The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Boomers & The Fifth Commandment

00:00:00.000 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin with

00:00:03.900 Right Response Ministries. In this episode, I'm privileged to welcome back to the show,

00:00:07.880 it's been a while, but Zachary Garris. The last time we had him, I think it was

00:00:12.240 somewhat shortly after he'd written his first book, which was Masculine Christianity.

00:00:17.600 This is now his second book that he's written. It's called Honor Thy Fathers. Honor Thy Fathers.

00:00:24.260 And so we're discussing the importance of the fifth commandment in light of some of the challenges

00:00:29.980 with our generation and some of the older generation preceding us and some of the mistakes

00:00:35.480 that they've made, and yet still the importance of trying to honor our immediate fathers. In my

00:00:40.060 case, that would be boomers, but not at the expense of honoring ancient fathers, all those

00:00:45.780 who came before them. So we're talking about the fifth commandment, honoring fathers, and

00:00:49.900 particularly honoring our ancient fathers, centuries of Christodom, and what they believed

00:00:56.980 about the biblical view of men and women, because that is one of the big theological 0.55

00:01:04.140 topics where recent generations, our immediate fathers, such as the boomers, have gotten off

00:01:12.280 the rails into not just first and second wave and third wave, but just absolute head-over-heels

00:01:21.040 rank feminism, of which the last 2,000 years of church history and our ancient fathers would not 1.00

00:01:28.800 even begin to be capable of recognizing. So that's the discussion that we're talking about today.

00:01:34.940 Roles of men and women, the nature of men and women, the Reformed tradition, and what has been

00:01:42.280 taught historically about men and women, and how to honor ancient fathers when your immediate

00:01:49.760 fathers are telling you, you should disagree. Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:01:56.920 This is Theology Applied.

00:02:03.200 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with

00:02:07.540 Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I am privileged to welcome to the show Zachary

00:02:11.760 Garris. He's published a couple books that have both been very helpful. One was Masculine

00:02:17.200 Christianity, and his most recent book, Honor Thy Fathers, which he published with New Christendom

00:02:23.040 Press, has just recently come out, and it's been a hit, I think, for a lot of people, because

00:02:29.280 a lot of the problem that we're experiencing today is that we are spurning our fathers,

00:02:34.820 especially as Thomas Watson, I believe it was, would say our ancient fathers, and just adopting

00:02:41.080 so many things that are modern, progressive, and not going back to the biblical roots and the rich

00:02:46.740 heritage that we had before us. So, Zachary, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

00:02:51.700 Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:02:53.200 All right, so let's start with this. Just give us real quick a synopsis, and I know it's a little

00:02:58.740 bit cliche, it's always the question you get asked, but why did you write the book? What's

00:03:02.520 your purpose? What are you trying to accomplish with it? And why do you think a book like this

00:03:06.940 is necessary today? Yeah, Honored Eye Fathers is essentially a historical look at

00:03:14.480 reform teaching on male headship, but it discusses male rule in the home, in the church,

00:03:22.080 and in the commonwealth. And my other book, Massacent Christianity, was more exegetical,

00:03:27.980 got into scripture, though it had some history, of course. But this is more of a historical angle,

00:03:32.280 but it's also polemical. Honor thy fathers is comparing. The first section is looking at the

00:03:37.600 older reformed theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries. And then the second part of the book

00:03:43.720 is kind of contrasting them with modern theologians, especially those who would call themselves

00:03:49.580 reform. And yeah, I think that's needed because I mean, part of the book is showing that we've

00:03:56.260 departed from the earlier tradition on these matters. Right. Yeah. So on that note, you know,

00:04:05.020 we talked about this a little bit offline, the two of us, but I got in a little bit of trouble

00:04:09.740 recently, a couple of days ago, and I think that it, I don't, I'm sure it's not exactly

00:04:14.720 what you would say. And so feel free to disagree with me wherever, you know, you and I would

00:04:19.420 differ, but I tweeted something out the other day and got a little bit of pushback, but I think it's

00:04:23.780 in the vein, the overarching vein of what you're communicating with your book, Honor Thy Fathers.

00:04:29.300 And just, I was talking about the fifth commandment. I wrote this, the fifth commandment,

00:04:33.680 honoring, which is honoring our fathers is vital to all those who desire to live a long

00:04:38.880 life in the land and be blessed by God. However, it is wise to hold as a respectful suspicion,

00:04:45.580 a respectful suspicion toward all those who advocate for honoring our immediate fathers

00:04:50.120 at the expense of honoring all the centuries of godly fathers who preceded them.

00:04:55.380 Careful obedience to the fifth commandment is similar to the thinking that we had to apply

00:05:00.020 during COVID. If a lesser civil official is demanding that we submit to that which God

00:05:04.920 calls wicked, it becomes necessary to appeal to a more righteous civil magistrate above them.

00:05:10.880 Likewise, while it is important to still exercise respect for our immediate fathers,

00:05:16.580 it is good and proper to appeal to generations of fathers who preceded them if our immediate

00:05:21.580 fathers have spent their lives spitting on their legacy. In short, beware of those who demand that

00:05:28.640 you only honor one generation of fathers, especially if it happens to be the very

00:05:34.000 generation of fathers that has been marked by rebellion towards their own fathers since the 0.56

00:05:39.200 beginning of their lives, aka the boomers. Now, obviously, part of the pushback that I got was, 0.92

00:05:45.980 well, it's a generation that's still alive and could see the tweet and respond. I wasn't saying

00:05:51.880 everybody, but I am saying that in a general sense, I really think, and it's not like all

00:05:55.940 our problems start with the boomers. That's an oversimplification. I get that. But I think of

00:06:00.700 the 1960s, I think of the civil rights movement. I think of, you know, protesting on the White

00:06:05.840 House, you know, front lawn and those, you know, stick it to the man and all these, the boomers, 0.84

00:06:12.240 I think it's a fact, not every single one of them, but to say that they, from their teen and early 0.88

00:06:17.780 adulthood years, were kind of the rebellious generation, long hair, hippies, smoking weed,

00:06:23.240 those kinds of things. And they had the benefit of getting to be rebellious, go against the system,

00:06:30.700 uh live in a van you know and and and do drugs and in their 30s when they they wanted to have

00:06:36.740 normal lives everything was waiting for them they could still get a house with a great mortgage and

00:06:40.260 they could get a good job and they could have retirement and vacation time and all you know

00:06:44.060 all those kinds of things and that's i mean i think that that's fair to say i'm not talking

00:06:47.680 about every individual obviously um there are older members of the older generation who have

00:06:53.580 been godly and faithful and xyz but i'm saying in general speaking of group dynamics i have noticed

00:06:59.780 I want to see if it's your experience as well.

00:07:02.180 But I think that particular generation, the reason I tweeted this out is I regularly see

00:07:07.960 them disparaging, in my opinion, disparaging young men and saying that they're misogynistic

00:07:14.600 or they're this or they're that because of their theological views, a biblical patriarch

00:07:20.020 or whatever it is.

00:07:21.180 And then whenever they get pushback from the younger generation saying, no, I think this

00:07:25.280 is what the Bible teaches.

