And I mean, obviously, with children, they grow and mature.
But with a woman, that's not the case.
She's an adult woman.
She'll never become a man, regardless of what people say.
And she can't hold that authority.
She's not designed to do so.
I mean, there's exceptional cases where, like, a widow, right, is the head of her household, but that's not ideal, obviously.
Even then, according to Paul, if she's younger, he would say the ideal is for her to find a new head and to remarry.
Her first and first.
Right, 1 Timothy 5 14, yeah.
And yeah, so even there, we have that passage, we have Titus 2, and Paul is directing women's work towards the home.
I mean, it's kind of another issue, but.
He's directing women towards work in the home and child rearing, and he's directing men towards, well, leadership in the home, but also their work is outside the home.
So, this even ties in with like the leadership and church thing is men's work is directed outside the home, whether it's leadership in the church or civil leadership or business or whatever they're doing.
So, I mean, I think that's kind of an underlying principle there.
But yeah, so real quick, getting back to what you were saying, I was just going to get you back on track, but you were saying, you know, Paul appeals to the natural law argument at some level.
It's also special revelation.
Got to throw that in there.
But he gets to the order of creation.
But he also, it's kind of a two pronged argument.
He references the order of creation, but also the order of the fall.
So in creation, man is formed first, and man is formed from the dust of the ground.
But it's the woman who's formed second, and she's formed from man and for man.
So that's the order of creation and its purposes.
But then he makes a second argument in terms of the order of the fall.
So Adam is formed first, but Eve falls first.
Yeah.
And so, well, what did most of the complementarians do with this is they've come up with this view that they say, well, it's just role reversal.
But I'm not really sure entirely what they mean.
I mean, I've read their stuff on this.
It doesn't really explain Paul's reasoning.
I think it makes a lot more sense, which is what I think most older writers held, is he's saying there's something about Eve and her deception.
She was the one deceived, Adam was not deceived, Adam sinned willingly.
And, um, which is not to absolve him of guilt, if anything, it only you know indicts him further, right?
It's not like saying this is a good thing about Adam, it's just when compared to the man, uh, the woman and her, I guess we could say, uh, just constituency, the way she's designed.
And I actually, I like this explanation is that woman is made to follow, right?
So, Eve was made to follow, and the problem is she didn't follow Adam and she didn't follow God, she followed.
The serpent.
Right.
So that was tied with her deception.
She was deceived.
I mean, that was her own word.
She says, The serpent deceived me in Genesis 3, and I ate.
So Paul's just picking that up.
Adam doesn't say, You know, Eve deceived me.
That's not what Adam says.
Now he does blame God.
Adam has plenty of sin.
And again, if anything, he's more responsible, not less.
But notice it's not deception.
So it's not Eve said, Well, the serpent deceived me.
And then Adam says, Well, the woman deceived me.
No, it's the woman you gave me.
She then gave me the fruit and I ate of it.
And if anything, the implication there and I ate of it is I knew exactly what I was doing and I sinned with my eyes wide open, but I did it.
You know, there's a lot of different commentaries from older writers on this, but, you know, some of them, not all, but some of them even say that, you know, Adam did it because his main sin in that moment was idolatry and loving his wife more than God.
He knew exactly what happened when he saw that his wife had eaten of the fruit and would surely die, as God had threatened and promised.
He said, I'd rather die with her than live with God and ate of the fruit with her.
Whereas what he should have done is he should have run to God and said, God, Oh, help us.
What do we do?
My wife is eating of this fruit.
And then he could have even been, you know, like the second Adam by saying, I offer myself as tribute.
Take me instead of her.
Would you please, you know, like, and, you know, but so he, but yeah, he, but he wasn't deceived is the point.
Right.
He should have, he should have killed the serpent.
Yes.
And guarded his wife.
Genesis 2 15.
He should have, he should have done what God said, which is to guard, but he didn't.
And so there is a role reversal in a sense.
He follows his wife when he's supposed to lead.
Right.
And he follows her into sin.
But yes, Paul is very clear in 1 Timothy 2.14.
He says, the woman was deceived and the man was not deceived, right?
That's just very clear in the text.
So there's something about man's not deceived and woman is.
And so, I mean, I don't know.
People come back and say, well, if woman's more deceived than man, then she can't teach children either.
And I'm like, no, that's not what it says because.
That it's just a comparison when, if it's going to be between a man and a woman, God says men are to be the leaders in the church, they're to be the preachers and teachers, not all men, but some men.
