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ZACH GARRIS | Feminism and the Church: Revisiting the Teachings of the Reformers
Episode 201 • 18th October 2024 • The Will Spencer Podcast • Will Spencer
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This podcast episode features a deep discussion on the impact of feminism within the church and society, highlighting how the traditional roles of men and women have been challenged over the decades.

Zach Garris, author of "Honor Thy Fathers" and "Masculine Christianity" emphasizes the importance of adhering to the teachings of the Reformation, specifically regarding male headship and the roles assigned to women in the home, church, and commonwealth.

Through an exploration of historical figures like John Knox and William Gouge, the conversation underscores the dangers of deviating from these foundational principles, which can lead to a feminization of the church and society.

The episode also critiques contemporary leaders, including Tim Keller and his wife, for their narrow complementarian stance and the implications of their teachings on church practices today. Listeners are encouraged to consider the historical context of these discussions and the potential for reforming modern practices to align more closely with traditional Christian teachings.

Takeaways:

  • Garris argues that the church has been slow to address feminist ideologies effectively.
  • Evidence from history shows that traditional gender roles have been upheld by Reformers.
  • Tim Keller's approach to gender roles has been criticized for being too lenient on feminism.
  • The conversation highlights the importance of understanding historical Christian perspectives on gender.

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Transcripts

Will Spencer:

Hello.

Will Spencer:

My name is Will Spencer and thanks.

Zach Garris:

For joining me for the Will Spencer podcast.

Zach Garris:

This is a weekly interview show featuring extended discussions with authors, leaders, and influencers who can help us make sense of our changing world.

Zach Garris:

Today I release new episodes every week on Friday.

Zach Garris:

My guest this week is Zach Garris, who's returning to the podcast.

Zach Garris:

Zack is a husband, father, pastor, and the author of two books including Masculine.

Will Spencer:

Christianity and the new honor Thy fathers.

Zach Garris:

Feminism is in the cultural and political crosshairs today.

Will Spencer:

Praise God.

Zach Garris:

Because for the first time since womens liberation exploded into western consciousness in the mid 20th century, cultural commentators have actual evidence to back up their critiques.

Zach Garris:

Naturally, 60 million aborted infants is in itself an incriminating statistic.

Zach Garris:

But with marriage and birth rates collapsing, antidepressant use soaring, and women's self reported happiness declining generation over generation, we can see that the feminist experiment is failing in culture, politics, and economics.

Zach Garris:

Indeed, it's failing in civilization as a whole, albeit slowly.

Zach Garris:

The evidence can even be seen as far away as Korea and Japan.

Zach Garris:

With birth rates so far below replacement, they've reached the level of national emergency.

Zach Garris:

But strangely, the one place feminism doesn't.

Will Spencer:

Appear to be failing is in the.

Zach Garris:

Church, which always lags behind the times.

Zach Garris:

While the Kamala Harris candidacy is representing both the apex and nadir of feminism, churches are seeking ways to expand feminism's influence in both local and national bodies, despite the clear word of God.

Zach Garris:

omething thats been clear for:

Zach Garris:

And yet some organizations that call themselves churches and yet are not, have gone tragically soft on abortion, claiming it might be a womans choice and we should be more compassionate, less faithful, more empathetic, and less dogmatic.

Zach Garris:

Naturally, this is also a result of feminism that prioritizes womens feelings over gods truth.

Zach Garris:

Now let me be clear.

Zach Garris:

There is also a movement of churches out there that are prioritizing men's feelings primarily of anger, as a result of what we're talking about with women.

Zach Garris:

That is not better, it might even be worse.

Zach Garris:

And it's another podcast.

Zach Garris:

So in the meantime, we can talk about church's capitulations to the demands of feminism without directly answering but what about the men?

Zach Garris:

So let's talk about feminism in the church.

Will Spencer:

Anyone?

Will Spencer:

Anyone?

Zach Garris:

Bueller?

Zach Garris:

And therein lies the problem.

Zach Garris:

Because in a reformed faith that has so much to say about politics, culture and even economics, there's often a shocking silence when it comes to something much more fundamental the nature of men, women, and our shared roles, responsibilities, and destinies together.

Zach Garris:

But it wasn't always so.

Zach Garris:

Which brings me back to Zach Garris and his new book, honor Thy fathers, out now on new Christendom Press.

Zach Garris:

In his brief, inaccessible work, Zack demonstrates the traditional stance of the reformed faith towards feminism, sort of because feminism wasn't really a thing during the age of the reformers.

Zach Garris:

But the word of God still rang true, which is why Luther, Calvin, Knox, Turretin Warfield, and many other reformers and Puritans were bracingly clear on women's roles in the home, church and government, namely, that they are not to teach or have authority over men.

Zach Garris:

Period.

Zach Garris:

Full stop.

Zach Garris:

Not that women can't have authority at all, as in over fellow women and children, just not over men.

Zach Garris:

That's a hard teaching.

Zach Garris:

I know there are so many cultural and political incentives to egalitarianism and what's known as broad complementarianism, which is basically the same thing.

Zach Garris:

But the word of God is clear, and things go better for us, men and women, when we submit ourselves to it, because the fifth commandment is the only one with a promise.

Zach Garris:

And that is where Zack derived the title of his book from, to help us understand that honoring male authority is following the Fifth Commandment, as elucidated in the Westminster confession of faith and elsewhere.

Zach Garris:

So, as Zack writes in one of the most memorable first sentences I've read recently, feminism has fallen on hard times of late.

Zach Garris:

But it has not fallen on hard enough times.

Zach Garris:

I couldn't agree more, and I hope feminism continues to fall on hard times outside the church and harder times within it.

Zach Garris:

May Zach Garriss new book, Honor Thy fathers, contribute to that effort.

Zach Garris:

If you enjoy the will Spencer podcast, thank you.

Zach Garris:

Please give us a five star rating on Spotify, plus a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Zach Garris:

And if you really want to help this show grow, share this episode or another one of your favorites with a friend of if you'd like to support the show financially, there are some easy ways to do that.

Zach Garris:

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Zach Garris:

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Zach Garris:

Or you can click buy me a coffee in the show notes.

Zach Garris:

But the most important thing you can do is support our advertisers.

Zach Garris:

I've curated every advertiser that appears on this show, and purchasing their products and services bring multigenerational wealth back to the christian community so we can rebuild a christian foundation to the west.

Zach Garris:

And please welcome this week's guest on the Will Spencer podcast, the author of honor thy fathers, Zach Garris.

Will Spencer:

Zach, welcome back to the podcast.

Guest:

Thanks for having me.

Will Spencer:

I have here the Zach Garris collection, masculine Christianity and honor thy fathers.

Will Spencer:

Congratulations on your second book.

Will Spencer:

I like to call honor thy fathers the reformed strike back.

Will Spencer:

So congratulations on this.

Guest:

Thanks.

Guest:

Yeah, it's kind of complimentary book, I think, to masculine Christianity.

Will Spencer:

Very much so.

Will Spencer:

In fact, I remember when I had you on to talk about masculine Christianity maybe a year, year and a half ago, something like that.

Will Spencer:

And having read on to thy fathers now, it feels very much like a couple missing chapters and away from masculine Christianity.

Will Spencer:

Not that the book felt incomplete, but that the two fit together really well, almost as if they could be the same volume, which is a great way to write a couple books.

Guest:

Yeah, I think so.

Guest:

I mean, they're obviously different angles.

Guest:

They could all go in the same book.

Guest:

There's some overlap, but honor thy fathers is more of a historical angle.

Guest:

So for people who are interested in that, I think it's useful.

Guest:

And then also it does get a little more into, I guess you could say, like the narrow complementarianism in the particular, in the reformed world.

Guest:

I mean, there's some of that in masculine Christianity, but, yeah, a little bit different book.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, it's definitely a different posture on the same sets of issues.

Will Spencer:

So I think I remember masculine Christianity being very heavily heavy on exegesis, like in the posture of these verses, in contrast to what the feminists say about them.

Will Spencer:

And then it's let's go and do a historical survey of what our reformed forefathers used to say about these verses, in contrast to more of like the modern approach that the church is taking to egalitarianism, complementarianism and feminism.

Will Spencer:

Really?

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Will Spencer:

So when you sat down to write honor thy fathers, did you have this book sort of like, was it kind of percolating in your mind for a while after masculine Christianity?

Will Spencer:

What was the genesis of this book pun allowed?

Guest:

Yeah, well, actually I was initially asked to write an essay on, um, basically the reformers on male rule, male headship.

Guest:

And so that got, that got things started, and then that actually, the guys who asked me to do that, that ended up not going anywhere.

Guest:

And so I had this essay sitting around and I was like, what am I going to do with this?

Guest:

It's, it seemed too long, you know, to post on the Internet.

Guest:

So then, you know, it's just kind of over time I started adding to it and I had more books I had acquired and was looking through things.

Guest:

And I think it was always kind of in the back of my mind because the essay was just sitting there and I hadn't done anything with it.

Guest:

So I eventually just kept adding to it and refining it.

Guest:

And then I was like, well, I think this could actually make a whole book be a little bit shorter.

Guest:

But I think I was able to, you know, add enough that it made for a book.

Guest:

And so that's, that.

Guest:

That's what came to be.

Guest:

Honor thy fathers.

Guest:

I mean, it's not, it's not super short, but it's actually maybe the kind of length of book people like to read.

Guest:

You know, where it's 100 to 150 pages, Macedonian Christianity was like 300.

Guest:

I tend to be not necessarily long winded, but it's easy on, like, a subject like this to.

Guest:

To write more.

Guest:

So, yeah, that's why I think this book is somewhat useful.

Guest:

Is it for people where it's a.

Guest:

It is a different angle.

Guest:

It's not the same book as Mexican Christianity.

Guest:

It has some of the same themes, but in some sense, it's maybe a little more accessible.

Guest:

People might actually start with this book and then say, hey, oh, I want to.

Guest:

Actually want to read masculine Christianity and dive a little more into the scripture passages.

Guest:

So, yeah, I.

Will Spencer:

And I know that this came out on new Christendom press, which is, I mean, it's a beautiful book.

Will Spencer:

People listening can't really see it, but you should definitely check it out.

Will Spencer:

Lovely design and cover.

Will Spencer:

And I think one of the things that it captures is this spirit of, hey, these questions that we're struggling with in the church right now, they've been answered.

Will Spencer:

This is not new.

Will Spencer:

It didn't just spring up out of the ground.

Will Spencer:

The reformers dealt with this hundreds of years ago.

Will Spencer:

So maybe you can start, maybe you can offer some examples of some of the reformers that you surveyed, some of the things they had to say about some of these egalitarian and feminist kind of questions.

Will Spencer:

Because when I saw that recovering the anti feminist theology of the reformers as the subtitle, I'm like, let's go.

Will Spencer:

So I appreciated that you dove into that to find some of those things that I think people today needed to hear.

Guest:

Yeah, I mean, the subtitle's a little bit anachronistic, right?

Guest:

I mean, feminism was not a term back then.

Guest:

I mean, they were around before the movement was around.

Guest:

But I mean, the thing is, you've always had kind of elements of feminism in the world.

Guest:

I mean, you've had rebellion against male rule and God's design and marriage and throughout society.

Guest:

And so none of that's new.

Guest:

But I think, you know, part of the reason I titled it the anti feminist theology of the reformers is their theology.

Guest:

They had a theology of men and women and male headship, and they clearly opposed what we would today call feminism.

Guest:

And so their writings are still very applicable to our day.

Guest:

And though we're writing, you know, this side of feminism, and so there's some things we might add, you know, particularly to the historical context.

Guest:

Their writings are still, you know, extremely helpful and.

Guest:

And especially practically.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Because they're.

Guest:

They're getting into the Bible and.

Guest:

And doing theology.

Guest:

So, yeah, I mean, you mentioned examples.

Guest:

I mean, I.