00:07:26.180 there's usually some kind of quip of honor your elders or you're not keeping the fifth commandment

00:07:32.000 or it's like listen um i we want to be as respectful as possible but you're not honoring

00:07:39.600 your fathers you you would excommunicate john calvin you would excommunicate john knox you

00:07:45.600 would ex all these guys gouge all these guys you you have to edit their books you can't even

00:07:51.440 publish them without censoring them because it says superiors. Like, you dishonor your fathers

00:07:56.840 every day. Your generation is marked. It is marked in American history as dishonoring fathers. 1.00

00:08:04.700 And I don't know. I don't think it's fair to say to a younger generation that wants to,

00:08:10.960 we're not wanting to progress forward. We're wanting to actually go back and to get to

00:08:15.180 biblical masculinity, biblical femininity, biblical views on all these theological subjects

00:08:21.700 And it's the older generation that's telling us that we're rebelling when in reality, if you look at a chain in each individual link, our generation is actually matching up with all these prior links except for one.

00:08:36.920 That's the rebellious generation, in my opinion.

00:08:39.840 What do you think?

00:08:41.800 Yeah, I think the first thing I'd say is there are a lot of great boomers, you know, that generation, obviously.

00:08:48.360 um yeah i think even in my church uh people in that age range lots of great men and women and

00:08:55.120 so we we should honor them i mean that's part of the the fifth commandment um you know understood

00:09:01.280 in its in its broader scope which which something like the westminster larger catechism does this

00:09:06.900 uh and and so i mean i take this up in the book which is they even ask the the scope of the

00:09:13.000 fifth commandment right which is to honor your father and mother and they they include not only

00:09:19.980 natural parents but superiors and age gifts uh and then those in authority family church and

00:09:25.960 commonwealth but yeah when you read the reformers on these kind of things they would of course

00:09:31.520 include uh spiritual forefathers and and prior generations it's not it's not limited to those

00:09:37.600 fathers is what thomas watson says yeah it's not limited to those who are living so so we need to

00:09:43.520 honor both right and um i mean there's also a sense in which um those who are older are still to um

00:09:54.080 honor and and treat respectfully the those who would be considered their inferiors in in age um

00:10:01.920 um and in the the larger catechism gets into that kind of thing as well so yeah there's a lot of

00:10:08.260 great boomers but i think just when you look at the history of like at least we can say the west

00:10:12.400 of the united states is our our country's been in decline for some time and i'm i surely wouldn't say

00:10:19.780 it started with the boomers i mean there were problems with prior generations right um but

00:10:24.700 there definitely has been a big shift in the last, say, 50 or so years where, I mean, feminism has 0.72

00:10:33.400 really become a massive problem. I mean, I argue feminism was around with like the first wave 0.85

00:10:37.780 women's rights movement, but that didn't really come to full fruition until I think like the 1960s

00:10:43.840 and 70s, you started to see this dramatic shift. I mean, you can even see it in the birth rates and

00:10:47.340 all of those kinds of things. And so we have to recognize that America has been in decline

00:10:54.380 and it didn't start with you know people under 50 uh so that that i think just needs to be 0.51

00:11:01.820 recognized and when you when you look at things in like the church i mean there's just been a lot of

00:11:08.140 a lot of compromise in in this period um you know i you could bring up like the the complementarian

00:11:14.460 movement which really took off in like the 80s and 90s especially and and that's had its fracturing

00:11:21.200 to the point where people speak of narrow and broad complementarianism.

00:11:25.820 And, you know, as I argue, even in this book, Honor Thy Fathers,

00:11:29.020 there's been a lot of deviation, even amongst some of the broader complementarians.

00:11:34.580 They've deviated from our forefathers.

00:11:36.540 So I just think it needs to be understood that we're to honor not only those who are living,

00:11:42.860 but also the dead.

00:11:43.760 And so there's going to sometimes be conflicts and views there.

00:11:47.680 And so in our manners and how we speak with older Christians with whom we disagree, we should be respectful, but they shouldn't talk down to us because we disagree or we think that actually the older guys got it right, the old dead guys. 0.98

00:12:03.480 I mean, that's a lot of times the way I think it is. 0.99

00:12:07.320 Well, that's what it is.

00:12:08.900 It's a debate between the young whippersnappers who are not making up novel doctrines.

00:12:13.920 we're simply like we just we went back and and we read we did the reading that that's all that's

00:12:20.600 all it is so it's the young whippersnappers who read you know william gouge instead of

00:12:25.720 john piper you know what i mean on on on domestical duties you know like biblical manhood and biblical

00:12:32.800 womanhood and then we're just repeating those arguments old arguments that were common that

00:12:38.260 is what people believe is what the church believed for centuries and centuries and centuries

00:12:42.720 and then we're being chastised, but being chastised from a standpoint of I'm older

00:12:48.900 and wiser and more experienced. And the irony is what I'm trying to communicate is the irony is

00:12:54.260 the younger guys are actually the ones who are holding to the older position.

00:12:59.920 And so we're saying, well, no, no, your view is the novel view. Your view is the misnomer.

00:13:06.940 I understand that I'm half your age. I get that. But the views that I'm espousing are not on the

00:13:15.400 basis of my own personal credibility and life experience. That's not the foundation for my

00:13:21.180 view. The foundation for my view is the Word of God as articulated and interpreted throughout the

00:13:28.240 witness of church history for centuries instead of just since 1988 with the origin of complementarianism.

00:13:36.940 right i is that fair yeah yeah i i think so and uh they shouldn't look down on us

00:13:45.100 uh who who want to go further back i think that's that's not a a bad thing i mean i i think part of

00:13:52.060 this is there's the assumption that there's been progress right progress in ideology progress in

00:13:57.460 the united states culturally politically uh theologically and i would challenge that in

00:14:05.880 most ways. I think there's been a lot of regress. And so, you know, theology doesn't really change

00:14:14.160 much. I mean, sometimes there's like new insights, but for the most part, we should be, I think,

00:14:18.840 fairly traditional and continuing what was passed down from our spiritual fathers. And so when there

00:14:25.780 are new things or deviations, most of the time those are wrong, and it's good to criticize those.

00:14:32.200 It just happens to be that many of the guys who made up some of those deviations are still alive and leaders in the church and whatnot.

00:14:41.060 And so like even with my book here, I don't want to disrespectfully engage them, but I do want to engage them and I want to tell them I think they're wrong.

00:14:49.400 And here's why. And I give my reasons. And I would I mean, the best thing I think would be they say, yeah, those are really good points.

00:14:55.120 And let me think about it. And and they can change their views. And honestly, I think it's kind of arrogant to go against the entire reform tradition.

00:15:05.160 I mean, that's that's kind of thing with this book is it's showing it wasn't just one guy.

00:15:09.480 I mean, I'm not just going to like John Calvin or something. I'm going to the entirety of the tradition and showing that actually they all were, you know, very patriarchal, held to a very strong view of male rule.

