An Important Resource for the Complementarian Debate
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben Kreps:
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace Churches with our executive director. Mark, those who are in Sovereign Grace know that we have seven shared values that we prioritize and celebrate and cherish. One of those is complementary leadership in the church and in the home. And anybody, who's observing the current state of our culture, knows that we are swimming against the cultural tide as we stand firm in our convictions. And because you wanted to serve us, you wanted to highlight a resource to help us as we hold fast to our biblical convictions. Tell us about it.
Mark Prater:
Yeah. It's a resource that is published by the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; a journal they put out called Eikon, a Greek word, and the subtitle: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology. So if you are a pastor listening to or reading this podcast, or a member of one of our churches, I would encourage you to subscribe to this journal. You can get that electronically, or I tend to prefer to get in print form, so it's available in that way as well. And I just started reading the most recent edition, which is the Spring 2023 edition. I wanted to highlight it because I think it's a timely and important resource for pastors in Sovereign Grace and members of our churches in Sovereign Grace. And this particular edition of The Journal is unique because it is devoted to a chapter by chapter review of the book, Discovering Biblical Equality, the third edition, written essentially by egalitarian authors. And it's important that in writing about the complementarian egalitarian debate, you're beginning to see in the egalitarian camp a shift towards embracing, for example, LGBTQ ideology.
So let me just read a portion of the introduction to hopefully provoke you to get this journal and read it. This is what they say. "Our reviews reveal that this third edition marks a significant departure from previous iterations of the intra-evangelical debate between complementarians and egalitarians. While most of the book is refreshed and repackaged arguments for egalitarianism, some chapters have given up significant ground to LGBTQ ideology, including an embrace of personhood theory, the use of gender-neutral pronouns for God and preferred pronouns for our neighbors, suggestions of feminine names for God, the promotion of “Side-B Gay Christianity” and same-sex covenanted partnerships — or marriage-lite, as it has been called by critics — and, most alarming of all, a chapter that entails an endorsement of transgender ideology, including so-called gender reassignment surgery."
So I think it's an important journal for pastors in Sovereign Grace to read. And again, I would encourage members of our churches to read, because it's not just about the complementarian egalitarian debate, it's how the egalitarian theology or doctrine is really shifting even more towards the culture and embracing an unbiblical anthropology from a theological sense. And that means embracing things like LGBTQ ideology. So I think it will help pastors not only in the debate that's happening, but also just to be equipped and armed to answer questions from people that could come to our churches asking where they stand on LGBTQ issues, for example. I think a good read of this journal will equip our guys to respond in a biblical way. So just an encouragement to read it.
Ben Kreps:
Excellent. Definitely. We'll be checking that out. Thanks for the recommendation. More broadly speaking now in this area, what thoughts do you have for us throughout Sovereign Grace?
Mark Prater:
Well, I think it's important that we be mindful that theological shifts happen subtly, and we have to keep our eye on God's word and make sure that we're not shifting from God's word. So let me give you one example of the reviews that's written in this journal. It's written by Colin Smothers. I think he was the executive director of CBMW. He's reviewing a chapter written by Christa L. McKirland, entitled Image of God and Divine Presence, A Critique of Gender Essentialism. That's the title of her chapter in Discovering Biblical Equality. So Collin Smothers does a review of that. And this is what he says is perhaps the most radical chapter in the book, the one that I just mentioned, for “McKirland not only rejects gender essentialism, but she also uses the gender neutral pronoun "Godself" in place of masculine pronouns to refer to God. She also uses masculine pronouns to refer to a biological woman, and even refers to this woman as a Christian. Despite individual's embracing transgender identity, most troubling, McKirland opens the door for people to undergo so-called gender reassignment surgery, provided they pursue it in submission to the spirit in order to become more like Christ."
So what you hear there is biblical language. We want to be led by the spirit. We want to be more like Christ; but to embrace an unbiblical identity is not to become more like Christ. And so it's a real illustration of how things shift somewhat subtly. And if we're not careful, we can be influenced by the culture and we might think, oh, I might have room for that in my theology. We can't have any room for that kind of thinking, obviously, in our theology if we're going to main remain in fidelity to the scriptures and orthodox in our theology. So again, just an encouragement for our guys, and again, any members of our churches to read this edition of the Journal, the Spring 2023 edition of Eikon.
Ben Kreps:
Excellent. Yeah, I mean, in this world in which I saw recently, the number one song on Christian Apple Music was in part sung by a drag queen in opposition to the church. I mean, that's the world that we're currently living in. So, we do well as pastors to pay careful attention to our life and doctrine in this area. And I think it's helpful to bring clarity to the church at times as well. We started using the Nashville Statement, for instance, also from CBMW. So grateful for them and the resources that they're providing to help us as pastors and as members of Sovereign Grace churches throughout the world. So thank you, Mark, for the recommendation. Thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.