And, um, so anyway, I, yeah, I think he's, he's like you said, Paul's appealing to creation, it's special revelation, but it's also he's looking to nature, the very differences between men and women, and and he's saying God's prohibition lines up perfectly with his design, uh, differing design of man and woman, and it's good, and I think.
Yeah, it's good.
It's good.
And for some reason, the complementarians aren't willing to go there.
Many of them, some of them are.
But this also ties in with other issues.
Maybe, you know, probably the best one to bring up would be women in combat, because we don't have as explicit a prohibition on women in combat as like 1 Timothy 2.
I mean, we can go back to Deuteronomy.
I do think that one verse, is it 21 5?
It's referring to women not wearing armor, it's gear for war.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, regardless, the principle is she's not to dress like a man, and men are the ones who were warriors in the Old Testament.
So, either way, it's role reversal or transgenderism, transvestism, sorry.
So, that's a problem.
But we should be able to reason our way there from scripture and natural law to say that women shouldn't serve in combat.
And yet, you go look at some of the debates we've had in the church, and I can go back.
I have a footnote on this.
I think it's the end of chapter three.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the OPC.
Which is kind of the old northern conservative Presbyterian church.
They had a debate in 2001, and thankfully the majority took, I think, what's the right side is they condemned women in combat as unnatural.
But there was like a substantial minority report and a protest that signed this thing.
Women in Seminaries and Modern Debates00:09:16
And they said, and this is the view they took, they didn't say, oh, well, it's good for women to be in combat.
They said, well, scripture doesn't speak to this sufficiently.
And so we as a church can't speak to it.
But the problem is, scripture does speak to this in a number of instances.
And we can also reason our way there.
I mean, the Westminster Confession speaks of.
making deductions, right?
Good and necessary consequences.
So scripture is either explicit on a subject or we deduce good and necessary consequences.
And that would be, I think, one of these cases is we can easily reason our way to the conclusion that women should not serve in combat and it's unnatural.
And yet many people today don't want to say that.
Many Reformed theologians don't want to say that.
And I think that's just.
Well, there's two things going on.
One, they're caving to cultural pressure.
They're feeling the cultural pressure, and they don't, I mean, in one sense, they don't want to go beyond scripture.
Okay.
But we have to go beyond just like the narrow words of scripture.
Like, so this would get into the fact that I'm not a narrow biblicist.
I think the Reformed tradition, you know, went beyond the words of scripture, they applied the whole of scripture.
And so I give an example of like Vermakeley and some others doing that, just that, is they, they, They said, yeah, women shouldn't normally fight in combat.
I mean, maybe there's an exceptional case where a woman's dropping a stone on a male soldier's head.
He's a threat to them.
That's exceptional, but she shouldn't dress up as a soldier and go fight in the army.
That's contrary to God's design, it's unnatural.
And yeah, and so I think we need to be able to go there.
We need to be able to reason and theologize the way that the older reformed.
Theologians did.
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I agree.
Yeah, I think part of the problem with, you know, you said like there's a lot of reform guys who aren't willing to go there because they're afraid of cultural pressure and.
And I think you're right.
And I think there's some underlying reasons for that.
And I don't think it's just because of wanting acceptance by the culture, because I think they know that, you know, the New York Times is probably not going to be on their side.
But there still are some incentives baked into the reformed camp, as small as it is.
And it is a very small camp.
You know, there's, at the end of the day, you know, you're talking about a market size of, you know, like maybe 100,000 to 200,000 people.
Like we forget what a, you know, we're just a sliver.
Of the evangelical population, and that is even account for outside of mainline denominations, and then Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox.
So, I mean, it's tiny.
It's tiny.
But because it's tiny, I guess my point is a lot of your reformed writers, the guys who are going to be putting out the journals, the guys who are going to be putting out the books, the guys who are going to be speaking at the conferences, these guys are usually attached to the seminaries.
They're adjunct professors and pastoring on the side, or they're tenured and professors full time.
And you're talking about a very small market, again, 100,000 to 200,000 people.
You need enrollment for these seminaries to be able to continue funding the work.
And one way to double your enrollment is to encourage women to sign up.
To say, well, you know, who's to say seminary is just, you know, all about training ministers, you know, like men for the ministry and, you know, the preaching of the gospel.
And, you know, everybody needs to know theology, right?
Right.
And, you know, so what better thing to do when you're young, you know, as a woman?
You know, like if you're not a mom yet, you know, knowing that nobody is, because we've completely built a culture within evangelical Christianity that despises getting married young, despises having children young.