00:15:22.820 um you know this idea of a tie-breaking vote in marriage none of them fought like that that's

00:15:28.920 that's totally modern and and and unbiblical i would say it doesn't use that kind of

00:15:34.400 qualification in the scripture so yeah i think um i mean i mean some of this is you know there's

00:15:40.700 ties even with politics in the sense that if we include culture and the like i mean you get into

00:15:47.900 kind of this older conservatism and so this this ties in with some of these even historical debates

00:15:53.380 and whatnot and there's there's kind of like a a lot of neoconservatism politically but also in

00:16:00.760 the church where i think a lot of people have just shifted left on a lot of issues and so then they

00:16:06.920 hear something that's like more right wing and like it's more it's more on the right it's like

00:16:13.740 a paleo conservative take or something and they they freak out it's like they've never heard it

00:16:19.120 before and maybe they haven't but uh that's that's not because people didn't used to hold a lot of

00:16:24.520 these views before it's just i don't know between the media and the education system i don't know

00:16:32.540 they have this like very narrow window of what's acceptable and i think i think that's what's going

00:16:37.720 on right now for a whole host of things and i mean i'm doing it somewhat on the theological front

00:16:41.800 is trying to take us back to the older Reformed theologians

00:16:46.380 and not just do theology in the 20th century.

00:16:50.860 I mean, that doesn't make sense.

00:16:53.820 You shouldn't do that really in any field,

00:16:55.600 but especially not theology.

00:16:58.400 Right.

00:16:59.800 So for our listeners, could you just articulate briefly?

00:17:03.060 I've done this probably a number of times,

00:17:05.200 and I think I may have even done it with you once upon a time

00:17:08.000 shortly after you published your first book, Masculine Christianity. But

00:17:12.780 for those who maybe haven't heard it or are unaware, could you articulate just some of

00:17:19.080 the distinctions between complementarianism and patriarchy? Because I think a lot of people are

00:17:23.140 underneath the impression that, well, you know, complementarianism is patriarchy. It's just that

00:17:28.680 patriarchy has become, you know, it has negative connotations and viewed as derogatory. And so,

00:17:37.100 you know we just are replacing you know just a new placeholder a new term um but it's the same

00:17:42.660 doctrine whereas i i would say no it's it's not and and the guys who coined the term were very

00:17:47.720 clear about um you know by their own admission uh flat out said that this is a halfway house in

00:17:54.380 between egalitarianism and patriarchy and that it was based you know i mean the intention it has

00:18:01.480 been said by by the framers of complementarianism that it was meant to um kind of um be a you know

00:18:09.760 um to to uh to hold back the floodgate uh of um of feminism that maybe this will be enough to

00:18:17.080 appease the egalitarians and the feminists um so that we don't lose everything um so could you

00:18:23.380 do do your you know your best to just articulate you know what what are you arguing for when you

00:18:29.060 say patriarchy why is complementarianism not sufficient yeah well first let me say you know

00:18:34.340 i obviously some people don't like the term patriarchy i mean it's just referring to father

00:18:38.380 rule right and so uh if we're talking about godly biblical patriarchy i don't see how you could have

00:18:43.500 a problem with that though though i will say in this book i use more of the language of just like

00:18:46.960 the traditional reform position so you know there's various terms we can use for these things

00:18:52.180 um so complementarianism really was a reaction to egalitarianism in the uh

00:19:00.700 1980s really is responding i think to these things and if we were to summarize

00:19:09.160 complementarianism there's really two points that were essential they affirm male headship in the

00:19:14.240 home and then in the church they would say only men can be uh well hold the office of elder or

00:19:20.760 pastor. And those are fairly like minimal affirmations because what that allowed is

00:19:28.760 people to hold maybe some other more egalitarian views. So like some, what we call narrow

00:19:34.620 complementarians would say, well, I think, you know, only a man can be a pastor, but I think a

00:19:42.200 woman could preach. I mean, I've heard people articulate that position because she does it 0.95

00:19:45.580 under the authority of the session well uh that's really out of line of with the tradition and i

00:19:51.800 think also makes an arbitrary distinction uh between office and tasks right um sprawl but

00:19:58.540 said that just real quick i gotta gotta say it rc sprawl he allowed for women to preach there is a

00:20:05.140 video and audio recording that you can find on renewing your mind it was a q a that he did

00:20:12.100 in a small group, probably in the Ligonier studio

00:20:15.700 where he had finished lecturing

00:20:17.200 and was allowing people to ask.

00:20:19.080 And it was funny because there was a woman,

00:20:20.460 I forget her name, because he names her.

00:20:23.000 And she says, are you implying that a woman could preach?

00:20:30.500 And he said, so-and-so, I didn't imply it.

00:20:34.180 I said it.

00:20:35.160 And he laughs.

00:20:36.240 But basically he said he doesn't believe

00:20:38.440 that a woman could be a ruling elder,

00:20:40.420 but that she could teach R.C. Sproul towards the end of his life. 0.92

00:20:45.540 And I love R.C. Sproul, but I'm just saying, yeah,

00:20:49.580 the boomer generation really started folding. 0.70

00:20:52.360 The best of them started folding on this.

00:20:55.240 Yeah, I obviously like R.C. Sproul.

00:20:57.760 I'd be curious to see the details and what the context there was.

00:21:02.560 Because, I mean, some of these guys do make distinctions.

00:21:05.800 Like, you know, sometimes we might be talking about,

00:21:07.740 well, it's a woman teaching in a women's setting or something.

00:21:11.480 That might be different.

00:21:13.560 Unfortunately, no, it was not that.

00:21:16.240 I wish it was.

00:21:17.500 It was not.

00:21:18.200 That is concerning if he said something like that.

00:21:20.740 But let me just say, I think, so you have like the narrow complementarian strand,

00:21:26.740 but then you have the broader complementarians who would,

00:21:29.480 they would say, no, a woman can't preach.

00:21:32.220 And, you know, I mean, in general, they would say that the worship service should be led by men.

00:21:40.400 But that's the thing is some of this starts to break down, you know, where some complementarians even think women can read scripture or in public worship or lead certain prayers in public worship.

00:21:52.400 And, yeah, the worst of them think that, you know, women could even preach.

00:21:55.820 um and then and then you get outside the worship service and then there's the question of women

00:22:00.620 teaching in sunday school uh to like mixed groups with men and and you know some of these narrow

00:22:05.820 complementarians especially would say that they can so you've got that but then um you also have

00:22:12.940 kind of the softening of male headship where you know this is this whole tie-breaking vote

00:22:18.440 where scripture just speaks of um the husband is the head of his wife and and you know ephesians

00:22:24.740 5 even says the wife should submit to her husband in everything you know it says in everything not

00:22:28.780 in not in an occasional tie-breaking vote it's it's the idea that the man is to actually lead

00:22:34.420 like they use that language but he's actually a leader and that means he leads in everything by

00:22:40.980 example and decision making his wife is you know his counselor he consults her on things but he's

00:22:48.980 still the leader. He doesn't let her lead most of the time, and then he only leads if there's

00:22:54.720 a disagreement. I mean, that's not what the scripture says. It's not what the Reformed

00:22:59.160 tradition ever said about male headship and marriage. So you've got that, and then most

00:23:04.580 complementarians probably wouldn't go to the issue of civil leadership, where they might allow

00:23:13.460 women to, or more likely it's probably they just don't say anything about women in political

00:23:20.180 office, where you go read, obviously Knox had the strongest statements against this,

00:23:24.040 but even Calvin said, yeah, that shouldn't be normative. It's not ordinary for women to 1.00

00:23:27.760 hold political office. That should mostly be men. And so, you know, that's pretty much the, 1.00

00:23:33.980 I would say probably the most standard view would be Calvin's, but complementarians probably

00:23:39.540 aren't going to say much about that and obviously we have it now where we have a woman running for

00:23:44.340 uh president of the united states and so so that that has just that issues kind of exploded where 1.00