Guest:

You have, like William Goodge, for example, he wrote a book of domestic duties.

Guest:

Goodge was a member of the Westminster assembly that drafted the Westminster confession and catechisms.

Guest:

And his book of domestic duties is like a very practical work on the home.

Guest:

I mean, it's not just on male headship.

Guest:

I mean, it gets in everything, parenting.

Guest:

And so it's got.

Guest:

It's got instructions for husbands, for wives, and other aspects of the home.

Guest:

So it's a very good book.

Guest:

It's very popular.

Guest:

I think it was:

Guest:

I mean, it's a little older.

Guest:

English reformation heritage has republished it as, like, a more modern, modern English.

Guest:

But they did.

Guest:

They did more than just some spelling corrections.

Guest:

So, I mean, I don't love that.

Guest:

But overall, it's good.

Guest:

They don't change the wording too much.

Guest:

But if you want to quote it or something, obviously you can just go look up the original online because it's free.

Guest:

But anyway, so, I mean, good even gets into there, like, you know, when he's dealing with husbands and wives, I mean, he's definitely getting into the details of what headship should look like and the marital relationship.

Guest:

And so, I mean, he's dealing with situations where, like, you know, he mentions women who don't obey their husbands, you know, don't submit and don't follow their lead.

Guest:

And so, I mean, he's got.

Guest:

He's got things to say that are, you know, probably somewhat offensive to some people, but that's at least, like, kind of one example in marriage.

Guest:

And then you would have.

Guest:

I mean, there's other quotes in there.

Guest:

I mean, there's just so people know, listeners know.

Guest:

The first three chapters of my book are male rule in the home, church and then the Commonwealth.

Guest:

So I get into all of those.

Guest:

And then I'm looking at the reformed on those different spheres.

Guest:

And so, I mean, there's not as much on the church in one sense, because they weren't dealing with like, this push for women pastors, um, like, like we have today.

Guest:

But, but they still have, they still have teachings that they applied.

Guest:

mothy two and one corinthians:

Guest:

So, um, yeah, I mean, there's, there's all sorts of stuff in here we can discuss, but maybe that's enough for, for now.

Will Spencer:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

Just to go back to something you said about it, the reformers weren't talking about feminism.

Will Spencer:

That wasn't really part of their world, but they were observing some of the same trends, some of the same behaviors, some of the same sins that have now taken shape in a socio political, in even theological kind of posture.

Will Spencer:

So it wasn't that they would have described themselves as feminists or anti feminist.

Will Spencer:

They didn't know what that was.

Will Spencer:

But they had made the same observations that many people are doing today, and they had spoken into these particular issues in their writings.

Will Spencer:

And so I guess we can go to the past to find what our forefathers honor thy fathers would have said about some of the same things that we're facing today and apply it to our modern challenges.

Will Spencer:

It feels like that's kind of the spirit of the book.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

I mean, the goal of, or like you said, the spirit of the book.

Guest:

It's taking the teachings and principles of the older reformed theologians.

Guest:

Just to be clear, it's the 16th and 17th century reformers is what I focus on, because that would be the actual reformers, like Calvin.

Guest:

I mean, I mentioned Luther a little bit, but it's mostly Calvin, Calvin and Bollinger.

Guest:

And I mean, there's others again, too.

Guest:

There's more probably the post reformation reformers, reformed orthodox, they've come that are a little bit later that, that's like Goog and Vermigli and others like that.

Guest:

So there's.

Guest:

Sorry, Vermigli is actually earlier.

Guest:

He's a reformer so much, that's, that's another guy.

Guest:

He's Dutch.

Will Spencer:

I was wondering how to say.

Will Spencer:

I was gonna, I was gonna say his name, but I don't know how.

Guest:

To say I put in there.

Guest:

I think it even has like a f sound.

Guest:

Technically, it's like Fuchsius.

Guest:

Yeah, fuchsia.

Guest:

So, yeah, it's, that's a hard one.

Guest:

Gazbertus is his first name.

Guest:

So he's a dutch guy, but there's actually not a lot, a lot of his stuff is not translated, so he's somewhat hard to access in English.

Guest:

But, um, yeah, I think it's just, you know, it's part of the advantage of going and reading those older theologians is the fact that they're, they're, they don't have the pressure that we do, you know, today, I mean, where we feel like we have to qualify everything or pastors today are afraid to almost even read certain portions of scripture because they're, they're very, you know, patriarchal or whatever.

Guest:

I mean, male, they teach male headship and so, you know, they just didn't really fear speaking on those things back in the day.

Guest:

I mean, that's not to say we shouldn't be sensitive, you know, to our context and hearers, but I just think it's helpful to go read these older guys and realize, you know, they pretty much all said the same thing with some variation.

Guest:

And if that's the case, then that's a pretty good argument that they were right.

Guest:

I mean, if you're reformed, right, if you, if you'd like them on, if you like the reformed theologians on justification and, you know, everything else theologically, then we should, we should care what they thought about mail headship and the like.

Will Spencer:

Now, were you aware going in of what some of the reformers had said?

Will Spencer:

Or was it kind of like a research project?

Will Spencer:

Like, did you know where to start?

Will Spencer:

Or was it your own kind of journey to go through these men's writings to find out what they had said about these issues?

Guest:

I mean, I had a pretty good idea from things I had seen that they were all going to at least hold what we would consider, like traditional teaching regarding male rule, certainly in the home and church.

Guest:

And I guess I didn't know exactly what they would all say about the Commonwealth.

Guest:

I mean, I had seen some differences between Calvin and Knox that I had even mentioned, I think, in masculine Christianity.

Guest:

So I think probably what happened is I had a good idea.

Guest:

But as I was researching this book, you know, it's kind of refining things and, you know, understanding even the different nuances, especially on the point between Calvin and Knox.

Guest:

And I found other guys who spoke on that question, such as Beza and Bollinger.

Guest:

So, yeah, I mean, and even that, I mean, I'll even say now, I mean, the book is nothing.

Guest:

It's not exhaustive.

Guest:

I mean, there's, there's lots of theologians I don't mention, and you could probably find even more, although I think one of the challenges is trying to find, I mean, there were the reform, the older reformed theologians wrote a lot.

Guest:

So, you know, because they didn't do a lot of books directly on the subject.

Guest:

It wasn't, you know, major controversy at the time.

Guest:

And so sometimes it's hard to find the quotes you have to read through fair amount or skim or know what you're, you know, looking for.

Guest:

And so, so, like I said, there is more you could find out there, I'm sure.

Guest:

But I tried to, I tried to get at least as much as I could in there.

Guest:

I mean, especially, I'm hitting kind of the big names like Calvin and Gooch because he has that of domestical duties, John Knox.

Guest:

I mean, he's, he's got the whole book on the trumpet blast against the monstrous regiment of women.

Guest:

So I had to get that one in there.

Guest:

And then I do get into the reformed confessions a little bit, where I mentioned the Heidelberg catechism on the fifth commandment, but then more so, the Westminster larger catechism, because it has more questions on the fifth commandment.

Guest:

It has, like ten of them, I think.

Guest:

And so some of that's like, even looking at the, the fifth command is honor your father and mother.

Guest:

And so broadly, they understood that to apply to all authority structures.

Guest:

So that would include marriage.

Guest:

Now, it doesn't always spell that out explicitly in, like, the Westminster large catechism, but if you go look at the language that he uses for the fifth commandment, and then you also look at the verses it's citing, so the proof text, and it's clear that they include marriage in there.

Guest:

You know, they'll cite, like, parts of one Peter three, and I know they at least cite that one, but maybe Ephesians five as well.

Guest:

And so you can see that when they're citing these texts and then they're using this language that, I mean, I mean, part of the problem is they're speaking of authority structures.

Guest:

They're speaking of authority structures in general, like, what should the superior authority do and what should the inferior authority do and the duties and sins.

Guest:

And so that's why it's language that would be used both for, like, for superiors, abuse, for husband, but also, like the civil magistrate and parents, even with children.

Guest:

But they did include it in there.

Guest:

And you can even see that in, like, some expositions of the larger catechism, which I mentioned some of them in there.

Guest:

That's just how they, that's how they understood the fifth commandment.

Guest:

And so that's just a way.

Guest:

I think that's maybe an important thing to mention is that's something we don't often think about today.

Guest:

I mean, unfortunately, the church today doesn't even always teach the Ten Commandments, but that was always a big deal back in the day.

Guest:

You would learn the Ten Commandments, the Lord's prayer and even catechisms.

Guest:

That was common as they would exposit these things, they would go through the Ten Commandments and ask questions, how do we understand this?

Guest:

What does this mean, each commandment?

Guest:

And then they would do the same with like the different lines of the Lord's prayer.

Guest:

And so when you do that, they actually had a whole theology under christian ethics.

Guest:

I mean, so that's what this would fall in.

Guest:

There was christian ethics.

Guest:

But you can see how they under, at least that's the context for how they were teaching on marriage in male headship.

Will Spencer:

So they were using the fifth commandment as a way to explain the concept of male headship and authority and submission in the context of the home specifically.

Guest:

Yes.

Guest:

So that's their primary target.

Guest:

There would be the home.

Guest:

Now, when you read the reformers, and I have quotes in the book about this, but they, they saw the home as kind of the foundation for then the other spheres of church and state, or Commonwealth, as they would often call it.

Guest:

So the language, like William Perkins, I know he used it and maybe Googe as well, where they said that they referred to the family as the seminary of the church and the family as the seminary of the Commonwealth.

Guest:

And so the reason is that's like the language of seed is what it's getting at.

Guest:

And so they're seeing the family as like the models, the seed of the church.

Guest:

And so, I mean, you actually see this even in scripture.

Guest:

They're not just making this up.

Guest:

You go to like one Timothy three, and you've got Paul.

Guest:

He's speaking of elders in the church.

Guest:

And one of the requirements is he says that the elder must manage his household.

Guest:

Well, that's, I believe, verse four and five and one Timothy three.

Guest:

And so he says, if a man doesn't know how to manage his household, how will he care for the church?

Guest:

And so you have that very requirement is that the home is a model for the church.

Guest:

And so the church is made up of households, it's made up of different families.

Guest:

The same is true of the commonwealth.

Guest:

And so, I mean, I think this is just the principle is you need to be able to manage your home well.

Guest:

And those who do that well and then are called to leadership rule in the church, or teaching in particular, would be like a pastor or teaching elder.

Guest:

You know, those men would be called to the eldership.

Guest:

They have to be confirmed by the church, of course, so.

Guest:

But you have that very practice there, and I think the same would apply to the civil realm, to the commonwealth.

Guest:

Now, we don't.

Guest:

The Bible doesn't make those demands, but I think that's a reasonable requirement as we look at a civil magistrate.

Guest:

He's going to be managing, caring for the citizens.

Guest:

I mean, how is he going to rule over other families if his.

Guest:

His own family is a mess?

Guest:

I think that's a good, good principle.

Guest:

Unfortunately, in America, we don't seem to care about that anymore.

Guest:

It's kind of gone out the window.

Guest:

Most.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Guest:

You know, most politicians, their families are absolute disasters, so.

Guest:

Which maybe explains things with politics, but.

Will Spencer:

Amen.

Guest:

Yeah, I don't.

Guest:

So just to bring it back, that's the idea, is the family is there in the Westminster larger catechism under the fifth commandment, and they're reasoning their way from the family to these other spheres, and they definitely see a connection there.

Will Spencer:

I think that does probably explain why we're at.

Will Spencer:

Where we're at is that there's been a general devaluing of the family for the past 60 years, generously 100 or more if we want to get really into it.

Will Spencer:

And that process has undermined male rule everywhere else.

Will Spencer:

You can go back, and again, we're talking about in a context of modern feminism.

Will Spencer:

You go back to the:

Will Spencer:

In fact, actually, just as a bit of an aside, in my church signal group with all the guys, we're talking about the bear and stain bears now, okay, I'm old enough to remember when they were the Berenstein bears, but that's a whole other conversation.