So, they know that all these women are going to be single in the Reformed churches, even when they're 20, 21, 22, 23.
Then, why not go to seminary and learn more about God, knowing that they're going to rack up $80,000 in debt and the very thing that they're called to do?
They'll be that much less likely financially to be able to do it because they've racked up debt.
But my point is just you can follow the money, not just in politics, not just in the corporate world, but very much in the Reformed church.
You can follow the money and get some real clear ideas real fast about.
Why guys believe and what they believe and write what they write.
Yeah, I think this is an unfortunate thing with seminary there has been a confusion between, like, failure to distinguish between theological education for women, which we all affirm, right?
That's part of church where we're teaching women, preaching to women and men.
Confusing that with the training of ministers and kids.
I'm family integrated over here.
I'm not just teaching men and women, I'm teaching kids too.
Yeah, amen.
So, I mean, seminaries were created.
I mean, to get into a little bit of the history in the United States, the first seminaries were really in the early 1800s.
I mean, Princeton Theological Seminary was one of the big ones, which was Presbyterian.
Archibald Alexander, Samuel Miller, and then Charles Hodge, kind of the early professors.
So, I mean, these were teaching men.
They were known.
Like, you weren't going to seminary, you know, just to go study theology.
You're going to Princeton to train to be a minister.
I mean, because before that, you would train with other pastors.
And that's great too, but obviously it has some deficiencies.
And so, seminary was, in many ways, great.
And so, I mean, yeah, that was the practice.
It was men.
And there's like this modern thing well, let's get women in the seminaries.
And yes, some of it is motivated by money for sure.
And I think it has a negative influence on the classroom.
I do think it's part of seminary, and I know a lot of people do it online now, but.
I mean, I went to seminary and there was something about living amongst like other men training for the ministry.
And that's great.
I think that's part of the experience.
Yep.
But yeah, so, and you know what?
Most of our theological classes, a lot of them were just men and that was great.
But we did have some at RTS with women in the counseling program and the like.
But yeah, so I think that's a whole big issue that definitely needs challenge.
But also what's happened with a lot of these seminaries is they've started to hire women professors.
Which is just ridiculous.
I mean, having women theological professors to teach biblical studies or Hebrew, or I mean, you could go down the line.
I mean, so it's like women training men to do something that the Bible says their professor themselves is not even permitted to do.
Yeah.
I mean, so like Westminster Theological Seminary, I mean, East Philadelphia, they had a woman that was teaching their Hebrew courses for a while.
I mean, this is kind of unfortunately fairly common.
RTS has brought some women in as adjuncts and whatnot.
You know, this is one great thing about Greenville Theological Seminary, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, is they actually require their professors to have five years of pastoral experience.
So, that right off the bat is going to limit those positions to men.
And I think that's great.
That's what seminaries should be doing.
But they're kind of unique in that regard.
And I think it makes it harder.
It certainly makes it harder to find professors.
But we just need to raise the bar in the church today.
We just have way too low a standard overall, and we're caving to feminism.
Way too much, and our institutions have been doing that.
And so, you know, I think if we can say one good thing is happening with the younger generations, I do think there is more, I think the younger men are overall more conservative.
Yep.
We can get into the reasons for why, but like, I don't know.
I mean, even my writings, I'm hoping, and it seems that way, that there's a good influence out there that most guys don't want to call themselves complementarians anymore.
Fighting for Words Worth Keeping00:03:03
They want to say they hold patriarchy or traditional reform position.
You know, so there are some good trends traditional reform position on patriarchy, yeah.
Or, yeah, that's right.
I think I say, uh, every time you see the traditional reform position, I'm like, yeah, that you can say that, but reform position on what, like Calvin's institutes on, like, on what, like the regular principle of worship, on like on baptism, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I want to cover the entirety of the reform tradition, amen.
But I would say reform, reform tradition on male rule.
I do say, I think I use that kind of language, so so I'm not opposed to the term patriarchy, I just I recognize, like, obviously, it has some baggage.
Some people, you know, they use that against us all the time.
Yeah, they do.
But at a certain point, you just got to roll with it.
You know what I mean?
It's like, yeah, that's.
Hey, I don't have a problem.
I don't have.
I mean, after careful consideration, after careful consideration, I've decided to become worse.
You know, you just hear it every day, like, you're misogynistic, you're this, you're that.
And it's like, you know what?
Your claims are slanderous.