00:23:51.960 they you know we don't just have occasional women running for office they like push for

00:23:55.800 half candidate the candidates being women and then it goes beyond that where it's i don't know

00:24:02.180 the men are just getting drowned out in a lot of these things so um but but there's other issues

00:24:07.460 where you know complementarianism many of them were not all but many of them were getting into

00:24:13.140 the whole ess thing um eternal subordination of the son right rather than just saying that the son

00:24:19.320 you know post-incarnation submits to the will of the father because they were they were saying

00:24:24.900 well it's in eternity because they're trying to say look uh you know in the trinity you have

00:24:31.000 equality between the persons but still submission and they're wanting to say look so the husband

00:24:36.620 and wife are equal, but the wife submits to the husband. And the thing is, the scriptures, 0.67

00:24:42.780 well, one, I don't think they teach eternal subordination to the son, but two, they don't,

00:24:47.240 you know, compare husband and wife to father and son in the Trinity. That's just not a comparison

00:24:53.900 the scripture makes. So, and in one sense, I mean, so we have to qualify these things. I mean,

00:25:01.120 in one sense, a man and a woman are equal, right? They're made in God's image. They're equal worth

00:25:05.640 and value, but in another sense, they're unequal. And that's, that's even like the, you know,

00:25:09.820 tied with, um, male headship is, is the husband actually, uh, husband and wife don't have equal

00:25:16.080 authority in the marriage relationship. They don't, they're unequal. I, we, for some reason,

00:25:20.700 a lot of these guys just are uncomfortable saying that, um, even though that's the obvious

00:25:24.700 implication of, of submission. So, uh, anyway, uh, I'm trying to think if there's some other

00:25:31.600 issues, but I think that kind of shows like, even if somebody holds a broader complementarian

00:25:35.300 position and some people would maybe call me that you know say that's my view but um and there's

00:25:40.980 going to be overlap there are going to be some of these things where uh you know the patriarchal or

00:25:45.580 just traditional reform position is going to just be more robust more consistent and uh and certainly

00:25:53.600 more rooted in in the history of uh of christian thought and theology you have heard it said that

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00:28:01.820 right yep agreed um yeah it seems like uh part what another distinction with complementarianism

00:28:09.180 between that and uh biblical patriarchy or whatever you want to call it gendered piety or the

00:28:14.380 like the reform tradition contains a lot more than just its views of men and women so like

00:28:19.580 even if you call it that then it's like the reform tradition on patriarchy you know like

00:28:25.340 That's what I would want to, so I don't know, however you slice it, but I think just one more distinction between complementarianism and patriarchy is the emphasis, the Bible's emphasis in the patriarchal view on nature, and that's part of what keeps God and his character from being capricious and arbitrary, and so I think a lot of the complementarian ethos is the woman, whether it be in the house or in the church,

00:28:55.340 or society at large um the woman is you know basically looking to the man and saying anything

00:29:00.580 you can do i can do better i can do anything better than you but i won't um you know so like

00:29:06.480 i you know i remember a pretty well-known woman who uh is considered to be conservative

00:29:13.160 i i don't think so but you know people consider her to be conservative the bar for being conservative

00:29:18.600 is pretty low these days you know you can you know you can do uh swimsuit modeling you know 0.89

00:29:24.020 and stuff like that. And, you know, conservatives are a joke. So anyways, you know that. But she

00:29:29.500 said that, you know, that she could preach better than most men, but she won't. And she won't

00:29:37.360 because, you know, she recognizes that the Bible does not permit that, her preaching to mixed 0.97

00:29:43.360 groups, men being present on the Lord's Day. And I appreciate, you know, her holding the line in

00:29:48.440 that sense. But I remember hearing that and thinking, well, that's, I think that's the root

00:29:53.540 the problem. I know what she meant. She meant that women are capable of theological competence.

00:30:05.560 If that's the statement, then I agree. I think women are capable of theological competence. I 0.97

00:30:10.700 think women can learn. In fact, I mean, that's one of the things that we see in 1 Timothy chapter

00:30:14.860 2. Not only is it permissible, but you could even argue that there's an insistent with apostolic

00:30:19.940 command a woman must learn. And then he begins to outline in what manner and what heart posture

00:30:25.380 she should learn, learn with submissiveness and quietness, but she should learn. And the chief

00:30:30.260 context for learning, I would argue is not sending all of our daughters to seminary, but

00:30:33.920 the chief context for learning that was in the mind of the apostle Paul, you know, as he's writing

00:30:38.320 this is the church. You know, on the Lord's day, women are learning right there with their husbands

00:30:43.060 sitting on the pew next to them from those who are biblically qualified to preach and teach who

00:30:46.720 are men. But the point is, women should learn, and women can be competent, but I don't think 0.99

00:30:53.820 it's merely that a woman is not allowed to preach. I honestly believe, because of what I know about

00:30:59.640 the Scripture on this matter, and because of what I know about the character and nature of God,

00:31:04.760 it's not that fish can fly just as good as birds, but God has designated and determined that fish

00:31:10.740 should swim, just because. And birds can swim just as good as fish, but God has determined

00:31:15.780 and designated that birds should fly. No, the role of creatures, it extends from their design

00:31:26.040 and their nature. And so I would say that there's something about preaching that is not mere

00:31:31.760 theological competence or mere oration and the ability to articulate and compel. But there's

00:31:39.000 something in the very nature of preaching. I think it's a misunderstanding of the nature of men and

00:31:43.400 women and a misunderstanding of the nature of preaching. I think there's something in nature,

00:31:47.740 not just role, but role stems from nature, and there's something in the design of preaching

00:31:52.940 and the design of men and women where it's not just that a woman can preach, and as it was said

00:31:58.740 by this particular woman, can preach better than most men, but won't because I'm conservative.

00:32:03.520 No, the reason you are not permitted in Scripture to preach is not merely because you're not allowed 0.83

00:32:09.760 to but because you are unable to you can't preach it's not just that sally shouldn't preach

00:32:16.400 sally can't preach she can't um because the preaching of the nature of preaching and the

00:32:22.660 nature of sally are incompatible um and i think i can argue that i'm curious what you would say

00:32:29.300 so i this is a good point you raise about nature and it's actually the one i forgot

00:32:35.820 to raise as far as problems with complementarianism. So I do think this is one of the big

00:32:42.580 problems with complementarianism, is they detached the command, which would be, or prohibition,

00:32:49.420 women being pastor or preaching, they detached that from God's design and the nature of man and

00:32:56.440 woman. And so I do think this is essential, is you have to understand those things go together. 0.66

00:33:01.580 the very nature of the thing or person and the telos, right? The goal, the end for which it's

00:33:11.280 made. And so God's commands are not arbitrary. And the reason he places restrictions on women

00:33:19.600 that he doesn't on men is because of his design for men to lead. And so this gets into like

00:33:27.140 natural law. And I realize people like to argue about that when it comes to like the political

00:33:30.660 realm and everything. But when we're talking about male and female relationships, duties,

00:33:39.700 gender roles, as some people like to say, we have to understand that God designed men to lead,

00:33:46.860 and he formed man this way. So even when we get into the very biology of man, testosterone,

00:33:53.300 all of these things that make a man different from a woman, that has ties with God's commands 0.79

00:34:02.320 for leadership. So both to be the head of the household, right? The very constituency of a man 0.95

00:34:08.160 is different from a woman, personality to some extent, right? And how they think and function. 1.00

00:34:13.940 And this stuff goes down deep. And so when Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise 1.00

00:34:22.020 authority over man, that's 1 Timothy 2.12, he's not just making that up. Oh, God told me this, 0.99

00:34:29.040 so I'm going to repeat this command. No, he knows that this flows from and is tied from

00:34:34.380 the different constituencies of man and woman. And in fact, what did we see? What's his reasoning

00:34:39.760 in 1 Timothy 2? He actually goes to creation. He's actually making a sort of natural law argument.