Will Spencer:

But about how those children's books, which I read as a little kid, were actually pretty feminist with the bumbling dad and the mom kind of in charge.

Will Spencer:

And of course, I was a little kid, I wasn't paying attention to that.

Will Spencer:

But that shows how far back this idea goes.

Will Spencer:

You can go into all in the family, the subversion of the male rule, dad is a loudmouth bigot, etcetera.

Will Spencer:

So you see these themes that we're all kind of doing in culture, that we're participating in or kind of immersed in to undermine male rule in the home.

Will Spencer:

And that has had cascading effects of undermining male rule in the church and then in the state, perhaps at the same time.

Will Spencer:

And so the reformers would have looked at it and said, the male rule in the home as established in the fifth commandment is the central ground and the pillar of male rule everywhere else in society.

Will Spencer:

Proceeding from the home outwards.

Guest:

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

Guest:

And when, when the home therefore collapses, I mean, this is a problem.

Guest:

It's going to affect everywhere else.

Guest:

And so I think, I mean, look, there is an interconnectedness, right?

Guest:

Obviously, the church helps support families, right.

Guest:

Because they're, they're overseeing them, the elders, they're preaching to families to fulfill their duties.

Guest:

And I would say that the state is also supposed to support families.

Guest:

I think they don't always do a good job in our culture.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

So.

Guest:

But some of that would be like.

Will Spencer:

Divorce law, the opposite.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, right.

Guest:

Like no fault divorce, I mean, actually, I would argue, undermines, well, male headship because the wife could say, well, I don't want to submit to my husband.

Guest:

I'm just going to divorce him.

Guest:

And the state, there's no punishment.

Guest:

There's no, I mean, I pointed this out.

Guest:

In masculine Christianity, you know, divorce is, well, marriage is a involves, it's a Christians, we believe it's a covenant.

Guest:

I know that Roman Catholics call it a sacrament.

Guest:

I don't agree with that.

Guest:

It is a covenant.

Will Spencer:

But don't worry, they're not here.

Will Spencer:

They're not here right now.

Guest:

I mean, there could be some listening.

Guest:

I don't know.

Guest:

But so, yeah, you know, we do believe it's, it's a covenant, but, but legally, it's going to have the, you know, it serves as a contract.

Guest:

But, so basically, the way at least I can just speak on us law is, and the states differ in some regard, but they, they have their default laws, default rules for the contract.

Guest:

And so you get married, you go sign the marriage license and.

Guest:

Yeah, I mean, you can, you can modify it with, you can modify the marriage contract with a prenuptial agreement.

Guest:

I mean, that's, that's allowed.

Guest:

There's sometimes limitations on it, but you can do that.

Guest:

But the problem is, is the default contract is no fault divorce in most states.

Guest:

Now, if all states, I think, have it.

Guest:

Yeah, New York was like the last one, ironically, it was New York.

Guest:

That was the last one.

Guest:

Change it.

Guest:

Which wasn't that long ago, actually, maybe the last 20 years.

Guest:

So, you know, where it used to be required that you would show fault to get a divorce and now you don't have to do that.

Guest:

I mean, some states make you wait a little bit longer.

Guest:

If you don't, if it's not consensual.

Guest:

It's not agreed by both parties.

Guest:

But the point being is, unfortunately, the default rules are now either party can unilaterally, unilaterally file for divorce, and there's no punishment.

Guest:

There's no.

Guest:

Even though they might have breached the contract, they might cheated on their spouse or something, or just they're getting out of the marriage and the other party doesn't want to.

Guest:

I mean, that seems like a breach of contract, but there's no penalties.

Guest:

It's just judges tend to.

Guest:

I mean, there's been some problems here, but judges tend to at least the trend now is they just.

Guest:

They don't want to hear anything.

Guest:

They just split things 50 50, children, you know, parenting time, and then also finances and the like.

Guest:

So that's kind of where we've trained.

Guest:

We're training in the United States.

Guest:

But the problem is that doesn't support strong families.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

We don't have laws in place to actually keep families together.

Guest:

We don't have.

Guest:

I mean, we have more and more laws that don't protect children.

Guest:

I mean, so.

Guest:

Oh, that's bad.

Guest:

I mean, some of the, you know, transgender laws.

Guest:

So there's all sorts of things there.

Guest:

And all that is to say, those three spheres of family, church, state, they are all interconnected, and the church and the state are supposed to be supporting the family and supporting.

Guest:

Just having strong families.

Guest:

And unfortunately, I think we could argue.

Guest:

I mean, I've just argued that the state doesn't do a very good job of supporting families, but I think we could also point out a lot of ways that the church is also not supporting strong families.

Guest:

Sometimes they.

Guest:

I mean, I've seen examples where pastors, sessions, church leadership is allowing one of the parties to divorce, and then they don't.

Guest:

They don't penalize them.

Guest:

They don't.

Guest:

They don't discipline them or bar them from the supper or excommunicate them eventually is what they should do if they don't repent.

Guest:

And instead they'll just allow divorce.

Guest:

I mean, I've seen.

Guest:

I've seen this, and you probably heard of situations like this.

Guest:

Well, and so, I mean, this is a problem is, you know, when the state's not doing its job, that's bad enough.

Guest:

But the church needs to stand on the scriptures, and they shouldn't just be allowing a party to divorce a Christian to divorce their spouse or a fellow christian spouse is often the case when there's no biblical grounds.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

There should be.

Guest:

It should be justified in the traditional protestant position.

Guest:

I realize some people disagree with this, but the traditional protestant position, which is found in the Westminster standards, is it has to be adultery or abandonment.

Guest:

And so anyway, all that is to say, I mean, and this is just in the divorce issue, there's also other things.

Guest:

The church isn't always preaching male headship.

Guest:

It's not always preaching.

Guest:

Pastors aren't always preaching for wives to submit to their husbands.

Guest:

And so they're almost like, you know, they may.

Guest:

They may give lip service to male headship, but then they're essentially encouraging egalitarian practice, which is contrary to God's design.

Guest:

And then, of course, so what you end up with is that causes problems.

Guest:

And so in that way, the church, and often many churches, unfortunately today, are just straight up egalitarian and teaching egalitarianism.

Guest:

So all of that undermines the family.

Guest:

And so the family is kind of left often on it on its own.

Guest:

I mean, there's some good churches doing a good job here, but the family's often left like, it's just up to husband and wife, and hopefully they do a good job.

Guest:

And if they don't, things fall apart, and then the church might not, might or might not help them, and the state probably isn't going to help them at all.

Guest:

So all that is to say is that this three spheres should be working together.

Guest:

The family is foundational, but we basically have the disintegration of the family.

Guest:

I mean, there's lots of people that talk about this, right?

Guest:

That the family's kind of falling apart.

Guest:

The american family, at least we can say, is rather weak, but then that ends up affecting church and state.

Guest:

So it's kind of this, you know, it's reciprocal in the sense that, okay, the state and the church harm the family.

Guest:

The family breaks down, but then that ends up leading to a weaker church and a weaker state, because those people go into politics or church leadership, or there's a lack of church leadership.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

You know, suitable candidates.

Guest:

So anyway, that was kind of a long answer, but all of that kind of goes hand in hand.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, the pieces all fit together.

Will Spencer:

That answer is great.

Will Spencer:

I mean, I think a lot of people listening can see these things reflected in their own lives.

Will Spencer:

You can see that the male rule in the home, the value of the family and marriage itself, and even human life and abortion has been undermined.

Will Spencer:

And what we have now, which many men that I know have been experiencing, is they have the divorce industry, the meat grinder that just grinds men down, that enables women to claim, without justification, things like abuse and to deprive dads of their children.

Will Spencer:

That's a whole big thing.

Will Spencer:

I know that David Edgington talks about the abusive wife he's having a lot of men flocking to him who have been sharing their stories of the ways that they've been actually impacted by the way that the family court system has been weaponized against men.

Will Spencer:

And I think the frustrating thing is all of those things can be true, and they're terrible for what they are, but that the church seems to turn a blind eye to all of it.

Will Spencer:

You know, I know a man, he was married for 20 years, had, I think, three sons, four sons with his wife.

Will Spencer:

They were married, and she decided that she was just going to peace out of the faith.

Will Spencer:

She's done with this whole Christianity thing, you know, dropped a.

Will Spencer:

Dropped a surprise divorce on her husband, you know, and instantly, she gets half, you know, and actually ends up being closer to 60%.

Will Spencer:

And his church didn't do anything about it, and she just decides she's going to go to another church that's just going to be like, oh, yeah, that's cool.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, sure.

Will Spencer:

You just destroyed your family for no reason at all because you decided you didn't want to submit to your husband anymore and how common this is and how the church is supposed to be the backstop for this.

Will Spencer:

It's supposed to be far more than that.

Will Spencer:

But I think men have a right to expect that a patriarchal religion, very obviously, if you read scripture like, Christianity, would speak up for them.

Will Spencer:

I mean, obviously, hold them accountable for sin.

Will Spencer:

Don't give them carte blanche to sin themselves.

Will Spencer:

That's not what I mean.

Will Spencer:

But to say that, like, hey, this is what the book says, and you're a minister of the word.

Will Spencer:

What's going on?

Will Spencer:

And they just kind of, like, shrug their shoulders and like, well, you know, and it's frustrating for men who feel like their own churches should be standing up for them and simply aren't.

Guest:

Yeah, well, I'm frustrated by it, and I'm a minister myself, but, I mean, there are exceptions out there.

Guest:

Obviously.

Guest:

There are good pastors.

Guest:

There are good churches.

Guest:

But, yeah, I think this is a huge problem.

Guest:

And, I mean, some of this is unavoidable in the sense of we have different denominations, we have a lot of independent churches, and people could.

Guest:

People can either be deceitful, like, they can just.

Guest:

They could get excommunicated at their church.

Guest:

They can go to another church and just not mention it.

Guest:

I mean, that's possible.

Guest:

Or more likely, though.

Guest:

And the unfortunate thing is that more likely that that church just doesn't care.

Guest:

You know, they just, they don't care that another church excommunicated them.

Guest:

They don't even know, like excommunication.

Guest:

Well, we never do that.

Will Spencer:

Oh my goodness.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

So, I mean, this happens, unfortunately, is there's, so if we were to identify the problem, it's, there's a lack of discipline in the church.

Guest:

And I mean, this, I mean, discipline starts with the preaching of the word.

Guest:

So you have to have faithful preaching because the idea is, right, you're calling people to repentance on a regular basis to obedience to God.

Guest:

And so that should be, that's kind of your like first line of defense.

Guest:

But when people don't do that and then they commit flagrant sins, right.

Guest:

It's the public stuff or scandalous sinse.

Guest:

And then they need to be censured, they need to be rebuked, you know, by, I mean, we have this in like Matthew 18, right?

Guest:

You go, if somebody sins against you, your brother, you go talk to him and rebuke him.

Guest:

If he doesn't listen, you go to two or, you know, bring two or three, and then if he doesn't listen, that you go, you take it to the church.

Guest:

And so the church would be going to the session.

Guest:

You go to your church leadership.

Guest:

I mean, Presbyterians, we call it sessions the elders.

Guest:

But whatever your church leadership is, and they should, they should be taking up discipline against the person.

Guest:

I mean, they could start with just talking to the person about it, but when the person refuses, then they can go through their courts.

Guest:

We have church courts.

Guest:

Maybe people don't always realize this, but at least, like the Presbyterians is how we do things.

Guest:

We have ecclesiastical courts, and so we can do censures, we can charge the person with an offense.

Guest:

And so let's say, you know, it could be like abandonment, right?

Guest:

They're divorcing their spouse.

Guest:

We would say, well, that's, you're abandoning your spouse.

Guest:

You don't have warrant to do that, assuming there's no warrant.