And so long as me and my Bible, like, we know that it's not true.
Then I'm just going to keep on chugging along.
You can call me whatever you want.
You know, and like, I like how, you know, Doug Wilson said, you know, a few years ago, I think he wrote like an article or something, recovering the lost virtue of sexism.
Like, I think that's good.
The tongue in cheek, you know, saying, like, wait a second, like, you know, some things really are wrong.
And then some things are not.
Like, this idea that we would treat the two sexes differently, the whore.
Like, oh, wait, but that's what we're supposed to do.
That's what chivalry is.
Like, yeah, that's.
So, anyway, some words are worth fighting for and keeping, but sometimes there are some words where it's like, okay, you know what?
It's just not worth dying on that hill.
We'll keep the virtue, keep the principle, but not be like, actually, every five seconds.
So you got to pick and choose.
Right.
Yeah, we're not going to, I don't think, call our views biblical sexism.
I wouldn't mind it.
But yeah, I hear you.
I mean, we have to just get used to the fact that they call us sexist.
I mean, it's a silly term, sexism.
I mean, obviously, there's like things that we would speak against, which would be like, you know, the abuse of women in a variety of forms.
But like, yeah, obviously, they call our views sexist.
And I'm just like, okay, whatever.
That's just some made up term you have that has no rooted, it's not rooted in scripture.
I mean, the subtitle to this book is Recovering the Anti Feminist Theology of the Reformer.
So that's another term.
We're anti feminists.
I am not a feminist.
I reject it entirely.
And it's not enough to not just be feminist, you've got to be anti feminist.
That's right.
I love it.
I'm anti feminist.
Amen.
Let's go.
Okay.
Well, let's land the plane.
But here's my final question for you.
Rejecting Feminism and Embracing Nature00:07:56
So, we were getting into nature, right?
These roles, they stem from nature.
They're not capricious, they're not arbitrary.
You can make natural arguments, you know, from good and necessary reason.
And then, you know, and then also there's a whole host of special revelation things that God just flat out says.
But getting into, again, nature, I think, you know, even the best of the complementarian folk, right?
The broad, hard, complementarian, whatever you want to call it.
I think they still, they're going to say, okay, well, sure, yeah, you know, these differences in roles, they stem from the distinctions in nature, but they're still going to limit, this is what I've noticed, they're going to limit the distinctions at the level of nature exclusively to the physicality of men and women.
So the only distinctions within the realm of nature that exist at all are men have shoulders, women have hips, right?
And so then, you know, mothering, you know, stems from that, like, yeah, sure, there's ovaries.
That is a distinction in nature.
And then that plays into the, but, What I want to say is, I think the difference goes all the way down, all the way down.
And what I mean by that is, certainly there is a distinction from testosterone and all these, but it's not just the physical distinction that men can bench more and that women can nurse children.
I don't think it's just the physical distinction, but with some of those physical things that, right, I think they flow into one another, what I'm about to say, but like testosterone, for instance, and the way it affects people, men, chemically and psychologically and mentally.
I think that the differences are more than just who can throw up more weights on the bench press and who can nurse children.
But I really do think there's something to be said for the fact that just look at competitive chess.
So it's not just like, well, men are always going to win in the high jump.
Okay, yeah, that's true.
But a woman can lift a bishop or a rook or a knight and move it three inches on a board.
There's no disadvantage.
There's no physical disadvantage for women in the realm of chess.
But you can study it and you can look at the metrics and all that.
Men are vastly superior.
Why?
And you can say, well, but it's just because it appeals to men.
And so, you know, women aren't as good as men at chess because they don't care about it.
Okay.
But even that begs another question.
What is it about this strategic game that was designed for kings to strategize war plans?
Why does that appeal to men and not to women?
You know, so like at every level, whether it's the.
Unique mental faculty, or even just the raw appeal and attraction towards a game of strategy and war.
The point is, it's not just that men are stronger and women are able to have babies.
It's not just physical.
There are distinctions and differences that go all the way down.
And all of them, to sum them up, in my assessment, the distinctions for men, they're all geared towards leadership.
And the distinctions for women, they're all geared toward being a deputy, a right hand, a helper to nurture, to follow, to trust, to create warmth, to turn a house into a home.
It is to supplement the man, but it is not to lead him.
And I think it's inescapable.
So I just want to get your take on that.
Is there another way that you would articulate the differences of nature that stem beyond just broader shoulders and broader hips?
Well, there's actually a lot of literature, and I haven't even dived into it that much.