00:34:44.440 because he says he says um for um um ad was formed first and and so he's going to the very

00:34:54.020 fact that he he was created first there's something about creational priority uh i think

00:34:59.240 it's tied with headship and though and then we could even go elsewhere like first corinthians

00:35:02.960 11 he says that a man was not made for a woman but the woman for man she's the helper to her

00:35:09.140 husband doesn't mean she's lesser uh worth or value of course we always have to tell egalitarians

00:35:16.560 that's not what we're saying um but um but it does mean as far as her work and uh god's design

00:35:24.820 for woman she is there to help her husband she's a life-giving being so it's you know she's a mother

00:35:30.400 i mean that's so important right it's speaking of hierarchy my my kids are not of less innate

00:35:36.180 value. If we're talking about the innate dignity and value of a human being made in the image of

00:35:40.820 God, I have four kids and a fifth on the way. They are not of less value than I am, but God has a

00:35:46.180 created order and a hierarchy. They are not my equals or my peers in terms of authority. We're

00:35:52.320 talking about authority. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And I mean, obviously with children, right, they

00:35:57.720 grow and mature, but that, you know, with a woman, that's not, that's not the case. She's an adult 0.99

00:36:02.800 woman she'll never become a man and regardless what people say uh and and uh she she can't hold 0.99

00:36:09.800 that authority she's she's not designed to do so um i mean there's exceptional cases where like a 1.00

00:36:16.460 widow right is the head of her household but that's that's not that's not ideal obviously 0.75

00:36:21.260 um so even then according to paul if she's younger he would say the ideal is for her to find a new

00:36:30.100 head and to remarry her first timothy 5 5 5 5 14 yeah and yeah and that so even there we have that

00:36:38.200 passage we have uh titus 2 and paul is is directing women's work towards the home i mean it's kind of

00:36:44.380 another issue but he he's directing women towards work in the home and child rearing and he's

00:36:50.080 directing men towards well leadership in the home but also their work is outside the home so this

00:36:54.900 even ties in with like the leadership and church thing is men's man's work is directed outside the

00:37:01.160 home uh whether it's leadership in the church or civil leadership or business or whatever they're

00:37:06.960 they're doing um so so i mean i think that's kind of an underlying principle there but yeah so real

00:37:13.460 quick getting back to what you were saying i was just going to get you back on track but you were

00:37:16.360 saying you know paul appeals to the it's a natural law argument at some level it's also special

00:37:21.760 revelation got it got to throw that in there but he gets to you know the order of creation but he

00:37:26.320 also he's kind of a two-pronged argument he he references the order of creation but also the

00:37:30.640 order of the fall so in creation man is formed first and man is formed from the dust of the

00:37:35.680 ground but it's the woman who's formed second and she's formed from man and for man so that's

00:37:40.800 the order of creation and its purposes but then he makes a second argument in terms of

00:37:45.120 the order of the fall so adam is formed first but eve falls first

00:37:50.280 yeah and so well what what did most of the complementarians do with this

00:37:56.440 is they've come up with this view that they say well it's just role reversal um but i'm not really

00:38:03.220 sure entirely what they mean i mean i've read their stuff on this it doesn't really explain

00:38:07.720 paul's uh reasoning i think uh it makes a lot more sense which is what i think most older writers

00:38:14.560 held is he's saying there's something about eve and her deception she was the one deceived adam

00:38:20.240 was not deceived adam sinned willingly and um which is not to absolve him of guilt if anything

00:38:27.120 it only you know indicts him further right it's not like saying this is a good thing about adam

00:38:33.680 it's just when compared to the man uh the woman and her i guess we could say uh just constituency

00:38:41.840 the way she's designed and i actually i like this explanation is that woman is made to follow right

00:38:47.280 so eve was made to follow and the problem is she didn't follow adam and she didn't follow god she

00:38:53.200 followed the serpent right so that that was tied with her deception she was deceived i mean that

00:38:59.280 was her own word she says the serpent deceived me in genesis 3 and i ate so paul's just picking that

00:39:05.440 up adam doesn't say you know eve deceived me that's not what adam says he you know now he does

00:39:11.440 Adam has plenty of sin. And again, if anything, he's more responsible, not less. But notice,

00:39:19.600 it's not deception. So it's not, you say, well, the serpent deceived me. And then Adam says,

00:39:24.080 well, the woman deceived me. No, it's the woman you gave me. She then gave me the fruit and I

00:39:30.780 ate of it. And if anything, the implication there, and I ate of it is I knew exactly what I was doing

00:39:36.200 and i sinned with my eyes wide open but i did it you know there's a lot of different commentaries

00:39:41.920 from older writers on this but you know some of them not all but some of them even say that you

00:39:45.880 know adam did it because um his his main sin in that moment was idolatry and loving his wife more

00:39:53.660 than god um he he knew exactly what happened when he saw that his wife had eaten of the fruit and

00:39:59.140 would surely die as god had threatened and promised um he said i'd rather die with her

00:40:04.840 than live with god and and ate of the fruit with her whereas what he should have done is he should

00:40:09.340 have run to god and said god um oh help us what what do we do my wife has eaten of this fruit

00:40:16.440 and then he could have even been you know like the second adam um by saying i i offer myself

00:40:22.700 his tribute take me instead of her would you please you know like and you know but so he but

00:40:28.940 But he wasn't deceived is the point.

00:40:32.640 Right.

00:40:32.940 He should have killed the serpent and guarded his wife, Genesis 2.15.

00:40:37.320 He should have done what God said, which is to guard, but he didn't.

00:40:41.200 And so there is a role reversal in a sense.

00:40:43.040 He follows his wife when he's supposed to lead, and he follows her into sin.

00:40:49.660 But yes, Paul is very clear in 1 Timothy 2.14.

00:40:53.400 He says the woman was deceived and the man was not deceived.