Guest:

And so, you know, the church should be bringing discipline, and that would start with rebuke, and then it would move to suspension from the sacraments.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

You know, you don't go to excommunication right away.

Guest:

You're trying to be patient with people to repent of.

Guest:

Yeah, but eventually, if they're refusing to repent, contumacious is the word that's sometimes used, contumacy.

Guest:

They refuse to repent.

Guest:

They're hardened in their sin.

Guest:

Then you excommunicate them.

Guest:

And that's just right.

Guest:

We see that in the Bible.

Guest:

I mean, this principle is there like one corinthians five, at least amongst other places, you deliver them to Satan.

Guest:

I mean, the hope is they repent.

Guest:

But that's actually part of the discipline process is you have to cast them out of the church and say your sin is unacceptable, it's unbecoming of a Christian.

Guest:

You can't do it and remain a part of the church.

Guest:

And so we visibly, as part of the visible church, you are no longer communicating with us.

Guest:

Communicating, you're excommunicated.

Guest:

So all that is to say there should be a discipline in the church.

Guest:

And especially for things like unjustified divorce, that would be called abandonment.

Guest:

I mean, and this, this isn't limited to women, right?

Guest:

It would apply to men or women doing the same, a man or woman doing the same thing or, you know, committing adultery or whatever sin it is, whatever flagrant sin there is taking place, there should be discipline against it.

Guest:

It just seems, though, that there's, I mean, I've seen this in some cases, I mean, it's a small sample size, so I can't, I can't extrapolate it everywhere.

Guest:

But I, from talking to other people, it does seem to be that this is primarily a problem with women because I do think it's more common if a man was to, a christian man is to just leaves his wife.

Guest:

The church is going to, you know, more likely than not to lay down the hammer.

Guest:

But when a woman does it, they can, they can, I don't know, they sometimes justify it or they have some basis as well.

Guest:

You know, she said that her husband was abusive.

Guest:

Okay, well, was this physical abuse?

Guest:

Did she call the police?

Guest:

I mean, when those things aren't, aren't the case, which, you know, that's usually not the case when this is going on.

Guest:

I mean, if the police are involved, that's a different story.

Guest:

But when we're just saying like spiritual abuse or this loose definition, and then they kind of let it go.

Guest:

Right?

Guest:

That's, that seems to be the case, is there's this practice where the churches are just, they're like overlooking things because, well, the wife, you know, gives some basis for why she's doing what she's doing.

Guest:

And a lot of times it's like emotionally manipulative, really.

Guest:

I mean, that the pastors and elders are being manipulated by women.

Guest:

So this is really, I mean, messed up, right?

Guest:

I mean, it shouldn't be working this way.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

The pastors and elders should be objective.

Guest:

Neutral arbiters in these, in these things.

Guest:

And so it should be fair, you know, whether it's the husband or wife that's abandoning the spouse, they should, they should be put under discipline.

Guest:

So this seems to be, from what I understand, talking to others as well, seems to be there's this particular problem with women doing this.

Guest:

Christian women, some of them maybe leave the faith, but sometimes they just are just going to a different church or whatever, or they stay at the same church.

Guest:

I mean, kind of crazy.

Guest:

And the pastors don't do anything.

Guest:

Elders don't do anything.

Guest:

But so that raises the question, though, you know, what are we to make of churches that aren't disciplining people for flagrant sins like obvious sins?

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Well, I mean, you look at the reformers and that the reform, the reformed tradition, the protestant tradition, you know, they ask, well, what are the marks of a church?

Guest:

Well, the marks are, you know, the faithful preaching of the word and the right administration of the sacraments.

Guest:

And then sometimes you hear the third one, which is the proper administration, discipline.

Guest:

But really, the thing is, you know, if you, you don't even necessarily need to name that one because that falls under the sacrament.

Guest:

Right?

Guest:

If we just say baptism and, sorry, the preaching of the word.

Guest:

The right preaching of the word.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Administration of sacraments.

Guest:

If you're rightly administering the sacraments, then if someone's in open flagrant sin, then you should not be administering the sacraments to them.

Guest:

You should be suspending them and then eventually excommunicating them from the sacraments.

Guest:

And that's the very language of excommunication.

Guest:

Right?

Guest:

Communion of the Lord's supper.

Guest:

So here's the really concerning part, is if a church is not properly or rightly administering the sacraments, then they are actually, they're not meeting one of the two marks of the church, which would mean that they're actually a false church.

Guest:

And so that's, I mean, this is a serious problem.

Guest:

And you see this in like, scripture uses the language of like, synagogues, of satan.

Guest:

You know, you have, you have actual, like false churches.

Guest:

We know there's false churches.

Guest:

I mean, the protestant consensus has been that Rome is a false church because they distort the gospel and their idolatry with the mass.

Guest:

It's because they don't rightly administer the sacrament.

Guest:

So if we're going to say that about Rome is, well, they get the sacraments so wrong that they're actually in the gospel, they're a false church.

Guest:

I mean, what does that say about kind of modern evangelicalism.

Guest:

I think you have a lot of false churches within the, within evangelicalism today.

Guest:

I mean, I'm not gonna, I can't know on an individual basis, but I'm just saying like, I think that's pretty obvious.

Guest:

If we have churches that are either distorting the gospel or it doesn't have to be that they could be preaching justification by faith or something, but then they turn around and they're not doing any church discipline for flagrant sins.

Guest:

Then according to the traditional reform position, I think we say traditional protestant position, they're actually a false church.

Will Spencer:

That's right.

Will Spencer:

That's right.

Will Spencer:

I want to flip to the back of the book.

Will Spencer:

You probably would remember the quote faster than I would be able to find it.

Will Spencer:

But you make the point that what good is it to have reformed all these different aspects of the church if we're not reforming our impact on culture?

Will Spencer:

And that seems to be the most striking aspect of the book, is like, okay, reformed our soteriology and all of, and that's, and then praise God.

Will Spencer:

And you know, there is a particular blind spot that we have in our culture today.

Will Spencer:

And when I've had these conversations with many women, they will say very rightly that there have been situations of church abuse which I think we could probably rightly and truly call abuse.

Will Spencer:

But I think the response that the church has had a, is rather than saying, okay, we're not going to do that anymore and we're going to hold a bolt.

Will Spencer:

We're going to hold both to a standard.

Will Spencer:

They've just kind of said, you know what we're going to do instead?

Will Spencer:

We're going to hold both men and women to a low standard or a no standard to make up for past excesses.

Will Spencer:

And that seems to be, seems to have created a particular blind spot where, okay, long before I was born, there was probably abuses happening in church that probably still are today.

Will Spencer:

But the existence of those abuses or those excesses does not itself justify overlooking excesses on the other side.

Will Spencer:

And that, I think, is the unique aspect of our moment is that, okay, we have to make up for those other abuses by being blind to a completely different category of abuse.

Will Spencer:

And somehow these scales will even out.

Will Spencer:

And I just don't, I mean, I don't think that that washes, but that seems to be the posture that many churches have like, well, the christian church screwed up in all these other ways in the past.

Will Spencer:

So now we're just going to let everyone have kind of a free for all, but it's actually serving to make things worse?

Guest:

Yeah, I mean, that makes no sense on really any level.

Guest:

Because.

Guest:

Because, I mean, if you're practicing injustice now, then on what basis could you even say prior generations were practicing injustice or abuse?

Guest:

You know, practicing abuse?

Guest:

So it's a.

Guest:

That's just kind of crazy, is.

Guest:

I mean, I would challenge the idea that there was widespread abuse in marriage and the like, prior to the feminist movement or something.

Guest:

I wouldn't agree with that.

Guest:

But, like, even if we were to grant that, well, then the solution would be we should just seek to follow God's word properly now, and I.

Guest:

And follow just practices.

Guest:

So, yeah, this idea of justifying injustice because of past abuses is.

Guest:

Well, it's actually just unjust.

Guest:

So there's really no other way.

Guest:

Other way to put it.

Will Spencer:

So, yeah, it's just unjust in the opposite.

Will Spencer:

It's unjust in the opposite direction.

Will Spencer:

And that seems to be the whole thrust of wokeness.

Will Spencer:

Just in general, this straw man is built of excesses and abuses in the past.

Will Spencer:

And so in order to right those excesses, we allow them in the opposite direction.

Will Spencer:

And that's not justice at all.

Will Spencer:

But that seems to soothe, not in any good way, a particular longing, perhaps, for revenge.

Will Spencer:

And I think that's the spirit that underlies a lot of this.

Will Spencer:

And I can understand, not to excuse it, but I can understand how people in the secular world would think that way.

Will Spencer:

I can understand the victor victim kind of cycle, which might be one of the only things ever to come out of psychology that's any good, is to understand the ways that victors become the victims.

Will Spencer:

And that cycle goes around and around.

Will Spencer:

But within the christian church, that that seems to have been swallowed and digested from self professing christians is something that's quite odd.

Will Spencer:

This idea that we have to welcome in the marginalized and give them power to then exert their own agenda, and somehow that writes the scales of history.

Will Spencer:

I think that's anti biblical.

Will Spencer:

There's an objective standard that we're all accountable to, but it's something that has flowed in probably through the very same feminist doors that you articulate, opened and opened in this book, and probably through theological liberalism as well.

Guest:

Yeah, I mean, even when you look at, like, feminism, they're not advocating actual equality.

Guest:

I mean, I would reject what they're wanting anyway, which would be functional equality.

Guest:

And, I mean, scripture doesn't teach that actually teaches that the husband has authority.

Guest:

I mean, while it affirms equality and being right and worse between men and women.

Guest:

So.

Guest:

But, yeah, I mean, you see that now is.

Guest:

It's.

Guest:

I mean, feminism wants essentially female dominance.

Guest:

I think that's often the case.

Will Spencer:

So, yeah, yeah.

Will Spencer:

Just real quick, I want to get back into the book.

Will Spencer:

A couple more questions.

Will Spencer:

But one of the things I wanted to mention is there was a thread going around on Twitter about female toxic femininity, and could someone please provide examples of toxic femininity?

Will Spencer:

And so I replied to that, and somewhere down the thread, I was able to say, well, when we look at the examples of male heroes, the component of male heroism is never like, haha, I won over the women.

Will Spencer:

But when you look at female heroes and media today, one of their components is always like, I put down those silly men.

Will Spencer:

And so you can see in that there is an element of this isn't just about equality, it's actually about supremacy.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

I see that same thing.

Will Spencer:

It's hard to miss, and it's becoming, I don't know that it's actually popular, but it's trendy, let's say.

Will Spencer:

So to get back into the book, one of the things that you did, I kind of see the book as being divided into three sections.

Will Spencer:

In a way.

Will Spencer:

You have the reformers within the home, and then you kind of bring it into the commonwealth, as you said.

Will Spencer:

But then you also talk a little bit about where things are in the evangelical church and some of the particular leaders, in particular Tim Keller and his wife, who have maybe they played a central role in letting some of these ideas in.

Will Spencer:

And I found that to be the most shocking part of the book.

Will Spencer:

But before we get there, I want to talk a little bit about female rule in the commonwealth, because you mentioned the difference between Calvin and Knox, which I thought was really interesting.

Will Spencer:

Maybe we can talk a little bit about that for the moment, because we've talked about in the home.

Will Spencer:

And so now let's bring it into the commonwealth, and then we'll take a look at what's going on in the church.

Guest:

Yeah, so, I mean, Knox has his.

Guest:

I mentioned this earlier, the first trumpet blast against the monstrous regiment of women.

Guest:

And he writes this.

Guest:

He actually writes it anonymously at first.

Guest:

And this is against Bloody Mary because she's queen and she's Roman Catholic, but she's persecuting Protestants.

Guest:

She's killing Protestants.

Guest:

And so, I mean, hence the name she earned, bloody Maryland.

Guest:

But when Knox writes his short treatise, he doesn't just attack her.