But the testosterone's effect on the brain.
I mean, men and women think very differently.
This is obvious.
I mean, some of this we don't need to look into all the literature because if you just live, you're like, okay, my mom and sisters think differently and wife think differently than I do.
Okay.
You know, they're all still human, but like there's definitely a just difference in how women process things.
And so you see this.
In the political realm, you see it in the church.
And I think it's clear that women leading in the church is disastrous.
And we don't want sessions full of women.
I mean, this is part of the thing.
I mean, sometimes churches will come up with like shepherdesses, like they're going to have some women's council, they're advisors to the session.
It's like, hey, every single elder that's a man, male elder, has an advisor at home, he has his wife, and we consult our wives on all sorts of things.
You should.
But sometimes, you know, your wife doesn't always agree with you and she might see things a different way.
And so you take that into account.
But she's not the one who ultimately makes the decision in the church.
And so I think God has designed men to lead.
And tied with that is He's designed them to provide.
And they would be like providing in the home, but providing in the church, the word, like teaching, but also protecting.
And so when you get into the church, you have this discipline aspect that is essential, right?
Rebuking one another.
I mean, we should all be doing that, exhorting one another in Christ.
But then, you know, you have formal discipline in the church for sinful behavior and false teaching.
And the church has to carry those things out.
The church has to exercise discipline.
And when it doesn't, those things fester and they become a problem.
And then the church declines into theological liberalism or libertinism and debauchery.
And those things happen.
Right.
And so you have to have men and particularly godly men leading the church at the local level.
And if you have beyond that, right, at the presbytery and general assembly level.
And you could kind of make the same point with politics.
I mean, not to get into this too much, but things have definitely changed where, like earlier America, voting was limited not just to men, but kind of men who had established themselves.
They had land and the like, and they had an interest in, in, The Commonwealth.
And they had a stake in the future.
They had children.
They were married.
Yeah, they had wives and children to look out for.
And now everybody votes, right?
We have universal suffrage.
Outside of children, you have to become 18 first, which I think is probably too low.
But, you know, so you have universal suffrage.
Everybody gets to vote, even if they are on the government dole, right?
They take more than they pay in taxes, they don't have to own any land.
And I mean, this is just, and also, so this kind of fed all these identity politics.
And then, I mean, we're seeing like just the differences in the way men and women vote.
I mean, you look, right, you see those maps on Twitter or whatever.
We laugh at it, but there's something to it, right?
It's like, well, if only men voted, like the Republicans would always win every time.
But if only women voted, the Democrats would win every time.
So obviously something's going on there.
And actually, this is a problem for the younger generations where the young men are getting more conservative and the young women are getting drastically more liberal.
And that's very concerning, not only for establishing marriages, but also future voting patterns.
And so some of this is the way women and men think differently.
And it's tied with how they're processing information.
And women are more nurturing.
And so I don't know.
I think sometimes men are just more suited to make hard decisions politically and ecclesiastically.
So, I mean, yeah, without getting all the details, there's definitely something here as far as God's design for men and women being different.
Gender Gaps in Politics and Leadership00:01:40
And female leadership is destructive.
That's just a fact.
And we need to affirm that, that's a truth historically.
Scripturally, theologically.
And if you recognize that, you can at least be more aware of what's going on.
And we can say, oh, actually, we shouldn't allow the kind of these pushes, people pushing for more female leadership in the church and whatnot.
We actually need to stand on scripture and the tradition and say, no, it's actually really good that we have just male elders.
That's fine.
We don't need anything else.
Right.
Well said.
Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Tell people, the listeners, where they can get your book.
So, Honor Thy Fathers, the e book is on Amazon right now.
And I think they will have the hardcover or if they do a softcover on Amazon at some point.
But otherwise, you have to go to the New Christendom Press website and they have it on there.
It's a hardback, it's kind of a special edition.
It looks really good here.
It does.
So, you know, they did a great job on the cover.
Yeah.
So, you want to pick that up if you can get the hardcover because it will not be there forever.
And you're saying the hardcover is only available with New Christendom or it is on Amazon?
No, it's not on Amazon.
It's not.
It's only on the New Christendom website.
Okay.
Yeah, they may do a soft cover at some point.
NewChristendom.com, I think.
Is that what it is?
I think it's NewChristendomPress.com.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, and they have it on the front page there.
Cool.
Well, keep up the great work.
Thanks, Zach, for spending some time with us today.
We appreciate it, and I hope to see you again soon.