00:40:58.940 right? And that's just very clear in the text. So there's something about man's not deceived

00:41:04.860 and woman is. And so, I mean, I don't know, people come back and say, well, if a woman's

00:41:11.940 more deceived than man, then she can't teach children either. And I'm like, no, that's not

00:41:15.800 what it says, because it's just a comparison. If it's going to be between a man and a woman, 0.60

00:41:21.520 God says men are to be the leaders in the church. They're to be the preachers and teachers, 0.94

00:41:26.480 not all men, but some men. And so anyway, I, yeah, I think he's, he's, like you said,

00:41:32.600 Paul's appealing to creation. It's special revelation, but it's also, he's looking to

00:41:36.460 nature, the very differences between men and women. And, and he's saying God's prohibition

00:41:41.820 lines up perfectly with his design, differing design of man and woman. And it's good. And I 0.99

00:41:47.480 think, yeah, it's good. It's good. And for some reason, the complementarians aren't willing to

00:41:51.420 go there many of them some of them are um but this also ties in with other issues maybe uh you know

00:41:59.160 probably the best uh one to bring up would be women in combat because we don't we don't have

00:42:04.720 as explicit of prohibitions on women in combat as like first timothy two i mean we can go back

00:42:08.760 to deuteronomy i do think the uh that one verse is a 21 5 is referring to women not wearing its

00:42:15.840 armor it's gear for war yeah yeah i mean regardless the principle is she's not to dress like a man

00:42:21.320 and men are the ones who were warriors in the old testament so so either way it's uh it's it's role

00:42:26.440 reversal and and transgenderism um transvestism sorry uh so so that's a problem but but we should

00:42:34.860 be able to reason our way there from scripture and natural law to say that women shouldn't serve

00:42:39.260 in combat and yet you go look at like some of the debates we've had in the church and i can go back

00:42:44.340 i have a footnote on this i think it's the end of chapter three the orthodox presbyterian church

00:42:48.600 the OPC, which is kind of the old northern conservative Presbyterian church, they had a

00:42:55.440 debate in 2001. And thankfully, the majority took, I think, what's the right side is they condemned

00:43:00.460 women in combat as unnatural. But there was like a substantial minority report and a protest that 0.74

00:43:06.080 signed this thing. And they said, and this is the view they took, they didn't say, oh, well,

00:43:11.280 it's good for women to be in combat. They said, well, scripture doesn't speak to this sufficiently.

00:43:16.020 and so we as a church can't speak to it. But the problem is scripture does speak to this

00:43:22.020 in a number of instances, and we can also reason our way there. I mean, the Westminster

00:43:29.020 Confession speaks of making deductions, right, good and necessary consequences. So scripture

00:43:39.860 is either explicit on a subject or we deduce good and necessary consequences, and that would be,

00:43:45.640 I think one of these cases is we can, we can easily reason our way to the conclusion that 1.00

00:43:51.820 women should not serve in combat and it's unnatural. And yet many people today don't

00:43:56.480 want to say that. Many reform theologians don't want to, don't want to say that. And

00:44:01.760 I think that's just, well, there's two things going on. One, they're, they're caving to cultural

00:44:07.060 pressure. They're feeling the cultural pressure and they don't, I mean, in one sense, they don't

00:44:12.160 want to go beyond scripture okay but we have to go beyond just like the narrow words of scripture

00:44:18.660 like so this would get into the the fact that i'm i'm not a narrow biblicist um i think the

00:44:24.160 reformed tradition um you know went beyond the words of scripture they applied the whole of

00:44:29.300 scripture and so i give an example of like vermigli and some others doing that just that

00:44:33.700 is they they they said yeah women shouldn't normally you know fighting combat i mean maybe 1.00

00:44:38.980 there's an exceptional case where a woman's dropping a stone on you know a male soldier's 1.00

00:44:43.540 head uh uh you know he's a threat to them that that's that's exceptional but she shouldn't dress 0.99

00:44:49.860 up as a soldier and go fight in in the army that's that's contrary to god's design it's unnatural

00:44:56.340 and um and yeah and so i think we need to be able to go there we need to be able to reason

00:45:00.980 and and theologize the way that the older reform theologians did are you a christian struggling

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00:46:03.060 I agree yeah I think part of the problem with you know you said like there's a lot of reform

00:46:07.520 guys who aren't willing to go there because they're afraid of cultural pressure and um and

00:46:11.760 I think you're right and I think there's some underlying reasons for that and I don't think

00:46:15.900 it's just because of wanting acceptance by the culture um because I think they know that you

00:46:21.460 know like the New York Times is probably not going to be on their side um but uh there still

00:46:27.980 are some incentives baked into the reformed camp as small as it is and it is a very small camp um

00:46:34.220 you know i mean there's at the end of the day you know you're talking about a market size of you

00:46:39.260 know like maybe a hundred to two hundred thousand people like we forget what us you know we're just

00:46:43.260 a sliver of the evangelical population and that is even account for you know outside of you know

00:46:48.780 mainline denominations and then you know roman catholicism and eastern orthodox and you know so

00:46:53.660 I mean, it's tiny. It's tiny. But because it's tiny, I guess my point is a lot of your

00:47:00.160 reformed writers, the guys who are going to be putting out the journals, the guys who are going

00:47:05.280 to be putting out the books, the guys who are going to be speaking at the conferences, these

00:47:08.780 guys are usually attached to the seminaries. They're adjunct professors and pastoring on the

00:47:14.420 side, or they're tenured and professors full-time. And you're talking about a very small market,

00:47:20.480 again 100 to 200,000 people you need enrollment for these seminaries to be able to fund continue

00:47:26.260 funding the work and one way to double your enrollment is to uh encourage women to sign up

00:47:32.300 um to say well you know who's to say seminary is just you know all about training ministers you

00:47:38.440 know like men for for the ministry and you know the preaching of the gospel and you know everybody

00:47:43.180 needs to know theology right right and you know so what better thing to do when you're young you

00:47:49.360 As a woman, if you're not a mom yet, knowing that nobody is, because we've completely built

00:47:56.200 a culture within evangelical Christianity that despises getting married young, despises

00:48:00.660 having children young, so they know that all these women are going to be single in the

00:48:03.780 Reformed churches, even when they're 20, 21, 22, 23, then why not go to seminary and learn

00:48:08.920 more about God, knowing that they're going to rack up $80,000 in debt, and the very thing

00:48:13.600 that they're called to do, they'll be that much less likely financially to be able to

00:48:18.100 do it because they've racked up debt and you know but my my point is just um you can follow the

00:48:24.460 money um not just in politics not just in the corporate world but very much in the reformed

00:48:29.960 church you can follow the money and uh and get some real clear ideas real fast about why guys

00:48:35.840 believe and what they believe and write what they write yeah i i i think this is an unfortunate

00:48:44.280 the thing with seminary is there has been a confusion um between like failure to distinguish

00:48:52.180 between theological education for women which we all affirm right that's part of church where

00:48:56.100 we're teaching women preaching to women amen uh confusing that with the training of ministers

00:49:01.540 and kids i'm family integrated over here i'm not just teaching men and women i'm teaching kids too

00:49:06.180 yeah amen so i mean seminaries are what were created i mean to get a little bit of history

00:49:14.780 in the united states the the first seminaries were uh really in the early 1800s i mean princeton

00:49:20.000 theological seminary was one of the big ones um which was presbyterian archibald alexander

00:49:24.660 samuel miller and then charles hodge uh kind of the early professors so um i mean these were

00:49:31.960 teaching men they were known like you weren't going to seminary you know just to go study

00:49:36.560 theology you're going to princeton to train to be a minister i mean because before that you would

00:49:42.960 train with um other pastors and and you know that that's great too but obviously it has some

00:49:48.520 deficiencies and so seminary was uh you know in many ways was great um and so i mean yeah that

00:49:57.140 was the practice it was men um and and there's like this modern thing well let's get women in

00:50:02.020 the seminaries and yes some of it is motivated by money for sure and i i think it has a negative

00:50:07.880 influence on the classroom i do think it's it's part of part of seminary and i know people a lot

00:50:14.360 people do it online now but i mean i went to seminary and there was something about living

00:50:18.280 amongst like other men training for the ministry and that's great i think that's that's part of

00:50:24.960 the experience yep um but but yeah so and you know what most of our theological classes a lot

00:50:32.900 of them were just men and that was great uh but we did have some at rts with with women in the

00:50:37.300 counseling program and the like but um yeah so i think that's a whole big issue that definitely

00:50:44.120 needs challenge but also what's happened with a lot of these seminaries is they started to hire 0.99

00:50:47.100 women professors which is just ridiculous um i mean having having women theological professors

00:50:54.260 to teach biblical studies or Hebrew, or, I mean, you could go down the line. 1.00

00:50:58.000 I mean, some of these, like... 0.68

00:50:59.480 Women training men to do something that the Bible says their professor themselves

00:51:03.520 is not even permitted to do.