Guest:

And he doesn't just say, well, women generally shouldn't rule.

Guest:

He actually says that female rule is illegitimate.

Guest:

He attacks it entirely.

Guest:

He's attacking just the idea of women rulers at all.

Guest:

Now, this becomes a problem because Mary dies, and then Elizabeth comes to power, and she's a Protestant.

Guest:

So, I mean, I think Mary was only alive for, like, four years.

Guest:

I think that's right.

Guest:

Queen for four years.

Guest:

So that's kind of the context of what happened there.

Guest:

And Elizabeth is not happy with John Knox.

Guest:

I mean, Knox is scottish, but that was under the monarchy at the time.

Guest:

So Calvin was not happy about Knox's treatise, the first blast, because he actually writes, and I have it in there, basically, Knox had asked him once, like, in private about this issue, and Calvin didn't see what Knox wrote immediately.

Guest:

But once he finds out about it, he was not happy.

Guest:

And partly because it's not that he did disagree with Knox in part, and I'll explain that.

Guest:

But the bigger issue, I think, was Knox caused trouble for basically the reformers because I think it was published in Geneva.

Guest:

And so Queen Elizabeth was upset.

Guest:

I.

Guest:

She was upset with Calvin and Beza, and they, of course, aren't pleased with this situation.

Guest:

So though they weren't, they weren't in England, but just relations with England.

Guest:

So all that is to say Calvin, and you see this in letters between him and also Bollinger and Beza, those guys all said that female rule should not be ordinary.

Guest:

So they weren't, you know, happy about having queens.

Guest:

They didn't think it was this great thing.

Guest:

They just didn't think it was illegitimate.

Guest:

So they didn't go as far as Knox.

Guest:

But, you know, you can see this in, like, Calvin's.

Guest:

I mean, you could just.

Guest:

I have it in there, but you can go read, like, his commentary on one Timothy two.

Guest:

And he actually applies that, you know, prohibition on women teaching in the church.

Guest:

He applies that to Commonwealth.

Guest:

And he just says, like, you know, the female power rule has always been considered a monstrous thing.

Guest:

So, I mean, he's got even pretty strong language against this as well.

Guest:

So that's why I say, like, his view isn't that different from Calvin.

Guest:

It's not like he thought women rulers were good.

Guest:

I mean, all of these guys, if they were looking at our society today, would say, yeah, something's really out of whack.

Guest:

I mean, you know, you're pushing 50% or even, like, higher.

Guest:

You know, majorities of your leaders are women.

Guest:

That's.

Guest:

That's not just some, like, Deborah situation where there's, like, you know, where she was a judge.

Guest:

I mean, I qualify that some.

Guest:

I get in that some of the differences there in masculine Christianity with her.

Guest:

But, yes, but, you know, we can at least grant.

Guest:

Okay, there's occasional female rulers.

Guest:

You know, that's.

Guest:

That's.

Guest:

It happens sometimes.

Guest:

They do a decent job, but that's not the issue.

Guest:

The question is, what's God's design for leadership?

Guest:

Should women be leading?

Guest:

And I think the traditional reform position, consensus, the minimum, at least, is that, well, it shouldn't be ordinary.

Guest:

Just as men are the leaders in the home and definitely are leaders in the church, in the civil realm, they should ordinarily.

Guest:

Should ordinarily be men.

Guest:

But.

Guest:

But sometimes things did happen right, where, you know, you would have a queen.

Guest:

I mean, they weren't.

Guest:

We have to remember, like, they weren't.

Guest:

They weren't elected.

Guest:

It's because there was, you know, the queen's married to the king, or there's no.

Guest:

There's no male heir.

Guest:

I mean, sometimes that was part of the problem.

Guest:

So.

Guest:

So anyway, so a little different situation.

Guest:

It wasn't, you know, a democracy or something where they're electing female.

Guest:

Female leaders.

Will Spencer:

So was John Knox's book, was that inspired by Mary's brutality, or was it a posture that he had already held?

Will Spencer:

Was it, like, I have to write this now, and to assert that female leaders are unjust because she's persecuting Protestants?

Will Spencer:

Or was this just something that he already believed that the circumstances gave him the opportunity to write?

Guest:

I don't know how much he knew or thought about women leaders before he wrote that, but I think it's fair to say he probably thought what he thought before he wrote it, but he decided, well, Mary, she's awful, and I need to blast her.

Guest:

And so that's what he did.

Guest:

And I think it's just, that's where his theology came out.

Will Spencer:

Okay.

Will Spencer:

So it gave him sort of an urgency in his occasion to express this, and so that's to be distinguished from men like Calvin and like Luther that thought that there were extraordinary circumstances where women could lead in the commonwealth, but it certainly wasn't ordinary.

Will Spencer:

It wasn't to be sought, it wasn't to be celebrated.

Will Spencer:

It was perhaps remedial versus.

Will Spencer:

John Knox was like, no, never, under any circumstances.

Guest:

Yeah, he said, it's illegitimate.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

So he went.

Guest:

He went a step further.

Guest:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

But, I mean, I guess that makes a little sense.

Will Spencer:

That makes sense given the circumstances.

Will Spencer:

So, as you were investigating the reformers, I meant to ask you this a little bit earlier.

Will Spencer:

Did you find anything that these men said about these ideas that surprised you?

Will Spencer:

They were like, oh, like a particular clarity that was relevant to today or anything that was like, oh, I wouldn't have expected they thought this way about it.

Guest:

Yeah, that's a good question.

Guest:

I, I mean, I guess at least maybe just how well they address the issues.

Guest:

I think, I think they really have good counsel.

Guest:

I mean, just even the words, I mean, I don't know.

Guest:

You know, look, the older writers are always going to get accused by modern standards of being sexist, but you go, you go read, you go read them.

Guest:

And, you know, they obviously thought highly of women.

Guest:

They weren't trying to keep women down.

Guest:

I mean, so none that surprises me.

Guest:

But to see it drawn out, you know, it's pretty standard to, like, speak of a husband's wife as his counselor, advisor and those kind of things.

Guest:

So, you know, I don't really know how you would, the, the feminists would fit that with their paradigm because they weren't saying like, oh, yeah, we don't care what women think.

Guest:

You shouldn't even ask them their opinions.

Guest:

No, that's not how they approach things.

Guest:

They just thought, well, the husband's the head of his household and so he had ultimate responsibility and duties.

Guest:

But, yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they affirm, like, equality between men and women in a sense.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

I mean, which we would all do is, I mean, they even use this language of, and there was that Matthew Henry quotes it, but it was from some earlier theologians where they say Eve was not taken from Adam's head or feet, but from his heart.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

So he doesn't trample her, but, but she, you know, there's a nearness in equality with her.

Guest:

So, you know, they say things like that.

Guest:

It's pretty standard.

Guest:

So, I mean, yeah, I think feminists, you know, would probably be tripped up by some of this stuff if they actually read it.

Will Spencer:

Can't be bothered.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, I thought the consistency, I think the number, the number of times that you, that, that different reformers quoted that same sentiment, that she wasn't taken from Adam's head to rule over him or from his feet to be trampled under him, but from his side to be next to him.

Will Spencer:

There were at least three or four different reformers who said the same thing.

Will Spencer:

Maybe they all got it from one of their predecessors.

Will Spencer:

But I thought that was a very beautiful and moving sentiment that speaks exactly to the, like, look, headship is a thing, but headship and submission doesn't mean subjugation.

Will Spencer:

And that's, of course, the feminists jump right into the, this is all about subjugation.

Will Spencer:

Ditch and overlook the notion that this is supposed to be a loving bond of equality in one sense, but leadership in another sense.

Will Spencer:

And how much Holmes need that?

Will Spencer:

Because I don't think that they could make the case that our leaderless homes today are doing better than they ever have at any point in history.

Will Spencer:

The joke that I've been making is that real feminism has never been tried, of course.

Will Spencer:

But maybe if they investigated the reformers, as you did, they would see, particularly in the church, that this is a far more loving bond than perhaps they want to interpret it as.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

I mean, we've got that quote about you being taken from the rib, but also just the duties.

Guest:

Well, scriptural duties from the Lord.

Guest:

But they preach these to men and women.

Guest:

And so, I mean, they.

Guest:

Have.

Guest:

You read Goodge, for example, William Goodge.

Guest:

I mean, he's got hard words for wives, but he also has hard words for husbands and being gentle with their wives.

Guest:

And it's one, Peter, three.

Guest:

So, yeah, I mean, it's just.

Guest:

It's all balanced.

Guest:

They're just wise, and it's good, good application from scripture.

Guest:

And I think, really, anybody would benefit from, you know, reading the quotations I provide in the book.

Guest:

But then you can also use that to jump off and go read, you know, the original sources.

Guest:

If you'd like to read more.

Guest:

I mean, like I said, you could googe.

Guest:

And, yeah, I think, you know, just when we contrast.

Guest:

When we contrast, like, older culture, christian culture, compared to, like, what we have today, I mean, okay, everybody, every culture has always had problems.

Guest:

There's always been divorce and adultery and all these, you know, sins.

Guest:

But, you know, who had a.

Guest:

Who had healthier marriages?

Guest:

I mean, we have some very healthy marriages today.

Guest:

But, like, overall, I mean, you look at our divorce rates and all these things.

Guest:

I mean, I don't know when you have a nation where, like, 40% of the children are born outside of marriage.

Guest:

I mean, and then the divorce rates.

Guest:

I don't even know what the divorce rate is.

Guest:

It's just high.

Guest:

I know that.

Guest:

I don't know.

Guest:

I don't know how you say that.

Guest:

Well, we've got a better grasp on marriage today.

Guest:

No, no, we don't.

Will Spencer:

I'm sorry.

Guest:

Just don't.

Will Spencer:

You mentioned Guj, and so I marked this page.

Will Spencer:

It's sort of an extended quote, if I may.

Will Spencer:

Read it real quick.

Will Spencer:

Good recognizes on page, I think it says, this is 25.

Will Spencer:

Goodge recognized that some wives must have their own will and must command not only children and her servants, but husbands also, he added, quote, if a husband be a man of courageous and seek to stand upon his right and maintain his authority by requiring obedience of his wife.

Will Spencer:

Strange it is to behold what a hurly burly she will make in the house.

Will Spencer:

But if he be a milksop and basely yield unto his wife and suffer her to rule, then it may be those there shall be some outward quiet.

Will Spencer:

The ground of hereof is an ambitious and proud humor in women who must needs rule, or else they think themselves slaves.

Will Spencer:

And I thought that was a pretty powerful picture in a way.

Will Spencer:

In some sense, the things that the reformers are dealing with.

Will Spencer:

Sin is not new.

Zach Garris:

It's not a new invention.

Will Spencer:

And to look into the past and to see, I mentioned earlier, David Edgington and the abusive wife.

Will Spencer:

So many men in his book and his practice, they try to lead righteously, and the response is to have a big hurly burly made about it, as if it's slavery.

Will Spencer:

It's like, well, no, that's not the case at all, as we've been saying.

Guest:

Yeah, I'll continue to quote for you because it gets even more controversial.

Will Spencer:

Please.

Guest:

He says, but in doing so, the women who react this way, he says, assuredly herein, they thwart God's ordinance, pervert the order of nature, deface the image of Christ, overthrow the ground of all duty, hinder the good of the family, become an ill pattern to children and servants, lay themselves open to Satan and incur many other mischiefs which cannot but follow upon the violating of this main duty of obedience, which, if it be not performed, how can other duties be expected?

Guest:

So that's kind of where I was saying, you know, Gooch has some.

Guest:

Some strong words for people, but in this case, he's.

Guest:

That's the feminist spirit.

Guest:

He's.

Guest:

He's saying, you know, this is.

Guest:

This is just what God calls you to do.

Guest:

And if you don't obey God in this matter, if wives won't submit to their husbands, on what basis are they going to do, you know, other.

