Dr Paul Allen

I know the premise may sound crazy – gender role theology as a slippery slope to LGBTQ+?!? – but bear with me, and I’ll try not to disappoint. In evangelical patriarchy/hierarchalism/complementarianism, it is often assumed that gender role equality in the church is a slippery slope to acceptance of LGBTQ+ ideology.  The argument goes something like this:  when a woman exercises spiritual authority over men in a church, she rejects her divinely ordained sexual nature as man’s subordinate. This permissiveness paves the way for the takeover of liberal theology, in which God’s intention for sexual activity between a man and a woman, and the sacredness of one’s created gender, are similarly subverted. Many evangelical egalitarians have demonstrated how this argument is beset both by a causal fallacy and a misunderstanding of gender differences. I will briefly summarize their counterarguments and present a new idea, namely, that the exclusion of women from church leadership as “God’...

Wiley Publishing Company came to the rescue of curious sluggards the world over by creating a prolific series of instructional books intended to condense complex issues into non-intimidating bite-sized servings. The format includes cartoons, friendly fonts, and likeable talking heads covering a variety of subjects. They called the series For Dummies, a simplified guide to help anyone learn anything they want to know with minimum effort. Vampires for Dummies and Vegetarianism for Dummies are some of the odd ones. What about 'Submission' for dummies? Today’s text is not a substitute for an in-depth study of the issues involved in submitting to authority. But it does serve as a study guide of the salient facts, a kind of Being a Good Witness for Dummies. 1 Peter 2: 17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. 4 PITHY POINTS TO PUT POLICY INTO PRACTICE 1.    HONOUR EVERYONE Like a fisherman’s net, Peter throws this catch-all command ove...

“Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” ( Ephesians 5:21 ) Normally in today’s world we are told to strive for the top. Desire to be “Number 1” overshadows the biblical injunction of submission. But when we are truly in a right relationship with God, we will be submitting to one another. Christ taught that servanthood was of much greater value in the eyes of God than mastery. We all know too many examples of churches that have been split by conflicts arising from selfishness among the believers or an unwillingness to serve. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” ( James 4:1 ). A Spirit-filled Christian ( Ephesians 5:18 ) desires to submit and serve rather than to assert and rule. The same thought is reflected throughout Scripture: “Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble” ( 1 Peter 5:5 ). “Obey t...

As I understand things, there are basically three views in dispute (with thanks to Dr. Michael Svigel for the chart below): The  incarnational   subordination  view holds that the second member of the Trinity is submissive to the first beginning at the incarnation, or “in the state of His humiliation” (Goligher’s words). In other words, before the incarnation, there was no submission within the Trinity. This is the view I see Trueman and  Goligher defend . The  economic   subordination  view holds that there is submission, in the Trinity before the incarnation, but only in relationship to others outside of the Trinity—so the Son submits to the Father in matters of creation and redemption, but there is no submission between the Father and the Son as they relate to each other.  The  eternal   subordination  view teaches that there is submission in the Trinity not only in matters of creation and redemption, but also...

Submission in marriage is no sign of inferiority because, after all, isn’t the second person of the Trinity eternally submissive to the first? And one member of the Trinity is obviously not greater than the other, because that would be heretical. Thus in the Trinity we have a model of two persons of equal ontology, but submissive in differing roles. My question is:  Why should the  eternality  of the submission matter for this argument?  Why can’t we just look at the Son in His incarnation — fully God and fully man — and see His functional subordination, which is as clear as day in Scripture (John  14:28 ; 1 Cor 11:3), and make the very same argument?  The Father and the incarnate Son are two persons of equal ontology, but submissive in differing roles. We don’t need the  eternal  submissiveness (and therefore complex commentary on whether and how to read the economic Trinity back into the immanent Trinity) to make the complementaria...