00:51:06.460 Yeah, I mean, so, like, Westminster Theological Seminary.

00:51:09.880 I mean, East Philadelphia, they had a woman that was teaching their Hebrew courses for a while.

00:51:16.720 I mean, this is kind of, unfortunately, fairly common. 0.98

00:51:19.300 RTS has brought some women in as adjuncts and whatnot.

00:51:24.260 You know, this is one great thing about Greenville Theological Seminary, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, is they actually require their professors to have five years of pastoral experience.

00:51:33.680 So that right off the bat is going to limit that to those positions to men.

00:51:38.560 And I think that's great. That's that's what seminaries should be doing.

00:51:41.700 But they're kind of unique in that regard.

00:51:44.480 So and I think it makes it harder. It certainly makes it harder to find professors.

00:51:48.200 But we just we need to raise the bar in the church today. 1.00

00:51:51.360 We just have way too low standards overall, and we're caving to feminism way too much, and our institutions have been doing that.

00:52:00.040 And so I think if we can say one good thing is happening with the younger generations, I do think there is more – I think the younger men are overall more conservative.

00:52:11.540 yep we can get the reasons for for why but like i i don't know i mean even my writings i'm hoping

00:52:17.740 and it seems that way that there's a good influence out there that most guys don't want

00:52:22.300 to call themselves complementarians anymore they want to say they're they hold patriarchy or or

00:52:27.800 traditional reform position um you know so there are some good traditional reform position on

00:52:34.040 patriarchy yeah or yeah that's right i i think i say uh every time you see the traditional reform

00:52:40.840 position i'm like yeah that you can say that but reform position on what like calvin's institutes

00:52:47.540 on on what like the regular principle of worship on like on baptism yeah yeah yeah i mean i want

00:52:54.140 to cover the the entirety of the reform tradition but i would say reform reform tradition on male

00:52:58.980 rule i do say i think i use that kind of language so male so i'm not i'm not opposed to the term

00:53:02.960 patriarchy i just i recognize like obviously it has some baggage some people you know they they

00:53:08.100 use that against us all the time yeah they do but at a certain point at some point you just got to

00:53:14.720 roll with it you know what i mean it's like yeah that's hey i don't have a problem i don't know i

00:53:18.860 mean after careful consideration after careful consideration i've decided to become worse

00:53:23.740 you know you just you just hear it every day like you're misogynistic you're this you're that and

00:53:28.600 It's like, you know what?

00:53:30.320 Your claims are slanderous.

00:53:33.120 And so long as me and my Bible,

00:53:35.040 like we know that it's not true,

00:53:36.940 then I'm just going to keep on chugging along.

00:53:38.800 You can call me whatever you want, you know?

00:53:40.360 And like, I like that, you know,

00:53:41.740 Doug Wilson said, you know, a few years ago,

00:53:43.720 I think he wrote like an article or something,

00:53:46.060 recovering the lost virtue of sexism.

00:53:50.760 And like, I think that's good.

00:53:52.660 The tongue in cheek, you know,

00:53:53.620 saying like, wait a second,

00:53:54.720 like, you know, some things really are wrong.

00:53:56.860 um and then some things are not like this idea that we would treat the uh the two sexes 0.93

00:54:03.060 differently the whore like oh wait but that's what we're supposed to do that's what chivalry is 0.67

00:54:09.300 it like yeah that's so anyway some some words are worth fighting for and keeping but some sometimes 0.96

00:54:16.160 there are some words where it's like okay you know what it's just not it's not worth dying on

00:54:19.520 that hill we'll you know we'll we'll keep the virtue keep the principle and but not be like

00:54:25.020 actually actually you know every five seconds so you got to pick and choose right like yeah we're

00:54:30.300 not gonna i i don't think call our uh our views biblical sexism uh though uh i i wouldn't mind it

00:54:37.140 but yeah i hear you we we don't we don't um i mean we have to just get used to the fact that

00:54:43.480 they call us sexist i mean it's a silly term sexism i mean obviously there's like things

00:54:47.780 that we would speak against which would be like you know uh the abuse of women and variety of

00:54:53.380 but like yeah obviously they call our views sexist and i'm just like okay whatever that's just some

00:54:58.500 made-up term you you have that has no rooted uh it's not rooted in scripture i mean the subtitle

00:55:04.700 to this book is uh recovering the anti-feminist theology of the reformer so that's good that's

00:55:09.320 another term we're anti-feminists right i'm not a feminist i reject it entirely it's and it's not

00:55:15.080 enough to not just be feminist that you've got to be anti-feminist that's right i love it i'm

00:55:21.380 anti-feminist amen let's go okay well let's let's land the plane but here's my final question for 0.96

00:55:27.160 you um so we were getting this in nature right these roles they stem from nature they're not

00:55:30.940 capricious they're not arbitrary you can make natural arguments you know from good and necessary

00:55:35.280 reason and um and then you know and then also there's a whole host of special revelation things

00:55:40.960 that god just flat out says um but getting into again nature i think you know even the best of

00:55:46.260 the complementarian folk, right? The broad, hard, complementarian, whatever you want to call it.

00:55:52.580 I think they still, they're going to say, okay, well, sure. Yeah. You know, these differences

00:55:56.320 in roles, they stem from the distinctions in nature, but they're still going to limit. This

00:56:01.680 is what I've noticed. They're going to limit the distinctions at the level of nature exclusively

00:56:06.540 to the physicality of men and women. So the only distinctions within the realm of nature that exist

00:56:12.900 at all are men have shoulders, women have hips, right? And so then, you know, mothering, you know,

00:56:19.600 stems from that, like, yeah, sure. There's, you know, there's ovaries that that's, that is a

00:56:22.940 distinction in nature. And then that plays into the, but what I want to say is I think the difference

00:56:27.500 goes all the way down, all the way down. And what I mean by that is, um, certainly there is a

00:56:33.100 distinction from testosterone and all these, but it, but it's not just the physical distinction

00:56:37.800 that men can bench more

00:56:39.700 and that women can nurse children.

00:56:42.540 I don't think it's just the physical distinction, 1.00

00:56:45.300 but with some of those physical things

00:56:47.440 that I think they flow into one another,

00:56:49.880 what I'm about to say,

00:56:50.740 but like testosterone, for instance,

00:56:52.380 and the way it affects people, men,

00:56:54.320 chemically and psychologically and mentally.

00:56:58.120 I think that the differences are more

00:57:00.320 than just who can throw up more weights

00:57:02.500 on the bench press and who can nurse children.

00:57:06.560 But I really do think, like, there's something to be said for the fact that,

00:57:10.920 like, just look at competitive chess, right?

00:57:15.700 So it's not just like, well, men are always going to win in the high jump.