Guest:

Fulfill other duties and.

Guest:

And practice other christian virtues?

Guest:

So, I mean, that's why this stuff matters, right?

Guest:

I mean, the Bible's pretty clear on male headship, wifely submission, and it's just as clear as that you should, you know, practice patience and be loving and these kind of things.

Guest:

So, I mean, if I don't know how we can just divide things and throw.

Guest:

I mean, obviously, I'm familiar with egalitarian arguments.

Guest:

I tried to dismantle them in masculine Christianity, but, you know, I just.

Guest:

If you're gonna throw one out, you're probably throwing other things out.

Will Spencer:

So that's a great opportunity to segue into the third, I was gonna say the third half of the book, but really the third section of the book, which is about the Kellers and Nancy Pearcey's toxic war on masculinity.

Will Spencer:

So maybe we can talk a little bit about that, because you had mentioned jokingly, I don't know how they make.

Will Spencer:

How they square these two things.

Will Spencer:

It's like, well, here are some pretty significant leaders who identify themselves with the reformed tradition, who have been doing just that.

Will Spencer:

Like the section about the Kellers, I was like, I couldn't read.

Will Spencer:

My hand was over my face.

Will Spencer:

Like, what am I watching right now with some of the things that were being written there?

Will Spencer:

So let's talk about that, because that was, of course, we're having this conversation a couple days after Ray Ortland had tweeted about his support for Kamala Harris and never Trump.

Will Spencer:

And, of course, we all have misinterpreted that.

Will Spencer:

Obviously.

Will Spencer:

Obviously, we had misinterpreted a six word tweet, but it's up right now.

Will Spencer:

So maybe we can talk a bit about that last section.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

I mean, we can maybe just preface this by saying that, you know, many of the leaders in the church have done a poor job in, well, a variety of areas, but feminism being one of them, or male.

Guest:

Male headship, I think I spend, like, 15 pages on the Kellers, you know, which is unfortunate.

Guest:

I mean, Tim Keller was, you know, he passed away last year.

Guest:

I mean, he's been very influential in the PCA, my denomination.

Guest:

I'm some same denomination he was.

Guest:

And just even outside of, really, even the reformed world.

Guest:

And Tim Keller's gotten a lot of criticism for a number of things, but I haven't seen a lot of criticism on this issue.

Guest:

In fact, I've seen some people praise his wife's booklet, which I get into in there, which is Jesus justice and gender roles.

Guest:

It's very short, published by Sondervin, so that maybe will tell you where it's coming from, which, you know, Sonderin's not very conservative, not anymore.

Guest:

So, yeah, I mean, you can ask me specific things in here, but I think, yeah, the Kellers were very narrow.

Guest:

They held to a very narrow complementarianism.

Guest:

In fact, I wouldn't even.

Guest:

I mean, I don't love the term complementarianism for various reasons, one of which is that, you know, that that would put their view in the same camp broadly as, I mean, maybe mine, if you wanted to call me a complementarian.

Guest:

I mean, I like.

Guest:

I said, I generally don't like that term.

Guest:

But you've had that distinction between, like, broader and narrow complementarianism.

Guest:

But yeah, I mean, they're almost at, like, egalitarianism.

Guest:

But yeah.

Guest:

Go ahead.

Will Spencer:

Well, so for the listeners who don't know the difference between broad and narrow complementarianism, maybe to even contrast it with egalitarianism and patriarchy help because those two terms in particular, like, what do they mean in the context of this discussion?

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Well, let's start with, like, the traditional reform view, which is what I'm advocating.

Guest:

The book, which some people would call patriarchy, just male rule.

Guest:

It's God designed mental rule.

Guest:

And so that would be in the home, church and Commonwealth.

Guest:

That would fit some complementarians who would say they are broad complementarians.

Guest:

But maybe what will help explain that is the narrow complementarians, where they.

Guest:

I don't know if they use this term for themselves, but it got used for them, which is that, I mean, to be a complementarian, you had to affirm.

Guest:

This was in the:

Guest:

It was really a reaction against egalitarianism or christian feminism, which was denying male headship, you know, at all.

Guest:

In the home or church, they wanted women pastors and mutual, mutual submission, they call it in the home.

Guest:

It's kind of crazy.

Guest:

So complementarianism came in and said, no, no, no, we affirm male leadership in the home.

Guest:

We affirm, you know, only.

Guest:

Only men can be pastors and elders in the church.

Guest:

And that's good.

Guest:

Those are good things to affirm.

Guest:

But the problem is how that got played out, how these things were applied and then kind of some compromise in between.

Guest:

So, for example, some people calling themselves complementarians, they wouldn't let women hold the office of pastor elder, but they would let women.

Guest:

I mean, you have this actually a lot.

Guest:

There's a lot of guys who do.

Guest:

They still let women teach Sunday school.

Guest:

You know, they can.

Guest:

Well, they can teach men in other settings.

Guest:

Okay.

Guest:

But.

Guest:

But, you know, some of them, the worst offenders would say, well, women can actually preach as long as it's under the authority of the session.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Because they can't be the pastor, but they can preach.

Guest:

I mean, no, I don't think that makes any sense, but.

Guest:

And I have various reasons for it with some of which I get into the book.

Guest:

But, you know, I'll just mention one here is like, first Timothy two says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over man.

Guest:

So the prohibition is on teaching.

Guest:

It's not even limited to preaching, and it's not on the office.

Guest:

So you have a broad prohibition that women aren't to teach scripture to men.

Guest:

And I argue that that's like a public aspect, not a one on one conversation or something.

Guest:

So anyway, so I don't think it makes sense.

Guest:

But that's the narrow complementarian position.

Guest:

Now, the Kellers never said that they allowed, that they would allow women to preach, but I don't think they really put the brakes on that.

Guest:

In other words, I think the very things that they said in that Cathy Keller's booklet argues, I think it would allow that for that position, though they didn't say that that's what they held.

Guest:

But I do know.

Guest:

I mean, and I dug this up, and I have footnotes on it, so if people want to see my research, they can find it.

Guest:

It's all backed up for Timothy Keller, I had to find stuff that was, like, audio.

Guest:

You know, it's.

Guest:

He didn't write a whole lot on this.

Guest:

His wife has that booklet.

Guest:

But I mean, basically, I can just tell you they agreed.

Guest:

He clearly was fine with everything she wrote in that booklet, and.

Guest:

Which, which would make sense.

Guest:

So basically, he allowed women to teach theology courses in their church to Mendez.

Guest:

Mixed groups, even.

Guest:

I think they had one exception.

Guest:

He said it's like, not their, like, I think they call it, like, catechet humans class.

Guest:

So basically, they're new members, but, yeah, so that meant, like, in Keller's church, which is redeemer, New York, they.

Guest:

And I assume they're still doing this.

Guest:

They were allowing women to teach.

Guest:

They did a systematic theology course, or, I don't know, you're just going through the old testament or whatever in some Sunday school course, they got women teaching that.

Guest:

So, I mean, that seems fairly egalitarian, but so, so that's the thing is, like, the narrow complementarian position is kind of like this compromise of sorts.

Guest:

It's like a middle.

Guest:

I mean, it's kind of Tim Keller's thing is the third way ism.

Guest:

But, yeah, so that's.

Guest:

That's where they were.

Guest:

And I will mention you've seen my prediction here is people that really followed Keller on these things will.

Guest:

Will continue to go down a bad path.

Guest:

I think narrow complementarianism is very unstable.

Guest:

I mean, there's other issues we didn't get into, but, like, they don't tend to really tie the prohibition with nature, the difference between men and women.

Guest:

And so they kind of make the prohibitions to be, like, arbitrary.

Guest:

And so then if they're just arbitrary, then you don't really have a good reason.

Guest:

I mean, you have, you have God's command.

Guest:

I mean, that's a good enough reason.

Guest:

Follow it.

Guest:

But it does help when we understand why he said what he did, why he placed prohibitions on us, which is.

Guest:

Oh, well, he designed men to lead, and men are more suited for preaching and leadership and all these things.

Guest:

So, yeah, so my prediction is that those who follow the Kellers on these points will continue to go down a path that leads them towards egalitarianism.

Guest:

And I think we've actually, I'll give some evidence of this.

Guest:

We've seen some people do this.

Guest:

Scott Sauls was a former PCA pastor, and he had some issues at his church.

Guest:

There's some discipline.

Guest:

And he, instead of coming back into the PCA, he actually left and went to the eCO, the echo, which is evangelical covenant order.

Guest:

It's actually an egalitarian Presbyterian denomination.

Guest:

He was a kellerite.

Guest:

He was a disciple of Keller.

Guest:

I mean, he talked about this.

Guest:

And so, and, yeah, we have to distinguish the echo from, like, the EPC.

Guest:

The EPC has its majority egalitarian now, but actually allows, you know, you don't have to be an egalitarian there.

Guest:

But that's not the case.

Guest:

If you go to echo.

Guest:

If you go to Echo, you are an egalitarian, like you must affirm or, I guess, must deny male headship.

Guest:

So, yeah, you've seen some guys from the PCA leave and go there.

Guest:

And I just, you know, it raises questions about what exactly did they believe when they were in the PCA?

Guest:

How firmly did they actually hold male headship?

Guest:

I don't know.

Guest:

I mean, I can't answer those things.

Guest:

But a couple of other examples.

Guest:

The last couple years there's been a case in the PCA, in the New York metro presbytery, which is where Tim Keller was in Redeemer.

Guest:

They planted a bunch of churches in that area, and there was a church that allowed a.

Guest:

I think she was an episcopal priest.

Guest:

They allowed a woman, they clearly allowed a woman preacher.

Guest:

She preached a sermon, I think.

Guest:

I don't know if it was her.

Guest:

I think she even administered the sacrament there, the supper.

Guest:

Don't quote me on that, but something happened.

Guest:

I think there was something with the supper, but I know she definitely preached.

Guest:

And so there was discipline.

Guest:

And part of the problem is the presbytery didn't have actually discipline.

Guest:

The church that did that.

Guest:

So that tells you something about the New York Metro presbytery.

Guest:

And then that went up to the General assembly so the General assembly, the higher court, is handling that, and now it's off to the standing judicial commission, which is like basically the Supreme Court of the PCA.

Guest:

So that's still going on because the SJC didn't want to take it up.

Guest:

And if I remember correctly, I think the General assembly sent it back to the SJC.

Guest:

So, but that's, that's still in process.

Guest:

So that's, let's do what you will with that, but at least know that happened in the New York metro Presbyterian.

Guest:

And then actually, I've seen some.

Guest:

Well, this ties into another thing is, like, even in the PCA, there's a lot of churches that allow women to, they don't allow women to preach, but they'll allow women to lead other parts of worship.

Guest:

And I mean, like, I'm specifically referring to, like, leading some prayers.

Guest:

Maybe some even let them do the pastoral prayer, but don't call it that.

Guest:

I was not calling it the pastoral prayer if a woman's doing it.

Guest:

But I know some will at least let women do some smaller prayers, shorter prayers in the service.

Guest:

And then probably the most common thing, and the Kellers used to do this all the time, or Tim Keller is they'd have women read scripture prior to the sermon.

Guest:

I mean, that's pretty common.

Guest:

If you ever listen to a Tim Keller Sermon, that's almost seemed like the majority of the time of the sermons I've heard by him is they, he'd have a woman read his scripture text.

Guest:

Now I'm just going to say, I'm a preacher and I don't like anybody reading my text.

Guest:

I want to read my own text before I get up there.

Guest:

One, it's just, you know, it's fresh on my mind.

Guest:

But two, I might add something, explain something, or just, I want to read it the way I want to read.

Guest:

I want to make sure it's read well.

Guest:

And I'm best suited to do that because I prepped from it all week.

Guest:

So there's just that principle.

Guest:

But that being said, our church, in our liturgy, we do have other scripture readings and prayers and things like that, and we only let elders do that.

