|
|
|
|
Why Another Hermeneutic?
There are reasons for which people do things -- few of man’s actions are ever meaningless or random. The reason many churches of Christ today are so different from what they were 50-60 years ago is not by accident. Some churches of Christ have women preachers and women elders. Many congregations are involved in all kinds of social and entertainment activities. In order to break down barriers between churches of Christ and denominations, gospel preachers are exchanging pulpits with denominational preachers. It has even been suggested that we should apologize to denominational people for saying they are not saved and we should accept every religious person who believes in Jesus. Whether or not they have been baptized for the remission of sins is insignificant. In more recent times, instrumental music has been introduced into worship. And, the latest digressive development is taking the Lord’s Supper on Saturday night.
In view of such plain Biblical teaching, how can those claiming to be churches of Christ defend women preachers and elders? It appears to most people to be as plain “the nose on your face” – “But I suffer not a woman to teach nor usurp authority over a man…” (1 Timothy 2:11-12). When giving qualifications for elders, Paul and says a bishop is to be the “the husband of one wife ((2 Timothy 3:1, 2). If you accept the fact that language is to be interpreted in harmony with its original intent, then women preachers and women elders are unscriptural. However, if one changes his hermeneutic, he convinces himself that the passages really do not mean what they say.
Jack Cottrell, in his book “Feminism and the Bible,” makes a distinction between the “liberal Christian feminist” and the “Biblical feminist.” The “liberal Christian feminists” looks at the Bible with the presupposition that women are oppressed and the Bible is androcentric and patriarchal. Since men wrote it, it was designed to control women and exalt man. The message of the Bible, then, to a “liberal Christian feminist,” must be filtered through her experiences as a woman who is enslaved by men. That means that in order to understand the Bible’s message for women, more emphasis is to be placed on the interpretation end than the original message of the writer. That makes their process of interpreting the Bible entirely subjective.
On the other hand “Biblical feminists,” who are more conservative in their approach to the Bible’s message, still cling to a kind of faith in scriptures. Their hermeneutic distinguishes between what is called “descriptive” or “prescriptive.” “Descriptive” means that passages such as 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and 3:1-2, merely describe what was true in the first century but are not “prescriptive;” that is, the teaching is not required behavior for modern women.
The need for another hermeneutic among a great number of modernistic churches of Christ was required by liberal minded preachers and elders who found themselves restrained by a hermeneutic of “book, chapter and verse; command, example and necessary implication.” Interpreting the Bible by following those rules, meant they could not practice what they wanted to practice. They could not really justify what they were doing by that kind of hermeneutic, because they actually found themselves condemned by their unauthorized behavior. Their dilemma necessitated that they either abandon the practices or change the hermeneutic – they liked their practices, so they invented another hermeneutic that fit their practices. It makes perfect sense to those in modernistic churches of Christ to do whatever needs to be done to build big churches and to address the social needs of man, because the hermeneutic they use is entirely different from the way you and I interpret it. The major flaw of their hermeneutic is that, while it mouths faith in the scriptures, it shows disrespect for the absolute authority of Christ revealed in NT scriptures. – Jim R. Everett
 |