00:57:18.660 Okay, yeah, that's true. 0.93

00:57:21.700 But a woman can lift a bishop or a rook or a knight and move it three inches on a board. 1.00

00:57:28.540 There's no disadvantage. 1.00

00:57:29.740 There's no physical disadvantage for women in the realm of chess.

00:57:33.380 um but you can you can study it and you can look at the metrics and all that um men are vastly

00:57:40.520 superior why and you can say well but it's just because it appeals to men and so you know women

00:57:44.800 aren't as good as men at chess because they don't care about it um okay but even that that begs

00:57:50.460 another question what is it about this strategic game that was designed for kings to strategize

00:57:56.400 war plans why does that appeal to men and not to you know so like at every level whether it's the

00:58:01.880 the unique mental faculty, or even just the raw appeal and attraction towards a game of strategy

00:58:09.480 and war. The point is, it's not just that men are stronger and women are able to have babies.

00:58:16.100 It's not just physical. There are distinctions and differences that go all the way down.

00:58:21.720 And all of them, to sum them up in my assessment, the distinctions for men, they're all geared

00:58:28.120 towards leadership. And the distinctions for women, they're all geared toward being a deputy,

00:58:36.240 a right hand, a helper to nurture, to follow, to trust, to create warmth, to turn a house into a 1.00

00:58:44.640 home. It is to supplement the man, but it is not to lead him. And I think it's inescapable. So I

00:58:53.140 just want to get your take on that. Is there another way that you would articulate the differences

00:58:57.200 of nature that stem beyond just broader shoulders and broader hips well there's actually a lot of

00:59:05.360 literature and i haven't even dived into it that much but um the the testosterone's effect on on

00:59:13.520 the brain i mean men and women think very differently this is obvious i mean some of

00:59:17.140 this we don't need to look into all the literature because if you just live you're like okay my my

00:59:21.420 mom and sisters think differently and wife think differently than i do okay you know uh they're all 0.86

00:59:26.580 still human but like there's definitely a just difference in in in how women process things and

00:59:31.960 so you see this in the political realm you see it in the church and i i think it's it's clear 1.00

00:59:39.360 that women leading in the church is disastrous and we don't want sessions full of women i mean this 0.98

00:59:49.580 is this is part of the thing i mean sometimes churches will come up with like uh shepherdesses 0.99

00:59:55.260 Like they're going to, like some women's council, they're advisors to the session.

00:59:58.920 It's like, hey, every single elder that's a man, male elder has an advisor at home.

01:00:04.660 He has his wife and we consult our wives on all sorts of things.

01:00:08.460 You should, but sometimes, you know, your wife doesn't always agree with you and she

01:00:14.360 might see things a different way.

01:00:15.600 And so you take that into account, but she's not the one who ultimately makes the decision

01:00:20.320 in the church.

01:00:20.860 And so I think God has designed men to lead, and tied with that is he's designed them to provide, and they would be like providing in the home, but providing in the church the word, like teaching, but also protecting.

01:00:36.900 And so when you get into the church, you have this discipline aspect that is essential, right?

01:00:41.120 rebuking one another uh i mean we should all be doing that exhorting one another in christ

01:00:46.220 um but then then you know you have formal discipline in the church for uh sinful behavior

01:00:54.740 and uh and false teaching and and the church has to carry those things out the church has

01:00:59.980 to exercise discipline right and when it doesn't those things fester and they become a problem

01:01:06.380 And then the church declines into theological liberalism or libertinism and debauchery, and those things happen, right?

01:01:15.760 And so you have to have men, and particularly godly men, leading the church at the local level, and if you have beyond that, right, at the presbytery and general assembly level.

01:01:27.640 And you could kind of make the same point with politics.

01:01:31.520 I mean, not to get into this too much, but things have definitely changed where, like, earlier America, voting was limited not just to men, but kind of men who had established themselves.

01:01:42.260 They had land and the like, and they had an interest in the commonwealth.

01:01:47.860 And they had a stake in the future.

01:01:49.480 They had children.

01:01:50.360 They were married.

01:01:51.260 Yeah, they had wives and children to look out for.

01:01:53.920 And now everybody votes, right? 0.97

01:01:56.080 We have universal suffrage. 0.98

01:01:58.000 Suffrage. 0.60

01:01:58.580 Outside of children. 0.99

01:01:59.560 You have to become 18 first.

01:02:00.780 and uh which i think is probably too low but um you know you said so you have universal suffrage

01:02:06.460 everybody gets to vote even if they are on the government dole right they take more than they

01:02:11.080 they pay in taxes um they don't have to own any land and i i mean this is just and also so this

01:02:19.900 kind of fed all these these identity politics and and then i mean we're seeing like just the

01:02:25.640 differences in the way men and women vote i mean you look if right you see those maps on on twitter

01:02:30.760 or whatever yes we laugh at it but there's something to it right it's like well if only men

01:02:34.120 voted like the republicans would always win every time but if only women voted the democrats would

01:02:39.400 win every time so obviously something's going on there um and actually this is a problem for

01:02:45.400 the younger generations where the young men are getting more conservative and the young women are

01:02:50.360 getting drastically more liberal yeah and that's very concerning not only for establishing marriages

01:02:55.800 but also future voting patterns and uh and and so some of this is the way women and men think

01:03:02.200 differently uh but it's it and it's tied with how they're processing information and um you know

01:03:08.880 women are more nurturing and so i don't know i think sometimes men are they're just more suited

01:03:13.060 to make hard decisions politically and ecclesiastically right so i mean yeah without

01:03:18.360 getting into all the details there's definitely something here as far as god's design for men and

01:03:21.960 women being different, and female leadership is destructive. That's just a fact, and we need to 0.99

01:03:28.800 affirm that, that that's a truth, historically, scripturally, theologically, and if you recognize

01:03:35.220 that, you can at least be more aware of what's going on, and we can say, actually, we shouldn't

01:03:41.700 allow the kind of these pushes, people pushing for more female leadership in the church and whatnot. 0.95

01:03:48.060 We actually need to stand on scripture and the tradition and say, no, it's actually really good

01:03:51.860 that we have just male elders that's fine we don't need anything else right well said well

01:03:57.120 thanks so much for coming on the show tell people uh the listeners where they can get your book

01:04:00.800 so uh honor thy fathers it the ebook is on amazon right now and i think they will have the

01:04:11.700 hardcover or if they do a softcover on amazon at some point but otherwise you have to go to

01:04:17.020 new christendom press website and they have it uh on there it's a hardback it's kind of a special

01:04:22.220 edition it looks really good it does people yeah so so you know that they did a great job on the

01:04:27.500 cover yeah so you you want to pick that up if you can get the hardcover because it will

01:04:32.060 uh not be there forever and you're saying the hardcover is only available with new christendom

01:04:36.060 or or it is on amazon no it's not on amazon it's not um it's only on the on the the new christendom

01:04:43.100 website so okay uh yeah they may do a soft cover at some point new christenem.com i think is that

01:04:49.400 what it is i think it's new christenempress.com yeah that's it um yeah and they have it on the

01:04:54.180 front page there so cool we'll keep up the great work thanks uh zach for spending some time with

01:04:59.120 us today we appreciate it and uh i hope to see you again soon thank you it was great to be here

01:05:13.100 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - September 16, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - Boomers & The Fifth Commandment

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