Guest:

So it either has to be me or as the teaching elder, pastor or a ruling elder.

Guest:

I think along with the Westminster assembly, we'd make the exception of like a man who's training for the ministry.

Guest:

He's an intern or he's a licentiate.

Guest:

He might be licensed to preach by the Presbyterian.

Guest:

That's fine.

Guest:

I think all that's good just keeping with the spirit of the pastors and elders doing these things and the scripture texts.

Guest:

I mean, the fact is you have entire, you have prohibitions on an entire class of people in the New Testament, and that would be on women.

Guest:

two, and then one corinthians:

Guest:

So, I mean, if you have these prohibitions on women as a class, that means women shouldn't be publicly speaking in church.

Guest:

They shouldn't be teaching or exercising authority in the, over the congregation.

Guest:

So, I mean, I think that's just pretty simple.

Guest:

This is the reformed tradition.

Guest:

I give, I give quotes to back all this up, even though I'll even, I'll note even the Westminster larger catechism, which.

Guest:

The PCA, it's part of our standards.

Guest:

I think it's one, it's 156.

Guest:

I'd have to look, says are all to read.

Guest:

It's basically asking all to read in public worship.

Guest:

And the answer is it says, it says not all are to read.

Guest:

And it gives some qualification.

Guest:

Now, it doesn't say who's not to read.

Guest:

Okay.

Guest:

It's not, it's not, like, explicit.

Guest:

I wish it were more explicit.

Guest:

But what I show in there is the context that the Westminster assembly drafted other documents.

Guest:

And so their directory for worship, you can go there and it very clearly connects.

Guest:

And you see, ah, when they said all or not to read, they meant only ministers and those training for the ministry.

Guest:

So they clearly didn't think women should be reading scripture in public worship.

Guest:

So all that is to say, the Kellers, amongst others, have departed from the reformed tradition in this regard.

Guest:

And one thing I'm trying to do is call them back to consistency here.

Guest:

And I don't think it's good to have women leading, you know, in our worship services.

Guest:

But there's kind of the spirit.

Guest:

I mean, we all see it and it's not limited to the PCA or anything.

Guest:

I mean, Wayne Grudem does this.

Guest:

Tom Schreiner, you know, he's a Southern Baptist.

Guest:

I mean, I've got quotes from there and from them in here.

Guest:

And I think also masculine Christianity, where they're like, they're basically saying, you know, we, we obviously have to follow scripture, but, but we want to push women to as many positions as we can.

Guest:

And I'm like, oh, whoa, whoa.

Guest:

That's, that's not what I'm getting from the Bible.

Guest:

You know, the Bible has prohibitions, but it, you know, it certainly isn't saying we should push for these, these other things.

Guest:

Push the bot.

Guest:

Push the boundary as much as you can.

Guest:

No, that's a very modern, like, spirit.

Guest:

That's a very modern feminist spirit.

Guest:

And so I guess that's, that's just what I would say there is.

Guest:

Like, that's.

Guest:

They're not getting this stuff from the Bible.

Guest:

I mean, I know someone might appeal to, like, first corinthians eleven five, which speaks of women praying and prophesying.

Guest:

I deal with that.

Guest:

The reformers all dealt with that.

Guest:

I don't think it's permissive, certainly not a command.

Guest:

And it's.

Guest:

I raise questions about the context.

Guest:

I don't.

Guest:

I think it's about private or semi private situations, like a Bible study.

Guest:

I don't think it's talking about public worship.

Guest:

So anyway, there's a whole host of issues there.

Guest:

But yeah, just to wrap up, we were saying is the Kellers have been a driver behind pushing this narrow complementarianism.

Will Spencer:

As you were talking about those things, I remember reading masculine Christianity and just getting a sense of how fine the people who are trying to bring feminism into the church, how fine they slice things.

Will Spencer:

It's actually pretty remarkable the amount of brain power that must be applied to, like, well, how can we just shave off just a little bit?

Will Spencer:

Let's bring women into all these places where a plain reading of scripture explicitly prohibits that.

Will Spencer:

But then you get, I think it's one corinthians eleven.

Will Spencer:

You said, how much they hang on that one verse and that verse in context of everything else throughout all of the Bible.

Will Spencer:

You can't say that, well, this is the little keyhole that we can squeeze things through, and yet they're trying.

Will Spencer:

And that was the thing that was.

Zach Garris:

So shocking to me, particularly in the.

Will Spencer:

Section about the Kellers, is that obviously there's a lot of, we'll call it scriptural wisdom there, but that seems to have been used to like, well, what can we cut off to enable things that otherwise any sensible person would look and be like?

Will Spencer:

That's not allowed.

Will Spencer:

But because of their scriptural wisdom, they knew exactly where to push.

Will Spencer:

And that's the troubling part to me.

Guest:

Yeah, I think Bb Warfield, he got into as the old Princeton theologian, he got into that passage with one corinthians 14 and eleven, and he looks at eleven five by one, praying and prophesying.

Guest:

And he says, what this means, basically, I'm paraphrasing what this means.

Guest:

Nobody really knows.

Guest:

And we're building up inference after inference when we start saying, well, oh, well, this means we should have women leading prayers and public worship.

Guest:

That's what, it's one passage, one verse, not even a, it's not even really a passage.

Guest:

It's like part of a passage, one verse phrase, and we're gonna, you know, run with it.

Guest:

I mean, that's, that's basically how christian egalitarians work is.

Guest:

They find anything.

Guest:

They find, you know, they go to Deborah and.

Guest:

Well, let's make Deborah normative.

Guest:

I mean, that's pretty much how their, you know, hermeneutics work.

Guest:

It's not good.

Guest:

Nobody does this with other stuff you shouldn't.

Guest:

It's not a good practice.

Guest:

So we don't take the less clear things, the muddy things, and build whole doctrines and practices on it.

Guest:

That's a bad idea.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, don't do that.

Will Spencer:

I remember in our first interview I asked you what the response had been to masculine Christianity.

Will Spencer:

You gave a really good answer.

Will Spencer:

But what has the response been to this book?

Will Spencer:

Like, as you've launched out there into the world, what's, what's the response been?

Will Spencer:

Broadly?

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Well, I'm a little concerned because I only seem to get positive feedback.

Guest:

So I, my thought is probably that, you know, my, my critics or people who don't like this stuff aren't, they either aren't reading it.

Guest:

That's probably the most common thing is they don't, they don't want to touch the stuff I write or they read it and I, I mean, this is what I would hope.

Guest:

They read it and they go, oh, I'm not interacting with that.

Guest:

That's just going to get me in trouble.

Guest:

And, I mean, that's kind of what I want.

Guest:

I want people to read my books and think that they can't refute it and that there's no reason to even try publicly and they're just going to look bad.

Guest:

So in this case, I mean, I argue things, right?

Guest:

So this book is an argument.

Guest:

It is contrasting, like, the older reform theologians with the modern, modern church, modern reform leaders and whatnot.

Guest:

And one of the things that's trying to show is that we've departed from our reformed forefathers.

Guest:

I think that's obvious.

Guest:

I don't think that's debatable.

Guest:

But what they would have to do, if you wanted to defend some sort of egalitarianism or narrow complementarianism, you would have to then take the position.

Guest:

If you read my book, you'd have to say, well, they were all wrong.

Guest:

Who wants to do that?

Guest:

Right?

Guest:

Who wants to say Calvin, Vermegley, Knox, guj you know, down the line, Perkins, everybody, they were all wrong.

Guest:

They just, I know they all agreed, but they, they all misinterpreted the Bible.

Guest:

They all got it wrong, and we today are right.

Guest:

You know, I mean, that's, that's kind of a crazy position.

Guest:

You know, I say in the book, it's, it's always possible that the church is erred.

Guest:

But I, you know, when that's, that's more likely when there's like very variance in views and.

Guest:

But when you have like a consensus, especially, I mean, you, I mean, this book only gets in the reformers.

Guest:

I mean, you could also get into, I do get an American Presbyterian, some like the 18th, 19th century, which, you know, they're in line.

Guest:

I mean, then you could throw in the church fathers and you could probably go in the medieval church, and when everybody's saying the same thing and they're all in, like central agreement.

Guest:

Let's just put it this way.

Guest:

The historical argument is not on the side of the feminists.

Guest:

So anyway, to answer your question, I haven't received a lot of criticism.

Guest:

I mean, but, you know, in one sense, it's good.

Guest:

It's less controversy on my part, but I hope, and I do think what I'm doing with my books honor thy father's masculine christianity, is I'm trying to feed the brethren.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

I'm trying to build up the church and give them tools and weapons for proper doctrine, for fighting egalitarianism, for fighting against narrow complementarianism.

Guest:

And, yeah, I hope that's rallying the troops.

Guest:

That's another thing is just kind of encouraging, encouraging the brethren.

Guest:

So that's what I hope my books, even these interviews are doing, and just kind of get this stuff into other people's hands.

Will Spencer:

I want to be respectful of your time, but I did have one more question, if you've got a minute.

Guest:

Absolutely.

Will Spencer:

So I wonder.

Will Spencer:

Now, I don't want to spoil it, but it's one of my favorite parts of the book was the seven step process for feminization.

Will Spencer:

And speaking of encouraging the brethren, I wonder if you could.

Will Spencer:

I want people to read the book.

Will Spencer:

It's at the end of the book.

Will Spencer:

It's completely worth it to read the whole book.

Will Spencer:

Exactly.

Will Spencer:

But without giving it away, maybe you can talk a little bit about that process just a bit, because I found that to be very encouraging.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

So I don't give it away.

Guest:

I won't read it because I won't remember it.

Guest:

Exactly.

Guest:

But this is one of the things.

Will Spencer:

I mean, I could read it this.

Guest:

Is one of the funny things when you write a book, um, for those who haven't, is, you know, you don't remember every detail you wrote.

Guest:

Uh, and I go back and reread things I've written before.

Will Spencer:

Um, so, so I said that.

Will Spencer:

Oh, yes.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

As far as the conclusion goes, um, from what I recall, I basically, you know, say that, um, the church, there's kind of a trajectory.

Guest:

The church slides into egalitarianism, and there's some steps.

Guest:

And so some of those are like, the first I think I list is, well, they're not, they're not reading the older theology, older reformers on these issues.

Guest:

You know, I think I say they read, they read the Puritans, but they don't, they don't read the Puritan.

Guest:

William Googe, you know, he had a very popular book of domestical duties on the family, and they don't read that.

Guest:

I said, how many pastors, how many pastors are handing out of domestical duties or recommending to their congregants?

Guest:

You know, probably not very many.

Guest:

Hopefully that changes.

Guest:

But, and then, and then some of it just starts with, like, I think negligence is they're not doing the active things we need to do.

Guest:

You know, teaching the scriptures on these passages and reading the reformers, they don't, they don't talk about women outside the home.

Guest:

They kind of just let that be.

Guest:

And the next thing you know, you've got all this massive cultural pressure of feminism, and then next thing you know, they're not even speaking on things really in the church significantly.

Guest:

And so that's really, I mean, how I'd summarize it is there's, there's this negligence, and then it leads to, you know, women leading in all sorts of positions.

Guest:

And that, you know, we end up with, like, this very, very narrow practice where it's just like, well, we just, we just won't have a woman as the senior pastor or a woman as the.

Guest:

We just won't have a woman president of the college.

Guest:

We'll just, you know, you know, have women in leadership all over.

Guest:

And, I mean, how long does that last?

Guest:

I mean, not very long where, well, we're going to at least keep a man as the senior pastor or president of the institution.

Guest:

I mean, eventually, if you're putting women in leadership all around, then it's going to lead to, I think, you know, complete capitulation to egalitarianism.

Guest:

So I don't know.

Guest:

Was there anything else you want to add?

Guest:

I mean, I do know.

Guest:

I say, like, which way are we going to go, you know, as a church?

Guest:

Are we going to, are we going to, we're going to follow the path of feminism or are we going to follow the path of our forefathers?

Will Spencer:

The, the conclusion that kind of outlined what I liked about it was like, you laid out, this happens first, and then you'll see this happen, and then this happened.

Will Spencer:

And this leads us to this egalitarian or perhaps even inverted kind of situation.

Will Spencer:

And it was those seven steps that you laid out so clearly that it was so intuitive, like, oh, yes, obviously this inverted scenario is where that's going to lead to, and then you're not far from there, from the sparkle creed.

Will Spencer:

Just throw yourself into it wholeheartedly.

Will Spencer:

And what I found encouraging about that is I think it would help the brethren and the sistren, so to speak, to identify where their church might be in that process and reverse and reverse the trends.

Will Spencer:

Like, if you're on stage three of a seven step process, you might be able to turn things around, if you can spot it for what it is.

Will Spencer:

But of course, if you're at six or seven, perhaps, where it's already a five alarm fire, maybe not so much.

Guest:

Yeah, that's a great point.

Guest:

And I think if you're at this, well, without getting specifics, we can just say if you're, if you're like a narrow complementarianism, you, you can still salvage things, right?

Guest:

I mean, you know, you don't have women officers in your church or women elders at least, or pastor, you know, you maybe you just, you just need to change some practices.

Guest:

Hey, we've been having women, you know, do a lot of things up front that we shouldn't, we shouldn't be doing.

Guest:

You can reverse course on that.

Guest:

You can, as a session, actually, like, look into the issue and make a determination and then, and then change course.

Guest:

And like you said it.

Guest:

So instead of going down that path of like, well, actually, we're going to consider ordaining women as elders.

Guest:

I mean, no, you can go back towards a more faithful, you know, traditional reform position.

Guest:

So, yeah, for many, I think today it's not too late.

Guest:

I mean, sometimes your church turns completely egalitarian and then, you know, you probably, if you're a member there or whatever, you probably just have to leave.

Guest:

But, I mean, I have heard of occasional situations where pastors have gone in.

Guest:

I don't think this is common.

Guest:

But, you know, maybe of women elders and their female elders, and they're actually, they have, like, concerns about this.

Guest:

I mean, they don't think this is ideal and they're willing to even step down.

Guest:

And so that does happen.

Guest:

So, yeah, I mean, I think we should be just positive in that.

Guest:

Yeah, this stuff's messy.

Guest:

There's a lot of problems in the church.

Guest:

But I do think we should always be repenting and always be seeking greater faithfulness towards the Lord and all things.

Guest:

And we can correct wrongs.

Guest:

We might have made mistakes in the past.

Guest:

We might have given into feminism in some ways, caved into culture, but we can, for the most part, reverse course, and it might bring some hardship.

Guest:

It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but that's what repentance looks like, and that's what faithfulness to God looks like.

Guest:

So hopefully that's at least an encouraging note to end on, is that there is hope for improvement and greater faithfulness in these areas.

Will Spencer:

Amen.

Will Spencer:

That's very encouraging, especially because of the work that you've done in your two books.

Will Spencer:

I'll just hold them up real quick.

Will Spencer:

Honor thy fathers.

Will Spencer:

And masculine Christianity paints such a clear picture.

Will Spencer:

This is what it looks like.

Will Spencer:

And here are the arguments that feminists and egalitarians marshal to misinterpret scripture.

Will Spencer:

Here's what it actually means, and here's what our reformed forefathers once said.

Will Spencer:

And putting the two books together, of course, here's what it looks like in our modern world.

Will Spencer:

And so that clear picture that you've painted, it's a wake up call.

Will Spencer:

Like, oh, this is not what it's supposed to look like.

Will Spencer:

This is what it is supposed to look like, and we can start working our way back there.

Guest:

Absolutely.

Will Spencer:

Amen.

Will Spencer:

Well, this has been a fantastic conversation yet again.

Will Spencer:

Thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you so much for writing your books.

Will Spencer:

Where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do?

Guest:

Yeah, you can find message and Christianity on Amazon.

Guest:

Honor thy fathers.

Guest:

At least the ebook is on Amazon.

Guest:

Otherwise you have to go to the new Christendom press page for the hardback.

Guest:

But hey, it's worth having the hardback.

Guest:

I think it's a nice addition.

Guest:

Otherwise people can go to my website.

Guest:

I write fairly regularly@knowingscripture.com.

Guest:

comma.

Guest:

That's more Bible based articles.

Guest:

Sometimes I write for other websites, but, yeah, otherwise you can follow me on Twitter acerygarris.

Will Spencer:

Wonderful, wonderful.

Will Spencer:

Well, thank you.

Will Spencer:

Real quick, do you have another book planned, or is there something in the works?

Guest:

I am working on a project with a friend, Sean McGowan, on the southern Presbyterians so it's more of a historical.

Guest:

I mean, I guess this last book was somewhat hysterical, but at church, I've been teaching through american presbyterian church history, and I've been heavily, you know, kind of studying the southerners in particular.

Guest:

And so I think that book will be useful because there's not a lot on the southern presbyterian church.

Guest:

I mean, that's the.

Guest:

Well, the mother church of the PCA.

Guest:

uthern presbyterian church in:

Guest:

And, yeah, I mean, I love the reformers, but I also love american Presbyterians.

Guest:

So I hope this will be of use, and I certainly think it'll be interesting.

Guest:

We've uncovered a lot of information and probably gone through more books than I had hoped to.

Will Spencer:

You mean, you also had a really nice appearance.

Will Spencer:

e wrong, but I think it's the:

Guest:

Yes.

Will Spencer:

I was very happy to see you in that documentary.

Guest:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

Maybe you could talk about that for just a minute.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, real briefly.

Guest:

So that was with the Abbeville Institute, and I had written articles for them several years back, and then I got asked to contribute an essay on religion in Virginia because that was a.

Guest:

This is for the:

Guest:

They also did a book, America first.

Guest:

So I contributed that chapter.

Guest:

And actually, that's kind of what got me started on writing on the southern Presbyterians is I was.

Guest:

I mean, I had read a lot on, like, Robert Louis Dabney and some other guys, but I ended up really diving in to other southern figures like John Holt Rice.

Guest:

He was an important guy in Virginia.

Guest:

But there's also Archibald Alexander was from Virginia.

Guest:

logy at Princeton Seminary in:

Guest:

So he's kind of a big name.

Guest:

I mean, his student is the most famous.

Guest:

It was Charles Hodge.

Guest:

But, yeah, there's just a lot of great history there.

Guest:

ntary the Virginia first, the:

Guest:

So that's available on YouTube.

Guest:

It's free.

Guest:

And I think it's great.

Guest:

It's got a lot of good history.

Guest:

It's kind of contrasting Virginia with, like, the New England Puritans.

Guest:

And I certainly think there's good of both groups.

Guest:

But there are some, like some things you see at least note here is, you know, I think.

Guest:

I think, you know, the south's referred to as the Bible belt still today, and kind of orthodox Christianity survived longer in the south.

Guest:

So there's.

Guest:

We can discuss why that's the case, you know, there's differing opinions, but the fact is I think there's something healthy about, you know, Southern Christianity.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, John Harris and I talked a little bit about that when he was on the podcast that came out a couple weeks ago at this point in time.

Will Spencer:

But it was maybe when you finished this book on southern Presbyterians, because I think a lot of people in America don't really understand where the different Presbyterian denominations came from.

Will Spencer:

And there is a very large Baptist to Presbyterian pipeline that's happening right now.

Will Spencer:

Certainly I had my own journey through that.

Will Spencer:

I think that could be a really interesting thing to inform people, like, well, the traditions in America, the denominational traditions, they have specific roots in specific places and times that I think we can feel, but that we don't necessarily know.

Will Spencer:

Because what's the joke that church history for american Protestants began with Billy Graham?

Will Spencer:

Something like that.

Guest:

Yeah, I don't like that joke because that's unfortunately an insult to probably what many people believe.

Guest:

Yeah, I mean, Presbyterian, part of the problem is Presbyterian history is kind of complicated because it came out of, came out of Scotland.

Guest:

I mean, it has its roots in the reformation, like, you know, Calvinism and reformed theology, but came out of Scotland and, but then you have the american presbyterian church.

Guest:

It's its own thing, but you have splits and divisions, new school, old school, and then northern southern church and then reunions and then liberalism in the, in the 20th century.

Guest:

So a lot of it gets, there's definitely some like, you know, complicated factors involved, which is why it's been great on my part to teach through it, but also really dive into the, to the sources.

Guest:

And so hopefully, yeah, I mean, I think the book's gonna be pretty long, but it's gonna have a lot of biography in it and theology, and I think people will like that.

Guest:

But even I could probably do some interviews and, like, explain some of the details, make it a little clearer for people, give them big, big picture information on, like, american Presbyterianism that hopefully will be useful.

Guest:

Because like I said, I like both the 16th and 17th century reform theologians.

Guest:

I think we should embrace them.

Guest:

But I also think there's a lot of good to embrace from the american Presbyterians.

Will Spencer:

I agree.

Will Spencer:

And I think as America tries to find its way forward with its christian identity in terms of christian nationalism, what does that actually look like?

Will Spencer:

What actually is our christian history in America?

Will Spencer:

Because it's kind of fuzzy.

Will Spencer:

Once you get past 19 hundreds looking backwards, it's fuzzy for a lot of people.

Will Spencer:

But I do think that those themes are still very present, but we don't know how to recognize them, perhaps.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

And maybe if I could just add one thing here is one of the interesting things with the American Presbyterians is they kind of bridge the gap.

Guest:

So if we're talking christian nationalism, like christian government and things like that, is, you know, most people we know what we have today, we might read about the reformers.

Guest:

Oh, they had like, you know, christian magistrates and things like that.

Guest:

But what you have in the United States is that the early colonies were christian for the most part.

Guest:

I mean, you had different levels of establishment.

Guest:

I mean, you had like the, you know, New England Puritans had the congregational church, but then in the south you had a lot of anglican establishments, but then they had strong dissenters like the Presbyterians, Baptists, and then eventually the Methodists, which came out of the Anglicans.

Guest:

But what's interesting is, like, so you had this kind of transition is, you know, people always say the First Amendment, freedom of religion, those kind of things, but that actually was only a prohibition on the federal government from establishing a church.

Guest:

But the states were trying to sort out, well, how are we going to do things?

Guest:

So, like, Virginia had to disestablish their church before.

Guest:

Before the US Constitution, right before.

Guest:

And then, you know, some of the other states, like South Carolina actually for twelve years, had a general establishment that allowed for like, just the generally established Christianity.

Guest:

Now, they didn't keep it, but a lot of those states did keep like, requirements that magistrates were Protestants even.

Guest:

They had to affirm the protestant religion.

Guest:

And eventually, over time, some of that stuff just kind of faded away and, you know, we became more pluralistic in the United States.

Guest:

But, yeah, I think it's the history there is at least interesting.

Guest:

And it certainly shows that while I wouldn't say America was strictly a christian country, because in one sense, we're a republic, we did have like christian states within the republic.

Guest:

And so, yeah, I mean, that's just, that's just the history there is.

Guest:

America at one point was like 98% protestant and mostly british origin, and with immigration and things started to change in the 18 hundreds.

Guest:

But, yeah, so a lot of history there that people just unfortunately are unfamiliar with.

Guest:

But I think hopefully we can change that.

Guest:

Hopefully it's starting to change some now and we'll continue to change it in the future.

Will Spencer:

Well, I definitely look forward to that book coming out and reading it and we can, we can have another conversation like this one.

Will Spencer:

I've enjoyed our chats.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

I'd be glad to do that at some point.

Will Spencer:

Cool.

Will Spencer:

Well, thank you so much, Zach.

Will Spencer:

This has been great, and definitely, everyone, go out and buy, honor thy fathers and provoke a feminist today.

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